EARLY 20TH CENTURY
LITERATURE
MODERNISM
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 past
Are both present in time future
And 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?
Lesson Essential Questions:
1.
Why is word choice so
important to poetry?
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 wellwritten poetic analysis?
1.
1.
How can an
understanding of form
and structure aid the
reader in interpreting a
poem’s meaning?
How can word choice
affect the tone, mood,
meaning of a poem?
1.
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. Yeats
T.S. Eliot
Robert Lee Frost
Langston Hughes
D.H. Lawrence
Rudyard Kipling
e.e. cummings
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Amy Lowell
Hart Crane
E.A. Robinson
Gertrude 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.
2.
3.
4.
Soul
Mind
Heart
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/entertai
nment/english-literature-the-early-twentiethcentury.html
• http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/library/alumni/online_
exhibits/digital/2000/c_n_c/c_10_20th_cent/intro_m
odernism.htm
• http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary
-term/modernism
• http://www.webexhibits.org/poetry/background.ht
ml