Reading Notes W12: Modernity and Modernism, Part A

Modernity and Modernism: 1900-1945 (3-13)

• at the beginning of the 20th century, the world was adapting in ways it never has before
• there was new means of transportation like the steamship, the railroad, automobiles, and airplanes so it allowed people to travel quickly
• the telegraph and telephone also allowed people to communicate instantaneously
• these vast transformations in human experience can be characterized as modernization (3)
• the production of weapons were increasingly effective as well
• the 20th century was the bloodiest in human history: as many as 200 million died in wars, revolutions, genocides, and related famines (4)
• in response to the horror, the old dream of  a unified, peaceful world became ever more appealing due to the light of new technologies and optimistic ideas of progress (4)
• as Europe and North America became industrialized over the course of the 19th century, they extended their political power to cover most of the globe
• yet as the 20th century advanced, "the sun did set on the British Empire and on every other European empire as well" (4)
• during the first half of the century, the world system the European powers dominated experienced the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, and the Holocaust
• these became concerns for the literature of the period and contributed to a rethinking of traditional literary forms and techniques (4)
• WWI was the most mechanized war to date and killed some 15 million people
• in the East, Germany and Austria-Hungary drove deep into Russian territory
• the Communist movement, supportive of some literary experiments, increasingly restricted the scope of acceptable artistic expression in the countries where it gained control (5)
• in response to that, literature developed, published abroad or in informal, private editions that could circulate without being censored (5)
• "writers around the world responded to these cataclysmic events with an unprecedented wave of literary experimentation, known as modernism, which linked the polictial crises with a crisis of representation - a sense that the old ways of portraying the human experience were no longer adequate (9)
• the modernist crisis of representation also reflected a broader "crisis of reason" that had begun in Europe in the late 19th century (9)
• modernism initiated a change in the content of literature, specifically in the inclusion of social roles