MODERNISM
In this section you can see a mind map created with the students after watching a YT video about Modernism and English literature. Apart from this, it is possible to read an example of interior monologue (Henrik Ibsen), stream of consciousness (Virginia Woolf) and contrapuntal poetry (Langston Hughes).
Example of interior monologue
Nora from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House spends nearly the entire play keeping a huge secret from her husband, Torvald. In the final act, the secret is revealed - and Torvald's lack of love for her is plainly revealed. Nora reflects her discovery in the play's pivotal monologue.
"You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me. It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you - I mean that I was simply transferred from papa's hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as your else I pretended to, I am really not quite sure which -I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it, it seems to me as if I had been living here like a poor woman - just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life."
This monologue is surprisingly progressive for Ibsen's time, as it allows a female character to not only doubt her husband's love but to reject it. She goes on to leave her husband and children in an effort to find herself.
(source: examples.yourdictionary.com/monologue-examples.html)
Example of stream of consciousness
Virginia Woolf is known for using stream of consciousness in her writing. The novel Mrs. Dalloway follows the thoughts, experiences, and memories of several characters on a single day in London.
In this passage, the title character, Clarissa Dalloway, watches cars driving by:
She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary. How she had got through life on the few twigs of knowledge Fraulein Daniels gave them she could not think. She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now, except memoirs in bed; and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs passing; and she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.
Woolf does more than simply say "Mrs. Dalloway watched the taxis and thought about her life." Rather, she lets the reader into the character's thoughts by using long sentences with semicolons to show the slow drift of ideas and the transitions between thoughts. Readers are able to watch as Mrs. Dalloway's mind moves from observations about things she is seeing to reflections on her general attitude towards life, and then moves on to memories from her childhood, then back to the taxi cabs in the street, and finally to Peter, a former romantic interest.
This is an excellent example of using associative leaps and sensory impressions to create a stream of consciousness. Woolf manages to convey not only the content but the structure and process of Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts, a fact which is all the more impressive because she does so while writing in the third person.
(source: https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/stream-of-consciousness#)
Example of contrapuntal poetry
Langston Hughes' The cat and the saxophone (2 a.m.), from The Weary Blues.
"Contrapuntal music has two or more separate tunes that are played or sung at the same time" (from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/contrapuntal).
In this poem we can read a ragtime song in capital letters (EVERYBODY/LOVES MY BABY/BUT MY BABY/...) alternating with a small talk and a couple who dances Charleston.
On the surface, "The Cat and the Saxophone (2 a.m.)" depicts a scene from 1920s popular culture. People are having a conversation in a speakeasy (illegal bar), where they are not only socially enjoying drinks with company but, during the Prohibition era, are purchasing and consuming alcohol illegally: "Half pint, - / Gin? / No, make it / [ . . . ] corn" (2-4, 6). Simultaneously, a ragtime band is swinging LOUDLY. In this intoxicating environment, inhibitions are lost and spontaneity spreads contagiously. A woman, who seems unacquainted with her partner, suddenly demands a kiss: "Kiss me, / [ . . . ] / daddy" (10, 12). Then, there is the impulsive and overwhelming urge to dance the wildly popular Charleston - conveyed through the affectionately exultant exclamation: "Charleston, / mamma!" (28-9).
All of these atmospheric affects and impressions stimulate the reader at once. They are surrounded, fully immersed in the sensations of risk, desire, and recklessness which come when all restraints are abandoned. Without images, without symbols, without metaphors, "The Cat and the Saxophone (2 a.m.)" conveys an ambiance of inebriation, insouciance, delight, abandon, and danger.
(source: https://www.modernamericanpoetry.org/poem/cat-and-saxophone-2-am)