Block Two: Literature in the modern world – the impact of Modernism
What is Modernism as a movement in literature?
* Modernism as a literary movement in literature applies to content and form. Thomas Hardy
can be said to be modernist in content, but not in form. Samuel Beckett, however, is said to be
modernist in content and form.
Modernism and cultural crisis
1- It refers to a sense of deep and thorough-going historical and cultural crisis, welcomed in
one sense, feared in another.
2- It refers to an exceptional degree of formal experimentalism in the arts as the only way in
which the historical and cultural crisis could be addressed.
3- It either assumes, or explicitly claims that it is only in the arts that the full significance of
these crises was articulated.
Read the following extract:
The name and nature of Modernism by Bradbury & McFarlane
Modernism is the one art that responds to the scenario of our chaos. It is the art of the
destruction of civilization and reason in the First World War, of the world changed and
interpreted by Marx, Freud and Darwin, of capitalism and constant industrial acceleration, of
existential exposure to meaninglessness or absurdity.
It is the literature of technology. It is the art consequent on the disestablishing of communal
reality and conventional notions of causality, on the destruction of traditional notions of the
wholeness of individual character, on the linguistic chaos that ensues when all the realities
have become subjective fictions. Modernism is then the art of modernization - however stark
the separation of the artist from society may have been however oblique the artistic gesture he
has made.
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Modernist poetry
- Imagism: it derives from ' Imagist ', a term coined by Ezra Pound, to describe the poems he
was then writing, and thought ought to be written by others. As a movement, imagism had
three characteristics:
1- Direct presentation by means of sharply defined perceptions of the world
2- Strict verbal economy
3- Free verse, which did away with traditional verse forms, patterned rhythms and rhyming.
- Image (Pound's definition): an image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional
complex in an instant of time. It is the presentation of such a 'complex' instantaneously which
gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits;
that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of arts.
What is a symbol (Symbolism)?
In normal use, it means an object that represents something else, for example, the crown and
scepter symbolises the Queens royal authority, flowers symbolises human qualities, etc.
The Modernist Novel (Jonathan Culler suggests three main issues or characteristics)
- Content was less important than style
- A novel should confront the reader as 'an aesthetic object rather than a communicative act'
- A novel should contain no identifiable authorial point of view or opinion about its subject, its
characters and events; their interpretation was entirely a matter for the reader to work out.
Other characteristics of the modernist novel
1 The author, as an overt voice in the novel should not appear.
2 Episodes are usually presented as 'scenes' rather than merely narrated
3 Characters are given their own voices.
4 Self-effacing role of the narrator, rejection of overt moralizing
5 The text is an aesthetic object rather than a communicative act
6 Modernist narrative is minimal, no complex plots and subplots
7 Open endings, resistance to narrative closure
8 Time is chronos, mere successiveness.
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A study guide to (Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf)
Character presentation of character in Mrs. Dalloway came in three main methods:
1- Showing their direct response to the world (Internal speech)
2- Presenting their memories of the past and thoughts about the future (Internal speech)
3- Showing the way in which other characters see them (External glimpses)
- Internal Speech: a flowing self-addressed monologue made up of immediate perceptions,
memories and plans for the future.
Narrative Structure: in Mrs. Dalloway there is unexplained fragmentation and a
multiplicity of episodes. The reader is led to no solution - things are simply 'like that'. The
narration moves in and out of different points of view, different voices, 'in a multi-dimensional
space', which deprives narrative of its traditional linearity and its expected resolution.
Narrative sequences, episodes are linked only by temporal succession.
Plot: in Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf really dispenses with 'plot' as far as possible, so that the
events are linked as a 'story' in a predominantly temporal sequence. In the overarching
Victorian sense, Mrs. Dalloway has no unifying 'plot' that ties the up the loss ends of every
narrative sequence.
Two Main Themes
1- The social system main criticism of marital shell. There is no single "real Clarissa." The
social system both commands her loyalty (her party, the 'perfect hostess', the Prime Minister's
attendance) and is radically undermined. This is the underlying paradox in the novel.
2- Clarissa and Septimus are doubles; they both represent an inward alienation from the 'social
system'. However, whereas Clarissa succeeds in living with her inner contradictions, Septimus,
partly a victim of the war, partly of the social attitudes, and above all of the power represented
in Holmes and Bradshaw, is driven to self destruction. His alienation is more extreme than
Clarissa's, but of the same kind.
Mrs. Dalloway: language & gender: in A Room of One's Own, Woolf contemplates the
predominance of what she calls the man's sentence - which is 'unsuited for a woman's use' a
man's sentence, as Woolf explains in 'To Cambridge Women' is a sentence that has:
1- Balance
2- An objectively analytical structure and abstract terminology
3- A confidently authoritative tone of the passage
4- An assumed knowledge of the general laws that govern human affairs
5- An air of self satisfaction
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A Study Guide to (the Waste Land by T.S Eliot)
Q What makes reading The Waste Land difficult?
1- Its wealth and range of allusions to other poems (German, French, Italian as well as
English), and to myths, legendary tales and religions.
2- The poems, seeming lack of structure
Burial of the Dead: spring is seen as a painful disturbance, rousing 'memory and desire' as
life begins to stir again after the winter. A different voice than the one that began the poem
seems to be speaking in line (13) It could be an aristocratic lady called Marie, or possibly her
words are a memory of the speaker who began the poem. Marie seems to be a solitary person,
lacking direction. A new voice is then heard in lines (19-30) the tone is now severe,
denunciatory, as of some Old Testament prophet. Unlike the opening lines, these directly
address us as readers, implicating us in some general human plight. Mankind, the 'son of man'
is accused of living in a similar state, parched, sterile and monotonous, with only the thought
of death, 'fear in a handful of dust', as the grim alternative to pointless life. In lines (31-42), the
speaker switches again to personal memory, and we are made aware of a voice other than his,
the speech of the hyacinth girl. In these lines, we see fragments of German from Wagner's
opera Tristan and Isolde.
One important point to realize about the speaker is that he is a person who expresses his
feelings in remembered snatches from music, literature and painting. The speaker of the poem
is often a kind of ventriloquist, a voice for others such as Marie. Sometimes he is no more than
the anonymous presenter of episodes, at others the medium through which poets and thinkers
from the past are, in brief quotations and allusions, brought to the reader's attention. In this
respect, The Waste Land directly illustrates Eliot's 'impersonal theory of poetry'.
Game of Chess: it begins with a description of a lady's bedroom, a lady and her relationship
with her visitor, the silent partner of their conversation. When the lady finally appears, the
scene is static. Even the fire becomes a 'framed' visual effect, beautiful and exotic, but frozen.
The carved dolphin suggests tamed energies. There is a sense of enclosure. The reader is not
told whether the lady's visitor is a husband or a lover. There is 'nothing' between them. The
lady has no insight into his state of feeling, and his feeling for her is reluctant, forced, and
habitual. The magnificent promise of the opening lines shrinks and dwindles to the routine
misery of a loveless couple, linked only by an external bond.
The allusion to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in line (77) emphasizes the contrast of the
modern couple with Antony and Cleopatra. The modern lady's sexual and emotional energies
are pointless, deadlocked, suppressed as suggested by the words 'savagely still' The reader is
offered another allusion in line (99) that of the Greek fable about Philomela. The rape of
Philomela in the modern world goes without protest and her cry is simply 'jug, jug' to the
world's dirty ears. The second episode, the pub scene, represents sterile, meaningless sexuality.
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The Fire Sermon: the nymphs described at the beginning of this section are actually
prostitutes. 'Sweet Thames' is asked to run softly till the speaker ends his song, which should
not be long because with contemporary 'love' being what it is, the poet's song will soon be
over. The feeling of subdued horror is suggested in the lines:
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
Notice how condensed that last phrase is 'you hear a chuckle, but what spreads across the face
is something you see, a smile or grin' the coalescence gives a nightmarish effect, as of
something whose smiles can be heard and whose chuckles seen. Another allusion is to Andrew
Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' With this poem, we are reminded of seduction, except in Eliot,
unlike Marvell, it is the feeling of impending death that is reinforced and not making the most
of life because of our mortality. What seems to hold the poem together? Associative links,
such as the evocation of summer, the presence of early winter, into spring again, a pattern
already set up in 'The Burial of the Dead'. These are the kind of the connections to look for in
this poem: associative links through imagery, recurrent patterns, and motifs.
Death by Water: In earlier sections, death has been felt as an underlying menace that makes
life pointless. 'Death by Water' is an elegy for the physical dissolution of the body, develops
the theme because of its different attitude towards it. The grave elegiac tone asks the reader to
face the fact, without histrionics or self-regarding excitement, that death is not just his or her
own, but everybody's fate.
What the Thunder Said: this section develops 'The Fire Sermon' by pursuing a
metaphorical journey that ends in certain explicit moral recommendations: 'Give, sympathise,
control' Now the speaker is one of the disciples; he struggles through the rocky mountainous
scenery and the frustrated search for water, which is associated with renewed life 'and death as
above'. But the speaker encounters only the 'Unreal City' which is not only London, but all
cities. The journey continues in nightmarish form, and ends in a final emptiness:
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
But the chapel suggests a Christian building, and this is supported in Eliot's note which tells of
an allusion to the Grail Quest. Again the feeling is ambiguous. The details suggest that the
quest failed. The close of the poem finds the speaker thinking over his experiences, still
uncertain of his future direction I sat upon the shore…in order?
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Myth and Modernism: modernist writing uses myths as a structuring technique to replace
the connected sequence of narrative. Eliot uses two sources (Jessie L. Weston's': From Ritual
to Romance) about the Grail Legend and Sir James Frazer's: the Golden Bough.
Tradition and Impersonality: the use of allusion and quotation in this poem enables it to
achieve its Modernist impersonality. It is also the way in which what Eliot calls 'Tradition'
shapes the poem.
Poetic Language: differences between Poetry and Prose (traditional distinctions):
- The typographical layout of a poem is different
- Rhyme
- Rhythm
Structural linguistics and 'poetic' language: Roman Jakobson (a Russian Formalist)
claims that poetry has a poetic function that is in poetry, language is focused on itself.
Poetic language and the principle of equivalence: Jakobson identified syntagmatic
(horizontal or syntactical) and paradigmatic (vertical) relationships in a sentence. The
difference between prose and poetry argues Jakobson is that the principle of equivalence or the
'axis of selection' (paradigmatic) is what dominates poetry whereas the 'axis of combination
(syntagmatic) dominates discursive prose.
Jakobson's 'poetic' function: two criticisms (just read)
* Jonathan Culler's criticism of Jakobson: There are many equivalences which have no
bearing on meaning. Objectively applied, the analysis produces a whole range of equivalences
- letters, syllables, sounds - which have no bearing upon meaning, and which we, as readers,
would waste our time in discovering. Culler maintains that the structure of language cannot be
analysed in isolation from its human significance.
* Robert Scholes' criticism of Jakobson: the key to 'literariness' lies not in the linguistic
structure of the message, but in its 'duplicitous' character. That is in its ability to generate more
than one meaning. Thus, it is the 'duplicity' of context that is the most important. The special
character of 'literary fictions' is to focus upon aspects of those absent contexts that we - as
readers, eavesdroppers, voyeurs - bring to them from memory, from experience. Scholes is
directing his argument against an account of literary texts that is merely formalistic, which
Jakobson encourages.
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Modernism and 'poetic' language: the French poet and critic Paul Valery distinguishes
between the language of poetry and the language of prose in the following way:
1- The language of prose resembles walking; it is functional, directed towards a specific end.
2- The language of poetry resembles dancing; it has no purpose beyond itself. 'Dancing goes
nowhere.'
3- Walking and dancing make identical use of the body, but for differing purposes. Prose and
poetry use some words and linguistics rules, but for differing purposes.
4- The language of prose vanishes once its object has been achieved, that of poetry remains.
5- Prose is the language of description and narration, it attempts to give the illusion of reality;
poetry imposes no such illusion.
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A Study Guide to (poems by W.B Yeats)
* The point here is to consider to what degree Modernism affected Yeats's poetry:
- The Symbolist Influence on (Yeats)
The Wild Swans at Coole: the swans…symbolize continuing life. The speaker will "awake
some day" to find old age, death, or a final loss of personal vitality? All of these are
possibilities. The effect of the development of the poem, each stanza building on the last, is to
evoke and suggest within its own structure the qualities that, for the speaker, the swans
represent. They are, in a word, highly poetic swans, subtly adapted to the meanings Yeats
needs for this particular poem.
The Fisherman: the 'Fisherman' is angry and scornful, and its theme is not so clear on the
first reading. Some parts of the poem are generalized and discursive when denouncing 'The
living men' the speaker hates and imagistic when describing the imaginary fisherman whom
the speaker admires. The poem springs from a painful contrast between ideal hope 'the
fisherman' and disappointing reality 'the living men the speaker hates'. Moreover, an ambition
to 'write for my own race' points to a kind of poetry directly opposed to the other-worldly aims
of the Symbolist movement.
Sailing to Byzantium: in this poem, old age has arrived, and the theme is now the hope for
immortality. The poem is built on a number of explicit contrasts: body / soul, sense / intellect,
animal / spiritual, and time / eternity. The speaker's metaphorical journey to Byzantium means
leaving the first set of conditions (body, sense, and so on), and gaining the second (soul,
intellect, and so on). The last verse of the poem makes it clear that the immortality the speaker
prays for has to do with art. With the golden bird symbolizing art, Yeats envisages his own
potential "immortality."
* Summary:
- The Wild Swans at Coole and Sailing to Byzantium are personal poems, about ageing and the
approach of death, and also about the permanence of poetry. But The Fisherman is partly
about poetry, also it refers to a world of public affairs - indifferent, even hostile, towards
Yeats's conception of poetry, but about which he nevertheless feels responsibility.
Easter 1916: this poem is about the Easter Rising on Easter Monday 1916 when a group of
Irish nationalists began an armed uprising in Dublin, without hope of immediate success but
with the intention of transforming, at the expense of their lives, the aims of the nationalist
movement from that of Home Rule to that of an independent republic. The rising was
defeated, and most of its leaders killed in the fighting or later executed by the British but, in
the longer term, it was successful.
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Clearly in the elegiac litany of the closing lines, it salutes the principal actors - MacDonagh,
MacBride, Connolly and Pearse - for the bravery that transformed them into timeless heroes,
whose memory will be celebrated 'wherever green is worn' Their act gave birth to 'a terrible
beauty', a metaphor that disposes of the idea that their deaths were ineffective, rather insisting
that the effect, whatever it turns out to be, will be portentous. Yeats seems to be saying that
revolutionary purpose turns hearts to stone and so withdraws the revolutionaries from normal
life and, at the same time that only such stony enchantment will lead to historically decisive
actions. In this way the lines reach beyond the specific situation of the Easter Rising and those
who took part in it.
* Conclusion: There is a conflict between symbolistic otherworldliness (Valery's dancing) and
discursive worldliness (Valery's walking) in Yeats's poetry. Symbolism, that powerful
influence upon so much Modernist writing and the dominant influence on Yeats's earliest
poetry, becomes, in his later work, directly opposed by his need for a poetic language that
could express his extended involvement in the Irish nationalist cause (This is strikingly unModernist).
Modernism and Ideology (a set of beliefs)
Ideology as opinion:
Pound: Art asks nothing of the reader / viewer / listener: it merely exists.
Pound: Literature should not try to persuade people to accept 'opinions'.
Eliot: Poetry doesn't inculcate or directly influence morals or politics.
Woolf: Art shouldn't preach; poetry mustn't be didactic.
Ideology as 'worldview' (just read)
-The Ideology of Modernism by Georg Lukacs: Lukacs's meaning for the term 'ideology' is:
"It is the view of the world." The 'ideology' or worldview of Modernists, according to Lukacs,
assumes that "Man…is by nature solitary, asocial, unable to enter into relationships with other
human beings…Man, thus conceived, is an a historical being. Lukacs criticizes this 'ideology
of Modernists," by citing the Aristotelian dictum 'Man is…a social animal'.
Ideology and language: Luce Irigaray argues for a feminine language that 'will have
nothing to do with the syntax we have used for centuries' and Virginia Woolf argues for a
sentence which we might call the psychological sentence of the feminine gender. Woolf argues
that sentences of the masculine gender fail to represent the world as experienced by women.
Putting this in terms of 'ideology', the masculine sentence naturalises the world in terms that
edit out of existence the experience of women.
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Modernist Drama
- Modernist drama lacks Naturalist drama's realistic sets, costumes and dialogue (which have
the effect of reflecting a convincing picture of individual people, living at a particular time, in
a particular place.
- Modernist plays take the opposite direction, making no attempt to 'reflect real life', but rather
insisting that 'a play' is what we are watching and that the people on the stage are indeed
'actors'. You will have noticed this feature in Beckett's Endgame, which is very much a
Modernist play.
- Modernist dramatists see Naturalistic emphasis on ordinary language as something very
restricting. Yeats says of Ibsen's A Doll's House: I hated the play…I resented being invited to
admire dialogue so close to modern educated speech that music and style were impossible. Art
is art because it is not nature.
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