Modernist fiction

Question 1

Modernist fiction: The Great War (Ernest Hemingway)

Answer 1

• 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)

Question 2

Modernist fiction: Ernest Hemingway

Answer 2

• 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”

Question 3

The 1920s aesthetics

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

Modernist fiction: Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Answer 4

• 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”

Question 5

Modernist fiction: William Faulkner

Answer 5

-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”

Question 6

Harlem Renaissance 1st phase. African- American Literature 1850s

Answer 6

• 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”

Question 7

Harlem Renaissance 2nd phase (1920s-1930s)

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

Harlem Renaissance. Black modernism

Answer 8

• 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.