Modernist fiction Flashcards

1
Q

Modernist fiction: The Great War (Ernest Hemingway)

A
  • 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)
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

Modernist fiction: Ernest Hemingway

A
  • 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”
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

The 1920s aesthetics

A
  • 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

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

Modernist fiction: Francis Scott Fitzgerald

A
  • 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”

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

Modernist fiction: William Faulkner

A

-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”

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

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

A
  • 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”

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

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

A
  • 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

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

Harlem Renaissance. Black modernism

A
  • 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.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly