Continuity and change in Modernist novel

By

Sanel Tufekcic

Modernism is a philosophical movement that started in the late 19 th and early 20th century. It is

characterised by a break with tradition (that of established religion, political and social views),

the believe that the world is that what we want it to be (the world is created in the act of

perceiving it), as well as the believe that there is no absolute truth, but that everything is rather

relative. Another notable characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness and the celebration

of inner strength. Modernists rejected the connection with history to the point that Ezra Pound

will, in 1934, state Make it new.

In Britain in contrast to the previous period (romanticism) which started in the height of

colonial Britain the modernist period starts in 1915 (one of the worlds darkest periods) with

the publication of The good soldier by Ford Madox and Joyces publication of Ulysses in

1922.

The contrast between modernism and romanticism does not end on the strong opposition of

their starting points, but goes rather deep into the main characteristics of writing. The

differences are so big that we can say that modernism broke with, until then, established

writing as a whole.

Influenced by Freud and his teachings the modernist writers focused a lot on the

consciousness and the inner self of the characters. Such a focus will lead to the introduction of

inner monologue (stream of consciousness) by William James in 1890 in his book The
Principles of Psychology later used and brought to perfection by Virginia Woolf and James

Joyce. This use of inner monologue is the first change that modernism brought in writing.

In the previous period the point of view for the majority of novels was that of the third person

omniscient narrator. That point of view can be seen in modernism as well, but in many cases

in the union with the inner monologue which gives the impression of first person narration.

Such works are that of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.

In relation to the change in the point of view, modernist writers prized dense allusions and

linguistic experiments that could sometimes border on incomprehensibility. That is contrasted

to romantics writers who ought to make literature accessible to everyone.

One another aspect of modernist writing that is in contrast to the previous period is that of

narrative construction. As the narrative in romanticism followed a straight line with clear

beginning and clear ending, in modernism that is not the case. For example we have Ulysses

which narrative starts at 8 a.m. and follows through the morning of Stephen Dedalus only to

return to 8 a.m in the 4 th chapter, but this time its the morning of Leopold Bloom. Another

example could be Mrs. Dalloway. Although the book covers only one day in Mrs. Dalloways

life we have retrospective moments which reach from her childhood to the present moment. It

is true that in the past a novel could have been retrospective as well, but the retrospective in

modernist novels has no predetermined place, but is rather randomly spread throughout the

novel.

On the other hand we have writers such as D. H. Lawrence who was writing in a more

traditional style that is closer to romanticism then to modernism, and yet, his themes are

completely modernistic with a strong focus on the dehumanizing effect of modern society.
There is also Aldous Huxley who, with his novel Brave New World, argues against the

dangers and nature of modern society. However, his writing style (I would argue) is closer to

that of our modern-day literature then to that of his time.

In conclusion I can say that, although modernist literature broke with the established concepts

of literature and forged its own type of literature, it also preserved certain aspect of the

previous periods, as well as established the fundaments for our modern-day literature.