Modernism: Bold New Forms and Values

1. 1914-1945 • An artistic movement that rejected traditional forms and emphasize bold, new ways of expression. • This time period is often associated with the excesses of the Roaring 20’s, but also with a loss of faith in traditional values and beliefs, including a loss of the American Dream. • Why??? Modernism

2. A movement away from realism into abstractions • A deliberate complexity, even to the point of elitism, forcing readers to be very well-educated in order to understand these works • A high degree of aesthetic self-consciousness • Questions of what constitutes the nature of being • A breaking with tradition and conventional modes of form, resulting in bold, highly innovative experimentation Characteristics of Modernism

3. The Modernism period took place during and after WWI, and it includes the Roaring 20’s, the 1929 market crash, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression • WWI: 1914-1918 – First time Americans faced a bloodbath war. It was the “beginning of the end” of innocence for Americans. • Prohibition: In 1919, The 18th Amendment prohibited the manufacture/sale of alcohol. • Alcohol was thought to be the central social evil. Historical Background

4. Historical Background The Roaring 20’s/The Jazz Age • A decade of economic prosperity and social/artistic experimentation in the United States. • A new type of music, jazz, grew popular. • Baseball became America’s past time. • Society became interested in the lives of sports figures and celebrities. • Women earned the right to vote • and continued to push back against • the patriarchal society that confined • them in the Victorian era. • The “flapper” redefined women’s • fashion and pushed the boundaries • of acceptable behavior. • She dressed scandalously, wore • obvious makeup, drank alcohol • and danced in front of men, flirted • ostentatiously, and brazenly expressed her own opinions on political, • social, and religious matters. • This era saw the rise of the automobile, aviation, telephones, motion pictures, and electrical appliances.

5. The 1929 Stock Market Crash caused economic destruction that spread to a global level. • It plunged the US and the rest of the world into the Great Depression. Many businesses went bankrupt and suicide was at an all time high. •  Great Depression – Millions of Americans suffered loss of jobs, poverty similar to third world poverty, starvation, and loss of material items Background, - The Great Depression

6. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s lasted for eight years and caused widespread destruction across previously fertile farmland in the central United States. It came in a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. The simplest acts of life — breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk — were no longer simple. Children wore dust masks to and from school, women hung wet sheets over windows in a futile attempt to stop the dirt, and farmers watched helplessly as their crops blew away. Background – The Dust Bowl

7. Through the 1920s, Americans harbored a belief in the ideal of The American Dream. Three central tenets of the “American Dream”: 1. America is a New Eden – a beautiful, bountiful, and rewarding land. 2. Optimism in the Future – the future holds abundance and opportunity for everyone willing to work hard for it. 3. Importance of Individual – Every person is important and should be independent and self-reliant. Theme: The American Dream

8. [The American dream is] “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.“ • --coined in 1931 by J.T. Adams in The Epic of America • Thoughts on the purpose of the word, SHOULD, in the quote above? The American Dream

9. Central Idea • Motif/Tone • Themes: • As a result of the devastation from World War I, the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl, the promise American Dream seemed unreachable. • People became disillusioned/cynical/ disappointed in “happily ever after.” • Disillusionment is a major theme in writings of this time period. • Self –examination and dissatisfaction with self • Paralysis (a sense that nothing can be done to create change) • Loss of faith in government/authority • Self-Reliance is a continuing theme – self reliance in the face of disillusionment of government/ authority. Loss of the American Dream

10. MacDougald, Elise. Two School Teachers. • Background: Harlem Renaissance is the name given to the period from the end of World War I through the middle of the 1930s Depression, during which a group of talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of music, dance, art, and literature in the four prominent genres: poetry, fiction, drama, and essay. Harlem Renaissance

11. Harlem Renaissance • Johnson, William. Street Life. • The notion of "twoness" , a divided awareness of one's identity. • Alienation and marginality. • Racial consciousness, • Racial integration. • The “Back to Africa” movement Themes of theHarlem Renaissance