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Modernist Portraits Unit 11 MODERNIST PORTRAITS Experimentations in Style, World War I to World War II Authors and Works I How did the stylistic innovations of modernist prose affect the way later authors used language Featured in the Video: and narrative structure? Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons (series of still lives) I How were the myths of the “public enemy” F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night, The Great shaped by historical and cultural changes during Gatsby (novels), “Babylon Revisited” (short story) the modern era? How is this related to shifting Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (novel), “The notions of the American success story? Snows of Kilimanjaro” (short story) I How did modernity transform the traditional notions of American self-reliance and indepen- Discussed in This Unit: dence? How did authors consider and rework mod- Susan Glaspell, Trifles (play) ern social relations in their writing? Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (series of short stories) Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man,” “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock,” Learning Objectives “Sunday Morning,” “Gubbinal,” “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (poems) After students have viewed the video, read the head- Marianne Moore, “Poetry,” “Nevertheless,” “In notes and literary selections in The Norton Anthol- Distrust of Merits” (poems) ogy of American Literature, and explored related Nella Larsen, Quicksand (novella) archival materials on the American Passages Web John Dos Passos, The Big Money (novel) site, they should be able to Hart Crane, “Chaplinesque,” The Bridge (poems) 1. recognize the different types of formal experi- mentation in the fiction of modernist writers such as Stein, Hemingway, Anderson, and Dos Overview Questions Passos, as well as in the poetry of Stevens, Moore, and Crane; I What issues shaped Americans’ thinking during 2. appreciate the diversity of modernist authors, the modern era? How did American literature especially the difference in subject matter treated respond to the societal transformations of the by authors such as Glaspell, Fitzgerald, Larsen, post–World War I period? Hemingway, and Stein; I How did political events, such as war and labor 3. understand the implications of the social and conflict, affect the works of the writers included in political transformations that reshaped Amer- this unit? ican life during the modern era and the effect of I What impact did World War I have on the way these changes on the literature produced; people thought about the modern world? What 4. see connections between the art and literature of technological innovations influenced the way peo- the modern era and be able to identify how pop- ple perceived society and the individual’s place ular culture informs both. within it? 2 UNIT 11, MODERNIST PORTRAITS Instructor Overview 1919, Congress enacted the Eighteenth Amendment, ushering in the era of Prohibition by outlawing “the Between World War I and World War II, the lives of manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating the majority of Americans underwent dramatic liquors.” This law fueled a widespread illegal trade transformations. Though America did not officially in alcohol; many historians believe that the increase participate in World War I until 1917, its entrance in organized crime during Prohibition was a direct into the conflict marked a new level of U.S. involve- result of the new opportunities for illegal money- ment in European affairs and made a significant making provided by the Eighteenth Amendment. impression on those who served in the war, includ- Prohibition, also known as the Volstead Act, was ing a large number of writers. Following the war, repealed in 1933, in part because politicians thought and in part spurred by the increased production of a that reviving the liquor industry might provide jobs wartime economy, American consumer capitalism for the unemployed. exploded, and the age of advertising and mass con- To a great extent the world of art and literature sumption reshaped the day-to-day lives of many reflected the new pace and interests of American Americans. The automobile, which debuted before life, though many American practitioners of what the turn of the century, became an ever-increasing would be labeled “modern” art lived in Europe, fact of daily life: in 1900 there were only eight thou- believing that the conventional values of American sand cars in America; by 1940 there were thirty-two culture stifled their creativity. T. S. Eliot and Ezra million. Telephones and electrification, both inno- Pound led the way for other authors who sought a vations of the late nineteenth century, also became cultural climate conducive to the production of commonplace in American homes. great literature; from 1920 through 1929, more and After the turn of the century, increasing numbers more American authors took up residence in the of Americans invested their money on Wall Street, culturally vibrant cities of Europe, especially Paris. which had become America’s most prominent finan- Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitz- cial exchange in the second half of the nineteenth gerald, and others formed a coterie in Paris and century. After World War I, the practice of investing together strived to create a type of literature appro- by borrowing on “margin”—that is, investing money priate to what they considered a new “modern” world that investors themselves did not have—became following World War I. Artists and writers alike more commonplace, enabling more people to developed new techniques and addressed new sub- invest—or gamble—in the market, often beyond jects in reaction to a now-outdated traditionalism. their own means. Some became rich beyond their Modernism also responded to a prevalent sense wildest dreams through Wall Street speculations in of loss and bewilderment prompted by the societal the 1920s; many more lost everything they had in and technological changes of the early twentieth the Wall Street crash of 1929. The ensuing Great century. Disillusionment, confusion, and in some Depression revealed that the booming capitalist cases a sense of freedom characterized the “Modern economy of the 1920s was less stable than many had Temper” of the first half of the twentieth century. It previously believed; in 1932 the federal government, became increasingly evident that many traditional led by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, began moral and social standards had shifted dramatically, formulating the “New Deal,” which initiated new particularly those governing the behavior of women, ways to regulate business and the U.S. economy. In who began to assert new freedoms such as going out the meantime, nearly a quarter of the workforce was unchaperoned, wearing less constrictive clothing, unemployed, and hunger and poverty remained and smoking in public. The pace of urbanization widespread until the economy began to recover at intensified, and more Americans lived in urban cen- the end of the decade, when World War II began in ters than in rural areas. This shift fundamentally Europe. changed the way people in communities interacted: Political changes likewise reshaped American whereas neighbors all knew each other in villages, life: after years of agitation for suffrage, women residents were largely anonymous in cities, where finally won the right to vote in 1919 (the Nineteenth the population tended to change rapidly. (This sense Amendment was officially ratified in 1920). Also in of the anonymity of the city appears in such works UNIT 11, INSTRUCTORMODERNIST PORTRAITSOVERVIEW 3 as The Great Gatsby and Quicksand, for example.) a daily newspaper might otherwise miss. Nella Further, immigration from Europe had accelerated Larsen’s Quicksand provides an example of the fic- markedly in the last decades of the nineteenth cen- tion produced during the Harlem Renaissance; also tury, and cities appeared to be filled with foreign- experimenting with style and considering the possi- ers. People thinking of themselves as native-born bilities for individuality in America and Europe, Americans pressed for reduced quotas of those Larsen’s novel questions the essence of African immigrants whose cultures seemed most different American identity in the larger context of the from their own. Nativist sentiment helped push American arts. The poets Marianne Moore, Hart through stringent immigration acts in the first Crane, and Wallace Stevens share many of the same decades of the century, and immigrants faced dis- concerns as the prose writers, examining in their crimination and prejudice as they tried to adjust poetry the place of the individual in the complex to American life (for more about immigration and and confusing modern world, while experimenting literature see Unit 12). Ironically, those Amer- with form and style in their work. icans who were truly native to the United States— Many of these writers spent significant periods American Indians—continued to face discrimina- of time abroad, especially in Paris, where they tion, and many lived on reservations where they had became involved with the Parisian artistic commu- little access to paid work or adequate health care. nity, much of which centered around Stein’s salon. Congress officially made all Native Americans citi- The impact of European modernism was felt by all, zens in 1924, but citizenship did not materially however, whether or not they joined the expatriate change the living conditions of most Native community for any length of time. In their poetry Americans; the Indian Reorganization
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