Modernism

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1915 - 1946
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Modernism

• As a term, Modernism refers to an experimental
  style of visual arts, literature, and music that
  arose after the first World War.
• Modernist works were avant garde, or against the
  norms of the time in their form and content.
• Generally, the content of Modernist works
  represents disillusionment and fragmentation
  brought about by the loss of optimism in humanity.

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Between World Wars Europe

• Many historians have described the period between
  the two World Wars as a traumatic coming of
  age.
• In England and Europe, the first World War left
  death, destruction, and disillusionment in its
  wake.
• The Spanish and Russian Revolutions bring further
  instability.
• The new technology of grenades, poison gas,
  machine guns, and bombs brings death to countless
  civilians and soldiers.

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Between Wars America

• The balance of power shifts from Europe to the
  United States.
• In a post-Industrial Revolution era, America had
  moved from an agrarian nation to an urban and
  suburban nation.
• World War I pushes Europe and America into
  economic instability leading to the Great
  Depression and hardships (think Germany)
• The lives of these Europeans and Americans were
  radically different from those of their parents.

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Social Norms/Cultural Sureties

• Women were given the right to vote in 1920.
• Hemlines raised Margaret Sanger introduces the
  idea of birth control.
• Young people begin to rebel against the strict
  moral codes of the Victorian pre-war era.
• Karl Marxs ideas flourish the Bolshevik
  Revolution overthrows Russias czarist government
  and establishes the Soviet Union.

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Literary Themes

• Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties
• Alienation of the individual
• Disillusionment of individual with modern world
• Valorization of the despairing individual in the
  force of an unmanageable future
• Product of the metropolis, of cities and
  urbanscapes

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Roots of Modernism

• Influenced by Walt Whitmans free verse
• Prose poetry of British writer Oscar Wilde
• British writer Robert Brownings subversion of
  the poetic self
• Emily Dickinsons compression of language.
• English Symbolist writers, especially Arthur
  Symons
• British War poets expressions of disillusionment
  and angst over the Great War.

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Urbanscapes

• Life in the city differs from life on the farm
  writers began to explore city life.
• Conflicts begin to center on society.
• The individual begins to feel isolated from
  society.

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The Harlem Renaissance

• Also known as the New Negro Movement
• A flowering of artistic contributions from the
  world or literature
• Poets included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen,
  Claude McKay
• Writers included Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes
  Were Watching God
• Wide variety of styles and themes, reflecting the
  modernist trend

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Valorization of the Individual

• Characters are heroic in the face of a future
  they cant control.
• Demonstrates the uncertainty felt by individuals
  living in this era.
• Examples include Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby,
  Lt. Henry in A Farewell to Arms

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Theme of Alienation

• Sense of alienation in literature
• The character belongs to a lost generation
  (Gertrude Stein)
• The character suffers from a dissociation of
  sensibilityseparation of thought from feeling
  (T. S. Eliot)
• The character has a Dream deferred (Langston
  Hughes).

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Modernist Writers

• James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott
  Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck,
  Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings,
  Robert Frost
• Harlem Renaissance writers such as Langston
  Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson,
  Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright

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Modernist Fiction

• Embraced nontraditional syntax and forms. The
  birth of stream of consciousness brings a
  characters uninhibited feelings to the reader
• Challenged tradition
• Writers wanted to move beyond Realism to
  introduce such concepts as disjointed timelines.
• An overarching themes of Modernism were
  emancipation" and disillusionment

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Science Fiction and Dystopias (anti-utopian
literature)

• The genre of science fiction takes off with works
  like H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds.
• Aldous Huxleys Brave New World depicts a
  frightening society where human beings are
  genetically engineered to perform socially.
• In addition to George Orwells Animal Farm and
  1984, Huxleys work centers of the fears of state
  control, propaganda and technological/industrial
  growth.

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Modernist Poetry Imagism

• School of Imagism Ezra Pound leads the movement
  - H.D. Hilda Doolittle, Amy Lowell, William
  Carlos Williams
• Direct treatment of the thing, whether
  subjective or objective.
• To use absolutely no word that does not
  contribute to the presentation.
• As regarding rhythm to compose in sequence of
  the musical phrase, not in sequence of the
  metronome.

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Imagist Poetry

• IN A STATION OF THE METRO
• Ezra Pound
• The apparition of these faces
• in the crowd
• Petals on a wet, black bough.

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Imagist Poetry

• This Is Just To Say   by William Carlos Williams
  I have eaten the plums that were in the
  icebox and which you were probably saving
  for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious
  so sweet and so cold

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Modernist Poetry

• William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), an Irish
  nationalist, pens these prophetic lines in his
  poem The Second Coming (1921)
• Things fall apart the centre cannot hold
• Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
• The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
• The ceremony of innocence is drowned
• The best lack conviction, while the worst
• are full of passionate intensity.
• T.S. Elliot (1888-1965) writes The Wasteland
  and The Hollow Men, in which he describes
  through dense imagery, disconnected narrative,
  and cryptic allusions, the desolation of a modern
  life devoid of meaning.

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Modernist Poetry Samples

• William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)              
   THE SECOND COMING
•   Turning and turning in the widening
  gyre     The falcon cannot hear the falconer  
    Things fall apart the centre cannot hold    
  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,     The
  blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere    
  The ceremony of innocence is drowned     The
  best lack all conviction, while the worst    
  Are full of passionate intensity.
•     Surely some revelation is at hand  
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.     The
  Second Coming! Hardly are those words out    
  When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi    
  Troubles my sight a waste of desert sand     A
  shape with lion body and the head of a man,    
  A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,     Is
  moving its slow thighs, while all about it    
  Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.    
  The darkness drops again but now I know     That
  twenty centuries of stony sleep     Were vexed
  to nightmare by a rocking cradle,     And what
  rough beast, its hour come round at last,    
  Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?