 Welcome to my channel and welcome to yet another video in the Crash Course series on literary theory. We have already touched a few important literary theory in this series. We've touched formalism, new criticism, we've touched structuralism, we've touched post-structuralism and deconstructionism. And while we were talking about all these literary theories, we discussed a major fact that was binary opposite. Structuralists were of the belief that in order to understand one thing, you need to understand the exact opposite to it. Now, if you want to understand what is structuralism, you need to understand what is post-structuralism and how is it different from structuralism. Similarly, if you want to understand post-modernism, don't you think it's important to first understand what is modernism? Now, modernism we all know came somewhere around 1910 and have you ever wondered what led to modernism? Why writers like T. S. Eliot, Matthew Arnold were talking about fragmented world, were talking about absence of faith. Okay, so if you understand the socio-economic condition of European countries during and before 1910, you will be able to understand what led to modernism. And once you understand modernism, I'm pretty sure that understanding post-modernism would be a cakewalk. So, let's first understand what is modernism but before that it's important to know how modern and modernism are different from each other. These two words modern and modernism seems to be alike but they are very different. If you look at the word modern, you can define it by historic sense. So, what is modern? Modern is when you don't add to the previous notions or traditional values. In that case, every age is a modern age. If you look at our parents, they mostly call us that you are modern generation. Why? Because we guys don't follow the values or principles of our parents' generation. But if you ask your parents, they would tell you that their parents, that means our grandparents used to say the same thing to our parents. They also used to say that you guys are modern. Why? Because each generation drifts from the previous generation and this drift is modern. If you look at English language from linguistic point of view, you will find that English language has also gone through three periods. Old English, Middle English and Modern English. Now, old English period was somewhere around 500 to 1000 AD, then came medieval period that was somewhere around 1000 to 1400 and then came modern period. That was from 1400 onwards and that is why Jofrey Chaucer is known as the father of modern English because he was the pioneer of modern English language. But then modernism as a movement began in 1910. It is different from the term modern. Modernism began in 1910. It did not began in the time of Chaucer. Chaucer is known as the father of modern English because the English as a language started in the modern from drifted apart from medieval English when Chaucer began writing. So modern as a word is always getting its meaning from historic sense. Every generation in that sense is modern. On the other hand modernism is a literary movement, a literary period which began after 1910. And it was during modernism that writers like T.S. Eliot was writing Love Song of J. Alfred Profrog, was writing works like Waste Land. We had Virginia Woolf writing to the lighthouse. We have James Joyce writing Ulysses, portrait of an artist as a young man. All these words actually symbolize the main principles, the main values of modernism which is a literary movement beginning around 1910. And after modernism came next literary movement which also became a literary theory which is known as postmodernism which began after Second World War. That is after 1945. So modernism is from 1910 to 1945 and postmodernism is post 1945. Modernism as a movement came into being when people unanimously believed in the fact that they are left with no pillar of faith. We as human beings always want to rely on something to get faith, to get strength from something. And there were a lot of pillars of faith for each of us during the Victorian and Romantic period. And gradually human beings saw that all these pillars of faith were shaken and no longer they could rely on these pillars of faith. Because of which they found that the entire world is fragmented and they have no scope for betterment. It is very well said by Matthew Arnold in the poem Dover Beach where he says that sea of faith has dried out. Now in order to understand why modernism came into being in somewhere around 1910, we need to understand the fact that which were the pillars of faith and how humans stopped to believe in these pillars of faith. The first important pillar of faith is the power of God. We all during the Victorian and Romantic period know that people believed in the power of God. But then what happened? Then came the great philosopher, the great scientist Charles Darwin who presented a paper called Evolution of Species in which it was clearly written that there was no involvement of God in the evolution of species like human beings. We all evolved because of a natural process, natural mechanism because of adaptation and science behind this entire evolution was told by Charles Darwin. And this was the first point when people shake in religion, people share faith in God was shaken. Another important philosopher who was writing during this period was Frederick Nyshe. Frederick Nyshe said a very important statement during the Victorian period, God is dead when he saw this rampant materialism. So if you look at the first pillar of faith, God, the power of God, the faith of humans on God was shaken during the Victorian period. Next to God we always consider King because if you look at Aristotle's Poetics or other philosophers book, you will find that they always say that God has appointed King to rule on his behalf. So next to God is King whose authority cannot be challenged. What happened to this King? If you remember this was a period when Marxism was taking great force. This was a period when Karl Marx came up with Communus Manifesto and in Communus Manifesto he said that this hierarchy of King, middle class, lower class should be diminished. It is this King and the aristocratic people who are actually taking the power of lower class people who are the reason for the suffering of lower class people. And he said that there should be public property, there should be no private property, there should be no private ownership of goods. And that was the time when people lost their faith on Kings because they found out that it is Kings who are actually responsible for their miseries. So faith on God lost, faith on King lost. What next? Faith on our own power, our own potential, our own mind and then came Sigmund Freud with his book Interpretation of Dreams. So when Sigmund Freud came with interpretation of dream, he talked about the model of consciousness and he said that consciousness is structured like an iceberg. We can only see 10% that is the conscious level. There is a lot of unconscious and subconscious functioning which we cannot see. So all our actions are based on the 10% of the consciousness. Rest 90% we don't have any control on. So faith on our human mind was lost when we came to know about this structural model of consciousness. Now faith on God lost, faith on King lost, faith on human mind lost. What next? Another institution on which people believed was democracy. Then came the first world war. During 1914, 1918, there was this extreme world war situation which spread across the world. Lot of soldiers were killed, widespread bloodshed took place and then this world war first which was fought in the name of democracy came out with no result, no conclusion. And that was a period when people started questioning the institution of democracy. They started questioning their faith in democracy. They believed earlier that democracy is the reason that they are free, they are liberated, they have power to speak but then it was democracy which was responsible for this widespread bloodshed. So their faith in democracy also broke down. Finally, this was a time when science and scientific inventions were taking place. So people had a lot of belief in science but then when these atomic bombs were made which could destruct an entire city Hiroshima, Nagasaki with just one atomic bomb people started to see what bad science can do. So when science marries money that gives birth to technology and for the first time during the first world war people were able to see the negative impact of science. Their faith in science also was shaken. So if you look at the pillars of strength, our faith in God, our faith in human mind, our faith in democracy, our faith in king, our faith in science, everything was shaken and that led to modernism where the major principle was fragmented universe. There was nothing on which we could rely. There was nothing which can help us to get out of problems. This was modernism and this socio-economic condition is going to help you understand why writers like James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf were writing what they were writing. They were so correct when you don't have something to rely on how are you going to live the rest of your life when you can see so much bad happening in front of your eyes. In spite of the fact that pillars of faith were shaken, the modern man during the 1920s, 1930s still believed that solutions are possible and all these writers were writing where there was this search of solution as a theme in their literary work. But then situations kept on becoming worse. If you look at the post-First World War period, you will find that there was great depression, then came different cold wars, then finally came World War II. And during all this period, all these European countries, they were gradually losing their colonies so their power was reduced. Apart from that, all these European nations became countries of multi-ethnicity. People from different colonized countries like Africa, India start living there. And this contradiction of multi-ethnicity came into being. So if you look at this post-modern world, you will find that in the post-modern writings, writers stopped looking for solutions. There was problematization of problems. If you look at the works of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, you will find that they are not at all talking about solutions. There is no search of solution. Being aware is considered to be a form of rebellion. If you are aware, it is considered that you are rebelling. So modernization means still there is search for solution. But in the post-modern world, people started to believe that there is no solution. Problematization of problem is there. Apart from that, if you look at the great modernist thinkers like Gene Waldwar, you will find that they came up with new theories like hyper-reality. What is hyper-reality? In order to understand hyper-reality, I will give you a very simple example. Before modernism, people used to manufacture objects which were known as hardware. Later computers came, technology came. Now in computer, in technology, in mobiles, what do we have? We have softwares, we have apps. Now apps, softwares, they are also manufactured. But they are not objects. If you look at Minion, Minion has become a very popular cartoon character. But do we have a Minion in reality? We have copies of Minion everywhere. We have Minion soft toys, lunchboxes, pencil box. Everything is there. But do we have Minions in reality? So when you have a copy of something which in reality does not exist, is what Gene Waldwar calls as hyper-real. Hardware is reality. You can see it. It's tangible. But software, it's intangible. It is manufactured. But it is not in physical form. So that's hyper-real. Gene Waldwar said that first Gulf War did not exist. It was hyper-real. That was the basic premise of Gene Waldwar. Because Gene Waldwar said that all what we see in media, all what we see on YouTube, on television, on radio is actually hyper-reality. They are trying to tell us what is real but we don't know whether it was real or not. We watch Disney movies. But do Disney exist in reality? No, it does not. So it's hyper-real. That's what Gene Waldwar calls as hyper-reality. And this was asked repeatedly in NetExam in July 2018. This was a question that who said that first Gulf War did not exist. It was a hyper-real episode. He also talked about Disneyland and this was asked in January 2017. So you can see repeatedly similar questions and asked in NetExam. So it's important for you to understand that because of the pillars of faith were shaken, modernism came into being. And because situation got worse, post-modernism came. And there was a slight difference in modernism and post-modernism. In modernism, there is still a search for solution. But in post-modernism, we only problematize these problems. We don't talk about solution. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is a perfect example of post-modern work. He's not talking about solution at all. He's just talking about problems. And being aware of the problem is said to be a rebellion in itself. Contradictions are embraced in post-modernism. If you look at multi-ethnicity world, if you look at different people coming from different cultures and that is celebrated, that is multi-ethnicity. And that is what post-modernism calls as contradictions must be embraced. There are a lot of other post-modern thinkers which you must study for UGC NetExam. One such is Julia Cristiva and her famous concept of intertextuality. I cover all these theories in detail with detailed analysis of previous year questions in my online audio course. So if you are willing to be a part of the online course, then you can visit my website www.arpathakarva.com. You'll get a list of all the writers that we cover as per the new syllabus. If you like the list, be a part of the course and prepare for UGC Net in a revolutionary manner. You can also subscribe to this YouTube channel because we are running this Crash Course series in which I would be talking about different literary movements and different literary theories in detail. Apart from that, if you have not yet followed me on the social media platform, I think you should do it right now because we are posting free Go Net quiz and free Net updates for the upcoming Net exam. The link of the same is given in the description box below. So that's it for this video lecture. I would like to know how you think about our videos in the comment section below. If you like the videos, do consider liking and subscribing as well as sharing it with your friends. That's it for this video lecture. We'll meet soon in the next video lecture till the time we meet next. Happy learning, keep loving literature and stay tuned to www.arpathakarva.com