Modernism in the 1930s

Abstract

Modernity has frequently been explained in terms of a long transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism, a transition that is associated with the rise of secularism, the impact of science on every aspect of social life, the rationalisation of labour, increasing specialisation and professionalisation, and an indifference (or hostility) to the past, which results in the destruction of long-established communities and traditions. Laura Riding considered that the crisis of modernity was a crisis of faith in humanity and, relatedly, in the capacity of language to communicate. Riding's poetry was often accused of being difficult and obscure. Modernism's relationship to race, empire, and colonialism is a complex one. The emergence of Surrealism represents a new direction for modernism in England. There can be little doubt that the two most ambitious attempts to produce a radical modernism in the inter-war period were Pound's Cantos and Joyce's Finnegans Wake.