Modernism

•Broad, diverse movement that sought to capture excitement of modern world•Experimented with language, form, symbol (think e.e. cummings breaking line forms, Hemingway focusing on character, etc.

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Symbolism• literary movement of 19th century France• writers (Poe et al) reacted against realism– (“life as it is”– often dealing with grim social realities)• Stressed importance of emotional state

Symbolism:Tree of Life c.1909 Gustav KlimtThe Tree of Life is an important symbol in nearly every culture. With its branches reaching into the sky, and roots deep in the earth, it dwells in three worlds- a link between heaven, the earth, and the underworld, uniting above and below.

Surrealism• Developed out of Dada activities of WWI

anti-war, anti-materialism, anarchisticridiculed meaninglessness of the modern world.

• Center of the movement: Paris.• Spread from 1920s onward, affecting the arts, as well as politics, philosophy, and social thinking.• Used Freud's ideas about free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious to liberate imagination.• Emphasized irrational side of human nature

Surrealism

Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory c.1954 – Salvadore Dali

Impressionism• Distinguished by greatly increased complexity, sweeping nature with fine details• In literature – more complex characters

Impressionism: Wheatfield with Reaper, Van Gogh

Old Man in Sorrow, 1890 Van Gogh

Existentialism•Human reason is inadequate to explain meaning of life•Universe is indifferent to humans•Individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely, in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom. -Kierkegaard

Existentialism

Excerpt from “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold

Ah, love, let us be trueTo one another! for the world, which seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new,Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night.