Modernism, Structuralism, and all the Posts--

A quick, overly-simplistic overview (and partly because I think it's fun):

1900-1945

The Structuralists:
Linguists (Ferdinand Saussure is the main guy; he publishes in 1912) who maintain that whichever signifier is attached to whatever signified is completely arbitrary. While not a radical idea in and of itself, the result is that the Platonic/Enlightenment/Biblical mode of thinking that words refer to immutable meanings outside the structure of language is overthrown. Some are overjoyed to be freed from the shackles of absolutist thought; others are disillusioned by the loss of faith in fixed referents.

The New Critics (Formalists):
Since the signifier has no other referent than the signified, then meaning in language can only be discerned internally, within the text itself. Consequently, the New Critics (now known as formalists), disregard all outside historical/biographical sources, preferring to examine only the structure of the text itself, favoring texts with complicated internal structures. (Metaphysical-conceit enthusiast John Donne thus comes back in vogue).

The Modernists:
This loss of immutable referents, exasperated by Darwin's dismantling of religious history (and by extension religious faith), Nietzsche's existential atheism, Freud's de-centering of conscious thought, the dismantling of the old aristocracies by the rise of democracy, rapid advancements in new technology like electricity, and most of all by the devastating disillusionment of World War I, (which called into question the superiority of European civilization itself), gives rise to a new generation of writers exploring this new de-centered space.
Some, like TS Eliot and William Butler Yeats, express profound despair at this loss of immutable referents. Others, like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, DH Lawrence, and George Bernard Shaw, use this space to explore new possibilities in language, thought, and morality, for better and for worst. Still others, like Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, come to the conclusion that democracy and mass-markets are watering down the public intelligence, not to mention alienating us from society and each other, and therefore come to support fascism as a corrective to overcome the alienation of the modern world.

1945-current(?)

The Post-Structuralists:
Not only is the signifier arbitrary, but the signifier and signified never even actually touch. We only know what a thing is by what it's not; in other words, words inherently only have negative meaning. It is thus impossible for language to ever come to a knowledge of the "Truth," if it even exists.

Deconstructionism:
Depending on who you talk to, deconstructionism either frees us to dismantle the cultural biases inherent in language, or is the death of all literary criticism. I lean towards the former, but that's just me. Deconstructionists like Jacque Derrida tend to be atheists, but as my prof. recently noted, in recent years post-structuralists of necessity have begun to use the religious language to express the material world outside of discourse. It's a problem dating back to Descarte, Plato, and The Matrix: how do we know our senses aren't lying to us? How do we know our minds are correctly conceptualizing the impossibly complex world around us? How do we know we aren't dreaming everything? Pre-Structuralist, the answer was complex thought-games, leading to the primacy of reason in the Age of Enlightenment (a supposition destroyed by World War I; if we're so enlightened, how could we wage such an irrational, catastrophic war?). Ironically, it's been the atheist post-structuralists who have at last realized that we all live by faith alone.

Post-Modernists:
Well, fascism was a bust, and if you thought the machine-guns and mustard gas of WWI were bad, check out the Atomic Bomb; doubtless we're all going to nuke ourselves...if this world is even real...because really, if language bears no connection to referents, how do we know anything? The question is no longer "what do we know?" but rather, "can we know?" And given the certainty of death, the irrationality of existence, and the nuclear age, some post-modern writers begin eulogizing the world as though it were already destroyed (Samuel Beckett in "Waiting for Godot" and "End Game;" Kurt Vonnegut in "Cat's Cradle" and "Slaughterhouse Five;" arguably Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" and even the movie "Planet of the Apes"). Argument has since ensued as to whether or not we're still in the Post-Modern age; some say it ended in the early 70s, others say it ended with the Cold War, others with 9/11.