American Modernism Flashcards
American Modernism
1901-1939 starting at the turn of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century. London, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, Carlos Williams, Stevens, Eliot, Cather, Gilman, Cullen, Mckay, Dos Passos, Stein, West, O’Niell, Crane, Du Bois, Washington, Millay, Hughes
Jack London
(American) Born in San Fransisco; socialist; went to sea; went to the Yukon for gold rush; writes bout these types of experiences. Also, dogs often appear in his fiction.
White Fang
Jack London (American) about a half dog half wolf that fights and things.
Call of the Wild
Jack London (American) about a pet dog that learns to fight and beats up wolves and in the end becomes “the leader of the pack.”
Sea Wolf
Jack London (American) remembered from its Nietzschean hero, Captain Sea Wolf. Leech gets the girl.
“To Build a Fire”
Jack London (American) about a man who is really cold in the Yukon, trying to build a fire, but can’t. In the end, he decides to go to sleep and dreams about his friends finding him the next day.
Ernest Hemingway
(American) Came out with the iceberg theory—that characters and stories are best developed by only telling a small portion of the details. The rest of the details are “underwater”—we only see the portion that float. Leaves a lot unstated, a lot of gaps. Also, Hemingway famously writes about fish and fishing. He lived in Paris and loved it as a young man.
In Our Time
Ernest Hemingway (American) His first novel. Mostly stories about Hemingway’s experiences as a war journalist. The main character is Nick Adams.
Farewell to Arms
Hemingway (American) Fredric Henry, soldier, and Catherine, nurse, fall in love and leave the Great War. Unfortunately for Henry, Catherine dies in childbirth.
The Sun Also Rises
Hemingway (American) Story of impotent man Jake Barnes and his interest in British socialite Lady Brett Ashley. A Jew, Robert Cohen, also likes Ashley. They all drink a lot, go to Spain, have some famous bullfighting scenes, and Jake Barnes meets an attractive bullfighter named Pedro Romero.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Hemingway (American) Set during the Spanish Civil war, Robert Jordan is an American commissioned to help the Spanish Republicans blow up a bridge. The whole story works up to this detonation. During the story, Robert and a Spanish girl Maria fall in love.
Old Man and the Sea
Hemingway (American) An old man and a boy go out together and catch a really big fish. Unfortunately, as they tow the fish back in, it’s eaten by sharks.
Death in the Afternoon
Hemingway (American) Hemingway’s non-fiction account of the art and sport of bullfighting.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
(American) named the “jazz age”—decade of 1920—and is associated with jazz. The crazy gin-drinking, morally bankrupt and spiritually deprived people he wrote about lived lives similar to his own. He, with Hemingway, Eliot, and Pound, is considered the “lost generation,” a term coined by Gertrude Stein.
Tender is the Night
Fitzgerald (American) Dick and Rosemary— In the novel, Dick is eventually ruined–professionally, emotionally, and spiritually–by his union with Nicole.
This Side of Paradise
Fitzgerald (American) Its hero, Armory Blaine, studies in Princeton, serves in WW I in France. At the end of the story he finds that his own egoism has been the cause of his unhappiness.
The Great Gatsby
Fitzgerald (American) Nick Carraway moves to New York and settles at the less fashionable West Egg. He goes over to East Egg and meets Jay Gatsby, and he parties a lot until Gatsby dies.
Ezra Pound
(American) Innovated imagism with Amy Lowell, who, Pound felt, later took over the project. Pound bitterly called it “Amygism.” He’s the chief of literary modernism, editing T. S. Elliot’s The Wasteland. Helped James Joyce get published. He was a good friend of Gertrude Stein and was also part of the “Lost Generation.” Expatriate writer. But he didn’t produce that much writing that we like a whole lot these days. Also known as “inventor of Chinese poetry” in our day for his “translations.” He knew a ton of languages. Did fascist radio program for Musolini and spent 12 years in American mental hospital.
“A River Merchant’s Wife”
Pound (American) Chinese wife anxiously awaits the return of her husband.
“Hughe Selwyn Mauberly”
Pound (American) talks about Idaho as barbaric land, Pound is in England trying to resuscitate a dead art, poetry. He also laments the “age” and talks about how it didn’t want the right thing.
The Cantos
Pound (American)
The Imagist Manifesto
Pound (American) 1. Direct treatment of the ‘thing’ whether subject or objective. 2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.” Pound’s short “one-image poem” ‘In a Station of the Metro’ is among the most celebrated Imagist works: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / Petals on a wet, black bough.”
William Carlos Williams
Had Puerto Rican heritage. He was American. Friend of Pound. Influenced by Imagism. Said, “No ideas but in things.” He was simultaneously and MD and a poet.
“To Elsie”
William Carlos Williams (American)
“So Much Depends”
William Carlos Williams (American)
The Great Figure
William Carlos Williams (American)
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.
“Spring and All”
William Carlos Williams (American) “Now the grass, tomorrow the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf One by one objects are defined – It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf But now the stark dignity of entrance – Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted they grip down and begin to awaken”
“Sunday Morning”
Wallace Stevens (American)
Poem starts with oranges and late coffee…
Last stanza:
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, “The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
“The Man Whose Pharynx was Bad”
Wallace Stevens (American)
First stanza:
The time of year has grown indifferent.
Mildew of summer and the deepening snow
Are both alike in the routine I know:
I am too dumbly in my being pent.
Last stanza:
One might in turn become less diffident,
Out of such mildew plucking neater mould
And spouting new orations of the cold.
One might. One might. But time will not relent.
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
Wallace Stevens (American)
