Modernism in
Literature
One hour Research Task
1. Key Characteristics of Modernism in Literature (you
may make reference to Art and Music too)
2. Yeats as a Modernist Poet
3. The significance of British rule in Ireland at the time
Yeats was writing.
4. The significance of Yeats’ words “Romantic Ireland’s
dead and gone”
You will be assigned one of the above. Use the internet to
research your area. After half an hour, you will join the
other students who have the same topic. Together, you
must agree a bullet point summary – to include no more
than TEN bullet points.
Modernism
• Modernistic literature is the expression of
the modern era (1901-45). It tends to revolve
around themes of individuality, the
randomness of life, mistrust of government
and religion and the disbelief in absolute
truth.
Modernism
• Influences of modern literature The three thinkers who influence the
Modern Era and Modern literature the most are probably Charles Darwin
(1809-1882), Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Sigmund Freud. This is not to say
that Modern authors were ardent evolutionists, or Marxists or even
practitioners of Freudian psychology; rather, these thinkers simply fuelled
and framed the perspectives and debates that formulated so much
Modern art and literature. Today, Freud's specific theories are largely
dismissed as unscientific. Still, these ideas had a profound influence on art
and literature as much as on our common, daily perceptions/conceptions
of existence and reality:
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
(13 June 1885- 28 January 1939)
William Butler Yeats was one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. In 1923 he was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired
poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."
YEATS WAS INTERESTED MAINLY IN THE LIKES OF:
mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology
In 1916, Yeats quite suddenly decided that he didn't want to write pretty poems anymore - he
wanted to write realistic poems: poems as urgent and as uncluttered as a newspaper article.
He even wrote a poem about his decision: "A Coat".
So some characteristics of Modernism in Yeats include:
Demotic language (not poetic language)
Political subject matter
Ugliness and violence, where these are appropriate to the subject matter (no attempt to
make everything aesthetically pleasing in a poeticised vision of loveliness).
CONTRAST IN YEATS POETRY
TRADITIONAL YEATS POEM:
MODERNIST Yeats POEM:
HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN
THE SECOND COMING
HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity
A Coat
I MADE my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.
William Butler Yeats
In a letter to his father, Yeats wrote the
following about the change in his poetry….
“….I have tried to make my work convincing
with a speech so natural that the hearer
would feel the presence of a man thinking
and feeling…..”
Ezra Pound described modernist poetry as:
“gaunter, seeking greater hardness of
outline”; “with a new quality of hard light”