American Literature: 1914-1945

1900-1910:

The flourishing of the muckraking magazine expose and the corresponding novel.

Literary naturalism -- Norris, Dreiser, London

1910-1920:

The "virtual birth" of modern American poetry.

• The founding of Poetry magazine in Chicago in 1912 by Harriet Monroe

• The emergence of the Imagists

Realistic novels:

• W.D. Howells

• Willa Cather

• Edith Wharton

Drama:

• Eugene O'Neill

American Criticism:

• Demanded a "usable past"

The First World War:

Produced a major dislocation of a number of talent writers who emerged from the war disillusioned with American idealism and crassness.

This post-war generation, considering itself self-consciously as a "lost generation," set about a repudiation of American culture in three ways:

1.) Expatriates: One group, largely from the East, went back to Europe and there published little magazines, waited on Gertrude Stein, took part in "dadaism," and formulated a polished and "symbolistic" style.

• F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Ernest Hemingway

• Edmund Wilson

• E.E. Cummings

• Malcolm Cowley

• Sherwood Anderson

2.) Revolters against the village: Another group, largely from the Middle West, came east and in Cambridge, New Haven, and Greenwich Village," produced satire aimed at the standardized mediocrity of the American village:

• Ring Lardner

• Sinclair Lewis

3.) Seekers of a tradition of order: Another group, largely Southern, repudiated the meaningless mechanism of capitalistic America by looking backward to a past that had tradition and order:

• The Fugitive poets

• The Agrarians

• John Crowe Ranson

• Allen Tate

• Robert Penn Warren

• Cleanth Brooks

• William Faulkner

1920-1930:

October 1929: the stock market crash = the end of the prosperous twenties

1930s: the Great Depression

The New Deal

"The Red Decade"

Writers:

• Ernest Hemingway
• William Faulkner
• John Dos Passos
• Thomas Wolfe
• Henry Miller
• John Steinbeck

1930-1940:

The coming of the second world war put an end to the radicalism of the thirties.

The war and its aftermath resulted in an age of conformity and conservatism, bolstered by a burgeoning economy.

American life in the forties and fifties was marked by a tendency to conformity, traditionalism, and reverence for artistic form and restraint, although there was marked informality in social conduct and freedom of subject matter in art.

Questions?