Beginnings of the Modern Age

1
Beginnings of the Modern Age

• 1910-1930s

2
Historical, Social, and Cultural Forces
3
World War I

• War started when Archduke Ferdinand was
  assassinated in 1914
• US joined the war in 1917
• Over 10million soldiers died
• Allies vs. Central Powers
• War ended in 1918

4
The Roaring Twenties

• Booming economy, jazz, and late night parties
• US soldiers returned home
• Al Capone and speakeasies
• National Prohibition Act of 1919

5
Womens Rights

• Suffrage
• Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul were reformers
• Women gained right to vote with 19th Amendment in
  1920
• Women joined the workforce and military

6
The Great Migration

• African Americans left South for the North
• Labor shortage due to war
• Well-paying jobs for African Americans in the
  cities
• Southern segregation policies
• Harlem Renaissance

7
Popular Culture

• Automobile, radios, movies, advertising, and
  other innovations
• assembly line (1913)
• Radios became fixtures in US homes (1920s)
• Heroes Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Bill
  Tilden

8
The Great Depression

• Stock market Crash of October 29, 1929
• Black Tuesday
• 1933 quarter of population was unemployed

9
New Poetics
10
New Directions

• writers believed American poetry had become
  stagnant
• Modern poets found inspiration in a wide range
  of sources beyond traditional lyric and romantic
  poetry of england
• French Symbolists poets, avant-garade, or
  experimental, painters influenced the new poets

11
The Imagists

• Imagist movement was founded by Ezra Pound after
  1910.
• An image is that which presents an
  intellectual and emotional complex in time
• Influenced William Williams to expand the matter
  or poetry.

12
Eliots Perspective

• Fundamentals part of poetry are references to
  history, art, and literature.
• Eliot believed the effects of war and industry
  had shattered the human spirit.
• 1929 poem the waste land took a pessimistic view
  of civilization.

13
Breaking the Rules

• E.E. Cummings didnt care for literary
  conventions about words, punctuation,
  capitalization.
• He insisted on irregular usage of letters.
• Cummings used typography in new ways.

14
Frosts New England

• Relied largely on rhyme and regular meter
• Several of his poems are written as dialogue
  between two people
• Often wrote of the loneliness and isolation of
  the individual

15
Modern Fiction
16
The Shadow of War

• World War I prompted optimists to question the
  meaning of life
• World War I turned quite a few youthful optimists
  into premature cynies
• John F. Cater wrote the older generation had
  certainly ruined the world before us.

17
The Lost Generation

• Many writers left U.S. to establish new lives in
  Europe

18
The Jazz Age

• F.Scott Fitzgerald gave the label the jazz age
  to the period between WW1 and the beginning of
  the Great Depression
• Believed that the United States was fundamentally
  in disarray
• Embodied the Frantic Peace and social ambition
  typical of the Jazz Age

19
Hemingways Prose

• Hemmingways First novel The Sun Also Rises
• The novel is told by Jake Barnes an American
  newspaperman
• Ernest Hemingway wrote in a concise style
  influenced by his background as a newspaper
  reporter

20
The Harlem Renaissance
21
Blues to Jazz

• Blues developed in New Orleans
• Langston Hughes wrote poems to celebrate everyday
  life as a African American
• Jazz inspired social lives and filled clubs

22
The Neighborhood

• Harlem became a main destination during the great
  migration.
• Word about the vibrant community life and
  affordable rents in this new york neighborhood
  attracting writers. Artists, and musicans.
• 1929 the courtry felt the shock of the stock
  market crash

23
The Dream Deferred

• W.E.B. Du Boiss magazine of the NAACP (The
  Crisis) brought issues of the U.S. culture
• Racial issues
• Racial segregation was widespread and racial
  identity became a pivotal issue for writers

24
Hurstons Folklore

• Explored the folklore of African-Americans
• Wrote Pust Tracks on a Road
• Refused to be classified in the Harlem Renissnace.