Introduction to Literature

20th Century American Literature

1st Lecture

How do you define literature?

Literature is a term used to describe written and sometimes spoken material. Derived from the Latin
word literature meaning “writing formed with letters,” literature most commonly refers to works of the
creative imagination, including poetry, drama, action, non-action, and in some instances, journalism,
and song.

Why is literature important?

Literature allows a person to step back in time and learn about life on Earth from the ones who walked
before us. We can gather a better understanding of culture and have a greater appreciation of them. We
learn through the ways history is recorded, in the forms of manuscripts and through speech itself.

How is literature used in everyday life?

Literature acts as a form of expression for each individual author. Some books mirror society and allow
us to better understand the world we live in. However, literature corms the real complexity of human
conflict”. Literature is a reaction of humanity and a way for us to understand each other.

What is literature universality?

Literature has the ability to evoke common human responses, universally. And the beauty of literature
is that this can be done through more than just the telling of a good story. Universal appeal can be
achieved through language, themes, style, and other literary devices.

What is literature function?

Literature preserves entire cultures and creates an imprint of the people’s way of living for others to
read, hear, and learn. Literature teaches us of many things about the human experience. Literature is
used to portray the facets of life that we see, and those that we would never dream of seeing.
What is literature in simple words?

Literature is a group of works of art made up of words. Most are written, but some are passed on by
word of mouth. Literature usually means works of poetry and prose that are especially well written.
The word literature comes from the Latin word “learning, writing, grammar”.

The 20th Century American Literature

Twentieth century American literature begins with a bang: the twinned literal detonations of
World War I and the figurative detonation of the Modernist movement in art, which upended many of
the conventions of poetry and storytelling. These two events were both primarily European in origin,
but they cast a wide net of influence, and for several decades American literature negotiated a new
identity as simultaneously national and international work, participating in world cultural and artistic
dialogues while still concerned to remain authentically national.
As the century continued, cultural cross-pollination grew even more complex: new works
emerged from recent immigrants, or from cultures within America who had long been marginalized:
African-Americans, Native Americans. These authors often negotiate complex relationships with a
literary heritage that has marginalized and excluded them.
Over the course of the semester, we will examine the new American literatures that have
emerged in reaction against the old, as well as the forms of continuity that persist between them. We
will see literature as double-voiced, speaking both to a particular historical moment and to the future,
both to an American audience and to readers throughout the world.

What makes American literature unique?

American literature explains basic characteristics of all kinds of literature such as characters, plots,
settings, images and themes. It embodies the ideas of Americans and makes certain places known. It
also tells stories of certain characters Americans had with their unique culture.
Why is American literature important?

American literature is very important for the education of people as it reveals the culture and history of
the United States. Moreover, American literature studying in other countries gives foreigners the
opportunity to get to know American culture, history, and great works of the great authors better.

Why do we study American literature?

Studying American literature encompasses understanding society. From this study, society can only
improve by analyzing the writing in any culture. American literature has produced some of the most
significant prose and poetry the world has seen.

The Main Characteristics of 20th Century Literature

The 20th century was like no time before it. Einstein, Darwin, Freud and Marx were just
some of the thinkers who profoundly changed Western culture. These changes took distinct
shape in the literature of the 20th century.
Modernism, a movement that was a radical break from 19th century Victorianism, led to
postmodernism, which emphasized self-consciousness and pop art. While 20th century
literature is a diverse field covering a variety of genres, there are common characteristics that
changed literature forever.

Fragmented Structure

Prior to the 20th century, literature tended to be structured in linear and chronological order.
Twentieth century writers experimented with other kinds of structures. Virginia Woolf, for
instance, wrote novels, whose main plot was often "interrupted" by individual characters'
memories,. Ford Madox Ford's classic "The Good Soldier" plays with chronology, jumping
back and forth between time periods. Many of these writers aimed to imitate the feeling of
how time is truly experienced subjectively.

Fragmented Perspective

If there is one thing readers could count on before the 20th century, it was the reliability of an
objective narrator in fiction. Modernist and postmodern writers, however, believed that this
 did a disservice to the reliability of stories in general. The 20th century saw the birth of the
ironic narrator, who could not be trusted with the facts of narrative. Nick Carraway, narrator
of Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," for example, tells the story with a bias toward the novel's
titular character. In an extreme case of fragmented perspective, Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying"
switches narrators between each chapter.

The Novel of the City

The 20th century is distinguished as the century of urbanism. As more people moved to cities
in Europe and America, novelists used urban environments as backdrops for the
stories they told. Perhaps the best known of these is James Joyce's "Dubliners," a series of
short stories that all take place in various locales in Dublin. Other 20th century writers are
also closely associated with various urban centers: Woolf and London, Theodore Dreiser and
Chicago, Paul Auster and New York, Michael Ondaatje and Toronto.

Writing from the Margins

The 20th century gave voice to marginalized people who previously got little recognition for
their literary contributions. The Harlem Renaissance, for example, brought together African-
Americans living in New York to form a powerful literary movement. Writers such as
Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston wrote fiction and poetry that
celebrated black identity. Similarly, female writers gained recognition through novels that
chronicled their own experience. Finally, the post-colonial literary movement was born, with
writers such as Chinua Achebe writing stories on behalf of subjugated peoples who had
experienced colonization by Western powers.
 The major movements of the 20th century Literature

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More

specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array
of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to
Western society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Postmodernism is the name given to the period of literary criticism that developed toward the
end of the twentieth century. Just as the name implies, it is the period that comes after the
modern period. But these are not easily separated into discrete units with specific dates as
centuries or presidential terms are limited. Postmodernism came about as a reaction to the
established modernist era, which itself was a reaction to the established tenets of the
.nineteenth century and before
Modernism
(1900-1950)
 Historical Context

Modernism
(1900-1950)
○ Writers affected by:
○ World War I, World War II, fear of communism,
beginning of the Cold War
○ Roaring 20s, the Great Depression,
commercialism
○ Increased population from immigration
○ Lingering racial tensions
○ Technological changes
○ Fear of eroding traditions
 Characteristics

Modernism
(1900-1950)
○ Modern writers are known for:
○ Themes of alienation and disconnectedness
○ Frequent use of irony and understatement
○ Experimentation with new literary techniques in fiction
and poetry
○ Stream of consciousness
○ Interior dialogue
○ Fragments
○ Creating a unique style
○ Rise of ethnic female writers
 Important Writers

Modernism
(1900-1950)
The Lost Generation Writers
○ A group of writers who ○ T.S. Eliot (poetry)
chose to live in Paris
after WWI
○ F. Scott Fitzgerald
○ Themes of alienation (fiction)
and change

○ Confronted people’s ○ Ernest Hemingway

fears, despair, and (fiction)
disillusionment
 Important Writers

Modernism
(1900-1950)
Harlem Renaissance Writers
○ Flourishing of ○ Langston Hughes
African-American authors (poetry)

○ Included music and art ○ Zora Neale Hurston

(fiction)
○ Two goals:
○ Write about
African-American ○ Claude McKay (poetru)
experience
○ Create literature by
African-Americans that could
rival anything created by
anyone else
 Important Writers

Modernism
(1900-1950)
Southern Renaissance Writers
○ Follow in the footsteps ○ Margaret Mitchell
of earlier local color
writers, in that they ○ William Faulkner
focus on the South

○ Flannery O’Connor
 Important Writers

Modernism
(1900-1950)
Traditional Poets Experimental Poets
Carl Sandburg e.e. cummings

Robert Frost

Modern dramatists
Arthur Miller

Tennessee Williams
Postmodernism
(1950-present)
 Historical Context

Postmodernism
(1950-present)
○ unprecedented prosperity ○ mass culture and
consumerism; media
○ global conflict saturation
○ Korean War, Vietnam War,
the end of the Cold War, the
rise of terrorism, Gulf War,
9/11, Iraqi War. War in ○ rise of technology and
Afganistan space exploration

○ social protest
○ the civil rights movement, ○ the digital revolution
the women’s rights
movement, the gay rights
movement
 Characteristics

Postmodernism
(1950-present)
○ Eclectic—a collection of ○ Questions traditional
a little bit of everything values

○ Create traditional works ○ Often critical and ironic

without traditional
structure ○ No heroes/anti-heroes are
common
○ Address social issues
related to ○ Detached, unemotional
gender/race/youthful
rebellion ○ Individuals are isolated
 Popular Authors

Postmodernism
(1950-present)
The Beat Poets Confessional Poets
○ Pre-hippies, highly ○ Used anguish of their
intellectual, exuberant own lives to reveal
language and behavior hidden despair
○ Jack Kerouac ○ Sylvia Plath
○ William S. Burroughs ○ Anne Sexton
○ Allen Ginsberg ○ Robert Lowell
 Popular Authors

Postmodernism
(1950-present)
American Authors Multicultural Literature
○ J.D. Salinger ○ Jewish
○ Elie Wiesel
○ James Thurber ○ African-American
○ Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou,
○ John Updike Alice Walker
○ Latino-American
○ Truman Capote ○ Julia Alvarez, Sandra
Cisneros
○ Stephen King
○ Asian-American
○ Joyce Carol Oates ○ Amy Tan, Maxine Hong
Kingston
 Modernism vs Postmodernism:

• Attempts to reveal profound • Suspicious of being "profound".

truths of experience and life.

• Prefers to dwell on the exterior

• Tries to find depth and
image and avoids drawing
interior meaning beneath the
conclusions or suggesting
surface of objects and events.
underlying meanings associated
with the interior of objects and
events.
 Modernism vs Postmodernism:
• Focuses on central themes and a • Sees human experience as unstable,
internally contradictory, ambiguous,
united vision in a particular piece of
inconclusive, indeterminate, unfinished,
literature. fragmented, "jagged," with no one
specific reality possible.

• Modern authors guide and control • Postmodern writers create an "open"

the reader’s response to their work. work in which readers must supply their
own connections, work out alternative
meanings, and provide their own
(unguided) interpretation.
• Modernist novels mourn the loss of • Postmodern novels celebrate and
a coherent world. revel in the chaos of an incoherent
world.