Modernism: in American Literature (1914-1945)

MODERNISM
In American Literature (1914-1945)

The time spans both world wars:
• WWI
• WWII
Particularly, the years following the Great War was a time when most modernist writers in
both fiction and poetry were most prolific.
The term "Lost Generation" was applied to the 1920s group of people who were struggling to find meaning
in the chaotic, post-WWI world.
The Lost Generation also lost a sense of identity, both on a personal and national level.
• Post WWI, America was propelled into a time of prosperity and change.
• Women began to feel liberated; the 19th Amendment came in 1920, allowing women the right to vote.
• "Flappers" bobbed their hair, wore short dresses, and drank and partied with the men.
• The Harlem Renaissance also occurred during this time, as huge numbers of African Americans migrated from
the south to the industrial North.
• African Americans began flourishing in literature, art, and poetry as well as music. This time is also often known
as the "Jazz Age."
Modernism was all about experimentation and innovation.
Poet Ezra Pound said, "Make it new“.
They no longer trusted the values and beliefs of religion, politics, and
society. Art began to replace religion as a guiding force and provided
new insight to the human condition. Experiments with literary form
occurred in both prose and poetry.
Stream of consciousness narration was used by novel writers such as Virginia Woolf
and William Faulkner. This type of narration was heavily influenced by the growing field
of psychology. Authors were preoccupied with examining inner self to define our ideas of
truth and reality.
The school of Imagism, founded by poet Ezra Pound, urged writers to
focus on the thing itself rather than be caught up in traditional poetic
language and device. This type of poetry is minimalist.
ELEMENTS OF MODERNISM IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
• Worldwide Destruction
The world witnessed the chaos and destruction of which modern man was capable. Modernist novels destroy conventions
by reversing traditional norms, such as gender and racial roles, notable in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby”. They also
destroy conventional forms of language by deliberately breaking rules of syntax and structure. William Faulkner's novel
“The Sound and the Fury”.
• Cultural Fragmentation
Fragmentation in modernist literature is thematic, as well as formal. Plot, characters, theme, images, and narrative form
itself are broken. Take, for instance, T.S. Eliot's “The Waste Land”. Modernist literature embraces fragmentation as a literary
form, since it reinforces the fragmentation of reality and contradicts Hegelian notions of totality and wholeness.
• Cycles of Life
Modernist literature represents the paradox of modernity through themes of cycle and rejuvenation. Eliot's speaker in "The
Waste Land" famously declares "these fragments I have shored against my ruins" (line 430). The speaker must reconstruct
meaning by reassembling the pieces of history.
ELEMENTS OF MODERNISM IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
• Loss and Exile

Modernism rejected conventional truths and figures of authority, and modernists moved away from religion. Themes
of loss, isolation and exile from society are particularly apparent in Ernest Hemingway's novels.
• Narrative Authority
Authority becomes a matter of perspective. There is no longer an anonymous, omniscient third-person narrator, as
there is no universal truth, according to the modernists. In fact, many modernist novels (Faulkner's) feature multiple
narrators, as many modernist poems (“The Waste Land”) feature multiple speakers.
• Social Evils
Modernist novels did not treat lightly topics about social woes, war and poverty. John Steinbeck's “Grapes of Wrath”
frankly depicts families plagued by economic hardship and strife. Modernist novels also reflect a frank awareness of
societal ills and of man's capacity for cruelty.
Ernest Hemingway's anti-heroic war tales depicted the bloodiness of the battlefields, as he dealt frankly with the
horrors of war. Faulkner, particularly in his most famous novel, “The Sound and the Fury,” also shows how
incomprehensibly cruel man can be, especially with regard to racial and class differences.

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MODERNISM

In American Literature (1914-1945)

• Loss and Exile

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