My pre existing knowledge of 20th century American Literature is very limited, but I do have some. I have studied Hemingway as well as others in ninth grade as well as senior year in high school. I also just did some research, so that is where all of my understanding comes from, but I am very excited to become more educated about it.
Much of the literature depicts the disposition of the era. As far as the politcal scene goes for this time period it was post world war one. Woodrow Wilson had in mind a new age for America: the end of war. It had felt as though everything lost it’s meaning and that there truly was no answer; no correct algorithm that would fix the problems that we keep running into. There was an understanding that no matter how we construct our government and build a strong foundation as a nation, our self destruction was inevitable and perpetual. Many topics in 20th Century American literature center around meaninglessness, corruption, and injustice, making societal as well as philosophical statements.
Many of the modernist authors had become hard hearted and cynical and their works reflect that. Many people became realists. The modernist era is characterized by nonconformity. The Victorian era had come to an end and so now there was a void in what society’s values should be, as the old ones had been exposed. The modern era in short, equates to a new construct and the societal search for a new mold to fit into. Many philosophies were developed in this time period. This is also the time period where romanticism is born. Romanticism seeked to find ways to not deny the reality, but to transcend and understand it in a new way. Now was a time period where people began to ponder and contemplate much deeper than every before.
Frued and Jung came around in this time period and as I learned from my psychology class, they were concerned with the unconsciousness’s role in our conscience. They claimed that all of our experiences shape us and those experiences are exactly what we carry with us everywhere we go. They claimed that dreams depict what we have suppressed and shoved into out subcounscious. Clearly their influence was powerful, as we base majority of our psychology understanding based on their findings. This is a major concept in literature in this time period, reflected by authors such as Hemingway and Fauklner. This time period in America is a birth of individuals relying on their own understanding to completely rebuild their thoughts about life.
Citation
Baldwin, Marc. “20th Century Literature.” YouTube, YouTube, 20 Mar. 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuyYaRcQtCo.
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