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American Modernism: An Introduction

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Title: American Modernism: An Introduction


1
American Modernism An Introduction  
2
Images of WWI
3
(No Transcript)
4
I. Historical Background
  • A. Period between the two world wars
    characterized by
  • a. USAs traumatic coming of age
  • b. Americans returned home but had lost isolated
    innocence
  • ex. Soldiers from rural America could not easily
    return
  • c. Technology and mechanization of work changed
    the economy and life.

5
2. Post WWI Big Boom
  • 1. prosperity and growth of middle class
  • 2. college enrollment doubled in the 1920s

6
Big Boom continued
  • 3. many purchased the ultimate status symbol the
    automobile
  • 4. electricity, radio, telephones, and cameras
    came into common use.

7
3. Characteristics of the 20s
  • A. 18th Amendment 1919
  • - Prohibition and the rise of bootlegging and
    speakeasies
  • B. 19th Amendment 1920
  • Liberation of Women they have official voice in
    society
  • C. Movies become a part of the week
  • Charlie Chaplin and Clara Bow

8
The Lost Generation
  • Disillusioned and lost a sense of identityWhy?
  • "... the greatest single fact about our modern
    American writing is our writers' absorption in
    every last detail of their American world
    together with their deep and subtle alienation
    from it." - Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds, 1942

9
II. Modern Attitude about Art
  • 1. The modern artist is generally less
    appreciated but more sensitive, even more heroic,
    than the average person.
  • -the painter Picasso
  • -the poet T.S. Eliot
  • -the writer Hemingway

10
2. The artist challenges tradition and
reinvigorates it. Examples of Picasso
11
III. Contradictory Elements
  • 1. Democratic and elitist.
  • Vast separation in wealthy and poor
  • 2. Traditional and anti-tradition.
  • Prohibition and conservative religious views vs.
    Economic and Artistic views of freedom

12
Contradictory Elements
  • 3. National jingoism and provinciality versus the
    celebration of international culture.
  • 4. Puritanical and repressive elements versus
    freer expression in sexual and political matters.

13
IV. Literary Achievements The Influence of
Realism
  • 1. Dramatization of the plight of women.
  • 2. Creation of a literature of the urban
    experience. (city life)
  • 3. Continuation of the pastoral or rural spirit.
    (the farmer as hero)
  • 4. Continuation of regionalism and local color.

14
The Imagists
  • Ezra Pound
  • H. D.
  • Jean Toomer
  • William Carlos Williams

15
The Expatriates
  • Ezra Pound
  • H. D.
  • Ernest Hemingway
  • F. Scott Fitzgerald

16
Harlem Renaissance Poets
  • Langston Hughes
  • Countee Cullen

17
VII. The Jazz Age
  • An American Music
  • emerges in New Orleans around the advent of the
    20th century
  • blends elements from varied traditions, including
    African and African American, religious, brass
    band, and blues styles.
  • Improvisational versus classic structure
  • The Devils Music
  • By the end of the 1920s, at least 60 communities
    across the nation enact laws prohibiting jazz in
    public dance halls.

18
VII. The Jazz Age
  • Jazz and Prohibition
  • Prohibition brings jazz into gangster-run
    nightclubs, the venues that serve alcohol and
    hire black musicians.
  • Speakeasies allow whites and blacks to mingle
    socially for the first time, and draw young
    audiences from all social classes.

19
The Icons of Jazz
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