Modernism In Modern Literature

Modernism has it’s origin from late 19th and 20th centuries. The continents which are amenable for it’s origin are mainly Europe and North America. With the experimentation, the modernists tried to break the old conventions of Victorian Era and instigate entirely new set of pattern for art and literature. Modernism was given birth after the First World War. It was a “War to end all wars” and it inculcated a great sense of horror in people as they hardly had an idea as to where it would lead to. The writers started adopting new forms of writing styles. They cared little for nature and history, rather they wrote about the alienation of the individual. This alienation originated because of the cold scenario which the individuals encountered after the First World War.

Some of the modernist writers include Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. The best example of modernist literature is T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”. It is confronted with quasi-conversational interludes and the biblical soundings.

A landmark event was the publication of the Irish writer James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922 in the development of Modernism in literature. The controversial novel deals with the events of one day in the life of three Dubliners through a technique known as stream of consciousness, which ignores a structure of the sentence and incorporates fragments of thoughts.

Another prominent writer D.H. Lawrence speaks with utmost fearlessness when dealing with sex. His frankness of the treatment of physical site of sexual love could be seen in his novels “The rainbow” and “Lady Chatterley’s lover”. Both of these novels were banned in England at the same time published ...

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...nic contrast between soul and body which is dominant in the original opening is ultimately reduced to relative insignificance. Clifford is thrilled when he holds Connie’s hand. His position is ambivalent, as he recognizes that unlike thought, the fleshy reality ends with death. Gradually, we see the propagation in distance in the relationship of Connie Reid and Clifford Chatterley. Later on as the story is old few chapters we see a new character Olive Mellors is introduced to us, who is a gamekeeper. His aloofness and nobility draws Connie close to him and after several meetings they develop a physical bond. Connie feels connected to Olive at a deep sensual level. Thus in the end the author D.H. Lawerence leaves upon his readers to decide the mysterious ending as whether Olive Mellors is succeed in getting divorced and whether he is able to reunite with his love.