Modernism in Canada and The United States
In Canada and the United States modernism emerges from transnational engagements with global intellectual movements while also grappling with local intellectual, cultural, and political developments…
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Dos Passos, John (1896–1970)
John Dos Passos was an American writer best known for his ‘contemporary chronicles’ of American life. His early novels, including Manhattan Transfer (1925) and the…
Tudor, Antony (1908–1987)
Born into a modest household in London’s East End, Antony Tudor changed the way we look at ballet and what it was thought to express.…
Knister, (John) Raymond (1899–1932)
Raymond Knister was one of Canada’s earliest modernist writers. Although Knister is best known as an imagist poet, he wrote and published work in a…
Dudley, Jane (1912–2001)
Jane Dudley, a key figure in the radical dance movement of the 1930s, was a choreographer who developed her own distinctive voice within the modern…
Balanchine, George (1904–1983)
George Balanchine (Georgii Melitonovich Balanchivadze), arguably the greatest ballet choreographer of the twentieth century, was at once both modernist and traditionalist. Unlike many radical innovators,…
Patriquin, Donald (1938--)
Donald Patriquin is a composer known chiefly for contributing to choral repertoire in Canada. Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, he studied composition as a teenager with…
Anglo-Modernism in Canada
Among the movements originating in Western Europe that instigated the modernist turn in anglophone Canadian literature, the most prominent were symbolism, impressionism, aestheticism, and decadence,…
Monk, Thelonious (1917–1982)
Thelonious Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer. One of the earliest performers in the bebop movement of modern jazz dating from the mid-twentieth…
Birney, (Alfred) Earle (1904–1995)
Earle Birney was a Canadian poet, novelist, dramatist and professor. Born in 1904 in Calgary, Alberta, he spent his childhood in rural Alberta and British…
Anderson, Sherwood
Sherwood Anderson was an American short-story writer, novelist, and memoirist. He was a businessman turned author whose writing often rendered the lives of ordinary people…
Larsen, Nella (1891–1964)
Nella Larsen was an American novelist active in the 1920s and one of the central figures of ‘Manhattan modernism.’ She is best known for two…
Monroe, Harriet (1860–1936)
Harriet Monroe was an American woman of letters who — from her position as founder and long-time editor of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse —…
Stein, Gertrude (1874–1946)
Gertrude Stein was a modernist writer of the twentieth century, notable for the extremity of her stylistic innovations. During the first half of her career,…
Oppen, George (1908–1984)
George Oppen was an innovative poet associated with the Objectivist movement in American poetry. Early in his poetic career, he appeared in both the ‘Objectivist’…
Howe, Irving (1920–1993)
Irving Howe was an American literary and social critic. Howe was a central figure in the circles of American democratic socialism as well as a…
Fuller, Loie (1862–1928)
Loie Fuller was a founding figure of modern dance. After an early career in American vaudeville, she moved to Paris where she created a new…
Federal Dance Project (1936–1938)
The Federal Dance Project (FDP) was formed in January 1936, as part of President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). Although it was originally a component…
Smart, Elizabeth (1913–1986)
Elizabeth Smart was a Canadian poet and novelist, best known for By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept– a novella-length work of prose…
The Objectivists
The Objectivist poets were a group of first- and second-generation modernist writers who emerged in the USA during the 1930s. The writers most commonly associated…
Fitzgerald, Zelda Sayre (1900–1948)
On 24 July 1900, Zelda Sayre was born into a prominent Southern family in Montgomery, Alabama, the youngest of six children. Her father had a…
Horton, Lester (1906–1953)
Lester Horton, regarded as one of the founders of American modern dance, worked outside the established center of New York City, establishing a permanent dance…
Denby, Edwin (1903–1983)
Edwin Denby is best remembered as one of the preeminent critics of dance modernism, yet he was also an accomplished poet and an experienced dancer,…
Lovecraft, H. P. (1890–1937)
H. P. Lovecraft was an American pulp author in the 1920s and 1930s. His work, primarily published in the magazine Weird Tales, helped create the…
Pratt, E. J. (1882–1964)
Edwin John Dove Pratt was a Canadian poet and academic whose often spare language displays vivid imagery while still employing rhyme, metrics, and blank verse.…