Traditional Aesthetics in Modernist Literature

In terms of the idea of truth, goodness and beauty, there is a clear difference between modernism and the traditional Platonic conception of aesthetics. Plato believed that: both the true and the good are beautiful; but in the eyes of modernism, the true, the good and the beautiful are not necessarily unified as a whole; the beautiful and the good can be true or false, and the ugly and the evil are the opposite of the beautiful and the good, but can be true. The question is how to observe the world and people, how to estimate the significance of the principle of "truth" for the aesthetic and cognitive value of literature. From the methodological point of view, the modernist writers focused on the self-knowledge of man, "know thyself". Hamlet said: "What a marvelous work is man! How noble is reason! How infinite is strength! How dignified in meter and demeanor! How excellent! The essence of the universe! The Spirit of all things."

In form, as Saul. Bellow said, "Strange feet wear strange shoes." So it is said that modernism is so varied in form that there is no fixed form, and in comparison with traditional literature, it is characterized by a deliberate break in the order of time and space, and a great deal of use of dreams, psychological time, black humor and magic, imagery, symbols and streams of consciousness to represent life and the human character. They believe that traditional realism can no longer profoundly express the complexity of modern people's life experience and inner experience, the individuality of people from the collective consciousness of the liberation, only with this method can be more profound and more accurate to the individuality of people and the complexity of the psychological experience of the performance, the traditional methods of white drawing in the fast-changing society seems pale and powerless and can not be portrayed in the complexity of the modern people's consciousness.