问答题
Make comments on the following passage. Use at least one major literary work to support your argument."Modernism reacted to a top-heavy Victorian rationalism by turning to the exotic, the primitivist, the archaic and unconscious. Truth was to be felt in the guts and genitals, not in the head. Animal spontaneity was the latest cerebral experiment. For all its self-conscious modernity, it was a period rife with myth and sour with blood and soil. We would be blown backwards into the future by gazing on the archaic images of the past, a past which resembled Utopia in its absolute non-existence."—Terry Eagleton
【正确答案】正确答案：Eagleton"s statement stresses the origins and distinctive features of Modernism. In fact, Modernism is an omnibus term for a number of tendencies in the arts which were prominent in the first half of the 20th century. It is a reflection against realism and rationalism. Technically it is marked by a persistent experimentalism. It rejects the traditional framework of narrative, description, and rational exposition in poetry and prose, in favour of stream-of-consciousness presentation of personality. Modernist literature is a literature of discontinuity, being based upon a sharp rejection of the procedures and values of the immediate past, to which it adopts an adversary stance. Consider James Joyce"s Ulysses. The whole story is a parody to Homer"s Odyssey, but tells a quite different story. The protagonist is not that fearless and brave hero in Homer"s but a fearful cowardice. His wife, Molly, is also not a Penelope who is faithful to her husband but is probably receiving her lover at their home. Also, the traditional narrative cannot find its way in the novel and at first glance much of the book may appear unstructured and chaotic. Every episode of Ulysses has a theme, technique, and correspondences between its characters and those of the Odyssey. The total lack of continuity makes the whole book hard to read but also establishes the book as one of the leading modernist writings.