W5 - Literature - Modernism and the lost generation

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Modernism

What does it mean in the arts? How would you describe it?

The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

Scan the poem in front of you, and try to read the first nine lines. No worries if you don't understand what's happening!

Write down any stylisitic and thematic elements that stand out to you. For example, do you see any significant differences between this text and Great Expectations?

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Modernism

Modernism, in the fine arts, a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I.

Make it New! - Ezra Pound

Juxtaposition - an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, especially for comparison or contrast.

Intertextuality = shaping of a text’s meaning with another text (Leda and the Swan + The Second Coming)

Allusions = Allusion is a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea of historical, cultural, literary or political significance. It does not describe in detail the person or thing to which it refers. It is just a passing comment and the writer expects the reader to possess enough knowledge to spot the allusion and grasp its importance in a text.

Unconventional metaphor: A creative metaphor is an original comparison that calls attention to itself as a figure of speech. American philosopher Richard Rorty characterized the creative metaphor as a challenge to established schemes and conventional perceptions.

"The entire house screamed with silence."

Conventional metaphor: "The snow is a white blanket."

Famous Modernist authors / poets / playwrights

"Make it New" - Ezra Pound

• T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

• Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway , To the Lighthouse , The Waves, etc.)

• James Joyce (Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegan's Wake)

• Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot, Endgame)

• Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)

• W.B. Yeats (Poems like A Coat, Leda and the Swan and The Lake Isle of Innisfree)

• E.M. Forster (A Passage to India, Maurice, A Room with a View)

• William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury)

T.S. Eliot 

American poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, etc. 
Lived in England

Lost Generation (disoriented, disillusioned) 

Trying to make sense of the chaos - looking for order

Thomas Stearns Eliot

1927 became a British citizen

T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land (1922)

5 parts (Burial of the dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death by Water, What the Thunder Said)

• 434 Lines

• 60 allusions to 40 authors (East, West, Modern, Ancient)

• Bits of pieces of a culture that is now shattered

• Themes: death, rebirth, seasons, lust, love, water, history

• Sick land in desperate need of rebirth > Europe early 20th century

• Grail legend > Glimmer of hope but every man must find this on its own.

• Allusions and Intertextuality

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Epigraph - the better craftsman
Sets the tone for the Waste Land - despair - breakdown - death

Sibyl - Greek Myth - Sybil of Cumae 

Woman who wished for eternal life. Got it but forgot to wish for eternal youth so eventually all that was left was her voice.

example of intertextuality in The Waste Land - TS Eliot

Geoffrey Chaucer

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour; 

(general prologue Canterbury Tales)

TS Eliot

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

features of narrative

• experimental

• discontinuous narrative; fragmentation

• number of different narrators

• self-reflection in writing (meta narrative)

• interiour monologue

• stream of consciousness technique

• focus on consciousness ánd subconsciousness of characters

charateristics of Lost Generation artists

• Disillusionment: Works focused on the loss of innocence, shattered ideals, and the futility of war.

• Expatriate Life: Many lived in Paris, leading aimless, indulgent, or wandering lives that reflected a search for meaning.

• Rejection of Materialism: They criticized the shallow, consumerist culture of postwar America.

• Break from Tradition: Literature featured modernist experimentation, cynical tones.

Name one characteristic of Modernist poetry, and one socio-historical factor that influenced the movement.

The Waste Land burial of the dead

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land

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