PRESENTATION OUTLINE
What is modernism
Modernism is marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition. This break includes a strong reaction against established religious, political, and social views.
The horrors of World War I (1914-19) and its accompanying atrocities and senselessness became the catalyst for the Modernist movement in literature and art.
• Modernists believe the world is created in the act of perceiving it; that is, the world is what we say it is.
• Modernists do not subscribe to absolute truth. All things are relative.
• Modernists feel no connection with history or institutions. Their experience is that of alienation, loss, and despair.
• Modernists champion the individual and celebrate inner strength.
• Modernists believe life is unordered.
• Modernists concern themselves with the sub-conscious.
Modernist Writers
Modernist writers, many of whom were expatriates living in Europe, responded to the loss of idealism they felt in the wake of World War I.
Americans wrote more realistically, on the whole, than did Europeans.
American writers rebelling against long held social norms to an unheard of degree, abandoning many of the value systems and tightly held world views that had influenced American society and art since the birth of the nation.
Names of modern writers
🔸F. Scott Fitzgeral
🔸Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dorothy Parker,
🔸John Steinbeck
🔸Sinclair Lewis
