Modernism and Faulkner
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Modernism was a revolt against the conservative values of realism.[2][3][4] Arguably the most paradigmatic motive (motif) of modernism is the rejection of tradition and its reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms.[5][6][7] Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking and also rejected the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator God[8][9] in favor of the abstract, unconventional, largely uncertain ethic brought on by modernity, initiated around the turn of century by rapidly changing technology and further catalyzed by the horrific consequences of World War I on the cultural psyche of artists.[10]
In general, the term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it new!" was paradigmatic of the movement's approach towards the obsolete. Another paradigmatic exhortation was articulated by philosopher and composer Theodor Adorno, who, in the 1940s, challenged conventional surface coherence and appearance of harmony typical of the rationality of Enlightenment thinking.[11] A salient characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness. This self-consciousness often led to experiments with form and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency of abstraction).[12]
The modernist movement, at the beginning of the 20th century, marked the first time that the term "avant-garde", with which the movement was labeled until the word "modernism" prevailed, was used for the arts (rather than in its original military and political context).[13] Surrealism gained fame among the public as being the most extreme form of modernism, or "the avant-garde of modernism".
Key Ideas to remember about Modernism:
*An emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing. HOW instead of WHAT
*A Movement away from objectivity provided by third-person narrators,
fixed narrative POV’s, and clear-cut moral positions (ex. Faulkner)
*Blurring distinctions of genres, so poetry seems more documentary (ex. Eliot)
*Emphasis on fragmented forms and discontinuous narratives
*A tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about artwork
*Modernists champion the individual and celebrate inner strength
*Modernists believe life is unordered
*Modernists concern themselves with the sub-conscious
Here are examples of artwork from the Modernist Era
Surrealism
VanGogh
Picasso- Cubism
Modernist Architecture
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