The Modern Age, 1890 – 1930

 

      KEY CONCEPTS

 

-          ECONOMY – POLICY:

Modernization (1890), consequent of the industrialization,  successful in Great Britain, France, Japan and the United States,  bringed competition between the states. The atmosphere of tension broke out in 1914 with the first World war.

 

-          RELIGIOUS CRISIS

The Darwin’s theory, stated in his Book The origin of species 1859, revealed that man is the result of a process of adaptation: our life depends on the capacity to adapt.

All this created the refuse of the religious values and the crisis of the individual, the only sure point of reference for him was himself.

 

-          SPACE – TIME

1.    Albert Einstein, with his General Theory of Relativity, affirmed that space and time did not exist as separate, but changed in relation to the point of view of the observer. 

2.    The French philosopher Henri Bergson made a reflection on time, it resulted as the sum of past memories and future expectations: the Simultaneity of time.

 

-          LITERATURE

The new conceptions of time influenced also literature, the technique of the shift of the point of view permitted the narrator to enter on the character’s mind, he seemed eclipsed. The ‘stream of consciousness’ and the monologue were also used, as a consequence the plot was not necessary. 

 

-          FREUD’S CONTRIBUTION

The Viennese psychologist Sigmund Freud wrote and important book : the Interpretation of Dreams in which he presented the importance of the irrational in determining people’s actions.

Human mind is made up of an unconscious part (ID), a conscious part (EGO) and a rational part (SUPER EGO)

 

-          CARL JUNG’S SYCHOLOGY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

He affirmed that man’s unconscious mind was formed by his racial memory: the primitive memory preserved by each individual of the experience of his race during its evolution.