2. History
• Modernism has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th
century which is mainly in Europe and North America
• Characterised by a self-conscious break with traditional
aesthetic forms.
• It represents a radical shift in cultural sensibilities just before
World War I
• Modernist literature explores new subject matter brought
about by an increasingly industrialised world
3. Formal/Stylistic characteristics
• Juxtaposition, irony, comparisons and satire are elements
found in modernist writing
• Mostly written in first person
• Typically reads as a long stream of consciousness similar to a
rant
• Juxtaposition could be used in a way to represent something
that would be often unseen, e.g. a cat and a mouse as best
friends
• Irony and satire are important tools for the modernist writer
in helping them to make fun of and point out faults in what
they are writing about, which normally would be problems
within their society
4. Key Writers
• e. e. Cummings (1894-1962)
- created about 2,900 poems, 2 autobiographical novels, 4 plays and
several essays.
- ‘I carry your heart with me’; “Be of love a little more careful than of
anything”; "I imagine that yes is the only living thing."
• Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
- won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, published 7 novels, 6 short
story collections, and 2 non-fiction works.
- ‘The Old Man and The Sea’; ‘The Sun Also Rises’; ‘A Very Short Story’
• Virginia Woolf (1882-1944)
- regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the
twentieth century
- ‘Mrs Dalloway’; ‘To The Lighthouse’; ‘Orlando’; ‘A Room of One’s Own’
5. Key Writers
• W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
- one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature
- ‘The Winding Stair and Other Poems’; ‘The Tower’; ‘the Nobel Prize in
Literature as the first Irishman’
• Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
- ‘Exilliteratur’
• Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
- ‘Valley Candle’; ‘Anecdote of the Jar’; ‘Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock’; ‘The
Emperor of Ice-Cream’; ‘The Idea of Order at Key West’; ‘Sunday Morning’;
‘The Snow Man’
• John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
- ‘Of Mice and Men’; ‘The Grapes of Warth’; ‘East of Eden’
• Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
- best-known works include the "play for voices" – ‘Under Milk Wood’; ‘In
my Craft or Sullen Art’
6. Key Writers
• James Joyce (1882-1941)
• Luigi Pirandello
• Katherine Mansfield
• Joseph Conrad
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
