Historical Context
World War I
Modernism spanned several decades, profoundly reshaping nearly every aspect of Western life between 1860 and 1939. If one historical event epitomized Modernism, it was the unimaginable catastrophe later known as World War I. Leading up to the war, modernist writers saw themselves as rebels, aggressively dismantling the societal certainties of the Victorian era. American modernists derided middle-class materialism, while British modernists bristled against the complacent conservatism of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. These writers defied convention by openly discussing sex, criticizing religion, and insisting that poverty was not merely a result of moral failure. By challenging these societal norms, modernist writers assumed the roles of rebels, outcasts, and even perceived threats to society. Figures like Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis started to believe in their own dangerous reputations.
The onset of World War I seemed to validate modernist predictions of unprecedented fragmentation and destruction. The war erupted in a manner almost foreseen by modernists, as society's confidence in its own structures ultimately led to its downfall. The intricate web of alliances that split Europe into two moderately hostile camps—one mainly composed of democracies like Great Britain and France, and the other of monarchies or dictatorships such as Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire—became the instrument of Europe's devastation. Even these classifications had exceptions, as Czarist Russia fought on the side of the democracies.
The war ignited when Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo in 1914. Austria-Hungary sought retribution against Serbia, prompting Russia to defend Serbia, Germany to support Austria-Hungary, and Eastern Europe to plunge into war. Concurrently, Germany seized the moment to implement a long-prepared strategy. The German military command had devised a plan to march through Belgium and northeastern France to capture Paris in six weeks. In 1914, they attempted this maneuver but stalled, leading the British to aid the French and Belgians. The Allies pushed the Germans back from the outskirts of Paris, saving France, but the armies soon found themselves entrenched in brutal trench warfare across northern France, Alsace, and Belgium. Millions perished in futile efforts to gain mere yards. Among the fallen were numerous modernist artists and writers, including Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, a French sculptor and friend of Ezra Pound.
The excitement about violence that marked earlier modernist writing vanished after the war, as writers who once reveled in the promise of destruction were profoundly numbed by its real effects. While soldier-writers like Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon have provided readers with vivid, horrifying depictions of combat, perhaps the most enduring modernist imagery of the war is found in two poems: Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and Pound’s “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.” Pound’s poem directly addresses the war, stating, “There died a myriad, / And of the best, among them, / For an old [b——] gone in the teeth, / For a botched civilization.”
Eliot’s poem, on the other hand, evokes the psychological impact of the war. It is a collection of fragments, pieces of culture and society shattered and devoid of meaning. The poem may be the most compelling verbal portrait ever created of civilized man facing the possibility that everything has been destroyed.
Literary Style
Narration
Modernism aimed to depict the world not as it objectively is, but as humans truly experience it. Consequently, modernist literature heavily relied on advancements in narrative techniques. Narration, or a voice telling the story, is the fundamental element of all literature. Interestingly, these narrative techniques in modernist poetry and fiction reflect similar ideas about experience, though they manifest in quite different ways.
Modernist fiction often employs stream-of-consciousness or “interior monologue” techniques. This type of narration attempts...
(This entire section contains 883 words.)
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to capture thoughts as they flow through a narrator's mind. The unexpected connections people make between ideas reveal aspects of their character, as do the things they try to avoid thinking about. InUlysses, Leopold Bloom tries not to focus on his knowledge that his wife will be unfaithful as he roams the city. Consequently, thoughts of his wife, her lover Blazes Boylan, or sex cause him to quickly shift his mental focus. Additionally, various small ideas and images recur throughout the book, such as an advertisement for Plumtree’s Potted Meat and the Greek word metempsychosis. These notions appear randomly and linger in Bloom’s mind, similar to how a song or phrase might stick in someone's head for hours before vanishing. This narrative technique aims to capture the chaotic and fragmented nature of real-world experience while allowing readers to discern deeper patterns in the thoughts from a removed perspective. The implicit argument of the stream-of-consciousness form is that humans are alienated from true self-knowledge.
In contrast, modernist poets like Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot did not deeply explore individual consciousness. Instead, they sought to model the fragmented nature of minds and civilization in their narratives. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” features dozens of speakers who succeed one another without warning. The poem begins with the voice of the dead speaking from underground, then abruptly shifts to the voice of Countess Marie Larisch of Bavaria, followed by a sudden transition to a commanding, priestly voice. The result is a cacophony of voices, a chaotic mass of speech that lacks connection.
In Ezra Pound’s The Cantos and William Carlos Williams’s Paterson, a multitude of voices is brought to its ultimate expression. The poet speaks in various voices, but historical figures, artworks, and ordinary people also contribute their voices. In these lengthy poems, the poets incorporated transcribed letters—Pound used letters from Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, while Williams included letters from his friends and admirers. In this context, the poet becomes less of a writer and more of a collector of voices; the significance lies in the arrangement of these pieces rather than the content of each individual piece. This approach serves to "decenter" the reader, leaving them uncertain about where the poet (with his or her inherent authority over the text) is situated within the poem.
Allusion
An allusion is a brief reference to a person, place, object, idea, or language that is not directly present. Due to modernist theories regarding the omnipresence of the past, allusions are nearly unavoidable in modernist literature. James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound—the trio often recognized as the leaders of the modernist movement in English literature—utilized allusion as perhaps the central formal technique in their writing. The past permeates the works of these three authors, and indeed this holds true for most other modernist writers as well.
However, it is in Joyce, Eliot, and Pound's work that allusion becomes particularly crucial. In fact, it is almost impossible to fully grasp their work without investigating their significant allusions, prompting scholars to compile extensive volumes explaining each reference in Ulysses and The Cantos. Some of their allusions are quite evident: for instance, in “Canto IV,” Pound includes the lines “Palace in smoky light, / Troy but a heap of smouldering boundary stones,” which most readers would recognize as a reference to Homer’s Iliad, recounting the end of the Trojan War. However, not all of Pound’s allusions are so transparent: “Canto VIII” starts with “These fragments you have shelved (shored)”; this alludes to Eliot’s well-known line “These fragments I have shored against my ruins” from the end of “The Waste Land.” While Eliot’s line is famous, only those who have studied poetry would recognize it. Many of Pound’s allusions, indeed the majority, are quite obscure. For instance, he dedicates several cantos to alluding to Sigismondo Malatesta, an obscure Italian warrior-prince from the Renaissance, whose name is recognized primarily because Pound brought attention to him.
Joyce designed Ulysses to function on multiple levels. For example, every ordinary event in Bloom’s day mirrors episodes from Homer’s epic, Odyssey. Additionally, the novel serves as a retelling of Irish history, the development of the human fetus, and the history of the Catholic Church. Similarly, Eliot’s “The Waste Land” can be interpreted as a collection of allusions or “fragments,” as he refers to them in the final section. The poem features characters like the Greek seer Tiresias, two working-class women from East London, several Hindu deities, Dante, and an American ragtime singer. These references appear without explanation, leaving the reader to decipher their meaning independently. In the critical reevaluation of Modernism over the past decade, a significant question has emerged: Is it necessary to understand all the allusions to truly appreciate the work?
Movement Variations
Imagism
Imagism stands out among the many small movements in modernist poetry that emerged before World War I. Ezra Pound established the "rules" of Imagism, which primarily involved rejecting Victorian poetry. Imagist poets were advised to "simply present" an image without commentary. The use of excessive adjectives and the poet's voice were discouraged. Additionally, Pound encouraged imagists to utilize the rhythm of the metronome.
Operating from London, Pound published the anthology Des Imagistes in 1914. Key poets in the movement included H. D., William Carlos Williams, Richard Aldington, and Amy Lowell. H. D.'s poem "Oread" exemplifies the imagist ethos. Although Pound soon moved beyond Imagism, Lowell, based in Boston, continued to publish imagist anthologies long after the movement had waned.
Vorticism
After Imagism, Pound transitioned to Vorticism. This movement, primarily involving Pound, writer T. E. Hulme, and painter/novelist Wyndham Lewis, was showcased in their magazine Blast: A Review of the Great English Vortex. Vorticism combined the principles of Imagism with Cubism's painting style and added a layer of aggressive anger. During this period, Pound discovered the Chinese written character, believing its combination of sound, text, and image created a luminous "vortex" of energy. However, the movement disbanded as World War I began, as its anger and violence paled in comparison to the war's real destruction.
The Objectivists
The Objectivists were a group of modernist poets who emerged relatively late in the modernist period. They can be seen as successors to the imagists, but their poetry is even more stark and flat. Drawing inspiration from William Carlos Williams, most Objectivists were from a younger generation born after 1900. The most recognized poets of the Objectivist movement include George Oppen, Louis Zukofsky, and Charles Reznikoff.
The Lost Generation
The term "Lost Generation" was coined by Gertrude Stein to describe the group of young Americans who moved to Paris in the 1920s. Ernest Hemingway is the most famous among them (Stein famously told him, "you are all a lost generation"), but there were many others. This group included numerous artists and writers, but also many who were drawn to Paris by the strong dollar and bohemian lifestyle. Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises, provides a lasting depiction of this group as they travel from Paris to Spain and back, seeking excitement and occasionally working.
The Lost Generation frequently encountered European artists who were already residing in Europe. Notable figures like Pablo Picasso, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Constantin Brancusi, and others had settled in Paris, transforming it into a major hub of artistic activity. When the "Lost Generation" arrived, many established artists either befriended these Americans, exploited them, or collaborated with them. However, by the close of the 1920s, most of these Americans had returned to their homeland.
Compare and Contrast
1890s: The U.S. economy experiences rapid growth as the nation taps into its abundant natural resources. Major corporations in transportation, steel, oil, meat-packing, and finance industries form monopolies. Consequently, Congress enacts the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to dismantle these monopolies.
Today: Multiple states and the federal government take Microsoft to court, accusing the company of monopolistic practices. Microsoft argues that standardization benefits consumers more than having a variety of options.
1914: World War I begins following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Sarajevo. The network of alliances among Europe's major powers forces these nations into conflict. The war continues until 1918, resulting in millions of deaths.
Today: In response to a terrorist attack that destroys the World Trade Center in New York, President George W. Bush declares a war on terrorism, targeting Osama bin Laden. Initially, American and British submarines and aircraft bombard Afghanistan, where bin Laden is believed to be hiding.
1915: During the early years of World War I, the United States remains neutral. However, in 1915, the German navy sinks the passenger ship Lusitania, killing thousands of Americans. This event significantly shifts American public opinion towards entering the war.
Today: Following terrorist attacks involving jetliners crashing into American landmarks, killing thousands, President George W. Bush announces a "war on terrorism" and begins bombing targets in Afghanistan. As the mission to locate and punish the responsible terrorists progresses, American troops join forces with local militias to overthrow Afghanistan's Taliban government.
1927: Al Jolson stars in The Jazz Singer, the first motion picture with synchronized sound. This innovation, which combined recorded sound with recorded images, was revolutionary at the time, following the first transatlantic radio broadcast in 1901. It paved the way for the simultaneous broadcast of sound and images by television in 1939.
Today: Since the advent of computers in the 1960s, the nature of recorded sound and images has drastically changed. Pre-World War II technologies such as film, magnetic tape, vinyl records, and radio broadcasts are considered "analog" information. Modern technologies, including compact discs, digital cameras, computer hard drives, and even cable television feeds, utilize digital information—a series of instructions to a computer. Many believe that this shift from analog to digital will transform our relationship to reality just as significantly as the development of recorded sound and images did.
1929: Following the exuberant Roaring Twenties, a period marked by rapid economic expansion and the rise of modern consumer culture, the stock market crashes on October 29, 1929. This crash results from several factors, including severe economic issues in Europe and Asia, and the American habit of purchasing on credit and subsequently defaulting. This event triggers the devastating Great Depression of the 1930s.
Today: After years of exceptional economic growth, primarily fueled by the tech sector, the seemingly endless prosperity begins to slow significantly. Overnight, paper fortunes vanish as stock options plummet to worthlessness. Numerous Internet companies go bankrupt, and the downturn also impacts traditional industries such as automobiles, construction, and travel.
Representative Works
Call It Sleep
One of the most prominent instances of Joycean prose in American literature is Henry Roth's Call It Sleep, published in 1934. Roth, the son of Jewish immigrants, tells the story of David Schearl, a young immigrant boy growing up in New York City. Employing the stream-of-consciousness technique mastered by Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the novel captures David's thoughts as he navigates a life of poverty, witnesses his parents' conflicts, and faces neighborhood bullies. While the novel received critical praise upon its initial release, it faded into obscurity until a paperback edition was released in 1964. By then, Roth had ceased writing and relocated to New Mexico. In the early 1990s, towards the end of his life, Roth resumed writing and produced four sequels to his acclaimed work.
The Cantos
If Ulysses is considered the pinnacle of the modernist movement, Ezra Pound’s extensive poem The Cantos is arguably its most defining work. Reflecting modernist principles, this poem is composed of disparate fragments and voices from various times and places. It seeks to diagnose the problems of the modern era, proposes a flawed solution, and envisions a better, albeit fragmented, world.
Pound began crafting his “poem including history,” as he termed it, in 1917, with early versions of three cantos appearing in a literary magazine. He dedicated himself to the project in the 1920s after relocating to Italy, continuing to work on it and publishing eight installments until the late 1960s. This epic poem aims to recount “the tale of the tribe” (civilized humanity) from ancient times to the present.
Designed to reflect and incorporate characters from two of history’s great epics (Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s Divine Comedy), the poem was initially intended to contain 120 “cantos,” or shorter sections. While it lacks a conventional plot, the poem generally transitions from hell (both literally and metaphorically as a fallen civilization) to purgatory, where historical figures like Confucius, Sigismondo Malatesta, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Mussolini appear. Pound aimed to spotlight moments in history where a just and aesthetically appreciative society thrived or had the potential to exist. The poem takes a personal turn during the 1940s when Pound, working for the Fascists, was eventually imprisoned in a U.S. mental hospital. As Pound approached the end of his life and the poem, he found and documented glimpses of paradise on earth.
Public opinion on the work varies greatly. Some readers find the poem incomprehensible, while others believe it contains some of the most outstanding passages in English-language poetry. Critics are equally divided. Despite its firm place in the canon of American literature and its status as a key work of modernist literature, many scholars and academics consider it a failed, obscure, and ultimately fascist poem.
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway published A Farewell to Arms in 1929. Already famous for his portrayal of dissolute youth in Paris in The Sun Also Rises, this novel marked a significant advancement in his sophistication and importance. The novel recounts Hemingway’s own experiences as an ambulance driver during the final days of World War I, including his injury, recovery, and romance with a nurse. More importantly, Hemingway introduced a revolutionary technique in his writing. His prose was journalistic, devoid of adjectives and any constructions that might draw attention to themselves. This narrative style achieved a numbness that mirrored the mental brutalization the war inflicted on both the hero and the author. Hemingway avoided abstract concepts like glory, duty, and honor, as his and his hero’s wartime experiences revealed these as tools used by the powerful to manipulate the ordinary.
Following the widespread critical and popular success of this novel, Hemingway became an international celebrity with substantial literary credibility. He continued writing for much of his life, producing at least two more great novels (For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea) before taking his own life in 1961.
Harmonium
The popularity of poet and insurance lawyer Wallace Stevens has only grown, even as the work of other modernists has waned. Stevens’s first poetry collection, Harmonium, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1923. While modernist poetry by Pound and Eliot was allusive, steeped in fragments of previous cultures and languages, and suffused with an almost angry melancholy, Stevens’s work was light and lyrical. In Harmonium, Stevens demonstrated a verbal dandyism, reveling in the sounds of words and Elizabethan definitions. He was a direct descendant of Keats and Marvell, whereas other modernists saw Browning, Shakespeare, and Dante as their predecessors.
However, Stevens cannot be dismissed as a writer of light verse. His poems reveal the characteristic modernist fear of nihilism and the notion that the entire world might merely be a projection of his mind. In “The Snow Man,” for instance, Stevens listens to “nothing that is not there and the nothing that is,” and in “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon,” the narrator questions whether “I was the world in which I walked.” In his later works, Stevens wrote longer, philosophical poems that explored art’s role in human cognition. By the 1970s and 1980s, Stevens, rather than Eliot or Pound, was cited as an influence by hundreds of practicing American poets.
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner, a native of Mississippi, started his writing career under the heavy influence of regionalist writer Sherwood Anderson, with whom he collaborated in New Orleans during the 1920s, a hub of American Bohemian culture. However, Faulkner soon surpassed his mentor by creating an entire fictional universe set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. In this setting, the past continually affects the present, and Faulkner’s storytelling is rich with techniques designed to transcend the temporal limitations of language. His 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury showcases his most successful experiments with the concept of time.
This novel narrates the decline of the Compson family, culminating in the suicide of Quentin, one of the sons. The story unfolds through multiple narrators, offering various perspectives on the same events, requiring readers to piece together these differing accounts to grasp what “really” transpired. The most challenging narration comes from Benjy, a mentally disabled boy who lacks any sense of time. In Benjy’s narrative, events from years past, yesterday, and the present are indistinguishably blended. Faulkner’s innovative techniques did not earn him widespread popularity in the United States, leading him to a brief, unsuccessful stint in Hollywood as a screenwriter. Nevertheless, his influence was profound among Latin American authors, particularly the "magical realists" like Gabriel García Márquez.
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf perfected the stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue style in her 1920s novels. Her 1927 work To the Lighthouse portrays the Ramsay family’s summer at a vacation home on the Isle of Skye. Various guests, including the painter Lily Briscoe (whom many readers believe represents Woolf herself), come and go. The novel transitions from an intimate focus on the family to a broader perspective, with the looming world war casting a shadow in the background. The narrative then jumps ten years ahead, capturing the family's response to the death of one of its members.
Woolf’s novel intricately and perceptively deconstructs memory, family dynamics, and the impact of death. Within the Modernist movement, which often prioritizes grand themes at the expense of the personal, To the Lighthouse stands out as a poignant example of how Modernist techniques can be employed to explore emotional depth.
Ulysses
James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, first released in 1922, stands as the pinnacle of modernist literature and is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written. Joyce dedicated ten years to crafting this intricately detailed account of a single day in the lives of three Dubliners. The central characters are Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising agent; Molly Bloom, Leopold’s wife, a singer planning to be unfaithful; and Stephen Dedalus, a disillusioned young intellectual. The narrative mirrors Homer’s Odyssey, but condenses its ten-year epic journey into eighteen hours within one city.
Upon its release—and even earlier, when excerpts appeared in magazines—the novel was instantly acclaimed as a masterpiece. Joyce’s vast knowledge, his mastery of languages, literature, and history, along with his deep affection for a specific place and time, are all evident in this work. Beyond being an intellectual feat and a small marvel of literary engineering, Ulysses is a profoundly moving tale of marital and parental love. Due to its candid depiction of sex and sometimes offensive portrayals of religion and Irish nationalism, the book was banned in Ireland and the United States. In America, it took twelve years for the book to be permitted; until then, travelers to Paris had to smuggle the book past customs inspectors, who were instructed to look for its distinctive blue-green cover.
“The Waste Land”
T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” published in 1922, is considered the most significant modernist poem. Largely devoid of a plot, the poem instead seeks to encapsulate historical progression to the present day through allusion. Characters like Tiresias, the Smyrna merchant, and an East London housewife traverse the poem. London, described as the “Unreal City” shrouded in fog, serves as a symbol for a fallen world. The poem transitions from Elizabethan times to antiquity to the contemporary era, concluding with a faint voice speaking Sanskrit.
Interestingly, the original version of the poem was six times longer and titled “He Do The Police in Different Voices.” While still an emerging poet, T. S. Eliot showed the poem to Ezra Pound, seeking his counsel. Pound performed what he termed a “Caesarean operation” on Eliot’s manuscript, advising him to sever the connections between the vignettes, resulting in a poem that appeared as a collection of fragments. Eliot never publicly acknowledged Pound’s crucial role in shaping “The Waste Land” until the 1960s, when the original manuscript was discovered, revealing Pound’s significant contribution.
Most critics interpret the poem as conveying a profound sense of despair, reflecting the belief that, with the collapse of all certainties, the world is reduced to “fragments” that are “shored against [our] ruin.” It continues to challenge students with its complexity, but even a rudimentary reading evokes a sense of desperation and loss.
Media Adaptations
Historically, most modernist works have not successfully translated into film or television adaptations. Among modernist authors, Hemingway's works have been adapted to film the most frequently. Hollywood produced two versions of A Farewell to Arms, one in 1932 (featuring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, directed by Frank Borzage) and another in 1957.
Other modernist authors have also seen their novels adapted into films. For example, there have been some attempts to bring Joyce’s work to the screen. In 1967, director Joseph Strick released a film adaptation of Ulysses, which presented a simplified version of the story. However, because much of the novel operates on a linguistic and allegorical level, most viewers found the film lacking.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Sources
Arnold, Matthew, Culture and Anarchy, Yale University Press, 1994.
Brooks, Cleanth, Modern Poetry and the Tradition, University of North Carolina Press, 1939.
—, The Well-Wrought Urn, Harvest Books, 1956.
Eliot, T. S., Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot, edited by Frank Kermode, Harvest Books, 1975.
Ransom, John Crowe, The New Criticism, New Directions Press, 1939.
Further Reading
Bradbury, Malcolm, and James McFarlane, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930, Penguin, 1991. This collection features over twenty essays by leading critics of Modernism. The subjects include the artistic environments in different cities, the distinct characteristics of modernist poetry, and examinations of smaller movements within Modernism.
Charters, Jimmie, This Must Be the Place, Herbert Joseph, 1932. Jimmie Charters—known as “Jimmie the Barman”—worked at the Dingo bar in Montparnasse, Paris, a popular spot for modernist writers like Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. The book offers a glimpse into the leisure lives of these writers, penned by a man who was more fascinated by their personalities than their artistic endeavors.
Douglas, Ann, Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995. Ann Douglas describes the 1920s New York art scene as a “mongrelized” mix of black and white, urban and rural, male and female. She emphasizes the significant contributions of marginalized groups to American Modernism. Her book highlights New York City's cultural rise and balances the stories of well-known modernist figures like Ernest Hemingway with those of Harlem Renaissance icons such as Langston Hughes.
Hemingway, Ernest, A Moveable Feast, Touchstone, 1996. Hemingway’s relaxed memoir of the Lost Generation offers the most renowned depiction of Paris in the 1920s. This charming and engaging book features artists and writers from Picasso and Gertrude Stein to Man Ray.
Kenner, Hugh, The Pound Era, University of California Press, 1973. Hugh Kenner, a prominent and sometimes controversial critic of Modernism, argues in this book that Ezra Pound, rather than T. S. Eliot or James Joyce, is the pivotal figure of Modernism. He claims that all of Modernism’s themes and techniques are present in Pound’s writings.