ACR Essay. Iryna Nikolaichuk.

Literary phenomena of modernism should be revaluated in postmodernism

For humanities, as for any other area of science, not only synchronistical, but also diachronic aspect is important while taking into consideration some actual scientific problems. But sometimes attention paid to both of these aspects is misbalanced, and it can cause over-analyzing of some concepts or phenomena in synchronistical aspect, but ignoring diachronic one and vice versa. Keeping this balance during the process of analysis is very important, but sometimes it is very difficult task for a number of researchers to define whether or not concrete phenomenon which is associated with exact history time needs re-analysis in another time with another criteria and model of thinking. For example, in a literary criticism there is a tendency of earning scientific interest to phenomena of literary modernism, which are noticeably distanced in time from their todays` researchers, in order to revaluate them according to the categories of postmodern way of thinking – and this direction of literary science seems to be very effective.

One reason for these tendencies is that these processes of revaluation of modernistic concepts can provide completely new image of modernistic art system in general and modern literature in particular. Stylistic and ideological inventions of modernism make very bright example of specifically organized system whose influence on next art generations remains to be appreciable. Also, while reanalyzing literary modernism in the terms of postmodernism it is very important to define interconnections between these two types of literature and, consequently, two different models of thinking and world-view. Revaluating modernistic concepts can emphasize their influence on contemporary art and literature. What is more, aesthetical and philosophical systems which were formed in modernism can be used by ‘postmodern’ researchers as theoretical base of analysis. Modernism was represented by a large number of different art and literary schools, organizations, and establishments, and their theoretical and aesthetical ideas are valuable for the theory of art in general and literary science in particular.

But it should be admitted that attention which was paid by different researchers to modernistic phenomena during the last century was so considerable that now for literary science it makes a real problem to deal with such a variety of different points of view about some concepts of modernism. Modernism as cultural phenomenon was analyzed so deeply in all the possible aspects that it makes no sense for postmodern researchers to refer to such over-analyzed problems instead of drawing their attention to something undiscovered yet. Furthermore, so noticeable number of various interpretations of some concepts of modernism causes misunderstanding of them. Different researchers with their points of view, for example, very often refer in their works not to exact meaning of the term, but to their own interpretation of it. Moreover, many problems in this area can appear because of distance in time and differences in model of thinking between modernism and postmodernism. Contemporary researchers sometimes make wrong conclusions just because of their misunderstanding of the modernistic world-view.

However, existing knowledge about some modernistic concepts needs re-systematization and re-analysis in highly distanced in time from modernistic way of thinking postmodern outlook because modernism as cultural and literal phenomenon still is under non-scientific and non-objective stereotypes which are to be destroyed by new researches. And the main problem which appears while analyzing the postmodern image of modernism is that these stereotypes were created by researchers whose conclusions were based on the works of other researchers, but not on the actual sources which are widely available – letters, diaries, newspapers, photos, and different art objects. Modernistic categories, therefore, can be clarified in new cultural and ideological space and can still be the points of interest for a literary criticism.

Sources:

1. ACR paragraph. Iryna Nicolaichuk. - http://fedoriv-writing.blogspot.com/2013/02/acr-paragraph-iryna-nikolaichuk

2.     Nikolaichuk I. Narrative technique of 'stream of concsiousness' in British literature of modernism: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf ; tutor - Rostyslav Semkiv / Iryna Nikolaichuk. - Kyiv, 2012. - 100 p.