Modern+American+and+British

__//**1914-1965**//__  (Click play on the voki to hear about some events that took place during the modern time period) media type="custom" key="13773648" width="99" height="99" align="right" //**American literary periods were best defined by certain stylistic conventions or popular schools of thought,**// //**however, the modern period of American literature is better defined by the traditions it broke rather than any tradition it created. Set into motion by rapid changes in the fabric of American life, it produced literature with tension, struggling with deep universal questions yet never coming up with fully reliable answers. It was during**// //**this period of drastic change and drastic art that American literature finally came into its own in academia.**//

//**__Characteristics__**// There were three major changes in attitude seperating the Modern Time Period from the previous time period:
 * 1) A common sense of significance and shared values had disappeared because of the pervasive uncertainty
 * 2) A new view of time: no longer viewed as a series of chronological moments to be presented in a sequence; now considered a continuous flow in the consciousness of the individual.
 * 3) Developments in the nature of consciousness

//** __Poem:__ A girl- Ezra Pound **// //** The tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, **// //** The tree has grown in my breast- Downward, The branches grow out of me, like arms. Tree you are, Moss you are, You are violets with wind above them. A child - so high - you are, **// //** And all this is folly to the world. **// __**Meaning:**__
 * it's about a young woman (whom the author must've known,or maybe women in general) and the period of life when a girl starts changing,turning into a woman,her feminine "burst" ,her smell (violet),her body starting to shape ,and her whole look changing from a little girl,into a gracious young lady.**

**__Famous Writers of the Modern Period:__**
 * **//Author//** || **//Country//** || **//Contribution//** ||
 * ** Ernest Hemingway ** || ** American **  ||  **He took American literature to a place it had never been—not just to the safari camps of Kenya, but to a pared-down, elegant style that condensed paragraphs of unspoken knowledge into a single sentence that said it all.**  ||
 * ** Thomas Stearns Eliot ** ||  ** American **   ** /Bristish **  || ** Eliot is one of the greatest literary critics of England from the point of view of the bulk and quality of his critical writings. His criticism was revolutionary which inverted the critical tradition of the whole English speaking work. ** ||
 * ** Ezra Pound ** ||  ** American **  || ** One of the most ambitious, influential, and innovative poets of the modernist period. Pound made significant contributions to American poetry not only as a poet but also as a translator, editor, polemicist, and essayist. ** ||
 * ** F. Scott Fitzgerald ** ||  ** American **  || ** Helped shed light onto the decay of society and the emptiness felt as the world tried to forget about the problems caused from World War I. Fitzgerald really showed the many problems that come from using greed, consumerism, and alcohol as a way to mask your pain and he also very effectively managed to tell stories in the way soap operas now model their plot lines ** ||
 * ** Truman Capote ** || ** American ** || ** Truman Capote is known for developing "New Journalism," a style of writing that was a cross between journalism and literature. The epitome of this genre is Capote's ground-breaking work of non-fiction, //In Cold Blood//, published in 1965 and considered the first "so-called news novel" ** ||
 * ** Howard Phillips Lovecraft ** || ** American ** || ** Hailed by literary critics as the inventor of modern horror, is a driving force behind such modern writers as Robert Bloch (//Psycho//), Wes Craven (//The Craft, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream//), and Stephen King (//Pet Semetary, Carrie, Children of the Corn//), to name a few. ** ||
 * ** Anne Sexton ** ||  ** American **  || ** Known as a confessional poet, one who writes real or fictitious, intimate, and hidden details of one's life. She dealt with subjects that others found inappropriate for poetry. She wrote about topics that people faced every day, but didn't talk about openly. Some thought her topics were too personal to write about. Sexton did not consider herself a feminist, although she wrote poetry concerning feminist issues. Sexton wrote about abortion, menstruation, drug addiction, sex, religion, and suicidal tendencies. ** ||