Unit 4:
the modernist period
Introduction
Our fourth unit of study is over the Modernist Literary Movement that dominated American Literature from 1910 to 1950. The goal of this movement was “to capture the essence of modern life both in form and content.” Contrary to the eras that preceded it, the Modernist era was hallmarked by internal conflict. The Modernists lived through both World War I and World War II, and the beginnings of the Cold War that was sparked by the development of the atomic bomb.
Needless to say, a lot changed during this time period. Constant conflict turned their optimism into pessimism. The generation before them fought over human rights, but the modernists did not see the point in working for, let alone fighting for, what they believed in. ‘Why work hard when this cruel world will just take everything from you in the end?’ they wondered as they watched hard working families lose their entire life savings daily during the Great Depression. The World Wars reduced their ordered world to chaos, resulting in their clear sense of identity dissolving to a desperate search for a place in the world. Above all other things, the Modernists were aware of the fleetingness of life.
Modernist literature has several distinct characteristics. Modernist authors, the Lost Generation especially, wrote with a fragmented cynical outlook. The major literary themes of the era were irony, isolation, disillusionment, hardship, and disappointment. Authors such as T.S. Elliot and William Faulkner used disjointed structures and techniques such as stream of conscience and multiple point of views to reveal the inner thoughts of regular people. Like most modern authors, they were highly critical of western society, especially its ubiquity. They truly followed the Modernist Maxim: “Make it New!”
Needless to say, a lot changed during this time period. Constant conflict turned their optimism into pessimism. The generation before them fought over human rights, but the modernists did not see the point in working for, let alone fighting for, what they believed in. ‘Why work hard when this cruel world will just take everything from you in the end?’ they wondered as they watched hard working families lose their entire life savings daily during the Great Depression. The World Wars reduced their ordered world to chaos, resulting in their clear sense of identity dissolving to a desperate search for a place in the world. Above all other things, the Modernists were aware of the fleetingness of life.
Modernist literature has several distinct characteristics. Modernist authors, the Lost Generation especially, wrote with a fragmented cynical outlook. The major literary themes of the era were irony, isolation, disillusionment, hardship, and disappointment. Authors such as T.S. Elliot and William Faulkner used disjointed structures and techniques such as stream of conscience and multiple point of views to reveal the inner thoughts of regular people. Like most modern authors, they were highly critical of western society, especially its ubiquity. They truly followed the Modernist Maxim: “Make it New!”
historical happenings
culture
Music, Art, and Clothing from the time period
Louis Armstrong And His Hot Five,
February 26, 1926, Chicago, Illinois
February 26, 1926, Chicago, Illinois
KEY LITERARY fIGURES
F. Scott Fitzsgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. The prolific decision of his parents Edward Fitzgerald & Mary McQuillan to name him after his distant cousin Francis Scott Key, who composed "Star-Spangled Banner", is a foreshadowing of literary genius the boy would grow up to be, who we know as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald attended Newman School, a prestigious New Jersey Catholic prep school. He later when on to attend Princeton University, however, with good but misguided intentions Fitzgerald put his literary ambitions ahead of his school work and was placed on academic probation. This prompted him to join the army in 1917.
F. Scott Fitzgerald published This Side of Paradise, his first novel, in 1921. Biography.com described the novel as “ a largely autobiographical story about love and greed... centered on Amory Blaine, an ambitious Midwesterner who falls in love with, but is ultimately rejected by, two girls from high-class families” (“F. Scott Fitzgerald”). Composed of bits and pieces of his previously written unpublished novel, The Romantic Egotist, along with new work, This Side of Paradise was an instant success. The entire first printing sold out in three days. Although Fitzgerald only profited just over $6,000 from its publication, the novel made him an instant celebrity. In 1922, Fitzgerald published his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned. Fitzgerald moved to France in 1924, where he wrote arguably one of the greatest American novels of all time, The Great Gatsby. The novel is now considered to be the “definitive portrait” of the era Fitzgerald coined the Jazz Age. Of his success, Fitzgerald said, “What little I've accomplished has been by the most laborious and uphill work, and I wish now I'd never relaxed or looked back—but said at the end of The Great Gatsby: 'I've found my line—from now on this comes first'” (“F. Scott Fitzgerald”).
While in the still in the army, Fitzgerald was stationed in Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama. In a fashion remarkably similar to how Gatsby and Daisy met in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald fell in love with Zelda Sayre, who was beautiful but shallow. She refused to marry him until he made enough money to provide her with the lifestyle the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Judge was accustomed to. Zelda finally married Fitzgerald in 1921, one week after the publication of This Side of Paradise. The couple’s only child, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, was born shortly thereafter.
As the famous platitude states, with great success comes great sacrifice. Soon after the success of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald fell into the clutches of alcoholism. Zelda suffered a mental breakdown and spent several stints in mental institutions. Fitzgerald’s next novel, Tender is the Night, was rather ambitious and therefore a commercial failure, although it is now considered to be of the same level of genius as Gatsby. Fitzgerald then moved to Hollywood to write screenplays to support himself financially. On December 21, 1940, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at age 44, leaving his final novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, unfinished. Unfortunately, by every indication, Fitzgerald died believing himself to be a failure, his dreams of literary success unachieved. If only he could see the impact and longevity of his witty, satirical, social criticisms.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota. The prolific decision of his parents Edward Fitzgerald & Mary McQuillan to name him after his distant cousin Francis Scott Key, who composed "Star-Spangled Banner", is a foreshadowing of literary genius the boy would grow up to be, who we know as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald attended Newman School, a prestigious New Jersey Catholic prep school. He later when on to attend Princeton University, however, with good but misguided intentions Fitzgerald put his literary ambitions ahead of his school work and was placed on academic probation. This prompted him to join the army in 1917.
F. Scott Fitzgerald published This Side of Paradise, his first novel, in 1921. Biography.com described the novel as “ a largely autobiographical story about love and greed... centered on Amory Blaine, an ambitious Midwesterner who falls in love with, but is ultimately rejected by, two girls from high-class families” (“F. Scott Fitzgerald”). Composed of bits and pieces of his previously written unpublished novel, The Romantic Egotist, along with new work, This Side of Paradise was an instant success. The entire first printing sold out in three days. Although Fitzgerald only profited just over $6,000 from its publication, the novel made him an instant celebrity. In 1922, Fitzgerald published his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned. Fitzgerald moved to France in 1924, where he wrote arguably one of the greatest American novels of all time, The Great Gatsby. The novel is now considered to be the “definitive portrait” of the era Fitzgerald coined the Jazz Age. Of his success, Fitzgerald said, “What little I've accomplished has been by the most laborious and uphill work, and I wish now I'd never relaxed or looked back—but said at the end of The Great Gatsby: 'I've found my line—from now on this comes first'” (“F. Scott Fitzgerald”).
While in the still in the army, Fitzgerald was stationed in Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama. In a fashion remarkably similar to how Gatsby and Daisy met in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald fell in love with Zelda Sayre, who was beautiful but shallow. She refused to marry him until he made enough money to provide her with the lifestyle the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court Judge was accustomed to. Zelda finally married Fitzgerald in 1921, one week after the publication of This Side of Paradise. The couple’s only child, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, was born shortly thereafter.
As the famous platitude states, with great success comes great sacrifice. Soon after the success of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald fell into the clutches of alcoholism. Zelda suffered a mental breakdown and spent several stints in mental institutions. Fitzgerald’s next novel, Tender is the Night, was rather ambitious and therefore a commercial failure, although it is now considered to be of the same level of genius as Gatsby. Fitzgerald then moved to Hollywood to write screenplays to support himself financially. On December 21, 1940, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at age 44, leaving his final novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, unfinished. Unfortunately, by every indication, Fitzgerald died believing himself to be a failure, his dreams of literary success unachieved. If only he could see the impact and longevity of his witty, satirical, social criticisms.
Other Key Authors:
- Ernest Hemingway, an "innovative writer whose novels reflected the disillusionment of many Americans with propaganda and patriotic idealism", best known for A Farewell to Arms (1929)
- William Faulkner, one of the most important writers in Southern American Literature and a Nobel Prize laureate, best known for his 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury and the short story “A Rose for Emily”
- John Steinbeck, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize for literature, best known for Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Of Mice and Men (1937).
- Katherine Anne Porter, her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was a bestseller but she is best known for her critically acclaimed short stories such as "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"
- Langston Hughes, leader of the Harlem Renaissance and innovator of jazz poetry, best known for his poetry collections such as The Weary Blues (1926), Not Without Laughter (1930) was his first novel
- Zora Neale Hurston, ”considered one of the pre-eminent writers of twentieth-century African-American literature”, best known for Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
literary themes
Disillusionment, Fragmentation, Isolation, and Ambiguity are arguably the most important themes in Modernist Literature. Disillusionment is the confusion that result from having an illusion or view of the world suddenly shattered. For example, at the end of The Great Gatsby when Nick goes to see Gatsby after Daisy chose to be with Tom, Gatsby says that Daisy still loves him and will choose to recreate the past with him. Gatsby refuses to listen to reason. Gatsby has lived the last five years of his life for Daisy, and now that that dream is over, he does not know what to do with himself, just as millions during the Modernist Era did not know what to do after the world as they knew it was turned on its head by the World Wars. Perhaps the best example of Fragmentation in Modernist work is TS Eliot's “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”. “Prufrock” jumps from topic to topic in a very disjointed manner. Because the poem does not have an overarching plot, it paints a vivid picture of Prufrock himself, who Roger Mitchell called “The Representative Man of early Modernism”. Isolation is another theme that runs through many Modernist works. In Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” we see Granny become more and more isolated as she draws closer to death. First she is jilted by her fiance, then as she dies her minds begins to leave her isolating her from her family members at her bedside, then just as she slips away, she believes herself to have been ‘jilted’ by God Himself. Ambiguity is the final theme crucial to Modernist Literature. Hemingway’s “In Another Country” is an excellent example of this. We do not learn the protagonists background or even his first name. He simply get a snapshot of his struggles rehabilitating from a combat injury in Milan. The story also does not have a resolution; we do not find out what happens to the protagonist either. In my opinion, the reason these themes are so prevalent in Modernist Literature is that the authors of the time, the Lost Generation especially, wrote for themselves as a coping mechanism, not for the delight of their audience.
works cited
"AP U.S. History Ch 32-34." Flashcards. Quizlet, n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
"F. Scott Fitzgerald." Bio.com. A&E Television Networks, LLC, 2014. Web. 2 May 2014.
Kawano, Kelley. "F. Scott Fitzgerald (Bold Type Magazine)." RandomHouse.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2014.
Paran, Janice. "What Is Southern Gothic?" McCarterTheatre.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 May 2014.
Pearson Education, Inc. Common Core Literature Gr 11. Pearson Education, Inc., 2012. Web.
"What Is New Historicism?" CliffNotes.com. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, n.d. Web. 02 May 2014.
"Zora Neale Hurston." The Official Website Zora Neale Hurston. The Estate of Zora Neale Hurston, 2014. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
"F. Scott Fitzgerald." Bio.com. A&E Television Networks, LLC, 2014. Web. 2 May 2014.
Kawano, Kelley. "F. Scott Fitzgerald (Bold Type Magazine)." RandomHouse.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 May 2014.
Paran, Janice. "What Is Southern Gothic?" McCarterTheatre.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 May 2014.
Pearson Education, Inc. Common Core Literature Gr 11. Pearson Education, Inc., 2012. Web.
"What Is New Historicism?" CliffNotes.com. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, n.d. Web. 02 May 2014.
"Zora Neale Hurston." The Official Website Zora Neale Hurston. The Estate of Zora Neale Hurston, 2014. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.