M O D E R N I S M

EARLY 20TH CENTURY LITERATURE

WORLD WAR I

• Shook England to the core • Social values were shaken along with artistic convention • War Poets: Sassoon, Owen, Brooke, and Rosenburg

Led to …

Modernism: multinational cultural movement that begin in the late 19th century and peaked on the eve of WWI• Growing out of philosophical, scientific, political and

ideological shifts that followed the Industrial Revolution and lead up to the aftermath of WWI

MODERNISM

• Reflected the tumult of this world in various ways • Rebelled against the artistic past • Deliberately chose not to reproduce reality or

copy from nature…photographs could do this • Distorted natural forms and rejected single

perspectives• Renewed interest in human past such as myth

and ancient cultures for inspirations• Yeats, Joyce, Eliot & Faulkner used myth as subject

matter and structure

TRAITS OF LITERARY MODERNISM

• Human character changed • inspired by the documentation of Freud and the power of

the unconscious and of human sexuality• Human personality (being irrational and incomprehensible)

was more complex than previously imagined

• Therefore, the idea from the 19th century that character was defined by means of historical and social context was no longer adequate (existentialism)

• Writers searched for subtler techniques to capture the irrational, unpredictable and darker side of human nature

CHARACTERIZATION TECHNIQUE

• Stream of consciousness: a characters thoughts are reproduced as they presumably occur, not in full sentences or in any logical sequence but according to an associate process that is based on the connections in the characters mind• Masters of technique: • Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner

• Modernism abandoned one of the most fundamental but also problematic types of character --- the hero

20TH CENTURY’S PLAY ON THE HERO

• The typical protagonist • Having lost faith in:• Society, religion, the surrounding environment will cause the

lose to claim heroic action

• Heroes then faced a terrifying, and possibly meaningless world, leaving characters in fear to act• having concluded that action itself is pointless OR that

they simply cannot act in a universe that entrapped them

• Modern heroism=heroic or successful action is not only unattainable but undesirable

PLOT AND CHRONOLOGY

• Changed the conventional way of telling a story from beginning to end

• Rejected traditional notions of plot and time• 19th century = past, present and future

Influenced by philosopher Henri Bergson who reasoned that time is not a series of logically sequential or separate stages but rather a continuum that is uninterrupted• 20th century = past, present, future is simultaneously present and

indistinguishable from each other

T.S. Eliot: Time present and time pastAre both present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past

-Four Quartes (1943)

PLOT AND CHRONOLOGY

• Always starting at the beginning became irrelevant and even misleading because in a sense there was no real beginning

• Dislocated normal narrative chronology through: flashbacks, repetitions, or even by omitting transitions entirely

• They believed that this would truly reflect reality than a narrative structure based on the artificial Aristotelian idea of beginning, middle, and end

• Challenged the practice of focusing on major events in a characters life because by this accord even the most trivial or mundane could possess importance and is capable of revealing much more about a person or their true nature • Joyce, Woolf, D.H.Lawrence, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and

Kafka were the successes of this literary form

AUTHOR + READER

• New techniques created new roles for both writer and reader

• The split was caused by the experimental nature of the author and the society’s inability to adjust to the radically new style

• Readers confronted with the new techniques to understand not only in what order the events actually occurred by also why the author chose this particular arrangement of words• Now part of the act of reading was to discover that significance

• Literature was blurring the line between art and life with the deeper examination of the human internal world, unconscious self and fragmented thoughts that we carry within ourselves

OBJECTIVES

CONCEPT: Form and Structure

CONCEPT: Diction/Word Choice 

CONCEPT: Historical Context  

CONCEPT: Poetic Analysis

Lesson Essential Questions:1. How does form and

structure influence the meaning of the poem?

 2. How can an

understanding of form and structure aid the reader in interpreting a poem’s meaning?

   

Lesson Essential Questions:1. Why is word choice so

important to poetry? 2. How can word choice

affect the tone, mood, meaning of a poem?

  

Lesson Essential Questions:1. How does understanding

the twentieth century facilitate the understanding of the poem?

2. How do contemporary works enhance a reader’s understanding of the primary text?

Lesson Essential Questions:1. What is the best method

for interpretation of a poem resulting in a well-written poetic analysis?

 2. How do historical and

cultural influences play a role in understanding a poem?

  

MOVEMENTS OF POETRY

• Elizabethan and Shakespearean (late 16th and early 17th century)• Form: • Ballad • Sonnet• Lyrical and narrative

• Content/Subject: religious

• Metaphysical (late 17th century into 18th century)• Form: • Lyric

• Content/Subject: investigating nature, love, philosophy (define and compare)

• Romanticism (18th and 19th century)• Form: • Started free verse

• Content/Subject: nature as metaphor, more personal, passion (nature is the heart of our lives)

FAMOUS 20TH CENTURY POETS

W.B. YeatsT.S. EliotRobert Lee FrostLangston HughesD.H. LawrenceRudyard Kiplinge.e. cummings Gerard Manley Hopkins Amy Lowell Hart CraneE.A. RobinsonGertrude Stein

POETRY

• Gone were the logical narratives, long fluid verse paragraphs that read like prose

• New: • General fragmentation in content and style• Abrupt changes in subject matter and tone• Allusions to unfamiliar authors and works • Rhymes that seemed to have no relationship to their poetic

context• Altering time schemes, creating complex and alienated

characters and fragmented syntax• Reflecting on the uncertainty and frightening nature of

modern life• Emphasis on style • Content/Subject: utopian values, spiritual exploration, revolt

against a culture/philosophy

READING AND ANALYZING POETRY

• From what within the poet or the poet’s life did the poem originate?

• A good poem arises from the union of four places, not unlike four rivers joining together:1. Soul2. Mind3. Heart4. Experience and Observation

SOUL

• When a poem arises, it feels like the poet’s soul is coming to life• The point of origin lies at the furthest depths of

the poet, often calling into play inherited memories, divine or universal inspiration, and insights or truths that should "magically" resonate with the reader.

MIND

• The intellect plays a vital part in the creation of a poem, bringing perspective, structure, and word choice to the experience conveyed on each line.• Worldviews, social and cultural attitudes, depth of

thought, comparison and contrast, and conclusions all inform the poet as he or she writes.

HEART

• Nothing moves a poem like expressed emotion. • The vast majority of poems spring from seven

emotions: • anger, joy, sadness, fear, courage, lust, and excitement.

• Word choice, pace, punctuation (or lack thereof), and meter convey the poet’s state of emotion. • If transferred purely to the poem, they will likely

provoke the same feeling in the reader.

EXPERIENCE AND OBSERVATION

• A poem is a single experience or observation, extracted by the poet’s life experience and refined by his or her intellect and choice of words. • Every poem conveys an experience or

observation of some kind. • If you are familiar with this experience or have

researched it, you are better able to interpret the poem.

TOOLS FOR READING POETRY

A few simple tools can help to transform any poetry reading experience from a bout with incomprehension to an enjoyable study on the way words, lives, emotions, souls, and experiences move through the eyes, minds, and hearts of the women and men who wrote these works.

1. Muse: • Discovering the poet’s inspiration can help you understand his

or her work. • Read more about the source of the poet’s inspiration. If you

can discover what’s in the poet’s soul, heart, and mind, you can unearth his or her motivation for putting pen to paper.

TOOLS FOR READING POETRY

2. Try reading each line aloud. • See if you can feel the energy and emotion as each word

forms upon and releases from your lips.• Pause accordingly at each punctuation mark. Take

another breath. • Sense the musical rhythm. Imagine the poet reading the

work through your voice.

3. Study the movement.• What is the meter? How are punctuation marks used – if

they’re used at all? How do syllables and meter work together?

• This movement defines the inner experience of the poem.

TOOLS FOR READING POETRY

4. Consider a poet’s word choices. • Picture the nouns and try to envision yourself in that

place or holding that thing. • Feel the verbs and look at how they move the poem

forward. • Interpret how and why the poet matched nouns and

verbs in such a specific way.

TOOLS FOR READING POETRY

5. Study the structure. • Chances are, there’s a specific reason why a poet

chooses a particular form to write a particular poem. • If you can learn more about the form, it may be easier to

interpret a poem written in that form. Then ask, Why did the poet choose that form? How does that form bring out the subject or mood of the poem?

• For example, a poem written in free verse conveys a more open relationship between a poet’s voice and the experience than a poem written in tightly rhyming quatrains.

TOOLS FOR READING POETRY

6. Explore additional layers. • Poems are the world’s greatest extended metaphors. For

countless centuries, poets were vital information links to citizens in repressed societies.

• Since poems draw from the souls of their authors, they usually transmit the experience at different physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual levels, creating an exciting atmosphere of discovery for the reader. When scanning a line of poetry, see how it feels.• Does the line relate to your core truths and beliefs? If you feel

happier or sadder – or any other emotion – after you’ve read it, you’re probably uncovering the poem’s deeper layers.

• Understanding the poet’s cultural context can help you understand his or her poem.

TOOLS FOR READING POETRY

7. Read from inside and outside the poet’s cultural context. • One of the best ways to gain perspective on the vastness

and richness of a poem, particularly a poem from yesteryear that still commands attention today, is to read from within and outside the poet’s cultural context.

• Learning more about a specific poet’s life, interests, home, circles of friends, and his or her social and cultural setting gives you hints so you can more clearly interpret the work.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/entertainment/english-literature-the-early-twentieth-century.html• http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/library/alumni/online_

exhibits/digital/2000/c_n_c/c_10_20th_cent/intro_modernism.htm• http://

www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-term/modernism• http://

www.webexhibits.org/poetry/background.html