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MODERNISM. What is Modernism?. What do you think this painting is trying to suggest? . Realist Painting. Realist Painting. Modernism. Modernism. Modernism. Modernism. Modernist Architecture. A Reaction to Realism. Gertrude Stein said, “make it new!”
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What is Modernism? What do you think this painting is trying to suggest?
A Reaction to Realism • Gertrude Stein said, “make it new!” • The Modernists were traumatized by the events that brought about the Realist age—such as WWI and the Great Depression—but they were not going to be beaten. • While they saw modern life as disjointed and overwhelming, they did not see it as worthless. They saw it as possessing its own unique beauty, however challenging to appreciate. • The Modernists reacted against the Realist depiction of people as nothing but nameless, faceless, two-dimensional characters carried along by external forces. • Their fiction returned authority to the individual, and they allowed him/her to live his/her life (or at least judge its meaning or value) through art.
Historical Context • WWI and Great Depression until 1960s (loosely defined) • American prosperity leads to changing social boundaries • Women’s rights recognized • African-Americans’ rights recognized • General Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Era is a paradox: commercialization allows people to conform; commercialization prompts people to rebel against conformity
Overarching PrinciplesContent • Often summarized as “Make it New!” • “=Modernize!” • focuses on taking traditional stories, styles, and formulas, but reinvents them.
Overarching PrinciplesContent B. Common Theme: Importance of Individuality 1. Protagonists in conflict with a corrupt society 2. Protagonists feel alienated; they are often expatriates or exiles, and some are emasculated or impotent. 3. Protagonists try to achieve an identity; the art they produce affirms them in their ongoing struggle. 3. Protagonists are shown as admirable despite no obvious successes—simply because they persevere and are unwilling to compromise.
1951 1953 1949 Each of these Modernist novels features individuals who are radically estranged from the worlds in which they are expected—by themselves as well as by everyone else—to successfully exist.
Overarching PrinciplesContent C. Modernism rejected traditional views of the divine– secular humanism 1. Ethics are applied relatively because circumstanceschange. 2. Right and wrong determined by personal discernment, not dogma/doctrine. 3. Agnostic D. In a pluralistic world, you live, or try to live, whatever American Dream you feel is best suited to you.
Modernist Style • Emphasis on compacted (concise but densely-packed) language in both prose and poetry. Focus is on immediacy and primacy of effect . • Extensive use of symbolism. • Abstract, expressive, surreal, and fantastical elements return to literature. • Experimentation in narration like stream-of-consciousness – narrator is often involved in the action and has a very distinctive, often idiosyncratic, “voice”
Your Loyola Blakefield Modernist Experience • Important Modernist influence • Good friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald • Believed in “Iceberg Theory” of writing that many modernists emulated
Hemingway Short Story • Possibly apocryphal, Hemingway is said to have once wagered that he could write an entire short story in only six words.
1st Paragraph of Catcher in the Rye IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HEAR about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father. They're nice and all. I'm not saying that-but they're also touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. I mean that's all I told D.B. about, and he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood. That isn't too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a Jaguar. One of those lithe English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He's got a lot of dough, now. He didn't use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was "The Secret Goldfish." It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me.
“This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams (Modernist) I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
“Variations on a Theme” by Kenneth Koch (Modernist Parody) 1I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer.I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to doand its wooden beams were so inviting.2We laughed at the hollyhocks togetherand then I sprayed them with lye.Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.3I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for thenext ten years.The man who asked for it was shabbyand the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.4Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.Forgive me. I was clumsy andI wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor!
According to textbooks like ours, the similarities are striking! Modernism and Postmodernism Literature that “allows for multiple meanings and multiple worlds . . . literal worlds, past worlds, and dreamlike metaphorical worlds may merge . . . postmodern writers structure their works in a variety of nontraditional forms . . . they do not abide by conventional rules for shaping fiction . . . also intensely self conscious: they comment on themselves, criticize themselves, take themselves apart” (802). • Literature that “calls for bold experimentation and wholesale rejection of traditional themes and styles . . . the writers of this era . . . were . . . still trying to find the answers to basic human questions: Who are we?” (566-568).
Modernism and Postmodernism Both highlight the individual’s interiority (esp. psychology) in a way that Realism did not. Both emphasize the power of the individual—to judge themselves and their lives—in a way that Realism did not. Both stress the power of art as a medium of that judgment. Both empower the reader of the text as well as the characters in it. • Both try totally weird things in terms of what they teach and how they teach it.
But How are the Two Movements Different? MODERNISM Content-wise • Assumes new meanings in chaos and disorder… • Challenges reader to discover those meanings (that were already there) Form-wise • Literature is a product, an artifact, a piece of finished art (that has structure, however complex) • Literature is playful POSTMODERNISM Content-wise • Does not assume new meanings in chaos and disorder… • Challenges readers to create those meanings (that were not already there) Form-wise • Literature is a process, an amalgam, a piece of unfinished art (that has loose ends, ragged edges, etc.) • Literature is downright zany
