i.+Modernism

= MODERNISM =

**American modernism** like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. The general term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States starting at the turn of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century.

MAJOR REPRESENTATIVES:
In the early teens of the twentieth century, he opened a fruitful exchange of work and ideas between British and American writers, and was famous for the generosity with which he advanced the work of such major contemporaries as Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, and especially T. S. Eliot. His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promotion of Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry—stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language, and forgoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in Pound's words, "compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome." His later work, spanning nearly fifty years, focused on his epic poem //The Cantos//. Poems by Ezra Pound
 * Ezra Weston Loomis Pound** [[image:ezra_pound.jpg width="207" height="301" align="right"]] (October 30, 1885 – November 1, 1972) was an American expatriate poet and critic who was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry.

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, and educated at Harvard, Eliot studied philosophy at the Sorbonne for a year, then won a scholarship to Oxford in 1914, becoming a British citizen when he was 39. "[M]y poetry has obviously more in common with my distinguished contemporaries in America than with anything written in my generation in England," he said of his nationality and its role in his work. "It wouldn't be what it is, and I imagine it wouldn't be so good ... if I'd been born in England, and it wouldn't be what it is if I'd stayed in America. It's a combination of things. But in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America."
 * Thomas Stearns Eliot** OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was an Anglo-American poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. The first poem he became known for, //The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock//, was started in February 1910 and published in Chicago in June 1915, and is regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including //Gerontion// (1920), //The Waste Land// (1922), //The Hollow Men// (1925), //Ash Wednesday// (1930), and //Four Quartets// (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly //Murder in the Cathedral// (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot -text

Hemingway was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After leaving high school he worked for a few months as a reporter, before leaving for the Italian front to become an ambulance driver during World War I, which became the basis for his novel //A Farewell to Arms//. He was seriously wounded and returned home within the year. In 1922 Hemingway married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives, and the couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent. During his time there he met and was influenced by modernist writers and artists of the 1920s expatriate community known as the "Lost Generation". His first novel, //The Sun Also Rises//, was written in 1924. After divorcing Hadley Richardson in 1927 Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer; they divorced following Hemingway's return from covering the Spanish Civil War, after which he wrote //For Whom the Bell Tolls//. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940, but he left her for Mary Welsh Hemingway after World War II, during which he was present at D-Day and the liberation of Paris. Shortly after the publication of //The Old Man and the Sea// in 1952 Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in a plane crash that left him in pain or ill-health for much of the rest of his life. Hemingway had permanent residences in Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1930s and 40s, but in 1959 he moved from Cuba to Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961. Ernest Hemingway's works
 * Ernest Miller Hemingway** (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American writer and journalist. His distinctive writing style—known as the iceberg theory—characterized by economy and understatement, influenced 20th-century fiction, as did his apparent life of adventure and the public image he cultivated. He produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and his career peaked in 1954 when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Hemingway's fiction was successful because the characters he presented exhibited authenticity that reverberated with his audience. Many of his works are classics of American literature. He published seven novels, six short stories collections, and two non-fiction works during his lifetime; with a further three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works published after his death.[[image:hemingway.jpg width="208" height="255" align="right"]]


 * John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr.** (February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel //The Grapes of Wrath// (1939) and the novella //Of Mice and Men// (1937). He wrote a total of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and five collections of short stories. In 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The //Grapes of Wrath// was written in 1939 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. The book is set in the Great Depression and describes a family of sharecroppers, the Joads, who were driven from their land due to the dust storms of the Dust Bowl. The title is a reference to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The book was made into a film in 1940 starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford. The Grapes of Wrath-text

POST WORLD WAR II PERIOD

 * Saul Bellow** (June 10, 1915 – April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to have won the National Book Award three times, and the only writer to have been nominated for it six times.[[image:saul_bellow.jpg width="214" height="266" align="right"]]

In the words of the Swedish Nobel Committee, his writing exhibited "exuberant ideas, flashing irony, hilarious comedy and burning compassion... the mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and that can be called the dilemma of our age." His best-known works include //The Adventures of Augie March,// //Herzog//, //Mr. Sammler's Planet//, //Seize the Day//, //Humboldt's Gift// and //Ravelstein//. Widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest authors, Bellow has had a "huge literary influence."

The Adventures of Augie March-text


 * Sylvia Plath** (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, children's author, and short story author.

Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, //The Bell Jar//, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. Plath, along with Anne Sexton, is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry initiated by Robert Lowell and W. D. Snodgrass.

Sylvia Plath's "Tulips"