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Modernism

To reinforce the lectures this week, and to cover information we won't have time to get to, I've assigned some readings in the big red book -- pages 494-500, 628-632, & 706-710. Taken together, the essays cover everything you need to know for the "Modernism" portion of your final exam.

Primarily, I want everyone to understand the "big picture," the development of literature in America as it enters the 20th century. As your book states, "[Modernism], swept along by disillusionment with traditions that seemed to have become spiritually empty, called for bold experimentation and a sweeping rejection of all traditional themes and styles" (495). The Modernist movement directed most everything that followed, propelled by Ezra Pound's edict to Make it new!

For more information than you'd ever care to know on the subject of Modernism (including several links to even more information), look at this Wikipedia page.

Finally, listen to/watch Igor Stravinski's The Rite of Spring for a taste of the composition that caused a riot in Paris in 1913.

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