The "Revolution" in Literature During the 19th/20th Centuries.
An influential English Modernist Virginia Woolf once said, "On or about December 1910, the world changed". This statement is regarding the drastic change in the culture of society with the beginning of exploration of the meaning of life and the patterns that society are prone to following. This brought about curiosity and the religious affiliated explanations were no longer sufficient. The dissatisfaction for many, and believing mindlessly in something with no real evidence was intolerable. Society's intellect was expanding with the impacts of the scientific revolution and new discoveries, the potential for the expansion of perspective was now present. Ontology as a philosophical viewpoint on life is defined as, "The science or study of being; that branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature or essence of being or existence." (Oxford English Dictionary). Exploring ontology and the many other philosophical branches that derived from it resulted in many new perceptions of viewing the nature of a human being and the society. That being said, the narrative of literature has changed drastically from the 18th Century to the 19th/20th centuries. At the peak of the 19th century there was a "revolutionary" shift and rise in the popularity of writers rejecting the concept of romanticism in their novellas and novels. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica; "Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental." Rejecting these concepts was among many of the cultural forces that drove literary modernism. Romanticism was a convenient way of writing, and thinking due to the traditional expectancies people had based on their religious based knowledge and replacing the harshness of society with an idealistic view on life.
