Modernism
Originating in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the hallmarks of literary Modernism include an emphasis on the individual rather than society, stream-of-consciousness and other breaks from traditional literary formats, and rich psychological symbolism. This study guide collection summarizes and analyzes titles from some of the most renowned Modernist writers, including but not limited to T.S. Eliot, J.D. Salinger, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, and Katherine Mansfield.
A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1929, is the story of Frederic Henry, an officer with the Italian army in World War I, and his relationship with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. Some have noted the similarities between the main character and Hemingway, who also served in the Italian army as an ambulance driver in 1918, and his nurse, Agnes Von Kurowsky, who cared for Hemingway after he was wounded.The... Read A Farewell to Arms Summary
Published in 1939, And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, best-selling novelist of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. With over 100 million copies sold, And Then There Were None is the world’s best-selling crime novel as well as one of the best-selling books of all time. It has had more adaptations than any other work by Agatha Christie, including television programs, films, radio broadcasts, and most... Read And Then There Were None Summary
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the 1916 debut novel by Irish author James Joyce. The novel tells the story of Stephen Dedalus, a thinly-veiled alter ego for Joyce, who embarks on a journey of artistic awakening. As a landmark novel in the history of literary modernism, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has been hailed as one of the most important works of the 20th century and... Read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Summary
Becket or The Honor of God is a 1959 play by the French dramatist Jean Anouilh. It portrays a fictionalized version of the conflict that took place between King Henry II of England and the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in the 12th century. The English translation of the play premiered on Broadway in 1960 to great acclaim and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 1964.The central conflict of Becket, which ended in... Read Becket Summary
“Bliss” is a short story written by New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield. It was originally published in 1918 in The English Review and later republished in 1920 as a collection of short stories entitled Bliss and Other Stories. Katherine Mansfield was a contemporary of British writers such as Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando), D. H. Lawrence (Sons and Lovers, Women in Love), and James Joyce (Ulysses, Dubliners). As a Modernist story, “Bliss” focuses on the... Read Bliss Summary
Cane, Jean Toomer’s most famous book, was first published in 1923. The original publication of the novel was a foundational moment in the Harlem Renaissance literary movement. Cane’s reissue (after being out of print for many years) in 1967 came out during the Second Renaissance of African American literature. This guide cites the 2019 Penguin Books edition. This guide also briefly mentions lynching and other racial violence as they appear in the novel.Other work by... Read Cane Summary
“Eveline” is the fourth short story in James Joyce’s Dubliners collection, completed in 1907 and published in London in 1914. This story, like the others in Dubliners, reveals Joyce’s view of Ireland, then a British colony, as existing in a state of paralysis. Alongside this broader theme, “Eveline” also explores topics like duty versus freedom, English imperialism, and individual autonomy. Nearly a story of a young woman escaping the confines of her abusive and lonely... Read Eveline Summary
Fefu and her Friends is a play by Cuban American playwright Maria Irene Fornés. It premiered in 1977 at the Relativity Media Lab, a small venue on New York’s Lower East Side. Set in 1935 New England, the play concerns a group of women who knew one another in college and gather for a reunion as adults. Within six months, Fefu was produced off-Broadway at the American Place Theatre, earning Fornés her second Obie Award... Read Fefu and Her Friends Summary
Though Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) died at age 35, he is often regarded as the father of the Japanese short story. During the middle of the 20th century, when Japanese cinema became interested in its national history and cultural heritage, Akutagawa’s work was adapted by filmmakers such as Akira Kurosawa. Because American Westerns had a close relationship with samurai films, Akutagawa’s stories have even been transposed onto the Wild West, resulting in such films as The... Read In A Grove Summary
Invitation to a Beheading is a 1938 novel by Russian author Vladimir Nabokov, and the penultimate novel Nabokov wrote in his native Russian before transitioning to English. This guide uses the 1965 Capricorn Books edition, based on the 1959 English version, translated by Dmitri Nabokov with help from his father, Vladimir. Plot SummaryCincinnatus C. has been arrested and imprisoned by the government in the unnamed country in which he resides. Cincinnatus has been found guilty... Read Invitation to a Beheading Summary
“Kew Gardens” is a short story by British author Virginia Woolf, published privately in 1919 before appearing in Monday or Tuesday, Woolf’s 1921 collection of short stories. The story explores themes such as Moments of Being, The Connection Between Humanity and Nature, and Interpersonal Conflict.This guide refers to the version of “Kew Gardens” available in Project Gutenberg’s online edition of Monday or Tuesday.The story follows four pairs of people as they wander Kew Gardens, a... Read Kew Gardens Summary
Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a Modernist novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. It was written between 1926 and 1928, while Lawrence was living in Italy, and first published privately in 1928. Since it was considered scandalous and obscene, the novel was not widely available in America or the United Kingdom until the 1960s. The novel was controversial because of its explicit sexual content, as well as its depiction of an adulterous affair between... Read Lady Chatterley's Lover Summary
Published in 1932, Light in August is William Faulkner’s seventh novel. The novel is set in the American South during prohibition and features an ensemble cast of characters who grapple with alienation, racism, and heartbreak across a nonlinear narrative. Classified as a Southern gothic and modernist novel, Light in August is considered a seminal work in 20th-century American literature.Note: This study guide quotes and obscures Faulkner’s use of the n-word.Plot SummaryLena Grove, a young pregnant... Read Light in August Summary
Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim is an iconic story about the height—and folly—of the British imperial enterprise. Published as a serialized novel between October 1899 and November 1900, it details the adventures of a sailor turned trade agent who seeks his fortune and reputation on the outskirts of empire. After an incident with the Patna, one of the ships on which he sails, Jim flees to avoid the stain on his reputation. Eventually, he arrives in... Read Lord Jim Summary
“Miss Brill” is a short story written by Katherine Mansfield. First published in the literary magazine Athenaeum in 1920, the story explores human nature through themes such as the power of imagination and the role that each person plays in life. Miss Brill, a middle-aged, unmarried, and lonely English woman living in a French city, recounts a Sunday afternoon outing to the Jardins Publiques (Public Gardens) in the early fall.On a crisp, beautiful fall Sunday... Read Miss Brill Summary
Mrs. Dalloway, one of Virginia Woolf’s best-known novels, was published in 1925. The entirety of the novel takes place over the course of one day in London, in June of 1923. At the start of the novel, in the morning, Clarissa Dalloway, the protagonist, makes last-minute preparations for her party scheduled for that evening. As the day progresses, readers meet various characters, major and minor, and learn about their thoughts and feelings about the past, present... Read Mrs. Dalloway Summary
Orlando: A Biography is a novel published in 1928 by the English author Virginia Woolf. It tells the story of Orlando, a member of the English nobility who is born a male in 16th century England. Around the age of 30, Orlando mysteriously changes into a woman and lives for centuries without visibly aging. Author Jeanette Winterson called Orlando “the first trans novel in English.” (Winterson, Jeanette. “’Different sex. Same person’: How Woolf’s Orlando became... Read Orlando Summary
Pollyanna (1913) is the second novel by American author Eleanor H. Porter (1868-1921). The book was so successful that it topped the adult best-seller list, and Porter wrote a sequel titled Pollyanna Grows Up (1915) two years later.In the years following its publication, Pollyanna provided hope in the turbulent years of World War I, and it continued to capture the national imagination throughout the 20th century. Eleven more “glad books” featuring the heroine were written... Read Pollyanna Summary
Rebecca, a bestselling novel by famed English writer Daphne du Maurier, was published in 1938, and has never gone out of print. The winner of the National Book Award for favorite novel of 1938, Rebecca has been adapted numerous times, including Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film version, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and a 1997 television miniseries. It was most recently adapted for a Netflix film in 2020 by the same name. Rebecca... Read Rebecca Summary
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello was published in 1921 in a collection of plays called Naked Masks. The play was first performed in Italian; Edward Storer translated it into English in 1922, and it was first performed in London’s West End and New York City later that year. The play’s avant-garde and meta-theatrical elements make it a precursor to the Theatre of the Absurd, and Pirandello’s work inspired... Read Six Characters in Search of an Author Summary
“Soldier’s Home” is a short story first published in Ernest Hemingway’s 1925 debut collection In Our Time. The version discussed in this guide is from The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition (Scribner, 2003).The story’s protagonist is Harold Krebs, a young man who returns home to Oklahoma after serving in World War I. It is one of many works by Hemingway, a WWI survivor, to show the impacts of the war... Read Soldier's Home Summary
Swann’s Way is a novel by French writer Marcel Proust. First published in 1913, it is the first volume in a series titled In Search of Lost Time. The series is famous for Proust’s exploration of memory and nostalgia and is widely considered among the greatest works of world literature. Swann’s Way has been adapted for film, television, and stage. This guide is based on an eBook version of the 1922 Henry Holt and Company... Read Swann's Way Summary
The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James, first published in 1903, centers on the relationship between John Marcher, a man haunted by the premonition that his life will be defined by some catastrophic event, and May Bartram. James’s narrative dissects the psychological effects of fear and anticipation by focusing on his characters’ inner lives and existential musings. The tale is an internalized ghost story wherein Marcher’s fears become self-fulfilling prophecies of loss. The third-person... Read The Beast in the Jungle Summary
The Castle (Das Schloss) by Franz Kafka was published in Germany in 1926. Kafka had expressed the wish that his books not be published, but his friend Max Brod ignored this after the writer’s death in 1924. The Castle did not sell well initially and its availability was restricted by Nazi efforts to ban works by German Jews like Kafka. One Jewish publisher, Schocken Verlag, was permitted to continue publishing Jewish works on the condition... Read The Castle Summary
Bertolt Brecht’s celebrated play, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, was written in 1944. The story is structured as a play within a play and touches on themes of justice, motherhood, and moral choices in times of crisis. Brecht, a German playwright best known for his unique style of drama called “epic theater,” was based in the United States at the time, and the play was translated into English by his friend, Eric Bentley. It went on... Read The Caucasian Chalk Circle Summary
“The Far and the Near” by American author Thomas Wolfe was first published in 1935. The story is set in rural America in the early 20th century and tells of a train engineer who passes the same cottage on his route for over 20 years. When the engineer retires, he visits the people who live in the cottage for the first time. The story explores themes such as The Relentless Passage of Time, Idealized Perception... Read The Far and the Near Summary
Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” was published in her 1922 short story collection The Garden Party and Other Stories, and many critics consider it the best example of her renowned prose style. Like many Modernists, Mansfield was most interested in rendering not objective realities but characters’ subjective perspectives; her third-person narrators often have intimate insight into a character’s interior world, to the extent that the narrative voice embodies elements of that character’s psychology. The world... Read The Garden Party Summary
The Great Gatsby is a fiction novel published in 1925 by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Inspired by Fitzgerald’s experiences during the Jazz Age of the 1920s, The Great Gatsby captures the prosperity and the hedonism of the era through a cast of characters who reside in the fictional Long Island towns of West Egg and East Egg. Despite a cold reaction from critics and audiences upon its release, many modern scholars include The... Read The Great Gatsby Summary
“The Killers,” by American author Ernest Hemingway, is a short story that tackles the themes Loss of Innocence, Passivity Versus Activity, and Disillusionment With Reality.Originally published in 1927 in Scribner’s magazine, “The Killers” was later included in Hemingway’s short story collections Men Without Women, which came out later the same year, Snows of Kilimanjaro, and The Nick Adams Stories. The story has also been adapted into various film and animation versions over the years.“The Killers”... Read The Killers Summary
Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain was conceived in the 1910s, which is when the bulk of the novel takes place; however, it was not completed until 1924, after the cataclysmic events of the first world war. Mann was born in 1875, just four years after the creation of the modern state of Germany and the failed revolutionary Commune of France. During World War II, he was exiled from Germany, where Nazis burned copies of The Magic... Read The Magic Mountain Summary
The narrator muses that it must have been January of the present year when she first detected a small, round, dark mark on the wall. This mark will serve as the impetus for the entire story. She then states that “in order to fix a date”, it “is necessary to remember what one saw” (1). Next, she recalls the fire, a ray of light on her book, and three chrysanthemums in a vase, in order... Read The Mark on the Wall Summary
The Misfits is a young adult novel by bestselling American author James Howe. The first of four in The Misfits series, the novel chronicles a group of unpopular seventh graders’ participation in a contentious student council election. The series inspired No-Name Calling Week, a bullying-prevention initiative that has been held by schools across the country.Plot SummaryThe Misfits is told from the perspective of Bobby Godspeed, a seventh grader living in Paintbrush Falls, New York. Bobby... Read The Misfits Summary
The Rainbow (1915) by D. H. Lawrence follows three generations of the Brangwen family in Nottinghamshire, England, during the Second Industrial Revolution. The novel covers approximately 65 years in the Brangwens’ agricultural dynasty and explores how each generation changes in the face of modernity and industrial progress. The novel’s depiction of sexual desire and its role in the protagonists’ relationships and spiritual lives led to The Rainbow being the center of an obscenity trial a... Read The Rainbow Summary
D. H. Lawrence published “The Rocking Horse Winner” in 1926, just four years before his death in 1930. He had written a story, “Glad Ghosts,” for inclusion in Lady Cynthia Asquith’s supernatural fiction anthology Ghost Book. She did not like the story, partly because of the celebration of male sexuality and other erotic undertones. Lawrence wrote “The Rocking Horse Winner” for her instead. Lawrence sets the story in a haunted house, appropriate for a “ghost”... Read The Rocking Horse Winner Summary
William Faulkner’s 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury relays the trials and decline of a once-prominent Southern family, the Compsons. The novel grapples with the challenges of a changing cultural landscape as modernity encroaches on the values—and deep-seated prejudices—of the Old South. Told through the perspectives of the three Compson brothers, Benjy, Quentin, and Jason, the novel visits and revisits key events in the family’s past and present. Much of the concern swirls around... Read The Sound and the Fury Summary
The Whisper Man, released in August 2019, is a crime thriller by British author Alex North about the potential resurgence of a serial child murderer known as the Whisper Man and how it entangles various characters in a small town. North claims he got the idea for the book after his son mentioned “the boy in the floor.” Through criminal investigation and the lives of a father and son, North explores the nature of intergenerational... Read The Whisper Man Summary
Virginia Woolf’s Modernist classic To the Lighthouse was published in May 1927 by Hogarth Press, the publishing house founded by Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard Woolf in 1917. The Modern Library placed To the Lighthouse on its list of the 20th century’s best English-language novels. The three-part novel, which is written entirely in Woolf’s own stream-of-consciousness literary style, marks To the Lighthouse as a seminal work of Modernism. Woolf herself described To the Lighthouse... Read To the Lighthouse Summary
Ulysses is a 1922 novel by Irish author James Joyce. The story is a loose adaptation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, portraying a day in the lives of several characters who live in Dublin, Ireland, in June 1904. Ulysses proved controversial on release due to accusations of obscenity but is now celebrated as one of the most important and influential works in the English language and considered a classic.This guide is written using the... Read Ulysses Summary
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry is a modernist novel published in 1947. Set in Quauhnahuac, Mexico, in 1938, it follows the Consul, a former British diplomat with an alcohol addiction, on the day of his death. In addition to the Consul, the small cast of characters includes the Consul’s half-brother, Hugh, his ex-wife, Yvonne, and his friend-turned-enemy, Jacques Laruelle. Malcolm Lowry, who spent time in Mexico and was known to have experienced addiction himself... Read Under the Volcano Summary
When Nietzsche Wept is a 1992 novel written by Stanford University Professor of Psychology Irvin D. Yalom. Set in Vienna in 1882, the novel imagines a working relationship between the famous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the eminent physician Josef Breuer. Breuer believes that Nietzsche’s physical ailments have psychological causes, and he embarks on his newly invented “talking cure”—effectively a precursor to talk therapy and psychoanalysis. Eventually, through an agreement between the two men, it... Read When Nietzsche Wept Summary
Originally published in 1919, Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life, is a short story cycle by American author Sherwood Anderson. Anderson drew inspiration from the Ohio town of Clyde, where he spent his childhood. By the late 20th century, many scholars considered Winesburg, Ohio a seminal text of American Modernist literature.Winesburg, Ohio focuses on the people who inhabit the eponymous town at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Among them... Read Winesburg, Ohio Summary