Modernism in

Literature

One hour Research Task1. Key Characteristics of Modernism in Literature (you may make

reference to Art and Music too)

2. Yeats as a Modernist Poet

3. The significance of British rule in Ireland at the time Yeats was writing.

4. The significance of Yeats’ words “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone”

You will be assigned one of the above. Use the internet to research your area. After half an hour, you will join the other

students who have the same topic. Together, you must agree a bullet point summary – to include no more than TEN bullet

points.

Modernism

• Modernistic literature is the expression of the modern era (1901-

45). It tends to revolve around themes of individuality, the

randomness of life, mistrust of government and religion and the

disbelief in absolute truth.

Modernism• Influences of modern literature The three thinkers who

influence the Modern Era and Modern literature the most are probably Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Sigmund Freud.  This is not to say that Modern

authors were ardent evolutionists, or Marxists or even practitioners of Freudian psychology;  rather, these thinkers

simply fuelled and framed the perspectives and debates that formulated so much Modern art and literature. Today,

Freud's specific theories are largely dismissed as unscientific.  Still, these ideas had a profound influence on

art and literature as much as on our common, daily perceptions/conceptions of existence and reality:

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

(13 June 1885- 28 January 1939) William Butler Yeats was one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. In 1923 he

was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."

 YEATS WAS INTERESTED MAINLY IN THE LIKES OF:mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology

In 1916, Yeats quite suddenly decided that he didn't want to write pretty poems anymore - he wanted to write realistic poems: poems as urgent and as uncluttered as a newspaper

article.He even wrote a poem about his decision: "A Coat".

So some characteristics of Modernism in Yeats include:

Demotic language (not poetic language)

Political subject matter

Ugliness and violence, where these are appropriate to the subject matter (no attempt to make everything aesthetically pleasing in a poeticised vision of loveliness).

 

CONTRAST IN YEATS POETRY

TRADITIONAL YEATS POEM:

 HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF

HEAVEN 

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with golden and silver light,The blue and the dim and the dark clothsOf night and light and the half-light,I would spread the cloths under your feet:But I, being poor, have only my dreams;I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

 

MODERNIST Yeats POEM:

 THE SECOND COMING

 TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity

A CoatI MADE my song a coat

Covered with embroideriesOut of old mythologies

From heel to throat;But the fools caught it,

Wore it in the world's eyesAs though they'd wrought it.

Song, let them take it,For there's more enterprise

In walking naked.

William Butler Yeats

In a letter to his father, Yeats wrote the following about the change in his poetry….

“….I have tried to make my work convincing with a speech so natural that the hearer would feel the presence of a man thinking and feeling…..”

Ezra Pound described modernist poetry as:

“gaunter, seeking greater hardness of outline”; “with a new quality of hard light”