Name:- Payal Bambhaniya
Batch:- M.A. Sem. 2 (2022-2023)
Roll no. :- 14
Enrollment no.:- 4069206420220002
Paper no.:- 110
Subject code:-22403
Paper Name:- History of English Literature - from 1900 to 2000
Topic:- Literary Movements
Email ID:- payalbambhaniya92@gmail.com
Submitted to:- SMT S. B. Gardi Department of English, MKBU.
Literary Movements
- Introduction
- Expressionism
- Surrealism
- Dadaism
- Conclusion
Introduction:-
The 20th century was a time of experimentation and innovation in literature, with writers from various parts of the world exploring new forms and styles of writing. The main periods of this time are often divided into modernist and post- modernist literature. During this time, writers like Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot , Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce were at the forefront of these experimental movements. They played with language, structure, and form to create new and exciting works that pushed the boundaries of what was considered traditional writing.
The emergence of experimental writing in the 20th century led to the development of various literary movements or "-isms" such as
Absurdism
Dadaism
Expressionism
Surrealism
Impressionism
These movements were characterised by a rejection of traditional literary conventions and an emphasis on experimentation , innovation and originality. Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker is an excellent example of experimental writing. The novel takes place in a post - apocalyptic world, and the language and syntax used throughout the book are deliberately fragmented and difficult to understand. The narrative is told from the perspective of Riddley, the protagonist, who speaks in a pidgin English that has evolved over time. Experimental writing challenges readers to engage in active and careful reading. Here, I will discuss some literary movements or "-isms".
Expressionism:-
Meaning of Expressionism:-
Expressionism is an artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person.
According to R. G. Hagger
"Expressionism is a form of romantic art in which emotion or emotive elements expressed through violent distortions and exaggeration, are taken to the point of excess. It is a characteristic of art that emerges and becomes dominant in times of social and spiritual stress."
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality.
Rise of Expressionism:-
Kurt Hiller was the first to apply the term "Expressionism" to German literature in 1911. It flourished in Germany as an anti realistic mod of artistic expression.
Expressionism developed as an avant-garde style before the first world war. It remained popular during the Weimar Republic , particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range of the arts, including expressionist, architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film, and music. The term is sometimes suggestive of angst. In a historical sense, much older painters such as Matthias Grunewald and El Greco are sometimes termed Expressionist, though the term is applied mainly to 20th century works. The expressionist emphasis on individual and subjective perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism and other artistic styles such as Naturalism and impressionism.
Expressionism rejects the limitation of external reality in order to express either a private, inner vision or a wider political one of a world often depicted as bizzer and violent. Expressionism can be used to describe virtually any of the deliberate distortions of or departures from reality that pervade Modern literature and art. Signor Benedetto Gose, The Italian critic expounded the definition of Expressionism. His philosophy of art is nothing but intuition or the expression of impressions. The intuition assumes the form of art when the spirit persists in it, intent only upon the activity of perfect expression by which impressions are elaborated to receive the death of imagination.
Expressionism in literature:-
Expressionism in literature is
a reaction against materialism, complacent bourgeois prosperity, rapid mechanization and urbanization, and the domination of the family within pre- world war I European society. It was the dominant literary movement in Germany during and immediately after world war. Expressionist poets were
George Heym
Ernst Stadler
August stramm
Gottfried Benn
George Trakl
Else Lasker Schuler
The dominant theme of the expressionist verse was horror over urban life and apocalyptic visions of the collapse of civilization. Some poets were pessimistic and contented themselves with satirising bourgeois values, while others were more concerned with political and social reform and expressed the hope for a coming revolution.
August Strindberg and Frank Wedekind were notable forerunners of expressionist drama, but the first full- fledged expressionist play was Reinhard Johannes Sorge's Der Bettler, which was written in 1912 but not performed until 1917. The other principal playwrights of the movement were
George Kaiser
Ernst Toller
Paul Kornfeld
Fritz von Unruh
Walter Hasenclever
Reinhard Goering
All are German playwrights who used expressionist dramatic technique. In American literature the plays of Eugene O'Neill, particularly Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, and The Great God Brown were influenced by Expressionism. T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Kafka's Metamorphosis, Virginia Woolf's novels, and the works of William Faulkner and Wyndham Lewis are influenced by Expressionism. The main Idea of Expressionism is to capture the feelings and emotions of the creators. Expressionist artists also sought to create a heightened sense of reality. Famous paintings of Expressionism are as below.
Surrealism:-
Meaning of Surrealism:-
Surrealism is a movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe between World war I and II.
Surrealism:-
The term "Surrealism" found Andre Breton, who in 1924 issued the first surrealist manifesto, which explained that a higher reality could be captured by freeing the mind from logic and rational control. The most important center of the movement was Paris, France. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, impacting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy and social theory. Many surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works themselves being secondary. Breton surrealism was a changed manifestation of romanticism. He saw it as the "prehensile bail" of romanticism. It employed some of the methods of romanticism concerned with dreams, madness, hypnosis, and hallucinations. This movement laid imagination as realised in dreams and presented without conscious control. In this way, it was influenced by Freudian Psychology. Herbert Read, the famous English critic, has placed surrealism in the tradition of romanticism. It is mainly concerned with the exploration of the mind.
Surrealism spread all over the world. It became popular in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Britain and the whole continent of South Africa. Apart from poetry, it has influenced the novel, the theatre, the cinema, the painting, and the sculpture. Among the poets who have worked in a surrealist manner are Aragon and Elnard and among painters are
Picasso
Tanguy
Salvador Dali
James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, Alan Burns, B. S. Johnson, and many others too came under the influence of surrealism.
Surrealist Techniques:-
A number of specific techniques were devised by the surrealists to evoke psychic responses. Among these were frottage ( rubbing with graphite over wood or other grained substances) and grattage (scraping the canvas) both developed by Ernst to produce partial images, which were to be completed in the mind of the viewer. Other methods include automatic drawing, a spontaneous, uncensored recording of chaotic images that "erupt" into the consciousness of the artist, and "exquisite corpse," whereby an artist draws a part of the human body, folds the paper to hide his or her contribution, and passes it to the next artist, who added the next part and so on, until a collective composition is complete. Surrealists also used found objects to create assemblies that feature familiar items in unfamiliar conjunction. Surrealist pictures are as below.
Dadaism:-
Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zurich in 1916 by Tristan Tzara. New York Dada flourished in Paris. Dadaist activities lasted until the mid 1920s. Key figures in the movement included
John Miro
Marcel Duchamp
Max Ernst
Hugo Ball
Francis Picabia
George Grosz
Tristan Tzara
Beatrice Wood
Its mood is between fantasy and destruction and its influence spread from London to New York. In art and literature manifestos of this aesthetics were mostly college effects: the arrangement of unrelated objects and words in a random fashion. The purpose of Dadaism was a nihilistic revolt against all bourgeois ideas of rationality. It was opposed to form and order.
Dadaism developed in reaction to world war I, the Dada movement consisted of artists who rejected the logic, reason, and aestheticism of modern capitalist society, instead expressing nonsense, irrationality and anti-bourgeois protest in their works. The art of the movement spanned visual, literary, and sound media, including college, sound poetry, cut-up writing, and sculpture. Dadaism artists expressed their discontent toward violence, war, and nationalism and maintained political affinities with radical politics on the left- wing and far-left politics. The artists and poets who follow Dadaism used colleges to arrange objects and words into meaningless and illogical patterns. It wished to destroy us along with bourgeois society. It was influenced by futurism. Its chief objective manifesto, phonetic poetry, simultaneous poem , noise, music and it all borrowed from the futuristic and stood as an image of dissolution which seemed the central fact of modern existence.
Grand opening of the first Dada exhibition: international Dada Fair, Berlin, 5 June 1920. The central figure hanging from the ceiling is an effigy of a German officer with a pig's head. Overall, Dadaism was a movement that rejected all traditional artistic and cultural values, emphasising instead the importance of the individual artist's vision and creativity.
Conclusion:-
Dadaism, Surrealism and Expressionism were three significant literary movements of the 20th century that emerged as a response to the social, cultural and political changes of the time. These movements had different approaches and techniques, they all shared a common desire to push the boundaries of traditional literary forms and express themselves in new and innovative ways.
Words Count:- 1,683
Images:- 9
No comments:
Post a Comment