Modernism & French Writers

WRITERS OF THE 20TH CENTURY WHO INFLUENCED THE MODERNIST MOVEMENT AND FRENCH WRITERS WHO WERE INFLUENCED BY THE MOVEMENT OF MODERNISM

Modernism as a phenomenon is defined differently by different people. One issue involved it its interpretation is that, as a phenomenon, modernism is so entwined with human emotion and perception that by its very nature it evolved over time. Because modernism evolved during the twentieth century, some writers influenced the emergence and development of modernist literary expression while other writers of the century were influenced by the movement. This essay considers the roles of prominent French writers of the twentieth century in relation to the modernist movement.

The modernist movement had its beginnings in the late-nineteenth century however; it was in the early years of the twentieth century when the writing of Marcel Proust set literary form on a new course. The change in form embraced skepticism and uncertainty in the representation of human emotion, experience, and understanding through literary expression:

Tout cela Ttait en rTalitT mort pour moi. Mor a jamais? C'Ttait possible. Il y beacoup de hazard en tout ceci, et un second hazard celui de notre mort, souvent ne nous permet pas d'attenre longtemps les faveurs du premier (Proust 44).

Modernism in literature involved the representation of recognizable human emotions and experiences. The meaning and relevance of

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ceptions as a means of communicating their own inner realities in their writing. The orientation of male Surrealist writers, however, was transformed into a more global context. The self-referential character of most of the works of females Surrealist writers results in literature in which personal reality dominates and narrative flow provides structure (Echenoz 14). The work of female Surrealist writers tends to be characterized more by sensibility than by hallucinatory disjunction. The work of male Surrealists frequently exhibits the fear of male Surrealists of woman's natural proximity to the inner sources of creation. This fear is expressed by male Surrealists in images that symbolically attack woman's creative, reproductive function. Female Surrealists, by contrast with their male counterparts, accepted the validity of an androgynous creative spirit, although male modernist artists generally and male Surrealist artists particularly claim that an androgynous creative spirit is central to the concept of modernism (Simon 10). Throughout history, the term androgyny has been used to denote any blurring or blending of the distinctions between the sexes. The androgynous personality is a manifestation of an individual's psych
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Approximate Word count = 1719
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)