1914-1945: WARS, PROSPERITY, & DEPRESSION MODERNISM

1914-1945: WARS, PROSPERITY, &

DEPRESSION

MODERNISM

RECOGNIZED NOT ONLY IN LITERATURE, BUT ALSO

• architecture• philosophy• psychology• anthropology• painting• music• sculpture• the sciences

A MOVEMENT OF CULTURAL CRISIS

Exciting!

Disquieting!

BRUTAL REALITY OF MODERN WAR

PROMISE OF AN AMERICAN HERO

DISILLUSIONMENT

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005683713/

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

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

GREATEST TECHNOLOGICAL INFLUENCE:

AUTOMOBILE

•Reshaped American structure of industry and occupation; many jobs created

•Cities change shape• Suburbs & highways

BUTConstant movement and lack of

tradition =

“rootlessness of American life”

Tocqueville (French social commentator)

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

• 1929 stock market crash• Struggle to restore nation’s economical

structure

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… -

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

FREEDOM FOR WOMEN

Middle class man had sexual freedom

Now woman demand sexual liberation (thanks to job opportunities, 19th

Amendment)

OTHER DEMANDS:

•Education•Professional work•Mobility•Any social benefits men already have (i.e. the right to voice an opinion in conversation)

WOMEN’S DRESSLong, heavy, cumbersome

SHORT, LIGHT, EASILY WORN (FREEING)

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

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

BREAKDOWN OF TRADITIONAL SOCIETY UNDER PRESSURES OF

MODERNITY

• Skepticism• Alienation• Irrationalism• Doubt as to the value of human existence

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

Marcel DuchampNude Descending a Staircase, No. 2French

Walter KuhnMorningAmerican

D. Putnam BrinleyThe Peony GardenAmerican

Wassily KandinskyImprovisation No. 27 (Garden of Love)Russian

Henri MatisseGoldfish and SculptureFrench

John MarinBroadway, St. Paul’s ChurchAmerican

Albert Pinkham RyderMoonlit CoveAmerican

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.

Caption: Migrant agricultural worker's family. Seven hungry children. Mother aged thirty-two. Father is native Californian. Nipomo, California

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."

MODERNIST MUSIC: IGOR STRAVINSKY

• The Rite of Spring• Riot in Paris where premiered, 1913• Attributes: dissonance (disharmony) and

discontinuity

MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE

• “Form follows function”•Glorifying buildings as machines (simple and industrialized)• Steel and glass materials• Efficient to maximize productivity (identical floors)

WALTER GROPIUSGROPIUS HOUSE

LINCOLN, MASSACHUSETTS1938

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHTFALLINGWATER

MILL RUN, PA1936 AND 1939

Shreve, Lamb and HarmonThe Empire State BuildingNew York City1929-1931

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

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

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

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”

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

“THE RED WHEELBARROW”WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

so much dependsupon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens

“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

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.

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