Modernism is a cultural, phylosophical and artistic movement that develops in the first half of the 20th century. It is influenced by an historical, political and econpmical background that shatters the certainties of the human being: the two World Wars, the rise of totalitarianisms, the depression and the increasing unemployment are only some of the major dramatic events of the time.
While Ireland and suffragettes fought for their rights, intellectuals suffer from an existencial disorientation, the disgrefation of their identity and an individual alienation.

Literarure is obviously influenced by this crisis and develops new "interior plots", focused on the psychological side of the human being, instead of "exterior plots", based on action. New techniques like the stream of consciousness, the free association and the interior monologue are used by the authors of the time, like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.