Every literary period is modern in its own eyes.

The ancient Greeks of 5th century BC Athens thought they were modern. The Romantics in their day thought they were modern. The writers of Realism saw themselves as modern in rejecting the Romantics. We just dont have a good term right now for the literary era in which we live. By default, we call most literary works written after World War I "modern." It is difficult to look at our own times and see what literary era we are living in and come up with a good name for it. "Modern" is the best that we can do for now. Some of the cultural and historical great events of the modern era include

Historical, Social, & Cultural Highlights of the Modern Era

two devastating almost-global wars: World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1941-1945) huge changes in industry and technology as compared to the 19th century the rise in power and influence of international corporations interconnectedness across the globe: cultural exchanges, transportation, communication, mass (or popular) culture from the West (with "West" being considered Europe and North America) the "Westernization" of many formerly traditional societies and nations and a resulting change in their values (often their the detriment of the formerly traditional society and nation). These "modern" values include a belief in the desirability of industrialization, individual political rights, democracy, mass literacy and education, private ownership of the means of production, the scientific method, public institutions like those in the West, middle class Western value systems, a disbelief inor at least a questioning ofthe existence of God, and (sometimes) the emancipation of women

The literature of the modern period has it roots in the literature of Europe and grows out of a reaction to Realism and Naturalism. As a reaction against Realism and Naturalism, some critics see in Modernism at least four "isms" or literary movements that make up the literature of the Modern era: impressionism, expressionism, surrealism, and nihilism.

Four Literary "isms" Inside Modernism 1. Whereas Realism attempted to portray external objects and events as the common or middle class man sees them in everyday life, impressionism tries to portray the psychological impressions these objects and events make on characters, emphasizing the role of individual perception and exploring the nature of the conscious and unconscious mind. 2. Whereas Realism tried to focus on these external objects and events,expressionism tried to express the inner vision, the inner emotion, or the inner spiritual reality that seem more important than the external realities of objects and events. 3. Whereas Realism focused on external objects and events as they are (verisimilitude), surrealism tried to liberate the subconscious, to see connections overlooked by the logical mind, to deny the supreme

authority of rationality and so portray objects and events as they seem rather than as they are. 4. Whereas Realism tried to show the supreme importance of rationalness and reason, absurdism tried to duplicate in literature the absurd conditions of contemporary life: nameless millions dying in wars, commonplace horrors such as the Holocaust, a world in which "God is dead" cast mankind afloat in a chartless and unknowable world void of a spiritual center, the ultimate absurd circumstances in which contemporary humankind found itself.

Modernism shares with Realism

a focus on the psychology of the individual sees the work of art as a coherent whole worthy of study.

Some of the characteristics of Modernism are that those pieces of literature we call Modern often

Characteristics of Modernism in Literature uses images ("word pictures") and symbols as typical and frequent literary techniques uses colloquial language rather than formal language uses language in a very self-conscious way, seeing language as a technique for crafting the piece of literature just as an artist crafts a piece of art like a sculpture or a painting uses language as a special medium that influences what that piece of literature can do or can be saw the piece of literature as an object crafted by an artist using particular techniques, crafts, skills (recall how the Romantics thought the piece of literature was a work of genius that somehow appears full-blown from the imagination of the genius). Form, style, and technique thus become as important--if not more so-than content or substance. often, the intention of writers in the Modern period is to change the way readers see the world and to change our understanding of what language is and does

From Modernism to Postmodernism "Postmodern" is the term used to suggest contemporary literature of the last half of the 20th century. It differs from Modernism is several ways

Characteristics of PostModernism in Literature 1. Whereas Modernism places faith in the ideas, values, beliefs, culture, and norms of the West, Postmodernism rejects Western values and beliefs as only a small part of the human experience and often rejects such ideas, beliefs, culture, and norms. 2. Whereas Modernism attempts to reveal profound truths of experience and life, Postmodernism is suspicious of being "profound" because such ideas are based on one particular Western value systems. 3. Whereas Modernism attempts to find depth and interior meaning beneath the surface of objects and

events, Postmodernism prefers to dwell on the exterior image and avoids drawing conclusions or suggesting underlying meanings associated with the interior of objects and events. 4. Whereas Modernism focused on central themes and a united vision in a particular piece of literature, Postmodernism sees human experience as unstable, internally contradictory, ambiguous, inconclusive, indeterminate, unfinished, fragmented, discontinuous, "jagged," with no one specific reality possible. Therefore, it focuses on a vision of a contradictory, fragmented, ambiguous, indeterminate, unfinished, "jagged" world. 5. Whereas Modern authors guide and control the readers response to their work, the Postmodern writer creates an "open" work in which the reader must supply his own connections, work out alternative meanings, and provide his own (unguided) interpretation.

Modernism, as a literary style, emerged after WWI, beginning in Europe and then progressing into American literature by the late 1920s. After the First World War many people questioned the chaos and the insanity of it all. The worlds universal truths and trust in authority figures began to crumble, and Modernism was a response to the destruction of these beliefs. The modernist movement in fictional writing broke through in the U.S. with William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (1929), which had a mixture of raving and ranting reviews. If you've read it I'm sure you know why . . . super confusing but brilliant. Faulkner went on to influence future modernist works like Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour (1934), Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Hemmingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), to just name a few. It was more than a literary movement, though. Modernism can be seen in many types of artistic expression from the period 1928-1945 in America; but this write will address Modernism in writing, so, heres a list of the characteristics: Modernisms characteristics: Fragmentation in plot, characters, theme, images, and overall storyline. Thus, for instance, many modernist works are not in the typical linear sequence. Loss is a huge theme in modernist works. The truth is questionable, as a common theme, and thus, you cannot always trust the narrator to tell the truth, whereas in traditional literature it is the narrators job to make the reader understand whats going on. Also, there may be more than one narrator, showing the diversity of truth. The destruction of the family unit. Characters may be given little or no physical description, and one or more characters is usually an "outcast." Authority figures are often untrustworthy, reflecting the question of truth. Movement away from religion. The reversal of traditional roles (Example: women doing something typically male and/or vice versa. Or the changing of customary racial roles). Ambiguous ending; such works often leave a lot of questions with the reader; they dont tie everything up for you. Often setting is more than just the setting (i.e. more meaning to it than just where the story takes place), or, maybe there is no setting at all. The use of improper grammar to reflect dialect. More sexuality and the use of intertextuality are often found. More use of the first person narrative, reflecting the lack of universal truth, i.e. there are only individual truths. As you can see, modernism is more complex than traditional writing, where there is usually one narrator (third person typically) whose job it is to explain everything to the reader. Background is just that, background. The writing is in

chronological order and all loose ends are tied up for you in the end. Postmodernism came about around the end of WWII, though not actually studied as a form until the mid 1980s. The characteristics are the same as modernism except postmodernism is more playful or celebratory regarding the world's "insanity." The idea being, okay, the world is chaotic, there are no universal truths, lets see what we can do with that. Examples of postmodern works include: Anais Nin's Under a Glass Bell (1944), William Gass's In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (1968), and Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987). Both modernism and postmodernism may have all or some of the above characteristics; it isnt required that all of the traits are used in order for a piece to be classified as modernist writing. The key characteristics are usually fragmentation, loss, distrust of authority, and the lack of universal truths.

What are the characteristics of Postmodernism? When listing the chracteristics of postmodernism, it is important to remember that postmodernists do not place their philosophy in a defined box or category. Their beliefs and practices are personal rather than being identifiable with a particular establishment or special interest group. The following principles appear elemental to postmodernists:

There is no absolute truth - Postmodernists believe that the notion of truth is a contrived illusion, misused by people and special interest groups to gain power over others. Truth and error are synonymous - Facts, postmodernists claim, are too limiting to determine anything. Changing erratically, what is fact today can be false tomorrow. Self-conceptualization and rationalization - Traditional logic and objectivity are spurned by postmodernists. Preferring to rely on opinions rather than embrace facts, postmodernist spurn the scientific method. Traditional authority is false and corrupt - Postmodernists speak out against the constraints of religious morals and secular authority. They wage intellectual revolution to voice their concerns about traditional establishment. Ownership - They claim that collective ownership would most fairly administrate goods and services. Disillusionment with modernism - Postmodernists rue the unfulfilled promises of science, technology, government, and religion. Morality is personal - Believing ethics to be relative, postmodernists subject morality to personal opinion. They define morality as each persons private code of ethics without the need to follow traditional values and rules. Globalization Many postmodernists claim that national boundaries are a hindrance to human communication. Nationalism, they believe, causes wars. Therefore, postmodernists often propose internationalism and uniting separate countries. All religions are valid - Valuing inclusive faiths, postmodernists gravitate towards New Age religion. They denounce the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ as being the only way to God. Liberal ethics - Postmodernists defend the cause of feminists and homosexuals. Pro-environmentalism - Defending Mother Earth, postmodernists blame Western society for its destruction

Modernist writers proclaimed a new "subject matter" for literature and they felt that their new way of looking at life required a new form, a new way of writing. Writers of this period tend to pursue more experimental and usually more highly individualistic forms of writing. The sense of a changing world was stimulated by radical new developments, such as:

new insights from the emerging fields of psychology and sociology anthropological studies of comparative religion theories of electromagnetism and quantum physics a growing critique of British imperialism, and the rise of independence movements in the colonies the increasing threat of fascism and doctrines of racial superiority in Germany the escalation of warfare to a global level

the rise of internationalism, and pacifist and disarmament movements the extension of democracy, without discrimination as to race or sex the increasing dissemination, impact, and influence of non-white cultures the entrance of women into the broader work force, and the development of social feminism the emergence of a new "city consciousness" new information technologies such as radio and cinema the rise of mass communication, and the growth of newspapers and periodical literature

Some of the features of the new sense of reality: the replacement of a belief in absolute, knowable truth with a sense of relative, provisional truths (Einstein's first book on relativity 1905);an awareness of "reality" as a constructed fiction a focus on the unconscious as an important source of motivation (Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams 1900) a turning away from teleological ways of thinking about time to a sense of time as discontinuous, overlapping, non-chronological in the way we experience it; a shift from linear time to "moment time," and from "progress" to "flux" a grasp of the inseparability of external reality and the perceiving mind; [compare developments in painting: moving from "representational" Victorian painting (painting that represents identifiable, often narrative, scenes in external reality) through Impressionism (e.g. Whistler; the attempt to paint the quality of the sensations stimulated by the external scene) to Post-Impressionism (e.g. Matisse; the "painterly" scene, the pure elements of colour and form] a focus on epistemological concerns (how do we know what we know?) and linguistic concerns (how is what we think inseparable from the forms in which we think?) a sense of the breakdown of a shared linguistic community; a reaction against the dominance of rational, logical, "patriarchal" discourse and its monopoly of power; leading to new pluralistic modelings of community Some manifestations of new approaches in modernist fiction: character: a disappearance of character summary, of discrete well-demarcated characters as in Dickens; the representation of the self as diverse, contradictory, ambiguous, multiple plot: scepticism about linear plots with sudden climactic turning points and clear resolutions; the use instead of discontinuous fragments, "moment time," a-chronological leaps in time, contrapuntal multiple plots, open unresolved endings style: "stream of consciousness"--tracing non-linear thought processes, moving by the "logic of association" or the "logic of the unconscious"; imagistic rather than logical connections point of view (or focalization): a rejection of the single, authoritative, omniscient point of view for a narrative focalized instead through the consciousness of one character whose point of view is limited--or through several characters who establish relative, multiple points of view--or through a shifting and plastic narrating consciousness that moves in and out of different characters' views

To characterize postmodernism, we must look briefly at what came before:modernism. "Modern" was once used liberally as an adjective to describe many things--from the latest kitchen gadget to a style of art. But "modern" also refers to a specific period of time (roughly 1870 through the mid-1960s) and to the range of cultural ideas, beliefs, and artifacts that people generated during that period.

Modernism was grounded in the beliefs of the Enlightenment--a time in western civilization (roughly 1730-1800) in which the "great minds" of the West began to disbelieve in the authority of the Judeo-Christian God as the basis for the truth and the law that undergird society and culture. Replacing traditional beliefs in God, church, and king, they established a new authority centered in man and his rational abilities to create a new, "liberated" social and intellectual framework for human endeavor. The modernist believed that science had shaken the foundations of traditional authorities and truths. (Consider, for example, how three developments--the steam engine, the harnessing of electricity, and Darwin's evolutionary theory-had radically altered the social consciousness of western man.) Modern man could find a new, rational foundation for universal truth; science, particularly, would reveal new truth, which, when applied to modern society and institutions, would literally remake the world. Modernism "... held the extravagant expectation that the arts and sciences would further not only the control of the forces of nature but also the understanding of self and world, moral progress, justice in social institutions, and even human happiness." (Jurgen Habermas,Modernity: An Unfinished Project, pp 162-63.) Modernism presupposed an understanding of human identity and self that was unified, coherent, and autonomous: man was a thinking being capable of rationally perceiving, knowing, and conquering the world--and he would. To be "modern," then, was to embrace the power of scientific rationality, the spirit of progress, a vision of unlimited potential for human society, and an optimism for the future in which man could obtain his two greatest needs: meaning and material security.

Looking to man and not God, the optimism of modernism has proven itself ill-founded. The response has been postmodernism. The best Christian book on postmodernism that I have found is A Primer on Postmodernismby Stanley J. Grenz. In this article, however, I will have to describe postmodernism more briefly, which I will do by looking at five presuppositions inherent in the postmodern worldview: (1) The quest for truth is a lost cause. It is a search for a "holy grail" that doesn't exist and never did. Postmodernists argue that objective, universal, knowable truth is mythical; all we have ever found in our agonized search for Truth are "truths" that were compelling only in their own time and culture, but true Truth has never been ours. Furthermore, if we make the mistake of claiming to know the Truth, we are deluded at best and dangerous at worst. (2) A person's sense of identity is a composite constructed by the forces of the surrounding culture. Individual consciousness--a vague, "decentered" collection of unconscious and conscious beliefs, knowledge, and intuitions about oneself and the world--is malleable and arrived at through interaction with the surrounding culture.

Postmodernism then, in stark contrast to modernism, is about the dissolving of the self. From the postmodernist perspective, we should not think of ourselves as unique, unified, self-conscious, autonomous persons. (3) The languages of our culture (the verbal and visual signs we use to represent the world to ourselves) literally "construct" what we think of as "real" in our everyday existence. In this sense, reality is a "text" or "composite" of texts, and these texts (rather than the God-created reality) are the only reality we can know.

Our sense of self--who we are, how we think of ourselves, as well as how we see and interpret the world and give ourselves meaning in it--is subjectively constructed through language. (4) "Reality" is created by those who have power. One of postmodernism's preeminent theorists, Michel Foucault, combines the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas about how those in power shape the world with a theory of how language is the primary tool for making culture. Foucault argues that whoever dominates or controls the "official" use of language in a society holds the key to social and political power. (Think, for example, of how official political "spin" control of specific words and phrases can alter the public perception of political decisions, policies, and events.) Put simply, Nietzsche said all reality is someone's willful, powerful construction; Foucault says language is the primary tool in that construction. (5) We should neutralize the political power inherent in language by "deconstructing" it. Another leading postmodernist, Jacques Derrida, theorizes that the language we use when we make statements always creates a set of opposite beliefs, a "binary," one of which is "privileged" and the other of which is "marginalized," and the privileged belief is always favored. For example, if one says "Honey is better for you than white sugar," this statement of opinion has "privileged" honey over white sugar. In the arena of morals one might say "Sex should only happen in marriage," in which case the experience of sex in marriage is "privileged" and sex out of wedlock is "marginalized." Derrida argues that all language is made up of these binaries, and they are always socially and politically loaded. "Deconstruction" is the practice of identifying these power-loaded binaries and restructuring them so that the marginalized or "unprivileged" end of the binary can be consciously focused upon and favored. Some examples The central characteristics of postmodernism present us with a radically different way of looking at life. At this point, however, we need to remember the proverb that says "If you want to know about water, don't ask a fish!" The postmodernist elements of our culture are to us like water to the fish: we live and breathe in them everyday, but we take them so much for granted that it is very difficult for us to see them. Perhaps the most general characteristics of postmodernism are fragmentation and pluralism. Our culture is rapidly reaching the point where we no longer think of ourselves in a universe but rather a multi-verse. In the postmodern worldview, transience, flux, and fragmentation describe our growing sense of how things really are. Where do we see this played out around us? Personal identity. At the level of the individual, there abides a sense of uncertainty about how to understand oneself; most people consciously search for a sense of identity--for who and what they are and for what significance and worth they have. Our media-generated, consumer culture daily offers us a thousand choices for who we should be like, what we should value, and how we can attain worth and significance. And we take these images for what is real. So, for example, tennis pro Andre Agassi can say "Image is everything!" in an advertisement, and we believe him. The recent, wildly successful sitcom "Seinfeld" vaunts itself as a "show about nothing." Isolated, narcissistic, urban, "thirty-something singles" float through their existences trying to make sense out of what they ultimately perceive to be a meaningless, patchwork world. We laugh as we watch these actors portray individuals with no roots, vague identities, and conscious indifference to morals outside their self-determined ones. George riotously works out his "pathetic" life "going with" whatever works for him at the moment in jobs, scams, or relationships. The commercial and critical success of this show is attributable not only to the genius of its script, character development, and acting, but also to the way the audience identifies with the fragmented, ludicrous, pastiche of "moments" which make up the characters' lives. Seinfeld is uniquely postmodern in its presentation of groundless, malleable character identities. It is

also postmodern--as are most TV sitcoms today--in its radical, up-front play with "moralities" altered at the characters' whim; there is no one morality. Education and academics. From the modernist perspective, truth was largely relative, but the possibility of universals in knowledge remained conceivable. In the postmodern model, we don't really "know" anything; rather, we "interpret." Postmodernist education says "Pick a worldview," as if only a choice of clothing style were at issue, "and create your interpretations accordingly," since truths are only language constructions put in place by those who have influence and power. The emphasis on multi-cultural education is grounded philosophically in this perspective. After all, says the postmodernist educator, the emphasis in Western education on rationality and the quest for what is ultimately true is only another manifestation of Western "cultural imperialism" motivated by consumer capitalist power. Popular media. Nowhere are the effects of postmodernism more glaring than in pop culture and its media. Image and fiction are promoted as reality in contemporary music, television, and print media by producers who understand the power of visual image to present a fictional reality that we will accept as reality itself. Dissolving the distinction between fiction and truth is justified by the postmodernist, because truth itself is a fiction; all we ever get are the fictions of our language games. The quintessential example of postmodern media production is MTV. From its fast, fragmented production editing to its underlying visions (sexual moral relativism, for example), MTV represents the "cutting edge" of postmodernism applied to consumer media. MTV's editors "collage" the shows together into a jumpy, stream-of-consciousness presentation that leaves older viewers baffled by its pace and apparent incoherence. But to the postmodern "generation-X" crowd who make a steady diet of it, MTV's randomness is normal. MTV's twenty-four-hour parade of images, pseudo-documentaries, hedonistic dating-scenario game shows, music videos, and cutting-edge advertisements relentlessly assault one's visual and auditory senses, leaving viewers feeling fragmented and transient within a decentered plural-reality: the postmodern world.

In considering postmodernist aesthetic practices in parallel with the postmodern lack of political consensus, Lyotard invokes "the lack of consensus of taste." Instead these aesthetic practices are characterized by an affirmation of their multiplicity. None needs to be defined by any given form, however multiple or fragmented, as was the case in modernist aesthetics, and as would be demanded from art by the consensus of modernist taste. By contrast, postmodernist aesthetic practices may adopt any form, outlook, or agenda, new or old, and allow for other (than postmodernist) practices and alternative approaches. The postmodernist aesthetic is thus defined by the (political) sense of this multiplicity of practices. Literature. Continuing the narrative experiments of the modernists, the first generation of postmodernists, American and British writers of the 1960s and 1970s "metafiction" (Kurt Vonnegut, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, John Fowles, and Angela Carter), produced texts that simultaneously questioned and violated the conventions of traditional narrative. Similarly the postmodernist Language poets (Lyn Bernstein, Charles Hejinian, and Bob Perelman), inspired by the linguistic experiments of modernism and the new ideas of poststructuralism, deployed a fractured, systematically deranged language aimed at destabilizing the systems (intellectual, cultural, or political) constructed through language. The fragmentation, intertextuality, and discontinuity that characterize so much of experimental modernist and postmodernist literature find a kind of fulfillment in the inherently fragmented, intertextual, and discontinuous form of "hypertext," a computer-generated Web text with multiple branching links.

Another hallmark of postmodern literature, and of postmodern art in general, is the erosion of the boundaries between "high," elite, or serious art and "low," popular art, or entertainment. Decidedly serious literary works now make use of genres long thought to belong only to popular work. A related phenomenon is the development of numerous hybrid genres that erode the distinctions, for instance, between literature and journalism, literature and (auto)biography, and literature and history. The emergence and proliferation of feminist, multiethnic, multicultural, and postcolonial literature since the 1970s is, however, the most dramatic and significant manifestation of the de-centering and demarginalization defining both postmodernity and postmodernism. In the 1970s and 1980s, American and European literature underwent an immense transformation as writers who had traditionally been excluded from literary canonswomen and ethnic and racial minoritiesmoved from the margins to the centers of the literary world. There are counterparts to this phenomenon in history and anthropology, which have seen a proliferation of histories from below and outsidehistories of women, of children, of the working class. Postmodernism has gone from History with a capital H, to histories, small h.

Post-postmodernism is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture which are emerging from and reacting to postmodernism. Most scholars would agree that modernism began in the late 19th century and continued on as the dominant cultural force in the intellectual circles of Western Culture well into the mid-twentieth century.
[1]

Like all epochs, modernism

encompasses many competing individual directions and is impossible to define as a discrete unity or totality. However, its chief general characteristics are often thought to include an emphasis on "radical aesthetics, technical experimentation, spatial or rhythmic, rather than chronological form, [and] self-conscious reflexiveness"
[2]

as well as

the search for authenticity in human relations, abstraction in art, and utopian striving. These characteristics are normally lacking in postmodernism or are treated as objects of irony Postmodernism arose after World War II as a reaction to the perceived failings of modernism, whose radical artistic projects had come to be associated with totalitarianism
[3]

or had been assimilated into mainstream culture. The basic

features of what we now call postmodernism can be found as early as the 1940s, most notably in the work of Jorge Luis Borges.
[4]

However, most scholars today would agree that postmodernism began to compete with modernism in
[5]

the late 1950s and gained ascendancy over it in the 1960s.

Since then, postmodernism has been a dominant,

though not undisputed, force in art, literature, film, music, drama, architecture and philosophy. Salient features of postmodernism are normally thought to include the ironic play with styles, citations and narrative levels, metaphysical skepticism or nihilism towards a grand narrative of Western culture,
[7] [6]

a preference for the virtual at the

[8]

expense of the real (or more accurately, a fundamental questioning of what 'the real' constitutes) affect
[9]

and a waning of

on the part of the subject, who is caught up in the free interplay of virtual, endlessly reproducible signs
[10]

inducing a state of consciousness similar to schizophrenia.

Since the late 1990s there has been a widespread feeling both in popular culture and in academia that postmodernism "has gone out of fashion."
[11]

However, there have been few formal attempts to define and name the

epoch succeeding postmodernism, and none of the proposed designations has yet become part of mainstream usage