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TRANSCRIPT
American Modernism
1915-1946
The Modern Age
Major Historical Events• World War I - America becomes a “World Power”
• 1914– Germany advance stalled into Europe
– Turned into trench warfare
– “Modern” machine guns introduced
• 1915 – Germans sank the Lusitania (a British Passenger ship– 1200 people died (128 Americans)
– Opinions began to shift to Allies
• 1917– Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare
– America joined Allies – very cheerful stuff (short hair, showing ankles, doughboys, etc…)
• 1918– Nov. 1918 Treaty of Versailles ended WWI
• 1919 – Prohibition
– Liquor became illegal = bootlegging, speakeasies, gang warfare
• 1920(21) – huge economic boom
– Roaring Twenties – Flappers, jazz, movies (Charlie Chaplin), dancing – the Charleston & the Jitterbug
• 1929 – Stock Market Crash
• 1932 – 12 million w/o jobs (25% of the workforce)
– FDR elected president on New Deal plan (also elected 1936 & 1940) only Pres. to serve 3 terms
• 1939 – German invasion of Poland sparks WWII
– America stayed out even when France fell in 1940
• 1941 (Dec 7th) Japan attacked Pearl Harbor
– US declared war on Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan)
• 1945 – Allies Defeat German/Italy (Dropped two atomic bombs on Japan)
– Women in the work force
– Men returned from war – baby boomers
Modernism is Born• People are looking for new answers and ideas –
old values and ideas brought WWI
• Sought to capture essence of modern life -fragmented & unorganized
• Every age considers itself modern
• Our modern age is must less rigid in its rejection of previous schools/modes of thought
• We are less about WHAT we think and more about HOW we think
• We acknowledge that “knowledge and understanding are never definitive”
• Focus on literature is its CONTEXT rather than its form– Things are not defined by the “formula” they fit, but
rather by the content they contain
– How lit/art is viewed &interpreted rather than what mold it fits into
• Acknowledges “reality and truth” but only in terms of individual/subjective experiences
• highlighted shifting, changing forms of “reality” –early art had been a product of skill and craft
• Is a mish-mash of all earlier literary movements
• People are no longer isolated and the world became a much smaller place
• Technology, gender roles, relationships, and education began to define reality based on new definitions as opposed to previous and standard schools of thought
• Expatriates (exiles as they called themselves)
– WWI disenchanted many people (became the Lost Generation) – lived in Europe after WWI – some returned to the US, some didn’t
– Fitzgerald & Hemmingway are the most famous
– Saw very little in civilization to praise or even accept as tolerable
• Between WWI & WWII
– New psychological theories
– Stream-of-consciousness technique (thoughts, memories, & insights all run together)
– Poetry began to use word play, shapes, etc…
• Harlem Renaissance
– Black writers mostly from the South
• Langston Hughes & Zora Neale Hurston for example
– Harlem became a hub for black writers, musicians, artists, etc…
Theories, Movements, & “isms”• Imagism – anti-romanticism
– Offered hard, clear, expression, concrete images, and everyday language
– Patterned after the classics (Roman, Greek, Chinese classics and Japanese poetry)
• Positivism– Scientific method could define everything including human society
• Like Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory – Schrödinger's Cat
• Darwinism– Evolution and Natural selection
• Marxism– Economic needs dictate ALL aspects of society
– Capital vs labor
– Materialism defined human history
• Psychoanalysis– Freudian idea that sexual desire and gender roles define everything we do
as human beings