Unit 7 The Modern Era 1900 1945 I

Unit 7: The Modern Era 1900 -1945

I. A Century of Change • • • Much change: • electric lights • mass merchandising mass media (tv & radio) • transportation (cars & • planes) • • instant communication • (phones) • Medicine (antibiotics & anesthesia) weapons of mass destruction suburban housing skyscrapers labor unions women workers population explosion

II. WWI • Before WWI, the US • War changed the life was “isolationist” and culture of (involved in our own Americans concerns) • Writing was traditional & regional • WWI began in 1914 • US delayed until 1917

III. The Lost Generation • Writers who fought / participated in war: John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, ee cummings • They saw war as chaotic, destructive, & meaningless • Gertrude Stein gave this group of writers the name “Lost Generation” • They questioned the fundamentals of the American Dream • They said people are dominated by their environments

IV. The Jazz Age & NY Literary Scene • 1920’s Jazz Age - conflict • NY became a literary between older, conservative center - Greenwich generation and a material, Village (bohemians) alienated younger • Edith Wharton, Eugeneration O’Neill, Thomas Wolfe • 1919 Prohibition - no • “Algonquin Round alcohol Table” - writers who met • Culture of “speak easies” or at Algonquin Hotel “juke joints, ” flappers, The Charleston, gangsters

V. Great Depression & 30’s Radicalism • “Chief Chronicler of • Karl Marx - German the Jazz Age” F. political theorist Scott Fitzgerald • millionaires: • 1925 The Great Carnegie, Morgan, Gatsby Rockefeller • 1929 Great Depression • hunger, labor unrest, began unions, anarchist bombings • Writers examine basic American ideals

• FDR New Deal Policies: Social Security, welfare, unemployment insurance, federal jobs • 1930’s “Great Dust Bowl” - Oklahoma droughts, led to great migration to California • John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath • Upton Sinclair: The Jungle • Richard Wright: Native Son

VI. The Expatriates • • F. Scott Fitzgerald Ezra Pound Ernest Hemingway Edna St. Vincent Millay • TS Eliot • Gertrude Stein • Moved to Paris or London • Gathered in cafes to exchange ideas • believed the US was inhospitable to high culture

VII. Modernism in American Lit • Modernism: international literary & artistic movement characterized by a rejection of artistic conventions of the past • “Make It New” • Cubist painter: Pablo Picasso • Modernist writers free verse, stream of consciousness • Subjectivism: treat reality not as absolute & orderly, but as depending on the point of view of the observer

More Modernism • Imagist Poetry: single moments of sense perception without reference to the poet’s emotions. • Irony: a signature technique of modernist lit; a sense of hopelessness

VIII. Changes in Roles of Women • Women’s roles • An increased role in art expanded and literature • 1920 Women’s Right • A golden age of to Vote American women • Could attend college & work outside the home

IX. Alternative Literary Responses • Postwar Regionalists: Robert Frost, Zora Neale Hurston, Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty, Katherine Anne Porter, etc. • Fugitives: Southern writers who rejected Northern commercial values; wanted to return to Southern traditions • New Criticism: approach to understanding lit through close readings & paying attention to patterns (imagery, metaphors, sounds, symbols) • Harlem Renaissance: explosion of Black artists, writers, & performers

X. WWII • After Worldwide Depression of the 1930’s, Europe placed hopes in ultranationalist leaders • Italy: Benito Mussolini • Spain: Francisco Franco • Germany: Adolf Hitler (theories of racial purity, the Aryan race) • Hitler invaded Poland • US entered WWII after Pearl Harbor; Dec 7, 1941 • WWII over in 1945 • 6 million Jews killed • Prison camps: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald