Modernism, which is typically identified with the artistic movements that happened after World War I (1914-1918), refers to a global movement in culture and society that rejected Victorian aesthetics, eschewing classical literary forms that had been popular in the preceding eras. Modernism also spurned the moral values of the preceding generation, which valorized an uptight attitude toward sexuality, rigid class and gender norms, and filial and patriotic duty. Modernism’s new openness regarding these subjects was joined by formal experimentation; artists painted with increasing abstraction, and writers mimicked psychological dislocation, stress, or jubilation through the techniques of fragmentation, stream of consciousness, and other anti-structural approaches. This trend was a reaction to the chaotic warfare of World War I, as well as to the advent of modern psychology, which ushered in a distinct turn toward the personal and subjective.

Modernism is also associated with the optimistic embrace of technology, innovation, and freedom. Popular American writers of this time period—including John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Edna Ferber, and Dorothy Parker—experimented with subject matter and narrative, shaping the world of contemporary literature. Visual art was dominated by expressionists and cubists, such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Wassili Kandinsky.