English poetry from the 1890s to the 1960s

Modernism in poetry

Historical Milestones

• 1918 | the Representation of the People Act gave voting right to all males over 21 and all females over 30

• 1921 | the Partition of Ireland → fragmentation of the British Empire

• 1922 | the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

Modernism is generally defined as the rejection of traditional styles and theories, as an opposition to the established conventions, as a violation of continuity, as a challenge to established culture.

• the birth of Modernism is in connection with a revolt against Romanticism

• traditional ideas but new modes of expression

• outrage against war

• literary magazines promoting modernism

  • The English Review

  • The Egoist

Characteristics of Modernist Poetry

• Symbolist Movement

  • has a strong connection with Romanticism

• free verse

  • rejection of traditional metres in favor of free verse

• stream of consciousness

• collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions replaced logical expressions

  • allusion: an indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place or artistic work → nature or relevance of it is not explained by the writer, relies on the reader’s familiarity with what is thus mentioned

    • topical allusions to events

    • personal allusions to aspects of one’s own life and circle of friends

    • imitative/ structural allusions to works which remind us of the strcture of another (e.g.: Ulysses = Odyssey)

Imagism

• leader: Ezra Pound

• direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective

• complete freedom of subject matter

• free verse was encouraged along with other new rythms

• used common vernacular language

• concision, directness

• poems should be brief

• poems should not contain superflous words

• the whole poem should be built around one single image

• the poem should not follow the beat of the metronome → the poem has to find its own shape

Traditionalists

• the poet of the empire: Rudyard Kipling, who maintained the idea of the British Empire in powerful echoes and hymns

• Edwardian entertainers

• studious crafts,em

• Georgean poets: Ruper Brooke, Walter de la Mare → vague emotions, inexpressive rhythms, surface verbal music, stereoryped techniques

• war poets: Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brook, Robert Graves → realism, compassion, sensuous perceiving

• Avantgarde “decadent” poetry, aesthetes: Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Earnes Dawson → derived identity from negation of Victorian values

Early and “Classical” Modernist (1890-1920s)

Early Modernism

• a radical break from Victorian traditions

• characterized by experimenation with form, fragmentation and a focus on subjective consciousness

• key figures: T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats

Classical Modernism

• a more refined phase of Modernism

• emphasized intellectual rigor, mythic allusions, and formal precision

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

• a 19th century fiction writer (Jude the Obscure was his last fiction to be published) and a 20th century poet

• 1898 | Wessex Poems

• used weird words (from Anglo-Saxon, Latin) → he was criticized by his

  contemporaries, but he tried to defend himself in his prefaces

• rejected the idea that he was a pessimistic poets, or atheist, but he claimed that he is an evolutionary meliorist (=one who believes that the world may be made better by humman effort)

• refusal to surrender to any poetic fashion

• agnosticism, scepticism

• a perceptional artist: the world is interpreted in terms of personal experience

  • his poetry is conceived of as the expresssion of that experience, a form of knowledge, a means of ordering sensation

• composed elatively short poems (dramatic monologues, elegies, songs, ballads)

• employment of short lines

• he was not a supporter of the monarchy

• Hardy’s personal metronome was ridiculed = he was not a typical modernist, he composed his personal experiences into sensory poems (no imagism)

• attacks oppressive and hierarchical social orders

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

• Enlgish oppression in Ireland (Irish, Galic language was oppressed) Irish Revival

• spent his childhood’s summers in Ireland, in Sligo, at his grandparents

• Celtic Twilight (book by Yeats)

  • revival of Irish culture

  • a cultural movement with the goal of reviving Irish culture in order to bridge the gap of disrapture in cultural discontinuity

  • 1893: publication of A Collection of folktales and myth from Sligo and Galway (later revised, and published again in 1902)

  • 1899 | foundation of the Irish Literary Theatre Abbey Theatre

  • The Lake Isle of Innisfree

    • nostalgic, yet the personal emotions are distanced by a layer of allusions (to the Bible, to Thoreau)

  • supported various occult studies

• 1910s | his style, rhythms get much more modern (influence of Pound)

• 1925 | A Vision (revised edition in 1937)

  • his own system is described about the working of the universe and about history

  • pattern of double interpenetrating gyres

    • poems reflecting this pattern: The Second Coming, Sailing to Byzantium, Byzantium, Easter 1916

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

• Modernism arrived decisively in English poetry with Eliot

• abandoned the conventional way of writing

• objective, objectivist poetry

• 1919 | Tradition and the Individual Talent

  • essay

  • introduced the “impersonal theory of poetry”: poetry is an escape from personal emotions”

  • the poet should not verbalize his or her emotions

  • the poet is a catalyst, who transmits certain emotions over to the reader from his own personal experience, but this experience must be cleansified in the process of composing

  • discards the subjective poetry of Romanticism

• 1922 | Hamlet and His Poems

  • introduced the term “objective correlative”: the external equivalent for an internal state of mind

  • the task of the poet is to create a verbal painting capable of evoking emotions in the reader

• the individual was replaced by the citizen, the community by the state, high by mass culture, religion by commerce, poetry by advertisement

• 1922 | The Waste Land

  • unified vision of the world is broken

  • a typical post-WW poem: loss of values, disintegration of internal and external world

  • disjunction, fragmentariness (Ezra Pound simply cut out certain passages from the text)

  • a dialogical poem with a multiplicity of perspectives

  • lost social meaning, the loss of a sense of community in modern life, the need for spiritual regenration → failure of the universe

  • fragmentation of metre, break the hold of the iambic pentameter

  • collage-work, a patchwork, a tissue of literary allusions (Bible, Shakespeare, Upanishads, Grail-legend the poem is a quest for something)

• 1917 | The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  • dramatic monologue → practical for expressing objectivity

  • a web of allusions

  • fragments of conversations

  • a shifting succession of images

  • structure: architectonic design → fragmented narrative plot, ambiguity, no coherent shape

  • recurrent motifs, refrains, the use of personal pronouns → unites the diverting lines

  • main theme: the problems of communication, self-identification → the failure of the individual

The Poetry of the 30s: The Engaged Poetry (1930-40s)

• 1930s | economical crisis (The Wall Street, The Great Depression, rise of fascism, Spanish Civil War, outbreak of WWII)

• The Auden Group/ Oxford poets (wrote with a Marxist or antifascist stance)

  • Wystan Hugh Auden

  • Lous MacNeice

  • Cecil Day-Lewis

  • Stephen Spender

• poetry deeply involved with political and societal issues

• responding to crises like the Spanish Civil War, fascism, and WWII

W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

• politically committed (left-wing intellectual)

• impact of Marx and Freud on their politics and psychology

• reacted against experimentalism, yet learnt from Eliot

• the leading poet of the generation, from the very beginning an acclaimed master

• middle-class professional background

• Oxford education

• in 1939 settled in the U. S., he had teaching jobs at universities

Features of his poetry

• impact of Eliot’s diction

• uses technical and scientific terms

• dispassionate, objective tone, poems as objects

• early poems

  • obscurity, labyrinth with no centres

  • prolific – topical urgency, often inspired by political events

  • technical-brilliance

  • rhythimc

• American period

  • turning point

  • more intimate

  • less rhethorical, more conversational writing

  • growing respect for tradition and Christianity

Works

• 1938 | As I Walked Out One Evening

• 1940 | Musée des Beaux Arts

• 1955 | The Shield of Achilles

  • pictures simultaneously the Homeric, Imperial Roman, and contemporary world, all equally brutal → violence of history, emotional detachment

New Romanticism (1940s)

• a reaction against the intellectualism of Modenism

• favored emotional intensity, individualism, and nature

• key poets: Dylan Thomas, George Barker, Kathleen Raine

  • their work revived Romantic themes but with a darker, surreal edge

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

• Neo-romantic style (challenging the High Modernism of the 1920s and a reaction against thirties discursive, intellectual styles)

• mystical intuitions, emotional intensity, personal utterance, natural imagery

• “the Welsh bard”

• by the time he was 21, he had completed half of his Collected Poems (1952) → enormous success

• rethorical poems

• 1936 | And Death Shall have No Dominion

  • sounds like preachers, but more pantheistic than Christian

  • repetitive, paratactical structures, double framework

• 1946 | Fern Hill

  • romanticized, idealized childhood

  • rustic idyll

  • state of original innocence (actual summer holidays)

  • complext structure of assonance and allienation, internal rhymes

• 1952 | Do Not Go Gently into That Good Night

  • villanelle on the death of his father

  • villanelle: a poem composed of an uneven number of tercets rhyming aba with a final quatrain rhyming abaa, French fixed form, where the first and the third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternatedly as the third lines of the succeeding tercet, and together as the final couplet of the quatrain

The Movement (1950s-1960s)

• a backlash against Romantic excess and Modernist obscurity

• associated with: Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, and Donald Davie

• name ironically given by J.D. Scott in an article published in the Spectator

• not a “movement”, yet there was something stylstically cohesive

Main Features

• advocated clarity, rationality, and traditional forms

• emphasied plain language and anti-heroic themes

• distrust of famboyant mannerisms, Romantic attitudes, great theoretical constructs

• neutral tone

Philip Larkin

• personal, autobiographical speech

• plain phrasing, lucidity, intellectual clarity

• technical accomplishment

  • direct speech in poems (may derive from his technique of writing novels)

• pathos and grim humour of experience

• agnostic stoicism

• descriptive-meditative tradition: his poems describe some sight, object, event and present his response or lack of response to it (i.e. description-plus-evaluation pattern, summarizing argument)

• his world revolves around the welfare-state of post-Imperial Britain

  • Hardynesque pessimism: loneliness, age and death, sexuality

• 1955 | Church Going

  • parody of church elegies (cf. Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in Country Churchyard)

• 1974 | Sad Steps

  • literary allusion to the moon in Sonnet 31 from Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella → the moon is (1) an orb, (2) a romantic symbol, (3) a geometrical object, (4) the metaphor of memory → stereotypical literary symbolism is mocked

Leda and the Swan (W.B. Yeats) - 1924

• traditional fourteen-line sonnet 

  • iambic pentameter (ABAB CDCD EFGEFG)

  • Petrarchan sonnet → paradox of combining the traditonal Petrarchan style with a radical and modern issue = the form which traditionally was meant to glorify and idealize love is now violated by the theme of brutality and violence

  • separation between the first eight and the second six lines (dividing line being the moment of evacuation)

• the poem is retelling the rape of Leda by Zeus who takes the form of a swan

  • story from Greek mythology

  • Yeats is not just showing the brutality of rape but also emphasizes its role in a larger cycle → violence breeds violence

  • cyclical nature of violence

• abduction of women for sexual indulges → frequent theme in Ancient Greek and Roman art (the act of violence is usually commited by a god disguised as a human or animal)

  • calls attention to the inferiority of women

  • various artworks idealize this union between a divine creature and a mortal human being → Yeats depicts this encounter as a brutally violent act (Leda is helpless to the assault)

• she feels a sudden blew of air made by the wings

  • the swan is on him, caressing her tights

  • taking her neck in his beak

  • expressions like “a sudden blow”, “terrified fingers”, “brute blood” reinforce the swan’s power over Leda

    • the narrator asks how her terrified fingers could be able to push away the glory of a God even though he was raping her

  • increasing the sensory impact of the poem

• the narrator speaks of the fallen walls of Troy and Agamemnon’s death 

  • Leda was raped by Zeus who took the form of a swan

    • the figure of the swan is a deliberate choice: recurring motif in Yeats’s poetry → comparison of beauty and evil - further strengthened by the poem’s structure

    • the swan becomes emblematic of the divine force responsible for the disastrous outcome of the Trojan War

  • she laid an egg from which twins were born, one of them being Helen

  • Helen was the cause of the War of Troy (being the most beautiful woman, she was kidnapped by the Trojans, so the Greeks besieged the city of Troy)

  • after the war, Clytemnestra, the wife of the Greek leader Agamemnon, had her husband murdered

  • this poem calls Leda an indirect cause of the war and all those deaths

• why did Yeats center his poem on this ancient tale? what significance does a myth like this hold in the later ages?

• the poem represents the beginning of modern history

  • Leda’s eggs hatched into Clytemnestra and Helen and the war-gods Castor and Polydeukes

  • thereby brought about the Trojan War

  • the war’s lasting impact: it brought about the end of the ancient mythological era and the birth of modern history

  • modernist and post-modernist period regularly used classical mythology as source of inspiration

  • art in he 20th century → social purpose by giving rise to culture

  • social responsibility is fundamental to Yeats’s poetry

  • Yeats believed that all mythological art is a projection of civilization → “art seeks to impose order and comprehensibility upon diversity and chaos of the experimental world”

  • the notion that art must always correct chaos that arises in society

  • art is a transforming medium in the violent convergence of forces → allows chaos to be redirected and harnessed to reshape both the artist and society

• cyclical nature of history

  • systemic order of the human world

  • Yeats predicts the arrival of a new era since history is periodical → events occur in cycles

  • a violent cycle is followed by a tranquil cycle

  • for a new cycle to begin, the union of the natural and the supernatural is crucial → Virgin Mary & Holy Spirit, Leda & Zeus

• parallel between the union of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit

  • the poem’s original title was Annunciation → direct reference of the Biblical event

  • the union of a divine force and a human being brings about devastating repercussions which mark the beginning of a new modern period

    • Greek Antiquity began with the rape of Leda

    • Christian era started upon the birth of Christ

    • the children born from these unions are catalysts for profound societal changes in the world

  • Leda is both a tool and a victim in the phallogocentric system

• we can also argue that the infinite rapist in this poem is the cycle universe itslef → men endure the violations of it because it all they know

  • neither gods nor people have the agency to stop history’s relentless progression

• breaking free of the perpetual cycle of violence

Church Going (Philip Larkin)

• a thought-provoking poem about religion and history

  • the speaker casually visits and empty church → a place he views with sceptical irrelevance

  • he is drawn to churches and speculates about what will become of them when religion itself has completely died out

  • pun in the title: the speaker believes that churches are going as in vanishing, but some form of “churchgoing” will survive

• a seven-stanza poem

  • made up of sets of nine lines

  • both full and half end rhymes

  • these varying endings give the poem a feeling of unpredictability

  • one is never quite sure when the words are going to fall into line, or step out

Themes

• The Role of Religion on Society

  • how society will/ won’t change when religion no longer hold any place in it

  • the speaker assumes that religion is dying and churches have lost their significance - a modern sceptic

  • imagining the fate of churches:

    • even non-believer like himself, will find some kind of power in what these buildings represented

• The Desire for Human Connection

  • churches played a vital role in uniting communities

  • if nothing else, churches remain ideal places o contemplate what human beings share in common, including their morality

  • hunger for the company of others

• it begins with the speaker entering into a building

  • the speaker checks to make sure the structure is clear and steps inside

  • he mentions the fact that the door closes with a “thud” behind him

  • both sealing him into the space, and keeping the exterior world out

• ‘Another’ is an important word

  • changes the feeling of the poem

  • not the first time that he has entered an abandoned, or simply empty, church

  • he is not sure why exactly he wants to be there

• he is even more confused by what he sees inside

  • he has seen many altars, pews, and Bibles before

  • “brass and stuff / Up at the holy end” - this mundane way of referring to the altar at the front of the church says a lot about the speaker

  • he does not hold any reverence or respect for the space he is in

• he also feels an “unignorable silence” 

  • that is overwhelming in the space

  • the church has been absent of people for quite a long time

• the speaker moves “forward” to the front of the church

  • “run[s]” his hand over the pews

  • he looks around and notices complete repairs and restorations done to the roof

  • this is a curious fact about the space as it is so devoid of people

• the speaker continues his journey through this religious space

  • takes to reading from the Bible (briefly)

  • he speaks a few “large-scale verses” in an increased volume

  • his projected voice comes back to him in an echo

• this ends his tour of the church

  • he departs after leaving an “Irish sixpence” (incredibly small amount of money, in the donation box)

  • he comes to the conclusion that this place was not worth visiting

• upon leaving the church he contemplates what the building represents

  • the speaker seems to have an inner conflict about his attraction to churches

  • he knew that there would not be anything new inside, but he stopped anyway

  • this is not unusual for him (he “often” does it)

  • the man is frequently entering into the churches, searching through their religious objects, and then leaving unsatisfied

  • he does not yet know what he is looking for

  • but is always left with one specific question: he is curious about what the church will be like

    • what it will mean when all the believers are long dead

    • what the human race will utilize all the churches for

    • will they be avoided “as unlucky places”

    • or will the “sheep” have full rein over their interiors

• he continues his contemplation of what the churches will become

  • one idea the speaker has about the fate of these places is the continued existence of their power

  • he considers the possibility that in the future people will still come to them for a variety of spiritual reasons

  • mothers might bring their children to “touch a particular stone” for luck, or perhaps people will come to see the dead “walking”

• he knows that “Power of some sort will go on”

  • even if the traditional religious context is lost

  • the “superstition” he knows will surround the place “must die” as well

  • one day, even the “disbelief” of the superstitions will be lost

  • all that the building will be is “Grass…brambles, buttress, sky”

  • it will be no more than its walls

• the architectural elements will become “less recognizable” as the days move forward

  • until its original purpose is completely unknown

• the speaker embraces a new question

  • he pictures the very last explorer of the building

  • wonders whether he or she will be like him, curious but emotionless

  • will this person even comprehend where he or she is?

  • what will this man or woman think as the final remnants of a dead religion?

• he considers the option that the seeker will be as is he

  • someone who is “uninformed” and unclear on the purpose of religion

  • this person might be as he is: curious about the place because of its long-lasting nature

  • one might wonder what has allowed it to survive

• the final stanza returns to the speaker’s own thoughts

  • he has finished contemplating what could be and resumes his present musings

  • he states that the church is, “A serious house on serious earth”

  • it has a true and worthy purpose and should not be made fun of

  • it is a place where all the “compulsions” or impulses of human beings meet

• the speaker decides that no matter what churches represent, they should be preserved

  • he sees them as being places of coming together - a place that has a communal purpose → people will always need some verison of the atmosphere churches provide (togetherness and serious contemplation of life and death)

  • acceptance of one’s common humanity with the rest of the world which means that here, the truth of human existence is “recognized” and celebrated

    • it is important enough to be remembered forever

    • the church will “forever” bring out a “hunger” is one that cannot be discovered through any other means