AMERICAN MODERNISM (1914-1945)
1. The background of Modern Poetry
In the 20th centry, two characteristic strains in American poetry are introspection and social criticism, in which the poets explores the depts of his own feelings with the regard to what appears to him to be the injustices of the society that forms his enviroment. Although the poetic scene in 1900-1910 was gloomy with vers of moralistic and imitative type, there emgerd in 1912-1922 a great poetry boom.As J.Isaacs estimsted that 1000 poets published over 1000 volumes of poetry during the period.
•The concept of modernism emerged in the eighteenth century when the classicists mocked tho who oppod them and called them modernists. Dr Samuel Johnson says in the Dictionary of the English Language that the word was coined by Johnathan Swiftin a letter to Alexander pope.(the modernism is relative to the classicism)
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•The word was given a new meaning by the French poet Bordelaire and the publication of
his collection of poem marked the beginning of modernism in literature. Now it is a comprehensive term applied to international tendencies and movements in all creative arts in the 20th century
•After World War One, America has great profits and she has great jump in technologies, especially in automobiles and radio; old moral system break.
II. Modernism
⏹During the first decades of the 20th century,modernism became an international tendency against positivism and reprentational art and literature .
⏹It began in Germany in the 1890s, spread worldwide,and ended in the early 1940s.
⏹The esnce of modernism: was a break with the past, and also fostered a belief in art and literature as a avenue to lf-fulfillment.
⏹Ways of expression: symbolism,impressionism,post-impressionism, futurism, constructivism, imagism, vorticism, expressionism, dadaism, and surrealism.
分众邮件营销专家1）Modernism is a cultural movement that generally includes the progressive art of architecture, design, literature, music, dance, painting and other visual arts which emerged in the beginning of the 20th century , particularly in the years following World War I. It was a movement of artists and designers who rebelled against late 19th century academic and historic tradition, and embraced the new economic, social and political aspects of the emerging modern world.
2）The movements that followed--including Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Constructivism, De Stijl荷兰抽象画派, and Abstract Expressionism are generally defined as Modernism.
积极心态的力量
3) Modernism in literature is not easily summarized, but the key elements are experimentation, anti-realism, individualism and a stress on the cerebral理智的 rather than emotive aspects.
3)The work of Modernist writers is characterized by showing the dinchantment, dislocation, and alienation of men in the world, and by the emphasis on experimentation
and formalism and objectivism which are, in most cas, a reaction to the cataclysm known as the Modern Age.
4)Among American writers, the best-known Modernists are T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and so on.
The differences between realism and modernism蔡延锴
| Realism | Modernism |
Function of Literature | 重归于好Educate People and Criticize Social Evils | Expression of "Self" |
Subject | Public, Exterior World | Private, Interior World |
Conception of Time &Space | 飙车族 Clock Time, Geographic space | Psychological Time &Space |
Forms and Techniques | Hero, Plot | Anti-hero, Anti-plot |
Tone | Optimistic | Pessimistic |
| | |
III. Features of modernism
⏹1.Modernism dramatized discontinuity and imminent verance from the past, its values and artistics forms by incorporating them in new literary production.
⏹2.Modernism had a nce of fragmentation in social communities and the fragmentation within the individual himlf.
⏹3.The distinctive feature of literary modernism was its strong and conscious break with traditional forms,perceptions and techniques of expression, and its great concern with language and all aspects of medium. It was persistently experimental.
Ⅳ. The Schools of American Modernism
1）Modern poetry: experiments in form (Imagism)
2）Pro Writing: modern realism (the Lost Generation)
3）Novels of Social Awareness
4）The Harlem Renaissance
5） New Criticism
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6）The 20th Century American Drama
Ⅴ. Reprentative writers
T. S. Eliot 整体衣柜品牌The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock(1917)
