American Modernism 1914-1945

WWI WWI -It involved Am. Artists and thinkers with the brutal actualities of large-scale modern war, so different from imagining heroism. -The senses of a great civilization being destroyed or destroying itself, of social breakdown, and of individual powerlessness became part of the American experience as a result of its participation in WWI, with resulting feelings of fear, discrimination, and on occasion, liberation. -In the wake of the apocalyptic sense of a new century and the cultural crisis brought on by WWI, Western notions of superiority came into question. In addition, long held precepts of the Renaissance and Enlightenment models of reality, all encompassing beliefs that humans were essentially good and could perfect both themselves and their societies, were beginning to collapse, and the value systems underlying American society—those of God, country, and capitalism—also faced challenges on almost all fronts. -A new term came to be used to describe the generation of men and women who came to maturity between WWI and the Depression of the 1930s. Gertrude Stein first heard the phrase from the proprietor of the Hotel Pernollet in Belley. Referring to a young mechanic repairing Stein’s car, M. Pernollet used the expression une generation perdue to describe the dislocation, rootlessness, and disillusionment experienced in the wake of the war. Stein later expanded the meaning of the phrase in conversation with Ernest Hemingway, saying that his was a decadent generation that was drinking itself to death. Hemingway, whose early books were prototypes for the lost generation of writers, recounts this conversation in the preface to The Sun Also Rises and again in A Moveable Feast. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night is a striking account of the spiritual climate of the time. Much of Malcolm Cowley’s work deals with the writers of that generation. It applied to all Americans who, after the war, found life in the United States to be shallow, empty, vulgar, and unfulfilling.

URBANIZATION Romanticism’s more moderate expression and valuation of nature—the rural, agricultural, and traditional—as opposed to culture and art seemed inadequate to express a sense of loss and new beginnings.

INDUSTRIALIZATION Romanticism’s philosophies of pantheism and transcendence no longer seemed to cohere for those who had to cope with the technologies of industrial modernization.

IMMIGRATION Oscar Handlin states, “Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.” Between 1880 and 1920, some 23 million immigrants came to a country that numbered only 76 million in 1900. Immigrants made up 15% of the total population in 1900; in the first decade of the 20th century, immigrants constituted nearly 70% of industrial workforce.

TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION -Telephones and electricity in homes changed the gap between better- and worse-off Americans. Those without electricity and phones were, literally, out of the network. -Phonograph record and record player, the motion picture which acquired sound in 1929, and radio -Automobile: millions of jobs were created; geography of the nation was altered by a new system of highways, which changed measure of distance, doomed some small towns to obscurity, and, put others, literally, on the map; made interstate trucking an alternative to railroading, cities changed shapes, suburbs came into being. -Large-scale migrations from rural areas to urban centers, along with technological change, also caused feelings of cultural dislocation.

Between World Wars Many historians have described the period between the two World Wars as a “traumatic coming of age.” In a post-Industrial Revolution era, America had moved from an agrarian nation to an urban nation. The lives of these Americans were radically different from those of their parents.

Modernism Embraced nontraditional syntax and forms. Challenged tradition Writers wanted to move beyond Realism to introduce such concepts as disjointed timelines. An overarching theme of Modernism was “emancipation”

Roots of Modernism Influenced by Walt Whitman’s free verse Prose poetry of British writer Oscar Wilde British writer Robert Browning’s subversion of the poetic self Emily Dickinson’s compression English Symbolist writers, especially Arthur Symons

Modernist Writers Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, Robert Frost Harlem Renaissance writers such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright

Imagism School of Imagism: Ezra Pound, H.D. [Hilda Doolittle], Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

Charateristics Open form Juxtapostion Free verse Discontinuous narrative Intertextuality Classical allusions Borrowing from cultures and other languages

Juxtaposition Two images that are otherwise not commonly brought together appear side by side or structurally close together, thereby forcing the reader to stop and reconsider the meaning of the text through the contrasting images, ideas, motifs, etc. For example, “He was slouched alertly” is a juxtaposition.

Discontinuous Narrative Narrative moves back and forth through time. Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying

Intertextuality Intertextuality is a relationship between two or more texts that quote from one another, allude to one another, or otherwise connect.

Themes Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties Alienation of the individual Valorization of the despairing individual in the force of an unmanageable future Product of the metropolis, of cities and urbanscapes

Social Norms/Cultural Sureties Women were given the right to vote in 1920. Hemlines raised; Margaret Sanger introduces the idea of birth control. Karl Marx’s ideas flourish; the Bolshevik Revolution overthrows Russia’s czarist government and establishes the Soviet Union. Writers begin to explore these new ideas.

Theme of Alienation Sense of alienation in literature: The character belongs to a “lost generation” (Gertrude Stein) The character suffers from a “dissociation of sensibility”—separation of thought from feeling (T. S. Eliot) The character has “a Dream deferred” (Langston Hughes).

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. Examples include Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby, Lt. Henry in A Farewell to Arms

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

1920’s: THE JAZZ AGE To F. Scott Fitzgerald it was an “age of miracles, an age of art, an age of excess, an age of satire.”

1930’s: THE DEPRESSION “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt