Eng426 20th century english literature

The Modernist Literature

The Modernist literature had its origin in the years immediately preceding the First World War (Louise B. Williams 2002). That was the time when the changes in the Post- Victorian literature that have been discussed above really took place. The disillusionments of the First World War expanded the scope of the change that was already going on in the Post-Victorian literature. The modernist writers began to represent graver troubles than the experiences of people in the Victorian and the Post- Victorian literatures. The writers were spurred by the troubles that the First World War brought upon man. The beautiful landscapes that were being disrupted by industrial activities in the Post-Victorian periods were totally destroyed during the war. In the modernist literature, there was no need to represent or describe landscape since it does not show the truth about human lives and feelings. The representation of women changed and included the harsh experiences the war brought on them. They had become unfortunate widows, bread-winners, company workers, and individualised. There was no need to applaud great deeds of people, so heroes and heroines were not represented, and writers concentrated on the inner feelings of characters rather than their immediate environments.

0. Characteristic Differences between the Victorian and the Twentieth Century Literature

Because of the differences in the realities that the Victorian and the Twentieth Century literatures represented and the differences in how they represented their messages, there were differences in the literary works produced. The basic differences are as follows:

1. Fusion of Romance and Gross Realism:

Fusion of Romance: Romance is the form of literary representation which deals with unrealistic ideas by focusing on nature and being. It was the form of literary representation till the economic progression and new life experiences of the Nineteenth Century Victorian literature did not discard this form. It married the romance form with the kind of realistic life experiences people had in the period. This accounts for the description of environments in Victorian literature. The new experiences of the people which reflected in the Victorian literature included various economic reform movements like emancipation, child labour, women’s right, and evolution.


Gross Realism: In Twentieth Century Literature, specifically, in the modern literature, there was total breaking away from romantic ideologies. Nature and being were no longer given attention. The writers believed that the truth about nature and the essence of being can only be found in each individual. Their literary works focused more on representing only practical realistic experiences of people and tried to provide insights into what the future of humanity will be with technological advancement.

2.