Modernism (1914 – 1945)

1
Modernism (1914 1945)

• Disillusionment and Doubt
• Corruption and Decay
• New Ideas / Styles / Experimentation

2
Historical Background

• The booming of American industry with its
  gigantic roaring factories, its impersonality,
  and its large scale aggressiveness, no longer
  left any room for the code of polite behavior and
  well-bred morality fashioned in a quiet and less
  competitive age.
• And it was during that period that a number of
  sensitive writers found that since there was
  little remedy for a country that was blind and
  deaf to everything save the glint and ring of the
  dollar, the only way out was to emigrate to
  Europe. There they began to think of themselves
  in the words of Gertrude Stein, as the Lost
  Generation.

3
Literature. The First World War stands as a
great dividing line between the 19th century and
contemporary America. Writers of the first
postwar consciously acknowledged that America
was, as Ezra Pound described it, an old bitch
gone in the teeth. Yet in the years between the
two world wars American literature achieved a new
diversity and reached its greatest heights. In
1922, T.S. Eliots The Waste Land was the most
significant American poem of the twentieth
century It helped to establish a modern
tradition of literature rich in learning and
allusive thought.
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In 1920 Sinclair Lewis published his memorable
denunciation of American small-town provincialism
Main Street, and in the same year F. Scott
Fitzgerald summarized the experiences and
attitudes of the decade in his short stories and
in his novel The Great Gatsby. Earnest Hemingway
wrote The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms,
and William Faulkner published one of the most
influential American novels of the age, The Sound
and the Fury. During the twenty years between
the two world wars six American writers who did
their best and most original work won the Nobel
Prize for literature.
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Lost Generation of the Roaring Twenties War
disfigures and tears away precious lives. Its
horrors embed themselves in the minds of the
survivors, who, when left to salvage the pieces
of their former existences, are brushed into
obscurity by the individuals attempting to
justify the annihilation of the world that was.
The era following World War I epitomizes the
inheritance of trouble and sorrow for the
generation that remains to retrieve some form of
happiness - writer Gertrude Stein called it the
"Lost Generation."
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After WWI, many young Americans left their
native country, bitter over the war and seeking
adventure. A circle of artistic expatriates
appeared-- among them Hemingway, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, Ezra Pound, and
Pablo Picasso. Hemingway and Fitzgerald employed
their keen social observation in writing The Sun
Also Rises and The Great Gatsby, respectively,
widely considered the two masterpieces of Lost
Generation fiction.
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Poetry the Imagists

• They concentrated on the direct presentation of
  images or word pictures.
• They wanted to produce the essence without the
  explanations.
• They wanted to freeze a moment in time.
• They used the language of everyday speech in
  irregular rhymes and patterns

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Ezra Pound

• Best remembered for the development of imagism.
• He relied a great deal on allusions.
• He supported Italy during the second World War
  and was tried for treason in the U.S. He was
  declared criminally insane and spent 13 years in
  a mental hospital. He was later released and
  lived his remaining years in Italy.

9
William Carlos Williams

• He was both a poet and a doctor
• He, unlike other imagists, focused only on things
  he regarded as American.
• He went on to win a Pulitzer Prize

10
T.S. Eliot

• Thomas Sterns Eliot was born into a wealthy
  family and attended Harvard.
• He began his writing career in college.
• While in his 20s, he moved to England.
• He married there and made many literary friends.

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Eliot continued

• He created a sensation in the literary word with
  his use of new structures and themes.
• He focused on the frustration and despair of
  modern life.
• Because of his use of imagery, he became famous
  as a Modernists

• He published his literary masterpiece known as
  The Waste Land
• Later, he turned to plays and wrote Murder in
  the Cathedral
• He won a Nobel Prize.

12
Wallace Stevens

• He went to Harvard to study business and became
  an insurance salesman. Later, he started writing
  poetry.
• Most of his poetry was about nature and the
  imagination.

• Anecdote of a Jar
• The Emperor of Ice Cream

13
Marianne Moore

• She started out publishing a literary journal.
• She did not want her work published.
• She wrote about animals, nature, and poetry itself

14
Carl Sandburg

• One of the most popular poets of his day because
  he captured the spirit of the working class
• A poet that helped establish Chicago as a
  literary community and wrote a famous biography
  of Lincoln

15
Robert Frost

• He depicted rural New England in his poetry.
• He was a conventional poet that was popular in
  England and America.
• Was the first poet to speak at a presidential
  inauguration (JFK)

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Prose Authors of Modernism

• Steinbeck
• Hemingway
• Anderson
• OConnor

• Fitzgerald
• Faulkner
• Porter

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Fitzgerald - The Jazz Age

• The age takes its name from jazz music, which saw
  a tremendous surge in popularity among many
  segments of society during the affluent 1920s.
• Among the prominent concerns and trends of the
  period are the public embrace of technological
  developments (cars, air travel and the telephone)
  as well as new modernist trends in social
  behavior, the arts, and culture.

18
William Faulkner

• Born in Oxford Mississippi. Set the majority of
  his stories in the fictional Yoknapatawpha
  County, Mississippi
• Although he had little formal education, he began
  to make his mark

• He focused mainly on the decay of traditional
  values as small communities got caught up in the
  changes of the modern age.
• He was considered a regional writer until he
  started experimenting.

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Faulkner Novels

• As I Lay Dying. A story about a familys journey
  to bury their mother, told in 15 different points
  of view. It was a masterpiece of narrative
  experimentation.

• The Sound and The Fury
• A complex story of the downfall of a southern
  family seen through the eyes of three brothers.
  One of whom was mentally challenged
• told by four different people telling four
  different points of view.

20
John Steinbeck

• Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California. He
  ended up supporting himself in various jobs as a
  laborer, teacher, and journalist. He went to
  Stanford University but did not graduate

• He tried his hand at writing but did not succeed
  until he began to write about Depression era
  topics. He had his first real success was Of
  Mice and Men.

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Steinbeck Continued

• His masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath won a
  Pulitzer Prize. This book focused on the plight
  of migrant workers.
• Later, he produced other best sellers including
  Cannery Row, The Pearl, and East of Eden. He did
  win the Nobel Prize for his discussions on social
  justice.

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Hemingway

• Hemingways style
• simple and natural / direct
• conversational, common, fundamental words
• simple sentences
• iceberg principle understatement, implied
• Use of symbolism
• Main Theme grace under pressure (?)

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Hemingways hero- Hemingways hero is an average
man of decidedly masculine tastes, sensitive and
intelligent, a man of action, and one of few
words. That is an individualist keeping emotions
under control, stoic and self-disciplined in a
dreadful place. These people are usually
spiritual strong, people of certain skills, and
most encounter death many times.
24
Terms to know

• Expatriate a person who either temporarily or
  permanently lives in a country other than that of
  the person's upbringing or legal residence.
• Flapper in the 1920s referred to a "new breed"
  of young women who wore short skirts, bobbed
  their hair, listened to jazz music, and flaunted
  their disdain for what was then considered
  acceptable behavior.

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Terms to know

• Apostrophe-the speaker or narrator addresses a
  person or thing.
• Personification-Giving human characteristics to
  known human things.

• Blank Verse- poems without rhyme but with meter.
• Meter-a pattern of stressed or unstressed
  syllables
• Pastoral-poem that deals with rural settings

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Terms to know

• Stream of Consciousness- present thoughts as they
  issue directly from a characters mind.
• Flashback-an interruption that describes a past
  event.

• Dialect-manner of speaking that is specific to a
  particular group.
• Hyperbole-exaggeration for humor purposes.
• Imagery-descriptive language that appeals to the
  senses.