Who Am I?

Understanding Identity and Morality in Modern and Contemporary Literature

Our last unit of the year!• We are going to look at literature, art, and music from around

the world that dates from the 1940’s to present.

• You will notice that many of our authors/ artists are still living; however, we will still study some of the history surrounding these authors.

• We will split this unit into two parts: Latin America and Europe

First Up

Latin AmericaWe will study:

• Short stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

• Excerpt from How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

• Poetry by Lorca, Paz, and Neruda

• Art by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Salvador Dali

-Magical Realism became the best known style associated with the ‘literary explosion’ of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

-The term is NOT unique to Latin America, but it is a style that unifies the Latin American experience in a way that had not occurred since Modernism.

-It describes a literature where the limits of the reality and fantasy are blurred.

-Magical Realism is not interested in a rational approach to explain occurrences.

Magical Realism

Poetry• Vivid details

• Filled with strong emotions and connections to culture

• Common themes include war, love, and the beauty of everyday objects and occurrences.

• Many poems can be found in the original Spanish as well as English and often English translations retain a word or two in Spanish.

Art

Focuses on the common people

Or on surrealism.

Next Up- Europe

We will study:• Camus’ “Myth of Sisyphus”

• Alligator River Morality Activity• Tolstoy’s “How Much Land Does a Man

Need?”• Comparison of Tolstoy/ Camus Quotes• Various Contemporary Poets through

“Performance Poetry”

Modern and Contemporary World Literature

1930s-PresentExistentialism

1940s-1990sEnd of Colonialism

1980s-PresentGlobalization

1960s-PresentInformation Age

Choose a link on the time line to go to a milestone.

1950 2010

1890s-PresentModernism and Postmodernism

19801890 1920

Detailed Time Line

1945-1980Cold War

1890s-1940s

Modernism and Postmodernism

• Major literary and artistic movement

Modernism

• Reaction to 19th-century realism

• Influenced by Freud, psychology

• Realism inadequate to capture modern reality and human experience

The City (1919) by Fernand Léger

Existentialist philosophies or attitudes stress that

Existentialism

From the 1930s

• human existence is concrete, particular, and individual

• physical existence precedes “essence” or meaning

• each must create his or her own essence or meaning

• there are no preexisting meanings, values, or guidelines

Each person responsible for his or her own choices

Existentialism

From the 1930s

• Commitment to choices can make meaning for individual

• Choices not unlimited—time and facts we have are limited

• Existence about more than just the individual

• Includes relationship to other beings and to the world

After World War II (1939-1945)

Existentialism

Artists struggled to understand and accept • senselessness,

meaninglessness of existence

• events of war, especially Holocaust, atomic bombs

Jean-Paul Sartre (French intellectual, writer) brought existentialist thinking into the arts.

The Information Age

1960s-presentInternet greatest force in “information revolution”

• Grew from 1969 U.S. Defense Department project ARPANET

• Connects many small networks worldwide• World Wide Web (1991) leading information-

exchange service of Internet• First browser appeared in 1993

• Linked computers to provide secure communications in case of attack

Globalization

1980s-presentGlobalization

• businesses• finance

• labor

• Process of increasing worldwide interdependence and interconnectedness of

• services• Made possible, faster by

• more, cheaper travel • telecommunications,

other technologies