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Expressionist Movement

Historical And Literary Periods
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An early 20th-century artistic movement emphasizing emotional intensity, psychological depths, and distortion of reality to express internal states. Originated in Germany and profoundly influenced literature, visual art, and drama.

Detailed Definition
The Expressionist Movement revolutionized poetry through formal innovation in service of emotional intensity and psychological truth. Poets employed distortion, fragmentation, and intensity to express inner turbulence. This movement appears in poetry through emotional excess and intensity, distorted imagery expressing psychological states, fragmented syntax and form, exploration of alienation and anxiety, startling visual imagery, rejection of conventional beauty, and the assertion of subjective experience over objective representation.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem by a poet like Georg Trakl, employing distorted, often harsh imagery, exaggerated emotional states, and non-realistic color to convey subjective inner reality, typical of the Expressionist Movement; A work focusing on the alienation, hysteria, and psychological trauma of modern urban life or war; The use of jagged, broken lines and intense alliteration/assonance to create an unsettling, visceral effect; A poem where objects and landscapes are not realistically described but are imbued with the speaker's overwhelming fear or anguish.
Additional Notes
The Expressionist Movement (early 20th century) prioritised emotional intensity over realism. German poets like Georg Trakl and Gottfried Benn expressed inner turmoil and social decay through fractured imagery and free verse, paving the way for modernist innovation.
Also Known As
Expressionism Expressionist Era
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