This block proseminar explores the vibrant and transformative period of American Modernism through the lens of three authors who coined this literary and cultural movement of the early twentieth century significantly. By looking at Ernest Hemingway's Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises), F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and excerpts of Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans, we aim to identify what makes their writing distinctly American, and how their works encapsulate the themes, styles, and innovations typical of the Modernist period. Each author navigates their own way through a web of disillusionment, and the search for identity and meaning in the post-World War I era. At the centre of all their works are renegotiations of the American dream, the juxtaposition of traditional and modern values, and the experience of living as an American expatriate in Europe. On the level of form, these modernist writers were looking for ways of representing the chaotic and fragmented world they were experiencing in light of overwhelming socio-economic changes. Consequently, they were looking for new modes of writing about their time, for example, by telling fragmented stories, applying multiple points-of-views, and making use of a technique that came to be known as stream of consciousness.
- Enseignant·e: Corin Kraft