American Modernism

1
American Modernism

• The Jazz Age
• The Harlem Renaissance
• The Lost Generation
• Regional/Local Color

2
Literary Terms

• Abstract
• Alliteration
• Allusion
• Character
• Collage
• Concrete
• Diction
• Dramatic Dialogue
• Dramatic Monologue
• Dynamic Character
• Free Verse

• Harlem Renaissance
• Image
• Imagery
• Imagism
• Imagist
• Inversion
• Irony
• Metaphor
• Meter
• Modernism
• Narrator
• New Criticism

3
More Literary Terms (cont.)

• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Regionalism
• Regionalists
• Repetition

• Stream-of-Consciousness
• Symbol
• Syntax
• Theme
• Tone
• Reversal
• Rhythm
• Simile
• Speaker

4
Essential Questions

• What are the characteristics of the Modern
  Period?
• Who are important authors of the period?
• What are some Modern themes in this period of
  literature?
• What is the relationship between Modernism and
  the Harlem Renaissance?
• What is collectivism?
• What are some of the periods literary
  achievements?
• What are some Modern attitudes?
• How does the writing style in the modern period
  differ from that of previous periods?
• What is the Harlem Renaissance?
• Who inspired the Harlem Renaissance?
• What is a renaissance?
• Who are some of the famous authors of the Harlem
  Renaissance?
• What is the Lost Generation and who were its
  members?
• Why was music so important to the Harlem
  Renaissance?
• What important historical events were behind the
  Modern Period?

5
Characteristics of Modern Period

• Opposition to dehumanizing trends in modern life
• Dignity of people in spite of great challenges
• Short stories with a more open form that stress
  mood and character rather than plot
• Loss of idealism due to war, industrialization,
  political changes. Search for new sources of hope

6
Characteristics (cont.)

• Experimental forms of poetry such a free verse
  (irregular and/or unrhymed verse lines) and
  symbols that suggest meaning and moods.
• Imagist poets like William Carlos Williams and
  H.D. wrote short poems with sharp and precise
  images.
• Confessional poets explored their personal
  conflicts with great honesty and frankness (i.e.
  Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton)
• During the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance helped
  to preserve African-American heritage and raise
  awareness of Black culture and concerns.
  Important poets of this movement are Langston
  Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen.

7
Historical Events

• 1919-1933 Time of prohibition of alcoholic
  beverages
• 1929 Stock market crash
• 1930-1940 Great Depression twelve million
  people out of work
• 1941 Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor United
  States enters World War II
• 1941-1945 World War I

8
Famous Modern Authors

• Sherwood Anderson
• Katherin Anne Porter
• Flannery OConnor
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Ernest Hemingway
• John Steinbeck
• T.S. Eliot
• Langston Hughes
• Eugene ONeill
• Thornton Wilder

9
Famous Modern Texts

• Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
• Flowering Judas (1930)
• A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955)
• The Great Gatsby (1925)
• The Sound and the Fury (1929)
• The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
• The Sun Also Rises (1926)
• The Weary Blues (1926)
• The Wasteland (1922)

10
The Lost Generation

• Seeking the bohemian lifestyle and rejecting the
  values of American materialism, a number of
  intellectuals, poets, artists and writers fled to
  France in the post World War I years. Paris was
  the center of it all.
• American poet Gertrude Stein actually coined the
  expression "lost generation." Speaking to Ernest
  Hemingway, she said, "you are all a lost
  generation." The term stuck and the mystique
  surrounding these individuals continues to
  fascinate us.
• Full of youthful idealism, these individuals
  sought the meaning of life, drank excessively,
  had love affairs and created some of the finest
  American literature to date.

11
The Lost Generation (cont.)

• There were many literary artists involved in the
  groups known as the Lost Generation. The three
  best known are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest
  Hemingway and John Dos Passos. Others usually
  included among the list are Sherwood Anderson,
  Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Ford Maddox Ford and Zelda
  Fitzgerald.
• Ernest Hemingway was the Lost Generation's leader
  in the adaptation of the naturalistic technique
  in the novel. Hemingway volunteered to fight with
  the Italians in World War I and his Midwestern
  American ignorance was shattered during the
  resounding defeat of the Italians by the Central
  Powers at Caporetto. Newspapers of the time
  reported Hemingway, with dozens of pieces of
  shrapnel in his legs, had heroically carried
  another man out. That episode even made the
  newsreels in America. These war time experiences
  laid the groundwork of his novel, A Farewell to
  Arms (1929). Another of his books, The Sun Also
  Rises (1926) was a naturalistic and shocking
  expression of post-war disillusionment.
• John Dos Passos had also seen the brutality of
  the war and questioned the meaning of
  contemporary life. His novel Manhatten Transfer
  reveals the extent of his pessimism as he
  indicated the hopeless futility of life in an
  American city.

12
The Lost Generation (cont.)

• F. Scott Fitzgerald is remembered as the
  portrayer of the spirit of the Jazz age. Though
  not strictly speaking an expatriate, he roamed
  Europe and visited North Africa, but returned to
  the US occasionally. Fitzgerald had at least two
  addresses in Paris between 1928 and 1930. He
  fulfilled the role of chronicler of the
  prohibition era.
• His first novel, This Side of Paradise became a
  best-seller. But when first published, The Great
  Gatsby on the other hand, sold only 25,000
  copies. The free spirited Fitzgerald, certain it
  would be a big hit, blew the publisher's advance
  money leasing a villa in Cannes. In the end, he
  owed his publishers, Scribners, money.
  Fitzgerald's Gatsby is the story of a somewhat
  refined and wealthy bootlegger whose morality is
  contrasted with the hypocritical attitude of most
  of his acquaintances. Many literary critics
  consider Gatsby his best work.

13
The Lost Generation (cont.)

• The impact of the war on the group of writers in
  the Lost Generation is aptly demonstrated by a
  passage from Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night
  (1933)
• "This land here cost twenty lives a foot that
  summer...See that little stream--we could walk to
  it in two minutes. It took the British a month to
  walk it--a whole empire walking very slowly,
  dying in front and pushing forward behind. And
  another empire walked very slowly backward a few
  inches a day, leaving the dead like a million
  bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again
  in this generation."
• The Lost Generation writers all gained prominence
  in 20th century literature. Their innovations
  challenged assumptions about writing and
  expression, and paved the way for subsequent
  generations of writers.

14
Regionalism and Local Color

• Local color or regional literature is fiction and
  poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect,
  customs, topography, and other features
  particular to a specific region. Influenced by
  Southwestern and Down East humor, between the
  Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century
  this mode of writing became dominant in American
  literature

15
Regionalism and Local Color (cont.)

• Setting The emphasis is frequently on nature and
  the limitations it imposes settings are
  frequently remote and inaccessible. The setting
  is integral to the story and may sometimes become
  a character in itself.
• Characters Local color stories tend to be
  concerned with the character of the district or
  region rather than with the individual
  characters may become character types, sometimes
  quaint or stereotypical. The characters are
  marked by their adherence to the old ways, by
  dialect, and by particular personality traits
  central to the region. In women's local color
  fiction, the heroines are often unmarried women
  or young girls. Narrator The narrator is
  typically an educated observer from the world
  beyond who learns something from the characters
  while preserving a sometimes sympathetic,
  sometimes ironic distance from them. The narrator
  serves as mediator between the rural folk of the
  tale and the urban audience to whom the tale is
  directed.
• Plots. It has been said that "nothing happens" in
  local color stories by women authors, and often
  very little does happen. Stories may include lots
  of storytelling and revolve around the community
  and its rituals.
• Themes Many local color stories share an
  antipathy to change and a certain degree of
  nostalgia for an always-past golden age. A
  celebration of community and acceptance in the
  face of adversity characterizes women's local
  color fiction. Thematic tension or conflict
  between urban ways and old-fashioned rural values
  is often symbolized by the intrusion of an
  outsider or interloper who seeks something from
  the community.