American Modernism

(1910s—1940s)

Lecture 12:

Historical Background:

1920s:

1. industrialization and urbanization

2. women’s liberation

3. mass media and luxuries

4. a sense of disillusionment

Historical Background:

1920s:

“The Lost Generation”

-- American expatriates in Europe

-- Fitzgerald, Hemingway, e. e. cummings, Sinclai

r Lewis, H. L. Mencken, Sherwood Anderson

-- Gertrude Stein

Historical Background:

1920s:

1. the Crash and the Depression

2. the New Deal

3. the Leftists

1930s:

Robert Frost

(1874—1963)

Frost’s poems:

“Mending Wall”

“The Road Not Taken”

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

“The Gift Outright”

“Nothing Gold Can Stay”

“Fire and Ice”

“Apple Picking”

Discussion topics: a. (“Mending Wall”) What does the wall possibly symbolize? b. (“The Road Not Taken”) What is the significance of the title of the poem? c. (“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”) Why is the last line repeated?

“Mending Wall”:

1. Why does the poet say that the wall stays always where we do not need it (line 23)?

2. How do you understand “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” (line 1)?

3. How do you understand “Good fences make good neighbors” (lines 27, 45)?

4. How do you understand “He moves in darkness” (line 41)?

“Mending Wall”:

5. What do we wall in and what do we wall out?

6. Can we do away with all walls?

7. What is the speaker’s attitude toward mending wall?

8. What does the wall symbolize?

9. What are the outstanding musical devices?

Frost’s aesthetics:

Frost depicts mostly New England landscape, but his poetry reflects the fragmentation of modern experience and alienation among modern men. He wrote in Wordsworthian style—plain speech of rural New Englanders, short traditional forms of lyric and narrative, and symbols from everyday country life. He had a lot of Emerson in him, seeing nature as a storehouse of analogy and symbol.

Homework:

For Week 13:

1. Reading Assignments:

Ernest Hemingway,

“A Clean, Well-lighted Place”

For Week 13:2. Presentation topics: a. In what ways do the two waiters differ? b. What does the title of the story mean? c. What is the significance of the garbled Lord’s prayer?

For Week 14:

1. Reading Assignments:

William Faulkner,

“A Rose for Emily”

For Week 14:2. Presentation topics: a. Why is Emily’s House the most appropriate setting for the story? b. Does the sex of the narrator affect the telling of the story? c. What is the disadvantage of taking Emily as a symbol of the post-Civil-War South?