MODERNISM – A MOVEMENT OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

The paper focuses on modernism as a movement of radical innovation in all artistic fields, the sweep of modernism being felt all over Europe and the United States in the first decades of the 20th century. Emphasis will be laid on the artistic achievement of several modernist English novelists and the way in which, by successfully assimilating tradition, they got integrated into the general movement of renewal. The twentieth century was, from its very beginning, confronted with a state of crisis in all fields of life, social, political or artistic. More than any of the centuries preceding it, the twentieth was essentially an international one, characterised by a new spirit, under the form of a reaction against the established system of values and break with tradition. The key concept, shared by the whole Western world was that of ‘the modern’. It would be then difficult to speak about distinct achievements restricted to Britain alone. As the two world wars demonstrated it, Britain could no longer play its role on the international stage independently, but as an integral part of a system whose functioning depended on the individual countries ’ ability to interrelate, while acknowledging one another’s identity. Britain was just one of the components of the Western world and the rapid economic, social, political and cultural changes occurring in this world proved unlikely to leav