Differentiate Modernism from Post Modernism
Modernism, in literature, is the basic concept of new methods through new reasoning. During the renaissance period of English history, the traditional values of Western civilization, which the Victorians had only begun to question, came to be questioned seriously by a number of new writers who saw society breaking down around them. The world was being looked at from a new perspective, mostly scientifically. Traditional literary forms were often discarded and new ones succeeded them as writers sought fresher ways of expressing what they took to be new kinds of experiences, or experience seen in new ways.
Modernism, through theology and philosophy, attempts the same objective. However, instead of just writers, scholars and church officials attempt to reinterpret Christian doctrine to fit the scientific thought of the 19th century. Ideas and ideals were used to promote social re-engineering within the law and government so as to tackle such issues as gender, race inequality, corruption, injustice, marriage and state affairs, all of which were anti-traditional. To fully understand what Modernism is, is to accept one word, Modern. To be modern is to be anti-traditional. It is to have belief in the progress of mankind through science and technology. It is to be anti-faith, because faith here means to have belief in something unverified by science. It is to believe that reason is the only tool at the disposal of man and to have belief that truth is knowledge.
Post Modernism, on the other hand, is ‘after modernism’, and in many ways postmodernism constitutes an attack on modernist claims about the existence of truth and value, claims that come from the European enlightenment of the 18th century. In disputing past assumptions postmodernists generally display a preoccupation with the inadequacy of language as a mode of communication. One such famous postmodernist theorist is French philosopher Jacques