The Modern Era

1
The Modern Era

• 1900-1950s

2
Important Historical Events

• World War I
• The Great Depression
• Prohibition
• The Dust Bowl
• Womens right to vote (suffrage)
• Racial division

3
Other Influences

• Marxism as an alternative political and economic
  philosophy
• The growing interest in psychoanalysis provides a
  new way of looking at personality and the
  individual
• All these ideas and events increases pressure on
  traditional beliefs and ideas

4
Thematic Shift

• Authors move away from idealism towards cynicism
• Authors begin to question authority and tradition
• This is due to the facts that historical events
  contradict the traditional view of the American
  Dream (US as a New Eden, optimism, and the
  strength of the individual)
• Disillusionment
• As a result, the Modernist Movement called for
  bold experimentation and a wholesale rejection of
  traditional themes and styles (all arts took part)

5
Examples of Modernist Art

• Stream of Consciousness- a new style of narration
  that abandons chronology and attempted to imitate
  the moment-to-moment flow of a characters
  perceptions and memories
• School of Imagism and Symbolism- founded by Ezra
  Pound and T.S. Eliot, rejects content for
  aesthetics (style and imagery)
• Some poets (Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters, and
  Edward Arlington Rombinson) retain plain
  language in their poetry

6
Important Modernist Poets

• Ezra Pound
• T. S. Eliot
• Edna St. Vincent Millay
• Robert Frost
• Edgar Lee Masters
• Edward Arlington Robinson

7
Important Writers

• Expatriates (often called the Lost Generation)-
  due to disillusionment, Prohibition, and cheap
  post-WWI European life, many writers leave
  America and write about US life in exile
• This included the following writers
• Ernest Hemingway
• Sinclair Lewis
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Gertrude Stein