20th_century_american_literature
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This document provides an overview of 20th century American literature, focusing on modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. It summarizes key historical context for modernism, characteristics like fragmentation and experimentation. It then highlights several modernist poets like Frost, Williams, Eliot and their works. Next it discusses modernist fiction from Faulkner, Hammett and Hemingway. Finally it covers the Harlem Renaissance, major African American poets and fiction writers like Hughes, Hurston, Wright who contributed new voices during this period.
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20th_century_american_literature
- 1. Twentieth Century American Literature American Modernisms Presented by Dr. Grant Bain University of Arkansas
- 2. Today’s Workshop Learn brief historical context for American modernism. Sample some works by major poets and fiction writers of the movement. Discuss the relationship between modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
- 3. Historical Context Advances in science and technology Major shifts in political structures Changing religious institutions and beliefs Crisis of representation
- 4. Characteristics of Modernism Fragmentation Alienation Experimentation
- 5. Modern Themes in Traditional Verse Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. Robert Frost (1874-1963)
- 6. American Modernist Poetry William Carlos Williams (1883- 1963) The Red Wheelbarrow so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.
- 7. American Modernist Poetry T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question…. Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.
- 8. More Eliot In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
- 9. The Waste Land: The Most Eliot APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Onl There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
- 10. Modernism and Popular Art You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember Nothing?” I remember Those are pearls that were his eyes. 125 “Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?” But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— It’s so elegant So intelligent Ragtime -Came from African American communities around St. Louis, MO in the late 1800’s -Syncopated or “ragged” rhythm Scott Joplin
- 11. American Modernist Fiction William Faulkner (1897-1962) “Caddy held me and I could hear us all, and the darkness, and something I could smell. And then I could see the windows, where the trees were buzzing. Then the dark began to go in smooth, bright shapes, like it always does, even when Caddy says that I have been asleep.” “Because if it were just to hell; if that were all of it. Finished. If things just finished themselves. Nobody else there but her and me. If we could just have done something so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us. I have committed incest I said Father it was I”
- 12. American Noir Fiction Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting V under the more flexible V of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, V. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down—from high flat temples—in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan. Dashiell Hammett (1891-1964) -The Maltese Falcon
- 13. The Dark Side of Nostalgia Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) “Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and beset by a ghostly band of doubts, did not think of himself as in any way part of the life of the town where he had lived for twenty years. Among all the people of Winesburg but one had come close to him. With George Willard, son of Tom Willard, the proprietor of the New Willard house, he had formed something like a friendship. George Willard was the reporter on the Winesburg Eagle and sometimes in the evenings he walked out along the highway to Wing Biddlebaum's house. Now as the old man walked up and down on the veranda, his hands moving nervously about, he was hoping that George Willard would come and spend the evening with him. After the wagon containing the berry pickers had passed, he went across the field through the tall mustard weeks and climbing a rail fence peered anxiously along the road to the town. For a moment he stood thus, rubbing his hands together and looking up and down the road, and then, fear overcoming him, ran back to walk again upon the porch on his own house.” -“Hands”
- 14. Ernest Hemingway The girl was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry. ‘They look like white elephants,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen one,’ the man drank his beer. ‘No, you wouldn’t have.’ ‘I might have,’ the man said. ‘Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.’
- 15. Ernest Hemingway It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,’ the man said. ‘It’s not really an operation at all.’ The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on. ‘I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.’ The girl did not say anything. ‘I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.’ ‘Then what will we do afterwards?’ ‘We’ll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before.’ ‘What makes you think so?’ ‘That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.’ The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of beads. ‘And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.’ ‘I know we will. Yon don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it.’ ‘So have I,’ said the girl. ‘And afterwards they were all so happy.’
- 16. Ernest Hemingway But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?’ ‘I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.’ ‘If I do it you won’t ever worry?’ ‘I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.’ ‘Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I don’t care about me.’ ‘Well, I care about you.’ ‘Oh, yes. But I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine.’ ‘I don’t want you to do it if you feel that way.’ The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station We can have everything.’ ‘No, we can’t.’ ‘We can have the whole world.’ ‘No, we can’t.’ ‘We can go everywhere.’ ‘No, we can’t. It isn’t ours any more.’ ‘It’s ours.’ ‘No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you never get it back.’ ‘But they haven’t taken it away.’
- 17. The Harlem Renaissance Broad term for the outpouring of literary production and experimentation by African American writers during the early decades of the twentieth century. Called the Harlem Renaissance because New York’s Harlem was a vital center of black artistic life, although many artists lived and worked elsewhere.
- 18. Harlem Renaissance Poetry Claude McKay (1889-1948) “America” Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate, Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
- 19. Harlem Renaissance Poetry Langston Hughes (1902- 1967) “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
- 20. Harlem Renaissance Fiction Zora Neale Hurston (1891- 1960) “Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don’t tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.” -Their Eyes Were Watching God
- 21. Harlem Renaissance Fiction Richard Wright (1908-1960) “Goddamnit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like livin' in jail.” “I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em...I didn’t want to kill,” Bigger shouted. “But what I killed for, I am! It must’ve been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder … What I killed for must’ve been good!” -Native Son
- 22. Conclusion Greatly expanded what could be written and how authors could write it. Introduced many new voices to the American literary scene. Set the standards for today’s literary production.
- 23. Further Reading American Modernist Writers Poets Carl Sandburg Ezra Pound Wallace Stevens Fiction Writers Gertrude Stein F. Scott Fitzgerald John Steinbeck Djuna Barnes Flannery O’Connor Harlem Renaissance Writers Poets Meredith Brooks Jean Toomer George Schuyler Fiction Writers James Weldon Johnson James Baldwin Jean Toomer Nella Larsen Rudolph Fisher