1. AMERICAN MODERNISM AND THE LOST GENERATION

2. CHARACTERISTICS Also rejected traditional institutions and forms
WWI destroyed the illusion that acting well brings good things
Reflection on US life – faster pace of life, the individual feels swallowed up
Social boundaries in race, class, sex, religion being challenged
Jazz music had an influence – comes from African-American slave culture, over time became seen as typically American

3. THE LOST GENERATION
Group of writers who came of age during WWI and felt disillusioned and aimless in the unfamiliar post-war world

4. JOHN DOS PASSOS Worked as an ambulance driver during WWI
Spanish Civil War - later changed his opinions about the war (at first socialist – then conservative)
Wrote non-linear fiction, used the collage technique

5. RICHARD WRIGHT African-American writer
Moved to Paris as an expatriate writer
Wrote many autobiographical stories about his experience of race
“Black Boy”

6. WILLIAM FAULKNER Southern author
Most of his writing is set in Mississipi
Odd punctuation and fascination with time
Interested in family, honor, how the past affects the present
The Sound and the Fury

7. SCOTT FITZGERALD Moved to Paris
Was frequently in financial difficulties because he and his wife lived very extravagantly
Important Jazz Age writer
Favourite themes: youth and promise, despair
Heavy alcoholic
The Great Gatsby

8. ERNEST HEMINGWAY Ambulance driver in WWI
Moved to Paris, where he was a journalist
Spanish Civil War
Economical and underestated style (Iceberg theory)
Favourite topics: masculinity, love war

9. GERTRUDE STEIN Went to university, then to medical school
Moved permanently to Paris
Considered an expert on literary innovation and talent
Many writers wanted to be a part of her club
Obsessed with stream of consciousness and experimental literature
Lots of repetition

10. AMERICAN MODERNIST POETRY

11. ROBERT FROST Realistic depictions of rural life
Writing in American colloquial speech
Was an English teacher for 42 years
More traditional than other Modernist poets (tended to use everyday English)

12. WALLACE STEVENS Worked as a journalist and lawyer in NYC
Loved Key West, Florida, and wrote many poems about it
Fought with Frost and Hemingway
Preferred writing for educated readers

13. IMAGISM
free verse devoted to “clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images”
Direct treatment of the subject
Use no word that does not contribute to the presentation
Compose in the rhythm of the musical phrase, not on the rhythm of the metronome (create new rhythms)

14. In a Station of the Metro
THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
By Ezra Pound

15. EZRA POUND One of the founders of Imagism Lived in London
Helped publish T. S. Eliot and Joyce
After WWI he moved to Italy disgusted with England
Fascinated by Japanese poetry

16. WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Combined the carreers of doctor and writer
Life-long interest in painting
Critical of T. S. Eliot
Wanted uniquely American poetry

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

18. e e cummings Had trascendental learnings in his life
Likes poetry with unconventional grammar & syntaxçWorked as ambulance driver in WWI
Wrote about love and nature, very satirical
Lowercase writing, no full stops

19. Harlem Renaissance

20. LANGSTON HUGHES
Descendant of African-American slaves and white slave owners
Innovator of jazz poetry
Leader of Harlem Reinassance
Wanted to depict working-class black lives
Folk & jazz rhythms in poetry

21. DRAMA

22. EUGENE O’NEILL Playwright
Began to write plays when he was recovering from tuberculosis
Among the first to have speeches in American vernacular and characters of the edges of society
Disillusionment & dispair
Long Day’s Journey into the Night

23. RESOURCES
Norton Anthology of American Literature:
Study.com :
The Literature Network:
Pictures and images from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons