s. He adds that they were emulated and carried further by many poets and novelists, having obvious parallels in the violation of representational conventions in expressionism and surrealism (Abrams 109).
Abrams definition of modernism includes the major elements most critical theorists apply to a definition of modernism. It is a style that reflected the distrust of history and tradition wrought by World War I. In an attempt to subvert traditional modes, artists experimented with new and innovative discursive styles to express their feelings of confusion and fragmentation. The definition of modernism put forth by Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature clarifies that modernism was a self-conscious movement. The encyclopedia defines modernism as a chiefly European movement in the early-to-mid-20th century that "represented a self-conscious break with traditional forms and subject matter and a search for a distinctly contemporary mode of expression" (Merriam 770).
However, Merriam-Webster expands the definition by noting that it began with a radical and utopian spirit stimulated by new ideas in anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis of the early 20th century. And writers such as Ezra Pound reflected an exuberance in the earlier part of the modernist period that would be absent later (Merriam Webster 770). The latter part of the period, which Merriam Webster calls "postwar modernism" was far more sober, as seen in the fragmentation and disillusion of Eliot's The Wasteland (1922) (Merriam 770). Merriam Webster also notes that other characteristics of later modernism are an increasing self-awareness, introspection, and openness to the unconscious and to humanity's darker fears and instincts (Merriam 770).
Finally, Margaret Drabble argues, as does Merriam Webster, that modernism reflected the impact upon literature of the psychology of Sigmund Freud and the anthropology of Sir James Frazer's ...