Aesthetics of Modernist Literature: a Style Analysis of Three Texts from T. S. Eliot, S. Beckett and V. Woolf´s Writings as Sample

Abstract

This paper explores analytical and stylistic tools in the discourse of modernist literature as epitomized in three canonical works of three influential modernist literary figures: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett. The paper shows how, upon meditation on the lived reality of Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, modernist literature writers resort to fragmented language, mythical usages, and nonlinear structures to respond to the much ravaging and grotesque events witnessed by the world in general and Europe in particular in this epoch. Reflecting the compartmentalized and Balkanized reality of the world through its dazzling stylistic and figurative innovations, modernist literature sought to shock audiences, to lead bare the inconsistency of the human condition. This goes in parallel with an emerging philosophy that turned conventions upside down in different domains: ethics and morals, religion, history, economy, politics, aesthetics, arts, and language among others.