1. Modernism

2. Writing changed content to reflect the feelings of the time:
Growing sense of uncertainty, disjointedness and disillusionment with the human experience
Growing mistrust of ideas and values of the past generations
Applying new ideas to 20th century life
Realizing a need for change, but unsure what sort and how to accomplish it
All of this can be FELT in writing—down to the very sentencing

3. Writing changed form to reflect the time:
Turning away from the literary style, form, and techniques of the 19th century
Experimenting with new themes: uncertainty, bewilderment, apparent meaninglessness of life
Experimenting with new techniques:
Implied themes, rather than stated themes
Uncertainty in resolution of plot/themes leave reader just as bewildered
The reader is forced to draw his/her own conclusion

4. The Forms Modernity takes:
Abandoning tradition plots, leaving possibilities rather than certainties
Little or no exposition/summaries
Few or no transitions
Jerky plots reflecting fragmentation of human experience
Stream of consciousness flow
Point of view switches (sometimes mid-story)
New Narrators:
Psychologically/Emotionally wounded
Detached and unreliable (sometimes unreadable)

5. IMPORTANT to note:
Symbols and allusions are out of control…sometimes they are the only “theme” we can find
Irony becomes the dominate tone (what will this do to the reader?)

6. Poetry changed form as well
Stretched old boundaries of form and content
Abandoned structure and form (what was left)
Experimented with presentation of the poem on the page

7. For Example: e.e. cummings old age sticks up Keep off signs)&
youth yanks them down(old
age
cries No
Tres)&(pas)
youth laughs
(sing
old age
scolds Forbid
den
Stop
Must
n't Don't
&)youth goes
right on gr
owing old.
For Example:
e.e. cummings

8. Main New Styles of Poetry
Imagism (Led by Ezra Pound)
Word pictures
Symbolism (Led by Wallace Stevens)
Clusters of images
The New Critics (a literary criticism AND a “kind” of poetry)
Form is essential to interpreting content
Debated purpose of poetry (it’s important—because it is)
Wrote poetry about poetry (meta-poetry!)
Individual Voices (Like T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost)

9. Yes, the moderns were “a generation lost”
According to Gertrude Stein
Sherwood Anderson
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
T.S. Eliot
All spent time in Europe…supposedly disenchanted with the “American Dream”

10. Modernism as movement elsewhere
Humor becomes a FORCE in literature
Dorothy Parker, James Thurber, E.B. White, Ogden Nash, Will Rogers
Drama
New staging techniques, costume desings, and the golden age of film
The Jazz Age
Coined by Fitzgerald
Reflected the “Roaring 20s”
HUGE changes in behavior of young adults
Art
Cubism and Impressionism