Realism
A social trend of thought in France in the 19th century, and also an art trend. French realist art originated after neoclassicism and romanticism. It refers to both the creative method of art and the realistic techniques of art. The word "reality" comes from Latin, which means reality and reality. Generally speaking, realism refers to the art form that depicts the real and tangible world "truthfully", sometimes also called "realism".
In terms of subject matter, realism abandoned neoclassical myths and legends, ancient heroes, romantic medieval legends, exotic sentiments and unrealistic fantasies, and focused on real life, expanding artistic creation. range of subject matter.
In terms of artistic expression, it attaches great importance to natural beauty and real beauty, is characterized by the pursuit of realistic techniques, faithfully depicts nature and reflects real life, advocates the evaluation of social life, and is concerned about the lives of ordinary people. An intimate depiction of nature.
Realism began with the Barbizon School in the 1830s and 1840s, and was named after the Courbet exhibition in the 1850s. With objectivity and typicality as its basic characteristics, French reality Islamism quickly affected the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Italy, Russia, the United States and other countries. From the perspective of the history of painting, realism also "derived impressionism and naturalism, indirectly influenced symbolism, and directly developed into fin-de-siècle trends of thought and surrealism. It is the general source of modern Western art concepts and various genres."
The origins of modernism can be traced back to French Impressionism. In the 1880s, French Post-Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism and Symbolism painters proposed "the independent value of artistic language itself", "painting should not be a servant of nature", "painting should get rid of its dependence on literature and history", " Concepts such as "art for art's sake" are the theoretical basis of the modernist art system. Therefore, the French post-impressionist painter P. Cézanne, a painter who pursues the geometric structure and physical beauty of painting language in his works, is known as " The father of modern painting".
Realism is the origin of modernism. It is based on people's cognition of objective things and the refining and processing of objective things. Realism is more faithful to the representation of the ontology of things, while modernism is more about refining things. Realism is the representation of things, while modernism gives things more personal emotional color and symbolic meaning. Both realism and modernism express the emotions of social groups and make their own screams. All have strong humanistic expression intentions.
Modernism
Modernism is a product of capitalist industrialization and an international artistic trend popular in European and American countries from 1890 to 1950.
1. The background of the birth of modernism
In society, influenced by the First World War and the birth of socialism in the Soviet Union, European intellectuals became skeptical of capitalism . In terms of technological factors, the impact of the collapse of Newton's mechanical system shook the cosmology of European intellectuals. In terms of cultural and philosophical factors, Nietzsche proposed "revaluation of all values" and "God is dead", which made European intellectuals rethink classical philosophy.
It can be seen from this that under the general background of that time, it was difficult for European intellectuals not to doubt and deny tradition.
2. The background of the birth of modernist literature
First of all, we must know that before the emergence of modernism, there were two traditional literary schools in European literature, one was realism and the other was romance. ism.
Modernism can be seen as the transformation of realism and romanticism in literature.
Aestheticism represented by Wilde is a transformation of traditional romanticism. His representative work is the famous "The Picture of Dorian Gray", which advocates "art for art's sake", which can be said to go to an extreme. Complete immersion in the ivory tower.
Naturalism represented by Zola is a transformation from realism. One of its representative works is the famous "Ball of Suet" by Maupassant. The characteristics of his literary creation are: a. Using biological methods Opinion writers. b. The description is cumbersome and obsessed with trivial descriptions of accidental phenomena. c. Promote thoughtlessness. It advocates recording facts purely objectively like experimental scientists and rejecting the subjectivity of creation. Naturalism goes to the other extreme.
This is the beginning of the transformation from traditional literature to modernist literature.
3. Schools of modernist literature
1. Symbolism.
Imagist poetry. This is the earliest and most influential literary genre in the Western modernist literary movement. It probably has the following characteristics:
Create morbid "beauty"; express the "highest reality" of the heart; use symbolic hints; Construct images in hallucinations; use musicality to increase meditative effects. 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.
Representative writers include Pound and Eliot.
Representative works are the famous "The Waste Land" by Eliot, and Pound's "A Station of the Metro" that many people don't know what to express:
In a Metro Station
< p> The sudden appearance of these faces in the crowdThe petals on the wet black tree
2. Expressionism.
What is "performance"? Understanding this seemingly simple word requires knowledge of a literary tradition.
This is the debate between "expressionism" and "representationism" in the nature of literature.
"Representation Theory" believes that literature and art are the representation of objective reality. What literary works should do is imitate the world and not focus on the expression of human emotions. Most supporters of the "representation theory" view are rationalists, such as Plato.
"Expression theory" believes that literature and art are the expression of the writer's soul. Literary works should express people's feelings and thoughts and should not focus on the description of reality. Most of the supporters of the "expressionism" view are irrationalists, such as Bergson's philosophy of life, Freud's subconscious psychology, and Croce's intuitionism.
Therefore, we can roughly guess from the above discussion that the expressionism that emerged in the 20th century should pursue the expression of human emotions and spirit. He believes that literature should not objectively record reality, but should express people's subjective spirit and inner emotions. Therefore, the characteristics of the works are a large number of deformations and abstractions of things in life, and the time and space are mixed. The representative works are Kafka's "The Castle" and "The Metamorphosis".
"The Metamorphosis" is about the protagonist Gregor discovering that he has turned into a "giant beetle". The entire novel is about the protagonist looking at Gregor's family and the entire family from the perspective of this "beetle" capital society. Kafka abstracts and deforms life here, giving readers an unreal but profound impression. Kafka's works do not clearly raise any theme, so different readers will have different understandings: some people think that it shows people's powerlessness over their own destiny, and that people are in a desperate situation when they lose themselves. Some people think this shows the alienation of people in capital society. But in general, a lot of deformation and abstraction of things in life are the characteristics of expressionist literature.
3. Stream of consciousness novels
This is a very famous and probably well-known genre of modern novels. Many people think that it comes from Freud's theory of the subconscious, but this is not entirely true. Freud's theory of the subconscious is only one of its theoretical sources. Another source that cannot be ignored is Bergson's "Life- "Intuitionism", this theory believes that reason is unreliable and cannot understand the nature of the universe. Only through an inner experience and a mysterious intuition can people grasp the world.
And stream-of-consciousness novels adhere to this idea. Specifically, stream-of-consciousness novels describe subjective psychological reality rather than objective social reality, so they mostly describe people's conscious activities. I like to break the order and distinction of time and space. I like free association and believe that the freer the protagonist's stream of consciousness in a novel, the more his novel can show the expression of consciousness and deep meaning. They don't like to analyze things rationally, but prefer to use irrational and illogical thinking. The following "The Spot on the Wall" by Woolf is very typical:
The novel describes the protagonist looking up and seeing spots on the wall at an ordinary moment on an ordinary day, which triggers the elegant flow of consciousness. Produce a series of hallucinations and reveries. The protagonist first associates the spots with the nail marks and the former tenant who hung the portrait; secondly, he associates the doubts about the spots with the mystery of life, the inaccuracy of thought and human ignorance; and the other time, he guesses that the spot is a convex circle. The image reminded me of an ancient elephant, and then I thought of sadness, bones and archaeology... Finally, I found that the spot on the wall was just a snail.
4. Existentialism Literature
Many people like to classify existentialism into postmodernism, but I think existentialism literature is both in essence and in terms of its development time. All should undoubtedly belong to modern literature. Some people even wrote articles discussing why existential literature is modernist literature (Are Sartre and existential literature postmodernism? - China Literature Network)
The core of existential literature is the " "Existence precedes essence" "The world is absurd and people are painful" "Life is painful and free choice".
"Existence precedes essence" means that life itself is meaningless, and people are born without essence. Only when people live and experience life can they determine their own essence. Therefore, man is a free being. Precisely because life has no meaning, people can choose meaning for themselves. Precisely because people are not defined at birth, people can choose what kind of person they want to be. ——Therefore, existential literature mostly expresses human "freedom" from the "unfree" environment in which the protagonist lives, and writes about the protagonist's choices from the "absurd" and "painful" world.
Representative works include Camus' "The Stranger".
4. Summary
From the above materials we can see that modernism has the following characteristics:
1. No longer pursues the depiction of social reality; Most of them are psychological reality, which basically belongs to the "expression theory" of literature
2. Most of them are non-linear narratives
3. Symbolic metaphors are widely used
4. Pay more attention to human subjectivity and have profound humanitarian thoughts
5. For ordinary people, modernist novels are difficult to understand
6. While inheriting traditional literature On the basis of rebellion, but the meaning of rebellion is not that obvious
Postmodernism
1. The definition of "postmodernism"
The definition of postmodernism is very It is so vague that different people have different expressions of different postmodernisms, so many different concepts of "postmodernism" have been formed.
Habermas believes that postmodernism emerged after World War II and is an anti-modern trend of thought. However, modernity has not yet fully developed, and the time for postmodernism to enter the historical stage has not yet matured. Postmodernism should be resisted.
Jameson believes that postmodernism is a symptom of late capitalism, marking a complete rebellion against the deep model of modernism. It should have emerged in the 1950s and is inherently consistent with consumption capitalism.
Bell believed that postmodernism emerged with the advent of industrial society and was a reflection of social forms in the cultural field. Therefore, postmodernism emerged in the 1960s.
Unlike the usual trends and schools of thought, postmodern literature neither refers to a specific group of writers or critics, nor does it have a widely recognized program or manifesto. Not only that, postmodern culture is a multicultural culture without a center, tolerant of various standards, and advocates "continuous development of various differences and efforts to maintain the reputation of difference." It is for this reason that there are many branches and schools within postmodernist literature, and various ideological trends are mixed. Many postmodern writers and critics have contradictions in their self-theoretical systems.
2. Schools of postmodernist literature
It is recognized that the following schools belong to postmodernism.
1. The Beat Generation. (New Hollywood Movie)
Emerged in the United States after World War II, they are a group of loosely knit young people who hold an attitude that is contrary to all values ??recognized by society, and often express themselves in decadence and decadence. , crime, and indulgence to express one's point of view. It is the most influential literary genre produced in the United States after the war.
The works created by writers of the "Beat Generation" are often widely controversial because these works usually do not adhere to the conventions of traditional creation, are often messy in structure and form, and have rough and even vulgar language. The representative work is "On the Road" by Kerouac. It is written about a group of students who drove across the United States, drank excessively, indulged in alcohol and sex, wandered, took drugs, and indulged in sexual indulgence. After a long and exhausting period of debauchery, they began to believe in Eastern Zen Buddhism and realize the meaning of life.
2. Black humor literature
Due to the innate fear of the communist revolution among the small and medium-sized bourgeoisie in the United States, under the social background of being at a loss as to what to do, they produced anti- Reality takes the form of "black" humor that combines ridicule and criticism, exposure and satire, fantasy and denial.
This genre has a very famous masterpiece, Heller's "Catch-22". The author abandoned the traditional realistic creative techniques in the novel, leaving the entire work without a complete plot development clue or prominent characters, and full of a chaotic, noisy, and crazy atmosphere. But the author also emphasizes a kind of "serious absurdity". In his work, he satirizes the absurd logic that American society only obeys the "Catch-22" in his eyes.
3. Magical realism literature
Magical realism inserts magical and bizarre characters and plots, as well as various supernatural phenomena into narratives and descriptions that reflect reality, making Latin The real political society of America has become a kind of modern myth, with both bizarre and fantasy artistic conception and realistic plots and scenes. It is difficult to distinguish between humans and ghosts, and illusions and reality are mixed.
The representative work is "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Marquez. The movie "Underground"
It should be noted that magical realism usually arises in some oppressive, authoritarian or totalitarian societies, and may represent an adjustment to such a highly dangerous political reality. On the other hand, magical realism also transcends these social constraints.
Different from science fiction and fantasy literature, magical realism will describe its world as absurd and capricious, while rigorous science fiction literature is limited by the laws of physics, or like fantasy literature There will be fixed rules (for example, you must throw a ring into a volcano, or no man can kill a certain knight).
For example, many of García Márquez's novels appear to be reports on the real world on the surface. However, if you look closely, you will find that they have some reportage. There is an unreality and mystery in it that cannot be explained by technique. Magical realism is not a movement or school, but a style of writing.
It has no formal connection with Surrealism.
3. Summary
From the above materials, we can see that postmodernism has the following characteristics:
a. Many people think that postmodernism is better than modernism It's harder to read, but that's not really the case. The circulation of "Catch-22" in the 20 years since its publication is 1.5 million copies is a proof. Although works such as "On the Road" and "One Hundred Years of Solitude" are less direct in terms of language expression and techniques than realist or romantic literature, they are far from being incomprehensible.
b. Postmodern literature is more realistic and more political
c. Postmodern literature is more critical of culture