Civil war (1642-1648) and the English Bourgeois Revolution

20. Modernism in American Literature. W. Faulkner
AM is a cultural movement in the US starting at the turn of the 20th c. with its core period between WW I and II,cont. into the 21st century. AM is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment. Celebrated Modernists include Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, and a romantic poet, Walt Whitman is sometimes regarded as a pioneer of the modernist era in America. The modernist period also brought changes to the portrayal of gender roles and especially to women's role in society. Gatsby, for example, deals with such topics as gender interaction in a mundane society. Many AM writers explored the psychological wounds and spiritual scars of the war experience. American modernists focused on "build a self". Race relations between blacks and whites.

William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, in 1897 Faulkner earned his fame from a series of novels that explore the South’s historical legacy. This grouping of major works includes The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1931), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). In his writing, Faulkner was particularly interested in exploring the moral implications of history. Gothic atmosphere in Faulkner’s “ghost story,” gestures to broader ideas, including the tensions between North and South, changing world order, disappearing aristocracy, and rigid social constraints placed on women.