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Modernism I: Americans in Paris - Coggle Diagram
Modernism I: Americans in Paris
What is Modernism?
Modernism is an international movement in the first half of the 20th century in literature as well as in the fine arts, classical music, and architecture
Literary modernism can be analysed in formalist terms (What are typical stylistic features of modernist writings?)
But literary modernism can also be analysed in socio-historical terms, as a reaction to social change, to the modernization of society, or simply, modernity.
Significance of World War I, or "The Great War", as it is still called in Great Britain, as a watershed in history and as a collective trauma of western societies
Definition from the NA
literary modernism as "work that represents the transformation of traditional society under the pressures of modernity, and that breaks down traditional literary forms in doing so"
A traditional society is transformed into a modern society. Modernist literature represents this process of modernization. At the same time modernism modernizes traditional literary forms and we arrive at more modern literary forms
Obviously, "modern" is a relative term. And this is one of the reasons why what was definitely "modern" in the 1920s is now rather called "modernist" in literary historiography.
Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot pushed their modernist agenda against "traditional" ideas about poetry. When Pound calls for a "direct treatment" of the topic – "Use no superfluous word", "Go in fear of abstractions" – this goes against the grain of traditional rhetoric which tends to be proud of not bluntly stating how it is
They pleaded for free verse and directed against traditional metre
T. S. Eliot attacks William Wordsworth's romantic idea of poetry as "a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"
Modernism is provocative: Virginia Woolf turns against (realist) objectivity in fiction, T. S. Eliot turns against (romantic) subjectivity in poetry. But in both cases, literary traditions of the 19th century are under attack, and the aim is to find forms of expression more adequate to modern times.
Modernism and the Literary Market
the structure of the literary market
subdivisions within modernism: expressionism, surrealism, dadaism, imagism, vorticism, futurism
modernist writers sometimes pose like revolutionaries: "Make it new!" is Pound's famous slogan
In the 20th century the literary market became larger than ever --> it had developed into an international market
perhaps as a consequence, a segmentation of the market that already began in the second half of the 19th century deepened
Different readers read different kinds of literature. Different kind of authors write for different kinds of readers. In economic terms: Different writers aim at different segments of the market.
Most "high modernists" didn't produce bestsellers. They could not realistically hope for that, because many modernist works are just too difficult to become bestsellers --> they are too complex, challenging and the market for experimental, intellectual, avant-garde writing is remarkably small
"the cities of modernism", where new ideas and art forms flourished: "Berlin, Vienna, Moscow and St. Petersburg around the turn of the century", then London, Zurich, New York and Chicago around World War I, and
"at all time" Paris
American Literary Modernism and the History of the United States
The process of modernization in the United States:
new means of transportation
new means of communication
new forms of entertainment
A kind of "sexual revolution" put into questions traditional (19th-century) gender roles, the institution of marriage, definitions of legitimate vs. illegitimate sex. In America, women gained the right to vote in 1920.
"Around 1915, as a direct result of the industrial needs of World War I, opportunities opened for African Americans in the factories of the North, and what became known as the Great Migration out of the South began"
In Harlem, New York, African American writers, musicians and artists gave birth to African American modernism, the Harlem Renaissance.
American modernist writing is to large extent "expatriate writing" (an individual living/or working in a country other than his/her country of citizenship
After World War I, a second wave of Americans moved to Paris
When did American literary modernism begin and end?
The NA offers two convenient dates, 1914 and 1945, and most modernist writing was produced between these dates
But they are also a bit misleading: American modernism was not "caused" by the beginning of World War I, and neither did it suddenly end when World War II ended. Modernism's decline probably set in earlier. In 1929 the stock market crash put an end to the economic boom of the 1920s, and the Golden Twenties gave way to the Great Depression. As a result, the literary market for bold, experimental writing that didn't sell shrank dramatically.
In a way, realism resurfaced as a way of confronting new realities
Literary movements rise and fall. But even after the "heroic" phase of modernism was over, the modernists kept writing and produced works that would influence later generations.