RM

Unit 3: Modernism

20th Century

  1. Popular facts
    • Women- voting rights, break taboos
    • Stock market
    • Roaring 20s
    • Jazz- New Orleans
    • “Sin” Industry- alcohol, gambling
    • Class Gap
  2. World War I
    • Ended in 1918
    • Disillusioned because of the war, the generation that fought and survived has come to be called “the lost generation”
  3. The roaring 20s
    • Depression and disillusionment took a less obvious form coming out of WWI
  4. The Jazz Age
    • Music promoted by such recent inventions as the phonograph and the radio swept from New Orleans to capture the national imagination
    • Improvised and wild, broke the rules of music
    • “It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire.” -Fitzgerald
    • The New Woman
      • Demanded the right to vote and to work outside the home
      • Symbolically cut her hair into a boyish bob and bared her calves in short skirts- became known as flappers
      • drunk alcohol, smoked, went dancing as unmarried women, “scandalous” activities

Modernism- psychological realism

  1. “Make it new” -Ezra Pound
    • Abstract expressionism
  2. Historical Context 1915-46
    • Reaction to overwhelming optimism preceding WWI and sense of promise introduced by technological advances
      • Tragic devastation proceeding WWI
  3. Value differences in the Modern World
    • Themes of Alienation and Existentialism
      • Confused sense of identity and place in the world, the collapse of morality and values, loss of faith, fluctuating, pessimistic, futile, chaotic
  4. Characteristics
    • “dis” Themes: disjointedness, disillusionment, disenchantment, disappointment, dissatisfaction
    • Collapse of the American dream: It’s impossible for the individual to triumph and America is no longer a “new Eden,” a land of opportunity
    • Collaboration with the reader: implied themes and piecemeal prose forces readers to draw their own conclusions
      • Reader has to piece together chronology and true image of titular character
    • Fragmentation- texts are fragmented to reflect fragmentation of the modern world (expositions, transitions, resolutions, and explanations are omitted)
    • Cynical Tone
  5. Characteristics of Modernism literature
    • Emphasis on bold experimentation in style and form
    • Rejection of traditional themes and subjects. Loss of faith in religion and society.
    • Sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the American dream
      • Gatsby eg: Nick
  6. TS Elliot “Wasteland”