Modernism — Concepts

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Modernism Concepts

• Dr. Joel Peckham

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Modernism Overview

• Modernism is far too general a term to break down
  into a simple definition. Unlike Romanticism,
  one cannot list a set of philosophical beliefs or
  stylistic characteristics that would broadly
  apply to every Modern Writer. The Modern Period
  could be argued to extend from the late 19th
  century to the mid-twentieth century and could
  include any author writing during that
  periodeven if that author hated the modern world
  and Modernist thinking. In fact, the
  reactionary impulseto go back to a time that was
  more civilized, more Godly, more rational, more
  wholemay be the most modern of all impulses as
  it is reflected in the work of Yeats, Eliot,
  Stevens, Pound, and Jeffers. It may be most
  useful, then to look at Modern Writers as those
  authors who responded to the particular
  challenges that various upheavals from that era
  posed to the individual. The industrial
  revolution and its corresponding scientific
  advances, two major world wars, the development
  of the atomic bomb, The Great Depression, the
  Russian Revolution, the end of slavery in the
  United States, a burgeoning Womens Movement, the
  influence of African Americans on world art and
  music etc., all combined to create a world in
  which the old order of things seemed to have been
  upended and there was no clear sense of a new
  direction being offered. For some artists, this
  meant a realization of the freedom only hinted at
  by the Romantics, for some it meant a
  disorienting, fragmented, and purposeless reality
  in which the individual was lost in a churning
  mass of humanity. What follows is a by no means
  exhaustive list of terms important to Modernism
  and Modernists with examples drawn from
  literature and art intended to stimulate
  discussion.

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15 Terms

• Existentialism A philosophy that emphasizes the
  uniqueness andisolation of individual experience
  in a hostile or indifferentuniverse, regards
  human existence as unexplainable, and
  stressesfreedom of choice and responsibility for
  the consequences of one's acts.The Problem of
  Radical Freedom Derives from the existential
  belief inabsolute freedomthe idea that men can
  literally do anything and aretotally responsible
  for their own actions. Of course in a world
  withinfinite choices and no clear guide for
  action, this freedom can beterrifying, leading
  toExistential Panic A condition in which the
  individual, completelyaware of his freedom and
  his responsibility, is overwhelmed by
  thatawareness and cannot act. It can also be
  defined by the panic causedwhen one cannot
  discover his purpose or value in the universe.  

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15 Terms Cont.

•   Absurd Hero The outlook of the absurd hero is
  this determined tocontinue living with passion
  even though life appears to bemeaningless. The
  absurd hero does not look back in regret or
  forwardwith hope--he or she simply accepts life
  as it is and keep going inaccordance with a
  personal code.
• Alienation Quite simply the sense of being
  completely disconnectedfrom, rejected by and
  even repulsed by one's cultureincluding
  one'snation, religion, and social
  class.Misogyny In many ways modernism is a
  reaction against Romanticism,that would include
  the Romantic idealization of the feminine.
  Manymale modernist writers work with an outright
  hostility toward thefeminine, seeing it as the
  voice of society (an empty realm ofsuperficial
  value).

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15 Terms Cont.

• Deracination Rootlessness. The sense of being
  disconnected from theland, the earth, what is
  natural.
• Agrarianism A direct response to the
  industrialization of America ingeneral and the
  South in particulara reactionary movement led
  bySouthern Writers like John Crowe Ransom, Allen
  Tate, and Robert PennWarren. This movement
  emphasized closeness to the land, a
  spiritualconnection between man and God, and for
  some writers a return toclassic forms of
  literature. Many Agrarians were also
  segregationists.Segregationist Someone who
  believed that the solution to the
  AfricanAmerican "Problem" was complete
  separation of the races. Politicized,it meant
  Jim Crow laws in the South. But it was also
  embraced bysome American authors of the south
  seen as a reactionary impulse to return to the
  ways of the Southern past. Like Nazism it can be
  seen as a powerful effort to impose order on a
  world in which old values and systems of belief
  were under threat from new ways of thinking and
  the questioning of authority

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15 Terms Cont.

• Fragmentation An extremely important modernist
  concept,characterized by the effects of an
  increasingly industrial world onthe individual.
  Many modernists felt that the city and the
  assemblylineas well the killing machines of
  warliterally fragmented theindividual, treating
  men as interchangeable, valueless, pieces of
  somegigantic machine.
• Ratiocination The act of wandering around,
  nomadicallya sense ofbeing lost, of belonging
  to nothing, no-one and nowhere.
• Feminism Belief in the social, political, and
  economic equality ofthe sexes. Important in
  modernism because it inspired great writerslike
  Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Susan Glaspell, Edna
  St. Vincent Millayand later Adrienne Rich to
  find their voices in counterpoint to thedominant
  machismo of the period. Though modern writers
  were oftenmisogynists, this misogyny was in
  itself a recognition and response tothe
  increasing economic, political and social power
  brought on byincreasing freedoms afforded
  different groups as the industrialrevolution
  heated up.

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15 Terms Cont.

• Ambiguity Used by modernist authors, especially
  poets to get at asense of uncertainty in the
  universe. Often evoked through symbolism,ambiguit
  y occurs when a statement, image, symbol or
  action has nodefinite meaning.Indeterminacy
  Much like ambiguity, indeterminacy occurs when
  oneaction, image, symbol or statement is so full
  with possible meaning,it becomes impossible to
  select which one is the right one.
• Stream of Consciousness A technique used by
  modernist authors thatsought to simulated the
  associative quality of human thought throughthe
  neglect of punctuation and traditional sentence
  structure.Thoughts progress across the page in a
  continuous stream.

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Existentialism

• A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness
  andisolation of individual experience in a
  hostile or indifferent universe, regards human
  existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom
  of choice and responsibility for the consequences
  of one's acts.

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Jean Paul Sartre

• we show that it is not by turning back upon
  himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself,
  an aim which is one of liberation or of some
  particular realization, that man can realize
  himself as truly human.
• what man needs is to find himself again and to
  understand that nothing can save him from
  himself, not even a valid proof of the existence
  of God.
• Existentialism is a Humanism

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The Problem of Radical Freedom

• The Problem of Radical Freedom Derives from the
  existential belief in absolute freedomthe idea
  that men can literally do anything and
  aretotally responsible for their own actions. Of
  course in a world with infinite choices and no
  clear guide for action, this freedom can
  beterrifying, leading to Existential Panic.

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T. S. Eliot

• Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is
  spread out against the sky Like a patient
  etherized upon a table Let us go, through
  certain half-deserted streets, The muttering
  retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap
  hotels And sawdust restaurants with
  oyster-shells Streets that follow like a
  tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead
  you to an overwhelming question. Oh, do not ask,
  "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit.
• -- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

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Jean Toomer

• Crimson Gardens. Hurrah! So one feels. The
  bare-back rider balances agiley on the applause
  which is the tail of her song. Orchestral
  instruments warm up for jazz. The flute is a cat
  that ripples its fur against the deep-purring
  saxophone. The drum throws sticks. The cat jumps
  on the piano keyboard. Hi diddle, hi diddle, the
  cat and the fiddle. Crimson Gardens . . hurrah! .
  . jumps over the moon. Crimson Gardens! Helen . .
  O Eliza . . rabbit-eyes sparkling, plays up to,
  and tries to placate what she considers to be
  Paul's contempt. She always does that . . Little
  Liza Jane. . . Once home, she burns with the
  thought of what she's done. She says all manner
  of snidy things about him, and swears that she'll
  never go out again with him along. She tries to
  get Art to break with him, saying, that if Paul,
  whom the whole dormitory calls a nigger, is more
  to him than she is, well, she's through.
• --From Bona and Paul

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Existential Panic

• A condition in which the individual, completely
  aware of his freedom and his responsibility, is
  overwhelmed by thatawareness and cannot act. It
  can also be defined by the panic caused when one
  cannot discover his purpose or value in the
  universe.

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Edvard Munch
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T. S. Eliot (revisited)

• There will be time, there will be time To
  prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet
  There will be time to murder and create, And
  time for all the works and days of hands That
  lift and drop a question on your plateTime for
  you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred
  indecisions And for a hundred visions and
  revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea.

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Absurd Hero

• The outlook of the absurd hero is this
  determined to continue living with passion even
  though life appears to be meaningless. The absurd
  hero does not look back in regret or forwardwith
  hope--he or she simply accepts life as it is and
  keep going in accordance with a personal code.

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Albert Camus

• The absurd man says yes and his effort will
  henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal
  fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least
  there is but one which he concludes is inevitable
  and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to
  be the master of his days. At that subtle moment
  when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus
  returning toward his rock, in that silent
  pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated
  actions which becomes his fate, created by him,
  combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed
  by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human
  origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to
  see who knows that the night has no end, he is
  still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
• The Myth of Sisyphus

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Robert Frost

• Whose woods these are I think I know.His house
  is in the village thoughHe will not see me
  stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with
  snow.My little horse must think it queerTo stop
  without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and
  frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.He
  gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there
  is some mistake.The only other sound's the
  sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.The woods are
  lovely, dark and deep.But I have promises to
  keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles
  to go before I sleep.
• -- Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

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Alienation

• Quite simply the sense of being completely
  disconnectedfrom, rejected by and even repulsed
  by one's cultureincluding one'snation,
  religion, and social class.

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Robinson Jeffers

• But for my children, I would have them keep their
  distance from the thickening center corruption
• Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at
  the monster's feet there are left the mountains.
  
• And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of
  man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
• There is the trap that catches noblest spirits,
  that caught they say God, when he walked on
  earth.
• -- Shine Perishing Republic

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Misogyny

• In many ways modernism is a reaction against
  Romanticism, that would include the Romantic
  idealization of the feminine. Many male modernist
  writers work with an outright hostility toward
  the feminine, seeing it as the voice of society
  (an empty realm of superficial value).

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Frida Kahlo
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Deracination

• Rootlessness. The sense of being disconnected
  from the land, the earth, what is natural.

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John Dos Passos

• The young man walks fast by himself through the
  crowd that thins into the night streets feet are
  tired from hours of walking eyes greedy for warm
  curve of faces, answering flicker of eyes, the
  set of a head, the lift of a shoulder, the way
  hands spread and clench . . . .
• --from USA

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Agrarianism

• Agrarianism A direct response to the
  industrialization of America ingeneral and the
  South in particulara reactionary movement led
  bySouthern Writers like John Crowe Ransom, Allen
  Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. This movement
  emphasized closeness to the land, a spiritual
  connection between man and God, and for some
  writers a return to classic forms of literature.
  Many Agrarians were also segregationists.

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Ill Take My Stand, Twelve Southerners

• Opposed to the industrial society is the
  agrarian, which does not stand in particular need
  of definition. An agrarian society is hardly one
  that has no use at all for industries, for
  professional vocations, for scholars and artists,
  and for the life of cities. Technically, perhaps,
  an agrarian society is one in which agriculture
  is the leading vocation, whether for wealth, for
  pleasure, or for prestige-a form of labor that is
  pursued with intelligence and leisure, and that
  becomes the model to which the other forms
  approach as well as they may.

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Segregationist

• Someone who believed that the solution to the
  AfricanAmerican "Problem" was complete
  separation of the races. Politicized,it meant
  Jim Crow laws in the South. But it was also
  embraced bysome American authors of the south
  seen as a reactionary impulse to return to the
  ways of the Southern past. Like Nazism it can be
  seen as a powerful effort to impose order on a
  world in which old values and systems of belief
  were under threat from new ways of thinking and
  the questioning of authority

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