Chapter 15Modernism in the American Grain Topics A Characteristics of American modernismB Historical, Philosophical, Formal dimensions of American modernism Definition of ModernismThe term modernism is widely used to identify new and distinctive features in the subjects, forms, concepts, and styles of literature and the other arts in the early decades of the present century, but especially after World War I (1914-18). The specific features signified by "modernism" (or by the adjective modernist) vary with the user, but many critics agree that it involves a deliberate and radical break with some of the traditional bases not only of Western art, but of Western culture in general.P 198 Modernism is the attempt to create something new in the space of modern crisis and change. Characteristics of American modernismInternational→ First, American modernism is the process of American literature merging into the mainstream of Western modern culture.a more complex view of reality → Second, literary modernists are just as concerned as reality as the realists are. However, the modernist have a more complex view of reality. Modernism are more aware that language is constitutive of reality, not just a transparent (thus unimportant) medium.several paradigms（范式）→ Third, there is the question of paradigm for modernism. The attempt to define modernism only in the terms of Eliot and a small group who shares his vision is to mistake one tree for the whole forest. Characteristics of American modernism Based on the afore-mentioned observations —— that American modernism is less nationalistic but more international and European, that the modernists are more aware of how language constitutes and shapes reality; that modernism includes several paradigms and a whole range of responses to the modern——American modernism should be examined in its various dimensions —— the formal, the historical and the philosophical —— so that we can perceive more clearly the larger picture of modernism. The Historical DimensionLate 19th century and first decade of 20th centuryWilliam JamesWorld War I: 1912, 19191 Prewar generation: Menken Pound, Eliot, Frost, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams2 Postwar generation → the Roaring Twenties ( the Jazz Age) →lost generation: Hemingway; Fitzgerald; Faulkner The radical 30s The Great Depression at the end of the 20s and during the 30s disillusioned people about the economic stability of the country and eroded utopianist thinking→ Social involvement in American modernist writingsJohn Dos Passos, James T. Farrell, Thomas Wolfe, and John Steinbeck The Historical DimensionInfluence: European modernism The basic impulses of literary modernism emerged in 19th century Europe. 1 Literature→ Baudelaire, Flaubert, Dostoevsky 2 social science → Nietzsche, Marx, Bergson, and Freud etc. William James: the Harvard psy’chologist philosopher-pragmatistHe published Principles of Psychology in 1890, which displayed the same interest in a new subjective science of consciousness that men like Henri Bergson were exploring in Europe.James portrayed human consciousness struggling for pragmatic self-definition in what he called the modern “pluriverse”. His "stream of consciousness" phrase had rich implication not only for the changing language of perception but for the ninetieth-century novel.stream of consciousness→ a new metaphor for the processes of mind→For James, consciousness was not a chain of linked segments, a 'river‘ or a 'stream‘ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described". World War IThen, World War I came, which changed the mood, if not the directions, of modernism. American modernists: two generations1 the prewar generation2 the postwar generationP 192 in examining the intellectual and emotional currents within American modern literature, it is found that the modern era of American writing was launched by the two generations of 1912 and 1919 which are so close in age and so divided in experience. The prewar generation was largely founded in the poetry of Pound and Eliot, Frost and Doolittle, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Conrad Aiken, Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters. In theater there was Eugene O'Neill, in fiction Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather and Sinclair Lewis, in general ideas Brooks, Randolph Bourne, Mencken.The postwar generation included Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, e. e. cummings, Edmund Wilson, Hart Crane etc. The later generation emphasis shifted decisively toward the novel, so that by the end of the 1920s both American poetry and American fiction were established on a radical course. The genteel tradition: Victorianism，PuritanismYet, in the first decade or so of the 20th century, in the mainstream of American intellectual life and culture, the genteel tradition-idealistic, polite, cultured and conservative-continued despite the new directions. Prewar generationH. L. Menken, Van Wyck Brooks, Santayana, Randolph Bourne and other radical intellectuals called for a rejection of the irrelevant past and present in order to start a freshly assertive future.But towards the end of the first decade and finally, by 1912, the modern temper that had been sweeping across Europe arrived…thus, even in the prewar years, seeds of opposing views regarding modernism was planted. The rejection of Victorian gentility was, in any case, inevitable. The booming of American industry, with its gigantic, roaring factories, its corporate impersonality, and its large-scale aggressiveness, no longer left any room for the code of polite behavior and well-bred morality fashioned in a quieter and less competitive age. War or no war, as the generations passed, it became increasingly difficult for our young people to accept standards of behavior that bore no relationship to the bustling business medium in which they were expected to battle for success. (From Advanced English) H. L. Mencken, (1880–1956) H. L. Mencken As a Jazz-Age Jonathan Swift, he took advantage of this platform to satirize war hysteria, presidents and the conventionsthat spawned them, book banning, the Ku Klux Klan, Prohibition, and the residual puritanism that he saw as the basis of America’s ills. re’sidual: remaining 残留的 Lost GenerationMany prominent American writers of the decade following the end of World War I, disillusioned by their war experiences and alienated by what they perceived as the crassness of American culture and its "puritanical" repressions, are often tagged as the Lost Generation. Lost GenerationA number of these writers became expatriates, moving either to London or to Paris in their quest for a richer literary and artistic milieu and a freer way of life. Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and T. S. Eliot lived out their lives abroad, but most of the younger "exiles”, came back to America in the 1930s. Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night are novels that represent the mood and way of life of two groups of American expatriates. The Radical 30sIn "the radical 30s," the period of the Great Depression and of the economic and social reforms in the New Deal inaugurated by President Franklin Roosevelt, some authors joined radical political movements, and many others dealt in their literary works with pressing social issues of the time—including, in the novel, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, James T. Farrell, Thomas Wolfe, and John Steinbeck, and in the drama, Eugene O'Neill, Clifford Odets. Philosophical dimension for modernism Intellectual precursors of modernismImportant intellectual precursors of modernism are thinkers who had questioned the certainties that had supported traditional modes of social organization, religion, and morality, and also traditional ways of conceiving the human self—thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Friedrich Nietzsche P 194 He offered the most insightful critique regarding how and why the higher values of Western civilization (a combination of Christianity and Platonism) have devalued themselves. Platonism: Western rationalism“reevaluation of existing values” is at the heart of Nietzsche. Death of God 虚无主义 nihilism Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) an Austrian neurlogist, the founding father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud 1 human behaviorBy clinical observation, Freud explained that human behavior is largely the result of instinctual drives, such as sexual and aggressive urges. 2 selfP 196 Freudian psychoanalysis has shattered the old certainty that the self is a conscious rational entity. The way that psychoanalysis discusses “eros” in relation to civilization is parallel to how Marx presents “commodity” in relation to the capitalist society. 2 selfAccording to Freud, the “self” (自我) is a dynamism shaped by tension-filled negotiations between the individual desires (id, 本我) and the pressures from civilization (superego, 超我) Freud and psychoanalysisId, ego and superegoThe id is the completely unconscious, impulsive, childlike portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and is the source of basic impulses and drives; it seeks immediate pleasure and gratification. The super-ego is the moral component of the psyche, which takes into account no special circumstances in which the morally right thing may not be right for a given situation. The rational ego attempts to exact a balance between the impractical hedonism of the id and the equally impractical moralism of the super-ego. Karl Marx (1818 –1883) Marx and modernismMarxism is an important source of modernism.P 197 However, classical Marxism does provide some very relevant insights about the modern world and the influence Marxism has reached far and wide, extending to the American politics of art and literature.The perceived importance of Marxism in literary studies continues to be, primarily, how it can clarify for us the historical content of modernist texts. Marx and modernism 1“definition of modernism” →Marxism is an indispensable paradigm for modernism because it defines “modernism” as a historical stage in which capitalism, profit-oriented and technology-driven, seriously changes the world we live in and our “humanity”. 2 “class” → Marxist idea of “class” remains poignant conceptual frame in social understanding. In the American context, “class” increasingly informs the discussion of “race” “ethnicity” and “gender”. 3 “alienation” → The idea of “alienation,” basic to Marxism, is also basic to modern literature. Marx and modernism 4 Social activism and Proletarian literature John Dos Passos; John Steinbeck Proletarian 无产阶级的；无产者 The Formal DimensionThe modernist period: the greatest period of experimentation on literary form and technique.Modernist writers: radical, revolutionary in experimentation on literary form and technique. They follow psychological time, use stream of consciousness, interior monologue, symbolism, myth, juxtaposition (most widely used in the modernist period) etc. juxtaposition 并置；并列对照 P 187 One of the important reasons why there is such exuberance in form is that modernists understand better that if they are to represent reality, they have to learn to represent the perspectives and narratives that make claims for “reality”. exuberance: richness Avant-gardeThe catastrophe of the war had shaken faith in themoral basis, coherence, and durability of Western civilization and raised doubts about the adequacy of traditional literary modes to represent the harsh and dissonant realities of the postwar world. T. S. Eliot wrote in a review of Joyce's Ulysses in 1923 that the inherited mode of ordering a literary work, which assumed a relatively coherent and stable social order, could not accord with "the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.“ Avant-garde Major works of modernist fiction subvert the basic conventions of earlier prose fiction by breaking up the narrative continuity, departing from the standard ways of representing characters, and violating the traditional syntax and coherence of narrative language by the use of stream of consciousness and other innovative modes of narration. Uses of narrative point of view In pre-modern fiction: God-like omniscient point of viewIn modern fiction: Uses of narrative point of view have become very sophisticated. 1 a first person narrator (maybe unreliable) Willa Cather: My Antonia F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby 2 limited omniscience; Henry James 3 external narrator (这种类型的特点是叙述者如同局外人或旁观者,事件的叙述只限于外部视点以及行为报告。
) Ernest Hemingway: In Our Time Perspectivism →The belief that a truth is something relative to a perspective and therefore reality is interpretable from many perspectives. 1 multi-perspectives 2 Inclusion of perspectives based on gender, race and class. William Faulkner：The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying Wallace Stevens: “Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird” The Sound and the Fury → The novel is separated into four distinct sections. The first is written from the perspective of Benjy Compson, a 33-year-old man with severe mental handicaps. The second section focuses on Quentin Compson, Benjy's older brother. In the third section Faulkner writes from the perspective of Jason, Quentin's cynical younger brother. In the fourth section Faulkner introduces a third person omniscient point of view. As I Lay Dying→The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. The formal dimension Fragmentation and open-endedness become a new structuring principles, often as a resistance to totalized view of reality. The Waste Land Inner realityLiterary exploration of the psychological depths now gain some new principles and methods from Freudian psychoanalysis. Attempts to express the workings of the unconscious result in new ways of presenting characters. Stream of consciousness (or, more precisely, stream of consciousness) emerges as a style in modern fiction. Stream of consciousness: The Sound and the Fury Irony and ambiguityFavored rhetorical modes reflecting a general disillusionment in the social, economic and spiritual values of the Western world. “the modern writer can no longer accept the claims of the world… the usual morality seems counterfeit; taste, a genteel indulgence; tradition, a wearisome fetter.” – Irving Howe Ideologically conservative: the modernists are actually anti-modern. They believe modernization destroys modern values and they long for a more traditional way of life. But they know that is impossible. Generally speaking, the modernist writers have a strong sense of pessimism.P 188-189 The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness by the wanton feat of those two infamous aristocrats is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take in all now for what the treacherously years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words. 。