Chapter 3

The Modern Period

two stylistic periods:

Modernism—before the Second World War (1939—1945)

Postmodernism—after the Second World War (1939—1945)

I. Historical, social and cultural background

1. between the two World Wars A. The two World Wars

a dramatic social change, a transformation from order to disorder. America in this period was characterized by economic boom and material prosperity but social chaos, spiritual waste and moral decay.

B. The impact of Marxism, Freudianism and E

uropean modern art

C. The expatriate movement

2. after the World War Ⅱ

II. Literary history of the period

1. American literature between the

two world wars

(1) The Imagist Movement and the artistic

characteristics of imagist poems

(2) The Lost Generation (3) The Expressionism

(4) The concept of “wasteland”

2. Postwar American literature (1) The Beat Generation

(2) The pluralism of postwar American fiction

a. War fiction

b. Southern literature

c. Jewish literature

d. Black fiction:

e. Other important writers

f. “new fiction” or Novels of absurdity

g. Literature of ethnic groups

3.The literary characteristics of American

modern literature (1) Theme: discontinuity and fragmentation

(2) Technical experimentation reject the traditional framework of narrative, description,

and rational exposition in poetry and prose, in favor of a stream of consciousness presentation of personality, a dependence on the poetic image as the essential vehicle of aesthetic communication, and upon myth as a characteristic structural principle

III. Representative of this period

Ernest Hemingway

1. Biography

1899 He was born in Oak Park, Illinois.

Hemingway attended the public schools in Oak Park

and published his earliest stories and poems in his

high school newspaper.

1917 Hemingway worked six months as a reporter for The

Kansas City Star.

WWI He joined a volunteer ambulance unit in Italy.

1918 Hemingway worked for a short time as a journalist in

Chicago.

1921 He moved to Paris, where wrote articles for the

Toronto Star.

1922 He went to Greece and Turkey to report on the war

between those countries.

1923 Hemingway made two trips to Spain.

1937 Hemingway observed the Spanish Civil war firsthand.

1941 Hemingway with Gellhorn went to China.

1944 Hemingway observed the D-Day landing below the

Normandy cliffs.

1946 Hemingway returned to Cuba.

1954 He was awarded the Nobe1 Prize for literature.

196l Hemingway shot himself with a hunting gun.

2. Literary works  

1923 Three Stories and Ten Poems (Short Stories)

1925 In Our Time (Short Stories)

1926 The Torrents of Spring (Novel)

1926 The Sun Also Rises (Novel)

1927 Men Without Women (Short Stories)

1929 A Farewell to Arms (Novel)

1930 The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories

(Short Stories)

1932 Death in the Afternoon (Novel)

1933 Winner take Nothing (Short Stories)

1935 Green Hills of Africa (Novel)

1937 To Have and Have Not (Novel)

1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls (Novel) 1942 Men at War (Edited Anthology) 1950 Across the River and into the Trees (Novel) 1952 The Old Man and the Sea (Novel) 1962 The Wild Years (Compilation) 1964 A Moveable Feast (Novel) 1967 By-Lines (Journalism for the Toronto Star) 1970 Islands in the Stream (Novel) 1972 The Nick Adams Stories 1979 88 Poems 1981 Selected Letters    

3. Major theme  1 ） The Lost Generation

2 ） The Hemingway Code Hero

4. Hemingway’s style

★ “iceberg” analogy:  “The dignity of movement of an

iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above

water.”

★ Seemingly simple and natural, Hemingway’s style is

actually polished and tightly contro1led, but highly

suggestive and connotative

5. Analysis of his short story: Indian Camp （ 1 ） Theme: Hemingway’s concern about violence

and death by revealing Nick’s feeling of perplexity, anxiety and terror over the misery of life and death.

（ 2 ） Characterization Nick Adams is, when he first grows up, the early

Hemingway protagonist, introduced to a world of violence, disorder, and death, and learning the hard way about what the world is like. Growing up in violent and dismal surroundings, Nick is psychologically and emotionally wounded and is later alienated from the society. The wound is a symbol and the climax for a process of the development of the character of Hemingway Hero; it is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disgrace.

（ 3 ） Language: Hemingway sought to endow prose with the density of poetry, making each image, each scene and each rendered act serve several purposes.

The End!