| The Jazz Age: Notes from "American Literature Between
the Wars" (939-950) Norton Anthology of American Literature,
Volume 2 (1994)
Backgrounds:
| 1918- American Entry into World War One (The Great
War) 1918- Bolshevik Revolution in Russia
| formation of Communist Internationale dedicated to
the demise of capitalism |
1918- Worldwide Flu Epidemic
| killed 675,00 Americans; 20-40 million
worldwide |
1919- Red Scare in America
| nativism- intolerance of immigrants leads to
Immigration Act of 1924 Violent labor unrest- strikes
led by radical groups including Wobblies in Northwest
and American Communist Party
FBI created to combat internal enemies of the
government |
1919- 18th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting
the sale of alcoholic beverages, is ratified... and then
ignored
| stimulates bootlegging industry:
gangsters and organized crime |
1920- 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving
women the right to vote
| the culmination of seventy years of
activism |
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Impact of Modern Times on American Culture
World War One:
| - America entered the war late and
tipped the balance in favor of the allies,
ending the bloody stalemate on the Western
Front which had consumed the lives of
millions of soldiers. - Even though
America lost few only a relatively small
number of soldiers in combat, involvement with the
brutal actualities of modern war disabused
many of their illusions about heroism.
- American writers and artists, like
intellectuals in Europe, were rocked by the
breakdown of a great civilization. The
enlightenment vision of a rational social
order which valued human rights as
fundamental and universal had been blown to
smithereens. Worse, intellectuals felt
helpless: they felt that life was determined
by forces too powerful for individuals to
overcome. Reaction? fear, disorientation,
and .... liberation. |
Urbanization, Industrialization and Immigration:
| - America emerged from the war with its
economy intact and quickly became the
world's manufacturing leader: economic boom.
- New technologies transformed American
life: telephones, electricity, phonograph,
motion pictures, radio.
- A mass popular culture emerged that was
highly commercial and manipulative
(advertising), yet irresistible. Talented
writers were drawn to Hollywood, and in
turn, film techniques influenced literary
form (flashbacks, pans, intercutting,
close-ups, etc.)
- The automobile was mass-produced. Henry
Ford's assembly line technique of production
made cars cheap enough for most Americans to
purchase. The automobile transformed the
economy and literally reshaped the city.
Jobs: auto plants, steel mills, highways,
gas stations, fast food, motels. The highway
system also made it possible for people to
commute to work from neighborhoods beyond
city lines: invention of the suburbs. |
Culture Wars:
| Affluence generated by economic boom and
the explosion of mass popular culture bring
issues of personal freedom, social
permissiveness, the pursuit of pleasure and
diversity to the fore: Traditional small
town, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant values
(work ethic, social conformity, duty,
respectability) vs.
Jazz Age rebellion (immigrants,
minorities, youth, women, artists)
Sexual Revolution of 1920's: the New
Woman: The wide awake, yet innocent Gibson
Girl of the Gilded Age gives way to the free
wheeling, independent 'flapper' of the
1920's. Women enter new areas of the
workforce, not just domestic service and
factory jobs, but primary and secondary
teaching jobs as well as clerical and sales
positions come to be dominated by women.
Even academia, the law, medicine, and
journalism allow women are opened to women.
The Great Migration; The lure of factory
jobs pulls millions of African Americans
from the rural South to the big cities of
the North. |
Intellectual Currents: New Ascendancy of Science
Einstein's Special and General Theories
of Relativity
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
Bohr's Quantum Mechanics"materialism"-
the only true answers to any authentic
questions must be verifiable by the senses.
vs.
"idealism" doubted- truth is transcendent
and exists in an ideal realm accessible by
pure, rational thought or by faith.
The universal notions of honor, duty,
courage, love and beauty inherited from the
Greeks via the Renaissance are called into
question.
"determinism"- forces larger and more
powerful than individual will determine
identity
Freud's theory of the unconscious:
repressed primal impulses within the psyche
manipulate our choices
Marx's theory of history: the class
(environment) into which we are born
determines our identity. Culture itself is a
tool of the ruling class.
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