20th century American Literature

1. Twentieth Century American
Literature
American Modernisms
Presented by Dr. Grant Bain
University of Arkansas

2. Today’s Workshop
Learn brief historical context for American
modernism.
Sample some works by major poets and fiction
writers of the movement.
Discuss the relationship between modernism and
the Harlem Renaissance

3. Historical Context
Advances in science and technology
Major shifts in political structures
Changing religious institutions and beliefs
Crisis of representation

4. Characteristics of Modernism
Fragmentation
Alienation
Experimentation

5. Modern Themes in Traditional Verse
Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)

6. American Modernist Poetry
William Carlos Williams (1883-
1963)
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

7. American Modernist Poetry
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the
sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted
streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question….
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

8. More Eliot
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the
window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on
the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the
evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from
chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell
asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the
street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you
meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of
hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

9. The Waste Land: The Most Eliot
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches
grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket
no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Onl
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from
either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

10. Modernism and Popular Art
You know nothing? Do you see
nothing? Do you remember
Nothing?”
I remember
Those are pearls that
were his eyes. 125
“Are you alive, or not? Is there
nothing in your head?”
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian
Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
Ragtime
-Came from African American
communities around St. Louis,
MO in the late 1800’s
-Syncopated or “ragged” rhythm
Scott Joplin

11. American Modernist Fiction
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
“Caddy held me and I could hear us
all, and the darkness, and something I
could smell. And then I could see the
windows, where the trees were
buzzing. Then the dark began to go in
smooth, bright shapes, like it always
does, even when Caddy says that I
have been asleep.”
“Because if it were just to hell; if that
were all of it. Finished. If things just
finished themselves. Nobody else
there but her and me. If we could just
have done something so dreadful that
they would have fled hell except us. I
have committed incest I said Father it
was I”

12. American Noir Fiction
Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and
bony, his chin a jutting V under the
more flexible V of his mouth. His
nostrils curved back to make another,
smaller, V. His yellow-grey eyes were
horizontal. The V motif was picked
up again by thickish brows rising
outward from twin creases above a
hooked nose, and his pale brown hair
grew down—from high flat
temples—in a point on his forehead.
He looked rather pleasantly like a
blond Satan.
Dashiell Hammett (1891-1964) -The Maltese Falcon

13. The Dark Side of Nostalgia
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941)
“Wing Biddlebaum, forever frightened and beset
by a ghostly band of doubts, did not think of
himself as in any way part of the life of the town
where he had lived for twenty years. Among all
the people of Winesburg but one had come close
to him. With George Willard, son of Tom Willard,
the proprietor of the New Willard house, he had
formed something like a friendship. George
Willard was the reporter on the Winesburg Eagle
and sometimes in the evenings he walked out
along the highway to Wing Biddlebaum's house.
Now as the old man walked up and down on the
veranda, his hands moving nervously about, he
was hoping that George Willard would come and
spend the evening with him. After the wagon
containing the berry pickers had passed, he went
across the field through the tall mustard weeks
and climbing a rail fence peered anxiously along
the road to the town. For a moment he stood thus,
rubbing his hands together and looking up and
down the road, and then, fear overcoming him,
ran back to walk again upon the porch on his own
house.”
-“Hands”

14. Ernest Hemingway
The girl was looking off at the
line of hills.
They were white in the sun and
the country was brown and dry.
‘They look like white
elephants,’ she said.
‘I’ve never seen one,’ the man
drank his beer.
‘No, you wouldn’t have.’
‘I might have,’ the man said.
‘Just because you say I
wouldn’t have doesn’t prove
anything.’

15. Ernest Hemingway
It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,’ the man said. ‘It’s not really an operation at all.’
The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
‘I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.’
The girl did not say anything.
‘I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all
perfectly natural.’
‘Then what will we do afterwards?’
‘We’ll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.’
The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of the strings of
beads.
‘And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.’
‘I know we will. Yon don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it.’
‘So have I,’ said the girl. ‘And afterwards they were all so happy.’

16. Ernest Hemingway
But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say
things are like white elephants, and you’ll
like it?’
‘I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think
about it. You know how I get when I worry.’
‘If I do it you won’t ever worry?’
‘I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly
simple.’
‘Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about
me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t care about me.’
‘Well, I care about you.’
‘Oh, yes. But I don’t care about me. And I’ll
do it and then everything will be fine.’
‘I don’t want you to do it if you feel that way.’
The girl stood up and walked to the end of the
station
We can have everything.’
‘No, we can’t.’
‘We can have the whole world.’
‘No, we can’t.’
‘We can go everywhere.’
‘No, we can’t. It isn’t ours any more.’
‘It’s ours.’
‘No, it isn’t. And once they take it away, you
never get it back.’
‘But they haven’t taken it away.’

17. The Harlem Renaissance
Broad term for the outpouring of literary
production and experimentation by African
American writers during the early decades of the
twentieth century.
Called the Harlem Renaissance because New
York’s Harlem was a vital center of black artistic
life, although many artists lived and worked
elsewhere.

18. Harlem Renaissance Poetry
Claude McKay (1889-1948)
“America”
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my
youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders
there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring
hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the
sand.

19. Harlem Renaissance Poetry
Langston Hughes (1902-
1967)
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and
older than the flow of human blood in
human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns
were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled
me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the
pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi
when Abe Lincoln went down to New
Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom
turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

20. Harlem Renaissance Fiction
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-
1960)
“Honey, de white man is de ruler
of everything as fur as Ah been
able tuh find out. Maybe it’s
some place way off in de ocean
where de black man is in power,
but we don’t know nothin’ but
what we see. So de white man
throw down de load and tell de
nigger man tuh pick it up. He
pick it up because he have to,
but he don’t tote it. He hand it to
his womenfolks. De nigger
woman is de mule uh de world
so fur as Ah can see.”
-Their Eyes Were Watching God

21. Harlem Renaissance Fiction
Richard Wright (1908-1960)
“Goddamnit, look! We live here and
they live there. We black and they
white. They got things and we ain't.
They do things and we can't. It's just
like livin' in jail.”
“I didn't know I was really alive in
this world until I felt things hard
enough to kill for 'em...I didn’t want
to kill,” Bigger shouted. “But what I
killed for, I am! It must’ve been
pretty deep in me to make me kill! I
must have felt it awful hard to
murder … What I killed for must’ve
been good!”
-Native Son

22. Conclusion
Greatly expanded what could be written and how
authors could write it.
Introduced many new voices to the American
literary scene.
Set the standards for today’s literary production.

23. Further Reading
American Modernist Writers
Poets
Carl Sandburg
Ezra Pound
Wallace Stevens
Fiction Writers
Gertrude Stein
F. Scott Fitzgerald
John Steinbeck
Djuna Barnes
Flannery O’Connor
Harlem Renaissance Writers
Poets
Meredith Brooks
Jean Toomer
George Schuyler
Fiction Writers
James Weldon Johnson
James Baldwin
Jean Toomer
Nella Larsen
Rudolph Fisher