Modernism

**+ What is modernism?** The term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world.

**+ What is it called in different countries?**
 * Modernism In the United States
 * Futurism in Italy
 * Constructivism in Russia

**+ When did it start and why?**  The modernist movement, at the beginning of the 20th century, marked the first time that the term // avant-garde //, with which the movement was labeled until the word "modernism" prevailed, was used for the arts.  The development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by the horror of World War I, were among the factors that shaped Modernism.

**+ What are its main characteristics?**
 * Open Form
 * Free verse
 * Discontinuous narrative
 * Juxtaposition
 * Intertextuality
 * Classical allusions
 * Borrowings from other cultures and languages
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Unconventional use of metaphor
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Metanarrative
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Fragmentation
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Multiple narrative points of view (parallax)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Dislocation of meaning and sense from its normal context
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Valorization of the despairing individual in the face of an unmanageable future
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Disillusionment
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past, borrowed without chronology
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Product of the metropolis, of cities and urbanscapes
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Stream of consciousness
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #444444; font-family: 'Segoe UI','Lucida Grande',Arial; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Overwhelming technological changes of the 20th Century