10.1 introduction to modernism英国文学导读.pdf

Modernism Modernism Modernism is a complex and diverse international movement in all creative arts, originating about the end of the 19th century. It provided the greatest renaissance of the 20th century. It is a conscious rejection of established rules, traditions and conventions, and the dehumanization of art.” Modernism was somewhat curbed in the 1930s. Modernism Modernism rose out of skepticism and disillusion of capitalism. Theoretical base: Irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis Common themes: the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and man, and man and himself Trends • After the First World War, all kinds of literary trends of modernism appeared: stream of consciousness, imagism, Dadaism, futurism, cubism, surrealism, expressionism and symbolism etc. • Towards the 1920s, these trends converged into a mighty torrent of modernist movement, which swept across the whole Europe and America. Characteristics of Modernism  Strong and conscious break with the past, by rejecting the moral, religious and cultural values of the past.  Move away from the public to the private, from the objective to the subjective.  Emphasize the psychic time over the chronological one, maintaining that the past, the present and the future are one and exist at the same time in the consciousness of individual as a continuous flow rather than a series of se