Modernism — English definition
Defined in 2 courses:
- An early-1900s movement that broke traditional forms to capture a fragmented, disillusioned world through irony, interior voice, and ambiguity. (English 11: American Voices, Identity & Public Memory)
- An early-1900s movement that answered a fractured, disillusioned world with fragmentation, difficulty, and deep interiority (Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka). (English 12: Complex Texts, Independent Inquiry & Public Voice)
Where it is taught
- American Literary Movements & Themes — Close Reading & Literary Analysis, English 11: American Voices, Identity & Public Memory, Grade 11
- Literary Movements & Context — Close Reading & Literary Analysis, English 12: Complex Texts, Independent Inquiry & Public Voice, Grade 12
In use
Then the catastrophe of the First World War helped usher in Modernism in the early 1900s, a movement marked by disillusionment, fragmentation, and irony.
American Literary Movements & Themes
Modernism answered with fragmentation, difficulty, and interiority — Eliot assembling a broken world from shards of quotation, Joyce and Woolf following consciousness as it actually flickers from thought to thought, Kafka rendering a reality gone quietly nightmarish.
Literary Movements & Context
Taught alongside
- literary movement
- the American Dream
- individualism
- Transcendentalism
- Realism
- Romanticism
- historical context
- the sublime