1. 1914-1946

2. Look at the time line on page 704…  What are some critical events that occurred in America during this time period?

3. Historical Background  The years preceding WWI were characterized by a sense of optimism.  Wilson was forced, when war broke out, to turn his attentions towards problems of the world rather than concentrating on problems at home.  WWI – Allies vs. Central Powers  Trench warfare  Sinking of the Lusitania  E.E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos all served as ambulance drivers.

4. Prosperity and Depression  Failing of League of Nations  Prohibition  Recession in 1920 and 1921  After those years the economy boomed  Radio and jazz  Great literary interpreter of the 1920s F. Scott Fitzgerald (the next book we are going to read is The Great Gatsby )

5.  Writers flocked to Greenwich Village, New York.  October 1929 – Stock Market Crash  1932 FDR elected  The New Deal  WWII – The Allies vs. The Axis Powers  Dropped the atomic bomb and its implications

6. Literature of the Period  The Birth of Modernism  Modernist experimented with a wide variety of new approaches and techniques = diverse body of literature.  Sought to capture the essence of modern life in both form and content of their work.  Modernist works demand more from readers.

7. Imagism  Ushered in Modernism  1909-1917  Poems contained clear expression, concrete images, and the language of everyday speech.  H.D. and Ezra Pound

8. Expatriates (exiles)  Disillusioned by WWI  Gertrude Stein – “lost generation”  Fitzgerald and Hemingway  Later Pound and Eliot

9. New Approaches  Stream-of-consciousness technique  Presentation of a series of thoughts, memories, and insights connected only by a character’s natural associations  Ulysses – James Joyce  Faulkner, Porter, Dos Passo  Poets – Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore  They stretched boundaries in punctuation, wordplay, and speech

10. Writers of International Renown  Nobel Prize for Literature  Sinclair Lewis – great satirist, Main Street  1936 – Eugene O’Neill playwright Desire Under the Elms, The Iceman Cometh, and Long Day’s Journey into Night  Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises, A Farwell to Arms), Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath)

11. The Harlem Renaissance  In Harlem, African American writers  Most moved to Harlem from the South  Langston Hughes  1920s into the 30s  Belonged to no single school of literature