Modernist Principles: Make it NewEnglish 3

American Literary ModernismThe greatest single fact about our modern American writing is our writers absorption in every last detail of their American world together with their deep and subtle alienation from it. Alfred Kazin

Literary Modernism: 1915-1945Reaction to WWIResponse to the sense of social breakdownDevelopment of Cubism and Surrealism in the visual artsInternal perspective on cultural matters

Literary Modernism: 1915-1945The Jazz Age and the Great DepressionInvestigation of the excess of the Roaring 20sConsideration of class and trauma as raised by the Great Depression

Literary Modernism: 1915-1945View of the world as fragmentedThe usual connective patterns are missing: morals and frameworks are compromisedArtists self-consciousness about questions of form and structureStylistic innovations, disruption of traditional syntax and formThese fragments I have shored against my ruin (Eliot, The Wasteland)

American Literary Modernism

Modernism, according to Christ Baldick, The Concise Oxford Definition of Literary Terms is a general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in the literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century

a movement which began in the closing years of the 19th century and which had a wide influence internationally during much of the 20th century. [It] reveals a breaking away from established rules, traditions and conventions, fresh ways of looking at mans position and function in the universe and manyexperiments in form and style. It is particularly concerned with language and how to use it and with writing itself.

The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 4th Ed. (1998) by J.A. Cuddar

More definitionsthe term Modernism is not a precise label but instead a way of referring to the efforts of many individuals across the arts who tried to move away from established modes [realistic] of representationPeter Childs, Modernism

Difference between Realism and Modernism Whereas REALISMEmphasized absolutism, andBelieved that a single reality could be determined through the observation of natureMODERNISMArgued for cultural relativism,And believed that people make their own meaning in the world.

Value Differences in the Modern World

Pre-Modern WorldModern World (Early 20th Century)OrderedChaoticMeaningfulFutileOptimisticPessimisticStableFluctuatingFaithLoss of faithMorality/ValuesCollapse of Morality/ValuesClear Sense of IdentityConfused Sense of Identity and Place in the World

Modernist writing reacts to several changes during the first part of the twentieth century:Industrialization and mechanizationRapid technological advances

WHAT IMPORTANT CHANGES OCCURRED?

An Ugly WarWW I was the first total war in which modern weapons spared no one, including civilians.The casualties suffered by the participants in World War I dwarfed those of previous wars: some 8,500,000 soldiers died as a result of wounds and/or disease. War was increasingly mechanized from 1914 and produced casualties even when nothing important was happening.

CiviliansIt has been estimated that the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war was higher than the military casualties, or around 13,000,000. Largely caused by starvation, exposure, disease, military encounters, and massacres.

The enormity of the war had undermined humankind's faith in Western society and culture.A generation of young men lost.Survivors reexamine bases of certainly, structure of knowledge, systems of belief and authorities, creating a feeling of hopelessness.

Postwar modernist literature reflected a sense of disillusionment and fragmentation.

PHILOSOPHY AND THEORYAn overview of the intellectual currents which influenced Modernism

Karl MarxHistorical progress as the political struggle between two classes resulting in a new socioeconomic order. The world is, in essence, a struggle.

Charles DarwinNew view of humanity as ascended from apes rather than descended from God shifts humanitys conception of its place in the worldDisplaces human position of privilegeCollapses boundaries between human and animal

Ferdinand de SaussureSwiss linguist who argues that language is relative, that words have no direct relationship to the concepts or objects they signify

Friedrich NietzscheNietzsche: when he said God is Dead and argued for the power of the human will, he shifted cultural ideologies about religion and philosophyThere is no divine pattern

Sigmund Freud Stressed subconscious motives and instinctual drives.After Freud, impossible to ignore psychological undercurrents of human behaviors.Writers deal with subconscious motivations.Writers stream of consciousness technique similar to Freuds therapeutic tactic of free association.

THE ART WORLD

Central ideas in visual artSpirit of experimentationNew ways of seeingNew materialsNew ideas about the function art has in the world

ExpressionismRefused direct representation of reality.Favor of expressing an inner vision, emotion, or spiritual reality.The Scream by Edvard Munch evokes a whole realm of spiritual agony.

SurrealismAims to bring a fuller awareness of human experienceboth conscious and unconscious states.

MODERNIST WRITING

Themes of Modern LiteratureCollectivism vs. individualismAnxiety about the pastThe present moment severed from the pastDisillusionmentViolence and alienationDecadence and decayLoss and despairBreakdown of social norms and cultural suretiesShift in race and gender relations

Tensions in Modernist LiteratureDemocratic impulseAnti-traditionalismCelebration of international cultureFree expression of sexual and political mattersTechnology as liberationRevolutionElitist impulseTraditionalismNational pride and provincialityPuritanical and repressive elementsFear of technological advancementConservatism

The Modern SelfThe chief characteristic of the self is alienation.The Lost Generation (Gertrude Stein)The Dream Deferred (Langston Hughes)Everything about T. S. Eliot The modern self is often unable to act, feel, or express love. The modern self has a tormented recollection of the past

Modernisms MissionLiterature = art object produced by consummate craft rather than as a statement of emotion.Not a set of stylistic features; an impulse to perfectA refusal of clichs; a system of taboosA reaction against degraded Realism, especially in the marketplaceA repudiation of monopoly capitalisms effects on human being (conformity, standardization, repetition, seriality, stupidity)

MAJOR AUTHORS

T. S. EliotThe most dominant literary figure between the two world wars. Influential poet and literary critic. Conceives of the poem as an object demanding a fusion and concentration of intellect, feeling, and experience. Major works: Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), The Waste Land (1922)

William FaulknerSouthern American writerMany works center on the mythical Yoknapatawpha countyExperimental techniques include stream-of-consciousness and dislocation of narrative timeFocus on issues of sex, class, and race relationsThe Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Absalom, Absalom! (1936)

F. Scott FitzgeraldFocus on the Jazz Age and the Great DepressionExamination of American Materialism Exploration of the American DreamThe Great Gatsby (1925), Tender is the Night (1934)

Ernest HemingwayIceberg Theory of literature (1/8 above water)Spare, tight, journalistic prose style (was a former war correspondent)Objective, detached point of viewExamination of masculinity, genderThe Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

*****************