What role did Gertrude Stein play in the development of American modernism?
Show answer Hide answer
Answer: A. Stein was a crucially important figure in the Paris émigré community.
Explanation
Gertrude Stein's famous Paris salon served as a crucial intellectual hub for expatriate modernist writers and artists. She actively supported and influenced pioneering authors who shaped the trajectory of twentieth-century American literature. The correct option accurately highlights her central leadership role within the vibrant Paris émigré modernist community. Gertrude Stein was an American avant-garde writer, art collector, and poet who spent most of her adult life in France. Her legendary apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus hosted famous painters like Pablo Picasso and writers like Ernest Hemingway. Stein coined the famous phrase Lost Generation to describe the disillusioned young expatriates living in post-war Paris.
Option B is too limiting because Stein was an active, innovative author and patron rather than just a passive muse. Option C is incorrect as Stein championed high modernist avant-garde experimentation rather than low modernism. Option D is completely false since Stein was a radical leader of vanguard artistic trends throughout her career.
- Subject
- English
- Category
- English Literature
- Topic
- —
- Difficulty
- medium
Related questions
Q1. How can Langston Hughes’s poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” be best characterized?
Show answer Hide answer
Answer: C. Similar to Hart Crane and Whitman, Hughes uses a personal and universal “I” to address issues of history, race, and identity.
Langston Hughes employs a collective, historical “I” to link personal African American identity with deep global roots across rivers. The poetic speaker bridges ancient civilizations in Africa and America, unifying Black...
Q2. What statement best defines the contrast between T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and the artistic goals of futurism?
Show answer Hide answer
Answer: B. “The Waste Land” confronts the fragmentation of modernity by exploring a variety of modes and voices, whereas the futurists do not focus on the fragmentation of modern experience, praising speed and industrial progress instead.
The Waste Land confronts modern fragmentation through shifting perspectives, whereas Futurism praises industrial progress. T.S. Eliot laments cultural breakdown while the Futurists celebrate speed and technological destr...
Q3. What differentiates poetry written about World War II from Futurist poetry?
Show answer Hide answer
Answer: A. The Futurists apotheosized technology, whereas World War II poets often focused on technology’s destructive powers.
Italian Futurists glorified machines and industrial speed, whereas World War II poets highlighted destruction. Futurism apotheosized technology as a magnificent savior, while wartime poets focused on its catastrophic mil...
Q4. What primary questions confronted poetry in the aftermath of the Holocaust?
Show answer Hide answer
Answer: B. The horror of the Holocaust was inexpressible; how can poetry speak of what is inexpressible?
The extreme trauma and unimaginable scale of the Holocaust forced post-war writers to question traditional poetic language. Writers struggled deeply with how conventional aesthetic forms could possibly address such unpre...
Q5. What statement best defines the poetic structure of Claude McKay’s “The Harlem Dancer”?
Show answer Hide answer
Answer: A. It is an English sonnet.
Claude McKay s poem The Harlem Dancer strictly follows the traditional fourteen-line structure of an English sonnet. It employs the characteristic rhyme scheme and thematic volta associated with Elizabethan sonneteering....
Q6. How should Romanticism’s connection to the Enlightenment be understood?
Show answer Hide answer
Answer: B. Romanticism challenged the Enlightenment’s emphasis on objectivity as the basis of truth.
Romanticism shifted focus away from cold Enlightenment objectivity and rationalism toward subjective emotional experience. Writers of the romantic era challenged the Enlightenment emphasis on universal order apprehended...