/kloc-From the middle and late 9th century to the early 20th century, the rapid development of science and technology in Europe and America refreshed the face of western civilization and changed people's views on the universe, the world and people. In the new economic structure, people's freedom is reduced, the degree of alienation is deepened, and the mental anxiety of westerners is intensified. The outbreak of world war not only destroyed people's sense of life stability, but also shook the cultural building of western traditional rationalism. The October Revolution in Russia not only brought hope to the oppressed workers, but also brought a sense of crisis to the western world. Under this social background, the cultural trend of western irrationalism was once popular in society. From the perspective of cultural thought, modernist literature is the product of the combination of western modernist irrational philosophy and modern psychology. Schopenhauer's voluntarism, Nietzsche's theory of power will, Bergson's intuitionism, Freud's psychoanalysis and other theories and theories have stained modernist literature with irrationalism and pessimism. Freud's affirmation of subconscious and sexual instinct has a wide and profound influence on modernist writers.
Modernism, as a literary trend of thought composed of many schools, has basically the same characteristics in general.
As far as ideological characteristics are concerned, first of all, modernism has a strong tendency of cultural criticism. Nietzsche's slogans such as "God is dead", "Down with idols" and "Re-evaluate all values" deeply influenced modernist writers in the 20th century. They no longer adhere to the traditional rational principles, do not believe in humanitarian ideals, and do not place their hopes on the realization of the "rational kingdom". But from the standpoint of life ontology, I think that the existing cultural traditions and even the whole human civilization are contrary to people's desire for life and the realization of people's value and should be abandoned.
Secondly, modernist literature highlights the theme of alienation. This alienation theme is mainly manifested in four aspects: the relationship between nature and individuals, society and individuals, individuals and individuals, and individuals and self.
The alienation of the relationship between man and nature is mainly the alienation of man from the material world, which is manifested in the opposition between matter and spirit. In modernist literature, the material world often becomes the maker of human survival crisis, which is naturally ugly and evil. Material civilization has caused the nihility, threat and fear of human spirit. For example, T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land describes that the material world makes people's value equal to or even lower than that of animals. This shows the opposition between man and his own living environment, and shows that man is restricted by the material world and moves towards alienation.
The alienation of the relationship between society and people means that people appear small and powerless in front of a powerful society and lose their individuality. For example, in Kafka's novels, society is like a huge, invisible palm, holding an individual's destiny, and the individual becomes a weak and restless "beetle".
The alienation of interpersonal relationship is the alienation of others to individuals, which is manifested in the antagonistic relationship between people. Modern Fengyi literature often shows terrible images of hostility between people, such as Strindberg's Ghost Sonata, which describes the killing between people; Kafka's novels describe that people cannot communicate with each other. Since 1950s, this description has been further developed in modernist literature.
The alienation of the relationship between man and self mainly refers to the alienation of man's personality and the disappearance of self, which shows the modernist writers' doubts about the stability and reliability of self. The characters in their works are characterized by no passion, no thoughts and expressions of their own, and tend to be impersonal or socialized. For example, in Woolf's novel The Waves, six characters discuss the question of "what is self" from different angles; The protagonist in the Invisible Man by American black writer Ellison becomes an invisible man because he can't find himself.
In terms of artistic features, first of all, modernist literature emphasizes the expression of inner life and psychological truth, which has the characteristics of subjectivity and introversion, and holds that the spiritual world is the only real world. Expressionist writers try to express "essential things and hidden souls", even if they write specific characters and scenes, they just regard them as the shell and form of spiritual phenomena. The purpose of writing is not the thing itself, but the corresponding spiritual strength.
Secondly, with the help of the mythological model of symbolic metaphor, modernist literature makes the description of life in literature move from appearance to essence, from surface to depth, from reality to surrealism, and from signified to signified, forming a deep model of literature. T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland constructs a symbolic "wasteland" by using barren land and dead crops caused by the loss of ancient reproductive divinity. Anthropology, mythology, biblical stories and western classic stories are widely used in the whole poem, forming a huge symbolic system with overlapping images and profound implications.
Thirdly, modernist literature advocates "taking ugliness as beauty" and "reverse poetics", describing a lot of ugly things, such as death, darkness, degeneration, crime, deformity, madness, plague and corpses. , far beyond traditional literature. The modernist writer's "taking ugliness as beauty" is not to affirm ugliness as beauty in life, but to affirm beauty in ugliness's self-exposure and self-denial, and to express the pursuit of beauty through the struggle with ugliness, just as Baudelaire said "exploring beauty in evil". Therefore, behind this aesthetic pursuit is a serious and lofty love for life.
Finally, modernist literature is keen on the innovation and experiment of artistic skills, and some writers tend to be formalistic in their creation. They use free association, inversion of time and space, inner monologue, automatic writing, accidental combination, stream of consciousness, epiphany, symbol, metaphor and suggestion.
Postmodernism is a cultural tendency of western society after World War II and a special product of western post-industrial society, which reached its climax in 1970s and 1980s. Postmodernism is mainly influenced by existentialism, especially Heidegger, and merged with post-structuralism. Existentialism reflects the confusion of western modern people about existence and tries to give lofty significance to people in the absurd world.
Postmodern culture is a multi-culture without a center, and sometimes it is self-contradictory. It contains various standards, which makes it difficult for people to grasp the characteristics of post-modern literature. We can only make a general summary of the recognized post-modernist tendencies and styles.
First of all, postmodernism further pushed the radical rebellion of modernism to the extreme. It not only fundamentally denies the old tradition, but also abandons the new norms of modernism, and is regarded as a kind of literature lacking recognized parents. It attempts to deconstruct the traditional forms of novels, poems and dramas, and even the "narrative" itself. Therefore, post-modern literature must be a kind of literature that ignores any established norms and is "anti-novel" and "anti-drama", that is, a kind of literature.
Secondly, postmodernism no longer pursues the ultimate value. In the eyes of these writers, all traditional beliefs about sublime things are short-lived products of words, which are not worthy of sincere or serious treatment. They are unwilling to seriously think about major social, political, moral and aesthetic issues, ignoring not only their concerns, but also the problems themselves.
Thirdly, postmodernism opposes modernism's "myth" about depth, rejects deep consciousness such as loneliness and anxiety, dissolves or flattens it, and doubts or even denies the theory of value and ontology of literature.
Finally, postmodernism denies the existence of center and structure, deliberately decomposes and subverts various components in the work, making the work have no ultimate meaning to find. In postmodern novels, the structure is chaotic, the "story" is inconsistent, and the characters' behavior lacks plausible motives, which is what people often say is the "uncertainty" of postmodernism. The commonly used techniques are contradiction, alternation, incoherence, arbitrariness, short circuit, anti-genre, discourse expansion and so on. Indifference is also an important feature of postmodern style.