Chapter One: An Overview of the African American Literatureviewed

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Introduction to Modernism

Modernism emerged as an artistic and cultural movement which starts at the turn of the 20th century with its core period between First World War and Second World War. Characteristically, modernism was considered as a revolution of style since many musicians, artists, and writers broke away from traditional techniques to create new and innovative art.

The features of the Modernist novel:

1. It deviates from the representational expression of reality

2. It is very much concerned with man's consciousness, the subconscious working of the human mind; the importance of stream of consciousness technique

3. It disrupts the chronological sequence and widely uses flash backs and flash forwards

4. It avoids plot

5. Its narrative structure is loose and weak. By way of compensation, it gives importance to allusion, repetition and symbolism

6. It avoids moral enlightenment and authorial intrusions (The author is like God in the universe, present everywhere but visible nowhere)

7. It employs either a single limited point of view or multiple narrators

8. It has no hero, rather an anti-hero, rootless, restless, alienated, the image of an unstable society with no confidence in itself.

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