Modernist+Period-+5th+Period

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My Life Story as a Woman Writer
Hello there, my name is **Hilda Doolittle**, also known as **H.D.** I am an author and poet who took the pseudonym of H.D. because most women were not accepted as writers during the Modernist Period, which started in the 1870s and ended in the mid-twentieth century. This name allowed me to freely express myself and to get other people to read my stories. I was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on September 10, 1886. My father was an astronomer and my mother was a Moravian. I attended Bryn Mawr College in 1904 and became friends with two students named Ezra Pound and Marianne Moore who would later become highly acclaimed writers. In addition to Pound and Moore, there were many other writers I had become acquainted with during the Modernist Period. Some of them included Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Elliot, William Faulkner, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

My Fellow Writers

 * Ezra Pound** (1885-1972) was an American poet and critic, was often called "the poet's poet" because he considerably influenced 20th century English writing and poetry. Pound believed that poetry is the highest of arts. He behaved as a rebel and challenged many of the common views of his time which caused him to spend twelve years in an American mental hospital. Nonetheless, Pound's style is __clear, economical and concrete__ to all of America during the Modernist Period.


 * Marianne Moore** (1887-1972) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet and was highly esteemed by her fellow colleagues during the Modernist Period. Moore often advised poets to present for inspection "imaginary gardens with real toads in them". Some elements evident in many of her works are __cryptic zigzag logic, eccentric rhythms, and ironic wit__. Her best-known poems feature animals and are written in precise, clear language.


 * Ernest Hemingway** (1899-1961) was one of the most famous American novelists as well as short-story writers and essayists. His deceptively __simple prose style__ has influenced a wide range of writers in the Modernist Period. Hemingway was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature but was unable to attend his award ceremony because he was recuperating from injuries he suffered from an airplane crash in Uganda. One of his famous works is **The Old Man and the Sea,** which depicts an old man's determination to complete a certain job against all odds.


 * T.S. Elliot** (1888-1965) was an American-English poet, playwright, and critic. He is also the __distinguished leader__ of the Modernist movement in literature. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948. His most famous work is "The Waste Land" which is a highly complex poem that describes cultural and spiritual crisis.


 * William Faulkner** (1897-1962) was an American short story writer and novelist. Faulkner's style is not very easy to contemplate because he makes many connections to European literary modernism. His __sentences are long and hypnotic__, and he withholds important details. In many of his works, he refers to people or events that the reader will not learn about until much later. One novel by Faulkner is **The Sound and the Fury** which introduces a type of rhetoric technique known as stream of consciousness. This novel is set in the Roaring Twenties and depicts the lifestyle of the characters during this time period.


 * Paul Laurence Dunbar** (1872-1906) was the first African-American poet to gain national acclaim for his literary works in the Modernist Period. He wrote a many diverse types of poems, essays, novels and short stories. His writing mainly focuses on the __hindrances other fellow African Americans experienced__ in the movement to achieve equality in America. He was praised by both eminent literary critics and fellow writers during his lifetime.

** The Construction of Modernism **
Throughout the entirety of my writing career, I became referred to as one of the finest Imagist poets among all of my fellow writers. Later in my life, I earned the Brandeis and Longview Awards because my poetry had begun to __break away from strict Imagism__. Breaking away allowed me __to express the Modernist ideals__ of the new period. One notable aspect of the Modernist Period was that much of writing in the Modernist Period dealt with the current status of American government and society. Aside from government and society, American culture also instigated a new branch in Modernist writing for many of my fellow writers and me. At that point, we writers were now introduced to so many new potential topics to write about. This allowed us to __write without restraint on any subject or matter we deemed necessary.__

Denotation of Modernism
Modernism is essentially the development of modern thought. The new ideas that sprung in the period of Modernism were considerably contradictory to the strict themes and ideals set by other periods.

** Historical Context behind the Modernist Period **
During the Modernist Period, __many historical events took place,__ which stimulated the development of a new thought process throughout not only the United States but also the entire world.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the division of pro-slavery and anti-slavery was very evident in the United States. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1861, eleven southern states seceded from the Union creating the Confederacy engendering the **Civil War**. The Union or the northern states won the war, and Lincoln created the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the Americas. After the slaves were freed and the country became one again, __people began to develop new ideas that helped them prosper as a country__ which was one of the major characteristics of the Modernist Period.

media type="custom" key="4502604" width="422" height="388" align="right" The first half of the nineteenth century for Europe was marked by a number of wars and revolutions, which contributed to an aesthetic "turning away" from the realities of political and social fragmentation, which was one of the central aspects of the Modernist period. The **Revolutions of 1848** were a series of uprisings that included the Italian states, France, Germany, and the Hapsburg Empire. France started the series with a successful revolution; however, the French Revolution failed to bring about a radically new society in France. As the revolutions occurred, it became clear very few would be as successful as France. __Despite the limited success of these uprisings, they still left behind a sense of modernity that stimulated transformations in previously held ideas in the time period__.

With revolutionary feelings in Europe and new ideas in America after the Civil War developing, the period of Modernism came into existence. After these historical events took place, people started to develop individual thoughts and Modernist ideals.

Science was also affected by this modernist attitude. **Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and Sigmund Freud's work on psychoanalysis** were all ideas that came about during the Modernist Period. The Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein __contradicted a previous theory__ concocted by Isaac Newton many years ago in that the Theory of Relativity predicts that light coming from a strong gravitational field should have its wavelength shifted to larger values. The Theory of Evolution developed by Charles Darwin describes that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor. It significantly __disproved other theories__ scientists such as Charles Lyell had fabricated before Darwin's time. Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis studies have really __revolutionized the methods__ in which therapy is carried out and studied by doctors. As a result, based on the alterations to theories in science during this period, **the way people today perceive and understand the world is much different and continues to change.**
 * Science during the Modernist Period **

If you would like to share your views and tell us how you feel Modernist ideals and novels still affect us today and why they are so important to the way literature is perceived, please visit our blog and share with us your comments at this link: http://hildadoolitlemodernism.blogspot.com/

Last but not least, I know many of you would like to read more about the context behind the Modernist period so here are some helpful links that will delve deeper into the Modernist period and its characteristics and components.
 * Helpful Links **

Modernism[| http://witcombe.sbc.edu/modernism/roots.html] H.D. [] Ezra Pound [] Ernest Hemingway [] T.S. Elliot [] William Faulkner [] Paul Laurence Dunbar [] Civil War [] Theory of Relativity http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/einstein.html Theory of Evolution http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/ Psychoanalysis http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/psychoanalysis.html