山东农业大学精品课程《英美文学史》课件：unit 15.pptVIP

Unit 15 Early Twentieth Century - American Modernism: A Brief Introduction The Centers of Modernism 1. Stylistic innovations - disruption of traditional syntax and form. 2. Artists self-consciousness about questions of form and structure. 3. Obsession with primitive material and attitudes. 4. International perspective on cultural matters. Modern Attitudes 1. The artist is generally less appreciated but more sensitive, even more heroic, than the average person. 2. The artist challenges tradition and reinvigorates it. 3. A breaking away from patterned responses and predictable forms. Contradictory Elements 1. Democratic and elitist. 2. Traditional and anti-tradition. 3. National jingoism and provinciality versus the celebration of international culture. 4. Puritanical and repressive elements versus freer expression in sexual and political matters. Literary Achievements 1. Dramatization of the plight of women. 2. Creation of a literature of the urban experience. 3. Continuation of the pastoral or rural spirit. 4. Continuation of regionalism and local color. Modern Themes 1. Collectivism versus the authority of the individual. 2. The impact of the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. 3. The Jazz Age. 4. The passage of 19th Amendment in 1920 giving women the right to vote. 5. Prohibition of the production, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages, 1920-33. 6. The stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression of the 1930s and their impact. Modernism and the Self 1. In this period, the chief characteristic of the self is one of alienation. The character belongs to a lost generation (Gertrude Stein), suffers from a dissociation of sensibility (T. S. Eliot), and who has a Dream deferred (Langston Hughes). 2. Alienation led to an awareness about ones inner life. Modernism and the New Negro Renaissance (see my Introduction to the Harlem Renaissance) 1. The relationship between the two is complex. 2. They both share the important motif o