Modernism:
the literary period that evolved as a reaction to the breakdown of
society and cultural norms after world war one. Modernist writing was
fragmented and ideas made abstract in an attempt to make the writing
reflect a character’s mind more realistically.
Historical
Importance: The dark outlook characteristic of modernist
literature was influenced by the national outlook during this period.
There was a national feeling of disenchantment after the First World
War, exacerbated by the great depression in the 1930’s. The
dark themes in modernist literature seem natural when we consider
that social discontent was growing and social norms were being broken
down. Modernist literature reflects the American people during this
period when their way of life seemed to be crumbling.
Realism’s
Most Famous Figures:
(source:
Miriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary)
T.S.
Eliot (1888–1965) British (American-born) poet &
critic; wrote Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), The
Waste Land (1922), Four Quartets (1943), etc.; awarded
1948 Nobel prize for literature
Gertrude
Stein (1874–1946) American writer; best remembered for the
artistic and literary salon she kept in Paris between the wars
F.
Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American writer; chronicler
of the Jazz Age; wrote novels This Side of Paradise (1920),
The Great Gatsby (1925), Tender Is the Night (1934),
etc.
Ernest
Hemingway (1899-1961) American writer & journalist; awarded
1954 Nobel prize for literature for novels and stories, including A
Farewell to Arms, (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940),
The Old Man and the Sea, (1952),
Exemplary
Quotes:
“Ours
was a generation grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all
faiths in man shaken”
-F. Scott
Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald
made this comment in labeling his generation, and it represents the
perspective from
which the
modernists were writing.
"He no longer
dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of
great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He
only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played
like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He
never dreamed about the boy."
-Ernest
Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea
This quote
is exemplary of the detached tone this modernist novel is told
through. It tells of the
hopelessness
of the man and how empty even his dreams are.
“In
the room the women come and go, and speak of Michelangelo.”
-T.S. Eliot
The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock
This excerpt is largely accepted as being a comment on
the foolishness of society. It is Elliot’s frustration that
such women would speak of something so benign as if it was of great
importance.
