Modernist fiction Flashcards
Modernist fiction: The Great War (Ernest Hemingway)
- War as a literary theme, writers felt the need to write about being in war
- “A Plunge of Civilization” (war taken to a metaphorical level)
Modernist fiction: Ernest Hemingway
- Individualists characters, rejects society, moves away to risking activities to avoid war.
- Tries to face death to give meaning to life
- Fiction is extremely massive
- Plot: boy meeting a girl but their relationship will never work because they do not communicate well.
- 3 phases:
1. Early work (mid 1920s) - individualism, short stories. “The Sun Also Rises”, “A Farewell to Arm”
2. 1930s - more social. “To Have and To Have Not”, “For Whom The Bells Tolls”
3. 1950s - back to individualism. “The Old Man and the Sea”
The 1920s aesthetics
- Great time of fun, glamour and emergence of jazz
- US profits economically
- Time of liberation
-Conservative VS non-conservative - Social and political repression
- Directed towards modernism consciousness.
- New perceptions led to the emergence of New Literature.
- Made fiction shorter
GEROG LUKACS
WALTER BENJAMIN
BEGGINING OF MODERN FICTION
Modernist fiction: Francis Scott Fitzgerald
- Upper class, technology, jjazz age, rise of new fortunes.
- Wrote mainly for entertainment and dealt deeply with important issues of modernity.
- Autobiographies.
- Alcoholism, drugs, etc.
- Style: sophisticated, elegant, close to Stein.
- Cruel issues in an elegant way, using full sentences with peculiar flow and rhythm.
“Flappers”
“Taps of Reveille”
“Tender is the Night”
Modernist fiction: William Faulkner
-Famous for his experimental localism.
- Stream of consciousness.
- South of the US focusing into small town to show violence and stupidity.
- Reference to social problems.
- Father of fiction
- All his stories are connected.
- Plots: traditional values of the south which becomes industrialized+ violence+ people with dementia issues.
- Psychological horror (black humor)
- Flashback= confusion of narrative voices and characters.
“Go Down Moses”
“These 13”
“As I Lay Dying”
“Yoknapawtawpha and the South”
Harlem Renaissance 1st phase. African- American Literature 1850s
- Genre developed mid-19th century, mainly slave narratives.
- Wanted to describe the cruelties of life under slavery + persistent humanity of persons as slaves.
Frederick Douglass
- “Narrative of the Life of Frederik Douglass, an American Slave
- “My Bondage and my Freedom”
Harriet Jacobs “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”
Harriet Beecher Stowe “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
Harlem Renaissance 2nd phase (1920s-1930s)
- Defence of Black Popular Culture.
- Double consciousness turns into “Black, but also Modernist”
W.E.B DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Zora Noelle, Hurston, Jean Toomer: first writers publishing about black literature.
- Wrote about African-American community + drama+ poetry.
- Political and social issues + fiction.
Alain Locke “The New Negro”
Nella Larsson
Harlem Renaissance. Black modernism
- Less aesthetics less experimental, more thematic.
- Settings and characters about real issues in life (cities showing struggles in the Ghetto)
- Themes: money, alcohol, working urban life.
- Multi-generic.
- Frequently written in different styles (novels + poetry + drama+ short stories)
- Pessimistic genre.
- Experimentalism and innovation in a technical and conceptual way.