All kinds of disciplines change in time. In particular in this text I am going to analyze the changes in painting and literature. During the Victorian age, the function of paintings was to present narrative scenes. So the author of the paint focused his attention on scenes, he represented characters’ actions. The concept of painting changed with Impressionism: pictures represented the emotions and sensations of the characters. So the subject was the same but it represented something different. During Post Impressionism the concept of painting changed: it gave importance to the pure elements of color and form. Artistic painting isn’t the only discipline that follows this way. Even in literature we can notice some changes. In particular I want to analyze the change of fiction in the Modern Age and in other periods. Modernism is a period that develops from 1890 to 1930. In the previous period, the function of literature was to tell and to explain a story as a succession of events or scenes. But during the Modern Age, literature focused its attention on characters, their behavior and their psychology.  An example is given by Joyce’s fiction. One of his works is called “The Dubliners”. In particular I will discuss “The Dubliners” taking “the Dead” as an example. In the chapter some characteristics of literature of the period come to surface. The main characters, Gabriel and Gretta, are invited by Gabriel’s aunts to a party that is organized every year. The party creates happiness in the couple but when Gabriel’s wife listens to a song, the woman becomes sad. Gabriel doesn’t understand the woman’s behavior and asks some explanations to her lover. The woman says that the song is the song that her first boyfriend used to sing to her. This person died some years later. This story creates a particular mind’s condition in Gabriel. The narrator reveals Gabriel’s characterization to the reader. He is a man that isn’t able to look in the heart of other people: he doesn’t know about all this story. Besides, the scenes reveal the egoism of the man: he thinks only about himself. Reading the story, we can understand that literature, in the Modern Age, has the aim of study people’s psychology and behavior. So it is different from previous literature. In conclusion we can say that the majority of disciplines (for example literature and painting) change in time.