1. American Modernism

2. 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.

3. Causes of the Modernist Temper
WWI
Urbanization
Industrialization
Immigration
Technological Evolution
Growth of Modern Science
Influence of Austrian Sigmund Freud ( )
Influence of German Karl Marx ( )

4. WWI

5. WWI Champs d’Honneur by Ernest Hemingway Soldiers never do die well;
         Crosses mark the places— 
Wooden crosses where they fell, 
         Stuck above their faces. 
Soldiers pitch and cough and twitch— 
         All the world roars red and black; 
Soldiers smother in a ditch, 
         Choking through the whole attack.

6. URBANIZATION

7. INDUSTRIALIZATION

8. 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.”

9. TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

10. Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Any late Vocab 13 needs to go in assignment box with an assignment ticket.
Take out notes from yesterday “American Modernism” we’ll finish these first.
We left off talking about the historical influences of this time period that shaped literature.

11. Growth of Modern Science
Scientific Revolution ( ) marked emergence of “modern science”
Developments in math, physics, astronomy, biology, human anatomy, and chemistry

12. Influence of Austrian Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
An Austrian neurologists
Founder of psychoanalysis
Treated patients through dialogue with patient and psychoanalyst

13. Influence of German Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Marx created theories about society, economics, and politics called Marxism
Believed human societies develop through class struggles
In capitalism, this manifests itself in the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat
This enables the proletariat to sell their labor power for wages

14. 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”

15. 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

16. 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

17. Imagism
School of Imagism: Ezra Pound, H.D. [Hilda Doolittle], Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams
favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language.
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.

18. Characteristics Open form Juxtaposition Free verse
Discontinuous narrative
Intertextuality
Classical allusions
Borrowing from cultures and other languages

19. Open Form
The form, which is the structure and shape of a poem, usually plays a crucial role.
There are two main forms of poetry: open and closed.
Closed form poetry, also known as fixed form, consists of poems that follow patterns of lines, meter, rhymes, and stanzas, whereas open form poetry does not.

20. 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.

21. Free Verse poetry that does not rhyme or have a regular meter.
A Noiseless Patient Spider BY WALT WHITMAN
 A noiseless patient spider, 
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, 
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, 
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, 
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. 
And you O my soul where you stand, 
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, 
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, 
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, 
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

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

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

24. Classical allusions / Borrowing from cultures and other languages
an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference.

25. 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

26. Social Norms/Cultural Sureties
Women were given the right to vote in
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.

27. 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).

28. 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

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