Modernism and Realism

Realism and Modernism are both very important literary genres from our country. There was a lot that happened historically to spark the change to each genre. There are many differences, but also similarities in these two literary genres. A theme relating to the wars of the time is a common characteristic while the actual style in which they are written differ greatly.

Realism was a very different style of literature from its predecessor of Romanticism. For the first time authors were depicting a setting and the story as how it would be in the real world, rather than what they wanted it to be. This was caused by the increase in scientific and rationalist thoughts after the Civil War. The style became less about an artistic style and shifted more to a more simple telling of the story. The middle class hero became the main protagonist for most works of Realism.

Historically there were many events that caused the shift to Modernism. There was the Great Depression, the Roaring Twenties, The Great War, and many other changes in culture. Black culture was also on the rise with new African Amercian artists and musicians surfacing in the popular culture of the nation. This is what is commonly refereed to as the Harlem Renaissance. It was these cultural changes that caused the change to modernist literature from the previous realism.

One major difference in the literary genres is the actual style in which the stories and poems are written in. Oftentimes there is a connection to the characters in a modernist work and the author that wrote it. The writing style is obviously different, because Modernist writers wanted to avoid the simple and rather use very deep words with significant meanings.

One characteristic that the two genres share is the depressing nature of some of the works. This comes from the time period that each genre occurred during. Realism began shortly after the Civil War, and the war was a topic of many works. There was a lot of reflection on what the soldiers went through, and also about the feelings of a country that had been divided. Modernism on the other had began during the Great War. This was a very depressing time, as people had never really seen such a war before. There was a lot of violence and this caused there to be the same depressing theme appear in some works of Modernism. This is not to say that all modernist works were like this because with the great cultural expansion of the country, there were more happy topics to write about.

Both of these genres are similar and different in many ways. What was going on during the time that they started had a drastic impact on the principals of each respective genre. The common factor of a war going on makes some characteristics of the genres very similar, but the writing style still remains very differed from each literary group. These are obviously two of the most important and influential genres in American literature.