List of modernist writers

Literary modernism, or modernist literature, has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America. Modernism is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional styles of poetry and verse. Modernists experimented with literary form and expression, adhering to Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new".[1] The modernist literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time.[2] It is debatable when the modernist literary movement began, though some have chosen 1910 as roughly marking the beginning and quote novelist Virginia Woolf, who declared that human nature underwent a fundamental change "on or about December 1910."[3] But modernism was already stirring by 1899, with works such as Joseph Conrad's (1857–1924) Heart of Darkness, while Alfred Jarry's (1873–1907) absurdist play, Ubu Roi appeared even earlier, in 1896.

When modernism ends is debatable. Though The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature sees Modernism ending by c.1939,[4] with regard to British and American literature, "When (if) Modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to Modernism occurred".[5] Clement Greenberg sees Modernism ending in the 1930s, with the exception of the visual and performing arts,[6] In fact many literary modernists lived into the 1950s and 1960s, though generally speaking they were no longer producing major works. The term late modernism is also sometimes applied to modernist works published after 1930.[7] Among modernists (or late modernists) still publishing after 1945 were Wallace Stevens, Gottfried Benn, T. S. Eliot, Anna Akhmatova, William Faulkner, Dorothy Richardson, John Cowper Powys, and Ezra Pound. Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published his most important modernist poem Briggflatts in 1965. In addition Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil was published in 1945 and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus in 1947. Samuel Beckett, who died in 1989, has been described as a "later modernist".[8] Beckett is a writer with roots in the expressionist tradition of modernism, who produced works from the 1930s until the 1980s, including Molloy (1951), En attendant Godot (1953), Happy Days (1961), Rockaby (1981). The poets Charles Olson (1910-1970) and J. H. Prynne (1936- ) are, amongst other writing in the second half of the 20th century, who have been described as late modernists.[9]


The following is a list of significant modernist writers:

References

  1. ↑ Pound, Ezra, Make it New, Essays, London, 1935
  2. ↑ Childs, Peter (2008). Modernism. Routledge. p. 4. ISBN 0415415462.
  3. ↑ Virginia Woolf. "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown." Collected Essays. Ed. Leonard Woolf. Vol. 1. London: Hogarth, 1966. pages 319-337.
  4. ↑ J. H. Dettmar "Modernism" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature ed. by David Scott Kastan. Oxford University Press, 2006.
  5. ↑ "modernism", The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Edited by Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.
  6. ↑ Clement Greenberg: Modernism and Postmodernism, William Dobell Memorial Lecture, Sydney, Australia, 31 October 1979, Arts 54, No.6 (February 1980). His final essay on modernism. Retrieved 26 October 2011
  7. ↑ Cheryl Hindrichs, "Late Modernism, 1928–1945: Criticism and Theory" Literature Compass, Volume 8, Issue 11, pages 840–855, November 2011; J. H. Dettmar "Modernism" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature ed. by David Scott Kastan. Oxford University Press, 2006.
  8. ↑ Morris Dickstein, "An Outsider to His Own Life", Books, The New York Times, August 3, 1997.
  9. ↑ Late modernist poetics: From Pound to Prynne by Anthony Mellors; see also Prynne's publisher, Bloodaxe Books.
  10. ↑ Ulysses, has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire [Modernist] movement". Beebe, Maurice (Fall 1972). "Ulysses and the Age of Modernism". James Joyce Quarterly (University of Tulsa) 10 (1): p. 176.

See also