'[T]he modern era [...] actually begins with the end of the 19th [century], when there is a sense of overcoming of an important phase of English history was already in the air." Indeed, when we discuss "modern" in terms of literature, this tends to be a reference to modernism, which was a written reaction to the sudden and rapid changes that occurred in across Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, changes most concentrated in metropolitan cities; Many in the modern period viewed these rapid changes in technology, industrialism and social mobility as negative, seeing the city as desolate and isolating, as demonstrated in Hornes' reference to "crooked-backed chimneys" and "houses with broken windows." Modernist writers such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, whom I will discuss in this essay, attempted to encapsulate these changes through their writing with a move away from traditional forms and linearity, experimenting with a more fractured and disordered style to reflect the changing world; previous generations of writers had used the city as "the backdrop against which these writers' characters acted out their lives", the city for the modernists played a more important role. Modernists such as Joyce and Woolf depicted metropolitan city life predominantly through its impact on the city and their characters and vice versa, personifying the city in an attempt to conceptualize and understand it with familiar characteristics. Through this method, while metropolitan life was in some ways vibrant and promising, modernist writers predominantly expressed the feeling of instability and anonymity that metropolitan life felt. for them it represented the "new" metropolitan life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay. Bobby Seal states in the article Woolf at the Door that cities in the modern. period became "[m]orethan simply meeting places and random crossing points." They were generative environments of the new arts, focal points of the intellectual community, or, in simpler terms, the new city held great promise. In Joyce's Dubliners, characters often hope for ambition or an epiphany that is almost never fulfilled or realized. For example in Araby, the boy waits all evening to go to the bazaar, and once he arrives he discovers that it is closing, while in Eveline, Eveline thinks of running away with her lover but at the end of the story she abandons her lover Frank at the pier. This provides a perfect metaphor to represent metropolitan life. The new modern city promises to be progressive and exciting in its progress, but in reality the rapid growth of cities has often left people with a feeling of "disconnection, detachment, even alienation from all local and particular ties." The best example of this metaphor is exemplified in Joyce's short story A Little Cloud. Little Chandler at the beginning of the story is filled with anticipation for his meeting with Gallaher: "Little Chandler's thoughts since lunchtime were on his meeting with Gallaher, on Gallaher's invitation, and on the great city of London where Gallaher lived." antithesis between the adjective "small" that precedes Chandler's name and the "large" that precedes "London", Joyce contrasts the city and the man, creating the promise of London for Chandler, which he hopes will get him out of his life uninspiring and dissatisfied. . The repetition of "Gallaher" here also establishes Gallaher as an emblem of the city and all the promise it holds, later highlighted by the further "contrast" Chandler feels between him andGallaher. He states that “if you wanted to be successful you had to leave.” You couldn't do anything in Dublin", once again seeing the metropolis of London as a sort of promised land of opportunity. However, Chandler actually already lives in Dublin, Ireland's largest city, and the reader immediately gets the feeling that London will be equally unsatisfactory and unsatisfying; a conclusion confirmed by Gallaher's actual presence in the story, where Chandler brushes aside his sense of disillusionment with Gallaher and the vulgarity he notices in him perhaps as "the result of living in London." While Chandler willingly dismisses this here, the reader grasps the fact that if his vulgarity is associated with London, the city cannot possibly deliver on all the promises Chandler hopes for. Likewise, Gallaher's opening dialogue is in in some fractured and erratic way, "well, how have you been doing since I last saw you?" My God, how old are we getting, leaving no room for Chandler to respond and presenting the man as unstable and fickle . Despite, or perhaps because of, Chandler's faith in him, we are disappointed in Gallaher as readers. His hasty manner and erratic dialogue make him seem insincere, and we are left wondering whether Chandler's "tears of remorse" at the end of the story are due to his imprisonment in Dublin or to his disappointment in Gallaher, who for him it represented the metropolitan's promise. London. This story therefore provides a perfect metaphor for Joyce to represent the city through Gallaher; a man who in theory is exciting and successful, but in reality is superficial and disappointing. One of the most notable features of modernist writing is in its style, which often rejected the Victorian values ​​of chronology and traditional narrative for mimesis of new metropolitan rhythms. life. Discussing Virginia Woof's work, Seal states in her article: 'Woolf developed a new approach to the use of rhythm in her writing too; the pace of life in a modern city was disorienting and intense.' Woolf represents metropolitan life by trying to imitate its rhythms and rhythms through her style and structure. Examining Kew Gardens, for example, the reader passes through the minds of a number of different characters in rapid succession, preventing them from truly getting to know the characters before their attention is diverted to something else. Although Woolf provides some details about the characters, "rosy-cheeked", "lithe", "in the prime of youth", these qualities are all superficial and to the reader these people simply remain people. In Misperceiving Virginia Woolf, James Harker comments that "cinema is recreated in the image of the city", and indeed Woolf here creates the cinematic effect of walking down a city street, an experience during which one observes only fragments of the life of other people without any prior information about them. It should perhaps be noted here that, by representing metropolitan life in this way, Woolf does not impose on the reader a sense of judgment about city life, firstly because she believed in the removal of the author from the text, and secondly because her structural choice and the rhythm mediated by its characters simply reflects the rhythm of metropolitan life; presented to the reader who in turn expresses his own judgement. Horne's depiction of houses "staring" at each other is a personification symbolizing the modern fear of constant surveillance, and indeed Joyce employs a similar image in Araby of houses "gazing" at the against each other." Technological and industrial progress in the modern period has allowed people to travel to places more easily, enabled telephone communication, andbrought masses of people to the cities. Such progress is something that modernist writers of the period could not ignore, and although these changes might have been expected to be welcomed, these writers often presented metropolitan life as suffering because of them; the increase in population ironically induces feelings of anonymity and hinders communication. This is again something represented through Woolf's characters in Kew Gardens, all of whom share a lack of communication with each other. This seems best exemplified in the exchange between the married couple, in which the two seem on completely different wavelengths: “For me, a square silver shoe buckle and a dragonfly—”“for me, a kiss. " Not only are their minds on different topics here, but the dash here indicates a break, the wife not even stopping to consider what her husband has said. If this is indeed a metaphor for the lack of communication in metropolitan life, we must pause to consider why this lack of communication is evident. While Woolf's story is set in gardens rather than city streets, Kew Gardens is located in London and is cultivated by humans and could therefore be seen as a metaphor for city streets. For example, his opening description of the flowers in the garden is incredibly vibrant and full of color: "From the red, blue, or yellow darkness of the throat emerged a straight bar, rough with gold dust and slightly clubbed at the end." fine.'The description of flowers here borders on the gaudy, with a multitude of colors and shapes presented to the reader in rapid succession. The intense and overwhelming properties of the flowers in the garden can therefore be seen as Woolf's representation of the mass media that grew rapidly in her era, in that they provide a distraction in the story, "the heavy woman looked through the pattern of words falling to the flowers', just as the mass media have done in the city. As Rechniewski says, "how can the writer compete with the siren call of the mass media?" apocalyptic and desolate image of the city of Hornes; on the contrary, the flowers are the symbol of life and excitement. However, what lies behind this image is the implication that the flowers are the distraction behind the lack of communication in the story, once again accentuating Woolf's use of character to mediate on metropolitan life. Character, however, is not presented only in humans. In an attempt to encapsulate the city, modernist writers often lent human qualities to buildings and vice versa, presenting the modern city as uniform and squalid. This brings us back to Hornes' depiction of the city, "the houses with broken windows go mad staring at each other without expression, and the chimneys with crooked backs and hoods turn slowly with a witch's murmur", which shares an affinity with some of Joyce's Dublin presentations. In A Little Cloud, for example, Chandler describes a row of houses as "stunted," saying that they "seemed to him like a band of tramps, huddled together along the banks of the river." In this case, the personification of houses as "wanderers" indicates that they are unwanted or annoying; a quality that expresses animosity and disgust towards new cities. Likewise, the qualities of the city are reflected in human character, where for example in A Painful Case, Duffy's face is described as dressed in "the brown tint of Dublin streets". Immediately one gets the impression that the city has influenced man, and not in a positive way, since the color "brown" is.