According to Trent Lorcher in "Lesson Plans: Modernism in
Literature,"
Modernism is marked by a strong and intentional
break with tradition. This break includes a strong reaction against established
religious, political, and social
views.
The Modernist movement
began after the Realist movement. Some of the most prominent writers during this time
period are William Faulkner, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, among many
others.
The Realist movement reflected a writer's desire to
present a story objectively, without any personal response to the material in the story.
It was the relaying of the truth of a moment or series of actions without making a
subjective judgment.
"There is not embellishment or interpretation...
[literature of the Realism movement was] "purport[ed] to be undistorted by personal
bias.
So where the Realist
movement was guided by presenting literature without prejudicial assessments, the
Modernists were not only interested in defying the approach to religious, political and
social norms, but passed "judgment" on their subjects, rather than simply reporting, in
a clinical or empirical way, what they had observed.
In
other words, the Realist authors were more objective in their perceptions of the world,
and the Modernists were more emotionally involved, and committed to questioning the
conventions of what had been previously been assumed or "cleaned up" without
question.
As an example, William Faulker's "A Rose For
Emily" lifts up the general norms of a Southern society not too long after the Civil
War, especially in terms of a woman of the elite class; the developing plot exposes the
mysteries and secrets of this woman that are unexpected by Faulkner's readers. Emily is
not a woman above reproach, not a sophisticated, southern "rose:" she not only kills
someone, but sleeps beside his dead corpse until her death. This shows how the author
pushes the reader's perceptions and blows apart the social norms in the 1930s when it
was printed.
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