Download The Modern Period Worksheet 1900-1950 - Lauralton Hall

The Modern Period Worksheet 1900-1950
To correspond w/ pages 524-536
1) What was the central and defining event that shaped the American Modern period?
Why?
2) What was the literary voice of America like before that time?
3) Describe how and why American writers turned from idealism to cynicism.
4) List four happenings in culture that reflect this newfound despair.
5) What effect did the Stock Market crash and the Great Depression have on the
American psyche?
6) What are the three central ideas of the American Dream?
7) Timeline: Identify:
1905 ___________________________________________________
1914 ___________________________________________________
1914 ___________________________________________________
1917 ___________________________________________________
1920 ___________________________________________________
1920 ___________________________________________________
1927 ___________________________________________________
1927 ___________________________________________________
1929 ___________________________________________________
1933 ___________________________________________________
1939 ___________________________________________________
1941 ___________________________________________________
1945 ___________________________________________________
1945 ___________________________________________________
1950 ___________________________________________________
8) How is the decade of the 1930s considered "the best of times, the worst of times?"
9) What are two postwar trends that shaped the intellectual movement of the time?
_______________________________________________
Describe it:
________________________________________________
Describe it:
10) What is the role that Sigmund Freud played in this time period?
11) What is "stream of consciousness?"
12) Describe the advent of Prohibition and how it affected American morals.
13) What is The Jazz Age? _________________________________
How and why does it begin?
14) How is Edna St. Vincent Millay a woman who is characteristic of the changing times?
15) What is the major theme of fiction in the modern period?
16) Who was the most influential of all American writers of the time? _____________________________________________________
Why?
17) Describe the new American hero of this time period.
What was his "code?"
18) What does "grace under pressure" mean?
19) Who were the poets of the time after the sad and tragic death of my dear Emily?
20) What is Symbolism?
21) What is Imagism?
22) List the 5 elements of Modernism in American Literature?
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23) Who was the poetic voice in New England?
24) What was his voice?
25) Who was Edgar Lee Masters and what area of the country did he represent?
How did his geographic region affect/mirror his poetic themes?
26) What is the Harlem Renaissance?
27) Where does the Harlem Renaissance begin?
28) How did the poetic voices of the West and South differ from those of poets from New
England?
29) At the end of the Modern period, re-characterize the American Dream.