With the publication of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce became recognized as one of the most important modernists shaping the future of literature.
Modernism is a style of writing that writers and other artists used with trends such as symbolism, expressionism, imagism, and surrealism.
Modernist writers rejected 19th century realism, and remained disengaged from mainstream thought and values, and to present their readers with complex new forms.