UNIT 3

Modernism and Post-modernism

in American literature (1915-1999)

M.A Nguyen Thi Thuy Dung

1
v1.0022110231
 WARMING UP

Ernest Hemingway Thomas Pynchon

2
v1.0022110231
 OBJECTIVES

After the the lesson, you will:

• Gain some knowledge about Modernism in American literature: historical background, characteristics and
themes
• Gain some knowledge about Post-modernism in American literature: historical background, characteristics
and themes
• Be able to compare the two literary periods

3
v1.0022110231
 OVERVIEW

3.1 Modernism Literature

3.2 Post-modern Literature

3.3 Comparison between Modernism and Post-modernism

4
v1.0022110231
 3.1. MODERNISM LITERATURE

3.1.1. Causes of the 3.1.2. Characteristics of

Modernist Temper modernist writing

3.1.3. Techniques in
modernist works

5
v1.0022110231
 3.1.1. CAUSES OF THE MODERNIST TEMPER

• World War I (gruesome view of death & technology)

• Urbanization
• Industrialization
• Harlem Renaissance
• The Jazz Age
• Influence of Austrian Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
• Influence of German Karl Marx (1818-1883)

6
v1.0022110231
 3.1.1. CAUSES OF THE MODERNIST TEMPER (cont.)

• World War I

7
v1.0022110231
 3.1.1. CAUSES OF THE MODERNIST TEMPER (cont.)

• Industrialization

8
v1.0022110231
 3.1.1. CAUSES OF THE MODERNIST TEMPER (cont.)

• Urbanization

9
v1.0022110231
 3.1.1. CAUSES OF THE MODERNIST TEMPER (cont.)

1930’s: The Depression

“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry
and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

10
v1.0022110231
 3.1.1. CAUSES OF THE MODERNIST TEMPER (cont.)

The Jazz Age & Harlem Renaissance

To F. Scott Fitzgerald it was an “age of miracles, an age of art, an age of excess, an age of satire.”

11
v1.0022110231
 3.1.1. CAUSES OF THE MODERNIST TEMPER (cont.)

SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939): Invented the use of psychoanalysis as a

means to study one’s “unconscious”

12
v1.0022110231
 3.1.1. CAUSES OF THE MODERNIST TEMPER (cont.)

KARL MARX (1818-1883)

• “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
• “The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the
bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are
its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

13
v1.0022110231
 3.1.1. CAUSES OF THE MODERNIST TEMPER (cont.)

Influences of Freud and Marx

• Modernist writers focused more on the inner being as opposed to the social being.
• Marxism instructed even non-Marxist artists that the individual was being lost in a mass society.
• Some modern writers believed that art should celebrate the working classes, attack capitalism, and forward
revolutionary goals, while others believed that literature should be independent and non-political.

14
v1.0022110231
 3.1.1. CAUSES OF THE MODERNIST TEMPER (cont.)

Shifts in the Modern Nation

• from countryside to city
• from farm to factory
• from native born to new citizen
• introduction to “mass” culture (pop culture)
• continual movement
• split between science and the literary tradition

15
v1.0022110231
 3.1.2. CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERNIST WRITING

• A movement away from realism into abstractions

• A deliberate complexity, even to the point of elitism, forcing readers to be very well-educated in order to read
these works.
• A high degree of aesthetic self-consciousness or awareness
• Questions of what constitutes the nature of being
• A breaking with tradition and conventional modes of form, resulting in fragmentation and bold, highly
innovative experimentation
• Along with the social realist and proletarian (amateur) prose of the 1920s and 1930s came a significant
outpouring of political and protest poetry.

16
v1.0022110231
 3.1.3. TECHNIQUES IN MODERNIST WORKS

• The modernists were highly conscious that they were being modern—that they were “making it new”—and
this consciousness is manifest in the modernists’ radical use of a kind of formlessness.
▪ Collapsed plots (non chronological or logical; sometimes no structure)
▪ Fragmentary techniques (bits and pieces come together, often vignettes and shorter)
▪ Shifts in perspective, voice, and tone (narrator becomes a more innocent, naïve voice)
▪ Stream-of-consciousness point of view (the flow of thought, random and irrational)

17
v1.0022110231
 3.2. POST MODERNISM

3.2.1. Historical 3.2.3. Qualities and

3.2.2. Common traits
background Characteristics

3.2.6. Examples of
3.2.4. Literary themes 3.2.5. New Criticism Postmodern writers and
works

18
v1.0022110231
 3.2.1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

19
v1.0022110231
 3.2.2. COMMON TRAITS

• Mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader

• No heroes
• Concern with individual in isolation
• Social issues as writers align with feminist & ethnic groups
• Usually humorless
• Narratives
• Metafiction
• Present tense
• Magic realism

20
v1.0022110231
 3.2.3. QUALITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS

• Erodes distinctions between classes of people

• Insists that values are not permanent but only "local" or "historical"
• Vision and viewpoint became an essential aspect of the modernist novel as well. No longer was it sufficient
to write a straightforward third-person narrative or (worse yet) use a pointlessly intrusive narrator. The way
the story was told became as important as the story itself.
• Henry James, William Faulkner, and many other American writers experimented with fictional points of view
(some are still doing so). James often restricted the information in the novel to what a single character would
have known. Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury (1929) breaks up the narrative into four sections,
each giving the viewpoint of a different character (including a mentally disabled boy).

21
v1.0022110231
 3.2.4. LITERARY THEMES

• Identity (culture and heritage, women’s rights)

• Racism
• Goodness in humanity

22
v1.0022110231
 3.2.5. NEW CRITICISM

To analyze such modernist novels and poetry, a school of "new criticism" arose in the United States, with a
new critical vocabulary. New critics hunted the "epiphany" (moment in which a character suddenly sees the
transcendent truth of a situation, a term derived from a holy saint's appearance to mortals); they "examined"
and "clarified" a work, hoping to "shed light" upon it through their "insights."

23
v1.0022110231
 3.2.6. EXAMPLES OF POSTMODERN WRITERS AND WORKS

• Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner's Song
• Feminist & social issue poets: Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Bill Levertov, Amiri Baraka, Toni
Morrison, Alice Walker
• Miller’s The Death of a Salesman & The Crucible (some consider Modern)
• Lawrence & Lee's Inherit the Wind
• Capote’s In Cold Blood
• Stories & novels by Kurt Vonnegut
• J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye
• Beat Poets: Kerouac, Burroughs, & Ginsberg
• Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

24
v1.0022110231
 3.3. COMPARISON BETWEEN MODERNISM AND POST-MODERNISM

Modernism vs Postmodernism in Literature

Modernism in Literature Postmodernism in Literature

A movement in literature that was predominant in 20th A response against modernism and was marked by
DEFINITION century, characterized by a strong and deliberate its reliance on narrative techniques like unreliable
break from the traditional styles of prose and poetry narrator, fragmentation, parody, etc.

Multiple meanings within a single literary work or

FOCUS Inner self and consciousness were predominant
complete lack of meaning
Fragmentation, intertextuality, unreliable narrator,
TECHNIQUES The stream of consciousness, irony, satire
parody, dark humor and paradox
STYLES Deliberately broke away from earlier styles Deliberately used a mix of earlier styles
Samuel Beckett, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce,
Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, John Barth,
Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Sylvia
AUTHORS Vladimir Nabokov, Umberto Eco, Richard Kalich,
Plath, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Butler Yeats, and
Giannina Braschi, John Hawkes, and Kurt Vonnegu
Virginia Woolf
25
v1.0022110231
 SUMMARY

The lesson covers 3 main parts:

• Modernism literature
• Post-modernism literature
• Comparison between Modernism and Post-modernism

26
v1.0022110231
 GLOSSARY

• Modernism
• Industrialization
• Urbanization
• Consciousness
• Metafiction

27
v1.0022110231
 FAQ - Frequently asked questions

1. What is meant by modernism in literature?

Modernism is a movement in literature that calls for a rejection of past literarty traditions in favor of bold
experimentation in literary techniques and structure to reflect the disillusionment of the American society after
World War I.
2. What is an example of modernism?
Some examples of literature from Modernism would be F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, T.S. Eliot's
poem The Wasteland, and Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms.
3. What are the main themes of modernism?
Some of the major themes of Modernist literature include the following: brokenness of the American people after
WWI and the advent of subjective truth; surrounding oneself in decadence to distract from a pervading spiritual
emptiness; a feeling of disillusionment brought on by the horrific atrocities of war and a lack of faith in the
American Dream.
4. What are the elements of modernism in literature?
Some of the elements or techniques used during the Modernism era include fragmentation of subject matter,
stream of consciousness writing, and free verse poetry. 28
v1.0022110231