Modernism

1. Modernism “The Lost Generation” 1900-1965

2. What was Modernism? • The Modernist Era was an array of cultural movements rooted in the changes in Western society • Embracing change and the present, modernism encompassed the works of thinkers who rebelled against past 19th century academic and historicist traditions, believing the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization • Modernism was a predominantly English genre of fiction writing, that grew in response disillusionment of World War I. • Whereas earlier, most literature had a clear beginning, middle, and end (or introduction, conflict, and resolution), the Modernist story was often more of a stream of consciousness. • An age of disillusionment and confusion—just look at what was happening in history in the US during these dates—this period brought us perhaps our best writers. The authors during this period raised all the great questions of life…but offered no answers

3. When and Where did Modernism take Place? • The Modernist period began around the 1850s and lasted generally until the end of World War II in (1960’s). • In whole, Modernism was strongest in America because it was rooted mainly from the disillusionment of WWI.

4. What caused Modernism to occur? • As its basis, modernists rejected European culture for having become too corrupt, complacent, lethargic, and ailing because it was bound by the artificialities of a society that was too preoccupied with image and too scared of change. They wanted to start their own form/genre of literature. • The devastation of WWI brought an end to the sense of optimism that had characterized the years before the war. • Disillusionment with traditions that seemed to have become spiritually empty, some sought to find new ideas more realistic and relatable to 20th century life. • Wanted to to capture the essence of modern life in the form and content of their work and to reflect the fragmentation of the modern world.

5. Elements of Modernism • Emphasis on bold experimentation in style and form, reflecting the fragmentation of society • Rejection of traditional themes and subjects • Sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the American Dream • Rejection of the ideal hero as infallible in favor of a hero who is flawed and disillusioned but shows “grace under pressure” • Interest in the inner workings of the human mind, sometimes expressed through new narrative techniques such as the stream of consciousness. • The writers of this time tend to stress on individualism, personal views, opposing beliefs, ambivalence of a human mind, mistrust on social institutions • a turning away from teleological ways of thinking about time to a sense of time as discontinuous, overlapping, non-chronological in the way we experience it; a shift from linear time to "moment time" • Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and also that of the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator

6. Common Literary Themes 1. violence and alienation 2. historical discontinuity 3. decadence and decay 4. loss and despair 5. rejection of history 6. race relations 7. unavoidable change 8. sense of place, local color

7. Literary Techniques/ Patterns • a response to "sense of social breakdown" • -reaction to WW I • -visual arts, Picasso, schooled as realist, became cubists, surrealism • sees world as "fragmented" • -pattern of construction out of fragments • -unrelated pieces • -"these fragments I have shorn against my ruin" -Wasteland • -life is fragmented • -unusual connective patterns missing: morals, framework, gone • point of view is remote/detached from subject • -ironic but not unfeeling • poetry is very allusive, • -allusions to myth, the Bible, foreign languages, street life, personal • -highly footnoted (see "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" or The Wasteland • poems like a riddle, labyrinth • -meaning must be searched for by reader • -like Joyce's Portrait of an Artist or Ulysses • Subject: the subject of modernist literature often asks what is the purpose of literature and poetry? • -what is the use for art in a world falling apart? • Elite audience: intellectual, academic • -Wallace Stevens is the exception, not elitist like Eliot or Pound

8. A New American Hero • This new Hero was introduced by author Ernest Hemingway, who served as an ambulance driver and was wounded in WWI. • The new hero was a man of action, a warrior, and a tough competitor. He had a code of honor, courage, endurance, and showed “grace under pressure.” • The most important aspect of the new American hero was that he was completely disillusioned with American tradition.. • Hemingway and the new American hero derived hope from human decency, bravery, competency, and skill.

9. Influential Writers & Their Works Faulkner -Faulkner was one of the most important writers in both American literature generally and Southern literature specifically. Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. Faulkner worked in a variety of written media, including novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays. Hemingway -Known as the man to have created the “New American Hero”. Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters - tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938).

10. Influential Writers Cont…. Fitzgerald Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.[1] Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his most famous), and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with age and despair.

11. Famous Literature Works of the Time Period • The Great Gatsby -Fitzgerald • Wasteland -T.S. Elliot • Road Less Taken- Robert Frost • A Farewell to Arms- Ernest Hemingway • The Garden- Erza Pound

12. Distinction b/t Pre-Modernism and Modernism VS Landscape with the Fall of Icarus(1525-1569) Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2(1912) While the pre-Modernist world is characterized by sense of order and stability rooted in the meaningful nature of faith, collective social values, and a clear sense of identity (both personal and cultural), the Modernist period is characterized by a sense of chaotic instability rooted in the revelation that collective social values are not particularly meaningful, leading to faithlessness, skepticism, and a confused sense of identity. This worldview is prominent in much (though certainly not all) Modernist literature. While the painting on the left is clear, where the clarity and order which characterize Bruegel's painting on the right are entirely absent, replaced by a sense of chaos, confusion, and futility of meaning.

13. Identifying Modernist Characteristics Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens, And she is dying piece-meal of a sort of emotional anemia. And round about there is a rabble Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor. They shall inherit the earth. In her is the end of breeding. Her boredom is exquisite and excessive. She would like some one to speak to her, -The Garden by Erza Pound And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.

14. *Question* In order, can you list all the time periods we have learned so far?

15. Renaissance Literature • The Enlightenment • Romanticism • Transcendentalism • Realism • Naturalism • Modernism

16. Sources • https://www.mdc.edu/wolfson/Academic/ArtsLetters/art_philosophy/Humanities/history_of_modernism.htm • http://faculty.unlv.edu/kirschen/handouts/modernism.html • http://staff.gps.edu/gaither/literary_movements.htm • http://www.cliffsnotes.com/cliffsnotes/history/what-are-characteristics-of-modernist-literature-fiction-in-particular • http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080917035256AA6HRwe • http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/terms/M/modernism.htm • http://howlandpowpak.neomin.org/powpak/cgi-bin/article_display_page.pl?id=thomas.williams/american&ar=32