American Modernism 1900-1945

Characteristics of Modernism embraced non-traditional syntax and forms previous structures of life had been either destroyed or determined to be falsehoods: art had to be renovated or reinvented sense of alienation, loss, and despair valorization of the despairing individual facing an unmanageable future characters are products of or changed by cities and urban areas criticized the manipulative commercialism of the time period deliberate complexity - forced readers to be well-educated in order to read and understand these works

Alienation The character belongs to a “lost generation” The character suffers from a “dissociation of sensibility”—separation of thought from feeling The character has “a dream deferred”

Valorization of the Individual Characters are heroic in the face of a future they can’t control. Demonstrates the uncertainty felt by individuals living in this era.

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

TECHNIQUES OF MODERNIST WRITERS The modernists were highly conscious that they were being modern—that they were “making it new”—and this consciousness is manifest in the modernists’ radical use of a kind of formlessness.

COLLAPSED PLOTS It will seem to begin arbitrarily, to advance without explanation, and to end without resolution It will suggest rather than assert, making use of symbols and images instead of statements. The reader must participate in the making of the story by digging the coherent structure out, which on its surface, it seems to lack.

FRAGMENTARY TECHNIQUES notable for what it omits—the explanations, interpretations, connections, and summaries that provide continuity, perspective, and security in traditional literature The idea of order, sequence, and unity in works is sometimes abandoned - sometimes registers more as a collage. This fragmentation in literature was meant to reflect the reality of the fragmentation of one’s life.

SHIFTS IN PERSPECTIVE Writers strove for directness, compression, and vividness - they were sparing of words. Modern fiction tends to limit the reader to one character’s point of view on the action - often that of a naïve or marginal person (a child or an outsider) to convey better the reality of confusion

STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS An attempt to depict the mental and emotional reactions of characters to external events - continuous sequence of thoughts that run through a person’s head, usually without punctuation or literary interference. writers seem to share certain assumptions: that the significant existence of human beings is to be found in their mental-emotional processes and not in the outside world this mental-emotional life is disjointed and illogical