Learning Goal: to identify characteristics of particular styles of writing

1. Learning Goal: • to identify characteristics of particular styles of writing • to identify differences between particular styles of writing • Success Criteria: • isolate conventions of “The Most Dangerous Game” that make it a traditional story • label “modern” conventions in storytelling

2. Traditional literature prior to the late 1800s was influenced by clearly established religious, political and social views. Typically written on a grand scale about aristocrats and royalty (although some Victorian era writers like Charles Dickens began to write about regular folk) the narrator is objective (doesn’t judge) and removed from the story (3rd person). Stories were typically set in exciting locations, over lengthy periods of time and describing grand adventures. Idealized, romantic views of heroes often taught lessons about virtue, morality, hard work and perseverance. Absolute truths and divine providence are clearly established: right wins, wrong is punished.

3. Late 19thc. Modernism The general thematic concerns of Modernist literature are well-summarized by the sociologist Georg Simmel: "The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.“

4. Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the movement which rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world.

5. Modernism rejected the certainty of the Enlightenment (God, government, science, and reason as finite). Modernists weren’t necessarily rejecting these ideas but rather questioning them in a way previous generations had not. The architect Ludwig Mies van derRohe would deem “less is more”. While the poet Ezra Pound's paradigmatic injunction was to "Make it new!".

6. Think of it like Modern architecture: • streamlined, simplified forms • clean and simple • efficient and economic • uses science and technology to improve our lives and reshape our environment Seagram Building, NYC, 1958 van derRohe

7. One of the most prominent characteristics of Modernism is self-consciousness. This often led to experiments with form, and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used. In turn, Modernist Literature is characterized by: • quest for meaning • focus on the everyday (streamlined/simplified) • reject the objective or omniscient narrative in favour of subjectivism (efficient and economic) • search for new concepts within the confines of tradition (e.g. stream-of-consciousness and disjointed time) (science and technology = change) • concept of alienation/isolation/pessimism (the tortured anti-hero) (the cost of reshaping our environment)