New Paradigms in Modernism
Talk about weird science.
The early 20th century signaled a massive explosion in scientific innovation. We're not just talking about motorcars and the telephone—although those were huge—we're talking about Einstein.
Yup: the era of the Modernist writers saw tremendous leaps in physics that shook the world. Modernists were equally influenced by the shiny new science of their time and by new discoveries about ancient civilizations. Sound confusing? Yeah, that's the idea—Modernists were living in an age where both the new (the Theory of Relativity, y'all) and the old (King Tut!) were changing the way people thought about everything.
Religious belief started to give way to science as the predominant way of understanding the universe (leading to several notable clashes) but allusions to Judeo-Christianity, Eastern religions, and ancient mythology were popping up everywhere. How do you deal with this topsy-turvy world? You write about it, naturally.
That "Whoa, what's going on here" change of public perception has an SAT-caliber name: a shift in the dominant paradigm. And it turns out that a massive shift in the way people think leads to some awesomesauce—albeit confusing—writing.
Chew On This:
Yeats' poem "The Second Coming," leans on the (spooky!) Book of Revelation in its language and imagery, but reads more like a political prophesy. There are plenty of detailed Biblical references in this poem. But Yeats adds to these his own mystical and historical elements. Yeats, true to his Modernist roots, is looking both backward (towards Biblical language) and forward (at a particularly nasty political and religious apocalyptic future).
Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway creates a network of perspectives on a single day in London. Perspective, like Einstein's universe, is proved to be relative.