The Topic of American Modernismen

At the end of the year 2017, we in our English class, looked into the genre of modernismen. Modernismen has its origins in the very end and early start of the 19th and 20th centuries, where it at the time was unlike any other literary period seen before, and it changed literature forever. In modernised there is focus on how the there is no concrete truth and that desires rule. We read some text from Ernest Hemingway, who is a key figure in american modernismen which we mainly focused on. Some of these text were "Hills Like White Elephants" and "Cat in the Rain". A writing style that prevailed under modernismen were the "iceberg principle" where not much is shown but much is told, what is also something that these stories are prime examples of. 

I found that the short stories that followed this "Iceberg Principle" to be very interesting. The fact that only the minimal is show, that we as reader must piece the story together from the scarcely implemented clues, to be very appealing. We do not see the whole story, only a fraction, as in "Hills Like White Elephants" in which, we are shown a glimt of the entirety of the plot. Only tidbits of a greater picture. If done correctly, this gives more meaning and depth to the words and what is portrayed, which encourages the reader to read the short stories more that once. These stories rely a lot on how the audience interprets diffrent elements and actions. A person from India, might see a shrug on the shoulder as something completely diffrent, that someone from England. The stories therefore somehow become more personalised, and the meaning of the can therefore change from person to person.

 Overall I generally enjoyed the genre of moderneismen. I find it engaging and interesting that the stories we've read, were able to be interpreted in many diffrent ways depending on the readers background. Trough the gymnasium I have read and analysed, some of the other time periods, up to and after the prevailing time period. Compared to the others this one is definitely the more interesting periods.  

Comments

  1. KHR-RybnersJanuary 12, 2018 at 3:09 AM

    Oh yeah, modernism is my favourite literary period as well. You reflections on it are very relevant and you demonstrate a good understanding of the 'iceberg principle' in minimalism, which is a technique also employed by a lot of writers today of course. Hemingway is the king of minimalism, though.

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