Modernism

Where are we coming from?Romanticism (@1750-1865?) Realism/Naturalism (1865-1914?)

•Values–the individual–the imagination–feeling–emotion–wonder–nature

•Beliefs–Truth of subjective

realities–Inherent innocence

and goodness of humans

• Response to rapid changes– Post war industrialization (war is

a victory of the industrial over the agrarian)

– Urbanization

– Immigration (factory workers)

– Science and technology (e.g. phonograph, light bulb, train, telephone, etc.)

Naturalism (the philosophical roots of realism)

• Idealism and reverence for individual realities are weak and avoid the messy complexities of the “real” world.

• Freud, Darwin, and Marx: Human actions are driven by repressed fears and desires (the unconscious), the physical environment (survival of the fittest), and socioeconomics (relations between the haves and have-nots—or between capital and labor).

• Tell me what your relationship with your mother/father was like, how much money you make, and where you live and I’ll tell you what you fear, desire, and think.

• And on top of all that, the universe is completely, totally, utterly, absolutely indifferent to those fears, desires, and thoughts. It is “amoral” and ambivalent.

The literary/artistic response: Realism (a technique)

• Empiricism trumps intuition and subjectivity: truth is verified by experience.

• Observation of the objective and the individual response to it.

• Mimetic art: portray life as it is lived in the world of conditions.

• That is, portray ordinary people (e.g. Harte’s outcasts of poker flat, Crane’s boatmen and hotel guests, London’s dying men),

• speaking like ordinary people (e.g. Twain’s storyteller, the characters in The Awakening),

• struggling against their fears/desires (e.g. Edna, Farquar), their immediate physical environment (e.g. “The Open Boat,” “The Law of Life,” “To Build a Fire”), and social/economic forces (e.g. the Swede, Daisy Miller, Sylvia)

Modernism 1914-1945?• 19th century ideas take root, flower, and produce poisoned fruit:• Science becomes “scientism.” Culture created by science/technology—Freud

(unconscious), Darwin (environment), Marx (socioeconomics).

• Birth of mass communication and popular culture—an attack on the “local” and the “commodification” of culture (language, beauty, morality become co-opted, bought, and sold).

• Time/Space relations change: the automobile, suburbs (changes notions of “home,” “here,” and “soon.”)

• “Free market capitalism” rationalizes and institutionalizes disparities between capital and labor (i.e. the haves and have-nots).

• “Great migration”--increases diversity in culture, language, and social structures—and incoherence and stability of communities.

• The biggie: World War I. A new kind of war.

• Bottom line: life is fundamentally different, and “old” or traditional ways of knowing are inadequate. Despair, pessimism, cynicism become the norm.

Alienation: The Heart of Modernism• From culture (“pop culture” and “the masses”).

• From society (the Depression, growing rich/poor gaps).

• From politics (world war and the political “elites”).

• From nature (scientism, technology, urbanization).

• From self (you think what you think and do what you do because of either unconscious drives that are out of your control [Freud] or because of social conditioning out of your control [behavioralists]).

• From meaning (the world is a meaningless, chaotic, Godless place where humans impose meaning): “God is dead”—Nietzsche.

So, what if you wake up one day and realize all the world’s a meaningless mess? What do you do?

• You search for and/or create meaning and clarity.

• Life is a quest for meaning, and the quest, not the particular meaning, becomes the subject of art.

• Allusions to archetypes, mythology, and history are common in modernist literature. They allow the writer and the reader to participate in the crafting of a human history in a meaningless world.

• Perspective, subjectivity, and the experience of these becomes the subject of art (cynical, despair-riddled romantics, sort of).

So what does this mean for literature?• Fragments, unresolved conflicts, and open endings rather than

coherent, resolved wholes.

• Ambiguity, idiosyncrasy, subjectivity, irrationality.

• Literature should be an artistic “experience”—not a lesson or a commentary or something otherwise corrupted by its connection to the world.

• “Art for art’s sake”—form privileged over content.

• Use of the disillusioned “anti-hero”—who lives by a personal code that demands vigilance against traditional, but fraudulent, heroic codes of allegiance to social and political institutions.

• Representation of the inner life—the psychological reality and “flow of experience”—stream of consciousness.

CubismCubism Every aspect of the whole subject,

broken down into fragments, analyzed, reassembled and

portrayed simultaneously in a single dimension.

Woman Playing a Mandolin, Picasso,

The Head of a Woman, Picasso

Dadaism Dadaism Anti-art. Reflected irrationality and cynicism toward social values. Sometimes absurd and playful, emotive and intuitive, and often cryptic. Response to a world

gone mad.

Bride Striped Bare, Marcel Duchamp

Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp

ExpressionismExpressionism

Seeks to present the inner life of humanity rather than its outward appearance.

The Scream, Edvard Munch

Interior of the 4th Dimension, Max Weber

ImpressionismImpressionism

• Depict/evoke the feeling or experience of the thing rather than the thing.

• Focus on light and color, not on lines (believed that we see light not matter).

• Visible brush strokes (calls attention to the individual process of creation).

Water Lilies, Claude Monet

Renoir

Imagism: Early Modernist Poetry

• Use the language of common speech.• Use the exact word and use no extraneous words—

precision and concision.• Avoid clichés.• Create “moods.”• Present a concentrated image (and an image for

concentration).• Suggest, rather than dictate.

Ezra Pound on Imagism:

“An ‘Image’ is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.” An image “gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the greatest works of art.”

“In a Station of the Metro,” Pound (1913)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.

“The Red Wheelbarrow,” WC Williams

so much dependsupon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens.

CubismCubism Every aspect of the whole subject, broken down into

fragments, analyzed, reassembled and portrayed simultaneously in a single

dimension.

Picasso, Picasso, Seated NudeSeated Nude

Picasso, Picasso, The Head of a WomanThe Head of a Woman

Fernand Léger, Fernand Léger, Woman with a CatWoman with a Cat

Dadaism Dadaism Reflected irrationality and

cynicism toward social values. Sometimes absurd and playful, emotive and intuitive, and often cryptic. Response to a world

gone mad. “Anti-art.”

Max Ernst, untitledMax Ernst, untitled

Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Nude Descending a StaircaseStaircase

Marcel Duchamp, Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Bicycle WheelWheel

Hydrometric Demonstration of how to Kill by Temperature, Max Hydrometric Demonstration of how to Kill by Temperature, Max ErnstErnst

ExpressionismExpressionism

Seeks to present the inner life of humanity rather than its outward appearance. A

heightened reality, often via the non-objective use of symbols, stereotyped characters, and

stylization, in order to give objective expression to inner experience

Lavender MistLavender Mist, Jackson , Jackson PollockPollock

Study for WomanStudy for Woman, Willem De , Willem De KooningKooning

SurrealismSurrealism

A means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so

completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a surrealist“(quote from Andre Breton). Drawing heavily on theories

adapted from Sigmund Freud, surrealists saw the unconscious as the wellspring of the

imagination.

Lobster TelephoneLobster Telephone, Salvador , Salvador DaliDali

Persistence of MemoryPersistence of Memory, Salvador , Salvador DaliDali

The Age of EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment, Rene Magritte, Rene Magritte

The Reckless SleeperThe Reckless Sleeper, Rene , Rene MagritteMagritte

I am the WalrusI am the Walrus, Beatles, BeatlesYellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eyeCrabalocker fishwife pornographic priestessBoy you been a naughty girlYou let your knickers downI am the eggman, they are the eggmenI am the walrus, goo goo goo joob

Semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel TowerElementary penguin singing Hare Krishna manYou should have seen them kicking Edgar Alan PoeI am the eggman, they are the eggmenI am the walrus, goo goo goo joob goo goo goo joobGoo goo gooooooooooo jooooob

LoserLoser, Beck, Beck

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkeyButane in my veins and I’m out to cut the junkieWith the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetablesDog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhoseKill the headlights and put it in neutralStock car flamin’ with a loser and the cruise controlBaby’s in reno with the vitamin dGot a couple of couches, sleep on the love-seatSomeone came in sayin’ I’m insane to complainAbout a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirtDon’t believe everything that you breatheYou get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeveSo shave your face with some mace in the darkSavin’ all your food stamps and burnin’ down the trailer park