Modernism (Hooray for Wikipedia)

I am reading Voss by Patrick White at the moment, and having just made an effort to learn more about Modernism in art for my reading of Margaret Olley, Far From a Still Life by Meg Stewart, I had blundered onto Wikipedia’s most useful page about Modernism in literature.  While there is a warning that the page needs attention from an expert in the subject (which must be a bit demoralising for the contributor), I found its list of characteristics very helpful in terms of understanding why White received the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Although the Press Release, and the Presentation Speech do not specifically refer to Modernism, citing his award “for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature”, the TLS (Times Literary Supplement) recognises White as an exponent of High Modernism.

Like James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and William Faulkner, Patrick White is a practitioner of High Modernism, a style and an approach almost no one attempts today. This is fashion, and fashions pass. Henry James was considered unreadable in the 1930s; today he is as widely read and admired as any serious writer in the language. And White’s particular form of Modernism was always problematic. [1]

Problematic, eh?  A particular form of Modernism?  It was time for me to find out what the characteristics of Modernism were, and Wikipedia’s list is guiding my reading from now onwards…

Formal/Stylistic characteristics

• Free indirect speech
• Stream of consciousness
• Juxtaposition of characters
• Wide use of classical allusions
• Figure of speech
• Intertextuality [shaping a text by using another text: borrowing, transformation, allusions, referencing]
• Personification
• Hyperbole
• Parataxis [short, simple sentences, often juxtaposed without any obvious connection so that readers must discern the implied connections for themselves. e.g. Children are little animals that begin to think by thinking of themselves. A spaniel is more satisfactory. Voss, Vintage Classics, p221]
• Comparison
• Quotation
• Pun
• Satire
• Irony
• Antiphrasis [an ironic figure of speech: words used to mean the opposite of their usual sense e.g. the pieces of paper fluttered around him and settled on the grass, like a mob of cockatoos.  Voss, Vintage Classics, p220]
• Unconventional use of metaphor
• Symbolic representation
• Psychoanalysis
• Discontinuous narrative
• Metanarrative [a story about a story]
• Multiple narrative points of view

Thematic characteristics

• Breakdown of social norms
• Realistic embodiment of social meanings
• Separation of meanings and senses from the context
• Despairing individual behaviors in the face of an unmanageable future
• Sense of spiritual loneliness
• Sense of alienation
• Sense of frustration
• Sense of disillusionment
• Rejection of the history
• Rejection of the outdated social system
• Objection of the traditional thoughts and the traditional moralities
• Objection of the religious thoughts
• Substitution of a mythical past
• Two World Wars’Effects on Humanity [2]

[1] http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25338-2529485,00.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernist_literature#Formal.2FStylistic_characteristics

Useful also, is Ian Graye’s review at GoodReads of a book called Modernism: A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930 edited by Malcolm Bradbury et al.

See also my post PostModernism for the Uninitiated.