The Birth of American Modernism

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The Birth of American Modernism

• (1910-1930)

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Introduction to Modernism

• CA Standard LRA 3.5 c Analyze recognized works
  of American literature representing a variety of
  genres and traditions.
• Objectives
• Review American literary movements of the 18th
  and 19th Centuries.
• Define Modernism and explain its causes.

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Genealogy of Ideas

• Colonialism the Revolutionary Period
• (Beginnings-1800)
• Puritan Morality
• Total Depravity
• Unconditional Election
• Limited Atonement
• Irresistible Grace
• Perseverance of the Saints

• Enlightenment
• Science begins to question religious authority
  (Truth discovered through reason rather than
  faith)
• American Revolution
• America as the birth of an idea, Alexis de
  Tocqueville.
• Democracy of individual freedoms (freedom from
  the bourgeois or ruling classes, and/or royalty).

4
Genealogy of Ideas

• Romanticism Transcendentalism
• (1800-1860)
• Birth of an American Literary Identity separate
  from Europe
• A reaction to Enlightenment (Truth through
  reason).
• Romantics found truth through the beauty of
  nature, death.
• The principle of God (as essence) is felt through
  nature.

• Transcendentalism is a reaction to formalized
  religion representing a form of spirituality.
• Transcendentalism involves the ability to
  transcend physical principles for a higher
  spiritual plane.
• Transcendentalism is based on an idea of basic
  human goodness underlying all people as opposed
  to Puritan Calvinism. (Emerson).
• Transcendentalism based on Calvinism explores the
  darker sides of romantic issues such as death or
  human suffering (Poe).

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Genealogy of Ideas

• Realism and Regionalism
• (1860-1910)
• The Civil War (testing the nationality of the
  Constitution)
• Romantic/Transcendental ideas are displaced by
  realism (depictions of everyday life).
• The development of regional literature in the
  local vernacular (rather than formal English).

• Issues of inequality become prominent.
• The rise of industrialism.

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Genealogy of Ideas

• American Modernism
• (1910-1945)
• WWI A brutal assault on the orderly
  civilization of the nineteenth century
  (Lathbury, 2006, p. 7).
• WWI Meaningless violence to many Americans
• Mechanisticfirst sight of the technology of
  killing (without seeing the face of the enemy)

• Belief in human reason shaken.
• Multiple perspectives on the traditional
• Picasso
• Arnold Schoenberg
• T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, James Joyce, e.
  e. cummings
• Abandonment of convention
• The Roaring Twenties (Jazz Rhythms . . .
• The Great Depression
• The Harlem Renaissance

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• World War I . . . destroyed faith in progress,
  but it did more than thatit made clear to
  perceptive thinkers . . . that violence prowled
  underneath mans apparent harmony and
  rationality.
• --William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of
  Prosperity

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What is American Modernism?

• A cultural movement marked by cynicism and
  disillusionment that was that was influenced by
  historical events at the birth of the 20th
  Century beginning with World War I.

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Subversion of Social Norms/Cultural Sureties

• Subversion is rebel, overthrow, or undermine
  something.
• Women were given the right to vote in 1920.
• Hemlines raised Margaret Sanger introduces the
  idea of birth control.
• Karl Marxs ideas flourish the Bolshevik
  Revolution overthrows Russias czarist government
  and establishes the Soviet Union.
• Writers begin to explore these new ideas.

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Theme of Alienation

• Alienation the feeling of being turned away or
  rejected.
• Sense of alienation in literature
• The archetypal character belongs to a lost
  generation
• (Gertrude Stein)
• The antihero suffers from a dissociation of
  sensibilityseparation of thought from feeling
  (T. S. Eliot)
• American Dream as a Dream deferred
• (Langston Hughes).

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Valorization of the Antihero

• The antihero 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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Urbanscapes

• Life in the city differs from life on the farm
  writers began to explore city life.
• Conflicts begin to center on society.

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Summary

• Modernism can be defined as _______.
• Its attitude __________________. It was a result
  of ___________________. Features of __________
  include ________, _______, _________ and
  ____________.