English Literature - Modernist Poetry Context

Modernist time periods

Early: 1913-1914

High: 1915-1930 (ww1)

Late: 1930-1944

Post modern: 1952-1962 (ww2)

Term to define modernism

Largely retrospective

What modernism was

A response in Western Europe to modern industrial capitalism

Major traits of modernism

Urbanisation, immigration, mass communication, secularisation of society. Increase of government decrease of aristocracy

“The age of interrogation”

Everything was held open to question, deep spirit of questioning of the early twentieth century

“On or about 1910 human character changed”

Said by Virginia Woolf about society

“The age of anxiety”

What W.H Auden dubbed the twentieth century

“Make it new”

A saying by Ezra Pound about writers reaching back towards the old and reworking it

“Rebirth of the era of rebirth”

Described the interest in reworking literature in the twentieth century reflecting that of the renaissance

“Mythical method”

A term coined by T.S Eliot, to give shape and control contemporary history by underscoring parallels between the present and myth

Modernist poetry circle

Ezra pound was the centre of

“The direct treatment of things”

Pound stressed that a word’s purpose was to point directly to the object it named without unnecessary verbiage

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” and “ poetry makes nothing happen”

Opposing views of poetry the latter coming from W H Auden in response to Yeats

Performance poetry culture

Emerged where delivery and a poem’s sonic features became more important that the form/writing

“An appalling explosive fusion” of many different trends

Modernism was a mix of trends like imagism, Dadaism and Vorticism at the time with no definitive definition

Lost generation

Title of those came of age during ww1 and established literary reputation in Europe (e.e Cummings) or post ww1 generation due to no inherited values that were relevant in a postwar world

Ekphrastic poems

Poems that referenced art, solidifying relationship of art and literary world

Imagism

Clear image at the centre of the poem

Objectivism

Coined by William Carlos Williams supported by his “no ideas but in things” that focuses on presenting concrete objects

Cubism

Narrative and character as an assembly of fragments

Vorticism

Centred on the feeling of alienation and dislocation and urban environment

Psychoanalysis

Popularised during the twentieth century by Sigmund Freud, uncovered multi-layered self that put importance on dreams, memories and fantasies

Crisis of faith

Lack of faith continued into early 20th century and deepened after ww1 and 2

Roaring twenties

A period of profound artistic revolution

Masculinist modernism and crisis of masculinity

Became known as High modernism almost entirely of male writers and accused of misogyny

Development of technology

Meant that wars had become deadlier

Experimental modernist

Complex work of art, new and original, elitist and psychologically rich

Traditional realism

Surface level, familiar wording like everyday speech, allusions to widely understood cultural references, metonyms

Robert Frost

• traditional realist

• Background in simple labour

• Pound took him under his wing but then went their separate ways in beliefs and practices

W.H Auden

• father was a doctor which gave him a rich source of imagery

• Came of age in 1930s so work reflected anxieties around economic depression, facism and war

• Was a homosexual in a convenience marriage with Erika Mann

T. S Eliot

• Pound found his work most interesting after his own

• Williams thought his work was too academic

William Carlos Williams

• poet and physician

• Disagreed with pound and Eliot thinking they were to attached to European culture

• Regarded his life as ‘before meeting pound’ and ‘after meeting pound’

Edna St Vincent Millay

• mother encouraged her to explore music and poetry

• Published “Renascence and other poems” 1917

• Social figure and feminist

• Openly bisexual

Marriage Moore

• never married

• Christian mindset of endurance in her work, grew up Presbyterian

• Involved in American suffrage movement

• Quotes other poets doing this ahead of when it was popular

D.H Lawrence

• illiterate, drinker father and educated, refined mother

• Lifelong love for nature as he spent a lot of childhood in the woods

• Scandalous life being accused of being a German spy and writing obscenity with no literary value “the rainbow”

E.e Cummings

• unique typography - coined “open verse”

• Served as a soldier and ambulance during ww1

• Held for 3 and a half months in military detention camp in Normandy

• Fascinated by music and sound

• Inspired by Pound and citing his work as “trailblazing”