20th Century Literature in English 1 - Comprehensive Summary
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Course
20th Century Literature in English 1 (1123FLWTLE)
Institution
Universiteit Antwerpen (UA)
In this summary the contents of the 3rd Ba course '20th Century Literature in English 1' are comprehensively compiled. This summary contains all information needed to pass the written exam, with a mock-up sheet of possible questions, seminar discussions of the primary reading materials, and an over...
Table of Contents
Introduction to Modernism..........................................................................................................2
Words, Words, Words; Modern, Modernity, Modernism (see P. Childe’s Introduction, Modernism).........2
Modernist Genre.............................................................................................................................................3
Modernism - Literary characteristics..............................................................................................................3
The Two Pillars of Modernism........................................................................................................................4
David Herman's ‘Re-Minding Modernism’.....................................................................................................5
Modernism and Gender..................................................................................................................................6
The Short Story: The Garden Party.................................................................................................................6
Colonialism & Modernism............................................................................................................7
Late Victorian England (circa 1897); The Heyday of The British Empire........................................................7
Joseph Conrad’s Life.......................................................................................................................................7
‘An Outpost of Progress’ (1897).....................................................................................................................8
Set in the remote African wilderness, the story follows two European men, Kayerts and Carlier, who are
assigned to manage a colonial trading post. Despite their supposed “civilized” background, they are
inexperienced and inept, relying heavily on their Black worker, Makola, to handle trade with the local
tribes. Initially, the men enjoy their new authority and the seeming simplicity of their duties. However, as
time passes, isolation, boredom, and the oppressive environment take a toll on their mental state. They
struggle with their own insignificance in the vast, indifferent jungle and fail to comprehend the cultural
complexities of the people around them. The turning point comes when Makola orchestrates the sale of
local villagers to a group of slave traders in exchange for valuable ivory. Though appalled at first, Kayerts
and Carlier ultimately accept the trade, revealing their moral weakness. This event further erodes their
sense of purpose and humanity.....................................................................................................................8
As their isolation deepens, the two men descend into paranoia and hostility toward one another. A petty
argument over some sugar cubes escalates into violence, resulting in Carlier’s death at the hands of
Kayerts. Overcome with guilt and despair, Kayerts hangs himself, leaving the trading post abandoned.....8
The story critiques European colonialism, exposing its greed, moral corruption, and dehumanizing effects
on both colonizers and the colonized. It also explores themes of isolation, futility, and the fragility of
civilization in the face of nature’s vastness and indifference. Seemingly insignificant events bring on
catastrophe.....................................................................................................................................................8
‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899-1902).....................................................................................................................8
Seminar Questions – ‘Heart of Darkness’....................................................................................14
Irish Modernism & ‘The Great Modernist’..................................................................................15
Anglo-Irish History and Tensions..................................................................................................................15
The Irish Literary Revival...............................................................................................................................16
Naturalism vs. Modernism............................................................................................................................16
James Joyce’s Life.........................................................................................................................................17
The ‘Uncle Charles’ principle........................................................................................................................17
‘The Dead’: A Modernist Story?....................................................................................................................17
‘Nausicaa’ in Ulysses.....................................................................................................................................18
Portrait of The Artist as A Young Man..........................................................................................................19
“Look within”.............................................................................................................................21
Virginia Woolf’s Life......................................................................................................................................21
‘Modern Fiction’ (1919, 1925)......................................................................................................................22
‘Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown’ (1924)..........................................................................................................22
‘The Mark on The Wall’ (1917).....................................................................................................................22
‘Mrs. Dalloway’ (1925)..................................................................................................................................23
T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound............................................................................................................27
Symbolism vs. Imagism.................................................................................................................................27
“Make it New”.............................................................................................................................................27
Thomas Stearns Eliot’s Life...........................................................................................................................28
‘The Waste Land’ (1922)...............................................................................................................................29
1
, Late Modernism.........................................................................................................................33
Modernist Drama..........................................................................................................................................33
Samuel Beckett’s Life....................................................................................................................................33
“Gress” and Failure.......................................................................................................................................34
‘Fin de Partie’ / ‘Endgame’ (1957)................................................................................................................34
Postmodernism..........................................................................................................................35
Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist?..........................................................................................................36
Weak Theory.................................................................................................................................................37
Written Exam................................................................................................................................................37
Example questions........................................................................................................................................38
Introduction to Modernism “The danger is in the
neatness of identification.”
💡Modernism = approx. 1890 - 1930
- S. Beckett
→ fluid and porous borders; the term isn’t exact!
→ aesthetic “isms” often break from their predecessors but it’s NOT a one-way street, there
is interaction!
Words, Words, Words; Modern, Modernity, Modernism (see P. Childe’s
Introduction, Modernism)
The word “modern” often implies a radical change from its predecessor, by calling
something “modern” a newness is implied.
“Modernity” is NOT “Modernism”, we are arguably still living in Modernity, but Modernism
is a literary or aesthetic period. The term Modernity was first used by Baudelaire in ‘The
Painter of Modern Life’ (1863), but the concept has existed since the Renaissance.
→ overwhelming mood of negativity! Rapid change is difficult to deal with, a lot of
insecurity and disillusionment.
Defenders of Modernism
Some thinkers defend this progress in light of productivity (e.g. J. Habermas, Le Corbusier);
- emancipation of human beings as opposed to fear of God
- further extension of Enlightenment
- Never-ending project
- Power, the beauty of speed
2
,Critics of Modernism
Some thinkers heavily criticised the modern world (T.S. Eliot, Walter Benjamin)
- materialism
- colonialism
- loss of meaning, alienation
- power and violence, ruin → Angelus Novus, Paul Klee (interpretation of W. Benjamin
“This storm is what we call progress.”)
Ferdinand Tonnies theorised about a shift from Gemeinschaft (rural, close-knit community)
→ Gesellschaft (urban, anonymity).
In Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), the smallness of humanity is illustrated in opposition to
the rapid progress of technology.
Many of the “new” developments of our time are just upgrades of what was invented in
Modern Times (except for the internet). Many inventions were completely new; air flight,
electric kettles, telephones, architecture, …
→ Architecture is a good reflection of what society was like, as buildings reflect the needs of
humans at that time.
Pioneering thinkers: Marx (industrialization), Darwin (evolution, change), Freud
(psychoanalysis), Bergson (personal time), Nietzsche (nihilism), de Saussure
(meaninglessness of language), Einstein (relativity, instability).
Georg Lukàcs disagreed with Modernists and the way people were depicted as asocial,
ahistorical and solitary. He states you can’t write meaningful stories without referring to
concrete historical events.
Theodor Adorno contrasts this by stating that Modernism tries to change society by offering
it shockingly radical art forms.
Modernist Genre Modernism - Literary characteristics
1 Anti-historicism = history is not evolutionary and not progressive (effects of WWII)
2 Focus on microcosm vs macrocosm
3 Art becomes self-referential
4 Disjointed and disintegrated (unlike Victorian Harmony)
💡In short: Modernism is a response to the crisis of modernity.
→ Modernist writers rejected the Hegelian view of history, but that didn’t mean they
rejected the importance of history.
Child quotes H. Rosenberg who describes this process as “the tradition of the new” →
tradition remains important in forming “the new” because often the so-called “innovations”
are drawn from existing literary tradition.
Is Modernism really that different from Realism?
Realism is rooted in verisimilitude (’semblance of reality’), but Modernism is too, just in a
different way.
Ian Watt writes about Realism that it should portray all the different types of experience,
and that individual experience is unique and therefore always new. However, later on, the
Realist tradition would evolve to focus mostly on society.
Modernist fiction attempts to render human Subjectivity in ways ‘more real than realism’.
Joyce called what we call Realism = romantic classicism, and what we call Modernism = the
new realism.
Stream-of-consciousness writing is very present in Ulysses by James Joyce. → The
protagonist looks at a box of tea, and a word association starts.
Realism proposed a ‘shared world’ perceived in largely the same way by all members of
society. Modernism focuses on different individuals and how all people experience the
world differently. (- Child’s)
The Two Pillars of Modernism
1. “Make it New” - Ezra Pound
modify and overturn old existing modes of representation. Radical innovation is needed
because the world is changing and we should change with it.
It breaks with the typical formalities of previous writing styles (stream of consciousness, in
medias res, intertextuality, …)
→ This is what makes Modernism a bit pretentious and elitist because you have to be very
educated on the history and typical formalities of writing before Modernism.
William James (brother of Henry James) was a psychologist who first used the term “stream
of thought, of consciousness”
2. “Look within” - Virginia Woolf
“examine an ordinary mind on an ordinary day.”
4
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