Modernism in literature involves introspection

Question: What constitutes Modernism in literature?
Position1 of 4›: Modernism in literature involves a focus on the individual
Argument‹2 of 2: Modernism in literature involves introspection

After the decline in classical western thinking and the radical changes in society at the beginning of the 20th century, writers turned inward, favoring individual expression and creating space for contemplation. In this way, Modernists established the blueprints for modern literature.

The argument

Following a period of rapid development in technology- in communications and industry- and the disruptive effect of mechanized warfare on society, the emergence of the writer’s expression as an individual was welcome. Before this, writing, like all art, was based on morality, objectivity, truth, spirituality, and beauty. It was made for commercial appeal, not to satisfy a creative need in the author. The dramatic form gave us soliloquies, but not until the advent of the modernists was the interior voice fully utilized in literary structure. This was also a response to the growing impersonality of the modern world. Not only was the concept of human life devalued by the war, but increased urbanization and the after-effects of the industrial-revolution led workers to feel like simply another cog in the machine. This is evident in Sophie Treadwell’s play 'Machinal' (1928), which stages the struggle of one woman for definition in an oppressively conformist society. As a journalist, Treadwell knew the line between objectivity and personality, which gives the play a distinct tone. Yet the case for personal identity arose in many forms. Novels such as EM Forster’s 'A Room with A View' (1908) and D.H Laurence’s 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover' (1928) display a rupturing of social norms through illicit, individually driven romances. Both female leads are spurred on by introspection. This shows Modernist characters appearing more self-aware of their social standing. For Luigi Pirandello in his play 'Six Characters in Search of an Author' (1921), this is taken to a literal extent in a moment of metafiction, in which fictional characters challenge the nature of their existence. Pirandello’s own presence within the production is often symbolically created with an empty chair in the auditorium. Indeed the turn towards introspection was a prophetic one for art and culture and truly put the ‘modern’ in modernism.

Premises

[P1]After rapid technological change and mechanised war devalued human life and impersonalised society, writers turned from morality and objectivity toward the individual's interior voice, as in Treadwell's 'Machinal'. [P2] Works like Forster's 'A Room with a View', Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', and Pirandello's metafictional 'Six Characters' show characters driven by introspection and self-awareness of their social standing. [C] Therefore, this turn toward introspection and the individual is what constitutes Modernism in literature.

Counter-arguments

The historical premise is not sustainable. The claim that before Modernism writing was grounded in morality and objectivity and 'made for commercial appeal, not to satisfy a creative need' passes over Romanticism, which a century earlier had made the artist's inner life and creative compulsion its explicit subject — Rousseau's confessional autobiography, Goethe's Werther, Wordsworth's book-length poem on the growth of his own mind. Interiority in prose is older still: Sterne's Tristram Shandy in 1759 and the epistolary novels of the eighteenth century are sustained experiments in rendering a mind from inside. Whatever distinguishes Modernism, it cannot be the discovery of the individual. The examples strain in the same direction. A Room with a View is more often read as Edwardian social comedy than as a Modernist work, and Lady Chatterley's Lover, whatever its transgressions of content, is written in a broadly realist mode rather than the experimental one usually taken as the movement's marker. The rival account — named, as it happens, by this entry's own slug — is that Modernism is defined by experimentation with form: fragmentation, unreliable and multiple narration, collapsed chronology, allusion and the abandonment of the omniscient narrator. On that account the interiority the argument identifies is a consequence of those techniques rather than the definition of the movement, which is why stream of consciousness is classed as a formal device.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Romanticism had already made individual interiority and the artist's creative need central a century earlier, and sustained rendering of a mind from inside runs back at least to Sterne, so the turn described is not what distinguishes Modernism. [Rejecting P2] A Room with a View is generally read as Edwardian social comedy and Lady Chatterley's Lover works in a broadly realist mode, so neither exemplifies the movement; the standard account locates Modernism in formal experimentation, of which interiority is a product.