LITERARY MODERNISM (1900-ISH TO 1940)

What Characterizes Modern and Post-Modern Texts?EQ

The poems and short stories in Modernism demonstrate a new direction taken by writers and by society during the early years of the twentieth century, a period of rapid industrialization, advances in technology, urbanization and social change. There were new ways of viewing the world which developed during this dynamic time period.

Beginnings of the Modern Age

What events come to mind as you think of the United States during the period between 1910 and 1930? What was the most important international event of this period? What is the decade of the 1920’s often called and why? What economic event signaled the end of this era? What population shifts took place during this period? What cultural changes took place?

Introducing the Time Period

The election of Woodrow Wilson was something of a surprise. He ran against two formidable opponents, former President Theodore Roosevelt and incumbent President William Howard Taft. Roosevelt and Taft divided the electorate, and Wilson was elected president with only a minority of the votes. Wilson’s presidency marked a transition in American history.

President Woodrow Wilson

1.In 1910 there were 500,000 cars in America. By 1920, there were more than 8 million.

2.Modern roads began snaking across America

3.Electricity spread into more and more homes

4.Skyscrapers were built

5.Industry expanded at an enormous rate

6.The speed and flurry of modern life

History of the Time

“There is one basic fact which underlies all the questions that are discussed on political platforms at the present moment,” declared Woodrow Wilson in 1913.

“That singular fact “That singular fact is that nothing is is that nothing is done in this done in this country as it was country as it was done twenty years done twenty years ago.”ago.”

More Americans left rural areas for cities. By 1920, for the first time in the nations history, city inhabitants outnumbered rural dwellers. Many African Americans left the rural South with hopes of greater freedom in northern cities.

New Freedom

In August 1914, Europe burst into war. Great Britain, France, Japan, Belgium, Serbia, Russia, and Italy formed an alliance against Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. In the Atlantic Ocean, German submarines torpedoed ships carrying supplies to Great Britain. In 1917, with Wilson declaring that “the world must be made safe “the world must be made safe for democracy,” for democracy,” the United States formally entered the war against Germany.

Boys of Summer

Repulsed by the senseless slaughter of the war, Americans attempted to withdraw from the rest of the world. Politicians rejected the plea to join the new League of Nations and approved severe immigration restrictions. Many Americans expressed a desperate yet creative hysteria in new jazz rhythms, outrageous fashions, and wacky fads, and in obsessions with money, motorcars and youth. On October 29, 1929, however, the excitement ended. The stock market crashed and countless investors lost all their savings. An extraordinary era had come to an end.

The Roaring Twenties

What Caused Another Shift in Literature?

Modernism grew out of the disillusionment that many writers, artists, and thinkers felt after World War I.

(Historical Causes)

Terms to know (we will define them as we go)

Imagism Disillusionment Expatriate Harlem Renaissance Unreliable narrator Stream of consciousness

Disillusionment: (n)

“disappointment caused by a frustrated ideal or belief”

In other words, writers lost the trust they previously had in mankind and his social and political systems if those systems could lead to such a horrific war.

Imagism

An early twentieth-century artistic movement in the United States. Imagists believed poets should use common, everyday vocabulary, experiment with new rhythm, and use clear, precise, concentrated imagery. Ezra Pound, is an example.

Expatriate

Westerners living in non-Western countries.

American literary notables who lived in Paris from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression included Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein.

Harlem Renaissance

Centered in Harlem in the 1920s-1930s, the Harlem Renaissance was a period in which African Americans created great literature and art. They wrote poetry, prose, plays, and novels. The literature ranged in subject, but race and racial identity was a common theme.

Unreliable narrator

In literature, an unreliable narrator is a first-person narrator, the credibility of whose point-of-view is seriously compromised, possibly by psychological instability or powerful bias. Stories told by narrators who come to appear unreliable raise unsettling questions about the limitations of human knowledge.

Stream of consciousness

A literary technique that presents the thoughts and feelings of a character as they occur.

Historical Causes (continued…)

The war had been far more terrible and destructive than anyone could have imagined, and Europe, long considered the center of the world for all things cultural and political, lay in ruin.

New technology such as machine guns and mustard gas along with the spread of horrible diseases led people to become disgusted with man’s ability to kill.

Other historical causes

Technology exploded during this time (automobiles, radio, movies, telephones, pre packaged foods and cleaning products etc…)

This led to a new way of life that writers felt must be represented.

So How Did They Write “Modern” Texts? Writers challenged traditional

forms of writing. They explored modern themes

that applied to the world that they saw (which according to them had not worked out so well due to war.)

They often looked at life as “fragmented,” meaning that life does not always “fit together.”

This idea of fragmentation often leads to the idea that life is meaningless. Writers grapple with this issue.

Who are these writers?

F. Scott Fitzgerald T.S. Eliot Langston Hughes Gertrude Stein Ezra Pound Ernest Hemingway Claude McKay

Key Works

1. “The Red Wheelbarrow”

2. “In a Station at the Metro”

3. “I, Too, Hear America Singing”

4. “In Another Country”

5. The Great Gatsby

It started with the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote. The League of Nations, Gahndi, laws curbing immigration, declaration by Congress that all Native Americans to be citizens of the United States, Einstein's theory of relativity, daylight savings time, worldwide influenza epidemic kills 30 million, a population nationally of 103 million and over 2 billion. And Mickey Mouse debuts.

The New Modern Era

What Caused Another Shift in Literature?

(Historical Causes)

Terms to know (we will define them as we go)

Disillusionment: (n)

Imagism

Expatriate

Harlem Renaissance

Unreliable narrator

Stream of consciousness

Historical Causes (continued…)

Other historical causes

So How Did They Write “Modern” Texts?

Who are these writers?

Key Works