SUMMARISING THE MODERN AGE: 1980-1930

In 1890 modernization developed in France, Germany, Japan and USA. There was an international competition, So Britain, the most powerful Nation in Europe, lost its supremacy  . As a result  there was an atmosphere of tension that obligated the different European nations to make defensive alliances , but in the 1914  there was the decisive moment: the First World War. It caused the loss of faith in liberal democracy, Capitalism and Victorian idea of progress and in science and in  industry that had not produced a better world .  A second consequence was the loss of European self-confidence . So Europe ended his domination. This implies an economic depression that caused unemployment and so it was necessary a new modern policy : Welfare State, that is to say, the state began to control economy  and it took care of  people.

After the First World War Britain wasn't the most power nation, replaced by USA and France.

Bolshevik revolution brings communism in Europe. In order to advantage the crisis The Communist Manifesto of 1848 was considered: to take power away from the middle classes by revolution end established a fully socialist society, but it also offered an optimistic view of the future to a generation which had lost faith in liberalism and democracy.

Another element of 1900 was the sense of isolation caused by Darwin' s theory which caused a change in belief and moral which were associated with the religion. Darwin's theory affirms that men are the result of a process of adaptation, that creates a natural selection; so He demonstrated that humanity wasn't create by God. Moreover religion's crisis depends on the loss of points of reference, everything change. This crisis is summed up by a Niece's metaphor " God is dead, that underlines the absurdity of God existence, but creates also a sense of void, it displaces men.

This doubts and insecurity was clear in literature of poets that tried to react to the lost of values : Conrad, Hardy, Woolf, Lawrence, Forster, Eliot, Belloc, Chesterton, Wells and Shaw. In literature there were a lot of systems of values and  a lot of point of view, as a matter of fact poets left characters to speak for themselves, and  novelist disappeared from his own work , as a consequence moral criticism , observations were absent . The omniscient narrator speaks about many characters ( shift of the point of view) , telling characters' inner thought, feelings and emotions, through the technique of interior monologue . Interior monologue is a indirect style that doesn't use reporting speech . In this way reader is free, he can draw conclusions without filter. 

In the 19^th  Albert Einstein in General Theory of Relativity speaks about space and time that change according to the point of view .  Philosopher like Bergson and James reflect about space and time: past and future exist together with the present in people' mind . As a consequence time is the result of past memories and future expectations. So there was a simultaneous concept of time Bergson describes this process as a "stream of  consciousness" that is not rational. Some authors, in front of values' crisis, react in a pessimistic way: Thomas Hardy, who wrote Wessex novel, based on stoical dignity; Conrad, who wrote " Heart of darkness; Edward Morgan Forster, who wrote a book on literary criticism , especially about the difference between round and flat character.

.In the 19^th Freud studied the importance of irrationality. Reason can't control "stream of consciousness". Freud is a psychoanalyst, who wrote "Introduction of psychoanalysis" and " Interpretation of dreams". Interpretation of dream is important because it explains the dynamic that regulate human behaviors .  Successively Jung, from Freud theory, argued that  basic element of man's unconscious mind was formed by his racial memory . As a matter of fact there are different culture and different symbols, id ( irrational part) ego(rational part) and superego ( correspond to the censure of id ). In this period there are also French symbolic poets that influence the writers of Aesthetic Movement, a movement which broke completely with the  Victorian tradition. At the end of 19^th century English poetry was a Romantic poetry : It was sentimental, pastoral . So it was necessary a new poetry, Eliot and Pound produced it. This  new poetry begun with Hulme' s essays , they condemned the Romantic idea that art was only a matter of self-expression , they expressed the believed in impersonal style, they expressed moreover that writers wanted to returned to the Pre Romantic idea of man: men are limited . This theory influence poets like Eliot, who was also influenced by Pound . In this way started the Imaginist Movement. This kind of poets uses poetic language , rejected the soft, pastoral nature of Georgian verse and try to produce poetry which reflect realty of modern world. This poetry is difficult and obscure to read : the contemporary society and art is considered degenerate .

MAP

Modernism put in crisis  Victorian age's values. The reasons are :

• Economical and political crisis
• Religious crisis
• New concept of time and space
• Philosophical reflections

These crisis were put in evidence by literature:

•·         Fiction reduced at minimum

•·         Narration of a short period of time

•·         Shift of the point of view

•·         Stream of consciousness

•·         Interior monologue

•·         Narrator's eclipse