The Modern Period lasted from 1914 CE to 1945 CE, and it is characterized by the following:
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American literature -- 20th century
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Literary History, Modernism and Postmodernism by
In these lectures, delivered at Harvard University in March 1983, the differences between Modernism and Postmodernism are discussed in semiotic terms, based on a contrastive analysis of semantic and syntactical (compositional) features. They present the major results of research into the literary conventions of Modernism (Gide, Larbaud, V. Woolf, du Perron, Th. Mann) and the innovations of Postmodernism (Borges, Fuentes, Barthelme, Calvino, Hermans). The investigation of innovation in literary history is based on a concept of literary evolution, launched by the Russian Formalists and elaborated by reception theory and semioticians such as Lotman and Eco. The author argues for further corroboration by means of empirical textual as well as psychological research.
Literature, Modernism and Myth: Belief and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century by
Modernist literature attempted to discover through myth an underlying metaphysic to an increasingly fragmented world. In Literature, Modernism and Myth, Michael Bell examines the relationship among myth, modernism and postmodernism. Bell shows how modernists used myth to emphasize the contingency of all values. This anti-foundational element, Bell claims, enables myth to act as a corrective to the political claims of ideological critique. He shows how postmodern concerns with political and social responsibility have in fact been inherited from modernism.
Modernism and the Ideology of History: Literature, Politics, and the Past by
Louise Williams explores the nature of historical memory in the work of five major Modernists: Yeats, Pound, Hulme, Ford and Lawrence. These Modernists, Williams argues, started their careers with historical assumptions derived from the nineteenth century. But their views on the universal structure of history, on the abandonment of progress and the adoption of a cyclical sense of the past, were the result of important conflicts and changes within the Modernist period. Williams focuses on the period immediately before World War I, and shows in detail how Modernism developed and why it is considered a unique intellectual movement. She also revisits the theory that the Edwardian age was a difficult period of transition to the modern world. Finally, she illuminates the contribution of non-Western culture to the literature and thought of the period. This wide-ranging and inter-disciplinary study is essential reading for literary and cultural historians of the modernist period.