Transcript Document

The Moderns
Disillusion, Defiance, Discontent
1914-1946
Communication Arts, Joplin High School - Brenda White, 2009
I. Introduction
A. World War I brought a clash of the old and the
young.
B. Reality hit: half a million killed in one battle
C. America seemed to have lost its innocence.
1. Idealism became cynicism
2. Writers began to question authority
3. New moral codes; slang expressions
D. The Great Depression brought suffering to
millions of Americans.
E. The modernist movement called for bold
experimentation and rejection of tradition.
II. The American Dream
A. Americans had always held some of these
beliefs.
B. The American Dream evolved out of three
basic tenets.
1. America is a new Eden.
2. Optimism, opportunity, progress
3. Triumph of the individual
C. Emerson: “Trust the universe and trust
yourself.”
III. A Crack in the World:
Breakdown of Beliefs
A. World War I damaged the idealism of the
American Dream.
B. Authors were no longer only from New England,
but came from the South, Midwest, and the
West. It was the birth of regionalism.
C. Karl Marx - Marxism
1. Marx fueled the Russian Revolution in 1917.
2. Marxism directly opposed the American system of
capitalism and free enterprise.
3. After a visit to Marxist Russia, American journalist
John Reed wrote: “I have seen the future and it
works.”
III. A Crack in the World: Breakdown of Beliefs (continued)
B. Sigmund Freud - Psychoanalysis
1. Called for understanding of sexuality and its effect on
our lives.
2. The role of psychology was becoming understood, and
as a result the degree of individual freedom an
individual really has was questioned.
C. Stream of Consciousness literary style
1. Moment-by-moment flow of a character’s perceptions
and memories.
2. James Joyce’s Ulysses
3. Katherine Anne Porter’s Granny Weatherall
4. William Faulkner (almost everything!)
IV. At Home and Abroad:
The Jazz Age
A. Prohibition: In 1919 it became part of the
Constitution through an amendment.
1. Alcohol was contrary to traditional American values.
2. Ushered in the age of the bootlegger, the speakeasy,
short-skirted flappers, and gangsters.
B. The Jazz Age / Expatriates
1. The Jazz Age was so-named by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
2. Fitzgerald and many others were Americans in search
of pleasure abroad.
3. The wave of expatriates was a sign of something
wrong with the American Dream.
4. The idea of America as land of heroes was disappearing.
V. Grace Under Pressure:
The New American Hero
A. Disillusionment was a major theme in the fiction
of the time.
B. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
1. Most influential post WWI writer
2. Known for his reportorial literary style: straightforward,
few adverbs, minimalist, bare bones
3. Reportorial refers to his journalistic training.
C. Hemingway’s new American hero
1.
2.
3.
4.
Man of action, warrior, tough competitor
A code of honor, courage, and endurance
Hemingway called this attitude “grace under pressure”
Hemingway’s beliefs: bravery, decency, competency, skill
VI. Modernist Voices in Poetry:
A Dazzling Period
A. American poetry went into somewhat of a decline
B. Writers looked to European artists for inspiration:
1. Henry Matisse and Pablo Picasso were exploring new
ways to see and represent reality.
2. Poets like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot started using a
technique called Symbolism to fashion a new,
modernist poetry.
3. Pound spearheaded the poetic movement called
Imagism.
4. Imagism aims at clarity of expression through the use
of precise visual images.
5. These styles prevailed until midway of the 20th century.
VI. Elements of Modernism
• Emphasis on bold experimentation in style and
form, reflecting the fragmenting of society
• Rejection of traditional themes and subjects
• Sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the
American Dream
• Rejection of the idea of a hero as infallible in
favor of a hero who is flawed and disillusioned
but shows “grace under pressure”
• Interest in the inner workings of the human mind
sometimes expressed through new narrative
techniques such as stream of consciousness
VII. Voices of American Character:
Poets of Tradition
A. Some poets rejected modernism and chose to
stay home instead of finding inspiration abroad.
B. Some of those poets were: Edwin A. Robinson of
Maine, Edgar Lee Masters of Kansas, Robinson Jeffers of
California and John Ransom of Tennessee.
C. Robert Frost
1. The greatest of these stay-at-home poets
2. From New England; handled speech skillfully but with
a twist all his own
3. Individual poetic genius
4. Used iambic pentameter to create a uniquely American
poetic voice
VIII. The Harlem Renaissance: Voices
of the African American Experience
A. There were two forms of African-American poetry
1. Conventional forms (Paul Laurence Dunbar) were
quickly accepted by the masses
2. New forms based on spirituals, jazz, rhythms
(Langston Hughes, “Shakespeare of Harlem”)
B. Harlem Renaissance
1. Geographical center of this movement was Harlem
2. Spiritual center was the too-long-ignored African
Americans who wanted their art recognized
3. These poets mixed their talents with the jazz and other
music coming out of New Orleans, Memphis, and
Chicago to become part of the Jazz Age.
IX. The American Dream
Revised
A. A belief in self-reliance
B. This is the richest period of American literature
since the flowering of New England.
C. Ideas challenged the American Dream resulting
in the second American Renaissance.
D. Writers continued to ask fundamental questions
about meaning and purpose of human
existence.