While John Ford danced around darkness, Anthony Mann dwelled in it. ... "In theory, this meant that the songs and dances should serve to advance the narrative, but in practice it produces the unrealistic convention of a character's bursting into a song at the slightest dramatic provocation. ... The band singer becomes a star while the mentor tries to deliberately sabotage apprentices career with violet dances as well as singing. ... However, because many of the actors in the musicals were not stage actors, they were not skilled at singing and dancing. ...

• Word Count: 2765
• Approx Pages: 11

Before 1914, English literature and ideas were in many ways still harking back to the nineteenth century: after 1918, Modern begins to define the twentieth century. ... Modernism is essentially post-Darwinian: it is a search to explain mankind's place in the modern world, where religion, social stability and ethics are all called into question. ... In 1899, Arthur Symons, one of the poetic 'aesthetes' of the 1890s, published his study The Symbolist Movement in Poetry, which would have great influence on modern poets like W.B. ... Modern poetry contains language that is closer ...

• Word Count: 10566
• Approx Pages: 42

Cummings was among the first to question modern America, and at the same time, create a unique writing style that would later distinguish him among the greatest writers in history. ... Although these protests against war seem typical in our modern society, Cummings" ideas were radical during the early 20th century. To put Cummings in the same list as Plato and Jesus might seem extreme, and almost blasphemous to some, but his work in "plato told" cleverly uses traditional thought to mark him as a revolutionary thinker against traditional culture before most writers of modern time. ...

• Word Count: 4790
• Approx Pages: 19
• Grade Level: High School