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Modernism

The year 1910 seams to mark a dividing line in the history of the novel. In fact, the years following 1910 were characterised by a revolution in English Literature called "Modernism". This term refers to those novelists who experimented with new forms and who, focusing on the mental processes that develop in the human mind, tried to explore them through the use of new narrative techniques. Two important factors helped to produce the modern novel:

1) the new concept of time worked out by Bergson and James, according to whome that time has a duration that eludes conventional clock time, it is a flowing continuity.

2) The new theory of the unconscious deriving from the Freudian influence. Freud maintained that our  behaviour could be affected by the unconscious and provided a new method of investigation of the human mind through the analysis of dreams and the concept of "free association". In the novel it is not necessarily the passing of the time that reveals the truth about characters. It may be unfolded in the course of a single day by what Joyce called "epiphany" that is a sudden revelation of an interior reality caused by the most ordinary events of everyday life. As a result the novelist rejected omniscient narration. So there is the creation of new narrative techniques such as the stream of consciousness or the interior monologue. Stream of consciousness is the psychological phenomenon itself, while the interior monologue is the narrative instrument used to translate this phenomenon into words. The interior monologue disregards logical transitions, formal syntax and conventional punctuation, to reflect the disconnected sequence of thoughts. We can distinguish 3 gruoups of novelist of this period:

- Psychologial novelist, who concentrated their attention on the development of the character's mind and on human relationship:

- Modern novelist, who chose subjective narrative techniques, exploring the mind of the characters;

- Novelist Socially and Politically Committed, who were outstanding authors of anti-utopian novels attacking totalitarianism and the ideals of scientific progress. Both depicted a gloomy and savage future, as a warning for the present.