Abstract
SAMMENDRAG
This thesis examines a possible ‘spiritual vacuum’ within the modernist era (1890-1940, approximately). As a basis for this discussion I have chosen the works of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Through the analysis of these works I discuss at what it means to be human in a secularized, and rapidly evolving modern society, as well as the consequences these factors may have on the modern individual.
My aim for this thesis is to show that modernist literature, as represented by Woolf and Eliot, highlights this ‘spiritual vacuum’ and a possible search for spirituality, through the particularity of the modernist literary form. Thus, in order to conduct such a discussion, I seek aid in the theories of Martha Nussbaum, and her emphasis on emotions both within the narrative frame, and on its outside.
‘The Search for Spirituality within British Modernism’ is a search for meaning and self-worth in a time where man appeared lost within the ‘newness’ of the modern world. Eliot and Woolf show us a search where the value of the self, the value of literature in itself – and above all – the value of humanism, all aid in providing a meaningful existence for modern man.