Modernism is a cultural movement that developed during the first decade of the 
XX century. It masks a cultural revolution aimed to subverting the traditional 
assumption about human life and the universe. People lost all the traditional 
points of reference that assured them a sense in their life. The traditional 
points of reference collapsed as a result of the studies of scholar like: 
Friedrich Nietzsche who's famous metaphor "God is dead" very well synthesizes 
the absurdity of any metaphysical principle on which traditional western 
culture had based it's reason of being. In addiction Sigmund Freud, in his 
Interpretation of Dreams, showed that most of people behavior is determined not 
by his rational control but rather by his instincts, that is the unconscious 
part of the mind, over which human being hasn't control. What's more Carl 
Gustav Jung also contributed studies about the way human unconscious works, 
adding to Freud discovery a reflection of our racial memory. And it's exactly 
according to our racial memory that we respond to the different signs and 
situations existence bring us to face.
 
 
 
In 1910 A. Einstein in his theory of relativity demonstrated that space and 
time are no longer to be consider of a separate phenomena, but they change 
according to the position of the viewers thus making the vision of reality 
relative, not definitely defined. Besides all this imply that there are many 
reality as the number of the viewers on it. It follows that the position of the 
human being must necessarily become de-centered and the human being, what's so 
ever, is and feels displaced and dislocated. Therefore his 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 would be conceived and perceive of according to traditional 
standards: in a linear way which imply conceiving of one's life as a sequences 
of events. Time is now a quasi-philosophical concept: disrupting linearity 
standards in favor of a simultaneous concept of time, embodying all 
chronological time. 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 memory of the past and our future expectation.
 
 
 
All that considered one can easily understand the reason why QUEST is the key 
world of modernism. Quest means a source of meaning in existence. At the same 
time imply Modernist thought still looks forward same form of meaning, a 
possible order on which to organize one's existence. No surprise them that even 
any kind of artistic production coincide with formal research. And this explain 
also why modernist art, beside displaying it meta artistic nature, is and has 
always being considered high and elite, addressed to a cultural few people, 
thus creating a somehow cultural division between popular culture and high 
culture.
 
 
 
In literature this means modernist production is really DEMANDING for the 
reader: he is asked for a NEVER ENDING COOPERTION with the text, in order for 
the text to make sense. MODERNISM BETTER THAN ANY TIME, DISPLAYS HIS 
INTERTEXTUAL NATURE, since writers, novelists, poets and play writers all the 
same WERE AWARED of the working of intertextuality and of its potential.
 
In 1929 in an essay called "The Narrow Bridge of Modern Art" Virginia Woolf 
had defined the novel "that cannibal, the novel that will devour all other 
genres". In her personal case the genres to be mainly devoured was POETRY in 
that her fiction creates the same facts of poetry: it has got a rhythm of its 
own.
 
 
 
MODERNIST FICTION:
 
 
 
    ·        REDUCES PLOT TO THE MEANING (story line generally cover one day);
 
    ·        USES A THIRD PERSON OMNISCIENT NARRATOR who, even if apparently 
eclipsed, adopts the POINT OF      VIEW OF ONE OR MORE CHARACTERS in what goes 
under the name of the shift of point of view.