essay modern literature

Modernism in Literature: Definition, Characteristics, Examples, and More

The Industrial Revolution – and the rapid industrialization that followed it – marked the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But new technologies didn't only change the ways of manufacturing. They also made writers reconsider their attitudes toward the established norms of the craft. Out of this cultural shift, one of the most compelling literary movements was born: modernism.

Modernism in literature is the act of rebellion against the norms on the writers' part. They refused to conform to the rules any longer. Instead, they sought new ways to convey ideas and new forms of expressing themselves. In their opinion, the old ways of writing simply couldn't reflect the rapid social change and a new generation born out of it.

Today, let's take a deep dive into modernist work. What is modernism in literature? What are the key characteristics that set it apart from other literary movements? What modernism in literature examples reflect the movement's qualities the best? And who can represent modernism in American literature?

You'll find the answers to all of these questions – and more – below!

What is Modernism in Literature

As any physic helper would advise you to approach a subject, let's start with one crucial question: ‘What is modernism?’

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the term 'modernism' as a practice characteristic of modern times and seeking to find original means of expressing oneself. Modernism was a movement not just in literature but also in arts, philosophy, and cinema.

As for the modernism in literature definition, the same dictionary describes it as a conscious break from the past and a search for new ways of expressing oneself. But its spirit is best reflected in a motto coined by Ezra Pound: ‘Make it new.’

The movement's main characteristics are individualism, experimentation, and absurdity. Its other characteristics include symbolism and formalism.

What about the history behind the modernism literary movement? Started by the Industrial Revolution and fueled by urbanization, the movement originated in Europe, with Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and Robert Musil as early modernists. It was also heavily influenced by the horrors of World War I: it shattered the preconceived notions about society for many modernists.

The movement first developed in American literature in the early 20th century modernism. Apart from the Industrial Revolution, it was influenced by Prohibition and the Great Depression and fueled by a sense of disillusionment and loss. William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, and E. E. Cummings are among the prominent American modernists.

Feeling Stressed About an Assignment Due Soon?

No need to let the deadline ruin your life. Let a professional writer take this weight off your shoulders!

5 Key Characteristics of Modernist Literature

Now that we've covered the modernist genre definition let's examine why certain works are considered modernist more closely. In other words, what sets modernist works apart from their counterparts?

The key to unraveling the answer lies in the key characteristics of modernism. We'll define five of them that matter the most:

• individualism;
• experimentation;

Below you'll find a short description of each characteristic, along with examples.

Individualism

Individualism is one of the key elements of modernism. It postulates that an individual's experiences, opinions, and emotions are more fascinating than the events in a society as a whole.

So, modernism is focused on describing the subjective reality of one person rather than societal changes or historical events on an impersonal scale.

A typical protagonist in modernist literature is just trying to survive and adapt to the changing world. Presented with obstacles, the protagonist sometimes perseveres – but not always. You can find compelling examples of individualism in the works of Ernest Hemingway.

The fascination with subjective reality also led to the development of unreliable narrators in fiction. You can find great examples of the Madman type of unreliable narrator in Franz Kafka's works.

Experimentation

Literary modernism rejected many of the established writing norms, paving the way for experimentation with the form. Modernist poets best exemplify it: they revolted against the accepted rules of rhyme and rhythm, thus inventing free verse (vers libre) poetry.

Modernism in literature also led to experiments with prose. Combined with individualism as another core characteristic, writers developed a narrative device called ‘stream of consciousness.’

This device is meant to reflect how the characters think, even though it may be inconsistent, chaotic, or illogical. This new technique allowed writers to craft novels that read like the protagonist's stream of consciousness.

Among authors, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are the best examples of this characteristic in action. As for poetry, T. S. Eliot's and Ezra Pound's bodies of work are a must-read.

During the modernist period, authors watched the world as they knew it crumbled around them. Two World Wars, the rise of capitalism, and fast-paced globalization all undermined authors' beliefs and opinions about humankind.

This led many of them to consider the world absurd and reflect it in their writing. From the setup to the plot development, modernist works based on this characteristic take surrealist or fantastical turns. They can also be described as bizarre or nonsensical.

The rise of absurdism also led to the invention of the Theatre of the Absurd. Pioneered by European playwrights, it revolves around the idea that human existence has no grand purpose or meaning. Absurdist plays don't seek to communicate effectively; instead, they include irrational speech.

There's no better example of absurdity in literary modernism than Franz Kafka's works, especially The Metamorphosis .

While symbolism in literature existed before the late 19th century, it quickly became one of the central characteristics of modernism in literature. Modernist authors and poets also reimagined symbolism. Where their predecessors left little unsaid, modernists preferred to leave plenty of blanks for the reader's imagination to fill.

That, however, doesn't mean there was no attention to details. On the contrary, modernist authors infused every layer of their work of fiction with symbolic details. The difference is that their way of using symbolism in writing allowed for several interpretations, all simultaneously possible and valid.

As a characteristic, symbolism in the modernism literary movement is most prominent in the works of James Joyce and T. S. Eliot.

As mentioned above, 20th-century modernism was defined by the search for radically new forms of expression. Creativity fueled this search, paving the way for the emergence of original forms.

In modern period literature, the writing process was no longer perceived as a laborious craft. Modernists treated it as a creative process instead. In some cases, the originality of the form was deemed more important than the substance.

Take the works of E. E. Cummings as an example here. Instead of conventionally putting the poetry on the page, he spread out separate words and phrases on the page as if it were a canvas and his poem – the paint.

Other examples of formalism include the use of invented or foreign words and phrases and unconventional structure – or its absence.

4 Recurring Themes in Modernist Literature

As an act of rebellion against conventional norms of the craft, literature of the modernist period touched on various themes that could best convey the author's opinion on the world around them.

Due to their variety, listing all of them here would be impossible. However, some of the modernist themes are more prominent than others. Below you can find four of them, along with examples.

These themes also represent a great starting point for essay writing. Whether you want to do it yourself or turn to a write my essay service, you can choose one of them as your topic for exploration.

Transformation

Modernism is practically inseparable from the theme of transformation. Be it the transformation of form, expression, or norm; the movement is based on the idea of radical change. If you want to see this theme in action, start with Ezra Pound's manifesto, Make It New .

As a theme, transformation also means a change in beliefs, opinions, and identities, a symbolic rebirth. Fueled by loss, destruction, and the war experiences of the authors caused fragmentation, this aspect of the theme.

You can find examples of transformation as a theme in Franz Kafka's absurdist The Metamorphosis . As for modernism in American literature, you can identify this theme in the works of Ernest Hemingway ( The Sun Also Rises ) and William Faulkner ( Barn Burning ).

Mythological Tales

Unlike their predecessors, modernist artists and authors didn't just refer to the Greek-Latin and other myths. Instead, they reimagined those tales in a new, modern world setting. Used as symbols or characters central to the plot, mythological tales and figures define modernism in literature.

As for examples of myths in the works of the modernist period, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land is one of the best. In this poem, T. S. Eliot reimagines the myths of the Fisher King and uses Tarot cards and the Holy Grail as symbols. T. S. Eliot also used Greek and Latin phrases to enhance the poem's meaning.

Other examples of myths in modernist works include James Joyce's Ulysses, which alludes to Homer's Odysseus, and Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra, which reimagines the Greek myth of Electra.

Loss, Separation, and Destruction

The cruel experiences of war are the major reason this theme became prevalent in modern-period literature. These experiences were infused with loss, separation, and destruction, and many authors lived through them. So, these experiences were reflected in the works of the post-war times.

Loss, destruction, and separation were also universal experiences that many went through simultaneously and shared their consequences. That's why the modernist works were also well-accepted by the readers.

You can find more than one instance of this theme in the works of Virginia Woolf, a British author and a pioneer of modernism in English literature. In American literature, the best examples of these themes are present in the works of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and T. S. Eliot.

Love and Sensuality

As one of the characteristics of modernism, individualism drove the theme of love and sensualism in the literature of this period. However, these themes didn't escape the disillusionment and demystification: they were reimagined somewhat cynically (or, some might say, realistically).

In modernist works, love isn't described as a magical feeling that can move mountains. Instead, the tone of love stories becomes grimmer and more fatalistic, and it serves as more proof of the social fabric corroding away.

In addition to love and sensuality, modernist works were marked by discussions of and reflections on sexuality, gender roles, and feminism. Some prominent authors in this regard are Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence.

For love and sensuality modernism examples in literature, read and analyze F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls . D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is also a great example here as it examines the theme from the perspective of emancipation and gender equality.

10 Notable Modernist Writers in the Literary Movement

Need to write a literature review about one instance of modern-period literature? Start your search for the subject by checking out the works of the following ten authors and poets!

These creators are among the most prominent modernists that defined the movement, developed its qualities, and experimented with its main characteristics. Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and more age-defining creators are among the notable modernist writers and poets below.

Virginia Woolf

A pioneer in modernism in English literature, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) and her body of work defined the movement. For one, she was one of the first authors to start using the stream-of-consciousness narrative device to display the complex inner world of her characters.

Woolf also infused her works with feminist themes. She was one of the three female authors of the period to explore ‘the given,’ according to Simone de Beauvoir. However, other themes of the time – the war, destruction, and the role of social class – are also central to her work.

Virginia Woolf's most prominent works are Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To The Lighthouse (1927). You may also enjoy reading The Waves (1931) and The Years (1936).

Further reading on Virginia Woolf's life and body of work includes J. Goldman's The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf (Cambridge University Press) and V. Curtis's Virginia Woolf's Women (University of Wisconsin Press).

James Joyce

An Irish poet and novelist, James Joyce (1882-1941) is best known for his Ulysses novel (1922). He belonged to the group of creators who explored new styles and forms of expression. His approach to writing was detail-oriented, infused with internal monologues, and overturning traditional plot and character devices.

James Joyce focused on modernist themes such as destruction, social class, enlightenment, and identity. However, his works mostly focused on slice-of-life tales told in new, creative ways.

Apart from Ulysses , James Joyce's major works include a collection of short stories, Dubliners (1914), the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and Finnegans Wake (1939). The latter pushed the use of stream of consciousness to its extreme.

As for poetry, James Joyce is best known for his three collections of poems, with Chamber Music (1907) being the most acclaimed one.

Gertrude Stein

Often referred to as the mother of modernism, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) is one of the most important American modernist writers. Like the two previous authors on this list, Stein experimented with stream of consciousness and other narrative devices. Her writing style, in turn, can be described as distinctive and playful.

Stein's first novel, Q.E.D. Q.E.D. (1903), was one of the first to explore a coming-out story. A lesbian herself, Stein focused on sexuality in some of her works (case in point: Fernhurst (1904)) – an unprecedented choice for the time.

As a poet, Stein is best known for Tender Buttons (1914), a collection of poems that capture the routine of mundane life. In the publication, Stein experiments with sounds and fragmented words to convey an image to the reader.

Stein's most prominent prose works of fiction include The Making of Americans (1902–1911) and Three Lives (1905–1906).

William Faulkner

Look no further if you're looking for modernism examples in literature that explore symbolism and multiple perspectives. William Faulkner (1897-1962), an American novel and short story writer, belongs to the group of celebrated modernist authors who focused on these themes.

A Nobel prize laureate and a Mississippi native, Faulkner is famous for his Southern Gothic stories taking place in the made-up Yoknapatawpha County. Besides symbolism and multiple-perspective storytelling, Faulkner also explored the unreliable narrator and nonlinear storytelling devices.

Faulkner's most prominent novels include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), The Wild Palms (1939), and Light in August (1932). He was also working as a Hollywood screenwriter between 1932 and 1954. During that time, he crafted screenplays for films like Flesh (1932), To Have and Have Not (1944), and The Big Sleep (1946).

An expatriate American poet, Ezra Pound (1885-1972) is one of the most prominent figures of 20th-century modernism. He was unrivaled in using free-verse poetry and allusions in his body of work.

Pound also excelled in using imagism in his works – and he was one of the first poets to do so. This makes his poems vivid and powerful for the reader's imagination.

You've already seen several references to Ezra Pound's Make It New (1934), a manifesto for the modernist movement. However, that's not the cornerstone of Pound's literary legacy. To delve into it, read The Cantos (c. 1917–1962), an epic 800-page poem, In a Station of the Metro (1913), or The Return (1917).

Franz Kafka

An Austrian-Hungarian author, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is one of the most prominent modernist writers in the German-speaking world. Kafka explored the themes of transformation, existentialism, and alienation in his works.

Kafka focused his craft on absurdist, surrealistic, and fantastical plots, as best exemplified by The Metamorphosis (1915). In this short story, a salesman has turned into a large insect (commonly interpreted as a cockroach).

Kafka's body of work led to the birth of a new term – Kafkaesque. This term is the easiest way to describe the author's style: it's marked by absurdist, disorienting complexity and a surreal distortion of reality.

The Metamorphosis isn't the only work of Kafka worth reading. His best novels include The Castle (1926) and The Trial (1925).

E. Cummings

E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) was one of the most productive American poets and authors of modern-period literature. Over his lifetime, he crafted around 2,900 poems, four plays, and two autobiographical novels over his lifetime.

Cummings' poetry style is best defined as idiosyncratic. The poet disregarded not just the established norms of rhyme and rhythm. He went further and refused to abide by the syntax, punctuation, and spelling rules. His poems often employ lowercase spelling as a form of expression.

If you want to get acquainted with the best works of E. E. Cummings, we suggest you start with may I feel said he (1935) and [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] (1952). His books of poetry – 1 × 1 (1944) and No Thanks (1935) – are also a worthy read and a great introduction to the poet's unique style.

H. Lawrence

Another prominent English novelist and poet, D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), didn't earn himself a worthy place in the modernism literary movement during his lifetime. Only after his death did his works earn him the recognition he deserved.

His works dealt with themes of sexuality, industrialization, modernity, and spontaneity. Exploring sexuality – especially from the standpoint of female characters – earned D. H. Lawrence many enemies. As a result of public persecution and censorship trials, D. H. Lawrence spent years in voluntary exile.

D. H. Lawrence's most prominent novels are Sons and Lovers (1913), Women in Love (1920), The Rainbow (1915), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). However, the latter was deemed too scandalous to be published in Great Britain until 1960, after D. H. Lawrence's death.

Ernest Hemingway

An American novelist and short-story writer, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) isn't just considered one of the most influential creators of the modernist period but American literature as a whole. He is famous for his unique style of prose. It's economical, straightforward, and matter-of-fact, with few descriptive adjectives in the text.

Having spent years as a journalist on the battlefield, Hemingway experienced the horrors of war first-hand. This influenced the themes he explored in his writing: his novels reflected war, love, destruction, loss, and disillusionment.

Hemingway's bibliography consists of seven novels and six collections of short stories. His most prominent works include For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), based on his experiences of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, and The Sun Also Rises (1926).

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) is one of the iconic feminist modernist writers who specialized in crafting short stories. A New Zealand native, Mansfield reflected on anxiety, identity, existentialism, and sexuality in her works.

Mansfield's style draws inspiration from visual arts and psychoanalysis. This made for vivid descriptions in her prose and complex characters. Her short stories often have a twist in the form of a revelation or an epiphany about the protagonist.

If you want to get acquainted with Mansfield's literary style, we recommend you start with short stories like The Garden Party (1922) and Daughters of the Late Colonel (1920). Other great but lesser-known examples of her short stories include Something Childish But Very Natural (1914), Bliss (1918), and Sun and Moon (1920).

A Modernism Essay Example

If you've come here looking for examples of modernism in literature to write an essay later on, we've got you covered! Our professional writer flexed their custom writing muscles and crafted this example of a modernism essay you can download below.

Feel free to use this short essay sample as a guide on how to write a quality paper about this literary movement. And if you'd like to have a top-notch modernism essay edited or written for you, our writers and editors are waiting to hear from you!

Don't Have Time to Do an A-level Job Yourself?

Our writers will craft an outstanding custom paper at an affordable price for you – all you have to do is place an order!

Related Articles

Know Everything About Modern Literature: History, Features, and Many More

History is not a picture of the past, but also it relates to the present and future. We can relate to our present and predict our future through history. So, it is the primary subject to know for all. Different persons with their personal history and phases in this evolving society can be found inside each historical period. From history, we can gather experience and a lot of knowledge about those days. Modern literature is the key to our answers to all historical happenings. The things that are happening today are passed for tomorrow. With the timestamp that literature provides, we would have no way of knowing what happened in the past. Literature allows us to a journey across time and learns regarding life on the planet from people who have come before us.

History of Modern Literature:

All creative barriers (both form and substance) were shattered throughout modern literature, resulting in unlimited aesthetic freedom. As a result, broad aesthetic trends progressively faded from the art world. Authors now write whatever they want, in whatever manner they choose, relying on whatever inspirations they want. The French novelist Gustave Flaubert, whose work Madame Bovary chronicles the tormented monotony of a country doctor’s wife, often establishes realism writing. Surrealist literature appeals to the subconscious through bizarre, dreamy elements, whereas expressionist poetry boldly dismisses outward appearances to present inner, psychological realities openly.

Spelling and grammatical rules and traditional linear narratives are considered as defied. The requirements are frequently eased in poetry, if not completely abolished (resulting in free Verse). Stream of consciousness is a famous radical literary invention in modern literature that captures the mind’s ongoing flow of ideas. Contemporary literature, like history, features, and many more are essential for everyone; we can have a piece of more profound knowledge and appreciation for culture. For example, we learn about the history of the methods written down, Manuscripts, and oral histories. We may learn about ancient Egypt’s history through deciphering ciphers and looking at images. Today, we can comprehend Egyptian culture through the symbols they left behind, which is the power of narrative. We can learn and know the matters of 1000 years before.

What Is Modern Literature?

First of all, we need to know what modern literature is. It started in Europe and North America. Modern literature is a purposeful departure from previous writing styles in both poetry and prose fiction. The historical evolution of works in prose or poetry strives to bring amusement, education, or instruction to the listener. The development of literary techniques utilized in communication is referred to as the history of literature. Not all texts are considered works of literature. Some recorded resources, such as data compilations, are not considered as literature.

Different Ages of English Literature:

The evolution of literature all over Europe throughout the modern period began with the Age of Enlightenment. It concludes with the Baroque period’s apex in the 18th century, following the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. The characteristics of modernist literature as seen through the lens of human experience with science, philosophy, art, and other forms of creativity. Here comes the concept of Postmodernism, which deals with absurdum, dispersal, novelistic, and inter-textuality above absolute meaning.

• In the mid-twentieth century, the postmodern literature movement was a reaction against the modernist literary style of the previous century. Postmodernism represented post-war disillusionment, denying ultimate truth, shunning severe Research, and focusing on subjective views rather than science.
• The modern period begins later outside of Europe, such as in Ottoman Turkey in the 1820s with the Tanzimat reforms.
• Nasser al-Din Shah’s reforms in Qajar Iran in the 1830s.
• In the 1850s, India faced the end of the Mughal period and the advent of the British Raj.
• In the 1860s, Japan underwent the Meiji restoration.
• Following the 1860s, China became involved in the New Culture Movement.
• The term ‘modern’ has three distinct connotations in the context of history and art . Ancient, medieval, and modern are the categories used in historical debates from 1500 to the present, and old, medieval, early contemporary, and current are used from 1800 to the present.

Characteristics of Modern Literature:

Scholars debate the precise years that make up the Modernist period in contemporary literary history, although most assume that modernist authors wrote between the 1880s and the mid-1940s. During this period, society saw enormous transformations on all levels. As a result of combat and industrialization, people looked to be undervalued. Global communication has reduced the size of the world. Keeping it up with the change was difficult.

• This new reality evoked a range of responses from writers. Individuals are getting more intriguing than societies in Modernist Literature.
• Modernist writers were fascinated by people’s reactions to changing situations. The person overcomes obstacles in several cases.
• In much Modernist fiction, characters are merely striving to keep their heads above water. The world or civilization was presented as a danger to the morals of the characters by the writers.
• Ernest Hemingway is well renowned for his colorful characters who persevered despite their circumstances. Modern authors provide meaningful explanations to objects, people, and places.
• Modern writers imagined a world with multiple layers, many of which were hidden or encoded somehow—the notion of a puzzle that we now solve dates back to the Modernist era. The Modernists’ use of symbols was distinctive, even though symbolism was not a new concept in writing.
• Modern writers pay more attention to the imagination than past authors, resulting in open-ended stories and several interpretations. Separate, open-ended symbols appear in James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses.’
• Modernist writers viewed literature as a skill. They felt that poetry and novels are tiny bits rather than the organic, internal process.
• The Modernists’ drive for innovation and uniqueness in literature, where foreign languages and an extensive vocabulary are common in modernist poetry.
• Literary Modernism was an expressive and experimental style of writing and poetry that flourished during the First World War.
• Literary Modernism gave writers the freedom to express themselves than in the past. Nonlinear narratives and free-flowing internal monologues are frequently seen in modernist works as the main characteristics.

So, the points mentioned above are the essential characteristics of modernist writing. Some renowned names of those times are – Franz Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Beckett, William Carlos Williams, and W.B. Yeats.

Characteristics of Modern Poetry:

Modern poetry is written in ordinary language, everyday spoken language, and even dialect or jargon. Modernist aspects in poetry can be classified into four categories:

• Innovative explorations in structure and technique.
• New ideas with the structure of puzzles.
• New expressions with changing situations.
• The complex and open-ended characters in poems.

The Modern Period of English Literature:

Besides the general characteristics, some crucial ideas influenced modern English literature.

Radicalism :

Radical literature employs a variety of unconventional approaches, many of which are influenced by visual art movements. For example, impressionist writing communicates the transient suggestion rather than a straightforward, straight narrative, whereas symbolist literature emphasizes symbolic imagery.

When it comes to art history, it typically refers to the period from 1850 to the present. Modern art (sometimes known as ‘modernist art’) is simply non-traditional and new art. Modern painters created a broad spectrum that consciously broke the conventional trends and started a new era of reality. Realist literature is distinguished to realistic people, places, and plots depicted in a simple, precise manner (just as a work of visual art, to be practical, must be straightforward and detailed).

In the time of the modern period, English Literature, Drama flourished primarily in France and Germany. The most common and meaningful names for this flourishment of Drama are Hugo and Goethe. Hugo’s best play is commonly regarded as the satirical tragedy Ruy Blas (a commoner who rises to the position of prime minister). In contrast, Goethe’s most famous Drama is Faust.

Romanticism :

Modern literature is the treasure of facts. We get the concept of ‘romanticism’ in this contemporary period of English Literature. Romantic literature is common themes in the natural world, societal strife and civilizations, supernatural components, and historical nostalgia. During the Romantic period, several famous modern genres developed. The fairytale, which is a short story with magical aspects, is another significant Romantic genre. Contemporary English writers’ works have become the most well-known corpus of European fairytales that most impact modern literature.

Influence of Modern Literature:

There is a vast influence of modern literature in history and today’s world. The literature emphasizes the importance of comprehending contemporary themes such as human strife. The consequences are endless, though we are discussing some of them.

Verse Without Rhyme:

Many modernist writers eschewed traditional poetic structures in favor of free VerseVerse, which lacks a constant rhyme scheme or melodic style.

Research and Testing:

Modernist literature and modern English writers used a variety of experimental literary styles that defied traditional storytelling constraints. Composite images and motifs, nonlinear tales, and a stream of awareness are free-flowing inner monologues used in Research.

Numerous Views:

Many modernist writers wrote in the first person with multiple characters to stress each character’s subjectivity and give depth to the tale with diverse perspectives.

Rather than focusing on society as a whole, modernist literature frequently concentrates on the individual. Characters in stories are followed to a changing reality with the concept of Idealism.

Conclusion :

Literature is a mirror of humanity and a means of comprehending one another. We can learn about another person’s thought process when listening to their voice. Modern literature is vital because of its purpose, and in a culture, it is growing increasingly. Literature has an indisputable effect on contemporary culture. We can relate modern literature with our practical lives. In colleges or universities, students are now reading modern literature with the history of humanity. This is vital, so students are given assignments to write about the primitive era to the modern era with the essence of literature. If you want to write your current literature assignments, then you have to read thoroughly and immensely. So that you can note what modern literature is, characteristics of contemporary literature, aspects of modern poetry, different ages of English Literature, about modern English writers, and so on. If you do not understand where to start and write and conclude your assignment regarding modern literature, you can ask for paper help from experts online. You can get ready-made and impactful projects from expert writers with excellent quality. So, without any hesitation, you can take paper help to get your modern literature assignment instantly.

By Alex Brown

I'm an ambitious, seasoned, and versatile author. I am experienced in proposing, outlining, and writing engaging assignments. Developing contagious academic work is always my top priority. I have a keen eye for detail and diligence in producing exceptional academic writing work. I work hard daily to help students with their assignments and projects. Experimenting with creative writing styles while maintaining a solid and informative voice is what I enjoy the most.

• Craft and Criticism
• Fiction and Poetry
• News and Culture
• Lit Hub Radio
• Reading Lists

• Literary Criticism
• Craft and Advice
• In Conversation
• On Translation
• Short Story
• From the Novel
• Bookstores and Libraries
• Film and TV
• Art and Photography
• Freeman’s
• The Virtual Book Channel
• Behind the Mic
• Beyond the Page
• The Cosmic Library
• The Critic and Her Publics
• Emergence Magazine
• Fiction/Non/Fiction
• First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing
• Future Fables
• The History of Literature
• I’m a Writer But
• Just the Right Book
• Lit Century
• The Literary Life with Mitchell Kaplan
• New Books Network
• Tor Presents: Voyage Into Genre
• Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast
• Write-minded
• The Best of the Decade
• Best Reviewed Books
• BookMarks Daily Giveaway
• The Daily Thrill
• CrimeReads Daily Giveaway

The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade

Ever tried. ever failed. no matter..

Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.

So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels , the best short story collections , the best poetry collections , and the best memoirs of the decade , and we have now reached the fifth list in our series: the best essay collections published in English between 2010 and 2019.

The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below.

The Top Ten

Oliver sacks, the mind’s eye (2010).

Toward the end of his life, maybe suspecting or sensing that it was coming to a close, Dr. Oliver Sacks tended to focus his efforts on sweeping intellectual projects like On the Move (a memoir), The River of Consciousness (a hybrid intellectual history), and Hallucinations (a book-length meditation on, what else, hallucinations). But in 2010, he gave us one more classic in the style that first made him famous, a form he revolutionized and brought into the contemporary literary canon: the medical case study as essay. In The Mind’s Eye , Sacks focuses on vision, expanding the notion to embrace not only how we see the world, but also how we map that world onto our brains when our eyes are closed and we’re communing with the deeper recesses of consciousness. Relaying histories of patients and public figures, as well as his own history of ocular cancer (the condition that would eventually spread and contribute to his death), Sacks uses vision as a lens through which to see all of what makes us human, what binds us together, and what keeps us painfully apart. The essays that make up this collection are quintessential Sacks: sensitive, searching, with an expertise that conveys scientific information and experimentation in terms we can not only comprehend, but which also expand how we see life carrying on around us. The case studies of “Stereo Sue,” of the concert pianist Lillian Kalir, and of Howard, the mystery novelist who can no longer read, are highlights of the collection, but each essay is a kind of gem, mined and polished by one of the great storytellers of our era.  –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (2011)

The American essay was having a moment at the beginning of the decade, and Pulphead was smack in the middle. Without any hard data, I can tell you that this collection of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s magazine features—published primarily in GQ , but also in The Paris Review , and Harper’s —was the only full book of essays most of my literary friends had read since Slouching Towards Bethlehem , and probably one of the only full books of essays they had even heard of.

Well, we all picked a good one. Every essay in Pulphead is brilliant and entertaining, and illuminates some small corner of the American experience—even if it’s just one house, with Sullivan and an aging writer inside (“Mr. Lytle” is in fact a standout in a collection with no filler; fittingly, it won a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize). But what are they about? Oh, Axl Rose, Christian Rock festivals, living around the filming of One Tree Hill , the Tea Party movement, Michael Jackson, Bunny Wailer, the influence of animals, and by god, the Miz (of Real World/Road Rules Challenge fame).

But as Dan Kois has pointed out , what connects these essays, apart from their general tone and excellence, is “their author’s essential curiosity about the world, his eye for the perfect detail, and his great good humor in revealing both his subjects’ and his own foibles.” They are also extremely well written, drawing much from fictional techniques and sentence craft, their literary pleasures so acute and remarkable that James Wood began his review of the collection in The New Yorker with a quiz: “Are the following sentences the beginnings of essays or of short stories?” (It was not a hard quiz, considering the context.)

It’s hard not to feel, reading this collection, like someone reached into your brain, took out the half-baked stuff you talk about with your friends, researched it, lived it, and represented it to you smarter and better and more thoroughly than you ever could. So read it in awe if you must, but read it.  –Emily Temple, Senior Editor

Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (2013)

Such is the sentence-level virtuosity of Aleksandar Hemon—the Bosnian-American writer, essayist, and critic—that throughout his career he has frequently been compared to the granddaddy of borrowed language prose stylists: Vladimir Nabokov. While it is, of course, objectively remarkable that anyone could write so beautifully in a language they learned in their twenties, what I admire most about Hemon’s work is the way in which he infuses every essay and story and novel with both a deep humanity and a controlled (but never subdued) fury. He can also be damn funny. Hemon grew up in Sarajevo and left in 1992 to study in Chicago, where he almost immediately found himself stranded, forced to watch from afar as his beloved home city was subjected to a relentless four-year bombardment, the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare. This extraordinary memoir-in-essays is many things: it’s a love letter to both the family that raised him and the family he built in exile; it’s a rich, joyous, and complex portrait of a place the 90s made synonymous with war and devastation; and it’s an elegy for the wrenching loss of precious things. There’s an essay about coming of age in Sarajevo and another about why he can’t bring himself to leave Chicago. There are stories about relationships forged and maintained on the soccer pitch or over the chessboard, and stories about neighbors and mentors turned monstrous by ethnic prejudice. As a chorus they sing with insight, wry humor, and unimaginable sorrow. I am not exaggerating when I say that the collection’s devastating final piece, “The Aquarium”—which details his infant daughter’s brain tumor and the agonizing months which led up to her death—remains the most painful essay I have ever read.  –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Of every essay in my relentlessly earmarked copy of Braiding Sweetgrass , Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gorgeously rendered argument for why and how we should keep going, there’s one that especially hits home: her account of professor-turned-forester Franz Dolp. When Dolp, several decades ago, revisited the farm that he had once shared with his ex-wife, he found a scene of destruction: The farm’s new owners had razed the land where he had tried to build a life. “I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust and I cried,” he wrote in his journal.

So many in my generation (and younger) feel this kind of helplessness–and considerable rage–at finding ourselves newly adult in a world where those in power seem determined to abandon or destroy everything that human bodies have always needed to survive: air, water, land. Asking any single book to speak to this helplessness feels unfair, somehow; yet, Braiding Sweetgrass does, by weaving descriptions of indigenous tradition with the environmental sciences in order to show what survival has looked like over the course of many millennia. Kimmerer’s essays describe her personal experience as a Potawotami woman, plant ecologist, and teacher alongside stories of the many ways that humans have lived in relationship to other species. Whether describing Dolp’s work–he left the stumps for a life of forest restoration on the Oregon coast–or the work of others in maple sugar harvesting, creating black ash baskets, or planting a Three Sisters garden of corn, beans, and squash, she brings hope. “In ripe ears and swelling fruit, they counsel us that all gifts are multiplied in relationship,” she writes of the Three Sisters, which all sustain one another as they grow. “This is how the world keeps going.”  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Hilton Als, White Girls (2013)

In a world where we are so often reduced to one essential self, Hilton Als’ breathtaking book of critical essays, White Girls , which meditates on the ways he and other subjects read, project and absorb parts of white femininity, is a radically liberating book. It’s one of the only works of critical thinking that doesn’t ask the reader, its author or anyone he writes about to stoop before the doorframe of complete legibility before entering. Something he also permitted the subjects and readers of his first book, the glorious book-length essay, The Women , a series of riffs and psychological portraits of Dorothy Dean, Owen Dodson, and the author’s own mother, among others. One of the shifts of that book, uncommon at the time, was how it acknowledges the way we inhabit bodies made up of variously gendered influences. To read White Girls now is to experience the utter freedom of this gift and to marvel at Als’ tremendous versatility and intelligence.

He is easily the most diversely talented American critic alive. He can write into genres like pop music and film where being part of an audience is a fantasy happening in the dark. He’s also wired enough to know how the art world builds reputations on the nod of rich white patrons, a significant collision in a time when Jean-Michel Basquiat is America’s most expensive modern artist. Als’ swerving and always moving grip on performance means he’s especially good on describing the effect of art which is volatile and unstable and built on the mingling of made-up concepts and the hard fact of their effect on behavior, such as race. Writing on Flannery O’Connor for instance he alone puts a finger on her “uneasy and unavoidable union between black and white, the sacred and the profane, the shit and the stars.” From Eminem to Richard Pryor, André Leon Talley to Michael Jackson, Als enters the life and work of numerous artists here who turn the fascinations of race and with whiteness into fury and song and describes the complexity of their beauty like his life depended upon it. There are also brief memoirs here that will stop your heart. This is an essential work to understanding American culture.  –John Freeman, Executive Editor

Eula Biss, On Immunity (2014)

We move through the world as if we can protect ourselves from its myriad dangers, exercising what little agency we have in an effort to keep at bay those fears that gather at the edges of any given life: of loss, illness, disaster, death. It is these fears—amplified by the birth of her first child—that Eula Biss confronts in her essential 2014 essay collection, On Immunity . As any great essayist does, Biss moves outward in concentric circles from her own very private view of the world to reveal wider truths, discovering as she does a culture consumed by anxiety at the pervasive toxicity of contemporary life. As Biss interrogates this culture—of privilege, of whiteness—she interrogates herself, questioning the flimsy ways in which we arm ourselves with science or superstition against the impurities of daily existence.

Five years on from its publication, it is dismaying that On Immunity feels as urgent (and necessary) a defense of basic science as ever. Vaccination, we learn, is derived from vacca —for cow—after the 17th-century discovery that a small application of cowpox was often enough to inoculate against the scourge of smallpox, an etymological digression that belies modern conspiratorial fears of Big Pharma and its vaccination agenda. But Biss never scolds or belittles the fears of others, and in her generosity and openness pulls off a neat (and important) trick: insofar as we are of the very world we fear, she seems to be suggesting, we ourselves are impure, have always been so, permeable, vulnerable, yet so much stronger than we think.  –Jonny Diamond, Editor-in-Chief 

Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions (2016)

When Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” was published in 2008, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon unlike almost any other in recent memory, assigning language to a behavior that almost every woman has witnessed—mansplaining—and, in the course of identifying that behavior, spurring a movement, online and offline, to share the ways in which patriarchal arrogance has intersected all our lives. (It would also come to be the titular essay in her collection published in 2014.) The Mother of All Questions follows up on that work and takes it further in order to examine the nature of self-expression—who is afforded it and denied it, what institutions have been put in place to limit it, and what happens when it is employed by women. Solnit has a singular gift for describing and decoding the misogynistic dynamics that govern the world so universally that they can seem invisible and the gendered violence that is so common as to seem unremarkable; this naming is powerful, and it opens space for sharing the stories that shape our lives.

The Mother of All Questions, comprised of essays written between 2014 and 2016, in many ways armed us with some of the tools necessary to survive the gaslighting of the Trump years, in which many of us—and especially women—have continued to hear from those in power that the things we see and hear do not exist and never existed. Solnit also acknowledges that labels like “woman,” and other gendered labels, are identities that are fluid in reality; in reviewing the book for The New Yorker , Moira Donegan suggested that, “One useful working definition of a woman might be ‘someone who experiences misogyny.'” Whichever words we use, Solnit writes in the introduction to the book that “when words break through unspeakability, what was tolerated by a society sometimes becomes intolerable.” This storytelling work has always been vital; it continues to be vital, and in this book, it is brilliantly done.  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends (2017)

The newly minted MacArthur fellow Valeria Luiselli’s four-part (but really six-part) essay  Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions  was inspired by her time spent volunteering at the federal immigration court in New York City, working as an interpreter for undocumented, unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Written concurrently with her novel  Lost Children Archive  (a fictional exploration of the same topic), Luiselli’s essay offers a fascinating conceit, the fashioning of an argument from the questions on the government intake form given to these children to process their arrivals. (Aside from the fact that this essay is a heartbreaking masterpiece, this is such a  good  conceit—transforming a cold, reproducible administrative document into highly personal literature.) Luiselli interweaves a grounded discussion of the questionnaire with a narrative of the road trip Luiselli takes with her husband and family, across America, while they (both Mexican citizens) wait for their own Green Card applications to be processed. It is on this trip when Luiselli reflects on the thousands of migrant children mysteriously traveling across the border by themselves. But the real point of the essay is to actually delve into the real stories of some of these children, which are agonizing, as well as to gravely, clearly expose what literally happens, procedural, when they do arrive—from forms to courts, as they’re swallowed by a bureaucratic vortex. Amid all of this, Luiselli also takes on more, exploring the larger contextual relationship between the United States of America and Mexico (as well as other countries in Central America, more broadly) as it has evolved to our current, adverse moment.  Tell Me How It Ends  is so small, but it is so passionate and vigorous: it desperately accomplishes in its less-than-100-pages-of-prose what centuries and miles and endless records of federal bureaucracy have never been able, and have never cared, to do: reverse the dehumanization of Latin American immigrants that occurs once they set foot in this country.  –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Zadie Smith, Feel Free (2018)

In the essay “Meet Justin Bieber!” in Feel Free , Zadie Smith writes that her interest in Justin Bieber is not an interest in the interiority of the singer himself, but in “the idea of the love object”. This essay—in which Smith imagines a meeting between Bieber and the late philosopher Martin Buber (“Bieber and Buber are alternative spellings of the same German surname,” she explains in one of many winning footnotes. “Who am I to ignore these hints from the universe?”). Smith allows that this premise is a bit premise -y: “I know, I know.” Still, the resulting essay is a very funny, very smart, and un-tricky exploration of individuality and true “meeting,” with a dash of late capitalism thrown in for good measure. The melding of high and low culture is the bread and butter of pretty much every prestige publication on the internet these days (and certainly of the Twitter feeds of all “public intellectuals”), but the essays in Smith’s collection don’t feel familiar—perhaps because hers is, as we’ve long known, an uncommon skill. Though I believe Smith could probably write compellingly about anything, she chooses her subjects wisely. She writes with as much electricity about Brexit as the aforementioned Beliebers—and each essay is utterly engrossing. “She contains multitudes, but her point is we all do,” writes Hermione Hoby in her review of the collection in The New Republic . “At the same time, we are, in our endless difference, nobody but ourselves.”  –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays (2019)

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic who has transcended the ivory tower to become the sort of public intellectual who can easily appear on radio or television talk shows to discuss race, gender, and capitalism. Her collection of essays reflects this duality, blending scholarly work with memoir to create a collection on the black female experience in postmodern America that’s “intersectional analysis with a side of pop culture.” The essays range from an analysis of sexual violence, to populist politics, to social media, but in centering her own experiences throughout, the collection becomes something unlike other pieces of criticism of contemporary culture. In explaining the title, she reflects on what an editor had said about her work: “I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naïve to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick.” One of the most powerful essays in the book is “Dying to be Competent” which begins with her unpacking the idiocy of LinkedIn (and the myth of meritocracy) and ends with a description of her miscarriage, the mishandling of black woman’s pain, and a condemnation of healthcare bureaucracy. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Thick confirms McMillan Cottom as one of our most fearless public intellectuals and one of the most vital.  –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Dissenting Opinions

The following books were just barely nudged out of the top ten, but we (or at least one of us) couldn’t let them pass without comment.

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010)

In The Possessed Elif Batuman indulges her love of Russian literature and the result is hilarious and remarkable. Each essay of the collection chronicles some adventure or other that she had while in graduate school for Comparative Literature and each is more unpredictable than the next. There’s the time a “well-known 20th-centuryist” gave a graduate student the finger; and the time when Batuman ended up living in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for a summer; and the time that she convinced herself Tolstoy was murdered and spent the length of the Tolstoy Conference in Yasnaya Polyana considering clues and motives. Rich in historic detail about Russian authors and literature and thoughtfully constructed, each essay is an amalgam of critical analysis, cultural criticism, and serious contemplation of big ideas like that of identity, intellectual legacy, and authorship. With wit and a serpentine-like shape to her narratives, Batuman adopts a form reminiscent of a Socratic discourse, setting up questions at the beginning of her essays and then following digressions that more or less entreat the reader to synthesize the answer for herself. The digressions are always amusing and arguably the backbone of the collection, relaying absurd anecdotes with foreign scholars or awkward, surreal encounters with Eastern European strangers. Central also to the collection are Batuman’s intellectual asides where she entertains a theory—like the “problem of the person”: the inability to ever wholly capture one’s character—that ultimately layer the book’s themes. “You are certainly my most entertaining student,” a professor said to Batuman. But she is also curious and enthusiastic and reflective and so knowledgeable that she might even convince you (she has me!) that you too love Russian literature as much as she does. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (2014)

Roxane Gay’s now-classic essay collection is a book that will make you laugh, think, cry, and then wonder, how can cultural criticism be this fun? My favorite essays in the book include Gay’s musings on competitive Scrabble, her stranded-in-academia dispatches, and her joyous film and television criticism, but given the breadth of topics Roxane Gay can discuss in an entertaining manner, there’s something for everyone in this one. This book is accessible because feminism itself should be accessible – Roxane Gay is as likely to draw inspiration from YA novels, or middle-brow shows about friendship, as she is to introduce concepts from the academic world, and if there’s anyone I trust to bridge the gap between high culture, low culture, and pop culture, it’s the Goddess of Twitter. I used to host a book club dedicated to radical reads, and this was one of the first picks for the club; a week after the book club met, I spied a few of the attendees meeting in the café of the bookstore, and found out that they had bonded so much over discussing  Bad Feminist  that they couldn’t wait for the next meeting of the book club to keep discussing politics and intersectionality, and that, in a nutshell, is the power of Roxane. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Rivka Galchen, Little Labors (2016)

Generally, I find stories about the trials and tribulations of child-having to be of limited appeal—useful, maybe, insofar as they offer validation that other people have also endured the bizarre realities of living with a tiny human, but otherwise liable to drift into the musings of parents thrilled at the simple fact of their own fecundity, as if they were the first ones to figure the process out (or not). But Little Labors is not simply an essay collection about motherhood, perhaps because Galchen initially “didn’t want to write about” her new baby—mostly, she writes, “because I had never been interested in babies, or mothers; in fact, those subjects had seemed perfectly not interesting to me.” Like many new mothers, though, Galchen soon discovered her baby—which she refers to sometimes as “the puma”—to be a preoccupying thought, demanding to be written about. Galchen’s interest isn’t just in her own progeny, but in babies in literature (“Literature has more dogs than babies, and also more abortions”), The Pillow Book , the eleventh-century collection of musings by Sei Shōnagon, and writers who are mothers. There are sections that made me laugh out loud, like when Galchen continually finds herself in an elevator with a neighbor who never fails to remark on the puma’s size. There are also deeper, darker musings, like the realization that the baby means “that it’s not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.” It is a slim collection that I happened to read at the perfect time, and it remains one of my favorites of the decade. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Charlie Fox, This Young Monster (2017)

On social media as in his writing, British art critic Charlie Fox rejects lucidity for allusion and doesn’t quite answer the Twitter textbox’s persistent question: “What’s happening?” These days, it’s hard to tell.  This Young Monster  (2017), Fox’s first book,was published a few months after Donald Trump’s election, and at one point Fox takes a swipe at a man he judges “direct from a nightmare and just a repulsive fucking goon.” Fox doesn’t linger on politics, though, since most of the monsters he looks at “embody otherness and make it into art, ripping any conventional idea of beauty to shreds and replacing it with something weird and troubling of their own invention.”

If clichés are loathed because they conform to what philosopher Georges Bataille called “the common measure,” then monsters are rebellious non-sequiturs, comedic or horrific derailments from a classical ideal. Perverts in the most literal sense, monsters have gone astray from some “proper” course. The book’s nine chapters, which are about a specific monster or type of monster, are full of callbacks to familiar and lesser-known media. Fox cites visual art, film, songs, and books with the screwy buoyancy of a savant. Take one of his essays, “Spook House,” framed as a stage play with two principal characters, Klaus (“an intoxicated young skinhead vampire”) and Hermione (“a teen sorceress with green skin and jet-black hair” who looks more like The Wicked Witch than her namesake). The chorus is a troupe of trick-or-treaters. Using the filmmaker Cameron Jamie as a starting point, the rest is free association on gothic decadence and Detroit and L.A. as cities of the dead. All the while, Klaus quotes from  Artforum ,  Dazed & Confused , and  Time Out. It’s a technical feat that makes fictionalized dialogue a conveyor belt for cultural criticism.

In Fox’s imagination, David Bowie and the Hydra coexist alongside Peter Pan, Dennis Hopper, and the maenads. Fox’s book reaches for the monster’s mask, not really to peel it off but to feel and smell the rubber schnoz, to know how it’s made before making sure it’s still snugly set. With a stylistic blend of arthouse suavity and B-movie chic,  This Young Monster considers how monsters in culture are made. Aren’t the scariest things made in post-production? Isn’t the creature just duplicity, like a looping choir or a dubbed scream? –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses (2017)

Elena Passarello’s collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses picks out infamous animals and grants them the voice, narrative, and history they deserve. Not only is a collection like this relevant during the sixth extinction but it is an ambitious historical and anthropological undertaking, which Passarello has tackled with thorough research and a playful tone that rather than compromise her subject, complicates and humanizes it. Passarello’s intention is to investigate the role of animals across the span of human civilization and in doing so, to construct a timeline of humanity as told through people’s interactions with said animals. “Of all the images that make our world, animal images are particularly buried inside us,” Passarello writes in her first essay, to introduce us to the object of the book and also to the oldest of her chosen characters: Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth discovered in the Siberian permafrost in 2010. It was an occasion so remarkable and so unfathomable given the span of human civilization that Passarello says of Yuka: “Since language is epically younger than both thought and experience, ‘woolly mammoth’ means, to a human brain, something more like time.” The essay ends with a character placing a hand on a cave drawing of a woolly mammoth, accompanied by a phrase which encapsulates the author’s vision for the book: “And he becomes the mammoth so he can envision the mammoth.” In Passarello’s hands the imagined boundaries between the animal, natural, and human world disintegrate and what emerges is a cohesive if baffling integrated history of life. With the accuracy and tenacity of a journalist and the spirit of a storyteller, Elena Passarello has assembled a modern bestiary worthy of contemplation and awe. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019)

Esmé Weijun Wang’s collection of essays is a kaleidoscopic look at mental health and the lives affected by the schizophrenias. Each essay takes on a different aspect of the topic, but you’ll want to read them together for a holistic perspective. Esmé Weijun Wang generously begins The Collected Schizophrenias by acknowledging the stereotype, “Schizophrenia terrifies. It is the archetypal disorder of lunacy.” From there, she walks us through the technical language, breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM-5 )’s clinical definition. And then she gets very personal, telling us about how she came to her own diagnosis and the way it’s touched her daily life (her relationships, her ideas about motherhood). Esmé Weijun Wang is uniquely situated to write about this topic. As a former lab researcher at Stanford, she turns a precise, analytical eye to her experience while simultaneously unfolding everything with great patience for her reader. Throughout, she brilliantly dissects the language around mental health. (On saying “a person living with bipolar disorder” instead of using “bipolar” as the sole subject: “…we are not our diseases. We are instead individuals with disorders and malfunctions. Our conditions lie over us like smallpox blankets; we are one thing and the illness is another.”) She pinpoints the ways she arms herself against anticipated reactions to the schizophrenias: high fashion, having attended an Ivy League institution. In a particularly piercing essay, she traces mental illness back through her family tree. She also places her story within more mainstream cultural contexts, calling on groundbreaking exposés about the dangerous of institutionalization and depictions of mental illness in television and film (like the infamous Slender Man case, in which two young girls stab their best friend because an invented Internet figure told them to). At once intimate and far-reaching, The Collected Schizophrenias is an informative and important (and let’s not forget artful) work. I’ve never read a collection quite so beautifully-written and laid-bare as this. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights (2019)

When Ross Gay began writing what would become The Book of Delights, he envisioned it as a project of daily essays, each focused on a moment or point of delight in his day. This plan quickly disintegrated; on day four, he skipped his self-imposed assignment and decided to “in honor and love, delight in blowing it off.” (Clearly, “blowing it off” is a relative term here, as he still produced the book.) Ross Gay is a generous teacher of how to live, and this moment of reveling in self-compassion is one lesson among many in The Book of Delights , which wanders from moments of connection with strangers to a shade of “red I don’t think I actually have words for,” a text from a friend reading “I love you breadfruit,” and “the sun like a guiding hand on my back, saying everything is possible. Everything .”

Gay does not linger on any one subject for long, creating the sense that delight is a product not of extenuating circumstances, but of our attention; his attunement to the possibilities of a single day, and awareness of all the small moments that produce delight, are a model for life amid the warring factions of the attention economy. These small moments range from the physical–hugging a stranger, transplanting fig cuttings–to the spiritual and philosophical, giving the impression of sitting beside Gay in his garden as he thinks out loud in real time. It’s a privilege to listen. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Honorable Mentions

A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard).

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (2010) · Joyce Carol Oates, In Rough Country (2010) · Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (2011) · Christopher Hitchens, Arguably (2011) ·  Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer, Between Parentheses (2011) · Dubravka Ugresic, tr. David Williams, Karaoke Culture (2011) · Tom Bissell, Magic Hours (2012)  · Kevin Young, The Grey Album (2012) · William H. Gass, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (2012) · Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012) · Herta Müller, tr. Geoffrey Mulligan, Cristina and Her Double (2013) · Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (2014)  · Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable (2014)  · Daphne Merkin, The Fame Lunches (2014)  · Charles D’Ambrosio, Loitering (2015) · Wendy Walters, Multiply/Divide (2015) · Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (2015) ·  Renee Gladman, Calamities (2016)  · Jesmyn Ward, ed. The Fire This Time (2016)  · Lindy West, Shrill (2016)  · Mary Oliver, Upstream (2016)  · Emily Witt, Future Sex (2016)  · Olivia Laing, The Lonely City (2016)  · Mark Greif, Against Everything (2016)  · Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017)  · Sarah Gerard, Sunshine State (2017)  · Jim Harrison, A Really Big Lunch (2017)  · J.M. Coetzee, Late Essays: 2006-2017 (2017) · Melissa Febos, Abandon Me (2017)  · Louise Glück, American Originality (2017)  · Joan Didion, South and West (2017)  · Tom McCarthy, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017)  · Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until they Kill Us (2017)  · Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017)  ·  Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017)  · Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018)  · Alice Bolin, Dead Girls (2018)  · Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (2018)  · Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done (2018)  · Maggie O’Farrell, I Am I Am I Am (2018)  · Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race (2018)  · Rachel Cusk, Coventry (2019)  · Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror (2019)  · Emily Bernard, Black is the Body (2019)  · Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (2019)  · Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations (2019)  ·  Rachel Munroe, Savage Appetites (2019)  · Robert A. Caro,  Working  (2019) · Arundhati Roy, My Seditious Heart (2019).

Emily Temple

Previous article, next article.

• RSS - Posts

Literary Hub

Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature

Sign Up For Our Newsletters

How to Pitch Lit Hub

Advertisers: Contact Us

Privacy Policy

Support Lit Hub - Become A Member

Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member : Because Books Matter

For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience , exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag . Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.

Become a member for as low as $5/month

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Philosophy › Modernist Literary Theory and Criticism

Modernist Literary Theory and Criticism

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on December 13, 2020 • ( 0 )

“Modernist” is a term most often used in literary studies to refer to an experimental, avant-garde style of writing prevalent between World War I and World War II, although it is sometimes applied more generally to the entire range of divergent tendencies within a longer period, from the 1890s to the present. Modernism is an international movement, erupting in different countries at different times; in fact, one characteristic of modernism is its transgression of national and generic boundaries. My main focus here, however, is on English-language modernism. As a historically descriptive term, then, “modernism” is misleading not only because of its varying applications (to the historical period or to a highly organized style characteristic of some but not all writers of the period) but also because it is typically more evaluative than descriptive. In its positive sense, “modernism” signals a revolutionary break from established orthodoxies, a celebration of the present, and an experimental investigation into the future. As a negative value, “modernism” has connoted an incoherent, even opportunistic heterodoxy, an avoidance of the discipline of tradition. This critical overtone has sounded periodically since the eighteenth century, from the time that Jonathan Swift, in A Tale of a Tub (1704), lampooned the “modernists” as those who would eschew the study of the ancients through the late-nineteenth-century reform movement in the Catholic church, which was labeled “modernist” and condemned as the “synthesis of all the heresies” in the papal encyclical Pascendi of Pope Pius X (1907). It is interesting to note that in the recent debates over modernism versus postmodernism, the characteristic unorthodoxy of modernism has been displaced onto the postmodern; in a motivated reversal, modernism is characterized as the corrupt, canonized orthodoxy (identified, misleadingly, with the new critcism attributed to T. S. Eliot, among others), with postmodernism as its experimental offshoot.

The project of identifying a modernist criticism and theory is vexed not only by the imprecision and contradictory overtones of the word “modernist” but also by the category “theory.” Certainly many modernist writers wrote criticism: Virginia Woolf published hundreds of essays and reviews; W. B. Yeats’s most important literary criticism has been collected in Essays and Introductions ; Ezra Pound’s voluminous criticism is well known for its informality and directness; Eliot was as important a critic, especially in his later years, as he was a poet. But the most interesting theoretical dimension of modernist writing is not always explicitly presented as either criticism or theory but is instantiated in the writing itself; the theory can be deduced, however controversially, from the practice.

One axiom of modernist theory that was importantly articulated by T. E. Hulme in “Romanticism and Classicism” (1913-14, posthumously published in Speculations , 1924) is an acceptance of limits that are identified with classicism. Hulme argues: “The classical poet never forgets this finiteness, this limit of man. He remembers always that he is mixed up with earth. He may jump, but he always returns back; he never flies away into the circumambient gas” (120). The classical style, Hulme states, is carefully crafted, characterized by accurate description and a cheerful “dry hardness” (126). He asserts that “it is essential to prove that beauty may be in small, dry things” (131); Hulme’s preference is for the visual and the concrete over the general and abstract, for freshness of idiom, for the vital complexities that are “intensive” rather than extensive (139).

Hulme’s sounding of the note of classical style as one that is local, limited, intensive, and fresh resonates widely through the work of other modernist writers. Pound’s dictum “Make it New,” Eliot’s objective correlative (“Hamlet,” 1919, Selected Prose 48), James Joyce’s epiphanies, Woolf’s moments of being, and the explosive power of the concrete image celebrated in Imagism are all instances of a “classical” technique, a preference for the local and well-defined over the infinite. In Dubliners, Joyce defined the sickness of modern life as paralysis, a loss of local control, and he set about designing his fiction in a way that requires the reader to understand its individual, local parts before the whole can assume a meaningful shape.

The classical style is characteristic of much, but not all, modernist writing (D. H. Lawrence’s work being one well-known exception). However, the classical theory begins to bifurcate, producing political implications that are diametrically opposed, when the insistence on finitude is applied to the individual. Both groups of classical writers accepted the view that the individual is limited, but one group, which included Woolf, Joyce, and Yeats, began to develop a theory of supplemental “selves” that points toward a celebration of diversity as antidote to individual limitation. In Mrs. Dalloway , Woolf has Clarissa propose a theory that she is many things and many people, “so that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them” (1925, reprint, 1981, 52-53). Yeats worked out an analogous idea in his theory of the anti-self in “Per Arnica Silentia Lunae” (1917), a notion that each individual is implicit in his or her opposite, which eventuated in the complex theory of interlocking personality types outlined in A Vision (1925, rev. ed., 1937). In Ulysses (1922), Joyce also pursues the idea that the self is luxuriously heterogeneous, a heterogeneity brought to the surface by multiple encounters with difference. He makes his hero an apostate Jew who is defined on either extreme by a “spoiled priest” and an adulterous woman, and in these slippages between limited individuals he celebrates such limits, such insufficiencies, as conditions of communal possibility. As Stephen Dedalus explains in the library, the varied world represents the potential scope of a disunited selfdom: “Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves” ( Ulysses , 1922, ed. Hans Walter Gabler, 1984, chap. 9,11.1044-46).

The same recognition of the limitation of the individual produced in other modernist writers an insistence on strict, authoritarian regulation of the individual, the germ of fascist tendencies for which the movement became notorious. Hulme again articulates the premises of this position: “Man is an extraordinarily fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tradition and organisation that anything decent can be got out of him” (116). He speaks of liberty and revolution as essentially negative things, citing the French Revolution as evidence that when you remove the restraints on individuals, what emerges is their destructiveness and greed. Like Eliot, Hulme appreciated religion for its power to control human depravity through traditional order.

The problem with controlling “human depravity” through institutional restrictions is that the controlling “order” tends to legislate sameness, so that some orders of existence are seen as preferable to—less depraved than—others. And this is where the seams of “classical” modernist theory split: not over the limited nature of humanity, but over the question of the value of difference. The split was a jagged one; some writers, such as Pound, could cultivate difference in their writing and denounce it in society (as he did in his infamous radio broadcasts of the 1930s). The different premium accorded to ethnic, social, religious, and sexual differences by writers who agreed on the limited nature of the individual, however, explains how the offensive tirades of Wyndham Lewis and the brilliant feminism of Woolf, the anti-Semitic propaganda of Pound and the Jewish hero of Joyce’s Ulysses could stem from the same “classical” root.

Virginia Woolf

In a period that was to culminate in World War II, racism was an inevitably controversial issue. The related cause of feminism was also hotly debated during the period, since women had only been granted suffrage after World War I (1920 in the United States, 1928 in Great Britain). Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own , details clearly and unpolemically the historical and material restrictions on women that prevented them from full participation in artistic and professional life. Her best illustration of the greater circumstantial constraints on women is her invention of a wonderfully gifted sister for Shakespeare named Judith, his counterpart in everything but freedom and opportunity. Woolf outlines what would have happened to this young girl if she had wanted to act in London, as her brother did; she sketches in the ridicule to which she would have been subjected, the ease with which more experienced men could have taken advantage of her, and the passion with which, upon finding herself with child, she would have killed herself: “Who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?” (1929, reprint, 1981, 48). Woolf’s main argument is that women need space—a room of their own—and economic freedom (a fixed income) for their hitherto pinched genius to flourish.

Finally, no discussion of modernist criticism and theory is complete without an account of the collapse of plot and its replacement by intertextual allusion and the “stream of consciousness.” In a much-cited review of Joyce’s Ulysses called “ Ulysses , Order and Myth” (1923) Eliot argued that developments in ethnology and psychology, and Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough , had made it possible to replace the narrative method with what he called the “mythical method,” which was first adumbrated by Yeats. The mythical method works not through narrative but through allusion to different mythical narratives that, when fleshed out and juxtaposed, illuminate both the text in which they appear and each other in surprising and often revisionary ways. For example, Yeats’s early poetry worked to contextualize his hopeless love for Maud Gonne within the competing and mutually reinforcing contexts of Greek myth (Helen of Troy) and Celtic myth (Deirdre of the Sorrows; the magic of the Sidhe). In Ulysses , the main mythic parallels are the Odyssey and Hamlet , although individual episodes are further complicated by allusions to other intersecting narratives, historical, fictional, or mythic. Eliot’s The Waste Land provides the densest illustration of the mythical method, where the range of allusion includes a variety of Christian, Greek, occult, Scandinavian, Judaic, and Buddhist references, as well as allusions to music, drama, literature, and history.

Eliot chose to highlight myth as the key to modernist stylistics, but actually myth was just one category of narrative accessed through allusion; one might say that all kinds of narratives were situated behind the page, identifiable only through “tags” in the text, and that the interplay between these narratives produces a submerged commentary on it that imitates the pressure of the cultural unconscious (in narrativized form) on any individual performance. The stream-of-consciousness technique is yet another way of drawing the reader’s attention from conscious, deliberate, intentionalized discourse to the pressure of the unsaid on the said, of the repressed on the expressed. The apparent randomness of associative thought prompts the reader to question the submerged “logic” of connection, to listen for the unconscious poetry of repressed desire. This attention to the unknown as the shadow of the known is reversed in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake , in which it is the known that is obscured by the highly organized distortions of language and history as processed by the unconscious mind and the “mudmound” of the past. It is no surprise, in light of this sensitivity to the muted voice of the unconscious in the literature of the period, that another great modernist theorist was Sigmund Freud .

In fact, the opposing political tendencies of modernist writers bear a significant relationship to their different attitudes toward the unconscious. Bounded by the eruption of two world wars, the modernist period can be read as a historical enactment of the tension between Friedrich Nietzsche ‘s Apollonian and Dionysian forces. The Dionysian power of the unconscious was making itself felt, and the writers who sought to contain or deny it through the Apollonian power of civic or religious authority were, like Pentheus in the Bacchae , torn apart. Others sought to express the creative potential of the unconscious, its capacity to unify without homogenization, to proliferate via division, and it is the writing of this group that is most animated by the zest of manifold contradictions. As Yeats wrote near the end of his career in the voice of a crazed old woman,

‘Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,’ I cried. ‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth Nor grave nor bed denied, Learned in bodily lowliness And in the heart’s pride.

‘A woman can be proud and stiff When on Love intent; But love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement; For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.’

(“Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop,” Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition , ed. Richard J. Finneran, 1983, rev. ed., 1989, 259-60)

Bibliography T. S. Eliot, “Ulysses, Order, and Myth” (1923, reprinted in Selected Prose of T S. Eliot, ed. Frank Kermode, 1975);T. E. Hulme, Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art (ed. Herbert Read, 1924, 2d ed., 1936); Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man (1927); Lawrence I. Lipking and A. Walton Litz, eds., Modern Literary Criticism, 1900-1970 (1972); Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (1929, reprint, 1981); W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions (1961), Mythologies (1959). Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane, eds., Modernism: 1890-1930 (1976); Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (1971); Frank Kermode, Romantic Image (1957); Michael H. Levenson, A Genealogy of Modernism: A Study of English Literary Doctrine, 1908-1922 (1984); Sanford Schwartz, The Matrix of Modernism: Pound, Eliot, and Early Twentieth-Century Thought (1985); Vincent Sherry, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and Radical Modernism (1993). Source: Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Share this:

Categories: Philosophy

Tags: Literary Criticism , Literary Theory , Modern Literary Criticism and Theor , Modernism , modernist criticism , modernist literary theory , Modernist Literary Theory and Criticism , modernist theory

Related Articles

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

• Locations and Hours
• UCLA Library
• Research Guides

Global Modernism

• Modern Literature
• Finding Articles
• Books & E-Books
• Image Resources
• Individual Artists
• Modern Architecture
• Colonialism & Postcolonialism
• Film and Video Collections
• Streaming Video Collections
• Museums, Archives, & Special Collections

Modern Literature Resources

• General Books
• Selected Books

Searches multiple literary sources, including: Dictionary of Literary Biography, Literature Criticism Online, Literature Resource Center, Scribner Writer Series, and Twayne's Authors Series. Scroll down to click on Gale's Literary Index , a master index to the major literature products published by Gale.

• << Previous: Modern Art
• Next: Colonialism & Postcolonialism >>
• Last Updated: Mar 18, 2024 11:41 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.ucla.edu/globalmodernism

A Short Introduction to Woolf’s ‘Modern Fiction’

A short summary and analysis of Virginia Woolf’s 1919 essay

Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘Modern Fiction’, which was originally published under the title ‘Modern Novels’ in 1919, demonstrates in essay form what her later novels bear out: that she had set out to write something different from her contemporaries. Analysis of this important short essay reveals the lengths that Woolf was prepared to go to discredit earlier writers and promote a new style of writing, which she calls ‘Georgian’ and was often referred to as ‘impressionist’ at the time, but which we now know better as ‘modernist’.

In ‘Modern Fiction’ (1919), Virginia Woolf takes issue with those Edwardian novelists writing in the early years of the twentieth century who, in some ways, might be seen as relics of the nineteenth-century realism outlined above: her three targets, Arnold Bennett , John Galsworthy, and H. G. Wells , are all labelled ‘materialists’ because of their preoccupation with predictable and plausible plots and their interest in describing the exterior details – the clothes a character wears, the furniture in a room – when what Woolf, as a reader, really wants to know is what is going on the heads of their characters.

Such a story points a way forward for Woolf and other writers, whom she labels ‘Georgian’ – i.e. more ‘modern’ and progressive than the materialist Edwardians.

In a later essay, ‘ Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown ’ (1924), Woolf attacked Bennett again, and summed up the difference between his type of fiction and the way life actually is:

In the course of your daily life this past week you have had far stranger and more interesting experiences than the one I have tried to describe. You have overheard scraps of talk that filled you with amazement. You have gone to bed at night bewildered by the complexity of your feelings. In one day thousands of ideas have coursed through your brains; thousands of emotions have met, collided, and disappeared in astonishing disorder. Nevertheless, you allow the writers to palm off upon you a version of all this, an image of Mrs. Brown, which has no likeness to that surprising apparition whatsoever. In your modesty you seem to consider that writers are of different blood and bone from yourselves; that they know more of Mrs. Brown than you do. Never was there a more fatal mistake. It is this division between reader and writer, this humility on your part, these professional airs and graces on ours, that corrupt and emasculate the books which should be the healthy offspring of a close and equal alliance between us. Hence spring those sleek, smooth novels, those portentous and ridiculous biographies, that milk and watery criticism, those poems melodiously celebrating the innocence of roses and sheep which pass so plausibly for literature at the present time. [Woolf, Selected Essays , ed. David Bradshaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 53.]

Readers need to say ‘enough is enough’ and embrace the kind of fiction Woolf had just started to write – her novel Jacob’s Room had appeared the year before, in 1922 – which sought to capture the wonder and reality of life more accurately than Arnold Bennett ever did.

Others had got there before Woolf: in ‘Modern Fiction’ she mentions  Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad, praising them for moving away from such traditional realism or ‘materialism’ in fiction in favour of a newer and more subjective and psychological mode in English fiction. S

he also praises Anton Chekhov’s short stories – which would go on to influence Katherine Mansfield – and singles out his short story ‘Gusev’, in which nothing much happens, as a fine example of this new mode of fiction. This new impressionistic and psychologically focused mode of writing, which would move away from Victorian realism and push fiction into new territory, would later become known as ‘modernism’.

Discover more about female modernist writers with Woolf’s finest short stories , our  pick of Woolf’s best novels and essays , our  reappraisal of May Sinclair’s fiction , our introduction to the work of pioneering writer George Egerton , and our overview of the best stories by Katherine Mansfield .

Image: Portrait of Virginia Woolf by Roger Fry (c. 1917), via Wikimedia Commons .

2 thoughts on “A Short Introduction to Woolf’s ‘Modern Fiction’”

• Pingback: A Short Introduction to Woolf’s ‘Modern Fiction’ — Interesting Literature – Raquel Picolo
• Pingback: Sharing:  A Short Introduction to Woolf’s ‘Modern Fiction’ – My Journey Through Life

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Discover more from interesting literature.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Modernism in Literature: Definition, Characteristics, Examples, & More

What is your honest reaction to the sudden changes in layout or setting in your favorite app? You are puzzled, and adjusting to things takes you a while, right?

That’s exactly what the entire human race felt at the end of the 19th century. Modernism is often called the “age of alteration in consciousness”.

Where man let go of faith and adopted new sets of beliefs and ideas for survival. The era of pure confusion and chaos is best reflected in modernist literature.

In this post,  PaperPerk  has given you a detailed account of modernism in literature. What are its important characteristics and themes with examples?

Table of Contents

What is Modernism in Literature?

Modernism in literature was a movement that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It began as a response to the changing world characterized by industrialization, urbanization, and the aftermath of World War I.

It challenged conventional forms of writing as an act of rebellion against the massive changes. This movement sought out new ways to express the complexities of modern life.

Modernism ended around the mid-20th century, giving way to postmodernism. However, learning about this movement is important as it helps us understand the transformative power of art, the evolution of literary techniques, and the cultural shifts that shaped our modern world.

5 Key Characteristics of Modernist Literature

Specific publication dates do not solely define modernism in literature; it encompasses a broader shift in artistic and literary practices.

Modernist artists and writers rejected traditional approaches and embraced new ways of expression. They employed various characteristics that had never been utilized before.

And even when they incorporated familiar techniques, they employed them innovatively, giving the text new meaning.

Thus, this modernist era brought a distinct and transformative approach to literature. Below we will explain some of the major characteristics that represented new forms of artistry and human existence.

Individualism

Modernist writers emphasize the importance of individual experiences, opinions, and emotions over those of entire societies. This was to discontinue the conventional motifs and characteristics of literature which were no longer relatable.

This element of subjectivity included concerns like,

• how people perceive their own reality and social event on the individual level
• how they survive the circumstances and move through life
• What set of beliefs do they adopt along the way

The modernist movement artists wrote characters that struggled to compromise and adapt to their new settings.

• Rudy Bradbury’s  Fahrenheit 451  protagonist questions the conformity and censorship prevalent in his dystopian society.

His journey represents pursuing personal autonomy and preserving individualism in the face of oppressive systems.

• Hemingway wrote characters who embody individualism, such as Santiago in “ The Old Man and the Sea .”

Despite the odds, Santiago’s determination to catch the giant marlin symbolizes his unwavering individual spirit and refusal to succumb to societal expectations or pressures.

• In  1984  by George Orwell, the protagonist, Winston Smith, rebels against Big Brother’s totalitarian regime and strives to maintain his individuality and independent thoughts.

Experimentation

Most literary modernists discontinued the old style of form and writing. They experimented with new techniques like

• Non-linear narratives
• Stream of consciousness
• Questionable narrator (chaotic or exaggerated accounts from the characters)
• In  Ulysses,  James Joyce experiments with non-linear narratives, where the events are fragmented and non-chronological.

The stream-of-consciousness technique delves into the character’s inner thoughts and perceptions, offering a complex, multi-layered reading experience.

• The Waste Land  by T.S. Eliot experiments with fragmented structure, incorporating different voices, languages, and historical references.

It employs free verse and incorporates multiple narratives to depict the fragmented and disillusioned post-World War I society .

• In  As I Lay Dying , William Faulkner utilizes multiple narrators with varying degrees of reliability, presenting different perspectives and accounts of events.

The narrative structure experiments with non-linear storytelling, showcasing the subjective experiences and perceptions of the characters.

During the modernist era, the world underwent a rapid transformation marked by capitalism, the devastating impact of wars, and the relentless advance of globalization.

Writers of the time reflected the grim reality, portraying existence as utterly meaningless, hopeless, and marked by human aggression.

The structure and development of plots in modernist works took surrealistic and fantastical turns, adding to the sense of absurdity.

These unexpected twists might appear bizarre or disturbing to those unaware of the context or unable to interpret the unconventional settings.

They often conveyed a sense of nonsensicality, bordering on mockery. The rise of absurdism in modernist literature gave birth to the “ theater of the absurd ,” where European playwrights explored the notion that human existence lacks fundamental purpose or meaning.

• In “ Waiting for Godot ” Beckett portrays two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting endlessly for someone named Godot, who never arrives.

The play explores existentialism, futility, and the absurdity of human existence through its repetitive and circular dialogue, lack of traditional plot development, and nonsensical events.

• Kafka’s “ The Trial ” follows the absurd journey of Josef K., who is arrested and put on trial for an unknown crime.

The story is marked by its surreal and illogical events, bureaucratic absurdity, and the sense of powerlessness and confusion experienced by the protagonist

• “ Catch-22 ” by Joseph Heller: This satirical novel depicts the absurdity of war and military bureaucracy.

The term “catch-22” refers to a paradoxical situation where the individual is trapped in a no-win scenario due to contradictory rules. The novel uses dark humor and absurd situations to highlight the absurdity and illogical nature of war and human institutions.

In the modernist era, writers sought new and original ways to express themselves. They approached writing as a creative process, discarding the tiring formalities of classical literature that focused on lengthy craftsmanship.

Unlike in the past, where the form precedes the material or theme, modernists emphasized the significance of the content itself.

Their literary works needed a clearer beginning or end, often resembling unfinished thoughts typed on a broken typewriter, leaving a vague impression.

Modernist writers used words as brush strokes, capturing their scattered thoughts and emotions, which resonated with readers, evoking empathy and meaningful results.

Modernist literature embraced unconventional structures or the absence thereof, allowing for diverse and unrestricted forms of expression.

A renowned example is E. E. Cummings, who skillfully spread words and phrases across the page like an artist on a canvas. Following are other examples that are helpful for  writing a paper .

• In  Finnegans Wake, Joyce’s  avant-garde novel is a prime example of formalistic experimentation. It presents a complex and challenging narrative with intricate wordplay, puns, and multilingual references. 

The novel pushes the boundaries of traditional narrative coherence and demands active reader engagement and interpretation.

• Woolf’s “ To the Lighthouse ” experiments with narrative form, employing stream-of-consciousness technique and shifting perspectives to delve into the inner thoughts and perceptions of characters.

The fluid and subjective narrative structure reflects the fragmented nature of human consciousness and challenges traditional linear storytelling.

• Eliot’s poem  The Waste Land  exhibits formalistic elements through its complex structure, intertextuality, and fragmented narrative.

Eliot incorporates a variety of literary and cultural references, multiple speakers, and different poetic techniques, creating a rich and layered work that requires careful analysis and interpretation.

Symbolism became a powerful tool for modernist writers during the modernist movement, although it had existed in literature long before.

The 20th-century writers infused new meanings into old symbols and created new symbols for previously unnoticed aspects.

Unlike the clear explanations of symbols in earlier works, modernist writers preferred to leave things open to interpretation, leaving spaces that created an air of mystery.

Most of the symbols they used relied on the reader’s own understanding and perspective. Modernist literature is rich with symbolic details that can be interpreted in various ways, depending on the reader’s viewpoint.

Modernism is remarkable because all the symbols are carefully chosen to highlight individualism.

This individualism not only matters in the writing itself but also in how readers interpret the work. Modernism introduced the idea that “no interpretation is wrong,” valuing the diverse interpretations readers bring to the text.

Two prominent writers in symbolism were T.S. Eliot and James Joyce, who masterfully employed symbols to enhance their works. However, here are some useful examples for your next paper.

• In  The Great Gatsby , F. Scott Fitzgerald utilizes symbolism to convey deeper themes of the American Dream, wealth, and moral decay.

The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock symbolizes Gatsby’s unreachable dreams and his pursuit of a romanticized past. At the same time, the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg represent a detached and judgmental society.

• In the novella  The Metamorphosis  Franz Kafka depicts the transformation of the protagonist Gregor Samsa into a giant insect serves as a powerful symbol.

It represents Gregor’s alienation, dehumanization, and the absurdity of his existence within a society that rejects him. The insect is a metaphor for his isolation and disconnection from the world.

• “ The Waste Land ” by T.S. Eliot: This modernist poem is packed with symbolic imagery that represents themes of decay, disillusionment, and fragmented modern society.

The recurring symbol of water, for instance, symbolizes both life and death, purification and destruction, reflecting the complex and contradictory nature of the modern world.

• “ Ulysses ” by James Joyce is rich in symbolic detail, with various objects, characters, and events carrying symbolic significance.

For example, the character of Stephen Dedalus represents the artist struggling for self-realization and spiritual growth. At the same time, Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the novel’s end symbolizes a celebration of feminine sexuality and liberation.

• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,  a poem by T.S. Eliot is laden with symbolic imagery that captures the internal struggles and anxieties of the speaker.

The yellow fog, the evening sky, and the mermaids are all symbolic elements that evoke a sense of existential crisis, social alienation, and the fear of aging and missed opportunities.

🗨️ Keep in view that all these characteristics had the same derivative notions behind them. That’s why they might seem to give the same meaning at certain times.

On the other hand, it might also look like all of these characteristics branched out of one main characteristic

5 Recurring Themes in Modernist Literature

Modernism in literature reflects how modern man had to deal with the consequence of two great wars in only two decades.

Most writers revolted against the complicated systems and incorporated new themes that mirrored the dilemmas of common folk. These themes served as a voice for the devastation and hopelessness people felt.

Let’s delve into five major themes of modernist literature, each accompanied by insightful examples.

Modernity has helped people connect with others like never before, but there is no denying the ever-present sense of Isolation in the post-war era.

Modern writers depicted this “isolation” as a fragmented sense of self. Their characters often struggle to find coherence in their lives.

Social or personal Isolation in those times was often attributed to the loss of traditional values and beliefs.

Here are some examples for you to quote in your paper on the theme of Isolation in modernist literature 

• “ The Catcher in the Rye ” by J.D. Salinger explores the isolation and alienation of Holden Caulfield, a disillusioned teenager who feels disconnected from the adult world.
• “Waiting for Godot”  by Samuel Beckett depicts the existential isolation of Vladimir and Estragon as they wait for an elusive character, highlighting the human condition of uncertainty and despair.
• F. Scott Fitzgrald’s “ Great Gatsby ” reflects Gatsby’s Isolation even with all the wealthy parties he threw, he hardly socialized with anyone.

Loss of Faith 

The turn of the century was a big question mark for all human existence. The destruction of war and its aftermath deeply affected people’s psyche and behaviors.

Like the philosopher Niszche had predicted, “God is dead, and we have killed him”, people had a hard time believing in any divine force and its influence on human life.

This disillusionment is a key factor in all of modernist literature. It explores the existential crisis, moral ambiguity, and the struggle to find meaning and purpose in a world devoid of hope and certainty.

For those who struggle with  finding the perfect topic  for a literary essay on modernism, choose this theme as plenty of material is available on it. For example:

• The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.” – Ernest Hemingway,  A Farewell to Arms
• In “ The Waste Land ” by T.S. Eliot, the fragmented and disillusioned characters depict a society in moral decay, where faith and hope have been shattered.
• In “ Mrs. Dalloway ” by Virginia Woolf, the characters navigate a post-war world filled with disillusionment, reflecting the loss of faith in traditional values and institutions.
• In “ The Stranger ” by Albert Camus, the protagonist, Meursault, embodies a sense of nihilism and detachment, questioning the meaning of life and exhibiting a loss of faith in societal norms and moral values.
• This theme is also prevalent in works like “ Slaughterhouse-Five ” by Kurt Vonnegut, “ Catch-22 ” by Joseph Heller, and “ The Bell Jar ” by  Sylvia Plath , where characters grapple with the loss of faith in humanity, society, and their own selves.

Search of Truth

The search for truth or search for meaning was one of the main concerns of human existence post-war. As most people rejected traditional beliefs, they desperately looked for something that might give them “hope” for existing.

Many writers of modernism toy with the idea of “subjective truth”. Most main characters in modernist literature seek and construct their truth about life and the world around them.

If you’re  organizing a paper  on this theme, you can use these examples

• The  WasteLand  by T.S Eliot beautifully reflects how the modern man is trying to look for meaning/ truth within the fragments of past and present that are left to him.
• Conrad’s  Heart of Darkness  displays a lack of truth that pushes every character to search for it. 
• “ The Trial ” by Franz Kafka: The story revolves around Joseph K.’s bewildering encounter with the enigmatic and absurd legal system.

As he navigates a labyrinthine bureaucracy, Joseph K. seeks answers and strives to uncover the truth behind his arrest, embodying the futile search for truth and justice.

• Woolf’s “ To the Lighthouse ” is Set before and after World War I. The novel delves into the inner lives and thoughts of characters.

It explores their longing for understanding, connection, and meaning, exemplifying the introspective search for truth and the elusive nature of human experience.

Rejection of Social System

Modernism in literature proves how rejecting the social system was a natural reaction to disastrous circumstances rather than an intentional stance.

People, skeptical about their place in the world, began questioning the significance of understanding and fitting into society.

Factors such as wars, the Great Depression, and widespread destruction led to a rejection of the social system that had previously existed. 

Simultaneously, individuals felt abandoned by the social system, creating a two-way road of disillusionment.

They pondered over the importance of society to their well-being and self-actualization, questioning whether it held any significance.

Here are some of the rich examples that you can quote in your literary essay.

• Aldous Huxley’s “ Brave New World ” portrays a futuristic society where individuality and personal relationships are suppressed in favor of a rigid and controlled social order.

The protagonist, Bernard Marx, questions and rejects societal conditioning, seeking meaning and freedom outside the constraints of the oppressive system.

• “The Great Gatsby ” by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Set in the Jazz Age of 1920s America, the novel explores the disillusionment and corruption of the American Dream.
• In Albert Camus’s “ The Stranger ,” the protagonist, Meursault, exemplifies the rejection of the social system.

Meursault’s detached and indifferent attitude, particularly in the face of societal expectations and norms, goes against the established conventions of his society.

Psychoanalysis

The theme of psychoanalysis in modernist literature explores the depths of the human psyche, unveiling repressed desires, unconscious motivations, and the complexities of the human mind.

It is evident through the portrayal of the character’s internal conflicts, dreams, and psychological transformations.

Here are some of the major example

• “ The Interpretation of Dreams ” by Sigmund Freud is a pioneering work in psychoanalysis.

It influenced modernist literature by introducing the concept of dream analysis and the interpretation of symbolic elements in dreams.

• In  Mrs. Dalloway  Woolf utilizes stream-of-consciousness narrative technique to explore the inner thoughts and perceptions of characters.

It delves into their repressed desires, traumas, and psychological struggles, showcasing the influence of psychoanalytic principles.

• Plath’s  Bell Jar  explores a modern person’s struggles with identity, societal pressures, and mental illnesses.

These themes are thought-provoking and can serve as excellent starting points for engaging discussions and impactful academic papers.

However, writing one of these themes can sometimes get complicated or even exhausting, so seek assistance from our professional  college paper writing service  to enhance your analysis.

7 Notable Modernist Writers in the Literary Movement

Writing a paper on literary movements requires a lot of research. Here are detailed accounts of seven of the most influential writers of the modernist movement in literature. These explanatory notes will help you write the appropriate  length of literature reviews  in your paper.

Prose Writers

Kafka (1883-1924).

Though most of his work was published after his death, Franz Kafka proved to be one of the most influential figures of the modernist movement.

His works had a unique combination of absurdity, anxiety, and alienation, often paired with a light and nonchalant tone.

Other aspects of Kafka’s writing are social control, dark humor, pessimism, difficulties in interpersonal relationships, and surrealistic elements.

For example, in the short story “Metamorphosis,” a salesperson transforms into a big insect (a cockroach). The salesman is still consumed by “going to work”.

These distinctive features have led people to coin the term “Kafkaesque”. The term describes complicated situations that occur due to common or mundane reasons.

Notable Writings

• The Metamorphosis
• The Judgment
• Letters to Father
• Letters to Milena

James Joyce (1882- 1941) 

Joyce is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He produced many impactful works as one of the earliest contributors to the modernist literary revolution.

He explored the themes of identity, sexuality, the human condition, politics, nationalism and religion, along with his techniques of using a stream of consciousness, complex narration style and language.

To this day, his writing is praised for its fragmented structure, nonlinear narratives, and the incorporation of everyday language and colloquialisms.

Joyce’s take on the complexities of a post-war world can benefit many generations still suffering the consequences of those devastating effects.

Other Noticeable Works: 

• Dubliners (1914)
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
• Finnegans Wake (1939)

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Woolf is regarded as the keystone of the  modernist  era. She contributed significantly to its development with her innovative writing style, exploration of consciousness, and feminist perspectives.

Her most notable works challenged traditional narrative conventions and delved into the complexities of human experiences.

She was among the first writers to experiment with elements like a stream of consciousness, gender identity, time and memory, power dynamics in domestic life, and the interplay of individual thoughts and external realities.

Notable Works :

• Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
• To the Lighthouse (1927)
• Orlando: A biography (1928)
• The waves (1931)

Ezra Pound ( 1885-1972)

Ezra Pound is mostly considered the “north star” of modernist poetry. As the most influential poet of 20th-century literature, Pound composed unmatchable verses.

He perfected the use of major poetic characteristics of the modernist era, including; free-verse, symbolism, allusions, and imagism.

His work is packed with powerful themes that he brought to life with stark images. Pound’s dedication to creating detailed images in the reader’s mind sets him apart as an artist.

Colleagues like T.S Eliot and Donald Hall praised Pound’s work and declared them the “beating heart” of modern literature. The famous serial collection “The Cantos” blends politics and history to warn and caution the reader of past mistakes.

Other famous works :

• In a Station of the Metro (1913)
• The Return (1917)
• Make It New (1934)

T.S Eliot ( 1888-1965)

The Symbolist movement heavily influenced Eliot’s early work in poetry. He wrote poems that focused on creating an atmosphere or mood; this technique was known as “suggestive” writing.

Experimentation with different techniques, tones and characteristics marked Eliot’s work. He used heavy imagery, symbolism, allusion, and free verse with no rhyme or meter.

Later, Eliot’s work had a similar touch to Pound’s modernity. In 1922 he published The Waste Land, considerably the most important poem of the modernist period.

The poem talks about how humans have lost touch with the past while. And what our future might look like if we continue down this path of destruction.

Famous Pieces: 

• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrok (1917)
• The Waste Land (1922)
• Four Quartets (1943)

W.H Auden (1907- 1973) 

Another key player of the modernist era, W.H. Auden, produced many influential works. He is one of the writers who keep evolving as subtle shifts in his writing are noticeable throughout his career.

Auden used a psychoanalytical approach to express himself on love, loss, and alienation themes. In later writings, he explores moral, social, and political issues.

His most famous work is probably “The Age of Anxiety”, a long poem that deals with themes such as existentialism, war, and death.

Noticeable Poems:

• Stop all the clocks
• In Memory of W.B Yeats
• September 1st, 1939
• If I Could Tell You

Philosophers

Albert camus (1913-1960).

Albert Camus’s  works explore existentialism, absurdism, and the human condition, reflecting the uncertainties and challenges of the 20th century.

His philosophical essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” reflects the idea that human existence is meaningless and we need to find meaning and joy in things we consider meaningful.

Camus talks about the absurdity of human existence and moral and ethical dilemmas in a light, almost enjoyable tone. He explores alienation, isolation, freedom, and the search for authenticity in a world devoid of inherent purpose.

He argues against the gravity of the conventional “absurdist” ideas and claims that not being bound to a higher purpose means enjoying the freedom of choosing our way of life.

His exploration of existential themes, critique of societal norms, and pursuit of individual authenticity have made him a highly influential figure in the modernist era.

Famous Writings

• The Stranger (1942)
• The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
• The Plague (1947)
• The Fall (1956)
• The Rebel (1951)
• The Guests (1957)

We are ending this guide on modernism in literature with the hope that it was helpful for many of you. But we understand how hard composing a paper on literature or any historical movement can be.

But don’t worry; our professionals are always ready to assist you with your academic projects. Avail of our  research paper writing service  at student-friendly discounts and impress your professors with well-versed and impacting research papers.

Order Original Papers & Essays

Your First Custom Paper Sample is on Us!

Timely Deliveries

No Plagiarism & AI

100% Refund

Try Our Free Paper Writing Service

Related blogs.

Connections with Writers and support

Privacy and Confidentiality Guarantee

Average Quality Score

Spatial Form in Modern Literature

• Related Documents

5. Spatial Form in Modern Literature

Spatial form in modern literature: a reconsideration, joseph frank.

Joseph Frank (1918–2013) achieved fame as a literary scholar first with his three-part essay “Spatial Form in Modern Literature” (1945) and then with his five-volume critical biography Dostoevsky (1976–2002). This essay traces his career, emphasizing its divergence from the practices both of New Criticism at its start and of the theory movement in the 1970s and 1980s, and noting the crucial role played by Allen Tate and the Sewanee Review. Unfashionable independence, fidelity to personal fascination, and unremitting effort all play a role in scholarly accomplishment.

A APREENSÃO ESPACIAL, O FRAGMENTÁRIO E O JOGO

Proposta de leitura de Memorial do fim, de Haroldo Maranhão, pela decodificação da apreensão espacial, do fragmentário e o jogo. A conclusão é que a homenagem está à altura do homenageado. Acrescenta-se um “verbete” (Hylda/Leonora), revelando uma carta que estivera na manga de Machado e fora capturada por Maranhão. Abstract Based on the idea of spatial form in modern literature proposed by Joseph Frank, focusing on characteristics like the fragmentary and the play of references found in James Joyce’s works, it is appointed the particular way that the same characteristics appear in a contemporary book, here, Memorial do fim, by Haroldo Maranhão.

The Undoing of a Man: Cuckoldry in Heywood's Edward IV

Manhood was a complex social construct in early modern England. Males could not simply mature or grow from boys to men. Instead, they had to assert or prove they were men in multiple ways, such as growing a beard, behaving courageously in battle, exercising self-control in walking, talking, weeping, eating, and drinking, pursuing manly interests, exhibiting manly behaviors, avoiding interests or behaviors typically ascribed to women, marrying a woman and providing for her physical, sexual, and spiritual needs, and living and dying as a faithful Christian. Once a male became a “man” in the eyes of others, his efforts shifted from “making” himself manly to maintaining or defending his reputation as a “true man.” All men could undermine their manhood through their own actions or inactions, but the married man could also lose his reputation through his wife's infidelity. Numerous literary husbands in early modern literature live anxiously with the knowledge they might suffer a cuckold's humiliation and shame. Matthew Shore, who “treasures” his wife to a fault in Thomas Heywood's two-part play Edward IV, is an exceptional example of such a husband. This critical reading of Edward IV explores the complexity of manhood in Heywood's day by showing various males trying to assert or defend their manhood; explaining why husbands had reasons to fear cuckoldry; analyzing how Jane Shore's infidelity affects her husband; following Matthew Shore's journey from trusting husband to distrusting, bitter cuckold, to forgiving husband; and examining his seemingly inexplicable death at the end of the play.

Stultitia loquitur: Fiction and Folly in Early Modern Literature

Toucher ii: keep your hands to yourself, jean-luc nancy.

This text begins by considering the phrase ‘digital haptology’ as suggested by the closing pages of Derrida's Le Toucher. It suggests that this moment in telecommunications presents a model of ‘tele-haptology’. The text goes on to consider Jean-Luc Nancy's ‘Noli me tangere’ as a response to Le Toucher. In particular it is concerned with Nancy's hypothesis on Modern literature and art as having an essential link to the gospel parables. Through a reading of Nancy's text and the gospels, this hypothesis is placed in doubt. Notably, the argument is made that once again Nancy's discourse on touching leads him to make a too hasty fore-closure of otherness within his intended deconstruction of reading and his account of Mary Magdalene. In response to Nancy's formulation of literature as parable, an alternative consideration of literature as tele-haptology is proposed.

Echohistoricism: Aristotle, Dryden, Montgomery, Conrad

The contingencies of military decisions and their outcomes have always shaped the course of literary history, determining even the languages in which it has been conducted. But modern literature takes a new bearing on its determinant military contingencies. This paper describes a modern literary scene that self-reflexively attributes to literature the potential to suspend these determining military events, and so to communicate the unactualised possibilities contained in past contingencies, even those that have been violently foreclosed. It is a scene of interested observers, adrift in a boat, who listen for the sounds of a distant naval battle. Having first located this scene's classical antecedents in Aristotle, I then track it through three pivotal and distinctively modern moments of literary self-periodization. In each instance, the scene is differently configured, articulating a specific conjuncture of war, textuality and literary self-definition. It appears in John Dryden as the setting of a modern critical dialogue on theatre, with James Montgomery as a Romantic definition of the poetry of sound in a lecture series on literature, and with Joseph Conrad as the narrative frame of a modernist tale within a tale. But the same scene re-echoes in all three – the scene of literary inscription as one in which, contingently, a war neither did nor did not take place, a battle was and was not fought.

National and historical consciousness in modern literature

Export citation format, share document.

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• How to write a literary analysis essay | A step-by-step guide

How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide

Published on January 30, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on August 14, 2023.

Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.

A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis , nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.

Before beginning a literary analysis essay, it’s essential to carefully read the text and c ome up with a thesis statement to keep your essay focused. As you write, follow the standard structure of an academic essay :

• An introduction that tells the reader what your essay will focus on.
• A main body, divided into paragraphs , that builds an argument using evidence from the text.
• A conclusion that clearly states the main point that you have shown with your analysis.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

Step 1: reading the text and identifying literary devices, step 2: coming up with a thesis, step 3: writing a title and introduction, step 4: writing the body of the essay, step 5: writing a conclusion, other interesting articles.

The first step is to carefully read the text(s) and take initial notes. As you read, pay attention to the things that are most intriguing, surprising, or even confusing in the writing—these are things you can dig into in your analysis.

Your goal in literary analysis is not simply to explain the events described in the text, but to analyze the writing itself and discuss how the text works on a deeper level. Primarily, you’re looking out for literary devices —textual elements that writers use to convey meaning and create effects. If you’re comparing and contrasting multiple texts, you can also look for connections between different texts.

To get started with your analysis, there are several key areas that you can focus on. As you analyze each aspect of the text, try to think about how they all relate to each other. You can use highlights or notes to keep track of important passages and quotes.

Language choices

Consider what style of language the author uses. Are the sentences short and simple or more complex and poetic?

What word choices stand out as interesting or unusual? Are words used figuratively to mean something other than their literal definition? Figurative language includes things like metaphor (e.g. “her eyes were oceans”) and simile (e.g. “her eyes were like oceans”).

Also keep an eye out for imagery in the text—recurring images that create a certain atmosphere or symbolize something important. Remember that language is used in literary texts to say more than it means on the surface.

Narrative voice

Ask yourself:

• Who is telling the story?
• How are they telling it?

Is it a first-person narrator (“I”) who is personally involved in the story, or a third-person narrator who tells us about the characters from a distance?

Consider the narrator’s perspective . Is the narrator omniscient (where they know everything about all the characters and events), or do they only have partial knowledge? Are they an unreliable narrator who we are not supposed to take at face value? Authors often hint that their narrator might be giving us a distorted or dishonest version of events.

The tone of the text is also worth considering. Is the story intended to be comic, tragic, or something else? Are usually serious topics treated as funny, or vice versa ? Is the story realistic or fantastical (or somewhere in between)?

Consider how the text is structured, and how the structure relates to the story being told.

• Novels are often divided into chapters and parts.
• Poems are divided into lines, stanzas, and sometime cantos.
• Plays are divided into scenes and acts.

Think about why the author chose to divide the different parts of the text in the way they did.

There are also less formal structural elements to take into account. Does the story unfold in chronological order, or does it jump back and forth in time? Does it begin in medias res —in the middle of the action? Does the plot advance towards a clearly defined climax?

With poetry, consider how the rhyme and meter shape your understanding of the text and your impression of the tone. Try reading the poem aloud to get a sense of this.

In a play, you might consider how relationships between characters are built up through different scenes, and how the setting relates to the action. Watch out for  dramatic irony , where the audience knows some detail that the characters don’t, creating a double meaning in their words, thoughts, or actions.

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
• Vague sentences
• Style consistency

See an example

Your thesis in a literary analysis essay is the point you want to make about the text. It’s the core argument that gives your essay direction and prevents it from just being a collection of random observations about a text.

If you’re given a prompt for your essay, your thesis must answer or relate to the prompt. For example:

Essay question example

Is Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” a religious parable?

Your thesis statement should be an answer to this question—not a simple yes or no, but a statement of why this is or isn’t the case:

Thesis statement example

Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law” is not a religious parable, but a story about bureaucratic alienation.

Sometimes you’ll be given freedom to choose your own topic; in this case, you’ll have to come up with an original thesis. Consider what stood out to you in the text; ask yourself questions about the elements that interested you, and consider how you might answer them.

Your thesis should be something arguable—that is, something that you think is true about the text, but which is not a simple matter of fact. It must be complex enough to develop through evidence and arguments across the course of your essay.

Say you’re analyzing the novel Frankenstein . You could start by asking yourself:

Your initial answer might be a surface-level description:

The character Frankenstein is portrayed negatively in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

However, this statement is too simple to be an interesting thesis. After reading the text and analyzing its narrative voice and structure, you can develop the answer into a more nuanced and arguable thesis statement:

Mary Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.

Remember that you can revise your thesis statement throughout the writing process , so it doesn’t need to be perfectly formulated at this stage. The aim is to keep you focused as you analyze the text.

Finding textual evidence

To support your thesis statement, your essay will build an argument using textual evidence —specific parts of the text that demonstrate your point. This evidence is quoted and analyzed throughout your essay to explain your argument to the reader.

It can be useful to comb through the text in search of relevant quotations before you start writing. You might not end up using everything you find, and you may have to return to the text for more evidence as you write, but collecting textual evidence from the beginning will help you to structure your arguments and assess whether they’re convincing.

To start your literary analysis paper, you’ll need two things: a good title, and an introduction.

Your title should clearly indicate what your analysis will focus on. It usually contains the name of the author and text(s) you’re analyzing. Keep it as concise and engaging as possible.

A common approach to the title is to use a relevant quote from the text, followed by a colon and then the rest of your title.

If you struggle to come up with a good title at first, don’t worry—this will be easier once you’ve begun writing the essay and have a better sense of your arguments.

“Fearful symmetry” : The violence of creation in William Blake’s “The Tyger”

The introduction

The essay introduction provides a quick overview of where your argument is going. It should include your thesis statement and a summary of the essay’s structure.

A typical structure for an introduction is to begin with a general statement about the text and author, using this to lead into your thesis statement. You might refer to a commonly held idea about the text and show how your thesis will contradict it, or zoom in on a particular device you intend to focus on.

Then you can end with a brief indication of what’s coming up in the main body of the essay. This is called signposting. It will be more elaborate in longer essays, but in a short five-paragraph essay structure, it shouldn’t be more than one sentence.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

Some students prefer to write the introduction later in the process, and it’s not a bad idea. After all, you’ll have a clearer idea of the overall shape of your arguments once you’ve begun writing them!

If you do write the introduction first, you should still return to it later to make sure it lines up with what you ended up writing, and edit as necessary.

The body of your essay is everything between the introduction and conclusion. It contains your arguments and the textual evidence that supports them.

Paragraph structure

A typical structure for a high school literary analysis essay consists of five paragraphs : the three paragraphs of the body, plus the introduction and conclusion.

Each paragraph in the main body should focus on one topic. In the five-paragraph model, try to divide your argument into three main areas of analysis, all linked to your thesis. Don’t try to include everything you can think of to say about the text—only analysis that drives your argument.

In longer essays, the same principle applies on a broader scale. For example, you might have two or three sections in your main body, each with multiple paragraphs. Within these sections, you still want to begin new paragraphs at logical moments—a turn in the argument or the introduction of a new idea.

Robert’s first encounter with Gil-Martin suggests something of his sinister power. Robert feels “a sort of invisible power that drew me towards him.” He identifies the moment of their meeting as “the beginning of a series of adventures which has puzzled myself, and will puzzle the world when I am no more in it” (p. 89). Gil-Martin’s “invisible power” seems to be at work even at this distance from the moment described; before continuing the story, Robert feels compelled to anticipate at length what readers will make of his narrative after his approaching death. With this interjection, Hogg emphasizes the fatal influence Gil-Martin exercises from his first appearance.

Topic sentences

To keep your points focused, it’s important to use a topic sentence at the beginning of each paragraph.

A good topic sentence allows a reader to see at a glance what the paragraph is about. It can introduce a new line of argument and connect or contrast it with the previous paragraph. Transition words like “however” or “moreover” are useful for creating smooth transitions:

… The story’s focus, therefore, is not upon the divine revelation that may be waiting beyond the door, but upon the mundane process of aging undergone by the man as he waits.

Nevertheless, the “radiance” that appears to stream from the door is typically treated as religious symbolism.

This topic sentence signals that the paragraph will address the question of religious symbolism, while the linking word “nevertheless” points out a contrast with the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Using textual evidence

A key part of literary analysis is backing up your arguments with relevant evidence from the text. This involves introducing quotes from the text and explaining their significance to your point.

It’s important to contextualize quotes and explain why you’re using them; they should be properly introduced and analyzed, not treated as self-explanatory:

It isn’t always necessary to use a quote. Quoting is useful when you’re discussing the author’s language, but sometimes you’ll have to refer to plot points or structural elements that can’t be captured in a short quote.

In these cases, it’s more appropriate to paraphrase or summarize parts of the text—that is, to describe the relevant part in your own words:

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

The conclusion of your analysis shouldn’t introduce any new quotations or arguments. Instead, it’s about wrapping up the essay. Here, you summarize your key points and try to emphasize their significance to the reader.

A good way to approach this is to briefly summarize your key arguments, and then stress the conclusion they’ve led you to, highlighting the new perspective your thesis provides on the text as a whole:

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, August 14). How to Write a Literary Analysis Essay | A Step-by-Step Guide. Scribbr. Retrieved April 10, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/literary-analysis/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, how to write a thesis statement | 4 steps & examples, academic paragraph structure | step-by-step guide & examples, how to write a narrative essay | example & tips, "i thought ai proofreading was useless but..".

I've been using Scribbr for years now and I know it's a service that won't disappoint. It does a good job spotting mistakes”

Get Best Essay Written by Essay Writers

Enter phone no. to receive critical updates and urgent messages !

Please upload all relevant files for quick & complete assistance.

New User? Start Here

Modernism In Literature : Characteristics & Examples

Given that the 20th century was the one closest to the beginning of a new millennium, it began with both immense optimism and some trepidation. Many believed that the beginning of a new age for humanity. From the end of the nineteenth century to about the middle of the twentieth, there was an artistic era known as the modern period, which included a number of emerging writing styles that influenced the growth of literature.

Authors had greater flexibility to experiment with their forms of expression thanks to literary modernism than in the past. Modernist works usually feature free-flowing interior monologues and non-linear plots that emphasize the experiences and sentiments of the character. W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, William Carlos Williams, and T.S. Eliot are among the authors of contemporary literature.

Definition of Modernism in Literature

Modernism's definition in literature   refers to the writers' act of defiance against social conventions. They objected to continuing to follow the rules. Instead, they looked for novel means of communicating their views and themselves. They believed that the rapid social change and the new generation that sprang from it could not be accurately captured in the traditional forms of writing.

Individualism, experimentation, and absurdity are the movement's three defining traits. In addition, it exhibits formalism and symbolism.

The 20th century marks the start of the modern age in English literature, which lasted until 1965. During this time, people abruptly stopped connecting with the world in the old ways.

With the advent of modernism, there were numerous cultural shocks. World Wars 1 and 2 dealt the modern era its greatest blow. Both of these conflicts lasted from 1939 to 1945, starting in 1914 and ending in 1919, respectively. Everyone suffered greatly in the years following the two world wars. Every civilian could clearly see the carnage of World War 1. Nobody knew where the world was going, and there was a general sense of uneasiness.

Ready to Push the Boundaries of Your Academic Success?

What Is Modernism In Literature?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "modernism" as a practice specific to the modern age that entails looking for novel ways to express oneself. Modernism was a literary, artistic, philosophical, and cinematic movement.

The same dictionary also defines modernism in literature as a purposeful rupture with the past and a search for fresh means of self-expression. But Ezra Pound's catchphrase "Make it new" perfectly captures its essence.

What about the literary modernism movement's background? The movement, which had its origins in Europe with Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and Robert Musil as early modernists, was spurred on by urbanization and the Industrial Revolution. The atrocities of World War I, which upended many modernists' preconceived conceptions about society, had a significant impact as well.

It was affected by Prohibition and the Great Depression in addition to the Industrial Revolution, and it was fueled by a sense of disappointment and loss. Popular American modernists include T.S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, and William Faulkner.

Characteristics of Modernism in Literature

After discussing the modernist genre classification, let's look more deeply at why some works are categorized as modernist. What distinguishes modernist works from similar ones, in other words?

The core characteristics of modernism in literature hold the key to unlocking the solution. Below we have outlined the top five of them:

Individualism

Experimentation.

A brief description of every modernism literature characteristics is provided below.

The individual is more intriguing than society in modernist literature. Modernist authors were particularly intrigued by how people adjusted to a changing environment.

The world or civilization was portrayed by authors as a threat to the morality of their characters. Characters created by Ernest Hemingway who accepted their surroundings as they were and persisted in their actions are particularly cherished.

Modernist authors rebelled against conventional methods and styles. Poets stopped using conventional rhyme schemes and switched to free verse. Writers combined historical imagery with contemporary themes and languages to create a stylistic collage.

Modernists often discussed the inner workings of consciousness. This obsession gave rise to a style of narration known as stream of consciousness, in which the novel's point of view wanders in a manner approximating human cognition. The experimental Modernist writings of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and others are well known.

The devastation of the two World Wars had a significant impact on writers of the time. Many notable English poets perished or were injured during World War One. Global capitalism was simultaneously remaking society on all levels. For many authors, the absurdity of the world was increasing daily. In the bustle of daily existence, the mystique of life was being lost.

This absurdity was portrayed by modernist writers in their works. Modern absurdism can be seen in Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," in which a traveling salesman is changed into an insect-like creature.

The authors of the Modernist movement gave things, people, places, and events deep significance. They created a multi-layered, often secretive, or code-like reality in their minds. The notion that a poem is a puzzle that must be solved has its roots in the Modernist era.

Compared to earlier authors, they allowed far more to the reader's imagination, creating open-ended stories with numerous possible interpretations. For instance, each chapter of James Joyce's "Ulysses" contains unique, open-ended symbols.

Modernist authors viewed literature more as a craft than as a creative peak. Instead of the intrinsic, organic process that earlier generations had portrayed, they thought that poems and novels were composed of smaller pieces.

Foreign languages, extensive vocabularies, and invented terms are frequently used in modernist poetry. E.E. Cummings, a poet, completely abandoned structure and smeared his thoughts all over the paper.

Key Themes of Modernist Literature

Modernist literature explored a variety of themes that may most effectively represent the author's perspective on the world around them as a rebellious gesture against established conventions of the craft.

It would be hard to include them all here due to their diversity. The modernist elements vary in prominence, nevertheless, from some to others. Four of them are listed below, along with illustrations.

Transformation

The idea of metamorphosis is practically inextricable from modernism. The movement is founded on the concept of radical change, whether it is the modification of form, expression, or standard. Start with Ezra Pound's manifesto, Make It New, to see this theme in action.

Transformation as a theme also refers to a symbolic rebirth, a shift in values and identities. This component of the theme was fueled by loss, destruction, and the authors' personal experiences with war, which led to fragmentation.

Franz Kafka's absurdist novel The Metamorphosis has examples of change as a topic. Regarding modernism in American literature, Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and William Faulkner's Barn Burning both have this theme.

Mythological Tales

Modernist authors and painters did not just allude to Greek-Latin and other mythologies, unlike their predecessors. Instead, they retold those stories in the context of the contemporary world. Mythological stories and characters are used as symbols or as plot-relevant characters to characterize modernism in literature.

S. Eliot's The Waste Land is one of the best works from the modernist era in terms of myth instances. T. S. Eliot utilizes Tarot cards and the Holy Grail as symbols in this poem to reinterpret the Fisher King stories. Additionally, T. S. Eliot included Latin and Greek words to deepen the poem's meaning.

Ulysses by James Joyce has references to Homer's Odysseus and Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill, which are two more examples of myths in modernist literature.

Loss, Separation, and Destruction

The harsh realities of war are mostly to blame for the rise of this theme in modern-period literature. Many authors lived through these events, which were laced with grief, separation, and destruction. Therefore, the works created in the years following the war reflected these experiences.

Separation, loss, and destruction were also universal events that many people shared at the same time and had similar effects on them. Because of this, readers generally favored modernist literature.

Virginia Woolf, a British author and a leader of modernism in English literature, has several instances of this theme in her writings. The best representations of these subjects in American literature can be found in T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway.

Love and Sensuality

Individualism, one of the traits of modernism, drove the literary themes of sensualism and love throughout this time. However, these concepts were rather cynically or, others could say, realistically reinvented, so they did not escape disappointment and demystification. Love isn't characterized in modernist literature as a mystical emotion capable of moving mountains. The tone of love stories instead becomes grimmer and more fatalistic, which adds to the evidence that society is eroding.

Modernist works were characterized by conversations and reflections on sexuality, gender roles, and feminism in addition to love and sensuality. D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and Virginia Woolf are a few well-known writers in this field.

Read and consider Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby for literary examples of love and sensuality modernism. Another excellent example is Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, which explores the issue from the perspectives of emancipation and gender equality.

Frustrated with Essay Writing? We Understand, and We're Here to Assist.

50 Essay/Research Paper Topics on 'Modernism in Literature

The period of Modernism sparked a series of events that changed the mindset of the entire world of Literature.

So, its importance cannot be denied. 

Respective literature students frequently get assignments  (essays and research papers ) on Modernism in Literature. 

While writing a research paper or descriptive essay on Modernism in Literature always promises to be an enlightening experience, students often struggle to come up with suitable topics for their writing assignments.

Of course, that changes right here. The below section indexes a variety of research topics on the Modernism period! So pay attention to them.

Prominent Modernist Authors and Their Works

Check out the writings of the ten authors and poets to get your hunt for the topic going! These authors are among the most well-known modernists who developed the movement's qualities and experimented with its key tenets.

James Joyce and "Ulysses"

James Joyce (1882–1941), was an Irish poet and writer. He belonged to the generation of artists that experimented with many means of expression. His writing style was meticulous, filled with internal monologues, and disregarded conventional plot and character techniques. Ulysses is written by James Joyce.

It is widely considered a masterwork, stylistically complex, and exciting. Numerous volumes of discussion and analysis have been written about it. The Odyssey, an ancient poem by Homer, is retold in Joyce's novel about the Greek hero Odysseus' homecoming from the Trojan Wars. Odysseus' journey took 10 years, but Joyce condenses it to one day in Dublin on June 16, 1904.

Since his school days, Joyce had been drawn to the myth of Odysseus, or Ulysses, as the Romans named him. Joyce structured Ulysses around eighteen episodes, each of which is designed to resemble a scene from Homer's epic. Joyce had a remarkable eye for detail.

Virginia Woolf and "To the Lighthouse"

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), a pioneer of modernism in English literature, and her body of work helped to define the movement. She was among the pioneers in employing the stream-of-consciousness narrative technique to show the nuanced interior lives of her characters.

Woolf incorporated feminism into her writing as well. Simone de Beauvoir was one of the three female authors of the time to examine "the given." Her work also heavily incorporates other historical topics from the era, such as the war, destruction, and the influence of social class.

Virginia Woolf's book “To the Lighthouse” was released in 1927. This piece is one of her more successful and approachable attempts at the stream-of-consciousness literary form.

The three parts of the book, which take place between 1910 and 1920, center on various Ramsay family members who are visiting their Scottish island vacation home on the Isle of Skye. The struggle between the universe's dominant male and feminine forces is a major theme in the book.

S. Eliot and "The Waste Land"

Eliot paints a gloomy image of the landscape of the modern world and its history in the poem's five sections, "The Burial of the Dead," "A Game of Chess," "The Fire Sermon," "Death by Water," and "What the Thunder Said." The "old man with wrinkled dugs," in his words, is "the most important personage." Greek mythology's hermaphrodite character Tiresias is blind but has precognitive powers.

The poem was started by Eliot in 1914, but it wasn't finished until a breakdown brought on by the death of his father in 1919. It is usually interpreted as a critique of the hopelessness of post-war European history. The ubiquitous metaphor of dryness is typically interpreted as signifying spiritual emptiness.

Franz Kafka and "The Metamorphosis"

Franz Kafka (1883–1924), an Austrian–Hungarian writer, is one of the most well-known modernist authors in the German-speaking world. In his writings, Kafka addressed the concepts of metamorphosis, existentialism, and alienation.

The German-language short story "The Metamorphosis" was written by Franz Kafka (1883–1924), a Czech author who was born in Germany. It was first published in German in 1915, and the first English translation appeared in 1933. It is his best-known shorter work. There have been many different interpretations of "The Metamorphosis," therefore it would be worthwhile to delve more into this captivating tale.

Gregor's main priority is his family rather than screaming or doubting his own sanity. This is the strength of his character rather than a flaw. In everything, Gregor puts his family first. His commitment to his family is shown as the narrative develops and the reader learns more about Gregor's life from his perspective.

Scott Fitzgerald and "The Great Gatsby"

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American novelist and short story writer whose works have been compared to the Jazz Age, a time period he is said to have invented. He is regarded as one of the best authors of the 20th century. Fitzgerald belonged to the "Lost Generation," a group of Americans who were born in the 1890s and came of age during World War I. He produced a large number of short stories that explore themes of youth, sadness, and aging while also finishing four novels and abandoning a fifth. His wife was Zelda Fitzgerald.

The third book written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby , was released by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1925. The novel, which is set in Jazz Age New York, chronicles the tragic tale of self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby and his pursuit of Daisy Buchanan, a rich young woman whom he once loved. Despite being a failure upon release, the book is today regarded as a classic of American literature and is sometimes referred to as the Great American Novel.

Gertrude Stein and “Tender Buttons”

One of the most significant American modernist writers is Gertrude Stein (1874–1966), who is frequently referred to as the "mother of modernism." Stein worked with stream of memory and other storytelling elements, similar to the other two authors on this list. Her writing, on the other hand, might be characterized as unique and playful.

One of the very first novels to examine a coming-out story was Stein's debut book, Q.E.D.Q.E.D. (1903). Being a lesbian herself, Stein made an unusual choice for the era by focusing on sexuality in several of her works, such as Fern Hurst (1904).

The collection of poetry Tender Buttons (1914), which captures the monotony of everyday life, is Stein's best-known work as a poet. In the book, Stein tries out different sounds and word fragments to try and paint the reader a picture.

The Making of Americans (1902–1911) and Three Lives (1905–1906) are two of Stein's most well-known prose novels.

William Faulkner and “The Sound and the Fury”

If you're seeking literary works that explore symbolism and different viewpoints as examples of modernism, go no further. American novelist and short story writer William Faulkner (1897–1962) is one of the renowned modernist writers who concentrated on these issues.

Faulkner, a Nobel laureate and native of Mississippi, is well-known for his works of Southern Gothic literature set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. Along with symbolism and many perspectives, Faulkner also experimented with the unreliable narrator and nonlinear narrative techniques.

The Sound and the Fury (1929), The Wild Palms (1939), As I Lay Dying (1930), and Light in August (1932) are some of Faulkner's best-known books. Between 1932 and 1954, he also had a screenwriting career in Hollywood. He wrote the screenplays for movies including Flesh (1932), The Big Sleep (1946) and To Have and Have Not (1944) at that time.

Ezra Pound and “Make It New”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972), an American poet who lived abroad, is one of the most well-known representatives of modernism in the 20th century. He was unmatched in his use of references and free-verse poetry throughout his body of work.

Pound was one of the first poets to use imagism, which he did masterfully in his writings. His poetry is enlivened and compelling for the reader's imagination because of this.

The modernist movement's manifesto, Make It New (1934), by Ezra Pound, has already been mentioned a number of times. That, however, is not what defines Pound's literary legacy. Read the Cantos (c. 1917–1962), an 800-page epic poem, In a Station of the Metro (1913), or The Return (1917) to explore more into it.

E. Cummings and “1 × 1”

One of the most prolific American poets and writers of modern-period literature was E. E. Cummings (1894–1962). He produced almost 2,900 poetries during his career, along with four plays and two autobiographical novels.

The best way to describe Cummings' poetic approach is as eccentric. The poet ignored more than just the accepted rules of rhyme and rhythm. He even went so far as to disregard the grammar, punctuation, and spelling norms. His poetry frequently conveys themselves through the use of lowercase letters.

We advise you to start with [I Carry Your Heart with Me (I Carry it in)] (1952) and [may I Feel Said He] (1935) if you wish to become familiar with E. E. Cummings' best works. Both of his poetry collections, 1 1 (1944) and No Thanks (1935) are well worth reading and serve as excellent introductions to the poet's distinctive style.

Ernest Hemingway and “The Sun Also Rises”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) was an American novelist and short story writer who is regarded as one of the most significant figures in both the modernist movement and American literature as a whole. He is well known for his distinctive prose. There aren't many evocative words in the text, making it economical, clear, and matter-of-fact.

Hemingway witnessed the horrors of war firsthand after working as a journalist on the front lines for years. As a result, he wrote about topics like war, love, destruction, loss, and disillusionment in his works.

Six collections of short stories and seven novels make up Hemingway's literary output. His most well-known works were The Sun Also Rises (1926) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), both of which were inspired by his experiences during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

Modernism Essay Example

“modernism and the disapproval with ornament”.

Long and impassioned discussions about the examples of modernism in literature and the future of decoration erupted in the lives of decorative arts theorists and practitioners. It was done in the second half of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th. These discussions resulted in the conclusion that ornament had no future. Or is that the case? America and Europe in the 19th century have the key to the solution. A lot changed throughout this time, not only in the fields of science and technology but also in the study of human communities. The world was inundated…

Modernist Poetry

Modern poetry deviates from conventional poetic forms and subjects, and it captures the spirit and culture of the 20th century. It began as poets like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Butler Yeats, Edward Arlington Robinson, and others started to doubt everything they had ever learned about life in the years following World War I. They observed that the world had radically altered, shifting from an agrarian and rural to an urban and industrial one.

The Modernists saw this shift as a chance to redefine language in order to convey this brand-new reality. They intended their poetry to capture all facets of life, even the unpleasant or ugly ones. Their poetry attempted to convey what it was like to live through such turbulent times.

The Legacy and Impact of Modernism

No specific incident or item had an impact on the modernist movement. In its brief history, modernism was a cultural movement that included a wide range of artistic forms.

The personal voice, fragmentation and dislocation, emotional numbness and detachment from society, alienation, and the use of sarcasm are traits that can be found in all modernist literature despite these distinctions.

Beginning in the late 1800s, modernism had a significant impact on society. It was a cultural movement that changed the course of history. It involves artists rejecting conventional wisdom and embracing fresh approaches to meaning-making.

Here are a few examples of how modernism altered our world:

• The Arts: Abstractionism was emphasized in modern art, and new forms of sculpture, painting, and poetry also evolved.
• Technology: With inventions like the vehicle, airplane, radio, and television, the 20th century saw a remarkable increase in technology.
• Worldviews: Modernists had doubts about conventional notions of culture since they held the concept that reality was not set in stone and could be altered.
• Society: Modernists disapproved of antiquated systems of tyranny, such as marriage and religious institutions.
• Gender positions: Women's positions in society substantially increased, with many of them taking on traditionally male roles.

Modernist literature generally reveals the perspectives of various poets and writers of literature. Modernist writers' writings will be more realistic and will depict the many lifestyles and social cultures of individuals. You should study extensively or get guidance from any English literature assignment helpers if you want to learn more about the present age in English literature. Don't be afraid to seek assistance if you need USA Essay Help or if you have any questions about your assignments. Our writers are accessible around the clock to provide all students with low-cost assistance with their English literature assignments.

Unraveling the Mysteries of Modernism Literature

FAQs Related to Modernism In Literature

What is modernism in literature.

Modernism in literature is a literary movement that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is characterized by a break from traditional writing styles and a focus on experimentation, fragmented narratives, and a sense of disillusionment.

Who are some key authors associated with Modernism?

Prominent authors of Modernism include James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Franz Kafka, and William Faulkner, among others.

How did World War I influence Modernist literature?

World War I had a profound impact on Modernist literature, as it shattered many traditional beliefs and values. Authors often used the war as a backdrop to explore themes of alienation, disillusionment, and the breakdown of society.

What are some common themes in Modernist literature?

Common themes in Modernist literature include individualism, existentialism, the loss of faith in traditional institutions, and the search for meaning in a chaotic world.

What literary techniques are frequently used in Modernist writing?

Modernist writers often employ stream-of-consciousness narration, nonlinear storytelling, symbolism, and allusions to other works of literature or art.

How did Modernist literature challenge conventional narrative structures?

Modernist literature frequently abandoned linear storytelling in favor of fragmented narratives that could be nonlinear, non-chronological, or presented from multiple perspectives. This challenged readers to actively engage with the text.

Why is "Ulysses" by James Joyce considered a landmark work of Modernist literature?

"Ulysses" is celebrated for its complex narrative structure, stream-of-consciousness writing style, and its ability to capture the inner thoughts and experiences of its characters. It is often regarded as a pinnacle of Modernist experimentation.

What role did urbanization and industrialization play in Modernist literature?

Urbanization and industrialization are often depicted as disorienting and dehumanizing forces in Modernist literature. Many authors explored the alienation and isolation experienced by individuals in rapidly changing urban environments.

How did Modernist literature pave the way for postmodernism?

Modernist literature's emphasis on subjectivity, skepticism, and the rejection of absolute truths laid the groundwork for the postmodern literary movement that followed, which questioned even more the concept of a single, objective reality.

What is the legacy of Modernism in literature today?

Modernism continues to influence contemporary literature, as authors draw from its innovative techniques and exploration of complex themes. It remains an important part of literary history, shaping the way we approach storytelling and meaning in literature.

Zara William is one of the brilliant minds behind the archive of blog at Allessaywriter.com. Her content educates, inspires, and entertains. Explore the world of writing and discover how words can shape thoughts and transform lives!

Create New Essay

Please enter phone for your order updates and other important order related communication.

You Might Also Like

Guide On Argumentative Essay In 2024

Are you about to start writing an argumentative essay? Don’t know where to begin? There’s no need to worry. Even if you don’t know...

Powerful Quantitative Research Topics To Score Top Grades

Quantitative research refers to the process of acquiring and evaluating numerical data in the form of facts, figures, reports, statistics, and the lik...

Argumentative Essay Topics For Student- Expert Guide

The entire objective of argumentative essays is to take a stance for or against a topic and share views supported with proper evidence. So, when ...

How To Write An Essay? Tips To Make Quick Essay Outline

How to write an essay is indeed a very common question now. Writing an essay needs a lot of things to be kept in mind. Many of the students think that...

14 Literary Devices That You Should Utilize While Writing An Essay

In your quest to prepare a perfect essay, you may have often thought about a number of ways you can adapt to enhance your writing. Now, following acad...

Bid Adieu to Deadline Stress and Secure Top Scores

Attached Files

160 Modernism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best modernism topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics on modernism, 💡 interesting topics to write about modernism, 📌 simple & easy modernism essay titles, 🔎 most interesting modernism topics to write about, ❓ questions about modernism.

• Modern, Modernism, and Modernization Modern, modernism, and modernization are the notions which may be easily defined in human mind, it means that one can understand what modern, modernism, and modernization mean, however, when it comes to formulation of the […]
• Modernism in Symbolism and Imagery as Presented in the Works of W.B. Yeats Modernism is a term that refers to a movement in art and literature that began in the late 19th century and extended through the early days of the 20th century. We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Between Romanticism and Modernism The first of the modernists in music sought to begin new dimensions and depths in music through the use of non-conventional instruments and novel sounds.
• Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism Period However, Richard Wright is the most important figure of this period; actually, the other writers were said to have attended “Wright School”.
• From Modernism to Postmodernism The desire to move out of the era of modernism to postmodernism was desirable. The change of modernism to postmodernism is an evolution of traditional believes and practices to a modern way of thinking.
• Modernism in Art and Painting Paintings done in the past about the state of people and past society presently help to give direction to in the world of art.
• Fashion in the Period of Modernism The main content of the Modern was the desire of artists to contrast their creativity with the historicism and eclecticism of art of the second half of the XIX century.
• Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism in Literature Romantic literature is characterized by several key traits, such as a love of nature, an emphasis on the individual and spirituality, a celebration of solitude and sadness, an interest in the common man, an idealization […]
• Modernism and Arts and Crafts: Comparison Today, critics view modernism as a breakdown of the traditional styles inherent to the Western culture that used to connect the appearance of works of art to the appearance of the natural world. In particular, […]
• Avant-Garde Fashion: The History of Modernism and How It Changed the World One of the main reasons why this particular movement resists the main fashion trends is that the garments are abundant with black color, the combination of leather and cotton, and multiple layers.
• Alienation in Modernist Short Stories and Poems As the paper unfolds, the treatment of the theme of alienation as per different writers will be looked into to establish whether there exists a common denominator in the treatment of the works or not.
• Analysis of Modernist Painting by Clement Greenberg Analyzing Greenberg’s work requires three components: reviewing his arguments, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the text, and showing examples of art that demonstrate the author’s principal points.
• Modernism and Avant-Garde in Edward Estlin Cummings’ Poems A critical analysis of Cummings’ works reveals that the techniques of modernism found in his poems are illustrations of the constant change in poetry.
• Modernism – Yeats, Eliot, and Wolf Yeats successfully draws the minds of the readers of the reality of the aging population. In the poem, Eliot’s is able to draw the conscious of the readers to imagine of the outlook of the […]
• Paradigm Shift From Modernism to Postmodernism Ways of Thinking Specifically, Freud invented the subconscious part of the mind, the superego, which helps in analyzing how one thinks, in other words, evaluating the correctness of the thinking. On the part of the ego, Sartre acknowledges […]
• Modernism in “Girl” Short Story by Jamaica Kincaid A general image of Girl and the seriousness of its separate elements make the work closer to modernistic style. The first sign of modernism in the work is the seriousness of the story and its […]
• Factors and Reason Why Modernism Arose in Europe The painters and the sculptors started to portray the dying and the dead with images of the grim and death reapers.
• In What Ways Do Walt Whitman Anticipate the Modernist Movement? In this paper, special attention will be paid to Walt Whitman as one of major and the most effective anticipators of the modernism movement because of the chosen fearlessness, intents to promote equalities in everything, […]
• Virginia Woolf and Modernism The lack of actual historical information is a testament to the treatment accorded to women in the 16th century and this is an element of modernity that Woolf uses; the oppression of women in the […]
• Differences of Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism Periods in Art The realism movement in art is a product of the ideological and philosophical spirit of its time. Modernism is the movement in search of new forms of art, and it emphasizes the interior world.
• The Second Battlefield: Women, Modernism, and the First World War The first theme is the connection of writings of women on the subject of the First World War and the modernism theoretical constructs.
• Wallace Stevens: An American Modernist Poet The road was not easy for Wallace Stevens. Wallace Stevens nearly never changes the themes of his poems.
• Product Design and Modernism It is necessary to focus on the following important distinctions of this style, namely: the absence of ornamental elements and minimalism; pure geometrical forms; the use of new materials; the suitability of the modernist designs […]
• Modernism, Modernization and Modernity in Australia, 1919-1939 The figure of the ‘flapper’ and her mode of dressing initiated Australians quest for pleasure and changes in moral and social values and attitudes.
• History of Literary Modernism in 19th Century The radical shift in the aesthetic value as well as the cultural sensibilities of the works of literature of the early 20th century is what people regard to as literary modernism.
• Is Fashion a Product of Modernism? The purpose of this study is to trace the development of fashion in the context of modernism. The disappearance of opulent Victorian dresses and close attention to the functionality of clothes attests the major change […]
• Postmodern Architecture vs. International Modernism A clear example of the new concept of postmodernism is that it is seen as the return of the pillars and other essential elements of the pre-modern designs.
• Modern Age: Deconstructivism vs. Modernism In the course of their evolution people obtained new values that impacted their vision of the world and resulted in the appearance of new ideals of beauty.
• Explaining Modernism: Evolving Beliefs and Ideas Historically, the very beginning of the modern period in art and design is assigned to the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s.
• Adolf Loos’s Architecture in Modernist Theory The inside of the building was created by Loos, who at the time was disenchanted with the style of other contemporary architects and wanted to present a modern look different from the popular trends of […]
• Modernist Movement in Music: Investigating Style Evolution of Western Classical Music The modernist movement in music seems appropriate for this paper because of the unique and exciting styles of composing modern-era music, such as jazz, pop, and rock.
• Modernist Literature: Representatives and Techniques Joyce’s “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake” experiment with language and narrative structure, creating a new form of storytelling that reflects the complexities of the modern world.
• Eliot and Joyce: How Modernism Uses Myth The poem is based on the myth of the search for the Holy Grail and the legend of the poor fisherman.
• Modernism: Yeats’ Poems and The Stranger by Camus Yeats’ poems also reflect the times, exploring the idea of a chaotic and uncertain future and the individual’s attempts to make sense of it.
• Modernism: Kincaid’s Girl vs. Pound’s in a Station of the Metro Howe calls one of the distinguishing features of modernist literature its complexity and the depth of the author’s thought, presenting the challenge to the reader.
• Mark Bradford on Reimagine Modernist Art Instead of painting in a realistic style, abstract painters seek to capture the ethereal, unveil the unseen, and express the mysterious.
• Modernism and Representation of Its Principles In addition, the grid is considered an announcement of the modernity of art and symbolizes the transition from the past to the present.
• Modernism: “The Painter of Modern Life” and “Paris Spleen” by Baudelaire According to Baudelaire, “to contemplate the movements of those who leave and those who arrive, those who still have strength of will, the desire to travel or to grow rich” can be viewed as a […]
• Modernism in Art: Themes and Techniques Scientific advancements that made them doubt the stability of the “actual” world and the accuracy of experience strengthened their views. However, Modernism appeared primarily as a protest against the old values and ideals, thereby challenging […]
• Modernism in Short Stories and Poems In “Hills like white elephant,” the author applies four features of modernism; the first trait that places the poem in modernism is not the use of romanticism.
• Modernist and Classical Architecture of Federal Buildings Buildings of classical architecture are designed to return respect for the power and the constitution, to remind us of the antiquity of such things as law and human rights.
• The Beauty of Simplicity: Modernist Architecture as a Worldwide Phenomenon With the advent of Modernist architecture, the emphasis has clearly been shifted onto the functionality of the architectural elements. Even with due regard for the novelty and reasonability of Modernist postulates, the popularity of the […]
• The Architecture of California and the Modernism of the USA The architecture of California was highly advanced because of the social and political revolutions coupled with the rise of technological and engineering developments.
• Architectural Sustainability and Modernism Architecture In a general sense, sustainability is about confirming that the quality of human life and the surrounding eco-systems will not be reduced in the short and the long terms, making sure that the capacity of […]
• Popular and Serious: Modernism, the Avant-Garde, and Punk At the beginning of the century, modernism and the avant-garde were the most revolutionary musical movements, while later, with the development of punk and other popular music styles, the boundaries of art expanded to include […]
• A Journey From Neoclassicism to Modernism Particularly, with the focus on the lack of excessively and the promotion of utility as the foundational quality of art objects, urban design of the time promoted laconism in the choice of form and restraint […]
• Gio Ponti: A Journey From Neoclassicism to Modernism By founding his Modernist approach on the pillars of Neoclassicism, Gio Ponti managed to embrace the specifics of the urban environment to create the solutions that made the form serve the function, as his “Bottle […]
• Cubism and Design Aesthetic of Modernism Moreover, with the increase in the role of multiculturalism, a range of different interpretations of the Modernist ideas emerged, leading to the creation of subdivisions within the movement.
• Definition of Modernism and Avant-Garde Movements The main unifying characteristic is the artists’ belief in the value of art and their “self-consciousness,” as they were sure that it matters.
• Arts and Crafts Movement and Modernism Winter states in the beginning that he is not unbiased toward the Arts and Crafts movement, and yet his article gives a lot of thought to the weaknesses and failures of the movement.
• Modernism in Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” and Lichtenstein’s “Drowning Girl” In both the pictures, there is the use of the supremacy of nature to express the emotions in the piece of work.
• Modernist Art: A Feminist Perspective Clarke limited the definition of modernism even further by his restriction of it to the facets of the Paris of Manet and the Impressionists, a place of leisure, pleasure, and excesses, and it seems that […]
• Modernist Avant-Garde Attitude to the Early Traditions of the Mainstream in Cinema Such a concern is one of the various reasons that do revolve around the reasons behind the suspicions of the early conventions of the mainstream cinema by the modernist avant-garde of the 1910 and 20s.
• “The Dance” by William Carol Williams: The Modernist Poem Still it seems that the power of the sound as the one that gives birth to the word is the one of the utmost importance.
• Robin Boyd and Harry Seidler: Modernist Architects Modernism also deviates from the excessiveness of the Victorian style and resorts to propaganda of social and cultural reconstruction. The advent of modernity, or the division of human activities according to the modern waves invading […]
• 20th Century Art History and the Idea of Late Modernism This movement turned out to be a significant development in contemporary art towards the end of the 1960s. This is a kind of contemporary art that came to be renown in the course of the […]
• Modernism in the Eyes of Picasso The term refers to all the social changes that are constantly occurring in this time period, the way that people experience these changes and the way that the changes are reflected in different circles, such […]
• How Modernism Evolved Into Postmodernism Modernism comprised the activities of people who felt that the traditional forms of art were turning out to be out-of-date in the new social-economic circumstances of a rising industrialized globe.
• History of Art: Modernism’s New Industry and Innovation The earliest roots of what today’s researchers identify as the modern period are generally recognized to be twined about the natural forms and artistic investigations of the Arts and Crafts Movement of the 1860s and […]
• Modernism and Islam, the Connection Between Them The issue is that of the connection between Islam and Modernity or rather the compatibility between Islamic ideals and beliefs and the phenomenon which is defined as modernity.
• Humanistic Tradition. Modernism of Friedrich Nietzsche It can be assumed that Nietzsche is praising the moral values provided by religion, whereas knowing the fact that he rejected the religion as an institution, it can be stated that Nietzsche points out to […]
• Modernist Poetry: Wallace Stevens and T.S. Elliot The main character of the poem contemplates the idea of death and religion. She says that “death is the mother of beauty” and that a change of the seasons, a change of the living to […]
• The History of Modernism Era: The Modern Philosophy of Art Modernism is used for the description of the style and ideas of a work of art that was produced during this period or era of modernism.
• Modernist Typography in Graphic Design In the example above, it can be seen that these serifs take on a strong triangular shape, joined to the main stroke with a series of brackets that serves both to fill in the negative […]
• Architectural History and Theory: Modernity and Modernism The lifts ought not to be longer but be hidden away like tapeworms in the position of stairwells, also the stairwells themselves, made ineffective, must be eliminated, and the lifts should scale the length of […]
• Expressionist Architecture: Modernism and Modernity The assumption is that the more rationality, the more order there is and the more order in society the better it will function.
• Disintegration for Modernist Writers Different and sometimes opposite currents within modernism itself make it difficult to create a comprehensive picture of this literary phenomenon in this essay that is why we are going to draw our attention to the […]
• Architecture and Modernism Connections Review There is no denying the importance of the fact that architecture is not only the aggregation of a given level of techniques, engineer capacities, approach to design, materials and form but what is more important […]
• The Shift From Modernism to Postmodernism Fredric Jameson’s postmodernism theory is considered to be “the effort to take the temperature of the age without instruments and in a situation in which we are not even sure there is so consistent thing […]
• Modernism: Critique of Colonial Empire Recognition and equity are two hegemonic components that emerge upon a close review of the literature advanced by Coulthard Glen in his article titled ‘Subjects of empire: Indigenous peoples and the ‘politics of recognition’ in […]
• Edward Weston’s Modernist Photographs More attention should be paid to the analysis of Weston’s photographs and the comparison of their style to my photographs. The object in my black-and-white photograph looks like a kind of tubes, which texture is […]
• Interior Architecture in Context: Subjective Well-Being in Modernist Design According to Petermans and Pohlmeyer, subjective well-being is an emerging topic of research in the field of design, although, no consensus has been reached in the scientific area as to what represents the essence of […]
• The World Wars, Modernism, and Post-Modernism Additionally, the realization of the worthlessness of human life due to the rise of science and technology led to the development of existentialism as a protest to the pressures of the changes provoked by the […]
• Early Modernist Art and Sociopolitical Climate The political uprising of the 1900s gave the artists of the time room to experiment. For the first time, artists felt that they could break the rigid rules established by the academies without any negative […]
• Modernist Revolution in Art History Simultaneously, the works of Karl Marx challenged the assumption of the relative nature of the shortcomings of capitalist society and suggested its fundamental flaws and inherent contradictions as reasons for the current social issues.
• Australia’s Aboriginal and Modernist Visual Arts Indigenous Australian art is characterized by a lot of imagery that depicted the origin of the artist and the themes in the paintings.
• Traditional Islamic Response to Modernism According to the readings, the British rule in India was a major contributor to the rise of modernism. This part of the readings is a bit confusing.
• Islamic Modernism and Its Culture Modernists reforms aimed to deal with aspects relating to the law of evidence, modern education, the status of women in the society, right of Muslim to have independent thinking and rationality, constitutional reforms, the nature […]
• Modernism and the Feminine Voice The major issues discussed in the book are the place of women in modernism, Stieglitz’s impact on O’Keeffe, and the role of O’Keeffe in Stieglitz’s life.
• Modernist Painting: Critical Anthology In his publication “Modernist Painting,” Clement Greenberg proves that the deficiency of figurativeness inherent in the contemporary modernist painting is the result of the art self-development instead of impacts made by social and historic factors.
• Pablo Picasso’s Art Modernism It generally rejected the belief and the certainty in enlightenment thinking with a consequent rejection in the belief of the existence of a powerful and most compassionate creator-God. This led to the birth of a […]
• Artistic Modernism and Art Nouveau The opposition of mass production to the handmade artistic work can also be regarded as the opposition of the inhuman and soulless to the infinite and spiritual that is comprised of beauty.
• Post Modernism and Nursing Science It is important to note that just like post modernism, nursing science has come to the view that there is some inner force that helps to heal patients.
• The Literary Renaissance: The Many Faces of Modernism London nails down the major problems of the post-war U.S.society: “This tower [.] represented [.] the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of […]
• Architecture in Australia Modernism The spirit of the modern times denotes the intellectual and the culture that is in practice within the 20th century, which is linked to the Australian views, sense, collective consciousness and taste.
• Feminism Builds up in Romanticism, Realism, Modernism Exploring the significance of the theme as well as the motifs of this piece, it becomes essential to understand that the era of modernism injected individualism in the literary works.
• Melancholy Caused by Fasting: An Artist in the Modernist Period In the personality of the hunger artist, we may notice the generalized character of a modernist artist, and in the actions of fasting, we may recognize the characteristics of modernism as an epoch in history […]
• The Influence of the Cultural Current “Modernism” on the Conception of Music in the 20th Century Modernism movement provoked composers changed their music from any possible perspective, and one of the most frequent was the change of music language and the necessity “to turn a composition into a ‘text’ constructed of […]
• The Rise of Modernism and Revolutionary Theories in Political and Cultural Life Although this emanated from the Western Europe, it resulted in the worldwide reorganization believed to have brought about the connection between the West and the rest of the world. This competition widened, which became the […]
• Le Corbusier: The Life of Modernist Architect It is through his remarkable designs that he received his nickname, Le Corbusier that was a rather annoying resemblance to his ancestor.
• American Modernism: Key Representatives and Evolution
• Fundamental Differences Between Modernism and Postmodernism
• Characteristics and Theoretical Framework of Modernism
• China’s Reform and the Transition From Nationalism to Modernism During the Dynastic Period
• Comparing the Industrial Age With the Era of Modernism
• Criticism and Self-Criticism in German Modernism
• Cubism and Its Influence on Cultural Productions Associated With Modernism
• Design and Comparison Between Modernism and Postmodernism
• Early 20th Century Eugenics as Part of Modernism
• The Creative Typographic Relationships Between Modernism and Current Design
• Factors That Helped to Shape Modernism
• Modernism and Fundamentalism in Islam Faith
• Henrik Ibsen: The Father of Modernism in Theatre
• Modernism and Its Effect on the Inner Self and Consciousness
• How Postmodernism Has Rejected the Modernism Movement
• How New York City’s Bridges and Rivers Became a Muse of Modernism
• Literary Devices and Modernism in Araby
• Meaning Modernism and Postmodernism in the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
• Modernism and Imperialism Themes in Orwell’s Work
• How Modernism Changed the Visual Art World Starkly
• Modernism and Its Impact on Art and Architecture
• Modern World Changes Brought by Modernism and Postmodernism
• Modernism and Its Impact on Society
• New York and American Modernism: Space, Time, and the Vision
• Symbolism and the Introduction of Psychology During the Literary Modernism Movement
• The Design Failure That Ended Modernism
• The Advantages and Disadvantages of Modernism
• The Modernism Movement During World War I
• The Relationship Between Gender and Modernism
• The Roaring 20’s: Modernism vs. Traditionalism
• Comparing Female Characters Victorian Era Modernism
• War and Modernism Poems During the Early 1900s
• What Are the Most Interesting Aspects of Modernism
• The Importance of the Year 1913 to the Development of Modernism
• The Historical Development of Literature From the Enlightenment Through Romanticism to Modernism
• The Philosophy of Modernism According to Robert Kaufman
• Modernism Concept of Poetry Dominated the 20th Century
• The Defiance of Postmodernism to Modernism Movement
• A Discussion About Definition of Modernism in Fiction Literature
• New Lives, New Landscapes: Rural Modernism in 20th Century Britain
• What Changes in the Modern World Are Caused by Modernism and Postmodernism?
• Is Henrik Ibsen the Father of Modernism in the Theater?
• What Was the Impact of Modernism on Society?
• How Did Modernism Affect the Culture in Europe?
• What Influence Did Modernism Have on Art and Architecture?
• How Are Zarathustra’s Three Metamorphoses Applied to Modernism?
• What Role Do Modernism and Fundamentalism Play in the Islamic Faith?
• Does Modernism Symbolize the Rejection of Tradition?
• What Are the Similarities Between Romanticism and Modernism?
• How Can Ulysses, Modernism, and Myth Be Explained Using a Modernist Approach?
• What Influence Did Cubism Have on Cultural Works Related to Modernism?
• Is Virginia Woolf the Founder of Modernism?
• What Are the Similarities and Differences Between Postmodernism and Modernism?
• Did Modernism Bring Much Change into the World?
• What Are the Key Representatives and Evolution of American Modernism?
• How Is Modernism Expressed Through African American Art?
• What Is the Importance of Modernism and Postmodernism in the Stories of Ernest Hemingway?
• How Is Modernism Related to Symbolic Interpretation Theory & Organizational Effectiveness?
• What Examples from Literature, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture Demonstrate Modernism?
• How Did Modernism and Postmodernism Affect Architecture After World War II?
• What Design Failure Marked the End of Modernism?
• Did Social Classes and Modernism Shape the Weimar Republic?
• What Are the Differences Between Realism, Modernism, and Postmodernism?
• How Did Modernism, Modernity, and Modernization Affect Urban Growth in Melbourne Between the Wars?
• What Is the Phenomenon of Modernism?
• How Are Modernism and Postmodernism Reflected in Literature?
• What Historical Events Took Place During the Period of Modernism?
• Are There Similarities Between Romanticism, Modernism, and Victorian Literature?
• What Factors Contributed to the Formation of Modernism?
• Does Modernism Affect the Inner Self and Consciousness?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, March 2). 160 Modernism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/modernism-essay-topics/

"160 Modernism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/modernism-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '160 Modernism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 2 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "160 Modernism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/modernism-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "160 Modernism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/modernism-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "160 Modernism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/modernism-essay-topics/.

• Postmodernism Essay Topics
• Andy Warhol Topics
• Contemporary Art Questions
• Epistemology Essay Titles
• Fashion Design Topics
• Expressionism Research Topics
• Impressionism Research Ideas
• Pablo Picasso Paper Topics
• Organizational Theory Topics
• Pluralism Paper Topics
• Scientific Revolution Titles
• Post-Structuralism Paper Topics
• Romanticism Titles
• Tolerance Essay Ideas
• Criticism Research Topics

Essays About Literature: Top 6 Examples and 8 Prompts

Society and culture are formed around literature. If you are writing essays about literature, you can use the essay examples and prompts featured in our guide.

It has been said that language holds the key to all human activities, and literature is the expression of language. It teaches new words and phrases, allows us to better our communication skills, and helps us learn more about ourselves.

Whether you are reading poems or novels, we often see parts of ourselves in the characters and themes presented by the authors. Literature gives us ideas and helps us determine what to say, while language gives form and structure to our ideas, helping us convey them.

6 Helpful Essay Examples

1. importance of literature by william anderson, 2. philippine literature by jean hodges, 3. african literature by morris marshall.

• 4.  Nine Questions From Children’s Literature That Every Person Should Answer by Shaunta Grimes

5. Exploring tyranny and power in Macbeth by Tom Davey

6. guide to the classics: homer’s odyssey by jo adetunji, 1. the importance of literature, 2. comparing and contrasting two works of literature  , 3. the use of literary devices, 4. popular adaptations of literature, 5. gender roles in literature, 6. analysis of your chosen literary work, 7. fiction vs. non-fiction, 8. literature as an art form.

“Life before literature was practical and predictable, but in the present-day, literature has expanded into countless libraries and into the minds of many as the gateway for comprehension and curiosity of the human mind and the world around them. Literature is of great importance and is studied upon as it provides the ability to connect human relationships and define what is right and what is wrong.”

Anderson writes about why an understanding of literature is crucial. It allows us to see different perspectives of people from different periods, countries, and cultures: we are given the ability to see the world from an entirely new lens. As a result, we obtain a better judgment of situations. In a world where anything can happen, literature gives us the key to enacting change for ourselves and others. You might also be interested in these essays about Beowulf .

“So successful were the efforts of colonists to blot out the memory of the country’s largely oral past that present-day Filipino writers, artists and journalists are trying to correct this inequity by recognizing the country’s wealth of ethnic traditions and disseminating them in schools through mass media. The rise of nationalistic pride in the 1960s and 1970s also helped bring about this change of attitude among a new breed of Filipinos concerned about the “Filipino identity.””

In her essay, Hodges writes about the history of Philippine literature. Unfortunately, much of Philippine literary history has been obscured by Spanish colonization, as the written works of the Spanish largely replaced the oral tradition of the native Filipinos. A heightened sense of nationalism has recently led to a resurgence in Filipino tradition, including ancient Philippine literature. 

“In fact, the common denominator of the cultures of the African continent is undoubtedly the oral tradition. Writing on black Africa started in the middle Ages with the introduction of the Arabic language and later, in the nineteenth century with introduction of the Latin alphabet. Since 1934, with the birth of the “Negritude.” African authors began to write in French or in English.”

Marshall explores the history of African literature, particularly the languages it was written over time. It was initially written in Arabic and native languages; however, with the “Negritude” movement, writers began composing their works in French or English. This movement allowed African writers to spread their work and gain notoriety. Marshall gives examples of African literature, shedding light on their lyrical content. 

4.   Nine Questions From Children’s Literature That Every Person Should Answer by Shaunta Grimes

“ They asked me questions — questions about who I am, what I value, and where I’m headed — and pushed me to think about the answers. At some point in our lives, we decide we know everything we need to know. We stop asking questions. To remember what’s important, it sometimes helps to return to that place of childlike curiosity and wonder.”

Grimes’ essay is a testament to how much we can learn from literature, even as simple as children’s stories. She explains how different works of children’s literature, such as Charlotte’s Web and Little Women, can inspire us, help us maximize our imagination, and remind us of the fleeting nature of life. Most importantly, however, they remind us that the future is uncertain, and maximizing it is up to us. 

“This is a world where the moral bar has been lowered; a world which ‘sinks beneath the yoke’. In the Macbeths, we see just how terribly the human soul can be corrupted. However, this struggle is played out within other characters too. Perhaps we’re left wondering: in such a dog-eat-dog world, how would we fare?”

The corruption that power can lead to is genuine; Davey explains how this theme is present in Shakespeare’s Macbeth . Even after being honored, Macbeth still wishes to be king and commits heinous acts of violence to achieve his goals. Violence is prevalent throughout the play, but Macbeth and Lady Macbeth exemplify the vicious cycle of bloodshed through their ambition and power. 

“Polyphemus is blinded but survives the attack and curses the voyage home of the Ithacans. All of Odysseus’s men are eventually killed, and he alone survives his return home, mostly because of his versatility and cleverness. There is a strong element of the trickster figure about Homer’s Odysseus.”

Adetunji also exposes a notable work of literature, in this case, Homer’s Odyssey . She goes over the epic poem and its historical context and discusses Odysseus’ most important traits: cleverness and courage. As the story progresses, he displays great courage and bravery in his exploits, using his cunning and wit to outsmart his foes. Finally, Adetunji references modern interpretations of the Odyssey in film, literature, and other media.

8 Prompts for Essays About Literature

In your essay, write about the importance of literature; explain why we need to study literature and how it can help us in the future. Then, give examples of literary works that teach important moral lessons as evidence. 

For your essay, choose two works of literature with similar themes. Then, discuss their similarities and differences in plot, theme, and characters. For example, these themes could include death, grief, love and hate, or relationships. You can also discuss which of the two pieces of literature presents your chosen theme better. 

Writers use literary devices to enhance their literary works and emphasize important points. Literary devices include personification, similes, metaphors, and more. You can write about the effectiveness of literary devices and the reasoning behind their usage. Research and give examples of instances where authors use literary devices effectively to enhance their message.  

Literature has been adapted into cinema, television, and other media time and again, with series such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter turning into blockbuster franchises. Explore how these adaptations diverge from their source material yet retain the key themes the writer composed the work with in mind. If this seems confusing, research first and read some essay examples. 

Literature reflects the ideas of the period it is from; for example, ancient Greek literature, such as Antigone, depicts the ideal woman as largely obedient and subservient, to an extent. For your essay, you can write about how gender roles have evolved in literature throughout the years, specifically about women. Be sure to give examples to support your points. 

Choose a work of literature that interests you and analyze it in your essay. You can use your favorite novel, book, or screenplay, explain the key themes and characters and summarize the plot. Analyze the key messages in your chosen piece of literature, and discuss how the themes are enhanced through the author’s writing techniques.

Literature can be divided into two categories: fiction, from the writer’s imagination, and non-fiction, written about actual events. Explore their similarities and differences, and give your opinion on which is better. For a strong argument, provide ample supporting details and cite credible sources.  

Literature is an art form that uses language, so do you believe it is more effective in conveying its message? Write about how literature compares to other art forms such as painting and sculpture; state your argument and defend it adequately. 

Tip: If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead.

For help picking your next essay topic, check out the best essay topics about social media .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

View all posts

• Architecture and Design
• Asian and Pacific Studies
• Business and Economics
• Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Computer Sciences
• Cultural Studies
• Engineering
• General Interest
• Geosciences
• Industrial Chemistry
• Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Library and Information Science, Book Studies
• Life Sciences
• Linguistics and Semiotics
• Literary Studies
• Materials Sciences
• Mathematics
• Social Sciences
• Sports and Recreation
• Theology and Religion
• Publish your article
• The role of authors
• Promoting your article
• Abstracting & indexing
• Publishing Ethics
• Why publish with De Gruyter
• How to publish with De Gruyter
• Our book series
• Our subject areas
• Your digital product at De Gruyter
• Contribute to our reference works
• Product information
• Tools & resources
• Product Information
• Promotional Materials
• Orders and Inquiries
• FAQ for Library Suppliers and Book Sellers
• Repository Policy
• Free access policy
• Open Access agreements
• Database portals
• For Authors
• Customer service
• People + Culture
• Journal Management
• How to join us
• Working at De Gruyter
• Mission & Vision
• De Gruyter Foundation
• De Gruyter Ebound
• Our Responsibility
• Partner publishers

Your purchase has been completed. Your documents are now available to view.

Essays on Modern Kurdish Literature

• Edited by: Alireza Korangy and Mahlagha Mortezaee
• X / Twitter

Please login or register with De Gruyter to order this product.

• Language: English
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Copyright year: 2023
• Audience: Scholars in Middle and Near Eastern Studies, Comparative Literature, Anthropology
• Front matter: 7
• Main content: 213
• Keywords: Kurdish Studies ; Kurdish Feminist Literature ; Nationhood and Literature ; Modern Kurdish Literature
• Published: July 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9783110634686
• ISBN: 9783110630039

Jump to navigation

Inviting Presences: Intratextual Subjectivities in Early Modern Women’s Writing

Surveying the absence on her shelf where Elizabethan women’s writing ought to be, Virginia Woolf (in)famously dismissed the possibility of Shakespeare’s sister ever finding “a room of her own” to develop her voice. Recent decades of literary scholarship have shown the invention with which early modern women built out their own textual “rooms,” finding voice in surprising places and forms (even in silence, as Christina Luckyj heard [2002]), in visions of new political subjectivities (in a radically equal imaginary, as seen by Mihiko Suzuki [2003]), and through networks of overlooked community (in coteries and in letters, as traced by James Daybell [2006]). Even more, we have become attuned to the way that early modern women’s texts are not merely “rooms,” blank potentials for an author to inscribe her subjectivity, but rich multivocal chambers whose voices rebound on their author.

We invite proposals for papers to be presented at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in Toronto, ON, October 31 to November 2, 2024, which pursue questions concerning alternate textual presences in early modern European women’s writing. Often writing from the margins of political or social community, women writers play with absence and desire to invite presence, of all kinds. How do paradoxes of absence/presence and monologue/dialogue manifest in writing by early modern women? How do women writers craft texts which entreat, invite, or summon other presences – be they interlocutors or friends, human or divine?

Suitable topics will focus on early modern (c. 1500-1660) literary texts written by women and might include:

How presence is summoned/evoked, including in the substitution of objects for subjects

Substantiation of longing and desire

Intertextuality and authorial identity

Anonymity, paratext, and book material culture

Gaps in the archive

Please send paper abstracts (250w) and brief biographical notes (150w) to Dr. Jantina Ellens [email protected] and Dr. Joel Faber [email protected] by Friday, April 12, 2024.