Modernism Characteristics Essay

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Modernity-Modernization-Modernism (Canon in literature) Attributes (Characteristics) of MODERNIST LITERATURE 1) PERSPECTIVISM: the locating of meaning from the viewpoint of the individual. - the use of narrators located within the action of fiction(experiencing from a personal, particular perspective (as opposed to an omniscient, ‘objective’); - the use of many voices, contrasts and contestations of perspective; - the consequent disappearance of the omniscient narrator (especially as spokesperson for the ‘author’; - the Author retires from the scene of representation (“the Author’s effacement”/”Authorial extensions” as voice, point-of-view, perspective). 2) IMPRESSIONISM: an emphasis on the process of perception and knowing: the use of devices (formal, linguistic, representational). - to present more closely the texture or process or structure of knowing and perceiving. 3) THE RE-structuring of the EXPERIENCE OF REALITY it re- PRESENTS. - art always attempts to ‘imitate’ or re-present reality: what CHANGES with Modernism is our understanding of WHAT constitutes reality and HOW that reality can be best re-presented presented to the mind and senses); - Consequences in literature: (a) a break with the sequential, developmental, cause-and-effect presentation of the ‘reality’ of the realist fiction; (b) a presentation of experience as layered, allusive, discontinuous; (c) the use of fragmentation and juxtaposition, motif, symbol, allusion. (4) LANGUAGE: not seen as ‘transparent’. - language is seen as a complex, nuanced construction of the ‘real’; - the multiple meanings and varied connotative aspects of language are essential to render the elusive, multiple, complex sense of reality and of the construction of reality. (5) EXPERIMENTAL in FORM. - to present differently,

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