Modernism

I quite like Craig Raine's definition of Modernism (from here, p.315) as 'an assault on sentimentality in literature.' There's something in that, although it makes me wonder why Modernist authors so rarely produced any laugh-aloud literature; for nothing assaults sentimentality so effectively as properly funny belly-laugh satire and general hilarity. Or perhaps we've been reading Modernism wrong; maybe its leading proponents were actually Wodehouse and Thurber.