A American Modernism Flashcards
(9 cards)
American Modernism
Cultural Context
- industrialization
- technology
- urbanization
- complete secularization
- advances in the sciences (relativity theory)
- psychoanalysis (freud: id, ego, super-ego)
- World War I
- (attempted shifts in gender and race regulations
literary reactions:
- feeling of pessimism / disintegration of the world; political systems, traditions, human beings, psyche
- fragmetntation
- disillusionment, skepticism, despair (e.g. T.S. Eliots The Waste Land)
- yet often vision of putting fragmented world together as a whole
Imagism
name given to a movement in poetry, originating in 1912 and represented by poets such as Ezra Pound and Amy Lowell, aiming at clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images
- freedom from didacticism
- freedom of choice of subject
- language of common speech
F.S. FLint’s rules
- direct treatment of the “thing”
- all words must contribute to the presentation of the “thing”
Ezra Pound:
- image presents an “intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time”
- experience of “sudden liberation”
Hilda Doolittle Oread
plot
In the short imagist poem “Oread”, a mountain nymph (the oread) calls upon the sea to come to the forest in a powerful and commanding voice. The speaker blends sea imagery with forest imagery, urging the waves to:
“whirl up / sea— / whirl your pointed pines.”
The sea is described in forest-like terms—with “pines,” “trunks,” and “firs”—blurring the line between sea and land. The poem creates a vivid, forceful image of natural elements merging in a wild, energetic moment.
Oread
- modernist poetry
- greek mythology: mountain nymph
- imagined to be living in the ??
- presided over activities that took place in the mountains such as herding and hunting
Imaginist: two images merge in the poem
- land/forest
- water/sea
How is the merging achieved?
- similies? comparison?
- not really, rather by fusion: no ‘unnecessary words’ such as “like” - cohesion though repetition, blending word fields
F. Scott Fitgerald
The Great Gatsby
plot
Set in the 1920s, The Great Gatsby follows Nick Carraway, a Yale graduate and World War I veteran who moves to West Egg, Long Island. His neighbor is the mysterious and wealthy Jay Gatsby, known for throwing lavish parties.
Nick soon learns that Gatsby is deeply in love with Daisy Buchanan, Nick’s cousin, who lives across the bay with her wealthy but arrogant husband Tom Buchanan. Gatsby and Daisy had a romance before the war, and Gatsby hopes to rekindle it.
As Nick gets drawn into their world of wealth, illusion, and desire, Gatsby and Daisy begin an affair. But when tensions rise, Tom exposes Gatsby’s criminal background. Shortly after, Daisy accidentally kills Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, in Gatsby’s car, and Gatsby takes the blame. Myrtle’s husband, George, then kills Gatsby and himself.
In the end, Nick reflects on the emptiness of the American Dream and returns to the Midwest, disillusioned by the corruption and carelessness of the wealthy elite.
Great Gatsby
narrative situation
first impression: Nick is a minor character and silent observer
However: Nick’s narration is interrupted by changes of perspective and extradiegetic fragments
-> reliability is questionable
- homodiegetic narrator
-> nick puts fragments together and highlights the mingling of narration in the beginning
-> later he does not indicate this mingling anymore; he describes Myrtle’s death as though he had witnessed it
=> mingling of intradiegetic passages and extradiegetic narration hints at unreliability
chapter 5: focus on beauty, decadence and materialism
The Harlem Renaissance
central goals
central goals:
- racial pride
- call for acceptance in all areas of life
- focus on rich history of African Americans
- emphasis on Black creativity and intelligence
- analysis of “double consciousness”
I, Too
Langstin Hughes
plot
The poem expresses the speaker’s belief that, although African Americans are excluded from full participation in society now, they are still part of America. With hope and pride, the speaker envisions a future where they will be recognized and respected equally.
-> a poem about every person in America
-> alludes to Walt Whitman’s “I hear america singing”
I, Too
Langstin Hughes
development in tone
- first stanza: inequality, separation; present tense
- second stanza: resilience and hope for a better future; future tense - how it could be? “they will know how beautiful i am”
- shift: writing ones self into existence, into society
- tone: resilient, optimistic, confident
