W5 - Literature - Modernism

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

Who claimed what? Link the person to the statement. 

Sigmund Freud

Charles Darwin

Karl Marx

People are no rational beings

People are not destined to own/ work. 

Life was created by evolution not God

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.

What is Modernism?

What characteristics of the modernist
movement do you see in Picasso's painting "Les Demoiselles d’Avignon"?

Cette vidéo n'est plus disponible

Rejecting convention - pushing boundaries - standard rhythmic metres are rejected. 

"The dissolution of the traditional tonality and transformation of the very foundations of tonal language"

Dissonance lack of harmony

Twelve tone technique: The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any one note through the use of tone rows, orderings of the 12 pitch classes. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key.

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."

Name one characteristic of Modernist poetry.

Free verse allows the poet to express their ideas and emotions, and to shape a poem however they would like. 

Free verse is not prose set out in lines. Like other sorts of poetry, it is language organised for its musical effects of rhythm and sound. However, these effects are used irregularly, not according to any completely fixed pattern.

What is free verse?

W.B. Yeats

Irish

Poet, prose writer, dramatist

Senator of the Irish Free State (Ireland before it was Ireland)

Protestant

A Vision 

 

“I am going to read my poems with great emphasis upon their rhythm, and that may seem strange if you are not used to it,” warned Yeats when introducing the Lake Isle of Innisfree in a 1931 recording. “I remember the great English poet, William Morris, coming in a rage out of some lecture hall where somebody had recited a passage out of his Sigurd the Volsung. ‘It gave me a devil of a lot of trouble,’ said Morris, ‘to get that thing into verse.’ It gave me the devil of a lot of trouble to get into verse the poems that I am going to read, and that is why I will not read them as if they were prose.”

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150422-how-to-read-a-poem

Explain in your own words. What is "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" about?

gyres - a historical cycle of about 1,000 years
History was not linnear but circular. Moved in circles and repeated itself. 

 Yeats thought that a new cycle was about to begin. 
The rape in the poem is also a metaphor of what England was doing to Ireland (uprising, rebellion in Ireland, war of independence 1919-1921) 

Explain in your own words. What is "Leda and the Swan" about?

A Vision

Explain the source of some of his imagery and thinking in "The Second Coming"

draw a spiral/vortex - look in booklet

What is the "Second Coming" about?

Idioms test - week 6

Question 20

"Raise your hand"(in Teams) if you have answered question 20.

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

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."

Free verse allows the poet to express their ideas and emotions, and to shape a poem however they would like. 

Free verse is not prose set out in lines. Like other sorts of poetry, it is language organised for its musical effects of rhythm and sound. However, these effects are used irregularly, not according to any completely fixed pattern.

Free verse

Writers wanted to refine the language of poetry in order to make it a vehicle for the exact description and evocation of mood. To this end they experimented with free or irregular verse and made the image their principal instrument.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1920)

Form: dramatic monologue (Stream of Consciousness) 
Irregular rhyme scheme
Fragmentation

Theme: Incapacity to act: modern man, overeducated, sensitive

Anxiety: growing bald, “I grow old”, intimidated by women

Disillusionment 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock - show video in Powerpoint

Prufrock: Mr. Prufrock is disillusioned and disassociated with society, yet he is filled with longing for love, comfort, and companionship. He is self-conscious and fearful of his image as viewed through the world's eye, a perspective from which he develops his own feelings of insignificance and disgust.

Stream-of-consciousness writing usually involves the narrator speaking of whatever comes into their head, without any predictable or planned structure or topic. It is as if you set your thoughts into a stream, and allow the currents to take you wherever they may go.

In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," Eliot uses stream-of-consciousness writing to reveal the character traits of the narrator, Prufrock. The central thought that his character, Prufrock, is pondering is whether or not to ask a loved one an important question, presumably a marriage proposal or some other feelings-related question.

Dramatic Monologue: It means a person, who is speaking to himself or someone else speaks to reveal specific intentions of his actions.

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)

For once I myself saw with my
own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae
hanging in a cage, and when the
boys said, "Sibyl, what do you want?" she replied "I want to die."

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.

The Waste Land

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.

Allusion = reference - usually not a direct reference but it's something that you should know to recognise. 

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden, / Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?” Similarly, Christ, by “dying,” redeemed humanity and thereby gave new life. The ambiguous passage between life and death finds an echo in the frequent allusions to Dante, particularly in the Limbo-like vision of the men flowing across London Bridge and through the modern city. 

Grail legend > Jessie Weston's interpretation. Holy grail was the cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper and the cup in which his blood was collected after his dead. The cup is guarded by the Fisher King. The only way in which the country, the Fisher King and the Grail can be saved is by a knight who comes in search for the grail. Quest for the holy grail. This quest is referenced numerous times in Eliot's work. Make sense of the choas, find the meaning of life but the answer, the grail is not in The Waste Land. Every man has to find this meaning for himself. 

Allusion or Intertextuality 

Intertextuality is when a text implicitly or explicitly refers to another text, by using distinctive, common or recognisable elements of the referenced text.

Implicit reference:  ideas, symbols, genre or style.

Explicit reference: directly mentions, quotes or references another text in their work.

Shape meaning 

Enrich or extend of their message.

Allusion: A subtle or indirect reference to another text, historical period or religious belief.

Historical allusion: ‘He was a Nero’ suggests disturbing behaviour like that form the infamous Roman emperor. 

                                                                                                                                                      (Matrix Education, 2020)

Intertextuality is when a text implicitly or explicitly refers to another text, by using distinctive, common or recognisable elements of the referenced text.

Implicit reference: when the author alludes to another text through ideas, symbols, genre or style.

Explicit reference: when the author directly mentions, quotes or references another text in their work.

This helps shape meaning because all texts portray particular perspectives on issues or messages. So, authors refer to specific texts to enrich or extend of their message.

Allusion: A subtle or indirect reference to another text, historical period or religious belief.

Historical allusion, ‘He was a Nero’ suggests disturbing behaviour like that form the infamous Roman emperor. (Matrix Education).

The Waste Land burial of the dead

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

Unreal City 

Watch beginning - students can watch fully if they want to know more. 

full poem

Fisher King - we must go on a 'quest' spiritual journey to find the grail to save the fisher king and to restore hope to the country.

Fragments -  juxtaposition of many different things and scenes

What is Stream of Consciousness?

A deictic expression or deixis is a word or phrase (such as this, that, these, those, now, then, here) that points to the time, place, or situation in which a speaker is speaking. Deixis is expressed in English by way of personal pronouns, demonstratives, adverbs, and tense. The term's etymology comes from the Greek, meaning "pointing" or "show," and it's pronounced "DIKE-tik."

It sounds more complicated than it really is, for sure. For example, if you would ask a visiting exchange student, "Have you been in this country long?" the words this country and you are the deictic expressions

Difference SoC and Interior Monologue

Interior monologue:

 traditional grammar and syntax

usually a clear logical progression from one sentence to the next and one idea to the next

Interior monologue relates a character's thoughts as coherent, fully formed sentences, as if the character is talking to him or herself.

  

Stream of consciousness:
 the actual experience of thinking, in all its chaos and distraction.
Stream of consciousness is not just an attempt to relay a character's thoughts, but to make the reader experience those thoughts in the same way that the character is thinking them.   

In interior monologue, unlike in stream of consciousness, the character's thoughts are often presented using traditional grammar and syntax, and usually have a clear logical progression from one sentence to the next and one idea to the next. Interior monologue relates a character's thoughts as coherent, fully formed sentences, as if the character is talking to him or herself.

Stream of consciousness, in contrast, seeks to portray the actual experience of thinking, in all its chaos and distraction. Stream of consciousness is not just an attempt to relay a character's thoughts, but to make the reader experience those thoughts in the same way that the character is thinking them.   

James Joyce

Irish novelist and poet

Moved to mainland Europe

Fiction > Dublin 

Ulysses (1922)

Where all of modernism comes together. James Joyce and his masterpiece of Modernist literature Ulysses. 

Ulysses

“‎I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that is the only way of insuring one's immortality.” - James Joyce

What do you think Joyce meant when he said: "If Ulysses isn't worth reading then life isn't worth living?

The novel is about class, love, time, sex and death. It's about religion. It's about politics. it's about our bodies. It's about language and how we say and write things. 

The excerpt in the booklet: ends with the life and love affirming line yes I said yes I will yes. Novel is set on the day when Joyce's wife first said yes to him.