Modern Era

20th Century
- The rupture of intellectual history
- All knowledge is based on perspective

"The Modernity if the transient, the fleeting, the contingient," - Charles Baudelaire, 1863.

The following is a short essay response to a theme of the Modern Era.

One of the common themes within the Modern Era of the 20th Century that really grabs the attention of the reader is that of the absurd or 'unknowability' that pops up in certain works. The absurd refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek the inherit meaning in life and the human inability to find any true concrete meaning. The appeal of this is that it runs amok and the reader gets to find their own meaning to a certain extent. It's fresh, entertaining, and allows the reader to experience things that are out of the ordinary. 

An example of the absurd would be that of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. Arcadia is an example of this because of the nature of the events of the play. It opens to the study session of Thomasina given by her tutor Septimus Hodge. Thomasina throughout the play desires to learn and in so doing she stumbles across the 2nd law of thermodynamics, something she should not be able to even to ponder about. At that time it had not been known and Thomasina lacked the mathematics to be able to describe accurately and prove the future she got a glimpse of, "She didn't have the maths, not remotely. She saw what things meant, way ahead, like seeing a picture. This is not science, this is storytelling," (2817). She would always know, but at the same time she would never know. It's the phenomenon of knowing without ever really knowing - she would never really find the meaning she sought.

At the same time the play jumps between times and there Hannah searches for the truth of the Hermit of Sidley Park while Bernard searches for the truth of Lord Byron killing a fellow poet. There Bernard makes claims about things he knows, but is continually proven wrong, "Actually, Bernard, as a scientist, your theory is incomplete." (2793). Bernard makes huge leaps in the things he thinks he knows, never waiting to try to find the concrete evidence he needs to learn any real truth. While Hannah will never know the absolute truths she doesn't want to take the leaps necessary to find the truths she seeks. She eventually learns of Septimus Hodge being the Hermit of Sidley Park - and can prove it. But in the end there's still plenty she can never know because she wasn't there during the time period, she can't know everything of the past. She wants to know the meaning of it all, but the truth is she can't know because that's how life works. 

The Modern era brought about many changes within literature knowledge being based on one's perspective, the idea of the unconscious and how it works in relation to people, and the absurd. The absurd brings about a human aspect of literature and the inherit truth within the human condition of wanting to know, but never being able to.