1. Entering the 20th Century and breaking new ground…
American Modernism
Entering the 20th Century and breaking new ground…

2. Historical Context
After World War I in 1914 to the end of WW II into the early 1950s.
Spurred by disillusionment after a savage WW I--What had this world become?
Loss of innocence
Flourished/peaked in 1920s & 1930s.
Explored both the decadence & wealth of the 1920s and the harsh realities of a Depression plagued 1930s.
Photography as fine art

3. Historical Context, cont.
Technological Innovation:
Fixation on LIGHT
Symbol for knowledge/awareness
Darkness as ignorance of blind tradition.
Enrollment in college doubled in the 1920s
Theory of Relativity in physics
Integration of internal combustion engine & industrialization: machines replacing humans
Rise of social programs: welfare, compulsory school, labor laws, etc.
Psychology as prominent field of study: Sigmund Frued & Carl Jung
People owned cars, radios, cameras, typewriters, and even phones, drastically changing daily life forever

4. Values & Beliefs
Like other “isms,” occurred across all forms of expression: music, dance, ART, architecture, etc.
“avant garde”: movements attempting to overthrow the status quo
Move past confines of extremely conservative Victorianism
New = good: move forward and embrace the future
Breakdown of social norms
Two World Wars' effects on humanity: alienation, frustration, disillusionment

5. Conventions Experimental in forms & techniques
Stream of Consciousness
Point of View: limited, multiple narratives, etc.
Break from bonds of Realism
Disjointed timelines
Classical allusions
Including intertextuality
Symbolic representation

6. Who? T.S. Eliot John Steinbeck F. Scott Fitzgerald Sherwood Anderson
The Wasteland, Four Quartets
John Steinbeck
Of Mice & Men, Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
Sherwood Anderson
Winesberg, Ohio
Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls
William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury, A Light in August
Robert Frost
“The Road Not Taken”
Langston Hughes
Claude McKay
Home to Harlem
Who?