The Moderns: 1914-1939

1. The Moderns:1914-1939 Redefining the American Dream “Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.” -Willa Cather

2. Overview • Life during the early part of the 20th Century was marked by tremendous change. • Political • Social • Psychological • Spiritual Each decade brought the new upheaval, and each upheaval required a new adjustment in attitude.

3. During this period of time, look for answers to these questions: • What is the American Dream? • What happened to the American Dream in the early twentieth century? • In what ways did modernism challenge tradition-especially in what people valued in art and literature?

4. War Changes Everything • World War I (the Great War) was one of the events that changed the American voice in fiction. • The country lost its innocence • Many Americans began to question authority (Modernist Movement) - Disillusionment with traditions that seemed to have become spiritually empty.

5. The American Dream: Pursuit of a Promise • American as a new Eden • A belief in progress • Triumph of the individual

6. America as a New Eden • American is a promised land of beauty, unlimited resources, and endless opportunities. -The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) 1925 - Great wealth and pursuit of pleasure had become ends in themselves for many people. • Gatsby was a self-made man whose wealth has mysterious & illegal origins. • His extravagant gestures are in pursuit of a dream.

7. A Belief in Progress • The American birthright in one of ever-expanding opportunity. • Progress is a good thing. • We can optimistically expect life to keep getting better & better.

8. Triumph of the Individual • The independent, self-reliant individual will triumph. • Everything is possible for the person who places trust in his or her own powers and potential. • Idea was championed by Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “Trust the universe and trust yourself.”

9. A Crack in the World: Breakdown of Beliefs and Traditions • The devastation of WWI & the economic crash a decade later severely damaged the three tenets of the American Dream. • Writers became skeptical of the New England Puritan tradition & the gentility that had been central to the literary ideal. • Most writers came from New England, where American started but modernist writers came from the South, the Midwest, and the West.

10. Two New Intellectual Theories or Movements • Marxism • Psychoanalysis

11. Marxism and the Challenge to Free Enterprise • Russia during WWI – Marxist revolution toppled & murdered the anointed ruler, the czar. • Karl Marx’s socialistic beliefs powered the revolution in 1917.

12. Karl Marx Believed… • The capitalist system could not be fixed and had to be destroyed to make way for a classless society. • All property would be owned by everyone as a community and people would receive equal benefits and rewards. • Sounds great, right? However, they followed the mantra: “All men are equal, but some men are MORE equal than others.” • Hence, Animal Farm

13. Capitalism is Threatened • Some Americans believed that certain elements of Marxism would provide much-needed rights to workers.

14. Freud and the Unconscious Mind • Vienna, Austria (1856-1939) • Sigmund Freud, the found of psychoanalysis • He said our actions were influenced by the subconscious • New understanding of human sexuality and the role it plays in our unconscious thoughts. • His beliefs left little room for humans to have free will.

15. Unconscious Mind Continued… • A literary result of this study of psychoanalysis was a narrative technique called stream of consciousness. • Stories weren’t told chronologically • Attempted to imitate the moment-by-moment flow of a character’s perception & memories • James Joyce in Ulysses • Katherine Anne Porter • William Faulkner

16. At Home and Abroad: The Jazz Age • Prohibition- In 1919, the Constitution was amended to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol.

17. Prohibition Added the Following Words to Our Vocabulary… • Bootlegger • Speak-easy • Cocktail • Flapper • Gangster • Jazz • F. Scott Fitzgerald gave the time period a new name: The Jazz Age

18. The Jazz Age Continued… • 1920- Women got the right to vote • Gave women an opportunity to move into artistic, intellectual, and social circles.

19. Expatriates Abroad • Many American writers & artists left America to enjoy life to the fullest in Europe. • Living was cheap in Paris, the French Riviera, and Italy • Life was more exotic there • They could drink alcohol freely • American Expatriates were a hint that something had gone wrong with the American Dream

20. American Expatriates • F. Scott Fitzgerald (& wife Zelda) • Ernest Hemingway • Ezra Pound • Gertrude Stein

21. Grace Under Pressure:The New American Hero • Ernest Hemingway was the most influential of the post-WWI writers. • He strove for plain style; reduced literary style to the bare bones-reflects his past as a news reporter for the Kansas City Star • Introduced a new kind of hero-The Hemingway Hero

22. Hemingway Hero • Man of action (warrior, tough competitor) • Has a code of honor, courage, & endurance • He shows “grace under pressure” • He has thorough disillusionment-at the mysterious center of the universe lay nothing at all-this is Hemingway’s own philosophy. • Belief in self: decency, bravery, competence, and skillfulness.

23. Modern Voices in Poetry:A Dazzling Period of Experimentation • The last traces of British influence were washed away and the American writers began a period of experimentation. • Many writers went to Europe to soak up artistic influences there. • Influenced by modernist artists like Matisse & Picasso

24. Period of Experimentation • Poets created works that invited new ways of seeing and thinking (Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, & E.E. Cummings) - Symbolism - Imagism

25. Voices of American Character • Many American poets rejected the revolution of modernism and stayed home in America. • Their individual accents revealed the regional diversity and character of American life. • Example: Robert Frost’s poems embodied “New England speech” and subjects.

26. The Harlem Renaissance • In the 1920s, a group of black poets focused on the unique contributions of African-American culture to America. • Poetry based its rhythms on spirituals and jazz and blues based its diction on the street talk of the ghettos.

27. Why is it called the Harlem Renaissance? • Geographical center of the movement was in Harlem, a New York City neighborhood. • People here were too long ignored, patronized, or otherwise shuffled to the margins of American art. • When this poetry joined with music echoing from New Orleans, Memphis, & Chicago, it became part of the Jazz Age.

28. The American Dream Revised • Writers of this era experimented boldly with forms and subject matter. • Also tried to find answers to the following questions: • Who are we? • Where are we going? • What values should guide us on the search for our human identity? • This echoes the philosophy of humanism in the European Renaissance.