The Modernist Period (1910-1945)
Introduction
Spanning from 1910 to 1945, the era of Modernism provided the reader with a glimpse of an author’s perspective of disillusionment, loneliness, and fragmentation. This literary period began as a result of the start of World War I. Writers, such as Cummings, Hemingway, and Passos were authors who experienced the war firsthand, and they were able to give a unique perspective of the war compared to authors who only read about it. In “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town,” Cummings displays the fragmentation of a bleak picture of life through confusion. During the Modernist era, imagism showed the rejection of the poetic forms in the nineteenth century. Imagist poets used ordinary language and free verse in order to produce concentrated pictures. Ezra Pound was the father of imagism because his poetry captures the ideas of imagism. ”In a Station of the Metro” shows how Pound creates imagism because it is concise and simple. Expatriates, such as T.S. Eliot, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Pound compose the group of authors known as the “Lost Generation.” The Lost Generation is composed of authors who established themselves during World War I.
Throughout the 1920’s, the economy of America greatly wavered. When the prohibition of alcohol occurred, Americans experienced a short recession. After the recession, there was an economic boom during the Jazz Age which is known as the Roaring 20’s. F. Scott Fitzgerald greatly depicted the Roaring 20’s in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald displays the disillusionment in Gatsby’s life by allowing Gatsby to finally be with his love Daisy, but Gatsby realizes having her is not as marvelous as he expected. Shortly after this period of joy in America, the Stock Market Crash happened in 1929. The Stock Market Crash was just the beginning of the Great Depression which resulted in a great deal of pain for Americans. John Steinbeck shows the effects of the Great Depression in The Grapes of Wrath by writing about the Joad family. In chapter three of the book, a turtle represents the everyday person, such as the Joad’s, while the embankment the turtle has to cross symbolizes the hardships and struggles that one endures.
After the Great Depression, the United States eventually enters World War II in 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The United States fired back by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan: one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. “Peace and the atomic age had arrived.” Due to the harshness of the World War II, authors reflected the despair produced in their lives by the war. Hemingway’s “In Another Country” encompasses the major ideas associated with Modernist literature. The injured soldiers have disillusionment because they believed they would get help from the physical therapy machines. Since the American narrator is in Italy, he feels isolated. The uncertainty of the soldiers is whether or not they will be able to fully recover from their injuries. Modernism is an era that captures the essence of the pain that people endured from 1910 to 1945.
Throughout the 1920’s, the economy of America greatly wavered. When the prohibition of alcohol occurred, Americans experienced a short recession. After the recession, there was an economic boom during the Jazz Age which is known as the Roaring 20’s. F. Scott Fitzgerald greatly depicted the Roaring 20’s in The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald displays the disillusionment in Gatsby’s life by allowing Gatsby to finally be with his love Daisy, but Gatsby realizes having her is not as marvelous as he expected. Shortly after this period of joy in America, the Stock Market Crash happened in 1929. The Stock Market Crash was just the beginning of the Great Depression which resulted in a great deal of pain for Americans. John Steinbeck shows the effects of the Great Depression in The Grapes of Wrath by writing about the Joad family. In chapter three of the book, a turtle represents the everyday person, such as the Joad’s, while the embankment the turtle has to cross symbolizes the hardships and struggles that one endures.
After the Great Depression, the United States eventually enters World War II in 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The United States fired back by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan: one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. “Peace and the atomic age had arrived.” Due to the harshness of the World War II, authors reflected the despair produced in their lives by the war. Hemingway’s “In Another Country” encompasses the major ideas associated with Modernist literature. The injured soldiers have disillusionment because they believed they would get help from the physical therapy machines. Since the American narrator is in Italy, he feels isolated. The uncertainty of the soldiers is whether or not they will be able to fully recover from their injuries. Modernism is an era that captures the essence of the pain that people endured from 1910 to 1945.
Historical Happenings
T.S. Eliot
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On September 26, 1888, Thomas Stearns Eliot, who is better known as T. S. Eliot, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Thomas’ father was Henry Ware Eliot, who was the president of Hydraulic-Press Brick Company, and his mother was Charlotte Champe Stearns, who was a teacher. Eliot was born into a wealthy family, and he was the youngest of seven children.
From 1906 to 1909, T. S. Eliot attended Harvard College. While in the Harvard library in 1908, Eliot found Arthur Symon’s The Symbolist Movement in Literature which helped initiate his love for poetry because he discovered Jules Laforgue’s poem. In 1910, Eliot went to Sorbonne to earn a postgraduate degree where he met Jean Verdenal, who became one of Eliot’s friends. Later, Eliot dedicated “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to Verdenal because he was killed in the battle of the Dardenelles. After staying in Paris for one year, Eliot returned to Harvard to seek a doctorate in philosophy. In 1914, Eliot decided to move back to England and reside there permanently.
In June of 1915, T. S. Eliot married Vivien Haigh-Wood who he met through Harvard friend, Scofield Thayer. The couple never had children. Vivien had a short-lived affair with Bertrand Russell. In order to support himself, Eliot became a teacher which allowed him to have enough money to return to poetry.
In 1917, T. S. Eliot published Prufrock and Other Observations which gained him fame. Ezra Pound was the first person to see Eliot’s poetic genius, and they eventually became friends. Since Eliot struggled financially, Ezra and Dorothy Pound helped fund the printing of the book. In 1919, Eliot suffered with the death of his father because he felt he was never able to mend bad feelings due to his marriage and his emigration to London. When T.S. Eliot published The Waste Land, he was deemed as the most influential poet of his time. The Waste Land illustrated a picture of bareness for the reader. In T.S. Eliot’s poetry, he had a tendency to include disillusionment and a fractured existence which were common themes during the literary time period of Modernism. In 1927, Eliot became an official British citizen, and he also entered the Anglican Church. Two years later in 1929, Eliot’s mother passed away.
T. S. Eliot’s marriage continually worsened, but he would not divorce Vivien because of his Anglican beliefs. In 1933, they separated, and during this time, it was determined that Vivien was mentally ill. In 1943, Eliot composed Four Quartets which reflected his beliefs as a Christian writer. On January 22, 1947, Vivien died because of a heart attack. In 1948, T. S. Eliot was given the Nobel Prize for literature. In January of 1956, Eliot got married to Valerie Fletcher who was also a poet. On January 4, 1965, Thomas Stearns Eliot died in London due to emphysema. When T. S. Eliot passed away, Robert Giroux, an editor, wrote about Eliot, “the world became a lesser place.”
Works Cited:
"T.S. Eliot." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.
From 1906 to 1909, T. S. Eliot attended Harvard College. While in the Harvard library in 1908, Eliot found Arthur Symon’s The Symbolist Movement in Literature which helped initiate his love for poetry because he discovered Jules Laforgue’s poem. In 1910, Eliot went to Sorbonne to earn a postgraduate degree where he met Jean Verdenal, who became one of Eliot’s friends. Later, Eliot dedicated “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to Verdenal because he was killed in the battle of the Dardenelles. After staying in Paris for one year, Eliot returned to Harvard to seek a doctorate in philosophy. In 1914, Eliot decided to move back to England and reside there permanently.
In June of 1915, T. S. Eliot married Vivien Haigh-Wood who he met through Harvard friend, Scofield Thayer. The couple never had children. Vivien had a short-lived affair with Bertrand Russell. In order to support himself, Eliot became a teacher which allowed him to have enough money to return to poetry.
In 1917, T. S. Eliot published Prufrock and Other Observations which gained him fame. Ezra Pound was the first person to see Eliot’s poetic genius, and they eventually became friends. Since Eliot struggled financially, Ezra and Dorothy Pound helped fund the printing of the book. In 1919, Eliot suffered with the death of his father because he felt he was never able to mend bad feelings due to his marriage and his emigration to London. When T.S. Eliot published The Waste Land, he was deemed as the most influential poet of his time. The Waste Land illustrated a picture of bareness for the reader. In T.S. Eliot’s poetry, he had a tendency to include disillusionment and a fractured existence which were common themes during the literary time period of Modernism. In 1927, Eliot became an official British citizen, and he also entered the Anglican Church. Two years later in 1929, Eliot’s mother passed away.
T. S. Eliot’s marriage continually worsened, but he would not divorce Vivien because of his Anglican beliefs. In 1933, they separated, and during this time, it was determined that Vivien was mentally ill. In 1943, Eliot composed Four Quartets which reflected his beliefs as a Christian writer. On January 22, 1947, Vivien died because of a heart attack. In 1948, T. S. Eliot was given the Nobel Prize for literature. In January of 1956, Eliot got married to Valerie Fletcher who was also a poet. On January 4, 1965, Thomas Stearns Eliot died in London due to emphysema. When T. S. Eliot passed away, Robert Giroux, an editor, wrote about Eliot, “the world became a lesser place.”
Works Cited:
"T.S. Eliot." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.
Key Authors
- T.S. Eliot- winner of Nobel Prize for Literature; author of The Waste Land, Four Quartets, Murder in the Cathedral, The Cocktail Party, and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
- Ezra Pound- inspired the dramatic changes in American poetry that characterized the Modern Age; author of “A Few Don’ts”, “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”, and “In a Station of the Metro"
- William Carlos Williams- pursued a double career as a poet and a pediatrician; author of Spring and All, In the American Grain, “The Red Wheelbarrow”, “The Great Figure”, and “This is Just to Say”
- Hilda Doolittle(H.D.)- an Imagist poet; author of Hippolytus Temporizes, Palimpsest, Hedylus, “Pear Tree”, “Heat”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald- distant relative of Francis Scott Key, the writer of “The Star Spangled Banner”; author of This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, The Last Tycoon, and “Winter Dreams”
- John Steinbeck- an author who greatly captured what it was like to live through the Great Depression of the 1930’s; author of Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, The Pearl, East of Eden, and The Winter of Our Discontent
- E.E. Cummings- a skillful satirist whose poems had a tendency to be unconventional in form and style; author of The Complete Poems, “old age sticks”, and “anyone lived in a pretty how town”
- Wallace Stevens- one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; author of Harmonium, Transport to Summer, Ideas of Order, and Collected Poems
- Archibald MacLeish- trained as a lawyer but decided to pursue a career in poetry; author of “Arcs Poetica”
- Marianne Moore- editor of The Dial; author of Poems, and “Poetry”
- W.H. Auden- earned the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for The Age of Anxiety; author of The Double Man, For the Time Being, and “The Unknown Citizen”
- Ernest Hemingway- his fiction expressed the sentiments of many members of the post-World War I generation; author of In Our Time, The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea, and “In Another Country”
- Sherwood Anderson- an author and successful businessman; author of Winesburg, Ohio, and “The Corn Planting”
- Eudora Welty- stories and novels capture life in the deep South; author of “Death of a Traveling Salesman” and “A Worn Path”
- Carl Sandburg- greatly captured the spirit of industrial America; author of Chicago Poems, Cornhuskers, Smoke and Steel, Slabs of the Sunburnt West, “Chicago”, and “Grass”
- Katherine Anne Porter- life spanned World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the rise of the nuclear age; author of “Maria Concepcion”, Flowering Judas, Noon Wine, The Leaning Tower and Other Stories, Ship of Fools, The Never-Ending Wrong, and “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”
- Robert Frost- one of America’s most loved and respected poets; author of A Boy’s Will, North of Boston, “Birches”, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “Mending Wall”, “Out, Out”, “The Gift Outright”, and “Acquainted With the Night”
- William Faulkner- an American author and Nobel Prize Laureate; author of Soldier’s Pay, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Gunga Din, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, The Unvanquished, The Hamlet, Intruder in the Dust, and “A Rose for Emily”
- James Thurber- literary works generally evolved from his own experiences; author of The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities, The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments, Fables for Our Time, My World and Welcome to It, and “The Night the Ghost Got In”
- E.B. White- influenced by philosophies of Henry David Thoreau; author of Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and “Here is New York”
- Zora Neale Hurston- a pioneering force in the documentation of African American culture; author of Dust Tracks on a Road, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Jonah’s Gourd Vine
- Langston Hughes- the most prolific and successful African American writer in the country; author of The Weary Blues, The Dream Keeper, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, “I, Too”, “Dream Variations”, and “Refugee in America”
- Claude McKay- in his writing, he evoked the colors and rhythms of life on his native island of Jamaica; author of Songs of Jamaica and “The Tropics in New York”
- Countee Cullen- used traditional forms and methods in his poetry; author of Color, Copper Sun, The Ballad of the Brown Girl, and “From the Dark Tower”
- Arna Bontemps- one of the most scholars figures of the Harlem Renaissance; author of Black Thunder, Hold Fast to Dreams, and “A Black Man Talks of Reaping”
- Jean Toomer- interested in the cultural roots of his people; author of Cane and “Storm Ending”
Literary Themes
In Modernist literature, authors focus on themes of fragmentation, loneliness, and disillusionment. Thomas Stearns Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is an excellent example of the fragmentation in literature. Eliot describes how J. Alfred is seeking to impress women. Eliot illustrated the fragmentation of J. Alfred because he showed how the man was a divided self. Since J. Alfred was not complete, he was also insecure. J. Alfred felt that he was never good enough. The theme of loneliness is a significant component of the literature during this time period. Ernest Hemingway composed “In Another Country” which displayed the loneliness of an American soldier among Italian soldiers who all suffered injuries while fighting in World War I. “In Another Country” also provides the reader with disillusionment of the soldiers because they believed they would get aid from the physical therapy machines, but the doctors were actually uncertain of the soldiers fully recover. F. Scott Fitzgerald exhibited disillusionment in The Great Gatsby by Gatsby telling Nick that he will recreate the past with his love Daisy. After five years of waiting to be with Daisy, Gatsby’s dream has ultimately ended. Gatsby believed that he could still get married to Daisy, but his hope concluded when he was killed.