The Impact of “New Psychology” on Modern Literature

Abstract

The 20th century was a period of great artistic change, and was dominated by the impact of World War I (1914-18) and World War II (1939-45), as well as by the artistic concerns of modernism (which affected both themes and methods of writing). Fiction has flourished in various kinds from the straight romance (e.g. John Buchman) to more experimental forms, like the novels of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce’s novel Ulysses – output of novels concerned with the whole life of one man, and a marked trend in the popular detective novel. The current has been setting strongly towards psychological interest – the problem was increasingly not “who did it?” but “why was it done?” and “what kind of person could have done it?”.