by Sarah Murray

Created on: February 01, 2009   Last Updated: February 20, 2009

For many centuries, art and literature have undergone innumerable adaptations in order to better represent the requirements and the desires of the societies by which they were created. The Renaissance era was a breaking from the traditions of the Medieval era, and a response to the discoveries of the 'New World'. The next era in the line of succession was one of order, of chaos, and of the Romantics, and was followed by a period consumed by the appearance of social conscience and morality. This rigidity of the Victorian era, with its attempts to fully capture the contemporary social injustices by way of Realism, lead to the birth of the radical, experimental works of the Modernists.

The definition of the term, Modernism, has long been a source of contention, but at its root, it refers to one who is an advocate of all things modern. In light of this, it would perhaps be more effective to view Modernism as not an extension of Realism, but rather a discontinuation of it, and to take into consideration which features of its theoretical predecessor it rejects, rather than accepts, when attempting to define the concepts of this movement.

This "tradition of the new" (Childs, 2000: 1) actively denounced the sentimental and inaccurate representational conventions of the Victorian era, and was present in all forms of art; music, painting, film, architecture and literature were all affected by the Modernist movement. This embracing of innovation and novelty may also stem from the social concerns that arose from the volume of violent conflicts that took place in Europe and Africa, amongst other locations, from the beginning of the 20th century; in denouncing the artistic conventions of one's past and present worlds, it is possible to create new art, and by extension, and a new world.

In order to properly inform the public, and their potential readerships, of their intentions as to how they would offer "alternate ways of representing reality and the world" (Childs, 2000: 3), many authors produced Manifestos. These statements of intent were as varied as they were numerous, though all stemmed from their experiences of the modern world. Yet, despite their efforts to educate their readers, this often did not occur in the first instance:

Modernist writing 'plunges' the reader into a confusing and difficult mental landscape, which cannot be immediately understood but which must be moved through and mappedby the reader in order to understand its limits and meanings. (Childs, 2000:

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>