A.L, 1914-1945

WWI (US involvement, 1917-1918)

-          turning point

-          returning soldiers from rural America yearned for a modern, urban life

-          postwar boom-businesses flourished

-          many Americans went to college

-          the middle class prospered

-          people purchased automobiles and acquired electricity, radios, telephones, cameras, typewriters, sewing machines

  The “Roaring” Twenties

-          Americans fell in love with modern entertainment

-          Movies

-          Jazz music

-          Dancing

-          Daring dress styles (women became known as “flappers”

-          Breakdown of traditional values

-          Young people of the 1920s were known as “the lost generation”

The Great Depression of the 1930s

-          worldwide

-          workers lost jobs, factories shut down, businesses and banks failed, drought turned farmland into a “Dust Bowl”

-          many farmers left the Midwest for California in search of jobs

-          as much as 1/3rd unemployment

-          the government, under president Franklin D. Roosevelt, created jobs in public works and other areas

WW II

-          Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor in December 1941

-          Industrial build-up for the war effort restored prosperity

-          Men went to war, women went to work in factories to produce ships, airplanes, jeeps, supplies

-          War production led to new technologies, including the nuclear bomb

Modernism in American literature, 1914-45

-          a sharp break from the traditions of the past

-          a response to the contradictions and pressures of contemporary life

-          worldwide: more scientific, faster, technological, mechanized, embraced change

-          authors:

+ questioned the “American Dream”

+ Wrote about businessmen, liberated women (flappers), disillusionment with old ideals

Modernist prose and poetry:

-          was short, precise and realistic, not exhaustively detailed

-          was fragmented and disjointed, not cohesive or coherent

-          asked emphasis on individual experience

-          had a small readership, but was influential

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

-          married Zelda Sayre

-          first novel, this side of paradise (1920), became a best-seller

-          published the great Gatsby (1925) – a story about the American dream of the self-made man and the cost of success

-          lived as an ex-patriot writer in Paris, France, 1924-31

-          known as the voice of modern American youth

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

-          an ambulance driver during WW I

-          lived in Paris, F, 1920s

-          the sun also rises (1926) brought him fame

-          a man of adventure-covered the Spanish Civil War, WW II, African safaris

-          the voice of his generation

-          published the old man and the sea (1952)

-          won Pulitzer prize, 1953

-          committed suicide, 1961

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

-          born in the southern USA

-          set his novels in the south

-          experimented with different points of view and voices (outcasts, children, illiterates)

-          known for writing long and complex sentences

-          his themes are: southern tradition, family, community, the land, race, and ambition

-          his best novels include: the sound and the fury (1929), as I lay dying (1930)

Willa Cather (1873-1947)

NOVELS OF SOCIAL AWARENESS

Since the 1890s, A literature contained an undercurrent of social protest. Authors were concerned about safe working and living conditions. This concern continued to the 1930s when writers wanted to improve the welfare of common citizen

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

-          born in Minnesota, worked at a socialist community financed by author Upton Sinclair

Works: Main Street (1920); Babbit (1922); Arrowsmith (1925); elmer Gantry(1927)

-          criticized A materialism, narrowness, and hypocrisy

-          1930-became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)

-          his best work achieves a scientific objectivism-it is almost documentary

-          known for his USA Trilogy, consisting of: The 42nd Parallel (1930),1919 (1932), and  The big money (1936)

-          his work exposes moral corruption of materialistic American society from 1900-1930

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

-          set much of his work in his home state of California

-          noted for his social criticism

-          found virtue in poor farmers living on the land

-          best works include: the grapes of wrath (1939), of mice and men (1937), cannery row (1945), and east of eden (1952)

-          received the nobel prize for literature, 1963

THE HASLEM RENAINSSENCE

-          1920s

-          NY city

-          Jazz, blues, dance, art, drama, literature

-          Writers incorporates blues rhythms and folk culture into their texts

-          Focused in vitality of black culture

Harlem R: Music, poetry

1.       Langston Hughes (1902-67)

-          poet, novelist, playwright, short-story writer, best known for “The Negro speaks of rivers”

2.       Richard Wright (1908-60)

-          born in a poor Mississippi sharecropping family, had only a ninth-grade education

-          became the 1st African-American novelist to reach a general audience

-          inspired by Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis

-          wrote about racial inequality

-          black boy (1945)- his autobiography

-          uncle Tom’s Children (1938)

-          Native son (1940)

3.       Zora Neale hurston (1903-60)

-          born in Florida

-          moved to NY City at age 16

-          a gifted storyteller

-          studied anthropology and collected folklore of her native environment

-          mules and men (1935), a collection of folklore

-          their eyes were watching god (1937)

-          a source of inspiration for younger writers, Alice Walker and Toni Morrrison

AMERICAN DRAMA

-          imitated English and European theater for many years

-          American playwrights began to develop original forms and expressions in the 20th century

-          Modernists realized that plays had the potential to speak to larger audience

1. Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)

-  a great figure of the American theater

- early dramas focused on the working class and poor

- Later works explored psychological drama

- First American playwright to win the noble prize in literature

- desire under the elms (1924)

- Strange interlude (1928)- won the Pulitzer prize

- morning becomes electra (1931)

2. Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)

- Playwright

- Best known for our town (1938), the skin of our teeth (1942), and the bridge of san luis rey (1927)

- Our town:

+ conveys American values

+ is set in a small country town

+ Has kindly parents, mischievious children, and young lovers

 + is a play about life and death