An Introduction to Modernism in Literature

Literary Modernism is a subset of a larger artistic movement called Modernism that embraces painting and music
In the literary realm, it's basically responsible for some seriously weird literature produced roughly between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II.

Who????
James Joyce
T.S. Eliot
Virginia Woolf
D.H. Lawrence
Samuel Beckett
Ezra Pound
Gertrude Stein
Katherine Mansfield

Why????
a response to a lot of the destruction and disruption caused by World War I (technology that was better than the warfare style it was designed for, trench warfare and poison gas)
the city transforms
It provoked a lot of artists, writers, and also painters and musicians, to really think that they need a new art to make sense of this new world

What???
nonlinearity of plot or sequence of things
irony and satire (Verbal irony, situational irony, dramatic irony )
voices and the idea of stream of consciousness
allusions

Ezra Pound
Came to London in 1908
hangs out with Yeats and T.S. Eliot
created artistic movements
Imagism
direct treatment of the “thing” as "thing" (an attempt at isolating a single image to reveal its essence)
short
use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

In the Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Ezra Pound

Voiticism

Gertrude Stein
American living in Paris
difficult-to-understand poems, mostly characterized by wordplay as greater than meaning. She's more interested in how words sound
A classic Steinian phrase is 'A rose is a rose is a rose.' "There is no there there“
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Tender Buttons 1914

Tender Buttons
A BOX.
Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle. So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again.

Tender Buttons
A RED STAMP.
If lilies are lily white if they exhaust noise and distance and even dust, if they dusty will dirt a surface that has no extreme grace, if they do this and it is not necessary it is not at all necessary if they do this they need a catalogue.

Tender Buttons
MILK.
Climb up in sight climb in the whole utter needles and a guess a whole guess is hanging. Hanging hanging.
EGGS.
Kind height, kind in the right stomach with a little sudden mill.
Cunning shawl, cunning shawl to be steady.

Katherine Mansfield
from New Zealand
a pretty bohemian lifestyle
Anton Chekov
In a German Pension (1911)
The Garden Party & Other Stories (1922)
Bliss and Other Stories (1923)
died at the age of 34

had long-lasting impact in literature
particularly famous for starting the technique known as stream of consciousness
James Joyce's Ulysses, Molly seeks sleep:
a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just
getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day
well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody
coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for
his night office or the alarmlock next door at cockshout
clattering the brain out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2
3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the
stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the
apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it
twice better lower this lamp and try again so that I can get up
early

James Joyce
Irish author
the oldest of 10 surviving children
boarding school, local school, college in Dublin, heads off to Paris, medical school, comes home, stays in Dublin, starts to work on Portrait
in 1904, on June he meets his future wife Nora Barnacle
a short-story collection Dubliners (1914)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 1916
starts working on Ulysses, which starts getting published serially - in installments (1918)
Ulysses gets published in its final book form in 1922
Finnegans Wake 1939

Finnegans Wake
unreadable !!!
experimental
lots of words from foreign languages
the beginning of the book and the end of the book are the same sentence, but in a circle. The beginning of the book is: 'riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.' And the end of the book: 'End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousandsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.'
Why does he do this?
the important thing to know about Modernism - they know how to be normal and they choose not to be. That's always the way to approach any work of Modernism - to take a look at it, see where it's weird, and think about why it's weird.

Dubliners - 1914
a short-story collection (15 stories) about people living in Dublin: 3 – about childhood, 4 – adolescence, 4 – mature life, 3 – public life, The Dead – summary
JJ intended these short stories to be “a chapter in the moral history of Ireland”
JJ recreated the short story, moving its action & focus from external to internal events
the most famous stories - 'Araby' and 'The Dead.'
epiphany (comes from the Christian church year commemorating the visit of the Wise Man – January 6); indicates a sudden revelation or discovery, usually unexpected, that allows the protagonist or reader to see smth in a new way

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916
the semi-autobiographical novel
published serially in a magazine called 'The Egoist' between 1914 and 1915. It was published as a book in 1916
abandons the idea that he needs to be strictly realistic. He starts to get a little more interested in representing Stephen's consciousness
Bildungsroman- 'formation novel.'
Stephen Dedalus - an alter-ego of young Joyce
follows Stephen through stages of childhood and young adulthood

Part I: Childhood
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
Part II: Sexual Awakening
Part III: Religious Torment
Part IV: Discipline
Part V: University
at the end of the diary is a dedication to his father: Old father, old artificer, stand me forever in good stead