Ministry of higher education, science and innovation republic of uzbekistan

Modern Literature

In Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the ill-fated girl Tess has a conversation with her brother in which he remembers that she has told him the stars are other worlds. When he asks if all the star-worlds are like their world, Tess replies that the worlds are like the apples on their tree, some “splendid and sound—a few blighted.” When he asks which they live on, a splendid one or a blighted one, Tess replies, “A blighted one.”
This comment sums up the world view of modernism.
Modernism in literature, approximately 1910 to 1945, is characterized by a feeling of loss of any centering, stabilizing factor in life, a break with tradition, and a reaction against established society, religion, and politics. Modernism sees humankind as lacking free will; instead individuals are victims of the circumstances in which they find themselves, victims of the environment much like animals. In addition, God, if there is a God, is detached from human affairs; a divine power may have set the world in motion, but the world now runs according to natural law without divine intervention. Writers such as T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf experimented with new forms of literature and new subject matter which explored and depicted modernism as it affected individual lives.
Modern novels attempt to present the reality of the mind, not of the external world. In fact, the narrative tends to reflect what modern writers felt was a lack of order and reason in the world. Novelists such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce use a stream of consciousness technique, a narrative style which attempts to reproduce the random thought patterns of the human mind, affected by external stimuli and mental association. This narrative technique tends to ignore conventions of punctuation and mechanics, much as they do not figure in one’s thoughts.
In poetry, imagism, an early 20th century movement in poetry, favors clear visual pictures painted with concrete, concise language. Imagism promotes the use of hard images, sparse but specific language, and irregular meters. The imagists spurred a new interest in the 17th-century Metaphysical poets and their metaphysical conceits.
Early 20th-century drama reflects all the characteristics that permeate the time period: the alienating effects of technology, the loss of faith in traditional values, the feeling of purposelessness of life. Dramatists often attempted to shock and challenge audiences. Experiments in staging and stagecraft paralleled experiments in other genre. Leading 20th-century dramatists include Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter. Pinter’s plays such as The Dumb Waiter (1957) belong to the theatre of the absurd (a type of drama intended to show the lack of meaning in modern life by depicting characters in senseless, hopeless situations speaking confusing, sometimes nonsensical dialogue), with its portrayal of an individual’s lack of control over life, the impossibilities of communication among human beings, and social inequities.
The U.K.’s The Theatres Trust provides a history of theatre building in the first quarter of the 20th century, the effects of World War I and the precursors of cinema, and the state of the theatre during and immediately after World War II. The Victoria and Albert Museum provides a brief history of early 20th-century drama, as does Theatre Database. Theatre Database also includes an article on surrealism, theatre of the absurd, and major 20th-century playwrights and plays.