| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Period | • c. 1890-1945 (WWI and WWII bookends) • High Modernism: 1910s-1930s • Key year: 1922 (Eliot's Waste Land, Joyce's Ulysses, Woolf's Jacob's Room) |
| Historical Context | Crisis of Western civilization: • World War I trauma • Loss of faith in progress, reason, religion • Urbanization, industrialization • Freud's unconscious, Einstein's relativity, Nietzsche's "God is dead" Traditional certainties shattered |
| Core Slogan | Ezra Pound: "Make It New" • Break with past conventions • Experimentation, innovation • Rejection of Victorian sentimentality |
| Formal Innovation | Experimentation with form and technique: • Stream of consciousness (Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner) • Fragmentation, collage, montage • Free verse, imagism • Multiple perspectives, unreliable narrators • Mythic method (Eliot, Joyce) |
| Themes | • Alienation, fragmentation, disillusionment • Loss of meaning, spiritual wasteland • Subjective reality, consciousness • Time and memory (Proust, Woolf) • Urban experience |
| Concept | Details |
|---|---|
| Impersonality | T.S. Eliot's doctrine • "Poetry is...escape from personality" • Objective correlative, tradition, dissociation of sensibility • Contrast to Romantic expressivism |
| Difficulty | "Poets must be difficult" (Eliot) • Modern life is complex → poetry must reflect complexity • Allusions, fragmentation, obscurity • Reader must work to construct meaning • The Waste Land = paradigm of modernist difficulty |
| Stream of Consciousness | Representation of thought flow • William James coined term (psychology, 1890) • Joyce's Ulysses (1922), Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925) • Interior monologue, free association • Disrupts linear narrative |
| Mythic Method | Using myth to structure modern chaos • T.S. Eliot's review of Ulysses (1923): "a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history" • Joyce: Odyssey → Dublin day • Eliot: Grail legend, vegetation myths → Waste Land • Order imposed on disorder |
| Imagism | Pound's poetic movement • Direct treatment, no unnecessary words, musical phrase • "An intellectual and emotional complex in an instant" • Precision, concreteness vs. Victorian abstraction |
| Defamiliarization (Ostranenie) | Victor Shklovsky (Russian Formalist) • "Art exists to make the stone stony" • Make familiar strange, renew perception • Modernist technique of shock, disorientation |
| Spatial Form | Joseph Frank's concept (1945) • Modernist texts read SPATIALLY not linearly • Reader must piece together fragments simultaneously • Like viewing painting, not reading linear narrative • Example: The Waste Land, The Cantos |
| Figure | Key Works | Innovation |
|---|---|---|
| James Joyce (1882-1941) | Ulysses (1922), Finnegans Wake (1939) | Stream of consciousness, mythic method, linguistic experimentation |
| Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) | Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) | Interior monologue, time and consciousness, "moments of being" |
| T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) | The Waste Land (1922), Four Quartets (1943) | Fragmentation, allusion, impersonality, mythic method |
| Ezra Pound (1885-1972) | The Cantos (1915-1969) | Imagism, collage, polyglot poetry, "Make it new" |
| Franz Kafka (1883-1924) | The Metamorphosis (1915), The Trial (1925) | Absurdity, alienation, nightmarish bureaucracy |
| William Faulkner (1897-1962) | The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930) | Multiple narrators, stream of consciousness, Southern Gothic |
| Marcel Proust (1871-1922) | In Search of Lost Time (1913-27) | Involuntary memory, subjective time, consciousness |
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Period | • c. 1945-present (especially 1960s-1990s) • Post-WWII cultural condition • "Post" = after, beyond, against Modernism |
| Relation to Modernism | Continuity AND rupture: • Continues modernist experimentation • BUT rejects modernist elitism, depth, master narratives • Modernism: Elitist, serious, depth → Postmodernism: Popular, playful, surface |
| Historical Context | Post-war late capitalism: • Consumer society, mass media • Information age, globalization • Loss of grand narratives (Lyotard) • Simulacra (Baudrillard) • Postmodern = cultural logic of late capitalism (Jameson) |
| Key Term Origin | • Architecture first (1960s): anti-modernist design • Jean-François Lyotard: The Postmodern Condition (1979) - philosophical definition • Fredric Jameson: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) |
| Feature | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Incredulity Toward Metanarratives | Lyotard's DEFINITION of postmodern • "Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives" • Metanarratives: Grand explanatory stories (Progress, Reason, Marxism, Christianity) • Postmodern: Skeptical of ALL grand explanations • No single Truth, only multiple truths |
| Pastiche & Parody | Pastiche: Blank imitation, mixing of styles • Jameson: Pastiche = parody WITHOUT satire (neutral imitation) • Example: Blade Runner mixes film noir, sci-fi Parody: Ironic imitation (still has critical edge) • Postmodern often pastiches RATHER than parodies |
| Intertextuality | Texts made of other texts • Constant quotation, allusion, recycling • Nothing original, everything remix • Example: Wide Sargasso Sea (Rhys) rewrites Jane Eyre |
| Metafiction | Fiction about fiction • Self-conscious, self-reflexive • Breaks fourth wall, exposes artifice • John Barth, Vladimir Nabokov, Italo Calvino • Example: If on a winter's night a traveler |
| Irony & Playfulness | Everything in quotation marks • Nothing taken seriously, everything ironic • Play with surfaces, no depth • Postmodern irony = pervasive, exhausting? |
| Blurring High/Low Culture | Collapse of distinctions • Pop culture = legitimate subject • Warhol, pop art, pop music in literature • Modernists: Elite, highbrow • Postmodernists: Embrace popular, commercial |
| Death of the Subject | No unified, autonomous self • Subject = construct of language/ideology • Fragmented, multiple, decentered • No depth, only surfaces and roles |
| Simulacra & Simulation | Jean Baudrillard's concept • Simulacrum = copy without original • Hyperreality: Simulations more "real" than reality • Example: Disneyland, reality TV, virtual worlds • Simulacra and Simulation (1981) |
| Fragmentation & Pluralism | No center, no hierarchy • Multiple perspectives, voices • Decentralized, decentered • Celebrates difference, diversity |
| Theorist | Key Work | Main Concept |
|---|---|---|
| Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) | The Postmodern Condition (1979) | "Incredulity toward metanarratives" Skepticism of grand explanatory systems |
| Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) | Simulacra and Simulation (1981) | Simulacrum, hyperreality, precession of simulacra Copy without original; simulation replaces reality |
| Fredric Jameson (b. 1934) | Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) | Postmodernism = cultural dominant of late capitalism Pastiche, nostalgia, waning of affect |
| Linda Hutcheon (b. 1947) | A Poetics of Postmodernism (1988) | Historiographic metafiction Self-reflexive + historical (e.g., Midnight's Children) |
| Ihab Hassan (1925-2015) | Essays on postmodernism (1980s) | Table comparing Modernism vs. Postmodernism Depth/Surface, Paranoia/Schizophrenia, etc. |
| Writer | Key Works | Post-Modern Features |
|---|---|---|
| Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) | Ficciones (1944), The Library of Babel | Metafiction, labyrinth, infinite regression, precursor to postmodernism |
| Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) | Pale Fire (1962), Lolita (1955) | Self-reflexive, unreliable narrator, games with reader |
| Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937) | Gravity's Rainbow (1973), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) | Paranoia, conspiracy, encyclopedic, fragmentation |
| John Barth (b. 1930) | Lost in the Funhouse (1968), The Literature of Exhaustion (1967) | Metafiction, self-conscious narration, exhaustion of forms |
| Italo Calvino (1923-1985) | If on a winter's night a traveler (1979) | Metafiction, playful, reader as protagonist |
| Salman Rushdie (b. 1947) | Midnight's Children (1981), The Satanic Verses (1988) | Magic realism, historiographic metafiction, hybridity |
| Don DeLillo (b. 1936) | White Noise (1985), Underworld (1997) | Media saturation, consumer culture, paranoia |
| Toni Morrison (1931-2019) | Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992) | Non-linear time, fragmented narrative, trauma |
| Aspect | Modernism | Post-Modernism |
|---|---|---|
| Dates | c. 1890-1945 | c. 1945-present (esp. 1960s-90s) |
| Response to Crisis | Fragment shore against ruins Order imposed on chaos (mythic method) |
Embrace chaos, fragmentation No attempt at unification |
| Attitude | Tragic, serious, anguished | Playful, ironic, parodic |
| Grand Narratives | Still believes (even if lost) Nostalgia for meaning |
Skeptical of ALL grand narratives (Lyotard) Multiple truths, no Truth |
| High/Low Culture | Elitist, highbrow Separate high from low |
Collapse distinctions Embrace popular culture |
| Depth Model | Depth, hidden meaning Surface/Depth opposition |
Only surfaces "Depthlessness" (Jameson) |
| Innovation | "Make it new" (Pound) Original genius still valued |
Nothing new, only recombination Pastiche, appropriation |
| Subject | Alienated but coherent self Individual consciousness (stream) |
Decentered, fragmented, multiple Death of subject |
| Example Texts | The Waste Land, Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway | Pale Fire, Gravity's Rainbow, Midnight's Children |
| Ihab Hassan's Terms | Form, Depth, Paranoia, Presence, Totalization | Antiform, Surface, Schizophrenia, Absence, Deconstruction |
| Question Type | Key Facts |
|---|---|
| Modernism Dates | c. 1890-1945; Key year: 1922 (Waste Land, Ulysses) |
| Modernist Slogan | Pound: "Make it new" |
| Stream of Consciousness Term | William James (psychologist, 1890) |
| Mythic Method | Eliot's review of Ulysses (1923) - using myth to order chaos |
| Spatial Form | Joseph Frank (1945) - modernist texts read spatially not linearly |
| Postmodernism Dates | c. 1945-present (especially 1960s-1990s) |
| Lyotard's Definition | "Incredulity toward metanarratives" - Postmodern Condition (1979) |
| Metanarrative Examples | Progress, Reason, Marxism, Christianity = grand explanatory stories |
| Baudrillard's Concept | Simulacrum = copy without original; Hyperreality |
| Jameson's Definition | Postmodernism = "cultural logic of late capitalism" (1991) |
| Pastiche vs. Parody | Pastiche = blank imitation (no satire); Parody = critical imitation |
| Historiographic Metafiction | Linda Hutcheon - self-reflexive + historical (Midnight's Children) |
| Don't Confuse | Distinction |
|---|---|
| Modernism vs. Modernity | Modernity: Historical period (industrialization, rationalization) Modernism: Cultural/artistic movement RESPONDING to modernity |
| Postmodernism vs. Postmodernity | Postmodernity: Historical condition (late capitalism, globalization) Postmodernism: Cultural/artistic response to postmodernity |
| Stream of Consciousness vs. Interior Monologue | Stream = unstructured flow; Interior monologue = more organized |
| Metafiction vs. Metanarrative | Metafiction: Fiction about fiction (technique) Metanarrative: Grand explanatory story (Lyotard's concept) |
| Pastiche vs. Collage | Pastiche: Imitation of styles (postmodern) Collage: Juxtaposition of fragments (modernist - Waste Land) |
| Modernist vs. Postmodernist Irony | Modernist: Irony with depth (Eliot's "Hollow Men") Postmodernist: Irony as play, no depth |
Modernism & Post-Modernism Complete
Pound | Eliot | Joyce | Lyotard | Baudrillard | Jameson