The main reason for studying theory at the same time as literature is that it forces you to deal consciously with the problem of ideologies…. There are many truths and the one you will find depends partly on the ideology you start with. [Studying theory] means you can take your own part in the struggles for power between different ideologies. It helps you to discover elements of your own ideology, and understand why you hold certain values unconsciously. It means no authority can impose a truth on you in a dogmatic way—and if some authority does try, you can challenge that truth in a powerful way, by asking what ideology it is based on…. Theory is subversive because it puts authority in question. Stephen Bonnycastle, In Search of Authority

has its origins in the 1920s is usually related to reactions among philosophers and artists to World War I Artists and intellectuals, shocked by the depths of inhumanity and brutality during WWI, stopped believing in the humanistic and enlightenment axioms about human nature, education and cultural progress.

ART becomes less pretty, less harmonic, less representational, less up-lifting

Audiences looking to ART to make sense out of the randomness of life become disillusioned with artists

Music- Melody and harmony are challenged Painting-abstraction/cubism

IN LITERATURE Modernism rejects traditional plots and closed endings… and embraces experimental forms

POST-MODERNISM Associated with the cultural paradigm shift which took place around 1960s, gaining full force in the 1980s. The idea that human beings having a unified and findable “self” are FANTASIES because human beings are simply a mass of contradictions and social constructions.

POST-MODERNISM Emphasis on Subjectivity HOW we see rather than on WHAT we see.

POST-MODERNISM Avoidance of Omniscient Point of View or Single Narrator

POST-MODERNISM BLURRING of LINES Between GENRES

POST-MODERNISM Linking of Fragmented Forms— Discontinuous Narrative

POST-MODERNISM Tendency to Reflexivity-- So works raise issues about Their OWN nature and status

SO.. How are MODERNISMANDPOST-MODERNISMDIFFERENT?

MODERNISM The Center Will Not Hold

MODERNISM Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, William Butler Yeats “The Second Coming” 1919

POST-MODERNISM THERE IS NO CENTER !

POST-MODERNISM There never WAS a center ! Alienation and fragmentation Yeats laments that the “center doesn’t hold anymore.” The POST-MODERN would be exhilarated!

POST- MODERNISM What is central What should the meaning to the center be in this text? story? (but it’s not there!) How do characters What absences or feel alienated? contradictions are there? MODERNISM

VIDEO EXAMPLE Modern: The Longest Day v=e5rOrWiCZRo Post-Modern: Saving Private Ryan v=flh8DNmqMSA