Lesson 1: Understanding the Context of Modernist Poetry

Review the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and other useful websites. Download and print out documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.

• Read the Poetry Exhibit “The Modernist Revolution: ‘Make It New!’” from the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets website.
• Browse the interactive timelines from the EDSITEment-reviewed resource Learner.org: Timeline: Events of 1876-1999 and Interactive Timeline: Inventions 1868-1898. Focus on the late 1800s/early 1900s.

Activity 1. Setting the Context of Modernist Poetry

• Ask students to define the term “modern” in general? Write descriptions on the blackboard/whiteboard, and ask students to think of different contexts in which the term is used.
• Read the following definition of the term “modernism” from the University of Virginia’s Electronic Labyrinth available via the EDSITEment-reviewed website Center for the Liberal Arts:

  "The term modernism refers to the radical shift in aesthetic and cultural sensibilities evident in the art and literature of the post-World War I period. The ordered, stable and inherently meaningful world view of the nineteenth century could not, wrote T.S. Eliot, accord with ‘the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.’.. rejecting nineteenth-century optimism, [modernists] presented a profoundly pessimistic picture of a culture in disarray.”

• Pass out the following blank Aspects of Modernism chart (available as a PDF). Based on the quotation above, help students brainstorm some of the differences between Romantic and modern periods, which may include the following:
  • Pre-Modern World (e.g., Romantic, Victorian Periods) / Modern World (early 20th century)

  • Ordered / Chaos

  • Meaningful / Futile
  • Optimistic / Pessimistic
  • Stable / Unstable
  • Faith / Loss of Faith
  • Morality/Values / Collapse of Morality/Values
  • Clear Sense of Identity / Confused Sense of Identity and Place in World

Have students keep this chart, which they will add to as they continue with Lesson Three of this curriculum unit.

• Note that the English novelist Virginia Woolf proclaimed that, “human nature underwent a fundamental change ‘on or about December 1910.’" [From the Academy of American Poets “The Modernist Revolution: Make It New”]. Her claim was in reaction to the transformative post-Impressionist exhibit curated by critic Robert Fry, which featured artists such as Gaugin, Cézanne, and Van Gogh. Ask students to consider what this statement means—to undergo a fundamental change in human nature. Discuss with students their own experience of such a shift in human nature. While many students will likely mention September 11th, encourage students to think of other profound changes: computers, the Internet, and World Wide Web; space travel, including the space station and the Mars rovers; 24 hour news networks; the prevalence of cameras and digital photography; and so forth. Ask students to think broadly and write down specific emotional and social changes they have experienced in their daily lives because of these changes.

Activity 2. Exploring the Context of Modernist Poetry

• Now that students have briefly considered how events and inventions can radically affect our worldview, redirect them to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The following exercise may work equally well working as individuals, in groups, or as a class. If working as a class on a single computer or if you wish to provide students with a brief introduction before group work, lead students through a tour of the interactive timeline from the EDSITEment-reviewed resource Learner.org: Timeline: Events of 1876-1999. Focus on the late 1800s and 1900s. While not all on the same scale of September 11th, certain historical, social, and cultural forces prompted the same kind of wide-scale change in the way individuals thought about their world. Ask students what some of these influential forces were. Students should see events such as: the rise of cities; profound technological changes in transportation, architecture, and engineering; a rising population that engendered crowds and chaos in public spaces; a growing sense of mass markets often made individuals; and WWI contributed to making people feel less individual and more alienated, fragmented, and at a loss in their daily lives and worlds.
• Divide students into five small groups. Assign each small group to one of the five topics listed below. Ask students to explore the assigned resources and to try to imagine life before and after the key moments in history. These sites primarily focus on U.S. history.
• Have each group assign a scribe, and ask each group to list at least five adjectives to describe how life must have been within the context of the topic they explore as a small group. Emphasize that students should consider these topics within the context of how an individual would respond to these social, cultural, technological, and historical changes.

Inventions/Technological Breakthroughs

• Have students explore the Interactive Timeline: Inventions 1868-1898, from the EDSITEment-reviewed resource Learner.org. The group should assign a person to take notes, jotting down 4-5 inventions for discussion.
• Students should explore the following sites as well: “Inventing Entertainment,” from the Library of Congress American Memory Project. Point students to the following videos in particular:
  • 104th Street curve, New York, elevated railway
  • 9th Infantry boys' morning wash
  • American falls from above, American side
• Ask students in this group should consider the following questions as they note key inventions/technological advancements at the turn of the 19th century:
  • What were some of the primary effects/ramifications of each invention/technological breakthrough?
  • How do you think individuals responded to the inventions/technological advancements? What became easier? What became harder in one’s daily life?
  • What are some of the effects of the invention of motion pictures (both in terms of the technology itself and the ability to capture moving images of various content/subject matters)?

Rise of the City

• Prompt students to compare and contrast rural and urban life. Discuss with them the rise of the city that occurred with the influx of immigration, continued industrialization of the United States (especially the North), and the rise of now commonplace features like major department stores and their window displays.
• Have this group watch the following early videos of New York, available via the EDSITEment-reviewed American Memory website, asking them to pay attention to people, traffic, and crowds.
  • Lower Broadway, 1903
  • Panorama of Flatiron Building, 1903
  • Panorama from Times Building, 1905 (notice the people/cars on the street from the 20-story height of the Times Building)
  • 104th Street curve, New York, elevated railway, 1899
  • Interior, New York Subway, 1905

See also:

• Overview of the first skyscraper (Home Insurance Building), from EDSITEment-reviewed PBS “Building Big” series
• New Brooklyn to New York via Brooklyn Bridge, no. 2
• Ask students to consider the following questions:

Quickened Pace of Transportation

Have this group explore the “The Wilbur and Orville Wright Timeline, 1901-1910,” from the EDSITEment-reviewed Library of Congress American Memory Project. Point out to students the collection’s webpage “The Belief That Flight is Possible to Man.”

• How would you feel if you were an individual navigating these city scenes?
• What elements of each city scene video stand out to you and why?
• Imagine first riding on an elevated railroad through a city or in a city subway? What would this ride feel like if you never had experienced it before?
• How might these changes effect how people responded to the city? To each other? Teachers might prompt students to consider, for example, how the layout of the school building or the way they move between classes—or from class to home—influences their relationships with other people.
• Also have students view one or more of the following early motion videos from the EDSITEment-reviewed American Memory website:
  • 104th Street curve, New York, elevated railway, 1899
  • Interior, New York Subway, 1905
  • New Brooklyn to New York via Brooklyn Bridge, no. 2, 1899
  • Market Street before parade, filmed from automobile, 1903
  • A trip down Market Street before the fire, filmed from San Francisco cable car, 1905

See also:

• Brooklyn Bridge Overview (from EDSITEment-reviewed America’s Story)
• Brooklyn Bridge overview from EDSITEment-reviewed PBS “Building Big” series.
• Ask students to consider the following questions:

Factory Life

• Imagine first riding on an elevated railroad through a city or in a city subway? What would this ride feel like if you never had experienced it before?

• Compare the pedestrians, horse/carriages you see to the new forms of transportation. What differences do you notice in these early films?
• What would life be like before the advancements in transportation in the late 1800s/early 1900s? What effects did such technological breakthroughs have on individuals in their local and larger worlds?

• Have this group explore the early motion videos from “Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904” [From the Library of Congress American Memory Project], including, for example:

  • Assembling a generator
  • Girls taking time checks
  • Girls winding armatures
  • Panorama of Machine Co. aisle
  • Panorama view of street car motor room
• Have students browse “The Triangle Fire, March 25, 1911 Photo Gallery,” including the link to Cornell University’s “The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Website”. The Triangle Fire caused the deaths of several young working women and prompted reforms.
• Ask students to consider the following questions:

World War I

• Think about “Girls taking time checks,” “Girls winding armatures,” and the panoramic overviews? What do these images suggest about an individual factory worker’s own place within the factory at large?
• What is the relationship between the factory worker and the machines such as those depicted in the Westinghouse videos?
• How would you describe working in a factory in the early 20th century?
• Have students view several of the trench warfare videos from The Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets site:
  • French soldiers in Alsace using trench periscope
  • British troops, August 1916, during the Battle of the Somme
  • Belgian troops entrenched along a railway line
• Small groups should view the following early video clips and/or photos of landscapes devastated during WWI.
  • The “Before and After” pictures
• Ask students to consider the following questions:
  • What do you imagine the experience of emerging from a WWI trench was like for a soldier? To what can you compare such an experience?
  • What do you think of the war-devastated landscape? How would you feel if you lived in such a European city after WWI?
  • What emotional effects do the before and after pictures elicit? Compare these pictures to contemporary images (of September 11th, the War in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq).

Assessment options include the following exercises:

• Have each student group present their findings, including their list of adjectives, from the small group activity to the full class. Write all adjectives on the blackboard/whiteboard. Lead brief full class discussions on each topic, and begin to chart primary characteristics of a modernist sense of the world.
• Have each individual student write a typed, two-page letter in the voice of an individual living during the late 1800s to early 1900s. The letter can be written to imaginary individuals from future generations. The letter should address the individual’s response to the social, cultural, technological, or historical change explored during the small group activity. Be sure to integrate into your letter the adjectives your group identified during the small group activity, and explain why those terms apply to you as an individual (in the persona you have chosen to adopt).

Consider extending this lesson with the EDSITEment lesson plan Poetry of The Great War: 'From Darkness to Light'?