20th Century English Literature: Modernism and Postmodernism

Modern is the historical period starting from the Renaissance period and ending with the birth of Postmodernism in the second half of the 20th century. Modernity is an adjective derived from the Modern period. Modernity actually started during the Renaissance and ended in 1950 with the birth of Postmodernism. Modernity is associated with the word “modern”, that also has been used since the Renaissance and is not synonymous with Modernism.

Modernism began in 1910 and ended with Modernity. As a result, while Modernism was a part of Modernity, it also rejected some aspects of Modernity from new perspectives. Realism, which is an important concept of the modern period, has been re-questioned in modernism which is late modernity. The reality concept that had come up to that time was changed by Virginia Woolf. According to Woolf, realism is “myriad impressions”, that is, the stream of thought in our minds, not objects that can be seen. With this reinterpretation of realism, a technique called “stream of consciousness” emerged and important figures such as James Joyce produced works using this technique. This technique, which has been poured into literary practice from the work of William James from the field of psychology, has emerged with the reinterpretation of realism, a tradition of the modern period, by incorporating the impressionist perspective, in other words, expression of feelings and thoughts. Therefore, it shows that modernity is both self-reflection and self-criticism of modernism.

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Modernist is a term expressing modernism’s understanding of literature, ideas,t heories and art. The modernist understanding of literature has developed within the framework of dogma concepts such as truth and system. In modernist thought, the reality is a concept that can be defined by language. The concept of knowledge is approached from the epistemological position. It seems that the logocentric mindset is rooted in the modernist idea. According to modernist thinkers, everything has an essence and a foundation. And it is possible to find them. In this context, literature has been influenced by these modernist ideas.Peter V. Zima in his book Modern Postmodern, page 182, describes modernist literature as follows:

“Like the sociological theories of Durkheim, Simmel, Max Weber and Alfred Weber, modernist literature can be read as a reflection and a critique of modernity since the Enlightenment period . Both sociological and literary modernism can be considered as a late modern self-criticism of modernity which begins to doubt some of its key concepts: truth, reason and the subject.”

The traditions of early modernity begin to be questioned in late modernity. The works of Virginia Woolf, T.S Eliot, and James Joyce are great intances of this. Thus, late modernity, as the last part of the modern period, was a period where literary traditions were tightly adhered to, and at the same time rejected and innovated.

The postmodern period is a transition period of humanity to consumer capitalism and dehumanization. Postmodernism comes after its predecessor “Modernism” in the second half of the 20th century. Modernism can be regarded as the continuation of modernism in terms of re-questioning the concepts and theories that have already been questioned, and the end in terms of rejecting or reconstructing these concepts and theories. There are many different opinions about when the period ends or whether it ends. The book by Jean-François Lyotard, who named the period, is The Postmodern Condition.

Postmodernism is an artistic practice and an aesthetic phenomenon that reflects mentality in fields such as culture, art, and literature that emerges as a reaction to late modernity. The mentioned literary practices are formed from fields such as philosophy and theory. Postmodernism is also a period of applying, self-consciousness, self-contradictory, self-undermining of the statement, and dual existence. Postmodernism is a comprehensive period in which many theories have been put forward and studies have been carried out in many fields. Due to this diversity, they have different definitions. Linda Hutcheon’s definition of the period in A Poetics of Postmodernism is as follows:

“I offer instead, then, a specific, if polemical, start from which to operate: as a cultural activity that can be discerned in most art forms and many currents of thought today, what I want to call postmodernism is fundamentally contradictory, resolutely historical, and inescapably political.”(p.4)

Also, postmodernism can be defined as “a radicalized modernism and a renewed attack on modernity” as Peter V. Zima’s book Modern Postmodern, in page 131, appears. This definition of Zima considers how postmodernism can be regarded as a continuation of modernism. In addition, in Zima’s book, as he states on the page 132 :

“(...) postmodern literature revolts against the metaphysical residues of modernity in modernism.”

This statement of Zima also explains why postmodernism is the end of modernism. The “metaphysical residues of modernity” mentioned here are the thoughts of truth, form, individual autonomy, artistic freedom, authorship, and authority of the canonical text, which are the cornerstones of modernism. In this context, postmodernist literature has been texts in which concepts are questioned and reconstructed within the works. Due to this skeptic attitude, which has a postmodernist idea, these effects are also seen intensely in the works. With cynicism accompanied by these inquiries, parody gained importance. Textualization techniques such as pastiche and collage have also gained importance and are frequently used in postmodernist literature and art.

The main concerns of postmodernism are language, individual, power, society, culture, desire, reality, knowledge, meaning, truth, essence, foundation, ground, metanarratives, history, binary opposition, fragmentary, parody, irony, pastiche, collage, language play, differance and metafiction. As a concern individual is directly related to the identity concept in postmodernism. According to postmodernity, identity and individual are constructed and subjected by discourses. In the postmodern perspective, meaning is entirely interpretative and varies from person to person. The history is lost, impossible to grasp, and subjective. In addition, there are common binary oppositions in the postmodern period, some of which are self-other, male-female, East-West, and center-marginal.

The modern view “language creates reality” has been opposed. Similarly, concepts such as truth, essence, and foundation which are the products of modern thought, have also been opposed.

There are three anti-thoughts in postmodernism, which are anti-essentialism, anti-foundationalism, and anti-realism. Anti-foundationalism opposes the modernist view of knowledge and the

epistemological position, which is our status of claiming knowledge. Postmodernism defends the perspective of ontological position, which is our status of being in the world. Anti-foundationalism is defined as follows on page 201 of Terry Eagleton’s book Literary Theory An Introduction:

“For ‘anti-foundationalist’ postmodernity, by contrast, our forms of life are relative, ungrounded, self-sustaining, made up of mere cultural convention and tradition, without any identifiable origin or grandiose goal; and ‘theory’, at least for the more conservative brands of the creed, is for the most part just a high-sounding way of rationalizing these inherited habits and institutions.”

Anti-essentialism is against the modern idea that everything has a certain form and attitude which makes it functional. Anti-realism, on the other hand, rejects the idea that reality which is idea of modernity exists and that language defines the truth of reality. Nietzsche, one of the important philosophers of postmodern thought, says the following about essentialism and realism:

“That the world is not the abstract essence of an eternal reasonableness is suffciently proved by the fact that that bit of the world which we know – I mean our human reason – is none too reasonable.”

Realism as the realist art and concept has been rejected. And the concept of reality has been questioned in every field. In the term of Baudrillard, one of the important names of postmodern thought, “simulacrum” has taken the place of reality.