From the Machine Age to the Digital Age: Modernist Writers and Digital Criticism

Digital application in humanities has invigorated the studies of modernist literature, giving it new life in the post-modernist scene. Following the digital turn in literary studies, scholars on modernism began to address an array of issues regarding the complex relationship between modernism and digitalization, including the mining of modernism's roots in media, the impact of digitalization on humanities, the pedagogical aspects of digital humanism, the changing circumstance of literary critic in the digital era and so on. This essay considers three aspects of modernism's interaction with digitalization, including the degrees to which modernist writers share the democratic notion of knowledge and education of the digital era, the means digital commentaries and criticism such as online journals, Amazon comments, literary blogs, et cetera have changed the landscape of contemporary literary criticism, rewriting the story of the rivalry between the traditional man of letters and the professional scholar-critic, and the limitations of digital criticism and the future of literary criticism.