The Modern Period Challenging the American Dream

What Is Modernism? Modernism = bold new experimental styles and forms sweep the arts ( ) –Modernism reflects a loss of faith in traditional values and beliefs, including the American Dream

What Is the American Dream? The independent, self-reliant individual will triumph. Everything is possible for the person who places trust in his or her own powers and potential. America is a new Eden, a “promised land” of beauty, unlimited resources, and endless opportunities. Progress is a good thing, and we can optimistically expect life to keep getting better and better. The American Dream

A Harsh Awakening World War I (1914–1918): destruction beyond belief -Over 300,000 die during the Battle at Verdun… -20,000 in a single day at the River Somme… -over 37 million casualties, including 15 million deaths over the course of the war The Great Depression follows the 1929 crash of the New York stock market and lasts through the 1930s

1914:WW I begins in Europe 1920: Women gain the US Vote 1929: Beginning of the Great Depression : Dust Bowl devastates western states 1939: WW II begins in Europe : Eliot’s “Prufrock” 1925: Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby 1926: Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises 1930: Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily” 1939: Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath 1949:Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye 1900 A Modernist Timeline

Cultural Changes: Reflected in the Literature –Painters such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso explore new ways to represent reality  Fragmentation  Objects and colors –The rise of Socialism directly opposes American system of capitalism  a literature of contrast both within the modernist movement and individual texts  i.e. Hemingway vs. Faulkner or Fitzgerald  Pound vs. Frost –Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, changes the way we see ourselves  stream of consciousness vs. Hemingway’s “iceberg”

The Harlem Renaissance Centered in Harlem, New York during the 1920s Flowering of African American art, music and literature The birth of Jazz music Poets: Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay

Modern Poetry: Experiments with form –The image and the object = central T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Ezra Pound’s “In the Station of the Metro” William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow” –Poets choose everyday words over flowery, sentimental language. –Fragmentation and re-combination e. e. cummings, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein

Modern Fiction: “The Lost Generation:” shell-shocked following World War I –Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald “Age of the Short Story:” serial magazines boom; writers are paid handsomely for short stories –Fitzgerald felt it was “selling-out” –Could sell a single short story for $4,000 (a lot of $$!!) Flawed heroes: honorable yet imperfect, courageous yet disillusioned –Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway Stream of consciousness narration –Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” The Sound and the Fury, etc.

More on Modern Fiction: The impact of Ernest Hemingway:  The most lasting influence of any 20 th century writer  Journalistic style: objective, observational  Short declarative sentences: “Aim to write one true sentence.”  The “iceberg”

Modern Poetry: Traditional Forms Robert Frost writes in traditional rhyme and meter against the modernist trend –“Writing poetry in free verse is like playing tennis without the net.”