American Modernism 1900 -1945

Between World Wars
Many historians have described the period between the two World Wars as a “traumatic coming of age.”
In a post-Industrial Revolution era, America had moved from an agrarian nation to an urban nation.
The lives of these Americans were radically different from those of their parents.

Modernism
Embraced nontraditional syntax and forms.
Challenged tradition
Writers wanted to move beyond Realism to introduce such concepts as disjointed timelines.
An overarching theme of Modernism was “emancipation”

Roots of Modernism
Influenced by Walt Whitman’s free verse
Prose poetry of British writer Oscar Wilde
British writer Robert Browning’s subversion of the poetic self
Emily Dickinson’s compression
English Symbolist writers, especially Arthur Symons

Modernist Writers
Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, Robert Frost
Harlem Renaissance writers such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Richard Wright

Imagism
School of Imagism: Ezra Pound, H.D. [Hilda Doolittle], Amy Lowell, William Carlos Williams
Direct treatment of the “thing,” whether subjective or objective.
To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

Charateristics
Open form
Juxtapostion
Free verse
Discontinuous narrative
Intertextuality
Classical allusions
Borrowing from cultures and other languages

Juxtaposition
Two images that are otherwise not commonly brought together appear side by side or structurally close together, thereby forcing the reader to stop and reconsider the meaning of the text through the contrasting images, ideas, motifs, etc.
For example, “He was slouched alertly” is a juxtaposition.

Discontinuous Narrative
Narrative moves back and forth through time.
Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying

Intertextuality
Intertextuality is a relationship between two or more texts that quote from one another, allude to one another, or otherwise connect.

Themes
Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties
Alienation of the individual
Valorization of the despairing individual in the force of an unmanageable future
Product of the metropolis, of cities and urbanscapes

Social Norms/Cultural Sureties
Women were given the right to vote in 1920.
Hemlines raised; Margaret Sanger introduces the idea of birth control.
Karl Marx’s ideas flourish; the Bolshevik Revolution overthrows Russia’s czarist government and establishes the Soviet Union.
Writers begin to explore these new ideas.

Theme of Alienation
Sense of alienation in literature:
The character belongs to a “lost generation” (Gertrude Stein)
The character suffers from a “dissociation of sensibility”—separation of thought from feeling (T. S. Eliot)
The character has “a Dream deferred” (Langston Hughes).

Valorization of the Individual
Characters are heroic in the face of a future they can’t control.
Demonstrates the uncertainty felt by individuals living in this era.
Examples include Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby, Lt. Henry in A Farewell to Arms