Unit 5 – Disillusion, defiance, and discontent

1914-1946 Unit 5 – Disillusion, defiance, and discontent

Look at the time line on page 704… • What are some critical events that occurred in America during this time period?

Historical Background • The years preceding WWI were characterized by a sense of optimism. • Wilson was forced, when war broke out, to turn his attentions towards problems of the world rather than concentrating on problems at home. • WWI – Allies vs. Central Powers • Trench warfare • Sinking of the Lusitania • E.E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos all served as ambulance drivers.

Prosperity and Depression • Failing of League of Nations • Prohibition • Recession in 1920 and 1921 • After those years the economy boomed • Radio and jazz • Great literary interpreter of the 1920s F. Scott Fitzgerald (the next book we are going to read is The Great Gatsby )

Writers flocked to Greenwich Village, New York. • October 1929 – Stock Market Crash • 1932 FDR elected • The New Deal • WWII – The Allies vs. The Axis Powers • Dropped the atomic bomb and its implications

Literature of the Period • The Birth of Modernism • Modernist experimented with a wide variety of new approaches and techniques = diverse body of literature. • Sought to capture the essence of modern life in both form and content of their work. • Modernist works demand more from readers.

Imagism • Ushered in Modernism • 1909-1917 • Poems contained clear expression, concrete images, and the language of everyday speech. • H.D. and Ezra Pound

Expatriates (exiles) • Disillusioned by WWI • Gertrude Stein – “lost generation” • Fitzgerald and Hemingway • Later Pound and Eliot

New Approaches • Stream-of-consciousness technique • Presentation of a series of thoughts, memories, and insights connected only by a character’s natural associations • Ulysses – James Joyce • Faulkner, Porter, Dos Passo • Poets – Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore • They stretched boundaries in punctuation, wordplay, and speech

Writers of International Renown • Nobel Prize for Literature • Sinclair Lewis – great satirist, Main Street • 1936 – Eugene O’Neill playwright Desire Under the Elms, The Iceman Cometh, and Long Day’s Journey into Night • Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises, A Farwell to Arms), Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath)

The Harlem Renaissance • In Harlem, African American writers • Most moved to Harlem from the South • Langston Hughes • 1920s into the 30s • Belonged to no single school of literature

Unit 5 – Disillusion, defiance, and discontent