Modernism 1900-1950

Modernism Modern Period writers were affected by World War I, World War II, fear of communism, and the beginning of the Cold War Roaring 20’s, the Great Depression, commercialism increased population lingering racial tensions after slavery and Reconstruction technological changes rise of the youth culture fear over eroding traditions

A Coming of Age Many historians have described the period between the two World Wars as a “traumatic coming of age.” After World War 1, many historians say that America had lost its “innocence” The ordered, stable and inherently meaningful world view of the nineteenth century could not, wrote T.S. Eliot, accord with "the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history." America’s connection to its past began to deteriorate. Modernism thus marks a distinctive break with Victorian bourgeois morality; rejecting nineteenth-century optimism, they presented a profoundly pessimistic picture of a culture in disarray. This despair often results in an apparent apathy and moral relativism.

The lives of these Americans were radically different from those of their parents. Modern life seemed radically different from traditional life -- more scientific, faster, more technological, and more mechanized. Modernism embraced these changes. In a post-Industrial Revolution era, America had moved from an agrarian nation to an urban nation. Social norms were questioned Prohibition (1919) both imposed morality and caused people to question that imposition Speakeasies, gangsters, the Jazz Age and the Roaring 20’s upended society’s sense of morality

Modernist literature is known for: themes of alienation and disconnectedness Creation of a unique style rise of ethnic and women writers Rejection of the ideal hero. The hero is now flawed and disillusioned Verbal ambiguity and complexity The malaise of the individual in the “lonely crowd,” the alienated self in the urban world, the “Unreal city” of the Waste Land or Ulysses. The autonomy of art and its divorce from truth or morality. frequent use of irony, understatement and symbolism experimentation with new literary techniques in fiction and poetry: stream of consciousness interior dialogue fragments

The Lost Generation A group of Americans who chose to live in Paris after WWI. Their writing explored themes of alienation and change and confronted people’s fears, despair, and disillusionment. T. S. Eliot (poetry) F. Scott Fitzgerald (fiction) Ernest Hemingway (fiction) Imagist Poetry Ezra Pound William Carlos Williams Wallace Stevens

The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

The Wasteland T.S. Eliot I. The Burial of the Dead April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

The Harlem Renaissance Writers represent a flourishing of African-American authors in a cultural movement that also included music and art poets introduced ghetto speech and the rhythms of jazz and blues into their verse These writers had two goals to write about the African-American experience to create a body of literature by African-American authors that could rival anything written by anyone else

Harlem Renaissance Harlem Renaissance writers included, among others: Langston Hughes (poetry) Zora Neale Hurston (fiction) Claude McKay (poetry) Countee Cullen (poetry) Arna Bontemps (poetry) Helene Johnson (poetry) James Weldon Johnson (poetry)

Modernists American modernist writers both echoed and challenged the American Dream. American modernists rejected Emerson’s optimism, yet a belief in self reliance still persisted. These writers were attempting to answer some basic human questions: who are we? Where are we going? What values should guide us on that search for our human identity?