Modernism

1. Modernism 1910-1940

2. What’s happening? • The Great War • World War I 1914-1918 • Roaring 20s/Jazz Age • The flapper • 19th amendment • Prohibition • The Great Depression • Dust bowl • 25% unemployment • Mass Production • Great Migration

3. Modernism American dream is shattered • Responding to the loss of idealism they felt in the wake of World War I • Direct response to the social and intellectual forces shaping 20thcentury • Called for complete re-haul of art • Jazz Age • Disillusioned with the traditional values sought to escape in pleasures of entertainment and good times • Most writers were expatriates • Living abroad they experienced the affects of war more acutely • Mass society is a threat to the individual • Standardization of culture resulted in isolation

4. The Harlem Renaissance • Great Migration • Millions of black farmers and sharecroppers moved to the big city • March 21, 1924 • Most celebrated writers (white and black) gathered at a dinner • Organizations created; magazines founded • Birth of the literary movement • Ended early due to Great Depression

5. “The New Negro” A sophisticated and well-educated African American with strong racial pride and self-awareness • CounteeCullen • Used classical style to explore the black struggle • Langston Hughes • Used the Jazz/Blues rhythm in his writing • “Jazz is a heartbeat and its heartbeat is yours.” • Celebrated lively night life and everyday experiences of working-class • Most influential Harlem writer

6. Claude McKay • Militant in his writing • Wrote after 1919 race riots • Jean Toomer • Explored own identity—not race’s Despite varied perspectives—all shared deep pride in heritage and cultural identity

7. New Poetry Rapid industrialization and urbanization caused many Americans to feel that the social order governing their lives was crumbling • Edgar Lee Masters • Used free verse to probe discontent beneath apparent stability of small town life in America • Edwin Arlington Robinson • Exposed tensions of small-time life • Draw psychological portraits of characters isolated in the midst of American society • Forerunner of modernist movement • Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg

8. “Rendering of concrete objects” Imagism • Poetry is most profoundly expressed through the “rendering of concrete objects” –Pound • Ezra Pound • Sought to re-create the image • Not comment on it, not interpret it—just present it • Exploded into free verse • T.S. Eliot • The Waste Land is considered one of the most representative and influential of modernist poems

9. “No idea but in things” Objectivism • Poets let the objects they rendered speak for themselves • Invited readers to experience the homely simplicity • No other reason than to understand its “this-ness” • Economy of words • Poetry altered irrevocably • William Carlos Williams • Disliked The Waste Land for its intellectualism and allusions to classical literature • No idea but in things

10. “The Age of the Short Story” • Americans living in the first half of 20th century wanted “fast literature” • Magazines grew • Captured by the Lost Generation • Gertrude Stein

11. The Lost Generation • Civilization as people had known it was being destroyed, and writers sought to capture in their work the resulting alienation and confusion • WWI shook ideological foundations of American writers • New values and lifestyles alienated them from their peers • American was seen as nothing but conformity and materialism • Stream of Consciousness • Developed from psychoanalytic theories of Freud • The unconscious forces drive human beings • The key to understanding behavior lay in this deeper realm • Albert Einstein • Everything is relative • New way of looking at world

12. Lost Generation cont’d • Ernest Hemingway • Composed short, fragmentary stories without traditional beginnings/endings • Left out narrative voice • Readers alone must figure out what might be going on or what a character might be feeling • “I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows.” • William Faulkner • Yoknapatawpha • “My own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it” • Themes resonate with thunder of Old Testament • Stream of Consciousness wander around dark labyrinths of the heart and mind • Considered too hard to understand/weird

13. F. Scott Fitzgerald • Named the Jazz Age • Revealed the negative side of the period’s gaiety and freedom • Portrayed wealthy and attractive people leading empty lives in their gilded surroundings • Fitzgerald has become identified with the extravagant living of the Jazz Age: “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire.” • He felt that aspiration and idealism defined America and its people. • His writing style is known for being clear, lyrical, and witty.

14. John Steinbeck • Writer’s duty is to “set down his time as nearly as he can understand it.” • Managed to tell—better than anyone else—the stories of ordinary people caught up in the Great Depression "Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed… The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love… I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."

15. Legacy of the Era • Mass culture is everywhere you look • No shortage of talented journalists, and an abundance of news organizations • Social Security, FDIC, agricultural price supports, the SEC