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HUMANITIES: MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

Guest Lecturer: Valerie Edge MA in Liberal Studies candidate

MODERNISM (LATE 19TH TO MID-20TH CENTURY)

Ò  Events: WWI, industrialism, expansion of cities

Ò  New ideas, growth in education

Ò  “Make it new”- Ezra Pound, mantra of Modernism

Ò  Contrast to Romanticism and Realism

Ò  Break with traditional aesthetic forms

Ò  Baudelaire coined term modernity

PROMINENT WRITERS

Ò  Joseph Conrad É  The Heart of Darkness É  “The Horror!”

Ò  James Joyce É  Ulysses É  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Ò  Virginia Woolf É  Mrs. Dalloway É  Jacob’s Room

Ò  T.S. Eliot

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T.S. ELIOT

Ò  Return to tradition Ò  Rejection of Romanticism Ò  Reinvention of past Ò  Defy growing

commercialization of literature and art

Ò  Greater attention to style, form and technique

Ò  Artists’ work to make sense of world

THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

Ò  Earlier work, 1915 Ò  Later works become

more religious Ò  Captures essence of

Modernism as seen by Eliot

Ò  Themes: É  Anti-Romanticism É  Reworking of tradition É  Neutrality É  Anti-Realism

POSTMODERNISM (1950S-?)

Ò Extension of and development from Modernism Ò Skeptical of generalizations Ò Social construction Ò Writerly versus readerly texts

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THEMES

Ò  Irony Ò  Intertextuality Ò Pastiche Ò Metafiction Ò Temporal distortion Ò Magic Realism Ò Hyperreality Ò Fragmentation of identity

POMO WRITERS

Ò Literature: Vladimir Nabokov, William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Chuck Palahniuk

Ò Philosophy: Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler