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!” 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

boundaries1. Women’s rights recognized2. African-Americans’ rights recognized3. General Civil Rights Act of 1964 Era is a paradox: commercialization allows people to

conform; commercialization prompts people to rebel against conformity

Overarching PrinciplesContent

A. Often summarized as “Make it New!” 1. “=Modernize!”2. focuses on taking traditional stories, styles,

and formulas, but reinvents them.

Overarching PrinciplesContent

B. Common Theme: Importance of Individuality1. Protagonists in conflict with a corrupt society2. 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.

1953 19491951

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 humanism1. Ethics are applied relatively because circumstances change.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

A. Emphasis on compacted (concise but densely-packed) language in both prose and poetry. Focus is on immediacy and primacy of effect .

B. Extensive use of symbolism.C. Abstract, expressive, surreal, and fantastical

elements return to literature.D. 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.

“For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.”

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 together

and 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 the

next ten years.The man who asked for it was shabby

and 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!

Postmodernism

Post-Modernism

Post-Modernism

Postmodern Architecture

Modernism and Postmodernism 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).

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).

According to textbooks like ours, the similarities are striking!

Modernism and Postmodernism

Both try totally weird things in terms of what they teach and how they teach it.

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.

But How are the Two Movements Different?

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

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