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Modernism

Modernism. More than a mass of crudely drawn rectangles, thank you very much. Modernism…. “began as a European response to the effects of World War I, which were far more devastating on the Continent than they were in the United States” (1078).

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Modernism

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  1. Modernism More than a mass of crudely drawn rectangles, thank you very much.

  2. Modernism… • “began as a European response to the effects of World War I, which were far more devastating on the Continent than they were in the United States” (1078). • Marcel Duchamp, “Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2” (1912). Art source: Philadelphia Museum of Art (http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/modern_contemporary/1950-134-59.shtml)

  3. The Modernist Aesthetic • “At the heart of the modernist aesthetic lay the conviction that the previously sustaining structures of human life, whether social, political, religious, or artistic, had been either destroyed or shown up as falsehoods or fantasies….Generalization, abstraction, and high-flown writing might conceal rather than convey the real. The form of a story…might be mere artifice…” (1078).

  4. Characteristics, p. 1 of 2 • Construction out of fragments • “notable for what it omits” (1078) • Lack of continuity, resolution, transition; reliance on juxtaposition • Omitting the artifice that made stories “work” • “the reader has to dig the structure out” • The search for meaning… Example: The 42nd Parallel, by John Dos Passos (from the USA trilogy)

  5. Characteristics, p. 2 of 2 • Quest for coherence in an increasingly disjointed world • Imposition of technology • Attention to the “old” myths – “reminding readers of the old, lost coherence” (1079) • Less self-satisfied than the previous age • Attention to the “concrete sensory image” (1079) • “The traditional educated literary voice, conveying truth and culture, lost its authority” (1079)

  6. Styles and attitudes • The poles: both extreme simplicity and extreme complication • Stream-of-consciousness • Shifts in perspective, voice, tone • Unusual forms rise to the level of art • Subjectivity, dissolution of objectivity • Feminism • African-American voices

  7. In America • How might the ascension of America itself played a role in the development of European modernism? • “To some [in America], the frequent pessimism, nostalgia, and conservatism of the movement made it essentially unsuited to the progressive, dynamic culture…” (1081)

  8. William Carlos Williams  “This Is Just to Say” (1934) 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

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