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Intro to Modernism
- 1. Modernity and Modernism,1900– 1945 (Volume F)
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- 11. Modernism • “crisis ofreason” • break with literary conventions • Charles Darwin • Karl Marx • Friedrich Nietzsche • Sigmund Freud • mobility
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- 17. Harlem Renaissance andNegritude
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- 19. Which event hadarguably the greatest impact on the early twentieth century? a. the Russian Revolution of 1917 b. the Great Depression c. the Second World War d. the First World War Test Your Knowledge
- 20. The League ofNations was founded as part of what treaty? a. the Treaty of Versailles b. the Armistice Treaty c. the Treaty of Utrecht d. the Treaty of the League of Nations Test Your Knowledge
- 21. Modernist artists dependedprimarily on which of the following? a. reason b. experimentation c. science d. tradition Test Your Knowledge
- 22. Fiction that includesreferences to itself is called: __________ . a. metafiction b. hyperfiction c. stream of consciousness fiction d. experiential fiction Test Your Knowledge
- 23. Visit the StudySpaceat: http://wwnorton.com/studyspace For more learning resources, please visit the StudySpace site for The Norton Anthology Of World Literature. This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Editor's Notes
- #3 New means of transportation, such as the steamship, the railroad, the automobile, and the airplane, allowed people in the industrialized West to cover vast distances quickly. Other technologies, such as the telegraph and the telephone, allowed them to communicate instantaneously. People were living in large cities, and the world population more than tripled. These transformations can be characterized as modernization. The image shows workmen leaving Platt’s Works, Oldham (1900).
- #4 Those who sought to end war looked to supranational bodies, such as the League of Nations, the United Nations, the European Community, the Organization of American States, and the Organization for African Unity, as the future guarantors of “peaceful coexistence,” a term that gained currency during the Cold War to refer to the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. The image is American propaganda during the Cold War, showing the feared threat of Communism.
- #5 World War I took place mainly in Europe; it was the most mechanized war to date and killed fifteen million people. Only after the United States joined the war in 1917 were the Allies (France, Britain, Italy) able to repel Germany from the Western Front (in Belgium and France). In the East, Germany and Austria-Hungary drove into Russian territory, which led to the establishment of a Communist dictatorship under Lenin. The image is a stereo view showing UK soldiers at Cambrai, in trenches with a tank in the background. The caption reads “Down in a Shell Crater, We Fought Like Kilkenny Cats.”
- #6 Russia’s near-defeat contributed to the Revolution of 1917, with Lenin establishing a Communist “dictatorship of the proletariat.” During the succeeding decades, forced collectivization of agriculture and enterprise (which led to widespread famine), as well as purges of people considered enemies of the Communist Party, caused tens of millions of deaths, both in Russia and in other former territories of the Russian Empire, such as the Ukraine. The photograph shows Lenin speaking to the army in Moskow (1920). The caption reads: “Trotski, who was also present at this famous picture, has been removed from this photograph, which happened often in the Soviet Union.”
- #7 The Treaty of Versailles (1919) formally ended the war, dividing Central and Eastern Europe into smaller nations, and founding the League of Nations, which was unable to demilitarize Germany. The Allies’ demand for reparations contributed to the economic chaos in Germany that, in turn, furthered the cause of the Nazis. The image is a painting by William Orpen, titled The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors , Versailles, 28 th June 1919 (1919). The lengthy caption includes the names of heads of state sitting and standing before a long table. In the front row, Dr. Johannes Bell (Germany) is signing, with Herr Hermann Muller leaning over him. Held in the Imperial War Museum.
- #8 Nazism arose as a National Socialist Movement and came to power under Adolf Hitler in 1933; the Nazis’ agenda included national rearmament and authoritarian politics held together by the glue of anti-Semitism. The photograph shows Hitler (October 1938).The caption reads: “Standing in a Mercedes, Hitler drives through the crowd in Cheb, part of the German-populated Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, which was annexed to Nazi Germany due to the Munich Agreement. “Held by the German Federal Archive.
- #9 Starting in 1941, Hitler authorized the Final Solution, aimed at destroying the Jewish people, exterminating six million Jews and several million Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political enemies of the Nazis. The left image is a photograph of the mass grave at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The caption reads: “Photographed by a British soldier after the camp’s liberation in April 1945. Dr. Fritz Klein, a German doctor at the camp, can be seen in the foreground standing amongst the corpses. The Small Arms Range is visible in the background.” Held by the United Kingdom Armed Forces; Imperial War Museum id# BU 4260. The right image shows starved prisoners at a concentration camp in Ebensee, Austria. The caption states that the camp was reputedly used for “scientific” experiments. Housed in the National Archives of Records and Administration, College Park.
- #10 Beginning on October 24, 1929, the stock market crash heralded the Great Depression. Within a few years, a third of American workers were unemployed; hunger and joblessness spread throughout the industrialized world. Franklin Roosevelt was able to reverse the worst effects of the Depression in the United States with the New Deal, which included public works spending and the introduction of Social Security. The image shows people waiting for relief checks during the Great Depression in Calipatria, California (March 1937).
- #11 World War II began after Hitler’s military force invaded Poland in 1939. Germany allied itself with Fascist Italy and authoritarian Japan, which had earlier conquered Korea and occupied China. The United States entered the war after the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). The photograph shows a wide view of the destruction at Pearl Harbor. The caption reads: “Panorama view of Pearl Harbor, during the Japanese raid on 7 December 1941, with anti-aircraft shell bursts overhead.” The photograph looks southwesterly from the hills behind the harbor. Large columns of smoke in the lower right center is from the burning USS Arizona . Smoke further to the left is from the destroyers Shaw , Cassin, and Downes , in dry dock at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard. Official US Navy photograph (1941).
- #12 A literary movement that linked political crises with the crisis of representation. These individuals broke away from conventions, including plots, verse forms, narrative techniques, and the boundaries of genre, and, reflecting a “crisis of reason,” they challenged the ability of human reason to understand the world. This was largely based on nineteenth-century philosophy by Charles Darwin (through natural selection, the animal nature of human existence is explored), Karl Marx (the struggle between social classes is the main drive of history), Friedrich Nietzsche (who attacked a belief in God and the conviction that humans are fundamentally rational), and Sigmund Freud (stress on the unconscious and power of sexual and destructive instincts). Writers had significant mobility, often studying or working away from their native residences.
- #13 Scientists found that the natural world does not necessarily function in the way it appears to. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and other discoveries, such as radioactivity, X-rays, and quantum theory, presented counterintuitive understanding of the physical universe that conflicted with classical Netwonian physics and even common sense. The image is a photograph of Einstein with Robert Oppenheimer (“father of the atomic bomb”) at the Institute for Advanced Study. Courtesy of the US Government Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
- #14 Symbolists including Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé inspired modernist poets to hold a high conception of the power and significance of poetry, leading them to draw on symbolist techniques including ambiguous and esoteric meanings. T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land responded to the prevalent sense of devastation after the First World War. Photograph of T. S. Eliot (1923) by Lady Ottoline Morrell .National Portrait Gallery, London.
- #15 The great modern novelists, including Conrad, Proust, Joyce, and Woolf wrote realistic works in the manner of Flaubert or Tolstoy. They did not, however, balance their attention between the outside world and the inner world of their characters, instead shifting toward interiority and focus on the limited perspective of an individual, often idiosyncratic character. Photograph of Virginia Woolf (1902) by George Charles Beresford.
- #16 Just as novelists questioned the role of omniscient narrator, dramatists challenged the separation of the audience from the action of the play—specifically, the tradition of the “fourth wall.” According to this concept, developed in realist and naturalist theater of the nineteenth century, the actors on stage went about their business as if they did not know that an audience was watching them. Modernist playwrights include Pirandello and Brecht. Brecht’s Epic Theater encouraged audience members not to identify with the characters and be carried away by the drama, but to think critically about the actions they were witnessing. His “estrangement effect” was meant to shock audiences by destroying their habitual assumptions about the world.
- #17 Asian writers embraced Communist or Socialist politics and a related style of politically engaged fiction. Their works—as in Ryunosuke, Jun’ichiro, Fusako and Man-sik, often blend modern techniques with old folklore or cultural practices of earlier Japan to make a political statement. The photograph shows Akutagawa Ryunosuke, taken in the 1920s.
- #18 The African American writer and activist W. E. B. Du Bois said that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” During the 1920s, African American intellectuals and writers enjoyed success when, as Langston Hughes wrote, “Harlem was in vogue.” During the 1930s, a group of African and Caribbean intellectuals, led by Léopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire, met in Paris (where they were pursuing higher education) and formed the Negritude movement, which celebrated the culture of Africa and the African Diaspora to provide leadership for decolonized states. The left image is a photograph of Langston Hughes (1936), photographed by Carl Van Vechten Housed in the Library of Congress. The right image is a photograph of Léopold Senghor (1987), taken by Erling Mandelmann (photo@ErlingMandelmann.ch).
- #19 It was said that the sun never set on the British Empire, at least at the empire’s height. In other words, its territories stretched across the globe so somewhere in the empire it was always daylight. By 1913, however, the British Empire had passed its zenith and many of its territories had gained a measure of independence; Canada, for example, was part of the larger British commonwealth but was by this point largely self-governed. Other empires around the world were equally powerful, such as the massive Russian empire, and Africa remained a site where various imperial powers (including Great Britain, France, and Belgium) contested for resources. This map shows major imperial territories around the world just prior to the outbreak of the First World War. The early twentieth century was ultimately the beginning of the end for the world’s empires.
- #20 Answer: D Section: Modernity and Conflict in World History, 1900–1945 Feedback: While each of these events was world changing, nothing compared to the destabilizing impact of the First World War. Death and destruction on that scale had previously been unknown—even unimaginable—for most people.
- #21 Answer: A Section: Modernity and Conflict in World History, 1900–1945 Feedback: The Treaty of Versailles (1919) formalized the end of the First World War and included provision for the formation of the earliest supranational peace-keeping organization: the League of Nations.
- #22 Answer: B Section: Modernism in World Literature Feedback: Literature across the globe responded to world-changing events (world wars, revolutions, financial collapse) with an unprecedented wave of artistic experimentation, as though the previous modes and forms of art were simply no longer able to capture, recreate, or express the shocking realities of the modern world.
- #23 Answer: A Section: Modernism in World Literature Feedback: A distinguishing characteristic of much modern art (though this continued to be true for some postmodern works as well) is the degree to which it made explicit reference to itself as a work of art. This is called metafiction when it occurs in writing. A story or novel, for example, might address the reader as he or she is in the act of reading. Thus the very act of consuming art (whether reading, listening, or watching) becomes part of the art being consumed. (This technique is also known as self-referentiality.)