MODERNISM

A complex movement which started after 1910 and flourished in the 1920s and 1930s and involved all forms of art: literature, music, visual arts, cinema.

ARTISTS

Joyce,Woolf, Kafka, Musil, Proust,

T.S. Eliot, W.B.Yeats

Picasso, Braque, Balla, Severini, Boccioni, Marinetti

COMMON ELEMENTS

·Desire to make a clean break with the traditions which came before them through

·experimentation in form and style

·attempt to directly represent the workings of the mind and the unconscious

·modernist works are: fragmentary, relative, favour a subjective perception of reality.

MODERNIST POETRY

·Fragmented in different movements·Absorbed influences from other countries·Poets began to see themselves in more international terms.

·FRENCH SYMBOLISM : Paul Verlaine, Stephane Mallarmè

·CHINESE/JAPANESE POETRY: W.B. Yeats

Ezra Pound

THE WAR POETS

WILFRED OWEN (1893-1918)SIEGFRIED SASSOON(1886-1967)

Gave a realistic account of trench warfare, were critical of the patriotic appeals

marked a break in the lyrical tradition

KEY FIGURES OF MODERNIST POETRY:

Ezra PoundT.S. EliotW.B.Yeats

were not English!

Poetry was no longer something to enjoy or to confort (Victorian Age) but something necessary to confront the moral emptiness of the age.

IMAGISM

poetic movement started by Ezra PoundManifesto 1914

·CONCISE USE OF LANGUAGE AND IMAGERY

·FREE RHYTHM (free verse)

·FREEDOM OF CHOICE IN SUBJECT MATTER

·REVOLT AGAINST ROMANTICISM

T.S. ELIOT

·Completely rejected the Romantic idea of the poet as an individual genius who communicated a deeply felt emotion through his works.·For Eliot a work of poetry is made impersonal by the tradition in which the poet is writing.·The originality of the poet lays not in his own voice but in the way he combines and manipulates elements of the old to make something new and add to the tradition.·He saw himself working in the broad European tradition

A CULTURAL ELITIST:

·The poet's role is that of preserving the cultural tradition from a barbaric civilization.·Poetry had to be difficult to render the complexity of modern life.·THE WASTE LAND is full of references and quotations from a wide range of cultures and languages which are often juxtaposed with scenes from every day life. ·The connections between these are obscure.

MODERNISTS

considered the experience of ordinary people as a poor, fragmented form of experience and often represented ordinary people's lives in a patronising or condescending manner.

T.S. ELIOT (1888-1965)

·born in Saint Louis, Missouri from a New England family·studied at Harvard, philosophy at the Sorbonne, Oxford·settled in England at the outbreak of WWI·worked as a schoolmaster, bank clerk, literary editor for Faber and Faber publishing house.·in 1914 he met Ezra Pound·1915 he married Vivien Haigh-Wood·1927 became a British citizen. Entered the Anglican Church·1948 Nobel Prize for literature·1957 married his second wife, Valerie Fletcher·1965 died in London

WORKS:

1915 The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufruck1922 founded the literary journal The Criterion1922 The Waste Land

AFTER HIS CONVERSION TO THE ANGLICAN CHURCH search for religious certainties:

The Hollow Men 1925Journey of the Magi 1927Ash Wednesday 1930Four Quartets 1935-42

VERSE DRAMAS:

1935 Murder in the Cathedral1939 The family Reunionexpress Eliot's christian faith

CHILDREN'S POEMS:

1939 Old Possum's Book of Practical Catsfrom which the musical Cats 1981 by Antdrew Lloyd Webber

CRITICAL WORKS:

1920 The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism1933 The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism1948 Notes Towards the Definition of Culture1957 On Poetry and Poets

THE WASTE LAND

A MODERNIST WORK:

·It expresses the depression and cinicism of the post war period.

·SYMBOLS: drought=death; flood=rebirth

·A heap of broken images:no beginning, no end; thoughts appear unfinished; abrupt shifts; past merges with present; the characters are not clearly defined. CINEMA TECHNIQUE .

THEMES:

· inability to communicate·sterility·lack of love·corruption·the quest (search for the holy Grail= search for truth)

STRUCTURE

·It breaks away from the canons of traditional poetry·Reminds of Joyce's experimentation in novel writing(stream of consciousness technique)·Picasso 's painting·Strawinsky's music

WISDOM AND SPIRITUALITYOF THE PAST

SPIRITUAL EMPTINESS OF THE PRESENT

THE MYTHICAL METHOD

Modern life can be more deeply interpreted if it is presented parallel to equivalent models of behaviour from the mythical past.

OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE

It is a phrase coined by Eliot himself whomaintained that poetry must be impersonaland objective

IMAGES are the objective correlative of the emotions they aim to suggest.

So Eliot didn't describe the emotions but presented the objects or the actions in a way that produced an emotion in the reader..for example squalid objects convey the idea of lack of love, apathy, spiritual death

SOURCES

JESSIE WESTON "From Ritual to Romance" 1920:The Medieval legend of the quest for the Holy Grail tells about a land which is barren because its king "the fisher king" was wounded and sexually maimed. A Young Knight goes in quest for the HG and reaches a chapel where the Grail is kept.The land will be restored to fertility only if the knight asks the meaning of the Grail and of the lance that he sees during a procession.

JAMES FRAZER " The Golden Bough" 1890-1915A collection of ancient customs, primitive vegetation myths and fertility rites. In pre-christian civilizations young men and gods were slain or drowned and then symbolically revived to fertilize the soil and make the arvest successful (with their blood and strength).

STRUCTURE

Five sections:1) THE BURIAL OF THE DEADdeals with the coming of Spring in a sterile land

2) A GAME OF CHESSjuxtaposes present squalor and past ambiguous splendour

3) THE FIRE SERMONreinforces the theme of squalor, introduces Tiresias, a greek blind prophet, both man and woman.

4) DEATH BY WATERfocusing on Phlebas, a drowned phoenician sailor and on the idea of purification.

5) WHAT THE THUNDER SAIDconveying the image of disintegration of Western civilization and suggesting its possible salvation.Rain will come if man has learned to GIVE, BE MERCIFUL, to CONTROL himself (in Sanskrit)

SYMBOLISM:

Eliot presents the emptiness and sterility of modern life at various levels:

·NATURAL: the land is dry, rocky, polluted and unfruitful.

·SOCIAL:people find it difficult to communicate with each-other (also symbolized by the quotations from different languages) and are unable to love.

·SPIRITUAL: people no longuer believe in religious values and in Christ as the spiritual saviour.So only through rain, love and faith will our waste land be saved and restored to fertitlity