Tues, April 16 Spoon River Performances

Performances today.....look over the rubric.
Due Wednesday: please read the introductory notes on Modernism   handout / copies below. Make sure to note very carefully the bolded paragraph.
Due Thursday:  vocabulary 11   copy on Monday's blog

Introductory Notes on Modernism

World War I was one of the bloodiest and most tragic conflicts ever to occur. When the initial advances of the German forces were stalled, the conflict was transformed into a trench war. The introduction of the machine gun made it virtually impossible for one side to launch a successful attack on its opponents’ trenches, however, and the war dragged on for several years with little progress being made by either side. Each unsuccessful attack resulted in the deaths of thousands of soldiers, and the war ultimately claimed almost an entire generation of European men.

President Wilson wanted the United States to remain neutral in the war, but that proved impossible. In 1915, a German submarine sank the Lusitania, pride of British merchant fleet. More than 1200 people on board lost their lives, including 128 Americans. After the sinking, the American public’s opinion tended to favor the Allies—England, France, Italy and Russia. When Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare two years later, the United States abandoned neutrality and joined the Allied cause.

At first the reality of the war did not sink in. Americans were confident and carefree as the troops set off overseas. That cheerful mood soon passed. A number of famous American writers saw war firsthand and learned of its horror. E.E. Cummings, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos served as ambulance drivers. Hemingway later served in the Italian infantry and was seriously wounded.

The end of the Great War in November 1918 brought little peace to Woodrow Wilson. His dream of the United States joining the League of Nations to prevent future wars failed. The war’s end brought little peace to the big cities of America either. Prohibition made the sale of liquor illegal, leading to bootlegging, speakeasies, widespread law-breaking and sporadic warfare among competing gangs.

Throughout the 1920’s, the nation seemed on a binge. After a brief recession in 1920 and 1921, the economy boomed. New buildings rose everywhere, creating new downtown sections in many city—Omaha, Des Moines and Minneapolis among them. Radio arrived, and so did jazz. Movies became big business, and spectacular movie palaces sprang up across the country. Fads abounded: raccoon coats, flagpole sitting, the Charleston. The great literary interpreter of the Roaring Twenties was F. Scott Fitzgerald. In The Beautiful and the Damned and The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald showed both the glamorous and the pitiful sides of the American Dream.

During the 1920’s, artists and writers flocked to Greenwich Village in New York City. Older buildings in the area, including barns, stables and houses were converted to studios, nightclubs, theaters and shops. In 1923, playwright Eugene O’Neill founded the Greenwich Village Theatre, where experimental dramas were performed. Thomas Wolfe taught English at New York University in the Village, while writing his autobiographical novel, Look Homeward, Angel.

The devastation of World War I brought about an end to the sense of optimism that had characterized the years immediately preceding the war. May people were left with a feeling of uncertainty, disjointedness and disillusionment. No longer trusting the ideas and values of the world out of which the war had developed, people sought to find new ideas that were more applicable to the twentieth-century life. The quest for new ideas extended into literature, and a major literary movement known as Modernism was born.

The Modernists experimented with a wide variety of new approaches and techniques, producing a remarkably diverse body of literature. Yet the Modernists shared a common purpose. They sought to capture the essence of modern life in the form and content of the work. To reflect the fragmentation of the modern world, the Modernist constructed their works out of fragments, omitting the expositions, transitions, resolution and explanations used in traditional literature. In poetry, they abandoned traditional forms in favor of free verse. The themes of their works were usually implied, rather than directed state, creating a sense of uncertainty and forcing reader to draw their own conclusions. In general, Modernist works demanded more from reader that words of earlier American writers.