Literary Modernism, which flourished in the early 20th century, is characterized by:

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Experimentation with form, stream-of-consciousness narration, and fragmentation. Literary Modernism (roughly 1900-1945) was marked by radical experimentation with literary form, fragmented narrative structures, stream-of-consciousness techniques, and a self-conscious break from traditional literary conventions. Modernist writers responded to the upheavals of World War I, industrialization, urbanization, and challenges to established values. Key modernist authors include James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and Franz Kafka.

A return to classical forms describes Neoclassicism, not Modernism. Rural life and dialect characterize Local Color and Regionalist writing of the late 19th century. Strict moral instruction and allegory are more typical of medieval and early modern literature. Modernism was defined by its break from these traditions, embracing difficulty, ambiguity, and formal innovation.

Modernism is one of the most important literary periods tested on the CLEP Literature exam. Modernist techniques include stream of consciousness (depicting the flow of characters' thoughts as they actually occur, as in Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway"), multiple narrators and perspectives, non-linear chronology, mythic parallels (Joyce's "Ulysses" maps onto Homer's "Odyssey"), and collage-like structures (Eliot's "The Waste Land" weaves together fragments from multiple languages and literary traditions). Understanding Modernism requires appreciating that its difficulty is deliberate  -  these writers believed that traditional forms could no longer adequately represent the complexity of modern experience.

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