Modernist literature is part of the capitalist culture of the 20th century. This kind of literature does not advocate the creation of works to represent life, but advocates starting from people's psychological feelings and expressing the oppression and distortion of life on people. In modernist literary works, characters are often deformed, stories are often absurd, and themes are often desperate.
The development of modernist literature
(1) Symbolism :
Symbolism:
1. Symbolism is the earliest and most influential literary genre in the Western modernist literary movement. It is divided into two periods. Early Symbolism was popular in France in the second half of the 19th century. After the First World War, Late Symbolism came into being, and in the 1920s, Late Symbolism reached its climax.
2. Symbolism has distinctive characteristics: creating morbid "beauty"; expressing the "highest reality" of the heart; using symbolic hints; constructing images in illusions; using musicality to increase the meditative effect. It developed the artistic characteristics of early symbolism, opposed superficial lyricism and explicit preaching, advocated the unity of emotion and reason, and expressed the beauty and infinity of the ideal world through symbolic suggestion, image metaphor, free association and the musicality of language.
3. Representative writers: French Valéry, German Rilke, American Pound, Irish Yeats and British T. S. Eliot.
Main writers and their works:
1. British T.S. Eliot: "The Waste Land" (1922)
2. French poet Valet Here: "Seaside Cemetery" (1926), thinking about the meaning of life, praising the never-ending movement of the universe, and expressing the joy after transcending the consciousness of death. Philosophical contemplation and novel and symbolic images blend in seamlessly, with harmonious and beautiful phonology and profound artistic conception.
3. Irish poet and playwright Yeats: "Sailing to Byzantium", Yeats won the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature for "expressing the spirit of the entire nation".
4. Maeterlinck: The representative writer of symbolist drama, "The Blue Bird" (1908, Tytier, Mytier, Bai Lilian). The blue bird symbolizes happiness, and the theme is to praise people's love for happiness and happiness. The pursuit of light.
5. Blok: Russia's "extremely sincere poet", "Twelve" (long poem)
Imagism (a variant of symbolism):
1. Characteristics of Imagist poetry: clear, precise, condensed, specific, not expressing emotions or preaching truth. The focus is on expressing the poet's intuitive image, but the author's intuitive feelings are not directly expressed, but are hinted through imagery.
2. Representative: American Ezra Pound, "Metro Station" (a typical image poem)
The Hermit School (another poetry genre derived from Symbolism):
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1. Founder: Ongaretti
2. Representative writers (two disciples of Ongaretti): Quasimodo and Montale
(2) Expressionism:
1. Expressionism is an important modernist school popular in European and American literature from the early 20th century to the 1930s before and after World War I. Originating in Germany, it first started with painting and then spread to literature.
2. It first appeared when the German critic Walden published a painting review in the magazine "Crazy Biao", emphasizing the need to break through the external appearance of things, express the inner world, and replace "expression" with "expression" Reappearance".
3. Characteristics of expressionism: abstraction; deformation; use of masks; mixture of reality and illusion in time and space; emphasis on sound and light effects; symbolic and absurd techniques. Its theoretical program is "Art is expression rather than reproduction", and it advocates that literature should not represent objective reality, but should express people's subjective spirit and inner passion, express the essence of things grasped through representation, and accurately grasp the external form of things. There is no point in describing it. His poems are emotionally intense and eloquent, pursuing strength and exaggerated lyrical style, often using condensed verses. Drama and novels often use abstract symbolic techniques to express profound philosophies and themes.
4. The pioneer of expressionism is the Swedish writer Strindberg. His plays such as "Ghost Sonata" put ghosts on the stage, allowing dead corpses, phantoms, dead souls and living people to appear on the stage at the same time.
Main writers and their works:
1. In poetry:
Austria’s Trakl and Welver ("Friends of the World", "Friends of the World", " Each other"), Germany's Heim and Bain
2. In drama:
American O'Neill: "Emperor Jones" (1920), the author integrated expressionist artistic techniques Based on his own creation, he formed a model work of unique "O'Neill School" expressionist drama. The Hairy Ape (1921), subtitled "Eight Comedies of Ancient and Modern Life." Protagonist: Jank
Sweden's Strindberg: "To Damascus", "Ghost Sonata"
3. In novels:
Austria's Kafka: Representative of Expressionist novels. "The Castle" (1915), "The Metamorphosis" (1915)
(3) Stream of consciousness novels:
1. Stream of consciousness novels emerged in the early 20th century (1920s) In the West, novels mainly express the flow of people's consciousness and show the trance and confused spiritual world.
He believes that literature should express the flow of consciousness of characters, especially subconscious activities. The flow of human consciousness follows "psychological time" rather than physical time.
2. It is characterized by stream-of-consciousness creation methods such as symbolic suggestion, inner monologue, and free association. It formed a rather spectacular modern style in Britain, the United States, France and other countries in the 1920s and 1930s. ism literary genre.
3. The artistic techniques used by stream-of-consciousness novelists have different emphases, but the artistic characteristics are the same: "the writer withdraws from the novel"; the plot is diluted; a large number of inner monologues and free association; time and space Alternation and psychological time; symbolic suggestion and contrastive association; innovation and variation in the use of language.
4. The representative writers are Joyce from Ireland, Woolf from England, Proust from France and Folkner from the United States.
Detailed explanation:
1. Inner monologue: Stream of consciousness novels directly display what they are thinking and feeling, showing the original psychology without being organized or logical. The writer withdraws from the novel and becomes subjective. There is less intervention and the focus is on expressing the characters’ conscious activities themselves.
2. Use the method of free association and stay on an object for a while. Any external stimulation can interrupt the previous thinking process and start new thoughts.
3. It is highly subjective and random, often breaks the limitations of time and space, has large jumps, and organizes the process from the psychological structure, while traditional novels mostly unfold the plot in the passage of time and space.
4. In terms of content and subject matter, traditional novels are often omniscient and omnipotent, but in stream-of-consciousness novels, the status of the writer decreases, and the reader's participation is strengthened. He does not pay attention to portraying typical characters, and relies on the consciousness of the characters to write about people and plots. fade.
Representative writers and their works:
1. Irish Joyce: "Dublins", "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"
2. British Wolf: "The Spot on the Wall", "To the Lighthouse"
3. French Proust: "In Search of Lost Time"
4. The Fortune of the United States Kerner: A major representative of "Southern literature" who created a unique "Yoknapatawpha lineage."
"The Sound and the Fury" (1929) reflects the decline of the Compson family, a prominent southern family. The novel creates a composite stream of consciousness method, which brings the use of stream of consciousness techniques to explore the inner life of characters to a new height. Focusing on Quentin's abnormal psychology and Benji's insane subconscious activities. Characters (eldest son Quentin, second son Jason, younger son Benji, daughter Katie)
(4) Surrealism:
1. It emerged in France in the 1920s. Dadaism developed. 1919 Dada poets: Breton (founder), Aragon ("The Communists", socialist realist works, anti-fascism), Eluard, published the first "Surrealist Manifesto" 》
2. They believe that literature is not to represent reality, but to express "hyperreality", that is, "absolute reality transformed from fantasy and reality", which is a unified object of two elements: reality and unreality. . In order to depict surrealism in content, they opposed logical reasoning thinking activities, respected the subconscious and dreams, and even made literature the product of dreams, subconsciousness and even insanity. The emphasis on fantasy and the denigration of rationality have become important symbols of his aesthetics. They advocate writing about people's subconsciousness, dreams, and coincidences of things, and propose "automatic writing" as a creative method to express the above content.
2. Main writers and their works: Breton's "Nadia", Aragon's "Countrymen in Paris", Eluard's poem "Pyme for Peace", "The Drowning Man", Soupo
p>(5) Existential literature:
1. Existentialism originated in France in the 1930s and reached its peak of development after World War II. It is the most powerful literary trend in modern literature and is popular all over the world.
2. Existential literature is produced on the basis of existential philosophy. It promotes existential philosophical ideas in the form of literature. It is characterized by more rationality than image; the core is that "existence precedes essence", "the world is absurd", "life is painful and free choice", and the way to survive can only be found through free choice.
3. "Absurdity" and "pain" are the basic themes of existential literature. The world is absurd and life is painful. On the one hand, it describes the absurdity of the capitalist world; on the other hand, it expresses human misfortune and destruction, as well as the thoughts and emotions of loneliness, disappointment, and fear.
4. In terms of art, first: existential literature embodies philosophy in images. Second: Use expression techniques eclectically, using both traditional and modern techniques.
5. The existential writers mainly include French Sartre, French Camus, Beauvoir and Mailer.
Main writers and their works:
1. French Camus: "The Stranger" (1942), "The Plague" (1947, Doctor Rieux)
2. French Sartre: "Nausea" (novel), "The Road to Freedom" (novel), "The Wall" (short story collection), "No Place to Die" (drama), "The Fly" (drama), "Confinement" (drama, showing that "hell is other people"), "The Respectful Prostitute" (drama), "Being and Nothingness" (philosophical work), "Existentialism is a Humanism" (philosophical work)
3. French Beauvoir: "The Visitor", "The Second Sex"
4. Mailer: "An American Dream"
(6) Absurdism Drama:
1. Theater of the Absurd is an anti-traditional drama genre that emerged in France in the 1950s and quickly became popular in other European and American countries.
2. Absurdism was named after the "Theatre of the Absurd" written in 1962 by the famous British drama theorist Martin Asling.
3. Characteristics of absurdist drama: absurd and abstract themes, the world is absurd and life is meaningless; fragmented stage images; strange and weird prop functions, which make the drama intuitive and artistic. Take it to the limit. In terms of content, it expresses the unreasonableness of the world and the absurdity of life; in terms of artistic techniques, it breaks the traditional drama structure and uses illogical plots, characters with broken personalities, mechanically repetitive dramatic movements, and incomprehensible words. Boring language is used to highlight the fundamental theme of the absurdity of the world as a whole. It has no complete plot, no dramatic conflict, the stage image is fragmented, and the characters' language is confusing. The world it represents is absurd, life is painful, and the relationship between people is incommunicable.
4. France's Ionesco is the founder of absurdist drama. The performance of his one-act play "The Bald Singer" marked the birth of absurdist drama.
Main writers and their works:
1. British Pinter
2. American Albi
3. French Beckett: "Waiting for Godot"
4. Adamov, France
5. Genet, France
6. Ionesco, France: "The Bald Showgirl" ( 1949, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Martin), "The Chair" (1959), "Rhinoceros" (1958)
(7) New School of Novel:
1. Formed in the 1950s of this century France in the 1990s, and later became one of the most important novel genres in France and the West after World War II. Also known as the anti-novel school or rejection school.
2. They believe that the world is absurd, nihilistic and unreal, and that traditional novels fool and deceive readers. Novels focus on describing the era and past of characters and emotions. It opposes the tendency of traditional novels and advocates that writers copy the existence of the absurd world intact without giving it any meaning or emotion. The new novel abandons plot and characters and collages scattered fragments. Replace people with objects and create a pure style of writing about objects. Encourage readers to participate in creation and reconstruct the characters and plot of the novel.
3. Representative figures include Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarlot, Claude Simon, and Duras.
Main writers and their works:
1. French Salote: the first to write a new novel
2. French Simon: "One of the New Novel Schools" "Father", "Wind" (won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1985), "Flanders Road"
3. Robbe-Grillet, France: "The Peeper": won the French "Review" in 1995 "Eraser" (1953, Dupont, Grenada Duan, Valas, writing about political murder)
(8) Black humor:
1. " "Black humor" is a modernist novel genre that was popular in the United States in the 1960s. It is named after a collection of "Black Humor" compiled by American writer Friedman.
2. "Black humor" is a literary method that uses the form of comedy to express the content of tragedy. Black refers to the terrifying and funny objective reality, and "humor" refers to the mocking attitude adopted by a purposeful and willful personality towards this reality. Humor coupled with blackness becomes a kind of humor that shows despair. Western critics call it "gallows humor."
3. The artistic characteristics of black humor:
It is a kind of humor that makes people laugh or cry. It is a mixture of tragic content and comedy form, expressing the absurdity of the world, society’s alienation of people, and rationality. The confusion after the principles are shattered and the futility of self-struggle are its central content. In the face of all this, people laugh cynically and use a humorous attitude towards life to distance themselves from reality in order to maintain the dignity of the devastated people, which is the so-called "black humor".
“Anti-hero” characters: The spiritual world of characters often tends to split, becoming “anti-heroes” with dual colors of tragedy and comedy. They use their ridiculous words and deeds to allude to social reality and express the author’s views on social issues. view.
The narrative structure method of "anti-novel": express the confusing plot through hints, foils, contrasts, and symbols. Breaking the rational chronological order, accelerating the pace of the jump, the plot lacks logical connections, often mixing narration of real life with fantasy memories, and mixing serious philosophy with gags.
The writing style is full of irony, and the language often breaks general grammar rules and inherent word collocation habits.
It is allegorical.
4. American Heller is considered a banner of "black humor". Also Vonnegut, Pynchon, Bath, Barthelme, French Vian.
Main writers and their works:
1. American Heller: "Catch-22"
2. Vonnegut: masterpiece "Slaughterhouse-Five", "Cat's Cradle" (1963, Bokonon, McCabe)
3. Pynchon: "Gravity's Rainbow"
(9) Magical realism:
1. Magical realism refers to a genre in Latin American novel creation in the mid-20th century. It originated in the 1930s and 1940s and became the mainstream of Latin American novel creation after the 1960s. Its rise has been called the "explosion of Latin American literature." Representative figures include Asturias of Guatemala, Carpentier of Cuba, Rulfo of Mexico and Marquez of Colombia.
2. Magical realism is a creative method that expresses the reality of life through illusions produced by "magic". Magic is the way, and expressing the reality of life is the goal. Magical things are used to hide reality, and what is shown to readers is a cyclical world where subjective time and objective time are mixed, and the space of subjective and objective things loses boundaries. In terms of art, a large number of supernatural factors are introduced into the depiction of reality. Miracles, hallucinations, dreams and even ghost images appear in the plots of novels. The temporal relationships are often disrupted, the narrative is full of jumps, and sometimes the scenes are symbolic, showing a distinct Hell and national characteristics. It can be called a successful example of the combination of "transplantation" and "root seeking". It is both a profound excavation of reality and a serious reflection on history; it is both a search for the origins of traditional culture on the continent and an extensive absorption of European and American modernism. The first person to use the term "magical realism" in Latin America was the Venezuelan writer: Petrie.
3. The true symbol of maturity is the novella "Pedro Páramo" by Mexican writer Rulfo.
4. In the 1960s, magical realism formed an upsurge in Latin American novel creation, symbolized by Marquez's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude".
Main writers and their works:
1. Rulfo, Mexico: "Pedro Páramo" (1955)
(10) Future Ism:
1. It is a modern Western literary and artistic trend and school that emerged in Italy in the early 20th century. Its founder, Italian Marinetti, published "The Future" in the French "Le Figaro" in 1909. The Futurist Manifesto was proclaimed, and the following year the Futurist Literary Manifesto was published to further announce its ideas. He believes that the rapid development of the 20th century has fundamentally changed the world. Machines and technology, speed and competition have become the main features of the era. Futurism should have a modern feel, praise aggressive sports and machine civilization, and praise the beauty and power of speed. He believes that the past culture is decayed and cannot adapt to the current era. He proposes to abandon all cultural heritage and is dissatisfied with the existing order.
2. On the theme of literature and art: mobilize all artistic means to focus on expressing objects and people in motion, and praise the sense of movement, power and three-dimensional style through dynamics.
3. In terms of art form: Futurists advocate the complete abandonment of traditional techniques.
Main writers and their works:
1. Russian Mayakovsky’s long poem: "Clouds in Trousers"
2. French Abo Linaire: The first "staircase" poetry form.
(11) Dadaism:
1. Modern Western literary school. It was born in Switzerland during the First World War. In 1915, a small art collective headed by the French poet Stan Tzara from Romania was named after the word "Dada" that was randomly turned up in a Zurich cafe, which means pure art. Accidental, meaningless, nothing.
2. The extremely rebellious attitude toward cultural traditions, real life, and artistic laws reflected the depressed psychology and search for a way out of some of the young Europeans during the First World War.
2. Representative writers: Breton, Su Bo, etc.
(12) "The Beat Generation":
It is a literary genre that became popular in the United States after World War II. The writers were mostly young men and women with rough and bold characters. Known for being unruly. They use homosexuality, jazz, drugs and alcoholism to escape reality and challenge decent society and traditional American values. They come to the conclusion that "sinking is liberation" and that indulgence is legal. They use weird introverted self-exploration and the so-called "sinking downwards" "Refined" attitude to express dissatisfaction with decent society and to carry out pathological resistance to society.
Main writers and their works:
1. Jack Kerouac: "Small Towns and Big Cities"
2. Ginsberg: " Howling》