Modernism

Background, Concerns, and Authors

Background

• Some critics argue that Modernism began around 1890

• For our purposes, we will assume it took true form in American Lit. at around 1910

• Social Movement, not just literary

• Born out of:– Imagism

• The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.» Ezra Pound, “In A Station of the Metro”

– Realism• There was this book…what was it? Something

about Huckleberry whatever…• “Realism is nothing more and nothing less than

the truthful treatment of material.” » William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Study,” Harper's

New Monthly Magazine (November 1889), p. 966.

• Other Influences/Results:– WWI

• Kind of a big deal

– Dada• Chaos and originality• Rejection of tradition• Anti-War

“Cut with the Kitchen Knife Through the First Epoch of the Weimar Beer-Belly Culture”

Hannah Hoch, 1919

“Dada Movement”

Francis Picabia, 1919

Concerns• War (WWI)

– Causes– Resultant societal impact– Personal aftermath

• Authority• Realism• Love/Romanticism• Aimlessness/Discontent• Female Independence• Masculinity• Institutions/Conventions/Traditions• Materialism• Brevity of language

The “Lost” Generation

• Group of American Expatriates living in Paris in early 1900s

• Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot (disciple of Pound)

• Name coined by Gertrude Stein– “You are all a lost generation.”

Hemingway

• Born 1899 in suburb of Chicago– “Wide lawns and narrow minds”

• Fun Fact: His mother dressed him in

girls’ clothes when he was a baby

• Hobbies: fishing, hunting, camping

• Sports: Boxing, football

• Kansas City Star (18 years old)

• Left Star for US Army to fight in WWI (1918)

• Rumored that poor vision led to Ambulance Corps in Milan

• Injured in July 1918– Mortar fragments in leg/machine

gun fire– 227 scars– Awarded Silver Medal of Military

Valor• Despite wounds, saved another

soldier

• Met and fell in love with a nurse from D.C., who left him before returning to America with him as planned (Agnes Von Kurowsky)

• Jaundice prevented return to Corps

• Oak Park to Toronto to Chicago (married Hadley Richardson) to Paris

• Greco-Turkish War• 1927: Divorce and

Remarriage (Pauline Pfieffer)

• Return to Key West in 1928

• Continued to write as a journalist, novelist, and short story author

• 1940: Divorce and Remarriage (Martha Gellhorn)

• Covered WWII as journalist

• 1944: Divorce and Remarriage (Mary Welsh)

• Brushfires and two plane crashes in Africa

• Depression and Paranoia• Committed suicide on

July 2, 1961

Some Works…• 1923 Three Stories and Ten Poems (Short Stories)• 1925 In Our Time (Short Stories)• 1926 The Torrents of Spring (Novel)• 1926 The Sun Also Rises (Novel)• 1927 Men Without Women (Short Stories)• 1929 A Farewell to Arms (Novel)• 1930 The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (Short

Stories)• 1932 Death in the Afternoon (Novel)• 1933 Winner take Nothing (Short Stories)• 1935 Green Hills of Africa (Novel)• 1937 To Have and Have Not (Novel)• 1940 For Whom the Bell Tolls (Novel)• 1942 Men at War (Edited Anthology)• 1950 Across the River and into the Trees (Novel)• 1952 The Old Man and the Sea (Novel)

Posthumously Published

• 1962 The Wild Years (Compilation)• 1964 A Moveable Feast (Novel)• 1967 By-Lines (Journalism for the Toronto

Star)• 1970 Islands in the Stream (Novel)• 1972 The Nick Adams Stories• 1979 88 Poems• 1981 Selected Letters

1926

1930

1930