Characteristics of modernism and characteristics of postmodernism

If you are asking about the characteristics of modernism and postmodernism in literature, that is:

In general, the basic characteristics of postmodernism literature can be summarized as Three aspects: the creative principle of uncertainty, the diversity of creative methods, language experiments and discourse games. Let’s describe them in detail below:

1. The creative principle of uncertainty

Donald Barthelme, an American writer known as “the father of a new generation of postmodern writers” Just declare: "The song of my songs is the principle of uncertainty." The uncertainty of postmodernist literature is reflected in the following four aspects: uncertainty of theme, uncertainty of image, uncertainty of plot and uncertainty of language. uncertain.

(1) Uncertainty of the theme. If in realism, the theme is basically determined, what the author emphasizes is to highlight the theme; in modernism, what the author opposes is the theme of realism. They are not opposed to the theme itself. On the contrary, they often painstakingly construct it. own theme. In postmodernism, the theme does not exist at all, because the meaning does not exist, the center does not exist, and the quality does not exist. "Everything is scattered." Everything is on the same plane, there is no theme, no "subtopic", not even a "title". In this way, postmodern writers emphasize the randomness, improvisation and patchwork of creation, and value readers' participation and creation in literary works.

The uncertainty of this theme is inseparable from the crisis and loss of postmodernists’ rationality, faith, morality and daily life norms. For example, the "Beat Generation" was a complete collapse from spirit to body. George Mandel pointed out that at that time, "the people of the entire country temporarily lost consciousness in their own ways: in churches, in movie theaters, in front of televisions, in bars, in books... The whole world was trying to In search of its narcotics... addicted philosophers, prostitutes and poets, artists and thieves, lovers, dreamers, derelicts, and all kinds of homeless people in America... whatever they are Climbing prayerfully to the top of a crumbling tower, heading towards some phantom of heaven, or bit by bit, from a boring movie to a shot of heroin, winning every possible escape route - the whole world is trapped into a trap." The "Beat Generation" was deeply influenced by existentialism, but they highlighted the weak and desperate side of existentialism - the absurdity of the material world and the indifference and loneliness between people - and focused existentialism on action. Progressive factors with selection abandoned. In addition, under the influence of psychoanalytic theory and Zen Buddhism, they emphasized the irrational and subconscious activities of human mental activities, and used nihilism to combat survival crises. Therefore, the "Beat Generation" showed two characteristics in their ideological tendencies: First, they looked at everything from a nihilistic perspective, which caused their outlook on life to be completely "broken". They had no understanding of politics, society, ideals, future, The fate of the people and the future of mankind are all indifferent. Second, they use sensualism to grasp the world, leading to the complete "breakdown" of the middle-class lifestyle. They are keen on a debauched life of drinking, taking drugs, living in groups and roaming. After the "Beat", the "Beat Generation" expressed their most private and profound sensibilities in their works without any shame or scruple. They called their creations "spontaneous creation" and they wanted to do whatever they wanted. Express yourself spontaneously and spontaneously. "On the Road" by Kerouac, the representative writer of the "Beat Generation", is such an autobiographical novel, which is based on the author's own personal experience. The novel expresses the mental state of the "Beat" elements "on the road": criss-crossing and erratic. On the one hand, they abandoned the old social morals and value standards; on the other hand, they were at a loss in the face of the green and complex social trends of thought. The author believes that life is an endless road. Although people stop and go, they are always on the road. In order to best express this idea, the author stuffed a long roll of white paper into the typewriter, recorded his wandering life and conversations with his accomplices without thinking, and hurriedly wrote this novel of more than 200,000 words within three weeks.

(2) Uncertainty of image. If in realism, characters are people, and in modernism, characters are personalities, then in postmodernism, people are silhouettes, and characters are images.

When postmodernism declares the death of the subject and the author, the characters in literature also naturally die. Contemporary theorist Federman said: "The characters in novels are fictional beings. He or she is no longer a flesh-and-blood character with a fixed identity. This fixed identity is a stable set of social and psychological qualities - a name, A situation, a profession, a condition, etc. The creatures in the new novel will become changeable, illusory, nameless, nameless, deceitful, unpredictable, just like the words that make up these creatures. But this does not mean that. They are puppets. On the contrary, their existence will in fact be more real, more complex, more true to life, because they are not just what they appear to be; they are what they are: literal beings." Some people call postmodernism. The characteristics of this kind of character can be summarized as "unreasonable, no origin, no ego, no root, no painting, no metaphor", where "no painting" means that there is no description code of the character, it does not give the character a portrait; "no metaphor" means There are no metaphors and metonymic codes, because in postmodernist literature, there is no "meaning" hidden behind the phenomenon to explore. It is these "six nothings" that completely dismember the certainty of postmodernist literary images.

This "uncertainty of image" is also reflected in the fact that the protagonists of postmodernist literature have moved from "non-heroes" to "anti-heroes" in the past. The contemporary American writer Barthelme is a typical postmodernist writer, and his short story "Sinbad" can be regarded as a classic postmodern text. There are two protagonists in the novel: one is Sinbad, a sailor with rich romantic sailing adventure experiences; the other is "I", an American teacher in the 1980s. "I" lived in poverty, wore shabby clothes, and was looked down upon by students who attended classes during the day. However, the poetic language full of romantic passion still moved the students, "Be like Sinbad! Go forward against the wind and waves!... I tell you, with the sea Become one!" But the students said there was nothing outside. "I" said, you are completely wrong. There "there were waltzes, swords and canes, and dazzling drifts of seaweed." The waltz mentioned here refers to the sailor Sinbad mentioned earlier in the novel who walked towards the woods where waltz music was heard after his eighth voyage. Here, it is difficult for people to distinguish whether the person speaking is Sailor Sinbad or the university teacher "I", or whether Sailor Sinbad and "I" are originally the same person? How many protagonists are there in the novel, two or one? Maybe it is the sailor from the past Sinbad is now the university teacher "I"? All this is uncertain. This specious, one-or-nothing character completely defeats any attempt to capture an accurate meaning, and all that is left is the postmodern "anything goes", whatever you understand it to be, it is What.

(3) Uncertainty of plot. Postmodernist writers object to the logic, coherence, and closure of storylines. They believe that the coherence of meaning, the logic of character actions, and the complete unity of plots of pre-modernism are a closed structure, the wishful imagination of writers, and are not based on real life. Therefore, they must be broken This closed body is replaced by an open body plot structure full of dislocation. In this way, postmodernist writers terminate the logic and coherence of the plot, arbitrarily reverse real time, historical time and future time, arbitrarily replace the present, past and future, and constantly divide and cut off the real space, making literary works The plot presents multiple or infinite possibilities.

The new novel goes against the certainty of the plot of traditional novels and carefully constructs a labyrinth-like plot structure. Because the new novels oppose the planned arrangement of the fate and encounters of the characters, the writing of life in a coherent and thrilling way, and the creation of typical characters, the new novels also mostly break the traditional concept of time in their writing techniques and put the past, The future and present are blended into one, and reality, illusion, and memory are intertwined, thus forming some seemingly chaotic scenes that are completely different from traditional novels, and all of this is actually carefully arranged by the author. Butor once said when talking about his novel, "It is not only a maze of space, but also a maze of time." New novelists value form above all else and believe that when a writer constructs a novel, the important thing is not what to write but how to write it. Therefore, they try their best to make the plot structure of their work as intricate and original as possible.

For example, Butor's diary novel "Timetable" is divided into five parts, which are the five months in the diary (May to September). The diary written by the protagonist in this maze-like city is no longer unfolded in the normal chronological order, but interweaves the present, past, future, reality, history, and fantasy. The chronological order in the book overlaps and intersects, but there is a certain pattern, just like a progressive multiplication table or a price list on the railway. The 5 months are first written in linear order of 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, and then written in diagonal order from May to February; secondly, the things written in each month are increasing, so the diary of each month is Add a description of one month, so that although only 5 months are written, the events of 12 months are included in these 5 months, and this year symbolizes a person's life and the entire era. This criss-crossing time is intertwined with the maze-like space, making the structure of the novel more complex and exquisite. If readers read this novel with the same mentality as reading a Balzac-style novel, they will be confused and confused, thinking that the author is "mad"; if readers read the new novel in the same way as a new novel, they will be confused and confused. , analyzing the author's carefully designed structure layer by layer will give you the joy and pleasure of getting out of the maze step by step, and you have to admire the author's originality.

(4) Uncertainty of language. Language is the most important factor of postmodernism, and it has even risen to the position of subject. In a sense, the uncertainty of postmodernism is the uncertainty of language. We will discuss this later.

2. Diversity of creative methods

The uncertain creative principles of postmodernist literature will inevitably lead to the diversity of its creative methods. Pluralism is also another basic feature of postmodernist literature. International comparative literature scholar Ibbs once pointed out at an academic conference, "The opposite of absolutism is relativism. Relativism is premised on the existence of pluralism with different standards." "Pluralism means the interaction of diversity. This The main advantage of a concept is that it allows adherents of different interpretive frameworks to communicate with each other and thereby engage them in different frameworks, thereby avoiding mutual isolation." Since the 1990s, due to the tremendous changes in the world situation, cultural absolutism represented by "Eurocentrism" and "Western centrism" has become the target of public criticism. Thinkers and scholars around the world have begun to think and pay attention to how to establish a new The latest topic of international cultural relations. After losing the center and absoluteness, all human beings around the world are on the same level, and world culture has shown a trend of diversified development. What people value is cultural exchange and cultural dialogue in the true sense. The pluralistic suspicion of postmodernist literary creation is not unrelated to the pluralistic tendency of this culture. This pluralistic characteristic of postmodernist literature is mainly reflected in the integration of postmodernism with modernism, realism, and romanticism.

(1) Postmodernism and realism. Although the spirit of postmodernism is far from realism, it has many similarities in expression techniques. For example, magical realism is a magical combination of postmodernism and realism. Magical realism is a product of postmodern culture, and its overall spirit and creative methods have distinct postmodern characteristics. However, magical realism writers have never been far away from realism. "Magical realism is first of all an attitude towards reality. Magical realist writers face reality and strive to go deep into reality to discover the mystery in reality, life and human activities." Most magical realist writers are very concerned about the country and The destiny of the people has a clear creative purpose, a strong sense of responsibility and a clear concept of love and hate. Llosa said that being a writer "means taking on a social responsibility at the same time: while developing one's literary career, through writing and its activities, it should also be an active player in solving economic, political and cultural problems in society. participants". Therefore, magical realist writers are different from typical Western postmodernist writers. They are not keen on describing the irrational and abnormal psychology of individuals. Instead, they are firmly rooted in objective reality and fully expose the political oligarchs and political oligarchs in contemporary Latin America. The ugly faces of large plantation owners and imperialism express the writer's sympathy for the people and his thoughts on the fate of the nation and the people.

Carpentier's initial appreciation of the insane dream-talking literature of Surrealism, his later boredom, and his final break were all because he used reason to rigorously analyze and examine this type of literature, and because he had a A strong desire to express the American continent. Marquez said that he has two beliefs deep in his heart: "First, excellent novels should be the artistic representation of reality; second, the closest goal of mankind is socialism." His "One Hundred Years of Solitude" describes the historical changes of Macondo, a small town on the Caribbean coast, for more than a hundred years through the bizarre and tortuous encounters and legendary ups and downs of seven generations of the Buendia family, and reflects the evolution of rural Colombia from the 19th century The hundreds of years of vicissitudes between the 20th century and the 20th century express the author's desire for peace, hatred of social unrest, hatred of war, opposition to foreign forces, and advocacy of national independence and unity. The realism factors in the novel are very prominent.

(2) Postmodernism and modernism. At most points of disagreement, modernist literature and postmodernist literature seem to differ only in a conscious degree. They are not so much the same in differences as the differences in the same, so it is almost impossible to strictly separate the two. Almost all postmodernist writers have been influenced by modernist writers, and many modernist writers often show some postmodern color in their works. Joyce is a classic writer of modernism, but in recent years he has been increasingly regarded as the founder of postmodernism. His "Finnegans Wake" is often regarded as the beginning of a new era of British and American postmodernism, because this work embodies the transition from "self-centered modernism" to "language-centered postmodernism". In this novel, Joyce's concern with linguistic experimentation and textual construction goes beyond reasonable boundaries. For the needs of the text, he not only adopted a kind of "dream language" that is unique in the history of world languages, but also allowed any other material he thought to be available to openly enter his work. From this, what he showed to the readers was an independent and A closed novel world and a maze that can never be exited. What Joyce wanted to do at this time was no longer to try to reflect something through some peculiar language and text, as he had done in his early years, but to create a world different from reality through language. Joyce finally completed his transition from modernism to postmodernism. There are not a few writers like Joyce who have crossed the boundaries between modernism and postmodernism, such as Kafka, Faulkner, Beckett, Williams, Albee, etc.

As postmodernist literature, "black humor" has obviously been influenced by existential philosophy and literature. "Black humor" writers take the attitude of laughing at the world after seeing it as absurd and unreasonable. These "black humor" writers "have a deep disgust and even despair for the world they describe. They use humor and sarcastic techniques that are highly exaggerated to the point of absurdity, and even do not hesitate to use 'distortion' phenomena to make readers unable to help but understand the essence." The shocking strokes of doubt use seemingly 'impossible' to reveal what 'may' happen or actually happen, reveal the nature of the real world they live in from the negative side, and use absurdity to metaphor the truth. The value standards of others have all been turned upside down (in fact, reality has turned everything upside down), and all ugly, evil, deformed, and irrational things, as well as embarrassing and embarrassing situations, have been punished. Humor, ridicule, and even "appreciative" laughter are used to express their gloomy mood and abyss of despair. "Heller's "Catch-22" is a masterpiece of black humor. The author originally wanted to use human wisdom to ridicule the military bureaucracy that rules society and the big shots who control people's right to exist. However, in the end, this "Catch-22" became an ever-present and inescapable phenomenon. A symbol, a trap, of the absurd human condition, which acquires eternal significance, and even wisdom is not immune to this trap. Therefore, Heller adopts an extreme and strange attitude of ridicule towards life and death, emotion and love, idealism and patriotism. Even the solemn question of "to be or not to be" in Shakespeare's works has become a joke in Heller's works: "To die or not to die, that is the question to be considered." The overall spirit of the novel belongs more to postmodernism. , and in terms of artistic techniques, it is more of modernism. (3) Postmodernism and Romanticism.

Just as modernism and romanticism have many close connections, postmodernism is often filled with a strong flavor of romanticism. For example, the confessional school, a postmodern poetry genre that emerged in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, pushed the Romantic feature of "expressing personal emotions" to the extreme. Confessional poets firmly opposed Eliot's principles of poetry creation and New Criticism theory. Eliot believes that the great pressure of cultural history is much stronger than the creative impulse of the poet himself. Therefore, "poetry does not indulge feelings, but escapes feelings, does not express personality, but escapes personality." This is Eliot's famous saying The principle of "non-personalized" creation. The New Criticism developed the theory of "fallacy of intention" based on Eliot's theory. They believe that because people often confuse the author's creative intention with the value judgment of the work and replace the latter with the former, this leads to the "fallacy of intention". Therefore, critics should exclude the author's creative intention from literary criticism. outside. Against the theories of Eliot and New Criticism, as well as the tradition of American academic poetry creation, confessional poets went against the grain. They have no scruples in revealing their personal privacy, such as sexual desire, thoughts of death, humiliation, despair, mental illness, surgery, conflicts with employers, and twisted and abnormal psychology towards their wives, parents, siblings, and children. This brought their poetry creation back to romanticism, thus creating the "confessional poetry" movement that became popular in the 1960s.

3. Language experiments and discourse games

People usually believe that the biggest difference between modernism and postmodernism is that modernism is centered on "self", while postmodernism is It is centered on "language". As early as 1932, the French writer Beckett issued a cry of postmodernism through the protagonist in his novel "The Unspeakable", "Everything boils down to a matter of words" and "Everything is words and nothing more." Generally speaking, modernism follows the self-centered creative principle and takes understanding the spiritual world as the main object of expression; while postmodernism advocates a language-centered creative method and pays great attention to language games and experiments. The former usually depicts human consciousness and subconsciousness as important themes in literary works, deliberately revealing the inner reality and spiritual reality of the characters, and then reflecting the "true appearance" of society. The latter is keen on developing the symbolic and code functions of language, is obsessed with exploring new language arts, and tries to make the work an independent "self-referential" and completely self-sufficient language system through language autonomy. Their intention is not to express the world, express inner emotions, or reveal the secrets of the inner world, but to use language to create a new world, thereby greatly diluting or even canceling the basic function of literary works to reflect life and depict reality.

On the basis of this theory, the first thing that postmodernist literature must expose is the falsity of the so-called "reality", that is, "reality" is nothing but an illusion created by language. At this point, postmodernist metafiction can serve as a representative. Metafiction (also known as anti-fiction) uses parody (or satire) as its main paradigm to reflect, deconstruct and subvert the novel form and narrative itself, which leads to traditional novels and narratives in form and language. The disintegration of the mode declares the invalidity and falsehood of traditional narrative. Postmodernist metanovelists believe that reality is created by language, and false language creates false reality. The narrative method of traditional novels is one of the creators of false reality: it creates a false story to "reflect" a reality that is itself false, thus leading readers into a double falsehood. Therefore, the main task of the novelist is to expose this deception, to present the falsehood of reality and the falsehood of fiction in front of readers at the same time, prompting them to think and re-understand reality and language. Metafiction is "novel about novels" and "novel about how novels become novels". It self-reveals fiction and self-parody, deliberately exposing the traces of the novel's self-operation to readers, and self-exposing the fictionality and forgery of the narrative world. "The truth of fiction is: facts are illusions; fictional stories are the prototype of the world." In this way, in metafiction, the so-called "reality" only exists in the language used to describe it, and "meaning" only exists in the process of creation and interpretation of the novel.

Barth's short story "Leaf" was created under this theoretical background. At the beginning of the novel, the narrator "I" is troubled because more than half of the novel is still "lack of passion, abstract, professional, and incoherent" with "conflicts, entanglements, and no climax." "I" thought about how the novel would end, but no matter how I thought about it, I couldn't get beyond "the story of our lives." "I" then decided that since those of us who "make a living by writing" are like "liars who have long-standing habits that die hard", then "change a common noun" and "continue making up". It turns out that this is how the traditional narrative world is fabricated. By extension, many human "truth systems", such as history, religion, morality, ideology, ethical values, etc., are not a "narrative method"? It is this narrative method that combines those scattered ideographic symbols. Integrated and organized with a self-justifying causal logic, it constitutes what we used to call "reality".

Similarly, after dispelling the authenticity of "reality", postmodernists believe that language itself is meaning, and language no longer needs to be attached to other "reality" foundations. For example, in postmodernist poetry, language itself is meaning, and it refuses to express, "Each word is a stone / as big as a fist - one by one / which I throw towards / the dark glass window." "We use this language as if we made it", "This language is the purpose, this language is the map". The School of Language Poetry states straightforwardly that the main raw material of poetry is language and the experience of language production. Therefore, postmodernist poets find their home in language and play freely in language. For example, Stevens's masterpiece "The Organ" changed the language style of American poetry with its pure language play and ecstatic clamor. Kenneth Coker simply guided the students to compose poems using a game method. He asked the whole class to compose a poem, and each child added a line. In the end, word games, boring words, and illogical expressions all turned into postmodernist poetry. At the same time, there were many experiments in postmodernist poetry. "Poets began to collaborate with sound, but also with music and other arts. Countless works translated from multiple languages ??appeared." Concrete poetry, which appeared in Germany in the mid-20th century, is also called "language experimental poetry". For experimental poets, text no longer has a definite meaning; it is just a symbol that has nothing to do with its grammatical function or status. It is the raw material that poets use to form certain graphics, and these graphic texts themselves are purposes and meanings. For example, the poet Gomdelin wrote: "Words are shadows/shadows become words/words are games/games become words." Just as words are games, poetry is also a game.

Since language can create "reality" and language itself is meaning, postmodernists can obtain full meaning and fun as long as they indulge in language and play freely. Therefore, on the one hand, postmodernist writers parody traditional literature and enjoy themselves in language games: Barthelme translated Balzac's novel into a farce; Barth used "modern speculative spirit" to rewrite ancient Greece Myth; Darren Poe juxtaposed the Book of Songs with the battlefield experience of World War I; Burgess countered that Shakespeare plagiarized "The Complete Works of Shakespeare"; Amis reunited the characters he created in the novel "in reality" , was brutally fooled. On the other hand, postmodernist writers have erased the difference between novels and their objects, arbitrarily converting fiction and fictional reality into one mess: Beckett's "First Love" disintegrates love as an unreasonable meaning way; Bass's "Night Sea Voyage" reduces people's need for God to the ridiculous consequences of sexual behavior; the profound religious philosophy about life and death in Australian writer Peter Kelly's "Conversations with the Unicorn" is nothing but a sad joke; Kelly "Fat Man in History" describes a "counterrevolutionary clique" trying to influence the course of history, but in the end they just became muddy samples for other people's experiments.

The playfulness of this narrative method in postmodernist literature allows readers to gain great pleasure from reading the text. Postmodern text is a "linguistic construction", a network structure, readers can start reading anywhere and stop reading anywhere. The reader does not need to explore or delve into the content hidden behind the text, he only needs to pay attention to his own experience and feelings at every moment.

In 1968, the British novelist B.S. Johnson ingeniously published a loose-leaf novel in a box with a removable cover, which developed the game spirit of postmodernism to the extreme. Readers can rearrange the 27 loose chapters of the book in any combination as they wish. They can start reading from any chapter and start their own game.

The object of modernist literature is the subjective inner world, the "self" in people's subconscious. This will inevitably lead to the psychological and expressive characteristics of modernist creative methods. To put it simply, the modernist creative method is a psychological or expressionist creative method. This method mainly has the following characteristics:

First, the subconscious mind is used as the object of expression. The most basic difference between modernism and traditional literature is the transfer of the object of expression. Traditional literature focuses on the relationship between the character's image, personality and environment, while modernism focuses on the human heart, which is something that people are not consciously aware of. the subconscious mind.

Second, irrational thinking methods. Because the subconscious mind of modernism is the object of expression, and the subconscious mind is an area beyond the control of human reason. It lacks clear logic and regularity, and has no clear purpose and meaning. Therefore, in creation, they must often use Irrational thinking methods, creating a series of fragmented and incoherent images. Because only in this way can the artistic pursuit of expressing one's own subconscious be fully achieved. In addition, by viewing the world from a subconscious perspective, the world naturally becomes disordered, irregular, and meaningless, and this is believed to be the true nature of the world that art is intended to express. The reason why poetry uses symbolic techniques is precisely because it expresses an irrational subconscious impulse.

Third, use symbolism, stream of consciousness, and transformation as expression methods to highlight the illusory and hypothetical nature. In order to express super-sensory passion and elusive inner reality, realist literature generally uses abnormal and deformed hypothetical means. It uses strange metaphors and extreme exaggeration to symbolize the object. Symbol can be said to be the most basic technique of modernist literature. If the original image of objective things cannot perfectly express what is deep in the heart, it must be distorted and deformed until it can perfectly express the subjective inner impulse. This technique is more prominent in the creation of symbolism, mysticism, absurdist drama and other genres. Stream of consciousness is also a common technique of modernism, which is a direct product of modernism's representation of people's inner world, especially the human subconscious. It does not symbolize the subjective self that people want to express by shaping the image of external objects, but frequently uses techniques such as "free association", "inner monologue" and "sensory impression" to directly describe the activities deep in the soul and the flow of the subconscious. This method of stream of consciousness is completely naturalistic, and it does not require rational reasoning or synthesis.

Fourth, go against tradition and seek innovation. This can also be said to be a general characteristic of modernism. Its performance involves almost all directions of literature, such as anti-rationality, anti-theme, anti-plot, anti-language, etc. Traditional literature believes that art is a reflection of reality and pays attention to the external world. Modernism, on the other hand, shifted its focus to the inner world and the subconscious mind. Subjective literature is the expression of the subjective self. Traditional literature emphasizes the rational spirit and is keen on regularizing the world. Strives to "give order to chaos." Modernism rejects rationality, appeals to intuition and instinct, and strives to "give order to chaos." Traditional literature reflects reality, while modernism completely abandons the theme and believes that the theme is the structure of the work - Form, it fundamentally denies the greatness and dignity of human beings and emphasizes the pain and meaninglessness of human years. Therefore, most of the characters in modernist literary works are abstract people without personality, lifelessness, and complete alienation. Sometimes they even have no image, occupation, or gender. Traditional literature often pursues vivid and tortuous plots, while modernism mostly has no plot, and even if it does, it is very monotonous and boring. This is the case for the two unknown homeless people in "Waiting for Godot". They blindly wait for Godot's arrival in the wild. They even decide to hang themselves when Godot doesn't come, but the readers know nothing about Godot. Traditional literature emphasizes the accuracy and vividness of language, and pursues the individuality and expressiveness of character language. Much of the language in modern literature is illogical, confusing, fragmented, and without any meaning.

All of these constitute the anti-traditional spirit of modernism, and at the same time reflect their innovative awareness of aesthetic pursuits. It is undeniable that the anti-tradition and innovation of modernism provide many new forms of expression that reflect the rapidly changing modern life. and expression methods. However, due to the idealist ideological worldview as the basis of epistemology, modernism has a serious tendency of formalism. Many writers are divorced from reality and blindly pursue the novelty of form and make mysteries, which makes many works obscure and difficult to understand. Quirky.