HOW HISTORY INFLUENCES TEXTS Modernism ( )

An American wake-up call  Belief in progress  America is Eden, a beautiful land of unlimited resources and opportunity.  Trust in the limitless potential of each individual  50 million killed in World War I ( )—more than any prior human conflict  Stock Market crash of 1929 leads to Great Depression and 25% unemployment rate  Freud’s theories suggest human thought and behavior are governed by the unconscious mind. American DreamAmerican Reality

Values of American Modernism  Cynical view of authority  Rejection of traditional values  Interest in Freud and psychoanalysis  Energetic desire to do something new

American Modernism is a reaction to:  World War I  The Great Depression  Prohibition and gangsters  Woman’s suffrage  Freudian theories

Characteristics of Modernist texts  Traditional styles, subjects and forms  Ideal heroes  Reason and rational thought  Bold experimentation in style and form, reflecting the fragmentation of society  Flawed and disillusioned heroes who show “grace under pressure”  New narrative techniques to express inner workings of the human mind, such as stream of consciousness Rejection of:Emergence of:

The Progression of American Thought GenreAmerican AuthorPerceived the individual as… RomanticsRalph Waldo Emersona god RealistsHenry James William Dean Howells Mark Twain simply a person NaturalistsStephen Crane Frank Norris a helpless ModernistsE.E. Cummings T.S. Eliot William Faulkner a complex mix of conscious thoughts and unconscious desires

Harlem Renaissance  Industrial needs of World War I create opportunity and lead to a massive migration of African Americans from South to North around  By the mid-1920s, Harlem, a section of New York City, attains an almost wholly black population of 150,000.  This “city within a city” produces poetry based on rhythms of spirituals, jazz, and the Blues, and diction based on the street talk of the ghettos

Symbolism  A form of expression in which the world of appearances is violently rearranged by artists who seek a different and more truthful version of reality.  Does not just describe an object; tries to reflect the emotional effects of the object.  Emphasizes imagination over reason  Distinct from religious, national, or psychological symbols  Born out of the belief that nature has lost its mystery due to scientific advances; the modern world is full of science, technology, poverty, violence, and spiritual corruption

Imagism  Believes poetry is the purest form of literary expression because of its precise, clear, unqualified images  Believes an image can carry the whole poem’s ideas and emotions  Attempts to reform poetry— ridding it of prettiness, sentimentality, and artificiality  Concentrates on the raw power of the image  Uses common speech  Does not employ elaborate metrics or stanza patterns

Think-Pair-Share: The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.  On the left is the entire text of the Imagist poem “The Red Wheelbarrow.”  What makes it poetry?  How does it exemplify Imagism?  Take two minutes to record your thoughts on these questions.