Which movement is known for experimental forms and alienation as core concerns?

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Which movement is known for experimental forms and alienation as core concerns?

Modernism is defined by experimental forms and a preoccupation with alienation in the modern world. Writers break with traditional narrative structures—using stream of consciousness, fragmented chronology, shifting points of view, and unconventional syntax—to mirror how people experience a fractured, rapidly changing society. The sense of alienation runs through these works: individuals feel detached from traditional beliefs, communities, and even their own sense of self, often navigating urban isolation and disillusionment after upheaval or trauma. This approach shows up in Joyce's Ulysses, Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Eliot's The Waste Land, and Faulkner's novels, where form itself becomes a tool to express inner life and social fracture rather than tidy, triumphant plots. By contrast, Romanticism elevates overpowering emotion and nature, Realism aims for faithful depictions of everyday life, and Naturalism emphasizes determinism and environmental forces shaping characters—areas that don’t foreground experimental form and alienation to the same extent.

Modernism is defined by experimental forms and a preoccupation with alienation in the modern world. Writers break with traditional narrative structures—using stream of consciousness, fragmented chronology, shifting points of view, and unconventional syntax—to mirror how people experience a fractured, rapidly changing society. The sense of alienation runs through these works: individuals feel detached from traditional beliefs, communities, and even their own sense of self, often navigating urban isolation and disillusionment after upheaval or trauma. This approach shows up in Joyce's Ulysses, Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Eliot's The Waste Land, and Faulkner's novels, where form itself becomes a tool to express inner life and social fracture rather than tidy, triumphant plots. By contrast, Romanticism elevates overpowering emotion and nature, Realism aims for faithful depictions of everyday life, and Naturalism emphasizes determinism and environmental forces shaping characters—areas that don’t foreground experimental form and alienation to the same extent.

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