World War I (1914–1918) was the first modern war fought on a global scale. By 1917, when the United States joined the war effort, nine countries were involved in the conflict. This was also the first war fought by drafted civilians in addition to professional soldiers. Known as "the war to end all wars," it surpassed the highest death toll reached by almost every previous war. By the time a ceasefire had been called on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, approximately 9 million soldiers were dead, 21 million were wounded, and 8 million were missing in action.

The mood in the United States after World War I was one of futility. The widespread devastation and bloodshed had taken its toll on Americans. Many soldiers who survived the war were so changed by their experiences that they were unable to settle back to their former lives. Those citizens who had stayed behind also felt a sense of hopelessness and loss as they watched their loved ones come back broken, in coffins, or not at all.

The American modernist movement grew out of this atmosphere of disillusionment and despair. Like many Americans, the modernist writers were disillusioned. In their eyes, the country had become a land of lost values and lost purpose. Modernist author Gertrude Stein once told fellow author Ernest Hemingway that many modernist writers saw themselves as members of the "Lost Generation."

• A fragmented narrative follows any order the author wishes. Fragment is a word that means "a piece broken off from a whole," so in a narrative (story), fragmenting means breaking off piece of the story and changing the order readers receive information.

Fragmented narrative not only refers to the ordering of events in a literary work but also to the style and mode of narration. Rather than conforming to standard first-person or third-person omniscient narrators, modernist writers experimented with new modes of narration.

• Stream of consciousness narration, for example, is written as a flow of momentary thoughts, impressions, half-sentences, and a multitude of sensory details rather than as a single, cohesive storyline. 

Parallelism is one of several literary elements that falls under the category of repetition. As with other types of repetition, parallelism places emphasis on significant parts of a work, such as theme or imagery. Parallelism arranges two or more significant elements in a corresponding, or parallel, format. Usually, writers use parallelism to emphasize a comparison or to highlight two or more ideas that have equal importance.

Modernist writers often used parallelism in their literary works. 

To see parallelism and related rhetorical devices, click here for notes from ENG 9A!

World War I began in 1914 and lasted four grueling years. Soldiers had to contend with the killing power of new technological innovations, such as warplanes, poisonous gas, and long-range weaponry. At the same time, medical care had also improved, which helped to save many injured soldiers. 

The setting for "In Another Country" is Milan, Italy, where a US soldier is recuperating in a hospital during World War I. Words such as cold, wind, stiff, heavy, and empty enhance the description of the city. Autumn in Milan is characterized by early darkness and dead game, or wild animals, hanging outside meat shops. As the opening paragraph continues, the second use of the word cold further evokes a feeling of the season. The word choice, imagery, and repetition establish a setting of coldness and death, which, in turn, establishes a dismal and forlorn mood.

Click here to read/review the story!

When authors blend characterization, plot, imagery, sound, and numerous other literary devices, they are attempting to achieve an overall or dominant impression in their poem or story. This process is called the creation of a "single effect."

The idea of single effect originated with author Edgar Allan Poe, who felt that every literary element should contribute to one particular effect in a text. It might be an overall theme or idea, as seen in Poe's works, which often convey a single effect of horror.

Example: In Robert Frost’s poem “Acquainted with the Night,” different literary elements combine to establish a particular mood:

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain

Other than characterization, modernist literature focused on specific themes relevant to the era. One common theme is a growing feeling of uncertainty and the loss of idealism. This loss is often connected to the loss of the glittering American dream, which had previously been a popular concept in American literature and culture. Modernist authors, therefore, often captured this loss of idealism in their characters by portraying their disillusionment with the American dream.

For a refresher on characterization, click here for notes from ENG 9B!

One way to determine if a literary character is static or dynamic is to track the character's defining characteristics throughout a work. By taking notes on how a character behaves in different sections in the story, readers can discover whether that character develops and changes over time. If possible, use the text breaks provided by the author as your section breaks.

An archetype is a story element that appears again and again in stories from cultures around the world and represents something universal in the human experience. When we think of types of characters that show up in a story, like the villain and the hero we're actually thinking of character archetypes.

Just as archetypes can be common symbols or characters, they can also include plots. Although this type of plot appears in works with diverse settings and characters, the same general storyline remains consistent. One of the most common plot archetypes is the quest, which psychologist Carl Jung and mythologist Joseph Campbell studied across several cultures. In the typical quest plot, the hero or main character goes on a dangerous journey to find an object or reach a goal. 

In a quest plot, the hero generally takes a long, usually risky, and treacherous journey. Often they are accompanied by one or more companions. Along the way, the hero often must defeat monsters or foes. Other common elements are temptations, a journey to the underworld, a final set of tests, reaching the goal, and a voyage home. Two examples of the quest archetype are Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Mood is the feeling or atmosphere in a work. It creates a feeling for readers that immerses them more emotionally within a text. Diction and syntax may also influence the mood. An author may develop a particular mood to achieve a point in their writing.​

Mood may also provide a foreshadowing of what is to follow within a story. While mood establishes a dominant impression of the text, it’s not always consistent. Mood can often shift and disrupt expectations that were established earlier.

• Example: In this excerpt on the next slide, from "The Fall of the House of Usher,” the narrator is painting a foreboding setting and mood for the reader:​

I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. 

• Example #2: Read the following excerpt from poet Carl Sandburg's fantastical children’s story "How the Animals Lost Their Tails and Got Them Back Traveling from Philadelphia to Medicine Hat":

It was easy enough for the rabbit who has long ears and no tail at all except a white thumb of cotton. But it was hard for the yellow flongboo who at night lights up his house in a hollow tree with his fire yellow torch of a tail. It is hard for the yellow flongboo to lose this tail because it lights up his way when he sneaks at night on the prairie, sneaking up on the flangwayers, the hippers, and the hangjasts, so good to eat.

Sandburg's diction consists of simple words in combination with nonsense words. This precise word choice and the connotative effect of names, such as flongboo and hangjasts, create an easy, whimsical mood. 

Carl Sandburg was born to Swedish immigrants and grew up in rural Illinois. He left school after eighth grade and got a job to help support his family. In 1912, Sandburg moved to Chicago, where he worked as a newspaper reporter and published poems in the magazine Poetry. Sandburg toured the United States giving lectures on poet Walt Whitman and former president Abraham Lincoln, both of whom he admired greatly. He also collected selections for an anthology of American folk songs.

Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories was a collection of fantastical children’s stories. Sandburg said the stories were "attempts to catch fantasy, accents, pulses, eye flashes, inconceivably rabid and perfect gestures, sudden pantomimic movements, drawls and drolleries, gazings and musings—authoritative poetic instants—knowing that if the whir of them were caught quickly and simply enough in words, the result would be a child lore interesting to child and grown-up." The Rootabaga Stories were fairy tales set in the Midwest, built on the idea of an American utopia.

"How the Animals Lost Their Tails and Got Them Back Traveling from Philadelphia to Medicine Hat" follows the quest archetypal plot. The focus is the animals' journey to Medicine Hat to talk to the Head Spotter of the Weather Makers. In contrast, the end result of getting their tails back is not as important. While these characteristics are common in quest plots, Sandburg’s story also varies from the traditional archetype. An entire committee travels together, whereas traditional quest stories focus on one hero or main character. The main character in many quest plots must travel to the underworld and face challenges there. In Sandburg's fairy tale, the animals simply travel between actual cities in the United States and Canada.

An element of modernism present throughout "How the Animals Lost Their Tails and Got Them Back Traveling from Philadelphia to Medicine Hat" is the theme of being disjointed from society. Sandburg places animals with nonsense names in real locations, such as Philadelphia. He also shows the animals in meetings that are as bureaucratic and formal as many real-life meetings. His use of nonsense words adds to the reader’s sense of being out of sync with society.

Click here to read/review the story!

Some forms of poetry follow specific rules for rhyme and meter. For example, sonnets and ballads have particular rhyme schemes that identify them as unique. The following excerpt from the poem "Something Left Undone" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow employs a frequently used basic rhyme scheme:

Labor with what zeal we will, a
Something still remains undone, b
Something uncompleted still a
Waits the rising of the sun. b

By the bedside, on the stair, c
At the threshold, near the gates, d
With its menace or its prayer c
Like a medicant it waits; d

This poem is traditional; it maintains a structured form and a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd. Every other line rhymes, and each line consists of seven syllables. It is important to note that none of the rhyme sounds (will, still; undone, sun; stair, prayer; gates, waits) are the same sound, so they are marked with different letters. Just as this poem’s punctuation and grammar are formal, so are its themes. The speaker is telling of an upcoming, expected event.

For more examples of different rhyme schemes, click here to see these notes from ENG 10A!

Authors use irony for a variety of reasons, including humor and to show inconsistencies and unexpected outcomes. Modernist writers often used irony to show the discrepancies between what is expected and the realities of life.

For a refresher on iron, please click here to see these notes from ENG 11A!

Poems can be more easily understood by breaking them down into smaller sections. When reading a difficult poem, try to summarize each stanza as you read it. 

Read a poem once to get a general idea of its meaning. Then reread the poem, pausing after each stanza to summarize what the poet is saying. Make note of the summary either in the margins of a printed copy of the poem or on a separate piece of paper. That way, the summaries are easy to find when revisiting the poem.

After graduating from Bryn Mawr College and working as a teacher, Marianne Moore became an assistant at the New York Public Library. There she met several notable modernist poets, including Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams. 

Moore contributed to the prestigious literary magazine Dial and served as its editor from 1925 until the magazine folded in 1929. Moore wrote several essays on poetry. She believed poets sometimes undervalued prose, noting that the precision and logic found in prose would help liberate a writer's imagination. Like many other modernist writers, she attempted to make poetry more accessible to readers.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first nationally recognized African American writers, and he was able to earn a living through his writing. Dunbar's parents, who had been enslaved, encouraged him to read and write poetry. Dunbar went on to attend high school with the airplane inventors Orville and Wilbur Wright. Orville Wright later helped Dunbar publish an African American newsletter in Dayton, Ohio, called the Dayton Tattler.

Dunbar often wrote about the difficulties that African Americans faced and their efforts to achieve racial equality. Dunbar used two main styles in his writing: formal English and rural dialect, which he referred to as "jingles in a broken tongue." Widely acclaimed by literary critics and his peers, Dunbar portrayed the struggles of the African American community in eloquent, dignified English while also creating realistic, believable characters.

Wallace Stevens made his living as a lawyer and businessman, writing poetry as a personal interest. He was friendly with other modernist poets, including Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and E. E. Cummings. 

Stevens's poem "Anecdote of the Jar" was published in his first book of poetry, Harmonium. This collection shows the influence of English romantics, French symbolists, and aesthetic philosophy, as well as Stevens's own light, whimsical style.

Stevens believed poetry’s goal was to capture the connection between reality and imagination. His poems explored how people's imaginations might affect their observations of the physical world.

Like realists, imagists focused on using common, everyday language, but they used it to create new, interesting rhythms in their poetry. Unconcerned with typical meter and rhyme schemes, imagists employed free verse in most of their poetry. Imagists also attempted to avoid the clichés of writing often found in romantic poetry and instead tried to create tension and evoke emotions by portraying contrasting images in their work. 

The concept of diction was of vital importance to the imagists. In Ezra Pound’s opinion, imagists wished to “use absolutely no word that does not contribute” to the writing. 

For a refresher on diction, click here for notes from ENG 10A!

The Ashcan School was a movement that roughly corresponded with the time frame of imagism in literature. Artists from the Ashcan School were realists whose work was intended to challenge impressionism. Robert Henri, John Sloan, and other realist artists were leading figures in the Ashcan School. These artists believed in Robert Henri’s credo of “art for life’s sake” and not “art for art’s sake.” The first show of Ashcan art was in 1908, and the last was in 1913, though the effects of the period were felt even into the 1940s.

Artists contributing to this movement portrayed everyday life in New York City at the time, trying to capture the look and feel of the city in a realistic way. Artists such as Robert Henri, George William Bellows, and John Sloan, while of the middle class themselves, often depicted images of the lower class and of gritty life in urban New York.

Pound wrote the poem "In a Station of the Metro" about the experience of emerging from a subway car in a station in La Concorde, France. The poem was originally a 30-line piece, which he later cut down to 15 lines. A year later, Pound read the following Japanese poem in the form of hokku, which is similar to the better-known haiku, and knew he could make his poem even more succinct:

The footsteps of the cat upon the snow:
plum-blossoms.

This poem combines the idea of a cat’s footprints with that of flowers. Pound stated that this ability to overlap the two ideas to create one image inspired him to write this final version of his own poem:

In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Pound’s "In a Station of the Metro" precisely follows all the guidelines of imagism. The poem's brevity, or shortness, contributes to its meaning: it is a quick glimpse of a dreary scene at a busy metro station. However, Pound is able to pack a lot of information into that one-second look through the use of interesting diction. The title itself adds to the scene, presenting the setting without taking up space in the poem itself.

William Carlos Williams was interested in literature and medicine. While attending medical school, he befriended Ezra Pound and other imagist poets who became his mentors.

Williams intensely pursued both his medical and literary career. His medical practice influenced his writing, as he often contributed autobiographical elements, such as a doctor-narrator character, to his works. Rather than being at odds with one another, Williams said his two careers were complimentary: "As a writer, I have been a physician, and as a physician a writer."

Williams said that his own writing, as well as imagism as a movement, "must be real, not 'realism,' but reality itself." Accordingly, Williams captured the reality of American life in “The Red Wheelbarrow,” represented by an image that made an impression on him years before. Recalling a visit to a friend, Williams said "I liked that man. . . . In his back yard I saw the red wheelbarrow surrounded by the white chickens." 

Click here to read/review this poem!

While Elizabeth Bishop's style is more flowing and descriptive than William Carlos Williams's, she also captures the image of a seemingly mundane moment through evocative description. While Williams captures his image in a few words, Bishop delves into extreme detail. Both Williams and Bishop use color to give specific definition to their images. However, where Williams's image and inclusion of color is succinct, Bishop describes the variation of color to be found in every part of the fish. Bishop, like Williams, also uses several forms of sound repetition. They play off one another to create a sense of connectivity throughout the poem. 

Click here to read/review the poem!

Jazz music was a major component of the Harlem Renaissance and the history and development of Black culture. An art form based on rhythm, collaboration, and improvisation, jazz began in New Orleans in the early 1800s. Enslaved people often gathered with drums to sing and dance the bamboula, a dance imported from Africa. The influence of the African rhythms in the bamboula, particularly the syncopation of standard marching beats, found its way into the beats of local bands. 

Other jazz forms included New Orleans and Chicago styles, bebop, and fusion. Often referred to as the original style of jazz, the New Orleans style was typically used in gospel songs and marches. The Chicago style of jazz that followed was more homophonic, meaning it often contained a single melody with chords. Chicago jazz was the first form to introduce piano as a background instrument. After this era came bebop, which merged traditional jazz with abstract musical chords and dissonance, or an unharmonious clashing of sounds. The solo performer was given more importance in the bebop style. Next came fusion, which made use of electrical and acoustic instruments but was much closer to the original sound of jazz than the other styles. 

As work songs and other forms of jazz developed, jazz music spread across the United States. For example, a jazz style known as Dixieland went from New Orleans to Chicago by means of the famous trumpet player Louis Armstrong. The Original Dixieland Band developed out of Armstrong's influence and, in the early 1920s, moved to New York City. Once jazz reached New York, especially Harlem, its development exploded. New York's many music halls began to feature jazz music. 

One jazz style, called boogie-woogie or boogie, is often associated with Harlem and jazz poetry, particularly the jazz poetry of Langston Hughes. Boogie jazz has several features that grew out of the jazz explosion of the Harlem Renaissance. Most notably, boogie has a walking base line, a pattern of notes that follows the rhythm but moves up and down the musical scale. Boogie also uses nonsense syllables known as scat. 

In one type of work song, called railroad songs, workers swung their hammers during the offbeat. Work songs combined with traditional musical and lyrical forms, such as hymns and ballads, to create spirituals, the blues, and other jazz styles. 

Please see slide 9 of the Tutorial "The Harlem Renaissance" from Unit 1 for audio samples of this kind of music.

During the Harlem Renaissance, improvisation and syncopation also combined with poetry to create jazz poetry. A quality of improvisation, for both music and poetry, is its flexibility in expression. 

Like improvisation, syncopation also plays a distinct part in jazz poetry. Meter and rhythm are defining aspects of poetry. However, standard poetic rhythms, such as iambic pentameter, are extremely regulated. Note that every other syllable in the lines below is stressed, emphasized by the boldface type:

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
(from Macbeth by William Shakespeare)

In contrast, the influence of syncopation on the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance produced an irregular rhythm:

Good morning, daddy!
Ain't you heard?
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?
(from "Dream Boogie" by Langston Hughes)

Notice that there are no distinct measures or beats in the jazz poetry example and that the syncopation plays with the location of the emphasized syllable, as in "dream deferred." 

Born in Missouri in 1902, Langston Hughes spent most of his childhood with his mother in Kansas. After graduating from high school, he lived in Mexico with his father for a year before enrolling in Columbia University in New York in 1921. That same year Hughes published his first poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."

Hughes left college after a year and, after working a series of odd jobs, traveled across Europe and Africa. In 1925, Hughes was published in a national magazine, Opportunity, and received the magazine's first prize for poetry for his poem "The Weary Blues." This poem became the title of his first book of poetry, which was published the next year and earned him true literary recognition. Hughes became one of the most recognized voices of the Harlem Renaissance and of the African American community.

Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891 and raised in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated Black township in the United States. Growing up in that environment, Hurston was not subjected to discrimination and was able to observe the achievements of African Americans. Hurston's mother encouraged her and her seven siblings to "jump at de sun," or strive for high goals. Hurston later explained, "We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."

Hurston moved to New York and was a major part of the Harlem Renaissance. She is best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937.

Hurston was never financially successful during her lifetime. She was buried in an unmarked grave until Alice Walker, a contemporary author influenced by Hurston, marked her grave in 1973. Many other writers who followed Hurston, including Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison, were influenced by her work.

Countee Cullen, born in 1903, was introduced to African American culture and politics from an early age. His adoptive father was the pastor of the largest congregation in Harlem. Yet Cullen studied and excelled at predominately white academic institutions. In school, he was mostly exposed to white poets, and he cited John Keats and A. E. Housman as some of his models, in part because there was no African American poetic tradition that he could use as a guide.

Cullen believed that art transcended race and that it could minimize the distance between different communities. A romantic poet, Cullen wrote within traditional poetic conventions, a product of his education. He was generally attracted to romantic themes, encouraging African American poets to work within English conventions as he did. Cullen called on poets such as Langston Hughes not to be "racial artists" and to omit jazz rhythms and other forms of experimentation from their poetry. In Cullen's mind, this change would help eliminate the racial divide in poetry.

Drama (as in acting on stage and performing plays) arrived in America in the early eighteenth century. Two of the earliest known theater directors in America were Lewis and William Hallam, brothers who arrived in Yorktown, Virginia, in 1752. Their drama troupe first performed William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in Williamsburg, Virginia.

From Williamsburg, the Hallam drama troupe ventured out to Annapolis, Maryland, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1754, Lewis Hallam constructed the first theater in America in New York City. By the end of the eighteenth century, drama was flourishing in America.

American theater, in its early years, lacked its own identity and was heavily reliant on English theater. Shakespeare’s plays were widely performed. Eventually, theaters hosted a variety of spectacles such as musicals, burlesques, minstrel shows, and even circus performances.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, American literature entered the realist period, and American theater took on its own identity. 

Some notable American dramas in the twentieth century include A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) by Tennessee Williams, Death of a Salesman (1949) and The Crucible (1953) by Arthur Miller, A Raisin in the Sun (1959) by Lorraine Hansberry, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962) by Edward Albee. 

Authors who write plays, called playwrights or dramatists, must incorporate movement into their works by including stage directions. These detailed instructions tell actors how to say lines and where to move on the stage.

When actors perform a play, they do not read these instructions aloud. Instead, the actors act out the playwright’s directions for the audience. However, when reading a play, the reader must use the stage directions, written into the script in italics, to imagine how lines are meant to be delivered and how the characters are moving around the stage.

• The dialogue in a play is the conversation that occurs between two or more characters.  

• A monologue occurs when just one character is on stage and speaking. Monologues often reveal a character's inner thoughts and motivations to the audience. 

Understatement is a technique used to create emphasis by saying less than what is known to be true. While writers use hyperbole to exaggerate an idea, they use understatement to downplay an important concept. Understatement is often used in a humorous way, helping to create an ironic or satirical tone.

For instance, a person who is bleeding heavily might say, “It's just a scratch,” or an athlete who has just completed a marathon might say, “I'm a bit tired.” 

Although you may read and understand stage directions correctly, it can be difficult to fully imagine the action in a play. Try acting out the scene with several people. Doing so will help you understand who is speaking to whom, where characters are in relation to each other, and how they move around the stage. If you come across a confusing stage direction in The Still Alarm that is difficult to visualize, try acting it out or staging the scene with some friends. 

Click here to watch the video on "The Still Alarm" from the Tutorial "American Drama" in Unit 1.