During this period, society at every level underwent profound changes. These poets were often critical of the works of expatriate writers such as Eliot and Pound, as evidenced by poems like Spring and All. Contemporary American Literature: Authors and Major Works ... Slide 1: Title Page–Include your name, the date, and the title of the piece of Modernist literature. The lives of the disillusioned and outcasts became more focal. It reacts against historicism, artistic conventions and institutionalization of art. These events influenced the writings of this era that display the diversity, materialism, and pride seen throughout America. There is no single date for the beginning of the modern era in America, as dozens of painters were active at the beginning of the 20th century. The importance of the individual was emphasized; the truly limited nature of the human experience formed a bond across all bridges of race, class, sex, wealth or religion. Literature has existed in the Americas for as long as the people who lived there have been telling stories. This exhortation by the American poet Ezra Pound sums up the Modernist agenda in one short phrase. Some see modernism in the tradition of 19th century aestheticism and the "art for art's sake" movement. [7] Many writers of this movement used modernist techniques to represent African American life, for instance incorporating the rhythms of Jazz music and dialects of African American culture into poetry and prose. Cummings. Ed. Learn how and when to remove these template messages, Learn how and when to remove this template message, personal reflection, personal essay, or argumentative essay, "2012 Essay Prize: Jennifer Stettler Parsons", "89.01.05: The Impact of the Music of the Harlem Renaissance on Society", American Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=American_modernism&oldid=991931963, Modernist architecture in the United States, Articles lacking in-text citations from July 2012, Wikipedia articles with style issues from July 2012, Articles that may contain original research from July 2019, All articles that may contain original research, Articles with multiple maintenance issues, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 2 December 2020, at 16:11. The following is a list of significant modernist writers: Virginia Woolf. Foreword to The Treasured Collection of Golden Heart Farm: Ward, David, and David C. Ward. African-American painter Aaron Douglas (1899–1979) is one of the best-known and most influential African-American modernist painters. In American literature, the modernist period stretches from the turn of the 20th century through the end of World War II. The history of American literature can be divided into five periods: Colonial and Early National, Romantic, Realism and Naturalism, Modernist, and Contemporary. Main schools and movements of American modernism. The photographer Alfred Stieglitz described it as: "Artists who saw my earlier photographs began to tell me that they envied me; that they felt my photographs were superior to their paintings, but that, unfortunately, photography was not an art. Originally titled ‘The Hours’, Mrs Dalloway is perhaps Woolf’s best-known work.Indeed, the structure of Woolf’s novel was inspired by her reading of Joyce’s Ulysses. 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