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1. Feelings of disillusionment.
2. Common subjects: slums of rapidly growing cities, factories replacing farmlands, poor factory workers, corrupt politicians.
3. Represented the manner and environment of everyday life and ordinary people as realistically as possible (Regionalism).
4. Sought to explain behavior (psychologically/socially).

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Mark Twain
-Huckleberry Finn

Jack London
-Call of the Wild
-"To Build a Fire"

Stephen Crane
-"The Open Boat"

Ambrose Bierce
-"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

Kate Chopin
-"Story of an Hour"
-The Awakening

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-Realism in American Litereature arose as a direct reaction and rejection of Romantasism

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(1865-1900)

Description:

Like all the terms relating to literary movements, the term is loose and somewhat equivocal. American Realism began as a reaction to and a rejection of Romanticism, with its emphasis on emotion, imagination, and the individual. The movement began as early as the 1830's but reached prominence and held sway from the end of the Civil War to around the end of the nineteenth century. The movement was centered in fiction, particularly the novel. It attempted fidelity to real life, or "actuality," in its representation. The realist concerns himself with the here and now, centering his work in his own time, dealing with common-place everyday events and people, and with the socio-political climate of his day .

Major Statements:

Samuel Clemens' (Mark Twain) "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"

William Dean Howell's Criticism and Fiction (1891)

Henry James "The Art of Fiction"

Roots of Realism:

Southwest Humorists:

Harris, George Washington, 1814-1869, sketches Sut Lovingood: Yarns Spun

Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin, 1790-1870 Georgia Scenes

Thorpe, Thomas Bangs, 1815-1878 The Hive of the Bee Hunter

Major Writers Representative Works

Name & Genres

Samuel Clemens, fiction The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi

"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses",

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Bret Harte, short fiction Selected Stories of Bret Harte "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" "The Luck

of Roaring Camp"

Ambrose Bierce, fiction Tales of Soldiers and Civilian (1891)

William Dean Howells, fiction, essays A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham, A Hazard of New

Fortunes

Henry James, fiction "Daisy Miller," Portrait of A Lady, The American, The Turn of the Screw

Edith Wharton, fiction The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence

Kate Chopin, fiction The Awakening

George Washington Cable, fiction The Grandissimes , Old Creole Days

Joel Chandler Harris, fiction Uncle Remus stories

Charles Chestnutt, fiction The Conjure Woman (1899), The House Behind the Cedars (1900)

"The Goophered Grapevine," "The Passing of Grandison"

Paul Lawrence Dunbar, poet

Hamlin Garland, fiction "Under the Lion's Paw"

Sarah Orne Jewett, fiction A White Heron (1886), "A White Heron,"

The Country of the Pointed Firs

(1896)

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, fiction A Humble Romance, A New England Nun and

Other Stories A New England Nun

The Revolt of Mother

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, fiction "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Jane Addams, autobiography Twenty Years At Hull House

Rebecca Harding Davis, fiction Life in the Iron-Mills

W.E.B. DuBois, essays The Souls of Black Folks

Booker T. Washington, autobiography Up From Slavery: An Autobiography

Common Themes and Elements in Realism

Pragmatism

literature of the common-place

attempts to represent real life

ordinary people--poor and middle class

ordinary speech in dialect--use of vernacular

recent or contemporary life

subject matter presented in an unidealized, unsentimentalized way

democratic function of literature

social criticism--effect on audience is key

presents indigenous American life

importance of place--regionalism, "local color"

sociology and psychology

Periodicals and Useful Resources:
Atlantic Monthly The Atlantic Monthly archives
Cady, Edwin H. The Light of Common Day: Realism in American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1971.

Chase, Richard. The American Novel and Its Tradition. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1957.

Geismar, Maxwell. Rebels and Ancestors: The American Novel, 1890-1915. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953.
Harper's Weekly Harper's Weekly Archive Harper's Weekly Online Harper's Monthly Library of Southern Literature Literature of Slavery and Freedom New York Spirit of the Times Spirit of the Times Database Spirit of the Times Webpage North American Review The North American Review Archives The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Women's Writings
Pizer, Donald, ed. The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: Howells to London. New York: Cambridge U P, 1995.

Sundquist, Eric, ed. and introd. American Realism: New Essays. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1982.

Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age. New York: Hill and Wang,
1982.

Ziff, Larzer. The American 1890s: Life and Times of a Lost Generation. New York: Viking, 1966.

Realism in Other Arts:

While realism in Western art was nothing new, as accurate presentation, nearly photographic, had been practiced as early as the Renaissance, the "new" realism eschewed any alteration from reality insisting instead on precise imitation. Subject matter was limited to the modern world and modern life. As in literature, works centered on the commonplace--lower class peasants and the urban working class, common people. Winslow Homer once said of his method, "I paint it exactly as it appears." French Realist Gustave Courbet may have said it better, "Everything that does not appear on the retina is outside the the domain of painting." Among the major practioners of American Realism in painting were: Homer, Thomas Eakins, William Michael Harnett, John Singer Sargent, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

Click on the thumbnails below to view a larger image.

Thomas Eakins

Winslow Homer

The Army of the Potomac - A Sharp-Shooter on Picket Duty

John Singer Sargent

Mrs. Joshua Montgomery Sears

James Abbott McNeill Whister

Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander

Symphony in Grey and Green: The Ocean

Test Your Knowledge:

Take a quiz on some of the major characters of American Literary Realism.

Practice for the Major Field Assessment Test.

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Like all the terms relating to literary movements, the term is loose and somewhat equivocal. American Realism began as a reaction to and a rejection of Romanticism, with its emphasis on emotion, imagination, and the individual.

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-In realism american literature, most of the time, the development and sotry of the character was more important than the action itself.

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Definitions

Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude," realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy all affected the rise of realism. According to William Harmon and Hugh Holman, "Where romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence" ( A Handbook to Literature 428).

Many critics have suggested that there is no clear distinction between realism and its related late nineteenth-century movement, naturalism. As Donald Pizer notes in his introduction to The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: Howells to London, the term "realism" is difficult to define, in part because it is used differently in European contexts than in American literature. Pizer suggests that "whatever was being produced in fiction during the 1870s and 1880s that was new, interesting, and roughly similar in a number of ways can be designated as realism, and that an equally new, interesting, and roughly similar body of writing produced at the turn of the century can be designated as naturalism" (5). Put rather too simplistically, one rough distinction made by critics is that realism espousing a deterministic philosophy and focusing on the lower classes is considered naturalism.

In American literature, the term "realism" encompasses the period of time from the Civil War to the turn of the century during which William Dean Howells, Rebecca Harding Davis, Henry James, Mark Twain, and others wrote fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of American lives in various contexts. As the United States grew rapidly after the Civil War, the increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class affluence provided a fertile literary environment for readers interested in understanding these rapid shifts in culture. In drawing attention to this connection, Amy Kaplan has called realism a "strategy for imagining and managing the threats of social change" ( Social Construction of American Realism ix).

Realism was a movement that encompassed the entire country, or at least the Midwest and South, although many of the writers and critics associated with realism (notably W. D. Howells) were based in New England. Among the Midwestern writers considered realists would be Joseph Kirkland, E. W. Howe, and Hamlin Garland; the Southern writer John W. DeForest's Miss Ravenal's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty is often considered a realist novel, too.

Characteristics

(from Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition)

Renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail. Selective presentation of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot

Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject.

Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past.

Class is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class. (See Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel)

Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances.

Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact.

Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important: overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the century progresses.

Interior or psychological realism a variant form.

In Black and White Strangers, Kenneth Warren suggests that a basic difference between realism and sentimentalism is that in realism, "the redemption of the individual lay within the social world," but in sentimental fiction, "the redemption of the social world lay with the individual" (75-76).

The realism of James and Twain was critically acclaimed in twentieth century; Howellsian realism fell into disfavor as part of early twentieth century rebellion against the "genteel tradition."

Practitioners Other Views of Realism

"The basic axiom of the realistic view of morality was that there could be no moralizing in the novel [ . . . ] The morality of the realists, then, was built upon what appears a paradox--morality with an abhorrence of moralizing. Their ethical beliefs called, first of all, for a rejection of scheme of moral behavior imposed, from without, upon the characters of fiction and their actions. Yet Howells always claimed for his works a deep moral purpose. What was it? It was based upon three propositions: that life, social life as lived in the world Howells knew, was valuable, and was permeated with morality; that its continued health depended upon the use of human reason to overcome the anarchic selfishness of human passions; that an objective portrayal of human life, by art, will illustrate the superior value of social, civilized man, of human reason over animal passion and primitive ignorance" (157). Everett Carter, Howells and the Age of Realism (Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1954).

"Realism sets itself at work to consider characters and events which are apparently the most ordinary and uninteresting, in order to extract from these their full value and true meaning. It would apprehend in all particulars the connection between the familiar and the extraordinary, and the seen and unseen of human nature. Beneath the deceptive cloak of outwardly uneventful days, it detects and endeavors to trace the outlines of the spirits that are hidden there; tho measure the changes in their growth, to watch the symptoms of moral decay or regeneration, to fathom their histories of passionate or intellectual problems. In short, realism reveals. Where we thought nothing worth of notice, it shows everything to be rife with significance."
-- George Parsons Lathrop, 'The Novel and its Future," Atlantic Monthly 34 (September 1874):313 24.

"Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material." --William Dean Howells, "Editor's Study," Harper's New Monthly Magazine (November 1889), p. 966.

"Realism, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seen by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm." --Ambrose Bierce The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Context and Controversy

In its own time, realism was the subject of controversy; debates over the suitability of realism as a mode of representation led to a critical exchange known as the realism war. (Click here for a brief overview.)

The realism of James and Twain was critically acclaimed in the twentieth century. Howellsian realism fell into disfavor, however, as part of early twentieth century rebellion against the "genteel tradition." For an account of these and other issues, see the realism bibliography and essays by Pizer, Michael Anesko, Richard Lehan, and Louis J. Budd, among others, in the Cambridge Guide to Realism and Naturalism.

© 1997-2013. Donna M. Campbell. Some information adapted from Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997).

Note: The information on this page has been copied verbatim on other web sites, often without attribution, but this is the originating site.

To cite this page on a Works Cited page according to current MLA guidelines, supply the correct dates and use the suggested format below. If you are quoting another author quoted on this page, either look up the original source or indicate that original quotation is cited on ("Qtd. in") this page. The following is drawn from the examples and guidelines in the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7th ed. (2009), section 5.6.2.

Campbell, Donna M. "Realism in American Literature, 1860-1890." Literary Movements. Dept. of English, Washington State University. Date of publication or most recent update (listed above as the "last modified" date; you don't need to indicate the time). Web. Date you accessed the page.
About this site

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American literary realism: definitions, bibliography, links

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Civil War
1861-1865

Reconstruction Era
1865-1877

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-It took him over 7 years to compleat writing Huckleberry Finn!
-He also invented a board game along with all of his writing.
He loved cats, and at one point in his life, he owned 19 cats!

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Mark Twain is widely considered the author of the first great American novel-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn-but his rollicking tales aren't the only legacy he left behind. His poignant quotes and witticisms have been told and retold (sometimes erroneously) over the last century and a half, and his volume of work speaks for itself. Over the course of his legendary career, Twain-real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens-wrote more than a dozen novels plus countless short stories and essays and still found time to invent new products, hang out with famous scientists, and look after a house full of cats.

Like many of history's literary greats, Mark Twain (né Samuel Langhorne Clemens) decided to assume an alias early on in his writing career. He tried out a few different names-Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, Sergeant Fathom, and, more plainly, Josh-before settling on Mark Twain, which means two fathoms (12 feet) deep in boating jargon. Where Mark Twain picked up the name has long been debated. According to one popular 19th-century story, he'd walk into a bar and call out "mark twain!," prompting the bartender to take a piece of chalk and make two marks on a wall for twain-two-drinks. Twain denied this, however, saying that he swiped it from a captain named Isaiah Sellers who used it at the New Orleans Picayune. But according to the LA Review of Books, there's no evidence Sellers used that name, and stories of it being used while Mark Twain was a steamboat pilot are unlikely. Instead, it's possible that stole it from an 1861 maritime sketch in a magazine or some as yet unknown origin.

Shortly after his stint on The Big Muddy, Twain headed west with his brother to avoid having to fight in the war. He took up work as a miner in Virginia City, Nevada, but the job wasn't for him. (He described it as "hard and long and dismal.") Fortunately for Twain, he didn't have to work there long. In 1862, he was offered his first writing job for Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise newspaper, where he covered crime, politics, mining, and culture.

Historic American Buildings Survey (Library of Congress), Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain

In 1864, Twain headed to Calaveras County, California in hopes of striking gold as a prospector (he didn't). However, it was during his time here that he heard the bartender of the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp share an incredulous story about a frog-jumping contest. Twain recounted the tale in his own words in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, originally called Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog. It was published in 1865 in The New York Saturday Press and went on to receive national acclaim.

Twain started writing the sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876, but he wasn't too pleased with his progress. After writing about 400 pages, he told a friend he liked it "only tolerably well, as far as I have got, and may possibly pigeonhole or burn" the manuscript. He put the project on the back burner for several years and finally finished it in 1883 following a burst of inspiration.

While Twain was putting off writing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he was busy working on a game he dubbed Memory Builder. It was originally supposed to be an outdoor game to help his children learn about England's monarchs, but he ended up turning it into a board game to improve its chances of selling. However, after two years of work, it was still too convoluted to be marketable and required a vast knowledge of historical facts and dates. That didn't stop him from patenting the game, though.

Memory Builder wasn't Twain's only invention; he also patented two other products. One was inspired by his love of scrapbooking, while the other came about from his hatred of suspenders. He designed a self-adhesive scrapbook that works like an envelope, which netted him about $50,000 in profits. His "improvement in adjustable and detachable straps for garments" also ended up being useful, but for an entirely different purpose than Twain originally intended. According to The Atlantic, "This clever invention only caught on for one snug garment: the bra. For those with little brassiere experience, not a button, nor a snap, but a clasp is all that secures that elastic band, which holds up women's breasts. So not-so-dexterous ladies and gents, you can thank Mark Twain for that."

Only one video of Twain exists, and it was shot by none other than his close friend Thomas Edison. The footage was captured in 1909-one year before the author died-at Twain's estate in Redding, Connecticut. He's seen sporting a light-colored suit and his usual walrus mustache, and one scene shows him with his daughters, Clara and Jean. On a separate occasion that same year, Edison recorded Twain as he read stories into a phonograph, but those audio clips were destroyed in a fire. No other recording of Twain's voice exists.

When you think of Mark Twain, you probably picture him in an all-white suit with a cigar or pipe hanging from his lips. It's true that he was photographed in a white suit on several occasions, but he didn't start this habit until later in life. According to The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum, "In December 1906, he wore a white suit while appearing before a congressional committee regarding copyright. He did this for dramatic emphasis. Several times after that he wore white out of season for effect." He also refused to trade his white clothes for "shapeless and degrading black ones" in the winter, no matter how cold it got. So take that, people who subscribe to the "no white after Labor Day" rule.

Twain really, really liked cats-so much so that he had 19 of them at one time. And if he was traveling, he would "rent" cats to keep him company. In fact, he had a much higher opinion of felines than humans, remarking, "If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat." He also had a talent for coming up with some great cat names; Beelzebub, Blatherskite, Buffalo Bill, Sour Mash, Zoroaster, Soapy Sal, Pestilence, Bambino, and Satan were just a few of the kitties in his brood.

Twain is one of the most misquoted authors in history. According to one quote wrongfully attributed to him, "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt." What Twain actually said was, "[He] was endowed with a stupidity which by the least little stretch would go around the globe four times and tie." There are many, many examples of these.

When he was born on November 30, 1835-mere weeks after Halley's Comet was at perihelion, or closest to the sun. It appears roughly every 75 years, and Twain predicted he would die the next time it graced the sky. As he put it in 1909, "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.' Oh, I am looking forward to that." He ended up passing away at his Connecticut home on April 21, 1910, one day after Halley's Comet's perihelion.
For more fascinating facts and stories about your favorite authors and their works, check out Mental Floss's new book, The Curious Reader: A Literary Miscellany of Novels and Novelists

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Mark Twain is widely considered the author of the first great American novel-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -but his rollicking tales aren't the only legacy he left behind. His poignant quotes and witticisms have been told and retold (sometimes erroneously) over the last century and a half, and his volume of work speaks for itself.

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-She worked as a journalist in her hometown from a very young age.
-In the year 1931, she won a prize for the play "Alison's House."
-Later in her life, she worked for the  Federal Theatre Project in Chicago

https://www.enotes.com/topics/susan-glaspell

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1. Sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the "American Dream": the independent, self-reliant, individual will triumph.
2. Emphasis on bold experimentation in style and form over the traditional.
3. Interest in the inner workings of the human mind (ex. Stream of consciousness).

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Lorraine Hansberry
-A Raisin in the Sun

F. Scott Fitzgerald
-The Great Gatsby

William Faulkner
-"A Rose for Emily"

Eudora Welty
-"A Worn Path"

Robert Frost
-poetry

T. S. Eliot
-The Waste Land
-"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

John Steinbeck
-Of Mice and Men
-The Grapes of Wrath

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-Modernism was a movement in the arts and is characterized by a break with the past in order to search for new forms of expression.

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Modernism, in the fine arts, a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I.

In an era characterized by industrialization, the nearly global adoption of capitalism, rapid social change, and advances in science and the social sciences (e.g., Freudian theory), Modernists felt a growing alienation incompatible with Victorian morality, optimism, and convention. New ideas in psychology, philosophy, and political theory kindled a search for new modes of expression.

Modernism in literature

The Modernist impulse is fueled in various literatures by industrialization and urbanization and by the search for an authentic response to a much-changed world. Although prewar works by Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and other writers are considered Modernist, Modernism as a literary movement is typically associated with the period after World War I. The enormity of the war had undermined humankind's faith in the foundations of Western society and culture, and postwar Modernist literature reflected a sense of disillusionment and fragmentation. A primary theme of T.S. Eliot's long poem The Waste Land (1922), a seminal Modernist work, is the search for redemption and renewal in a sterile and spiritually empty landscape. With its fragmentary images and obscure allusions, the poem is typical of Modernism in requiring the reader to take an active role in interpreting the text.

Eliot's was not the dominant voice among Modernist poets. In the United States Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg evocatively described the regions-New England and the Midwest, respectively-in which they lived. The Harlem Renaissance produced a rich coterie of poets, among them Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Alice Dunbar Nelson. Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912 and made it the most important organ for poetry not just in the United States but for the English-speaking world. During the 1920s Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, and E.E. Cummings expressed a spirit of revolution and experimentation in their poetry.

A sense of disillusionment and loss pervades much American Modernist fiction. That sense may be centred on specific individuals, or it may be directed toward American society or toward civilization generally. It may generate a nihilistic, destructive impulse, or it may express hope at the prospect of change. F. Scott Fitzgerald skewered the American Dream in The Great Gatsby (1925), Richard Wright exposed and attacked American racism in Native Son (1940), Zora Neale Hurston told the story of a Black woman's three marriages in Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Ernest Hemingway's early novels The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929) articulated the disillusionment of the Lost Generation. Meanwhile, Willa Cather told hopeful stories of the American frontier, set mostly on the Great Plains, in O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918), John Steinbeck depicted the difficult lives of migrant workers in Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and William Faulkner used stream-of-consciousness monologues and other formal techniques to break from past literary practice in The Sound and the Fury (1929).

Across the Atlantic, the publication of the Irish writer James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922 was a landmark event in the development of Modernist literature. Dense, lengthy, and controversial, the novel details the events of one day in the life of three Dubliners through a technique known as stream of consciousness, which commonly ignores orderly sentence structure and incorporates fragments of thought in an attempt to capture the flow of characters' mental processes. Portions of the book were considered obscene, and Ulysses was banned for many years in English-speaking countries. Other European Modernist authors whose works rejected chronological and narrative continuity included Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and the American expatriate Gertrude Stein.

The term Modernism is also used to refer to literary movements other than the European and American movement of the early to mid-20th century. In Latin American literature, Modernismo arose in the late 19th century in the works of Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and José Martí. The movement, which continued into the early 20th century, reached its peak in the poetry of Rubén Darío. ( See also American literature; Latin American literature.)

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Modernism | Definition, Characteristics, History, Art, Literature, Time Period, Postmodernism, & Examples

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Modernism, in the fine arts, late 19th to mid-20th century, a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. It fostered a period of experimentation in literature, music, dance, visual art, and architecture. Learn more about the history of Modernism and its various manifestations.

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-Modernism in literature is fuled much by industrialization and urbanization in the world as well as a search for responses to the changing world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Modernism, in the fine arts, a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I.

In an era characterized by industrialization, the nearly global adoption of capitalism, rapid social change, and advances in science and the social sciences (e.g., Freudian theory), Modernists felt a growing alienation incompatible with Victorian morality, optimism, and convention. New ideas in psychology, philosophy, and political theory kindled a search for new modes of expression.

Modernism in literature

The Modernist impulse is fueled in various literatures by industrialization and urbanization and by the search for an authentic response to a much-changed world. Although prewar works by Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and other writers are considered Modernist, Modernism as a literary movement is typically associated with the period after World War I. The enormity of the war had undermined humankind's faith in the foundations of Western society and culture, and postwar Modernist literature reflected a sense of disillusionment and fragmentation. A primary theme of T.S. Eliot's long poem The Waste Land (1922), a seminal Modernist work, is the search for redemption and renewal in a sterile and spiritually empty landscape. With its fragmentary images and obscure allusions, the poem is typical of Modernism in requiring the reader to take an active role in interpreting the text.

Eliot's was not the dominant voice among Modernist poets. In the United States Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg evocatively described the regions-New England and the Midwest, respectively-in which they lived. The Harlem Renaissance produced a rich coterie of poets, among them Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Alice Dunbar Nelson. Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912 and made it the most important organ for poetry not just in the United States but for the English-speaking world. During the 1920s Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, and E.E. Cummings expressed a spirit of revolution and experimentation in their poetry.

A sense of disillusionment and loss pervades much American Modernist fiction. That sense may be centred on specific individuals, or it may be directed toward American society or toward civilization generally. It may generate a nihilistic, destructive impulse, or it may express hope at the prospect of change. F. Scott Fitzgerald skewered the American Dream in The Great Gatsby (1925), Richard Wright exposed and attacked American racism in Native Son (1940), Zora Neale Hurston told the story of a Black woman's three marriages in Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Ernest Hemingway's early novels The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929) articulated the disillusionment of the Lost Generation. Meanwhile, Willa Cather told hopeful stories of the American frontier, set mostly on the Great Plains, in O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918), John Steinbeck depicted the difficult lives of migrant workers in Of Mice and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and William Faulkner used stream-of-consciousness monologues and other formal techniques to break from past literary practice in The Sound and the Fury (1929).

Across the Atlantic, the publication of the Irish writer James Joyce's Ulysses in 1922 was a landmark event in the development of Modernist literature. Dense, lengthy, and controversial, the novel details the events of one day in the life of three Dubliners through a technique known as stream of consciousness, which commonly ignores orderly sentence structure and incorporates fragments of thought in an attempt to capture the flow of characters' mental processes. Portions of the book were considered obscene, and Ulysses was banned for many years in English-speaking countries. Other European Modernist authors whose works rejected chronological and narrative continuity included Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and the American expatriate Gertrude Stein.

The term Modernism is also used to refer to literary movements other than the European and American movement of the early to mid-20th century. In Latin American literature, Modernismo arose in the late 19th century in the works of Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera and José Martí. The movement, which continued into the early 20th century, reached its peak in the poetry of Rubén Darío. ( See also American literature; Latin American literature.)

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Modernism | Definition, Characteristics, History, Art, Literature, Time Period, Postmodernism, & Examples

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Modernism, in the fine arts, late 19th to mid-20th century, a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. It fostered a period of experimentation in literature, music, dance, visual art, and architecture. Learn more about the history of Modernism and its various manifestations.

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World War I
1914-1918

The Great Depression
1929-1939

World War II
1939-1945

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-In the 1920s the dominant idea of the American dream was the thought that anyone, with enough determination and effort, could achieve success and/or their dreams despite aspects such as past or family status.

https://inforefuge.com/demise-of-american-dream-the-great-gatsby

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-The idea of the American Dream was rooted in the minds of Americans from a very young age. This idea was mounted on the ideal of success, wealth, status, and power.

https://www.ipl.org/essay/What-Is-The-American-Dream-In-The-PKJPVUH42DVT

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-In this decade, the American Dream largly refered to the ideas of freedom, rescect for one another, and the ideal of equality of oppertnities. Aditionally, it was utilized in advertisements.

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The Transformation of the ‘American Dream’ (Published 2017)

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It wasn’t originally about owning a beautiful home and a roaring business. It meant freedom, mutual respect and equality of opportunity.

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-In the 40s, the rise of suburbs was taking place in America, and this was slowly changing the way that people lived. As a result, the American Dream changed to relfect that. In this decade, the American dream was largly based on settling and starting a family in a big house with your own land.

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After WWII, America stood back and gazed upon itself. There was a new revitalized American Dream after all the bloodshed, home front hard work, and thick-as-molasses patriotism. The American Dream of the 1930s had been focused on working hard, men...

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-There was a specific image of the American Dream during the decade of the 1950s. This idea was the goal of achieving a stable job and having a house in the suburbs in which one could raise a family.

https://www.ipl.org/essay/The-American-Dream-In-The-1950s-F3WMGM7ESJP6

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-Another strong theme of the American Dream in the 1950s was the idea of conformity. Specifically, many people strived for a very specifc picture of sucess. That is, having a secure job and a nice house, a wife, and a family.

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Essential Question

How did conformity apply as a value to the living and working choices of Americans during the 1950s?

How did the notion of success during the 1950's relate to the "American Dream"?

Materials

Procedure

Conduct a class discussion with students about times in their lives they have conformed to others' standards. Set the lesson in historical context by describing the post-war boom in domestic spending to rebuild America as we struggled with the fallout from the Cold War era at home. Define the term "American Dream" and relate it to the changes occurring throughout the decade of the 1950s.

Have students identify the historical context of the excerpts from Death of a Salesman by making a chart of what was taking place socially, economically and politically at the time of its publication.

Questions for the three documents:

How was success defined during the 1950s?

How is Willy Loman a victim of corporate America?

How has the concept of "the American Dream" changed over time? Why do you think it has changed?

What does Harold Clurman mean when he says that salesmen have to "sell their personality"?

Have students answer the following questions independently, and discuss as a class:

Lorraine Hansberry identifies three values people in the 1950s lost sight of: industriousness, usefulness, and humanism. Have we still lost sight of these three values today? Cite at least three pieces of evidence or examples to support your position.

What does Herbert Block mean by "Split-level Living?" What does this tell you about American society during the 1950s?

Show the film The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), which is the story of a man who is working his way up the corporate ladder and who has to deal with progress, greed, and the status quo. Compare the stories of Willy Loman and Tom Rath to paint a picture of how many defined success during the 1950s. Develop a visual representation of a working man trying to achieve success during this era. Make sure you include visual references to the struggles of progress, greed, and the desire for conformity.

Have students write a journal entry where they identify a message, lesson, or reflection from any of these documents that is applicable to their lives or circumstances.

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success and the american dream during the 1950s | essential question

how did conformity apply as a value to the living and working choices of americans during the 1950s?
how did the notion of success during the 1950’s relate to the "american dream"?

materials           

death of a salesman by arthur miller

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scene 1 (1949)
excerpts from "commentaries about death of a salesman" (1949–1959) (pdf)

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guthrie theater | essential question

how did conformity apply as a value to the living and working choices of americans during the 1950s?
how did the notion of success during the 1950’s relate to the "american dream"?

materials           

death of a salesman by arthur miller

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scene 1 (1949)
excerpts from "commentaries about death of a salesman" (1949–1959) (pdf)

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guthrie theater
"split-level living" by herbert block

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library of congress

procedure
conduct a class discussion with students about times in their lives they have conformed to others’ standards. set the lesson in historical context by describing the post-war boom in domestic spending to rebuild america as we struggled with the fallout from the cold war era at home. define the term "american dream" and relate it to the changes occurring throughout the decade of the 1950s.
have students identify the historical context of the excerpts from death of a salesman by making a chart of what was taking place socially

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economically and politically at the time of its publication.
questions for the three documents:

how was success defined during the 1950s?
how is willy loman a victim of corporate america?
how has the concept of "the american dream" changed over time? why do you think it has changed?
what does harold clurman mean when he says that salesmen have to "sell their personality"?

have students answer the following questions independently

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and discuss as a class:

lorraine hansberry identifies three values people in the 1950s lost sight of: industriousness

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and humanism. have we still lost sight of these three values today? cite at least three pieces of evidence or examples to support your position.   
what does herbert block mean by "split-level living?" what does this tell you about american society during the 1950s?

show the film the man in the gray flannel suit (1955)

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which is the story of a man who is working his way up the corporate ladder and who has to deal with progress

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and the status quo. compare the stories of willy loman and tom rath to paint a picture of how many defined success during the 1950s. develop a visual representation of a working man trying to achieve success during this era. make sure you include visual references to the struggles of progress

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and the desire for conformity.
have students write a journal entry where they identify a message

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or reflection from any of these documents that is applicable to their lives or circumstances.

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Success and the American Dream during the 1950s

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Success and the American Dream during the 1950s | Essential Question How did conformity apply as a value to the living and working choices of Americans during the 1950s? How did the notion of success during the 1950's relate to the "American Dream"?

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("The Jazz Age" or "The Roaring 20s")
1.Black cultural movement in Harlem, New York
2.Some poetry rhythms based on spirituals and jazz, lyrics on the blues, and diction from the street talk of the ghettos
3. Other poetry used conventional lyrical forms

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James Weldon Johnson

Claude McKay

Countee Cullen

Langston Hughes (poetry)

Zora Neale Hurston

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The harlem renaissance was a pinnicle time in Black history as it is known for being the most influencial and important African American literary history movement ever.

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Beginning about 1916, a large number of African Americans moved from the rural American South and settled in the urban North and West. One of the communities where African Americans settled during this Great Migration was Harlem, in New York, New York.

After World War I Harlem became a thriving center of African American culture. The Harlem Renaissance (c. 1918-37) was the most influential movement in African American literary history. The movement also included musical, theatrical, and visual arts.

The Harlem Renaissance was unusual among literary and artistic movements for its close relationship to civil rights and reform organizations. During this time Black artists began to take control of how Black culture was being represented.

Sociologist, activist, editor, and author W.E.B Du Bois's book The Souls of Black Folk (1903) had a profound effect on an entire generation that formed the core of the Harlem Renaissance. Booker T. Washington had urged Blacks to accept discrimination for the time being and elevate themselves through hard work and economic gain, thus winning the respect of whites. Du Bois argued that Washington's strategy, rather than freeing Blacks from oppression, would serve only to perpetuate it.

Claude McKay is generally considered the first major poet of the Harlem Renaissance. His militant poem "If We Must Die" (1919) is one of the most-quoted works of African American literature of this time period.

The movement was popularized by African American philosopher Alain Locke in The New Negro (1925), an anthology of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays.

Out of the blues came jazz, migrating to Northern urban centers, such as Chicago, Illinois, and New York, New York, during and after World War I. Great musicians, such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, emerged. The popularity of jazz among whites helped bring attention to the Harlem Renaissance.

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List of important facts regarding the Harlem Renaissance (c. 1918-37). Infused with a belief in the power of art as an agent of change, a talented group of writers, artists, and musicians made Harlem-a predominantly Black area of New York, New York-the home of a landmark African American cultural movement.

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Although there were many different causes that lead to the Harlem Renissance, one of the main things that spurred this was the increase in migration.

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Harlem Renaissance was an African American cultural, social and artistic movement which peaked in the 1920s. Centered at the Harlem neighborhood in New York City, the movement spread through the United States and reached as far as Paris. Chiefly caused due to the Great Migration, Harlem Renaissance declined and came to an end during the Great Depression. Known as the New Negro Movement during the time, Harlem Renaissance is most closely associated with Jazz and the rise of African American arts. Here are 10 interesting facts about Harlem Renaissance and about its causes, effects and accomplishments.

#1 The major cause of Harlem Renaissance was the Great Migration

Great Migration is a term used for the movement of African Americans in America from the South to the North and Midwest. Between 1910 and 1930, in the first Great Migration, around 1.6 million migrants moved from institutionalized racism in the South to seek a better life in the booming northern economy. The southern states had passed several laws against African Americans which among other things prevented black citizens from registering to vote and mandated racial segregation. Also labor shortage due to the First World War was seen as an opportunity by black citizens to seek employment in the North. Movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North was instrumental in initiating the Harlem Renaissance.

#2 It is named after the Harlem neighborhood in the Manhattan borough of NYC

Harlem is a large neighborhood within the northern section of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Harlem was at first an exclusive suburb of white citizens but by the late 19th century most of them moved further south. The Great Migration started turning Harlem into an African American neighborhood. The population of black citizens in Central Harlem increased from around 10% in 1910 to more than 70% by 1930. Harlem Renaissance is called so as the movement was majorly centered in Harlem, which became a place of residence or assembly of most African American intellectuals who contributed to the movement.

#3 Though centered in Harlem, it was a nationwide movement

New York was the financial and cultural capital of U.S. and also the central place for writers to get published. Hence Harlem's location made it an ideal place for the development and advancement of creative works by African Americans. However, though it was centered in Harlem, the Renaissance was a nationwide movement. Its influence can be gauged by the fact that it even had an impact on the French speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris.

#4 Primitivism played a part in popularizing the renaissance among white citizens

The major factors contributing to the Harlem Renaissance were dramatic rise in levels of literacy among black citizens; development of several national organizations dedicated to their cause like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); increased interaction among black intellectuals; development of pride for their race; and a zest to carve for them a separate identity. Freudian psychology held that primitive people held a more direct relationship with nature. Known as primitivism, it led to increased interest in the creative works of African Americans among white citizens. This was among several trends that led to further popularizing the renaissance.

#5 When it happened, Harlem Renaissance was called the New Negro Movement

The Harlem Renaissance is considered to have begun in the late-1910s and lasted till around mid-1930s. In 1925, The New Negro: An Interpretation, an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African-American art and literature, was published. It was edited by Alain Locke, an African American philosopher and writer who is sometimes referred to as the 'Dean' of the Harlem Renaissance. The New Negro is considered by scholars as the definitive text of the movement. Harlem Renaissance, which is said to have peaked between 1924 and 1929, was known as the "New Negro Movement" at the time and it was only later that it became known by its current name.

#6 Journals played an integral part in the development of the movement

In 1910, the NAACP launched its official magazine The Crisis. It published the work of many young African-American writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance including Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Jean Toomer. By 1918, The Crisis had over 100,000 readers. In 1917, Hubert Harrison, who has been described as "the father of Harlem radicalism", founded the Liberty League and The Voice, the first organization and the first newspaper dedicated to the Harlem Renaissance. Opportunity, The Messenger and Negro World were other prominent journals associated with the movement.

#7 It was marked by unprecedented development in African American arts

Harlem Renaissance laid the groundwork for all later African American literature and had an enormous impact on subsequent black consciousness worldwide. Its works often referred to double consciousness of the African American experience. A term coined by W. E. B. Du Bois it describes the psychological challenge for an African American to view himself from not only his perspective but also from what the white world views him. This was due to his African heritage and a European upbringing in slavery and education. Harlem Renaissance saw unprecedented development in not only African American literature but in all arts.

#8 Jazz music of African Americans became an international craze

African American music; such as blues, spirituals and especially jazz; became a worldwide sensation and amplified the renaissance. Harlem Stride Piano, a jazz piano style, was developed during the 1920s and contributed in spreading the popularity of the music form among the wealthy. Also blacks began to emerge in the classical world of music compositions, an area previously dominated by whites. Charleston, a dance form which developed from black folk dance, was associated with jazz and became an international craze. Such was the popularity of jazz among whites that it sparked a "Negro Vogue" in cities such as New York and Paris.

#9 Langston Hughes is the most famous name of the Harlem Renaissance

Harlem Renaissance was characterized by intense debate and diverse literary styles. Several writers like Countee Cullen used poetic forms associated with Europe and white people while others like Langston Hughes chose African and African American based folk forms in their works. Hughes, who is perhaps the most famous name associated with the renaissance, believed that black artists should focus on the folk and create distinctive 'Negro' art. Hughes was also one of the early innovators of the art form known as jazz poetry and famously wrote about the period that "the negro was in vogue".

#10 It had profound and far reaching consequences

Harlem Renaissance declined after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and faded due to the Great Depression that followed. Major accomplishments of the movement include creating a new black identity, reducing racial bias, changing to an extent the way the world viewed people of color and adding a new dimension to art forms which influenced artists for generations. Harlem Renaissance had profound and far reaching consequences and built the foundation for the community for the initial phase of the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Anirudh is a novelist, writer, seo expert and educationist. His debut self help book "Happiness Decoded" was released in early 2014. His maiden novella "Teicos" is a thoughtful depiction of the development of society and is awaiting publication. With Learnodo he hopes to break the barriers of the education system and reach out to a limitless audience in a simple and cost effective way.

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10 Interesting Facts About The Harlem Renaissance

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Harlem Renaissance was an African American cultural, social and artistic movement which peaked in the 1920s. Centered at the Harlem neighborhood in New York City, the movement spread through the United States and reached as far as Paris. Chiefly caused due to the Great Migration, Harlem Renaissance declined and came to an end during the Great Depression.

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"The New Negro Movement"
1919-1925

Prohibition
1920-1933

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During this time period, much of the American dream centered around the idea and goal of achieving equality for all. Additionally, peace and freedom for all people groups was the goal of many.

https://www.ipl.org/essay/The-American-Dream-In-The-1960s-FJ7ANZCTZT

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As the country continued to grow and develop, so did the American Dream. At this time point in history, the American Dream mainly centered around the idea of having a peaceful life with one's family.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2000/03/24/the-american-dream-circa-1970/a7d0c6fa-741e-48d8-a8ec-426d70bf66e1/

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One overarching theme of the American Dream in the 1980s was the idea of people having fun and having a "free" lifestyle where one could do as they pleased.

https://www.bartleby.com/essay/The-American-Dream-In-The-1980s-PJ9ZFM8K8DT

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Another major aspect of the American Dream throughout this time period was the goal of making and accumulating as much money as possible. Many people viewed success as having a money surplus.

https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/05/How-the-American-Dream-Has-Changed-Over-Time.pdf

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As the growth of America occured, so did the growth of the American Dream. In the 1990s, the bulk of the American dream rested in the goal of gainin money, power, and status.

https://wjccschools.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/05/How-the-American-Dream-Has-Changed-Over-Time.pdf

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It seems that the American Dream started to dramatically change even more in the 2000s. This is because the idea of the American dream began to change from having a family and a home to instead becoming a millionaire and gaining fame.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/american-dreams/408535/

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People used to believe they would someday move on up in the world. Now they're more concerned with just holding on to what they have.

At the height of the Great Recession, Jennifer Silva, a sociology professor at Bucknell University, interviewed working-class young people (ages 24 to 34) about coming of age in turbulent economic times. With good jobs harder to find and educational opportunities financially out of reach, Silva discovered that the young adults she talked with were letting go of traditional markers of adulthood. Rather than planning to go to college, buy a home, get married, and start a family, these young adults were bouncing from one low-paid job to the next, taking on debt to weather the tough times, and were wary of romantic attachments. Lacking the resources needed to stay afloat in the new economy, these young people were no longer setting their sights on the very things that have long symbolized the American dream: a home, a job, a family.

Recent data indicates they are in good company. This year a survey by Fannie Mae found that the share of consumers who said they would buy a home if they were to move has decreased and is now at an all-time survey low of 60 percent. According to the latest employment statistics, 1.8 million Americans have not looked for work in at least the previous month, and 35 percent of them don't believe there are any jobs available. Another 6.5 million are only working part-time and would prefer to be working more. In 2015, only 28 percent of those surveyed by The Atlantic and Aspen Institute felt that a healthy marriage was an important part of their personal sense of the American dream and just 14 percent said that having children was important.

For the majority of Americans, the 2000s was a " lost decade," with wages flatlining or declining. Middle-class jobs disappeared during the Great Recession and many have never come back. Instead, many of the fastest-growing sectors are those that pay the least. Median income remains below pre-recession levels. How is all of this influencing how Americans are feeling about the American dream?

Surveys continue to show that Americans, in large numbers, still believe in many of the tenets of the American dream. For example, majorities of Americans believe that hard work will lead to success. But, their belief in the American dream is wavering. Between 1986 and 2011, around 50 percent of those polled by Pew consistently said they felt that the American dream was "somewhat alive." However, over that same time period, the share who said it was "very alive" decreased by about half, and the share that felt it was "not really alive" more than doubled.

Majorities of Americans think it will get worse in the future. Survey after survey finds that when asked about the next generation, Americans are pessimistic, saying that it willbe harder and take more effort for the next generation to get ahead.

These gloomy sentiments may be part of a more general shift: The majority of Americans once thought the playing field was more or less level. No more. Back in 1998, a Gallup poll about equal opportunity found that 68 percent thought the economic system was basically fair, while only 29 percent thought it was basically unfair. In 2013, feelings about fairness had reversed: Only 44 percent thought the economic system was fair, while 50 percent had come to feel it was unfair. Another 2013 poll found that by an almost two-to-one margin (64 to 33 percent), Americans agreed that "the U.S. no longer offers an equal chance to get ahead."

Perhaps as a result of all of this, there are signs that the very idea of the American dream is changing. The American dream has long been equated with moving up the class ladder and owning a home. But polling leading up to the 2012 election revealed something new-middle-class Americans expressed more concern about holding on to what they had than they were with getting more. Echoing these concerns, Pew reported in 2015 that when asked which they would prefer-financial security or moving up the income ladder-92 percent selected security. This is a seven percentage point increase since just 2011, when 85 percent selected security over economic mobility.

And while majorities of Americans continue to say that home ownership is a key part of the American dream in general, when a survey asked people which things were the most important to their personal American dream, only 26 percent selected "owning a nice home" as a top choice, while 37 percent chose "achieving financial security" and 36 percent chose "being debt free." In a 2013 Allstate/ National Journal Heartland Monitor poll that asked respondents to define what it means to be middle class, 54 percent of respondents chose "having the ability to keep up with expenses and hold a steady job while not falling behind or taking on too much debt," and only 43 percent defined being middle class as earning more, buying a home, and saving.

For more and more families, achieving the traditional American dream has become just that-a dream. Instead, what surveys indicate is that people are downsizing their definition of the American dream. Today, the desire to own a home or to move up economically is often replaced by a desire to be debt free and to have financial stability.

These developments point to a possible change in the underlying psychology of the American dream, and thus for the country more broadly. When people are more concerned about falling down than they are with moving up, planning ahead and having big goals is not only pointless but painful, since time and again something outside of one's control comes along and upends their plans. There are grave consequences to this: People stop making investments in their education; they delay or never have children; they stop buying homes, they are less likely to take entrepreneurial risks; and they defer their dreams, often indefinitely.

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People used to believe they would someday move on up in the world. Now they're more concerned with just holding on to what they have.

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1. Influenced by studies of media, language, and information technology.
2. Sense that little is unique; culture endlessly duplicates itself.
3. New literary forms and techniques: works composed of only dialogue, or combining fiction and nonfiction, experimenting with physical appearance of their work.

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Alice Walker

Wallace Stevens

e.e. cummings

Maya Angelou

Anne Sexton

James Baldwin

Richard Wright

Sandra Cisneros

Amy Tan

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This is a time period where political and social changes dominate and influence the world. This effects not only the overall cultrue, but the individual as well.

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Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Facts and Our Stubborn Attitude Towards Them

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Facts, as the old saying goes, are "stubborn things." But what about our attitude towards facts? When one's feelings about facts drive a decision, the facts themselves can quickly take a back seat. Say you and a friend see a neighbor's two-year old son toddling nude across the backyard.

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Another dominating trait about this time period is th earise of new ideas and philosophies. For example naturalism along with the idea that there is no absolutes are common philosophies of postmodernism.

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Postmodernism and modern philosophy

Postmodernism is largely a reaction against the intellectual assumptions and values of the modern period in the history of Western philosophy (roughly, the 17th through the 19th century). Indeed, many of the doctrines characteristically associated with postmodernism can fairly be described as the straightforward denial of general philosophical viewpoints that were taken for granted during the 18th-century Enlightenment, though they were not unique to that period. The most important of these viewpoints are the following.

1. There is an objective natural reality, a reality whose existence and properties are logically independent of human beings-of their minds, their societies, their social practices, or their investigative techniques. Postmodernists dismiss this idea as a kind of naive realism. Such reality as there is, according to postmodernists, is a conceptual construct, an artifact of scientific practice and language. This point also applies to the investigation of past events by historians and to the description of social institutions, structures, or practices by social scientists.

2. The descriptive and explanatory statements of scientists and historians can, in principle, be objectively true or false. The postmodern denial of this viewpoint-which follows from the rejection of an objective natural reality-is sometimes expressed by saying that there is no such thing as Truth.

3. Through the use of reason and logic, and with the more specialized tools provided by science and technology, human beings are likely to change themselves and their societies for the better. It is reasonable to expect that future societies will be more humane, more just, more enlightened, and more prosperous than they are now. Postmodernists deny this Enlightenment faith in science and technology as instruments of human progress. Indeed, many postmodernists hold that the misguided (or unguided) pursuit of scientific and technological knowledge led to the development of technologies for killing on a massive scale in World War II. Some go so far as to say that science and technology-and even reason and logic-are inherently destructive and oppressive, because they have been used by evil people, especially during the 20th century, to destroy and oppress others.

4. Reason and logic are universally valid-i.e., their laws are the same for, or apply equally to, any thinker and any domain of knowledge. For postmodernists, reason and logic too are merely conceptual constructs and are therefore valid only within the established intellectual traditions in which they are used.

5. There is such a thing as human nature; it consists of faculties, aptitudes, or dispositions that are in some sense present in human beings at birth rather than learned or instilled through social forces. Postmodernists insist that all, or nearly all, aspects of human psychology are completely socially determined.

6. Language refers to and represents a reality outside itself. According to postmodernists, language is not such a "mirror of nature," as the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty characterized the Enlightenment view. Inspired by the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, postmodernists claim that language is semantically self-contained, or self-referential: the meaning of a word is not a static thing in the world or even an idea in the mind but rather a range of contrasts and differences with the meanings of other words. Because meanings are in this sense functions of other meanings-which themselves are functions of other meanings, and so on-they are never fully "present" to the speaker or hearer but are endlessly "deferred." Self-reference characterizes not only natural languages but also the more specialized "discourses" of particular communities or traditions; such discourses are embedded in social practices and reflect the conceptual schemes and moral and intellectual values of the community or tradition in which they are used. The postmodern view of language and discourse is due largely to the French philosopher and literary theorist Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), the originator and leading practitioner of deconstruction.

7. Human beings can acquire knowledge about natural reality, and this knowledge can be justified ultimately on the basis of evidence or principles that are, or can be, known immediately, intuitively, or otherwise with certainty. Postmodernists reject philosophical foundationalism-the attempt, perhaps best exemplified by the 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes's dictum cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"), to identify a foundation of certainty on which to build the edifice of empirical (including scientific) knowledge.

8. It is possible, at least in principle, to construct general theories that explain many aspects of the natural or social world within a given domain of knowledge-e.g., a general theory of human history, such as dialectical materialism. Furthermore, it should be a goal of scientific and historical research to construct such theories, even if they are never perfectly attainable in practice. Postmodernists dismiss this notion as a pipe dream and indeed as symptomatic of an unhealthy tendency within Enlightenment discourses to adopt "totalizing" systems of thought (as the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas called them) or grand "metanarratives" of human biological, historical, and social development (as the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard claimed). These theories are pernicious not merely because they are false but because they effectively impose conformity on other perspectives or discourses, thereby oppressing, marginalizing, or silencing them. Derrida himself equated the theoretical tendency toward totality with totalitarianism.

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postmodernism | Definition, Doctrines, & Facts

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postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism, in Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power. This article discusses postmodernism in philosophy.

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One of the most unique and amazing works of literature is the book known as "The Help." Personally, I have read this book myself and it is so amazing and interesting. One of the main themes that this story follows is the idea of racism even after slavory was abolished. Aditionally, social class is a huge focus of this story.

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This timeline assingnment was extreamily interesing and cool to acomplish throughout the semester. One aspect that was particularly interesting throguhout this assignment was the ability that is provides the demonstrate an overview of the development of literature over time. This assignemnt took us throught the learnign and growth of American literature through the years. Furthermore, we ware able to see the development of new ideas and writing trends along with the authors who embodied these writing strategies.