Learning Paths » 5C Interacting
MCorte - Notes about Modernism
by - (2011-11-30)
Up to 5 - Modernism and Postmodernism
MCorte -Modernism and Postmodernism - Notes about Modernism
Modernism is a cultural movement that developed during the first three decades of the twentieth century. It marks a cultural revolution aimed at subverting the traditional assumption about human life and the universe. People lost all the traditional point of references that assure them a sense in their life. The traditional points of references collapsed as a result of the studies of scholars like Friedrich Nietzesche, whose famous metaphor "God is dead" very well synthesize the absurdity of any metaphysical principle on which traditional western culture had based his reason of being. In addition Sigmund Freud in his Interpretation of Dreams showed how most of people behaviors is determined not by rational control but rather by his instincts that is the unconscious part of the mind over which human beings have no control. What's more Carl Justav Jung also contributed studies about the way human unconsciousness works adding to Freud's discovery a reflection on our racial memory . And it is exactly according our rational memory that we respond to the different signs and situations existence bring us to face.
In 1910 Albert Einstein in his Theory of Relativity demonstrated that space and time are no longer to be consisted of as separated phenomenal but the change according to the position of the viewer thus making the vision of reality relative: not definitely definited. Besides all this employs there are as many realities as the number of viewers on it. It follows that the position of human being must necessarily become decentered and the human being whatsoever is and feels displaced and dislocated. Therefore it desperately needs to grasp to somebody or something which may compensate at least partly to the sense of void left by the collapse of certainties on which all traditional western culture was rooted.
Not even time could be consisted and perceived of according to traditional standards: in a linear way which implies conceiving one's life as a sequencing of events. Time is now a quasi - philosophical if not psychological concept, disrupting linearly standards in favour of a simultaneous concept of time, containing all chronological times. Now past and future are included in the present in one's stream of consciousness. In a few words: according to Bergson's theory of time the present results from our memories of the past and our future aspectations.
All that considered one can easily understand why QUEST is the key word of Modernism. Quest means a search for a meaning in existence at the same time implying that modernist thought still looks forward some form of meaning, a possible order on which to organize one's existence. None surprise than even any kind of artistic production whatsoever called inside with formal research. And this explains also why Modernist art besides displaying its meta- artistic nature, is and has always been considered high and elite, addressed to a culture of few people, that's creating a somehow culture divided between popular culture and culture, that is high culture.
In literature this means modernist production is really demanding for reader, he is asked for a never-ending cooperation with the text in order for the text to make sense. Modernism better than any time displays its intertextual nature, since writers, novelists, poets and play writers all the same, were aware of the working of intertextuality and of his potentation.
In 1925 in an essay called "The Narrow Bridge of Modern Art", Virginia Wolff had definite the novel "that cannibal, the novel that will devour all other genres". In her personal case the genre to be mainly developed was poetry in that in her fiction creates the same fate of poetry: it has got a rhythm of his own.
Modernist fiction:
• Reduces plot to the minimal(storyline generally covers one day)
• Uses a third person omniscient narrator who even if apparently eclipsed, adopts the point of view of one or more character in what goes under the name of the shift of the point of view
In 1910 Albert Einstein in his Theory of Relativity demonstrated that space and time are no longer to be consisted of as separated phenomenal but the change according to the position of the viewer thus making the vision of reality relative: not definitely definited. Besides all this employs there are as many realities as the number of viewers on it. It follows that the position of human being must necessarily become decentered and the human being whatsoever is and feels displaced and dislocated. Therefore it desperately needs to grasp to somebody or something which may compensate at least partly to the sense of void left by the collapse of certainties on which all traditional western culture was rooted.
Not even time could be consisted and perceived of according to traditional standards: in a linear way which implies conceiving one's life as a sequencing of events. Time is now a quasi - philosophical if not psychological concept, disrupting linearly standards in favour of a simultaneous concept of time, containing all chronological times. Now past and future are included in the present in one's stream of consciousness. In a few words: according to Bergson's theory of time the present results from our memories of the past and our future aspectations.
All that considered one can easily understand why QUEST is the key word of Modernism. Quest means a search for a meaning in existence at the same time implying that modernist thought still looks forward some form of meaning, a possible order on which to organize one's existence. None surprise than even any kind of artistic production whatsoever called inside with formal research. And this explains also why Modernist art besides displaying its meta- artistic nature, is and has always been considered high and elite, addressed to a culture of few people, that's creating a somehow culture divided between popular culture and culture, that is high culture.
In literature this means modernist production is really demanding for reader, he is asked for a never-ending cooperation with the text in order for the text to make sense. Modernism better than any time displays its intertextual nature, since writers, novelists, poets and play writers all the same, were aware of the working of intertextuality and of his potentation.
In 1925 in an essay called "The Narrow Bridge of Modern Art", Virginia Wolff had definite the novel "that cannibal, the novel that will devour all other genres". In her personal case the genre to be mainly developed was poetry in that in her fiction creates the same fate of poetry: it has got a rhythm of his own.
Modernist fiction:
• Reduces plot to the minimal(storyline generally covers one day)
• Uses a third person omniscient narrator who even if apparently eclipsed, adopts the point of view of one or more character in what goes under the name of the shift of the point of view