1. Modernism

2. Qualities of the Time period
America a world power
Immigration explodes
Increase in transportation
Development of the American Dream
Three Characteristics
An admiration for America as a new Eden: a land of beauty, bounty and unlimited resources.
Optimism: justified by the ever-expanding opportunity and abundance that many people have come to expect.
The ultimate Triumph of the individual – the independent, self-reliant person.

3. Qualities continued… WWI 1920’s: the roaring 20’s!! Harlem Renaissance
Destroyed American optimism
Disillusionment (loss of hopes and dreams); loss and confusion
More people move to the cities
1920’s: the roaring 20’s!!
The political movement of American Isolationism. We didn’t join the league of nations.
The jazz age (a term coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
Prohibition
Flappers
Harlem Renaissance

4. Characteristics of Modernist Literature
Attempt to break free from tradition
Interested in the human mind
Often experimental in form
Modernist literature shows instead of tells
Important for the reader to interpret and bring their own emotions
Stream of consciousness writing: run-on sentences, lack of punctuation, little or no capitalization.
Many of these writers wrote for many years after this time period but they got their start here.

5. Stream of Consciousness
Example:
“I had gone. . . to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring” (Hemingway 13).

6. More about Modernism
It elevates the individual and the inward over the social and the outward, and it prefers the unconscious to the self-conscious.
It is a reaction against Realism and Naturalism and the scientific beliefs on which they rest. Here we begin to see the development of existentialism
***** The modern revels in a dense and often unordered actuality as opposed to the practical and systematic, and in exploring that actuality as it exists in the mind of the writer it has been richly experimental. (Handbook to Literature 326)

7. Colony of expatriates
Remained in Paris after WW I. known as the Lost Generation
Gertrude Stein was like Emerson. She was a guide for artists and authors of the time. She had a home that housed many artists and authors.

8. Gertrude Stein

9. Famous Expatriates

10. The Basis for the typical American Hero
Hemingway Hero
The Basis for the typical American Hero

11. Hemingway Most influential post World War I writers
His literary style largely influenced writing for generations
Stripped typical writing down to the basics of what it must express.
Incorporated his own issues with faith into his writing:
He had a strong belief in the self: bravery, competence, and skill.
He also believed that humans had unbeatable odds against us.
***Despite this (and probably because of this) he believed in the importance of recognizing and snatching up rare, good rich moments that life offers before they are gone.

12. Hemingway hero A man of action, a warrior, and a tough competitor.
Has a code of honor, courage, grace under pressure, endurance.
Most importantly: he is thoroughly disillusioned, a quality that reflected Hemingway’s outlook.