The Harlem Renaissance and Modernism

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The Harlem Renaissance andModernism

• 1910-1940

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• Change was the only constant for Americans in the
  early 20th century.
• In 30 years, they faced a world war, an economic
  boom, then the Great Depression.
• Attitudes toward womens place in society
  shifted.
• Traditional values were set aside or forgotten
  completely as Americans searched for certainties
  in what felt like a whole new world.

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Historical Context

• World War I
• Jazz Age
• 19th Amendment (womens right to vote)
• Prohibition (1920-1933 alcohol is illegal)
• Great Depression (1929)

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• Dust Bowl (drought huge dust storms)
• The New Deal (relief for homeless and hungry,
  recovery for agriculture and business, various
  economic reforms to prevent another depression)
  (the massive spending and production in WWII
  brought economic crisis to an end)

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Cultural Influences

• Mass culture/ mass media
• Conformity and materialism / what once were
  luxuries became necessities
• New ideas
• Stream of consciousness flow of thoughts
• Sigmund Freud subconscious drives behavior
• Karl Marx people in power try to keep their
  power. Those without power try to get power.
• Albert Einstein Theory of Relativity (nothing is
  absolute everything can change)

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Harlem Renaissance

• Great Migration
• Millions of black farmers and sharecroppers moved
  to the North in search of opportunity and freedom
  from oppression and racial hostility.
• Thousands of these migrants settled in Harlem,
  New York. It became the cultural center of
  African-American life.
• Black men and women drew on their own cultural
  resources to produce unique forms of expression.
• Became known as Harlem Renaissance

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Modernism

• World of contradictions disillusion hope,
  self-doubt self-discovery, crumbling traditions
  explosive creativity.
• Defining features
• Rejected traditional subject matter and theme.
• instead of love, they wrote about inability to
  commit. For modernists, nothing lasted
  therefore, they frequently focused on
  impermanence and change.
• Instead of heroes who stood for values of
  society, modernists focused on alienated
  individuals
• Revealed important emotions and ideas with
  understatement and irony
• Rather than directly stating meaning, modernists
  used symbols and images to suggest meaning.
• Describe characters actions, feelings, and
  thoughts, but do not interpret them for the
  reader.

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• Poetry re-create images and let those images
  speak for themselves
• Journalism influential part of the literary
  scene