Question- What do you know about Modernism in Literature? Study it under the following heads- 1. Modern Fiction 2. Modem Poetry 3. Modern Drama.

Answer -

1. Modern Fiction - The novel was the dominant literary form in the Victorian period and while engagement with the reading public of the early 20th century continued. The high Victorian fascination for social drama was somewhat pushed to the margins in the attempts of the modern to accommodate new situations and attitudes. It may be argued that the modern moment in english diction was brought about by the writings of Joseph Conrad, especially his Lord Jim (1900) and Heart of Darkness (1902).

The possibilities suggested by Conrad were taken further by other modern novelists such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. In her novel, Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To The Lighthouse (1927), Virginia Woolf readdressed the issue of the genre itself by suggesting that external structuring of events through the frame of the novel was not adequate to justify the complexities of modern experience.

Among other members, the novelist E.M. Forster was associated with the Bloomsbury Group. Like Woolf's stream of consciousness technique, Forster's best known work is A Passage To India (1924) where he wave through the thread of cultural differences with dexterity. His views regarding India have been controversial to say the least.

James Joyce's novel has become a cult text of modern literature. In Ulysses, ahead with his quest figure, Stephen Dedalus (whom he had introduced in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in a narrative that to present the modern day Dublin as the archetype of the civilized city, and these characters are epitome of modern man.

D.H. Lawrence relied more on the thematic evocation of the modern experience than narrative jigglery to further his theris on modernity. The logic of autobiographical association was used initially to read his first novel Sons Lovers (1913). Lawrence did not want to impress upon his audience or it could be argued that his visualisation of obscenity and vulgarity operated through a completely different matrix than the one that normally did. The Rainbow (1915), Women In Love (1920), Aaron's Rod (1922) and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928/1960) are some of Lawrence's other novels.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) wrote a futuristic novel about modern chaos in his Brave New World (1932). The combination of tragedy and satire was successfully packaged in the novels of Evelyn Waugh especially 'A Handful of Dust' (1934) and Brideshead Revisited (1945). The plight of the personal occupied a very important place in Greene's fiction which was portrayed in The Power and The Glory (1940) and The Heart of the Matter (1948).

2. Modern Poetry - The advent of the twentieth century saw interesting explorations in the field of poetry, which were further quickened by developments in the contemporary world. The first major change came in the writing of the group know as the War Poets (Modernist Poets). The First World War was a major political as well as a cultural event. The poetry of Rupert Brooke was often seen in conjunction with his image of the young patriot, who died for the country.

The contemporaries of Brooke who provided responses protest and frustration included Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967). Sassoon wrote anti-war poems with a quiet but very effective ironic thrust in the Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter Attack (1918). Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), Ivor Gurney (1890-1937), Issac Rosenberg (1890-1918), Edward Thomas (1878-1917) and Charles Sorley (1896-1916) were some of the other poets of the war period who didn't survive it."

The First World War provides a very convenient marker to read the emergence of new trends in English poetry and figures like W.B. Yeats (1865- 1939), who in fact had been writing from the last decades of the preceding century, and T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) moved to suggest interesting departures from the available poetic modes. The conflict between the romantic idyll and the potentially corrupt urban world is beautifully evoked in his "The Lake Isle of Innisfree". Yeats romanticism found another counter in the spirit of Irish- nationalism.

Eliot on the other hand, began his poetic career by reacting to the romantic assumptions of the nineteenth century brand practiced by poets like William Wordsworth. One of his earliest poems, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' is today as an example of trademark modernism for its constricted allusiveness and for subsisting in a parodic engagement that undercut many of the Victoria certainties including love. In his classic The Wasteland (1922), where he presents the angst, corruption and materialism of-modernist society within the frame of a quest that draws on various cultural structures. The poem is characterised by a robust of cosmopolitanism: The collection of four poems called "Four Quartets' (1943) dealt with the complexities of religious experience in the modern world.

Poets like W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day Lewis swerved towards the political ideologies and such alignments eventually compelled a confinement of some of their poems to purely topical contexts. The poetry of Stephen Spender (1909-1995) is organised to manifest his concern for the contemporary scene, and from his first collection Poems (1930) to Dolphins (1994), he exudes a sober sophistication. The poetry of Dylan Thomas (1914- 1953) exhibits the marks of a genius that, according to many, wasn't completely fulfilled.

3. Modern Drama - Henrik Ibsen is often regarded as the first modernist in the history of European theatre, which is conflated with his placement as a pioneer in terms of the development of realist theatre also. Even though the plays of Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934) and Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929) preceded the innovative theatrics of modern drama, some of their plays do show the potential of a serious engagement with the problems of modernity. The second Mrs. Tanquery (1893) by Pinero, for instance, combines the Ibsenite penchant for critical readings of contemporary malaises. A similar foray into the theatrics of Ibsen is seen in Henry Arthur Jones Mrs. Dane's Defense (1900) which enlarges the parameters of society drama to accomodate the sexual politics that also served as themes in novel of the period.

The only comic reinvention of the time came from the writings of Oscar Wilde, who deliberately undercut the familiar by exposing oppositional facts with those very structures that characterised contemporary conditions. Outwardly, the four major plays (Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892: A Woman of No Importance 1893. The Ideal Husband, 1895: The Importance of Being Earnest exhibit striking similarities with the theatre of social convention as epitomised by Jones and Pinero.

G.B. Shaw (1856-1950) inherited, or rather consciously appropriated the Ibsenite Model and exploited the resources of such theatrical conditioning in his dramatic experiments. The adoption of themes of familiar understanding in plays like Androcles and the Lion (1913), Pygmalion (1914), and Saint-Joan (1924) etc. suggests the potentialities of these stories that could be dramatically extended beyond the conventions that framed them.

The works of John Galsworthy coming at around theme time, utilised the benefits of plotting to show how engaged the chosen subjects were: Strife is Galsworthy's best example of this condition.

Another Irishman who left a mark on the modern stage was John Millington Synge (1871-1909). In a brief but exciting career Synge exploited the resources of his culture to experiment and engage the potential of Irish theatre in a way that wasn't attempted before him. The Shadow of the Glen (1903), Riders to The Sea (1904), The Well of The Saints (1905) and The Playboy of The Western World (1907) are Synge's plays that move through terrains of heightened pessimism and given their placement within a culture of Irish in-domitableness..

Sean O' Casey occupies a position in the history of Irish theatre. His early adventure with Irish nationalism and contemporary life war manifested in three of his plays The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Peacock and The Plough and the Stars.

T.S. Eliot wrote in numerable plays which are worth mentioning- Murder In Cathedral, The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk etc.

The 1920s and the 30's were fertile year's for the English theatre- Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) successfully demonstrated the possibilities of satire in his plays. They include Our Betters (1917), The Circle (1921), The Constant Wife (1927) and For Services Rendered (1932).

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