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1914-1945: WARS, PROSPERITY, &
DEPRESSION
MODERNISM
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RECOGNIZED NOT ONLY IN LITERATURE, BUT ALSO
• architecture• philosophy• psychology• anthropology• painting• music• sculpture• the sciences
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A MOVEMENT OF CULTURAL CRISIS
Exciting!
Disquieting!
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BRUTAL REALITY OF MODERN WAR
PROMISE OF AN AMERICAN HERO
DISILLUSIONMENT
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005683713/
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MODERNIST PARADIGM (PATTERN OR WORLD VIEW)
• Loss of faith in dependable, predictable,
orderly universe
• Loss of certainty of truth
• Man feels alone in an uncertain world
• Rejection of tradition (particularly artists)
• Life seems absurd: failure of reason,
tradition, moral systems
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TECHNOLOGY
• Record player, motion picture with sound, radio = greater sense of connectedness
• BUT ALSO = manipulative commercialism!
skepticism and apprehension about pop culture
• Gap grows between better-off and worse-off Americans
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GREATEST TECHNOLOGICAL INFLUENCE:
AUTOMOBILE
•Reshaped American structure of industry and occupation; many jobs created
•Cities change shape• Suburbs & highways
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BUTConstant movement and lack of
tradition =
“rootlessness of American life”
Tocqueville (French social commentator)
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THE GREAT DEPRESSION
• 1929 stock market crash• Struggle to restore nation’s economical
structure
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CLASH OF VALUES
“Traditionalist Americans—believing in work ethic, social conformity, duty, and respectability—attempted to control social and private behavior according to a model of white, Protestant, small-town virtues… -
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CLASH OF VALUES
arrayed against them were newly articulate groups: immigrants, minorities, youth, woman, and of course, artists, arguing for a diversity of styles of life.”
-Norton Anthology of American Literature
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FREEDOM FOR WOMEN
Middle class man had sexual freedom
Now woman demand sexual liberation (thanks to job opportunities, 19th
Amendment)
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OTHER DEMANDS:
•Education•Professional work•Mobility•Any social benefits men already have (i.e. the right to voice an opinion in conversation)
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WOMEN’S DRESSLong, heavy, cumbersome
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SHORT, LIGHT, EASILY WORN (FREEING)
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AFRICAN AMERICANS IN AMERICAN CULTURE
• Job opportunities in North lead to Great Migration• Faced racism and segregation• BUT better off economically and socially• Increase in personal freedom•Harlem Renaissance
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EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY
• Man has no ‘nature’ so he must create himself
• No inclination toward good or evil at birth we are all potential
• Man creates himself by means of choices
• Man feels alone in a world without meaning
• We must turn inward to seek truth in a fragmented and chaotic world
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BREAKDOWN OF TRADITIONAL SOCIETY UNDER PRESSURES OF
MODERNITY
• Skepticism• Alienation• Irrationalism• Doubt as to the value of human existence
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MODERNISM IN ART
• New York Armory show of 1913 shocks and causes an uproar
• “conviction that previously sustaining structures of human life, whether social, political, religious, or artistic, had been either destroyed or shown up as falsehoods or fantasies”
• Fragmented and abstract is more true to life
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Marcel DuchampNude Descending a Staircase, No. 2French
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Walter KuhnMorningAmerican
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D. Putnam BrinleyThe Peony GardenAmerican
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Wassily KandinskyImprovisation No. 27 (Garden of Love)Russian
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Henri MatisseGoldfish and SculptureFrench
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John MarinBroadway, St. Paul’s ChurchAmerican
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Albert Pinkham RyderMoonlit CoveAmerican
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PHOTOGRAPHY: SOCIAL REALISM
Dorothea LangeMigrant Mother Series,1936Florence Owens Thompson and children (subject)
Caption:Destitute peapickers in California; a 32 year old mother of seven children. February 1936.
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Caption: Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is native Californian. Nipomo, California
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Caption: "Nipomo, Calif. Mar. 1936. Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged 32, the father is a native Californian. Destitute in a pea pickers camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute."
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MODERNIST MUSIC: IGOR STRAVINSKY
• The Rite of Spring• Riot in Paris where premiered, 1913• Attributes: dissonance (disharmony) and
discontinuity
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MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE
• “Form follows function”•Glorifying buildings as machines (simple and industrialized)• Steel and glass materials• Efficient to maximize productivity (identical floors)
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WALTER GROPIUSGROPIUS HOUSE
LINCOLN, MASSACHUSETTS1938
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FRANK LLOYD WRIGHTFALLINGWATER
MILL RUN, PA1936 AND 1939
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Shreve, Lamb and HarmonThe Empire State BuildingNew York City1929-1931
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MODERNIST WRITING
• “represents the breakdown of traditional society under the pressures of modernity” (Norton)
• Often interprets modernity as an experience of loss
• Generalization, abstraction, fragmentation
• Stream-of-consciousness
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THEMATIC FEATURES
• Focus on form rather than meaning
• Breaking down of limitation of space and time
• Breakdown of social norms and cultural values
• Despairing individual in the face of an unmanageable future
• Disillusionment
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THEMATIC FEATURES
• Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past
• Need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life
• Importance of the unconscious mind
• Interest in the primitive and non-western cultures
• Impossibility of an absolute interpretation of reality
• Overwhelming technological changes
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FORMAL FEATURES OF POETRY
• Free verse
• Allusions and multiple association of words
• Borrowing from other cultures and languages
• Unconventional use of metaphor
• Importance given to sound to convey “the music of ideas”
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IMAGISM
• Concentrates on presentation of words or “word pictures”• Expresses essence of object, person, or
incident without explanation• Spare, clean, presentation of an image• Freeze a moment in time to capture
moment• Everyday language• Shies away from traditional poetic patterns
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“THE RED WHEELBARROW”WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
so much dependsupon
a red wheelbarrow
glazed with rainwater
beside the whitechickens
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“THIS IS JUST TO SAY”WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe iceboxand whichyou were probablysavingfor breakfast
Forgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold
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WORKS CITED
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 5th ed. New York: Norton, 1999. Print.
“Disillusion, Defiance, and Discontent." Prentice Hall Literature: Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2002. 704-713. Print.
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WORKS CITED
Brooker, Peter, ed. Modernism/Postmodernism. London: Longman, 1992. Print.
Hassan, Ihab and Hassan, Sally, eds. Innovation/Renovation: New Perspectives on the Humanities. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Print. Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism,
Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Print. Lodge, David, ed. Modernism, Antimodernism, and Postmodernism. Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, 1977. Print. Wilde, Alan. Horizon of Assent: Modernism, Postmodernism and the Ironic Imagination. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. Print