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Chapter V. Modernism

Focus of Study Lost Generation Background Modernism Origin Definition Distinctive Features

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Lost GenerationHistorical Background1.The First World War: it cast

the young men into an age of disorientation, alienation and dissent. They entered the war with naïve and blind patriotism and under the slogan of world peace and democracy. Returning from the war, these idealized intellectuals felt separated by their war experience from conventional ideals and values of their homes.

Eiffel TowerEiffel Tower

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2. There were economic bloom and deceptive affluence after the war since America made a lot of money in the war. The first modern warfare destroyed not only the lives of many promising young men, but also destroyed their early innocent beliefs. Many excellent young man found it difficult to adapt themselves to the post-war overflow of materialism.

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3. Scientific advances caused increase in industry, which brought vast changes to the character of American society. Millions of Americans were thrown into a modern society of sharp competition. People were no longer content to follow former patterns and there was a rebellion against the falseness of society as represented by Victorian gentility.

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4. “The sad young men” given by Fitzgerald in All the Sad Young Men described the disillusioned post-war generation, esp. the young writers who lived as expatriates in Western Europe for a short time. They were called the “Lost Generation” by Gertrude Stein.

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Modernism The War brought a radical change

to the country and initiated the age of Modernism in American literature. During the first decades of the 20th century, modernism became an international tendency.

Origin: It began in Germany in the 1890s, spread worldwide, and ended in the early 1940s.

It is assumed that modernism was the consequence of the transformation of society brought about by industrialism and technology in the course of the 19th century.

The Louvre (The Louvre (罗罗浮宫浮宫 ))

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Definition: The essence of modernism was a break with the past, and it also fostered a belief in art and literature as an avenue to self-fulfillment. Modernism took shape in a convergence of tendencies in modern culture, accidental circumstances, and concerted efforts on the part of influential writers.It included a wide range of artistic expressions such as symbolism, impressionism, post-impressionism, futurism, constructivism, imagism, vorticism, expressionism, dada, and surrealism.

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Distinctive Features of Modernism

1. Modernism dramatized discontinuity (a sense of disjunction) and imminent severance from the past while making determined efforts to use the past, its values and artistic forms by incorporating them in new literary production.

Modernists at the beginning of the 20th century were not so optimistic and exuberant as Thoreau and Emerson.

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Affected by the postwar disillusionment and loss of faith and disgusted at government slogans with the cheap commercial values and sham business ethics of the time, they thought of life as diminished.

They had a strong feeling of alienation, of loss, and of despair. They tried to get back to the foundations of previous art and to use them in a new way.

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2. Modernists had a sense of fragmentation in social communities and the fragmentation within the individual himself.

Fragmentation--a common theme in modernist writing.

The use of “anti-hero ”in presenting such theme: An anti-hero is the person who is the main focus of the work as a hero should be. He is weak, ineffective, inapt, and achieves success through bungling, through not being as effective as he’d think he could be, unlike the romantic hero who is strong, courageous enough to save the maiden in the tower.

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3. The distinctive feature modernism was its strong and conscious break with traditional forms, perceptions, and techniques of expression, and its great concern with language and all aspects of its medium. It was persistently experimental.

Stream of consciousness, the use of myth as a structural principle, and the primary status given to the poetic image, all challenged traditional representation.

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Practitioners of Modernism

Ernest Hemingway F. Scott Fitsgerald E. E. Cummings Ezra Pound T. S. Elliot Sherwood Anderson William Faulkner

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Study Questions

How would you define “ the Lost Generation”?

What is the characteristics of modernism? How do you understand “ the anti-hero”? What is “stream of consciousness”? Have you

read any novel of “stream of consciousness”?

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Reference

Allen, Walter. The Modern Novel in Britain and the United States. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964.

Gindin, James. Postwar British Fiction: New Accents and Attitudes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.

Spiller, Robert E. The Cycle of American Literature: An Essay in Historical Criticism. New York: Macmillan, 1955.

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