Modernism

1. Modernism English 11 Honors

2. Definition of Modernism: • is an opening up of the world in all of its forms - theoretically, philosophically, aesthetically, and politically. • Before Modernism, the world was thought of in a Realist's fashion – an attempt to describe human behavior and surroundings or to represent figures and objects exactly as they act or appear in life. • takes the reader into a world of unfamiliarity, a deep introspection, a cognitive thought-provoking experience, skepticism of religion, and openness to culture, technology, and innovation. • http://www.helium.com/items/809291-modernism-in-literature-and-history • http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761552472/realism_(art_and_literature).html

3. Modernism… • applied both to the content and to the form of a work, or to either in isolation. • reflects a sense of cultural crisis which was both exciting and disquieting, • putting into question any previously accepted means of grounding and evaluating new ideas. • Modernism is marked by experimentation, particularly manipulation of form, and by the realization that knowledge is not absolute.

4. Before the Modernist Movement -two devastating almost-global wars: World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1941-1945) -huge changes in industry and technology as compared to the 19th century -the rise in power and influence of international corporationsinterconnectedness across the globe: cultural exchanges, transportation, communication, mass (or popular) culture from the West (with "West" being considered Europe and North America) -the "Westernization" of many formerly traditional societies and nations and a resulting change in their values (often their the detriment of the formerly traditional society and nation). • http://vc.ws.edu/engl2265/unit4/Modernism/all.htm

5. These "modern" values include a belief in… • political rights • Democracy • mass literacy and education • private ownership of the means of production • the scientific method • middle class Western value systems • a disbelief in—or at least a questioning of—the existence of God • and (sometimes) the emancipation of women

6. 1) New concentration on the relationship between language and meaning. • 2) Emphasis on the fluidity of consciousness. • 3) Emphasis on alienated individuals wandering around the lonely crowds of modern, urban, industrialized world. • 4) Emphasis on divided self or the dissolution of the rationally autonomous ego. • 5) Rejection of Romanticism and the Victorians: modernists must "make it new." • 6) Fear of the "masses," "mass-culture" and the rise of newer technologies of representation such as newsprint and the photograph.

7. Characteristics of Modernist Literature • uses images ("word pictures") and symbols as typical and frequent literary techniques • uses colloquial language rather than formal language • seeing language as a technique for crafting the piece of literature just as an artist crafts a piece of art like a sculpture or a painting • uses language as a special medium that influences what that piece of literature can do or can be • saw the piece of literature as an object crafted by an artist using particular techniques, crafts, skills Form, style, and technique thus become as important--if not more so--than content or substance. • often, the intention of writers in the Modern period is to change the way readers see the world and to change our understanding of what language is and does

8. Inside Modernism • Surrealism • Expressionism • Absurdism • Stream of Consciousness • Avant Garde

9. Absurdism • tried to duplicate in literature the absurd conditions of contemporary life: • nameless millions dying in wars, commonplace horrors such as the Holocaust, • a world in which "God is dead" cast mankind afloat in a chartless and unknowable world void of a spiritual center

10. Avant-Garde • literally meant the "most forwardly placed troops." The movement sought to eliminate or at least blur the distinction between art and life often by introducing elements of mass culture. These artists aimed to "make it new" and often represented themselves as alienated from the established order. Avant-garde literature and art challenged societal norms to "shock" the sensibilities of its audience (Childers & Hentzi, p.26 and Abrams, p.110). • It is necessary to arrive at selecting an object with the idea of not being impressed by this object on the basis of enjoyment of any order. However, it is difficult to select an object that absolutely does not interest you, not only on the day on which you select it, and which does not have any chance of becoming attractive or beautiful and which is neither pleasant to look at nor particularly ugly. (Marcel Duchamp)

11. Photograph of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain". (Urinal "readymade" signed with joke name; early example of "Dada" art). A paradigmatic example of found-art.

12. Stream of Consciousness • is a narrative mode that seeks to portray an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her actions. • "Such fools we all are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June." • -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

13. Surrealism • tried to liberate the subconscious, to see connections overlooked by the logical mind, to deny the supreme authority of rationality and so portray objects and events as they seem rather than as they are. • (also associated with the avant-garde and dadaism) was initiated in particular by André Breton • adherence to the imagination, dreams, the fantastic, and the irrational." • Dada is a nonsense word and the movement, in many ways similar to the trends of avant-garde and surrealism, "emphasized absurdity, reflected a spirit of nihilism, and celebrated the function of chance.” • (Childers & Hentzi, p. 69). Major figures include André Breton (breh-TAWN), Georges Bataille (beh-TYE), Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp (dew-SHAHN), Man Ray, Raoul Hausmann, Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters

14. Expressionism • tried to express the inner vision, the inner emotion, or the inner spiritual reality that seem more important than the external realities of objects and events. • Kafka’s work has been taken by many as an imaginative forecast of the nightmare through which Europe was compelled to live during the Hitler regime. But its significance is more subtle and universal; one of the elements is original sin and another filial guilt. In the story The Metamorphosis(1915) a young man changes into an enormous insect, and the nightmare of alienation can go no further.

15. Gertrude Stein • an extremely well-educated woman--an American, a Jew, the child of immigrant parents, a lesbian, and a feminist-- • Like Picasso, she wanted to invent Cubism - not in oils but in words. She worked to subtract plain meaning from English prose. • Stein uses basic and elementary words to create poems about everyday items from a “new” perspective. • Wanted to confuse the masses • Compare Steins’ poetry to Picasso’s Cubism.

16. Gertrude Stein is interested in: • what it is to be an American • what it is to be a woman • how people see things • how people tell stories • She describes her own ordinary experience. • She writes about ordinary, commonplace people in such a manner that the absolute uniqueness of each is captured. This is her contribution to the American tradition of democracy and individualism. • She writes extensively about her life, and her growth into her life, as a major American writer of the twentieth century. She comments on culture, art, politics, and sexuality. • http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/stein.html

17. LONG DRESS by: Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) WHAT is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current. What is the wind, what is it.   Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it. "A Long Dress" is reprinted from Tender Buttons: Objects Food Rooms. Gertrude Stein. New York: Claire Marie, 1914.

18. Picasso and Cubism:depart from the traditional understanding of perspective and spacial cues • http://www.eyeconart.net/history/cubism.htm

19. -depict different viewpoints simultaneously. -Traditionally, an object is always viewed from one specific viewpoint - -Picasso felt that this was too limiting desired to represent an object as if they are viewing it from several angles or at different moments in time. -the danger was that many of the works of this period are completely incomprehensible to the viewer, as they start to lose all sense of form. House with Trees The Mandolin

20. T.S. Eliot • 1888 September 26: Thomas Stearns Eliot born in St. Louis, Missouri to Henry Ware and Charlotte Stearns Eliot. • 1898 A student at Smith Academy in St. Louis • 1905 To Milton Academy in Massachusetts • 1906-10 Undergraduate years at Harvard. • 1910-11 Having finished BA and MA degrees at Harvard, spends a year at the Sorbonne in Paris. In the summer of 1911, finishes a version of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" • 1911-14 Returns to Harvard to study philosophy as a graduate student. Begins doctoral thesis on F.H. Bradley. • 1914 To England on fellowship; meets Ezra Pound. • 1927 Enters the Church of England and assumes British citizenship. • 1965 Dies on January 4th; his ashes to East Coker. • http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/eliot.htm

21. TS Eliot believes… • that poetry should aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language and that such representation necessarily leads to difficult poetry. • His poetry draws on a wide range of cultural reference to depict a modern world that is in ruins yet somehow beautiful and deeply meaningful. • As Ezra Pound once famously said, Eliot truly did “modernize himself.” In addition to showcasing a variety of poetic innovations, Eliot’s early poetry also develops a series of characters who fit the type of the modern man as described by Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others of Eliot’s contemporaries. • The title character of “Prufrock” is a perfect example: solitary, neurasthenic, overly intellectual, and utterly incapable of expressing himself to the outside world. • The Waste Landin 1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century. It takes on the degraded mess that Eliot considered modern culture to constitute, particularly after the first World War had ravaged Europe. • http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/eliot/section2.rhtml

22. POETS Of the Modernist Movement: Gertrude Stein T.S. Eliot Ezra Pound William Carlos Williams

23. Writers of the Modernist Movement: F. Scott Fitzgerald- The Great Gatsby Ernest Hemingway- The Sun Also Rises William Faulkner- As I Lay Dying