Modern Poetry Fiction 1900-1960

1. Modern Poetry & Fiction1900-1960 Miss Vick dvick@berrien.k12.ga.us

5. Also consider� Also consider the effects of antibiotics and anesthesia, weapons of mass destruction, suburban housing and skyscrapers, labor unions, women in the work place and the population explosion.

8. World War I WWI was one of the defining moments of the first half of the 20th century. Before the war, the US was isolationist, involved in it�s own concerns.

10. Traditional & Regional Writing before the war tended to be traditional and regional. Examples were Edgar Lee Masters, Edwin Arlington Robinson and Jack London.

14. European Concern In World War I began in 1914, but the US delayed entering into the conflict until 1917 because they saw it as a European concern.

15. Writers in War John Dos Passos Ernest Hemingway E.E. Cummings

19. Traditional Order The writers felt that traditional expressions of order no longer applied. They felt that the real America had been lost or distorted. They felt alienation.

20. Lost Generation One American writer living in Paris, Gertrude Stein, would label this group of postwar writers the �lost generation.�

22. Questioning Dream Many of these writers began to question the American Dream. They saw humans dominated by disgusting work and living conditions.

23. Jazz Age During the 1920s, the so-called Jazz Age, conflicts developed between older, conservative people and the prosperous younger generation.

26. Flaunting Prohibition Young people demonstrated their rebelliousness by flaunting prohibition and by frequenting �speak-easies� or �juke joints� and listening to jazz music.

28. Prohibition Prohibition was the law passed in 1919 that prohibited the manufacture or sale of alcohol.

30. Roaring 20s This era was the era of the flapper, the Charleston, goldfish swallowing college students in raccoon coats, and the gangster.

33. New York City Rebelliousness among young people also affected the literary scene. New York was the literary center, the home of a number of publishing houses, newspapers, and magazines.

34. Edith Wharton Edith Wharton told of the breakdown of traditional ways of life of the wealthy citizens of old New York in such novels as The Age of Innocence.

37. Greenwich Village In the 1920s and 1930s, New York became the center for avant-garde, bohemian writers, artists, and intellectuals many of whom lived in Greenwich Village.

39. Greenwich Writers Eugene O�Neill�s plays were produced in Greenwich and Thomas Wolfe wrote his most famous novel, Look Homeward, Angel.

42. Algonquin Round Table The Algonquin Round Table was a group of authors (Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman) who met regularly at the dining room of the Algonquin Hotel.

45. F. Scott Fitzgerald In 1925, the chief writer of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgerald, produced a novel, The Great Gatsby. It was about the disillusionment and morality of the ideal �self-made man�.

47. Great Depression The financial collapse of 1929 initiated the period known as the Great Depression.

50. Socialist/Communist During the 20s and 30s, many American writers adopted socialist or communist ideals based on socialist or communist ideals based on the theories of Karl Marx.

51. Karl Marx Karl Marx, the German political theorist, argued that the exploitation of workers would lead to a collapse of capitalism.

53. Millionaire Industrialists To many, the Great Depression, which put millions of people out of work, seemed to be proof that millionaires like Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and John D. Rockerfeller, offered little hope to the average worker.

57. Socialist Revolution?? In the middle of the Great Depression, hunger, labor unrest, union organizing, and bombings seemed to indicate that the United States was headed toward a Socialist Revolution.

58. No Revolution That the revolution did not occur can be attributed to Joseph Stalin�s harshness, economic recovery, and Franklin D. Roosevelt�s New Deal policies.

61. New Deal Policies The New Deal Policies provided Social Security, welfare, unemployment insurance, and federally funded jobs.

63. Great Dust Bowl In Oklahoma in the 1930s, severe droughts caused the Great Dust Bowl which added to the effects of the depression. Many workers/farmers fled to California.

66. John Steinbeck John Steinbeck�s novel The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of a family fleeing from the Dust Bowl.

68. American Writers Other American writers critical of the American culture in the first half of the century included Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and Richard Wright.

70. Upton Sinclair Sinclair�s book The Jungle offered a scathing expose of the meat-packing industry.

72. Sinclair Lewis Lewis�s books Babbitt and Elmer Gantry depicted the worst excesses of materialism�greed and hypocrisy.

74. The Expatriates In the teens and twenties, a large number of important American writers were living in Paris and London.

75. Famous Expatiates F. Scott Fitzgerald Ernest Hemingway Ezra Pound Edna St. Vincent Millay T. S. Eliot Gertrude Stein

82. Unfriendly? Some writers such as Pound and Eliot believed that the US was unfriendly to high culture.

83. Modernism Modernism was an international literary and artistic movement characterized by a rejection of the artistic conventions of the past.

84. Breakdown Modern Culture The modernist movement was seen as a breakdown in modern culture. It was reflected in the Cubist paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

89. Modern Literature In literature, modernism found expression in many expression in many experiments in form, including free verse and stream-of-consciousness prose.

90. Free Verse Authors T. S. Eliot E.E. Cummings

91. Steam-of-Consciousness Steam-of-Consciousness writing is presented as a stream of thoughts and feelings passing through a character�s mind unedited.

92. Subjectivism Subjectivism is the tendency to treat reality not as absolute and orderly but depending on the point of view of the observer.

93. Imagist Poetry Imagist poetry sought to present a single moment without the reference to emotion or the opinions of the author, speaker, or narrator.

94. Imagist Poets Ezra Pound Amy Lowell William Carlos Williams H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) Wallace Stevens

100. Irony Irony became a signature technique of Modernist literature.

101. Changes for Women In 1920, women won the right to vote. They were allowed to gain a higher education and entered the world of work.

102. Increased Role The increased role of women in arts and literature is one of the most dramatic changes to occur during the 20th century.

103. Golden Age of Women The 20th century was the golden age of women writers including Edith Wharton, Eudora Welty, Kay Boyle, Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, Zora Neale Hurston,

104. Amy Lowell, Marianne Moore, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Shirley Jackson, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Gina Berriault, Elizabeth Bishop, May Swenson, Denise Levetov, Gwendolyn Brooks, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, Adrienne Rich,

105. Tillie Olsen, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich, Maxine Kumin, Lorraine Hansberry, Li-Young Lee, Amy Bloom, Joyce Carol Oats, Anne Tyler, Marsha Norman, and Beth Henley to name a few.

114. Regionalists Regionalists wrote an �American� literature about the local, rural areas in which they had settled.

115. Regionalist Authors Robert Frost Sherwood Anderson Zora Neale Hurston John Crowe Ransom

120. Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an explosion of creative work by black artists, writers, and performers.

121. NAACP African-American writing at the time was partially funded by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).

122. Harlem Renaissance Poets Langston Hughes Paul Laurence Dunbar Countee Cullen Claude McKay Arna Bontemps Jean Toomer

129. World War II World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars. However, people handed their power to ultranationalist leaders such as Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler.

133. Racial Purity The belief of �racial purity� and the �Aryan race� was part of Hitler�s plan to rule the world.

134. US Enters War The US was reluctant to enter the war and did so only after Japan, an ally of Germany, attacked Pearl Harbor.

137. Bombs World War II lasted until 1945 when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

140. German Atrocities Only after the war ended did people know that Germany had exterminated millions of Jew, Gypsies and others in death camps.

141. Holocaust This extermination became known as the holocaust. People were killed in such camps as Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

147. 2nd Renaissance The period following the war was known as the Second American Renaissance. It was the beginning of social and political conservatism. It was also a time of great literature

148. Post-War Authors Norman Mailer James Jones

151. Post-War Dramatists Arthur Miller Tennessee Williams William Inge

155. Post-War Fiction Robert Penn Warren James Baldwin Saul Bellow Bernard Malamud

160. Post-War Poets Gwendolyn Brooks Robert Lowell Theordore Roethke Randall Jarrell

161. Reading Selections Mr. Flood�s Party Grass Mending Wall Home Burial Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

162. This Is Just to Say The Red Wheelbarrow Patterns In a Station of the Metro Bells for John Whiteside�s Daughter Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond The Tropics in New York

163. The Negro Speaks of Rivers A Black Man Talks of Reaping Richard Cory A Wagner Matinee The Jilting of Granny Weatherall Winter Poem

164. I Stand Here Ironing To Black Women