American literature in the

Modern and Post-Modern

Periods
CEM
American literature in the
Modern and Post-Modern
Periods
OBJECTIVES

VOCABULARY WORDS

ESSENTIAL QUESTION
CEM
DISCUSSION
OBJECTIVES
• Explain the context of literature from the modern
And Postmodern Periods; and
• Analyze text From the Specific Periods

VOCABULARY WORDS

ESSENTIAL QUESTION

DISCUSSION
OBJECTIVES
VOCABULARY WORDS
BOMBARD- To hot or FRAGMENTARY(adjective)-
attack(something or someone) consisting parts or pieces; incomplete
constantly or repeatedly; often used
figuratively
PARAGON(noun)- a person or a underscore(verb)- to
thing that may serve as excellent or emphasize(something) or show the
perfect model or example. importance of (something)

SUBJECTIVISM(noun)- A doctrine
that emphasizes individual
experience, feeling, or apprehension

ESSENTIAL QUESTION

DISCUSSION
VOCABULARY

ESSENTIAL QUESTION
How is modern and post-modern
American literature a reflection of its
society?

DISCUSSION
 ESSENTIAL QUESTION

DISCUSSION
MODERNIST PERIOD(1910 to 1945)
Advances in science and technology in Western countries rapidly
intensified at the start of the 20th century and brought about a sense of
unprecedented progress. The devastation of World War I and the Great
Depression also caused widespread suffering in Europe and the United States.
These contradictory impulses can be found swirling within modernism, a
movement in the arts defined first and foremost as a radical break from the past.
But this break was often an act of destruction, and it caused a loss of faith in
traditional structures and beliefs. Despite, or perhaps because of, these
contradictory impulses, the modernist period proved to be one of the richest and
most productive in American literature.

MODERNIST PERIOD
DISCUSSION

MODERNIST PERIOD
A sense of disillusionment and loss pervades much American
modernist fiction. That sense may be centered on specific
individuals, or it may be directed toward American society or
toward civilization generally. It may generate a nihilistic,
destructive impulse, or it may express hope at the prospect of
change.

NOTABLE WRITERS
MODERNIST PERIOD

NOTABLE WRITERS

F. Scott Fitzgerald skewered the American Dream in The Great

Gatsby (1925).
Richard Wright exposed and attacked American racism in Native Son (1940).

Zora Neale Hurston told the story of a Black woman’s three marriages in
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).

Ernest Hemingway’s early novels The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell
to Arms (1929) articulated the disillusionment of the Lost Generation.

NOTABLE WRITERS
 DISCUSSION

NOTABLE WRITERS

Willa Cather told hopeful stories of the American frontier, set mostly on the
Great Plains, in O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918).

William Faulkner used stream-of-consciousness monologues and other

formal techniques to break from past literary practice in The Sound and the
Fury (1929).

John Steinbeck depicted the difficult lives of migrant workers in Of Mice

and Men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939).

NOTABLE WRITERS
NOTABLE WRITERS

NOTABLE WRITERS
T.S. Eliot was an American by birth and, as of 1927, a British subject by
choice. His fragmentary, multivoiced The Waste Land (1922) is the
quintessential modernist poem, but his was not the dominant voice
among American modernist poets.

Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg evocatively described the regions—

New England and the Midwest, respectively—in which they lived.

The Harlem Renaissance produced a rich coterie of poets, among them

Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Alice Dunbar
Nelson.

Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912 and made

it the most important organ for poetry not just in the United States but for
the English-speaking world.

NOTABLE WRITERS
 NOTABLE WRITERS

NOTABLE WRITERS
During the 1920s Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, and E.E. Cummings
expressed a spirit of revolution and experimentation in their poetry.

Drama came to prominence for the first time in the United States in the early 20th
century. Playwrights drew inspiration from European theater but created plays that were
uniquely and enduringly American.

Eugene O’Neill was the foremost American playwright of the period. His Long Day’s
Journey into Night (written 1939–41, performed 1956) was the high point of more than
20 years of creativity that began in 1920 with Beyond the Horizon and concluded with
The Iceman Cometh (written 1939, performed 1946).

During the 1930s Lillian Hellman, Clifford Odets, and Langston Hughes wrote plays that
exposed injustice in America.

Thornton Wilder presented a realistic (and enormously influential) vision of small-town

America in Our Town, first produced in 1938.
POST MODERNIST PERIOD(1945-PRESENT)
 NOTABLE WITERS

POST MODERNIST PERIOD(1945-PRESENT)

the Postmodernist period occurred directly after the Modernist period.
Events that inspired this movement were the end of World War II, the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights
movement. Postmodernism works were characterized by multiple
qualities. These contemporary works often featured ordinary places
and portray a release from meaning, a desire to correct the past, and a
desire to enjoy oneself.
With the end of World War II and the discovery of the holocaust and the
atomic bomb, American society began to see reality as subjective. New types
of art displayed this new mindset, as well as the literature of the time period,
did. There was also a strong desire to correct the past and right the wrongs
that occurred during both of World Wars.

POST MODERNIST PERIOD

HISTORY

POST MODERNIST PERIOD

With advances in technology and rights, Americans could better
define who they were. Americans now saw themselves as a major
world power because of their atomic bombs. Women and African
Americans also began developing a voice and identity distinct in
American culture. With people like Martin Luther King and Malcolm
X leading the Civil Rights Movement, the African American identity
started becoming recognized by society. Because not everyone
supported this, racism also became another important theme of the
Contemporary era.
These events influenced the writings of this era that display the
diversity, materialism, and pride seen throughout America. Authors
began to describe everyday life and new technology.
Postmodernism focused on the present and the future. It was and is
an ongoing, evolving period of American literature.

THEMES
 POST MODERNIST PERIOD(1945-
PRESENT)

THEMES
The Postmodernist period focuses on several themes that are evident in the
works of the time period. The themes of identity, racism and a search for
goodness in humanity are the main themes of this time period. Identity is a
theme commonly found in many African American works as they began to write
about their culture and heritage. The theme of identity can also be seen in the
women’s civil rights movement of the time where women fought for their place in
society. From the Civil Rights Movement also comes the theme of Racism. It is
shown in To Kill A Mockingbird.
The title of “Postmodernism” fits well within this era because it depicts how
people reacted to the events of the modern era. During the modern era, two
major World Wars and The Great Depression left many Americans looking for
hope in society. The holocaust and the atomic bombs left Americans searching
for hope in humanity. The authors tried to reflect society and humanity in a way
that showed that there was still some goodness left in it.

NOTABLE AUTHORS
THEMES

NOTABLE AUTHORS

John Hershey: Author of Hiroshima, The Wall, A Single Pebble, The War Lover,
and Fling and Other Stories

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Author of "Constantly Risking Absurdity," City Lights,

Howl and Other Poems, and A Coney Island of the Mind

Theodore Roethke: Author of "Cuttings," Open House, The Waking, The Far
Field, The Lost Son, and Words for the Wind

Robert Hayden: Author of "Frederick Douglass," and A Ballad of Remembrance

NOTABLE AUTHORS

James Baldwin: Author of "The Rockpile," and Go Tell It on the Mountain

John Fitzgerald Kennedy: Author of his Inaugural Address

Martin Luther King Jr.: Author of "Letter from Birmingham City Jail“

Arthur Miller: Author of All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and
The Last Yankee

Julia Alvarez: Author of "Antojos," Homecoming, The Other Side, The Woman I
Kept to Myself, and In the Time of the Butterflies
THEMES

NOTABLE AUTHORS
Harper Lee: Author of To Kill A Mockingbird

Ian Frazier: Author of "Coyote v. Acme," Dating Your Mom, Family, On the Rez,
and The Fish's Eye

Anna Quindlen: Author of "One Day, Now Broken in Two," Object Lessons, Black
and Blue, One True Thing, and Blessings

Rita Dove: Author of "For the Love of Books," Thomas and Beulah, On the Bus
with Rosa Parks, and American Smooth

SUMMARY
NOTABLE AUTHORS

SUMMARY
• Writers challenged the norms and traditional practices of writing
• They broke away from seemingly realist paragon that already dominated the
american literature
• Modernism and postmodernism underscored that literary writing has to be
“free”
• Writers of these periods are unconventional as they deconstructed the norms
in writing
• Distortions are not regarded as rebellious acts of writing such “delineations”
are the unique features of modern and post modern works

REFERENCES
SUMMARY

REFERENCES

Luebering, J. E.(2022).Periods of american literature.Britanicca.

Https://www.Britannica.Com/list/periods-of-american-literature

Saylar, J. (N.D.).Postmodernism. American literature.

Http://jordansylaramericanliterature.Weebly.Com/the-postmodernist-period.Html#:~:text=1945%2d
present,and%20the%20civil%20rights%20movement
.
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