Assignment 2

Modernism

Name Farhan Ahmed

REG No: 50800

1. Important historical events of the era.

A notable characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness concerning artistic and social
traditions, which often led to experimentation with form, along with the use of techniques
that drew attention to the processes and materials used in creating works of art. The First
World War was an important influence on the development of modernist literature. The
war brought about a general feeling of pessimism, leading to the breakdown of old values
and beliefs, as well as a sense that society was entering new phases. There were several
historical events that led to the advent of Modernism as a literary movement such as
industrialization, urbanization, and WWI. Influenced by worldwide industrialization and
the first World War, literary modernism was an emotional and experimental style of
prose and poetry that occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
literature.

2. Major traits of the Modern Period in Literature.

Modernism is marked by experimentation, particularly manipulation of form, and by the
realization that knowledge is not absolute. a term typically associated with the twentieth-
century reaction against realism and romanticism within the arts. Modernism is a period
in literary history which started around the early 1900s and continued until the early
1940s. Modernist writers in general rebelled against clear-cut storytelling and formulaic
verse from the 19th century. Modernism is marked by experimentation, particularly
manipulation of form, and by the realization that knowledge is not absolute. a term
typically associated with the twentieth-century reaction against realism and romanticism
within the arts. Both Modernist and Postmodern fiction explore the themes of alienation,
transformation, consumption, and the relativity of truth. However, each movement
approaches these themes from a different vantage point, since the methods of modernism
and postmodernism are distinct.
3. Prominent literary figures of Modernism.
Modernism, spanning the first half of the twentieth century, was the era of James Joyce,
Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, and other heavyweights who made it
their business to revolutionize literature. Eliot, Ezra Pound, the Dutch author Menno ter Braak
and others. Significant Modernist literary works continued to be created in the 1920s and 1930s,
including further novels by Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Robert Musil, and Dorothy
Richardson.