American Modernism
A century ago, society and life were changing as rapidly and radically as they are in today’s digital age. Quicker communication, faster production, and wider circulation of people, goods, and ideas—in addition to the outbreak of World War I—produced a profoundly new understanding of the world, and artists in the early years of the 20th century responded to these issues with both exhilaration and anxiety. Freeing themselves from the restraints of tradition, modern artists developed groundbreaking pictorial strategies that reflect this new shift in perception. Like their artist counterparts, writers in the first decades of the twentieth century were interested in finding new ways to express the realities of a new world. Some were conservative at heart, seeking a new tradition that would stand against the crass shallowness of an impersonal, mechanized society; others welcomed change, celebrating the new possibilities of the emerging mass culture. The one they had in common, perhaps, is the impulse, in poet Ezra Pound's words, to "make it new."
Characteristics of Modernism
In general, modernist writing shared the following concerns or themes.
Formal experimentation Whether trying new language effects or multiple narrators, modernist writers stretched the boundaries of what was acceptable in poetry, theater, and fiction. Fragmentation of certainties There's a reason the Chicago Art Institute chose the name Shatter Rupture Break for its modernist exhibition: writers and artists of this time were exploring the dislocations and disjunctions of the self, of culture, of society wrought by the modern world. Interior perception The birth of modern psychology brought a new interest in the ways perception shapes reality, as writers attempted to show in poetry and narrative the world as experienced by the human mind. Flawed heroes The romantic hero did not entirely cease to exist in this era, but the hero became more complicated, fatalistic, or disillusioned. Symbolism Rejecting the emphasis of the realist tradition on direct, representational forms, modernists preferred expressive, symbolic language and images that would show a reality beyond or behind the everyday surface. The Modern City Colossal, bustling, mechanized, ablaze with electric lights and advertising, the city was the ultimate figure of modernity. Whether appalled or exhilarated, modernist writers again and again looked to the city not only as their setting but their theme. Examples of Modernism
The Great Figure
The poet William Carlos Williams published this short poem in 1921. Notice the way his imagery and careful line breaks attempt to capture the experience of seeing the rushing firetruck in the nighttime city, rather than the firetruck itself. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot's 1915 poem was a hallmark of "high modernism." Eliot's audacious use of imagery and metaphor and his satiric contrast of classical allusion and contemporary social blandness marked him as a major new voice, and his character Prufrock set a type for the alienated, uncertain hero that persists to this day.
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