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English 3
Reaction to WWI
Response to the sense of social breakdown Development of Cubism and Surrealism in the visual arts Internal perspective on cultural matters
Investigation of the excess of the Roaring 20s Consideration of class and trauma as raised by the Great Depression
The usual connective patterns are missing: morals and frameworks are compromised Artists self-consciousness about questions of form and structure Stylistic innovations, disruption of traditional syntax and form These fragments I have shored against my ruin (Eliot, The Wasteland)
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 avantgarde trends in the literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century
The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 4th Ed. (1998) by J.A. Cuddar
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.
More definitions
the 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 representation Peter Childs, Modernism
Whereas REALISM
MODERNISM
Emphasized absolutism, and Believed that a single reality could be determined through the observation of nature
Argued for cultural relativism, And believed that people make their own meaning in the world.
Modernist writing reacts to several changes during the first part of the twentieth century:
An Ugly War
WW 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.
Civilians
It has been estimated that the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war was higher than the military casualties, or around 13,000,000.
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.
Karl Marx
Historical progress as the political struggle between two classes resulting in a new socioeconomic order. The world is, in essence, a struggle.
Charles Darwin
New view of humanity as ascended from apes rather than descended from God shifts humanitys conception of its place in the world Displaces human position of privilege Collapses boundaries between human and animal
Ferdinand de Saussure
Swiss linguist who argues that language is relative, that words have no direct relationship to the concepts or objects they signify
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche: when he said God is Dead and argued for the power of the human will, he shifted cultural ideologies about religion and philosophy There 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.
Spirit of experimentation New ways of seeing New materials New ideas about the function art has in the world
Expressionism
Refused 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.
Surrealism
Aims to bring a fuller awareness of human experienceboth conscious and unconscious states.
MODERNIST WRITING
Collectivism vs. individualism Anxiety about the past The present moment severed from the past Disillusionment Violence and alienation Decadence and decay Loss and despair Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties Shift in race and gender relations
Democratic impulse Anti-traditionalism Celebration of international culture Free expression of sexual and political matters Technology as liberation Revolution
Elitist impulse Traditionalism National pride and provinciality Puritanical and repressive elements Fear of technological advancement Conservatism
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 Mission
Literature = art object produced by consummate craft rather than as a statement of emotion. Not a set of stylistic features; an impulse to perfect A refusal of clichs; a system of taboos A reaction against degraded Realism, especially in the marketplace A repudiation of monopoly capitalisms effects on human being (conformity, standardization, repetition, seriality, stupidity)
MAJOR AUTHORS
T. S. Eliot
The 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 Faulkner
Southern American writer Many works center on the mythical Yoknapatawpha county Experimental techniques include stream-of-consciousness and dislocation of narrative time Focus on issues of sex, class, and race relations The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Focus on the Jazz Age and the Great Depression Examination of American Materialism Exploration of the American Dream The Great Gatsby (1925), Tender is the Night (1934)
Ernest Hemingway
Iceberg Theory of literature (1/8 above water) Spare, tight, journalistic prose style (was a former war correspondent) Objective, detached point of view Examination of masculinity, gender The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)