E X T E N S I O N MODERNISM The first two decades of the 20th century in Europe were characterised by the rise of many literary and artistic movements which refused tradition and produced works that were different and modern. These movements took on different names in the various countries they developed in, but, to refer to them, we generically speak of Modernism. They all aimed at creating new forms and expressing new content which would reflect the deep changes that society had experienced, the complexity of the modern world and the confusion of the individual in it. Growing urbanisation, the development of industries, technological developments, the horrors and the consequences of the war, new social and scientific theories (Darwin s evolutionism, Freud s Psychoanalysis, and Marxism, among the others) had, in fact, transformed society, which now appeared uncertain, unfair and difficult to understand. Traditional religion and ethics had lost their place, and people had lost their certainties and reference points. Modernist Fiction. Plot lost its importance, the workings of the mind became central and no theme was considered unsuitable for literature. The English novelist D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) spoke openly about sex, which was, at the time, a taboo subject, and gave as much importance to the psychology of his characters as to external events, though still keeping a rather traditional style. On the contrary, the Irish writer James Joyce (1882-1941), invented a new form to express the inner thoughts of his characters. In his most famous work, Ulysses (1922), he abandoned both the logical construction of the sentence and conventional syntax in order to put into words the stream of consciousness, that is the natural flow of thoughts as they come to the mind with no order or control by reason. The French writer Marcel Proust (18711922) took 14 years to write his gigantic work la Recherche du Temps Perdu. In this novel without a plot, which consists essentially of an exploration of his own memory, he uses a complex narrative J. Joyce technique of association of ideas. 77