Modernism Presentation by Paola Rodríguez Herrera

Characteristics

paolarodriguezherrera — 2022-02-11 06:12:06 UTC

In this era the traditional ways of thinking changed. The modernists saw a sense of decay and growing alienation for individuals, and turned from society to explore the individual, sometimes recording the workings of the mind.

Modernism was essentially based on a utopian vision of human life and society and belief in progress, or moving forward.

At the heart of modernist art was the belief that the previously sustaining elements of human life, like religious beliefs, social mores, and artistic convictions, had been destroyed or proven false or fragile. This sense of fragmentation led to a literature built out of fragments of myth, history, personal experience, or earlier art.

There was a lot of poetry inspired by World War I, written by soldiers on the battlefield describing their experiences and also by war supporters at home.

Fiction during this time shifted the focus of man in his social circle to man as an isolated individual, and this change emphasized the thought processes and unconscious impulses of man.

Historic Context

paolarodriguezherrera — 2022-02-11 06:13:20 UTC

The Modernism Period is often referred from 1901-1939. Modernism was marked by experimentation and individualism, which came from the shocking reality of the Great War, World War I, and which lasted from 1914 to 1918.

This era is a reaction to the previous Victorian period first and foremost, which also has a clear break with tradition, which was so important to Victorians.

Influences

paolarodriguezherrera — 2022-02-11 06:13:26 UTC

Some of the people who influenced this movement were:

T.S. Eliot. He was a British poet, literary critic, essayist, and editor.

D.H. Lawrence. The novels from this author explore the disillusionment that came with the aftermath of industrialization.

Ezra Pound. Poet who championed the free verse and allusion, and is considered the one of first writers in modernist poetry to use imagism.

James Joyce. Author known for telling small, slice-of-life tales in experimental and evocative ways.

Virginia Woolf. Late Victorian novelist responsible for novels who incorporated stream of consciousness style into her texts, infusing the character's interior monologue with emotion and complexity.

Katherine Mansfield. Short story author was influenced by visual art and psychoanalysis, and many of her stories contained epiphanies of important revelations about the main character.

Characteristics

paolarodriguezherrera — 2022-02-11 06:13:51 UTC

Modernist literature applied an amount of different experimental writing techniques that broke the conventional rules. Some oh those techniques included blended imagery and themes, absurdism, nonlinear narratives, and stream of consciousness.

As in British Modernism, in the American Modernism the individualism was also present. This means that it typically focuses on the individual, rather than society as a whole.

Many modernist writers wrote in first person perspective with multiple characters to emphasize the subjectivity of each character, and add depth to the story by presenting a variety of viewpoint. Also, many of these writers rely on literary devices like symbolism and imagery to create a connection between the text and the reader, and to help the reader understand the writing.

Poets from this era rejected the traditional structure of poetry and opted for free verse, which lacks of a consistent rhyme scheme, metrical pattern, of musical form.

Historic Context

paolarodriguezherrera — 2022-02-11 06:14:02 UTC

American Modernism was mainly between World War I and World War II.
Many of these American authors and poets began a trend of "nativism", seeking the representation of the modern American experience in America. During this era, there was explored the psychological wounds and spiritual scars of the war experience.

Thanks to the American Modernist Literature, the development of regional trends within American literature was allowed, including the Harlem Renaissance and Southern Modernism.

Influences

paolarodriguezherrera — 2022-02-11 06:14:19 UTC

Robert Frost. American poet who was admired for his depictions of the rural life of New England, his command of American colloquial speech, and his realistic verse portraying ordinary people in everyday situations.

Carl Sandburg. Americaan poet, historian, novelist, and folklorist.

Claude McKay. He was a Jamaican-born poet and novelist whose Home to Harlem (1928) was the most popular novel written by an American black to that time.

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 fot the English-speaking world.

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).

Willa Cather. Told hopeful stories of the American Frontier.

paolarodriguezherrera — 2022-02-11 06:15:10 UTC

Louise Bogan. (1950). Modernism in American Literature. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3031447?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents

MasterClass staff. (2022). Modernist Literature Guide: Understanding Literary Modernism. Retrieved from: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/modernist-literature-guide#12-notable-modernist-writers

(N.A). (2022). British Modernism. Connecticut State University. Retrieved from: https://www.easternct.edu/speichera/understanding-literary-history-all/british-modernism.html#:~:text=The%20period%20from%201901%2D1939,that%20her%20rule%20had%20guaranteed.&text=Much%20modernist%20literature%20is%20actually,as%20an%20experience%20of%20loss.

(N.A). 2022. 3.1: Modernism and Postmodernism as Literary Movements - Humanities LibreTexts. Retrieved from:

paolarodriguezherrera — 2022-02-11 06:25:12 UTC

When we use the word modern, we might totally be using it to describe something that is recent or new when doing so, we often subconsciously also invoke the idea that what is new or recent is better than what is older.

The modernism era was on the end of the century 19th to the middle of the 20th century.