The Moderns (1914-1939)
By: Kimberly Veliz, Danny Rodriguez, and Rafael
Rodriguez-Ema
Social & Political Highlights
During Modernism
 World War I
 Women’s Suffrage
 The Great Depression
WWI
 WWI started when the Archduke Francis
Ferdinand of Austria- Hungary was assassinated
by a Serbian nationalist.
 U.S extended conflict in 1917.
 By 1916 more than half a million soldier were
killed. Nearly 50 millions lives were lost by the
time the truce was signed in Nov. 1918.
 The treaty of Versailles officially ended the war.
Women’s Suffrage
 With the ratification of the 19th
amendment, women in the U.S. finally
won the right to vote.
 Women started wearing shorter skirts and
bobbing their hair in a modern fashion.
The Great Depression, 1929
 Caused by the stock market crash; brought
suffering to millions of Americans.
 One fourth to one third of Americans
workers were unemployed.
Quiz Time!
•When did WWI start?
•1914
•What amendment gave women the
right to vote?
•19th Amendment
•What event led to the great
depression?
•Stock market crash
•What treaty ended WWI?
•Treaty of Versailles
Modernism
 American writers started being affected by the
modernist movement. This movement in
literature, painting, music, and other arts swept
along by disillusionment with traditions that
seemed to have become spiritually empty.
Modernism called for bold experimentation and
wholesale rejections of traditional themes and
styles.
Elements of Modernism
 Rejection of traditional themes, subjects and forms.
 Sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the
American Dream.
 Rejection of sentimentality and artificiality.
 Rejection of the ideal of a hero as infallible in favor of
a hero who is flawed and disillusioned but shows
“grace under pressure”.
 Interest in the inner workings of the human mind,
sometimes expressed through new narrative
techniques, such as stream of consciousness.
Principles of the American Dream
 America as the new Eden
 The United States is a new Eden, a promised land of beauty,
unlimited resources, and endless opportunities.
 Both the promise and the disappointment of this idea is reflected
in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
 A belief in progress
 The American birthright is one of ever-expanding opportunity.
Progress is a good thing, and we can optimistically except life to
keep getting better and better.
 Triumph of the individual
 The independent, self-reliant individual will triumph. Everything
is possible for the person who places trust in his or her own
powers and potential.
Hope you paid attention because it’s quiz time!
•When the U.S. was thought to be the new Eden, what author reflected the
contrast of this idea in his novel?
•F. Scott Fitzgerald with The Great Gatsby
•What 3 ideas compose the American dream?
•America as the new Eden, a belief in progress, and a triumph of the individual
•True or false: The moderns accepted sentimentality and artificiality.
•False
Marxism
 WWI and the Great Depression severely damaged the ideas
of the American dream.
 The socialist beliefs of Karl Marx (1818-1883) that had
powered the Russian Revolution in 1917 conflicted with the
American system of capitalism and free enterprise.
Marxists threatened to export their revolution everywhere.
 Marxism was basically the political and economic theories
of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, later developed by their
followers to form the basis for the theory and practice of
communism.
Freud and the
Unconscious Mind
 In Vienna there was another ground-shaking movement.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the founder of
psychoanalysis, had opened the workings of the
unconscious mind to examination and called for a new
understanding of human sexuality and the role it plays in
our unconscious thoughts.
 One literary result of this interest in the psyche was the
narrative technique called Stream of consciousness. This
writing style abandoned chronology and attempted to
imitate the moment-by-moment flow of a character’s
thoughts and memories. Ex: Ulysses by James Joyce.
Jazz Age
 In 1919 the constitution was amended to prohibit the
manufacturing and sale of alcohol.
 This led to an age full of jazz clubs and underground
social scenes becoming popular.
 Women played a prominent role; they won the right to
vote and began to create a presence in artistic,
intellectual, and social circles.
The New American Hero
 The most influential writer of post WWI was Ernest
Hemingway. Most famous for his literary style, which affected
the style of American prose fiction for many generations.
 Hemingway reduced the flamboyance of literary language to
make it bare and truthful.
 Hemmingway introduced a new kind of hero to literature. His
hero is a man of action, a warrior, and a tough competitor; he
has a code of honor, courage, and endurance. But most
importantly the hero had thorough disillusionment.
What time is it? Quiz time!
•
Marxism paved the way to what
political theory?
•
Communism
•
What writing style abandoned
chronology and attempted to
imitate the moment-by-moment
flow of a character’s thoughts
and memories?
•
Stream of consciousness
•
What big impact occurred in
1919 to the amendment?
•
Prohibition of alcohol
•
Who was the most influential
writer of post-WW1?
•
Ernest Hemmingway
A Period of Experimentation
 After getting all British influences out of American
poetry, American poets entered a period of
experimentation. They explored Europe, and learned
from modern painters like Pablo Picasso.
 Ezra pound and T.S. Eliot used suggestive techniques of
symbolism to create a new, modernist poetry. Pound also
led a poetic movement called imagism. Imagism and
symbolism would be seen in poetry up to the 20th
century and can be seen greatly used in E.E. Cummings
poetry.
Voices of American Character
 Many American poets rejected modernist trends. These
poets stayed at home, ignoring the revolution of
modernism.
 These poets had plain American speech, and they
revealed the diversity of American life and character.
 The greatest of these poets was Robert Frost. Frost took
the conventional writing of poetry and gave it a twist of
his own .
Harlem Renaissance
 In the 1920’s a group of black poets focused directly on the
unique contributions of the African American culture to
America.
 Based it’s rhythms on spirituals and jazz, its lyrics on songs
known as the blues, and its diction on the street talk of the
ghettos.
 Lyric poets: James W. Johnson, Claude Mckay, Langston
Hughes, and Countee Cullen.
 These poets brought literary distinction to a movement of
artists called the Harlem Renaissance. The geographical
center of this was Harlem, New York.
Guess what? Quiz!
 What two authors used the
technique of symbolism?
 Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot
 What successful poet ignored the
revolution of modernism and
preferred conventional forms of
writing?
 Robert Frost
 What kind of music came from the
Harlem Renaissance?
 The blues
Symbolsim
 Symbolism is a form of expression in which the world of
appearance is violently rearranged by artists who seek a
different and more doubtful version of reality.
 Symbolist poets tried to portray the emotional effects that
objects can suggest, not just describe them. Symbolist had
nothing to do with religious, national or the psychological
symbols we are familiar with. The symbolists stressed
instead in the trust of the nonrational, hoping to bring selfdiscovery to the reader.
 Symbolism is a new manifestation of the Romanticism
that had swept over Europe and the U.S. in the 19th
century.
Imagism
 Imagism, which flourished in the years 1912-1927,
consisted of people who believed, like the symbolists, that
poetry can be made purer by concentration on the precise,
clear, and unqualified image.
 Imagists believed that imagery alone could carry a poem’s
emotion and message. Without all the elaborated metrics
and stanza patterns a traditional poem has.
 Imagists reformed poetry, they would get rid of the beauty
and sentimentally of the poem and concentrate instead on
the raw power of the image to communicate feeling and
thought.
 Imagists believed in the free verse form of writing poetry
instead of conventional forms. Free verse is poetry
without regular rhyming and metrical patterns, which
was deplorable to tradition minded poets.
 Though imagism didn’t last long it did give rise to some
of Americas best poets, including: E.E. Cummings,
Marianne Moore, and Williams Carlos Williams
Important Movements
 Impressionism was movement in
painting originating in France
in the 1860s, characterized by a
concern with depicting the
visual impression of the
moment, especially in terms of
the shifting effect of light and
color. Ex. Claude Monet
 Surrealism was a 20th-century
new and unusual movement in
art and literature that sought to
release the creative potential of
the unconscious mind, for
example by the irrational
juxtaposition of images. Ex.
Salvador Dali.
Oh no! It’s the last quiz 
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True or False: Symbolist poets did not try to
portray the emotional effects that objects
can suggest, and instead, just describe them.
False
______ believed that ______ alone could
carry a poem’s emotion and message.
Imagists; imagery
_____is poetry without regular rhyming and
metrical patterns, which was deplorable to
tradition minded poets.’
Free Verse
Movement that sought to release the
creative potential of the unconscious mind?
Surrealism
Movement in painting characterized by the
shifting effect of light and color?
Impressionism
~The End~