Literary Modernism

Definition.

Certain writers, painters, and musicians found new ways of perceiving reality that came to be defined as modernism—not a period of time but a commitment to experimentation in techniques, freedom in ideas, originality in perceptions, and self-examination in emotions. In general it manifests a rejection of traditional techniques and unexamined values. It often—not invariably—expresses the plight of the individual in a world of machinery and commercialism. Perhaps the greatest influence on the ways writers endeavored to convey experience was the stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922). Utilizing one day in Dublin, Joyce explored the interior lives of his characters by means of the association of ideas and sensory impressions. Novelist John Dos Passos adapted Joyce's techniques to American life. His Manhattan Transfer (1925) connects hundreds of episodes to convey a...

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