  What events come to mind when you think of the United States during this period of time?  Depression?  Roaring 20’s?  World War I and II? BrAiNsToRm

  Poets  e.e cummings  T.S Eliot  Robert Frost  Ezra Pound  William Carlos Williams Novelist/Short Stories - Katherine Anne Porter -Ernest Hemmingway -John Steinbeck -William Faulkner -Gertrude Stein Authors

  Generally, modernists were driven by the belief that the assurances once provided by religion, politics, or society weren’t enough.  However, others responded with a fresh sense of both the freedom and the responsibilities of the artist in a new age. Modernism Split

  T.S expressed a deep sense of loss and despair as he felt that modern life was horrific, chaotic, and ultimately futile. T.S Eliot

  Ezra Pound in particular envisaged the possibility of a new society to which artists would contribute meaningfully. Ezra Pound

  Saw this as an optimistic opportunity to take the road less traveled by…  He was believer of new experiences and saw the possibility of change as a good thing. Robert Frost

  The modernist period also saw a radical experimentation in literary form and expression.  Loss of form  Loss of structure  Narrative voice change  Intro of stream of consciousness Ch Ch Changes

  We are going to experiment with Stream of Consciousness  For the next 3 minutes I want you to write everything you think, doesn’t have to make sense, doesn’t have to connect, just your thoughts….Go! Stream of Consciousness

 “Life events occur in chronological order, but our conscious memories of them often unfold differently.” The Jilting of Granny Weatherall Katherine Anne Porter

  Because of the push of industrialization in Britain and America, travel and communication grew allowing for transatlantic ideas.  Writers either wanted to keep with American traditions or wanted to have more of a global approach to literature.  -if we are all going to war together, we should become one together Transatlanticism

  Pound and Eliot based their writings and places such as London and Paris even though they were American.  Frost, Williams, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemmingway developed modernist literature that was connected to American traditions. Split Again

  “Eyes stand first in the poet’s equipment”  “Of mixed ancestry I felt form earliest childhood that American was the only home I could ever possibly call my own. I felt that it was expressly founded for me…” William Carlos Williams

  Felt the effects of World War I strongly in his personal life as well as literary career  Focused on what was current in the world and connected it back to American readers Ernest Hemmingway

  The chief quality of Fitzgerald’s talent was his described, and a detached observer of it.  Wrote about what he was and what he saw. F. Scott Fitzgerald

  What all the modernists shared was a belief in literature’s importance in the modern world, and the need for it to be continually vital.