Modern Breakthrough

His lectures at Copenhagen University starting 1871 and his work Main Currents in 19th Century Literature (Danish: Hovedstrømninger i det 19.

The authors during the Modern Breakthrough revolted against traditional cultural themes, especially the literary period of romanticism.

The very beginning of The Modern is usually attributed to Georg Brandes, who already in 1869 translated the controversial essay The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill into Danish.

In the 1890s, the movement was in part replaced by Symbolism, originating in many of the authors' interest in subjects of a religious or spiritual nature.

But the realism in the Modern Breakthrough has influenced later authors such as Selma Lagerlöf, Johannes V. Jensen and Martin Andersen Nexø in the following years (1900–1920), which some call the popular breakthrough (Danish: "Det Folkelige Gennembrud"), because the authors in this period write about the lower rungs of society, e.g. Martin Andersen Nexø's Pelle the Conqueror, which was adapted into a film in 1987.