Modernism%20/%20Harlem%20Renaissance

1
Modernism / Harlem Renaissance

• 1915 - 1945

2
ModernismHistorical Context

• Overwhelming technological changes
• WWI first war of mass distruction
• Grief over loss of past
• Fear of eroding traditions
• Rise of youth culture

3
Genre / Style

• Dominant mood alienation/disconnection
• Writing highly experimental
• Use of fragments, stream of conciousness,
  interior dialogue
• Writers seek to create a unique style

4
Modernist Writers

• Earnest Hemingway
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• William Faulkner
• John Steinbeck
• Robert Frost
• Etc.

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Harlem RenaissanceHistorical Context

• Offshoot of Modernism
• Took place during the 1920s
• Time after WWI mood of terrible anxiety and
  despair
• Called High Modernism, The Jazz Age, The Roaring
  20s, and the time of Prohibition of Alcohol
• At the time was called the New Negro Renaissance

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HR Historical Cont.

• 1920s
• Aftermath of WWI (1914 1918)
• Called the Red Scare of 1919
• Prohibition
• Terrified of anarchists, socialists, communists,
  etc. because there were serious bombings in New
  York.
• Spread of Socialism in Europe
• Summer of 1919 violence began to be transferred
  to the African Amer. population.

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HR Historical Cont.

• There were many lynchings
• But African Americans were fighting back this
  time
• Resurrection of the KKK
• Many African Americans lost their jobs when
  whites came back from war.
• Many militant and pragmatic peoples

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HR - Style

• Did not want to express anxiety and despair like
  the modernists
• Felt more optimistic and hopeful
• Trying to establish respect for the African
  American race
• Literature, music, and art flourished during this
  time

9
Harlem Ren. Writers

• Langston Hughes most successful
• Countee Cullen the black Keats
• Zora Neal Hurston rediscovered by the womens
  movement in the 70s
• Jean Toomer Cane regarded as one of the most
  influential works of the era
• Claude McKay poetry evokes the heritage of his
  native Jamaica