MODERNISM AND THE MODERN NOVEL IN THE CONTEXT OF ANALYSIS

II. INTERNATIONAL ISTANBUL CONGRESS, İstanbul, Türkiye, 28 - 29 Eylül 2022, ss.27-28

The novel is modern for its time in every age, and what is meant by modernism in literature is a certain period

with its own characteristics. According to Jesse Matz, in this sense, modernity is the period in which the state

of endless change and renewal, which forces human life and character to constantly change, begins to

dominate. Therefore, modern period novelists think that reality has changed and that the art of fiction, or more

generally fiction, should adapt to this situation. According to them, the novel should reflect the

incomprehensibility, foreignness and changes of the modern times, so they try innovations to reflect

modernity, so that the modern novel is separated from the classical novel. However, it should not be forgotten

that there are works that do not meet the requirements of the modern novel, although they were written in the

period of modernism. Matz defines modernity, which we say reflected in the modern novel, as the world of

the present, which has broken away from tradition and turned to the future, traumatized by conflicts and

destroyed by suspicion, as he mentioned, as the world of change. Incessant new inventions, new ideas, new

lifestyles are the main dynamics of this change. Science and technology produce new ways of seeing, working

and thinking every day, changing world politics constantly creates new cultures and new conflicts, new

generations gladly leave old traditions behind. Unshakable forces no longer exist, God long ago forgotten, the

aristocracy disappeared, only belief in change remained. Order and stability are gone, replaced by change and

movement.

In order to make sense of this mood of depression that dominates the modern novel, what modernity has

brought to human life can be looked at in more detail. For example, great discoveries in science have changed

the image of the universe in our minds and our perception of our position in the universe. Rapid production

and industrialization, which emerged as a result of the transformation of scientific knowledge into technology,