MODERNISM(1920 – 1930s)

Main Features1. Focus on newness - break the formal rules of poetry and find new modes of expression required by modern times (William Carlos WIlliams "Nothing is good save the new")

2. Desire to "make it difficult" - complexity of modern era needed equally complex poetry. Unlike earlier poetry, modern poetry generally presented “ideas, experiences, and sensory perceptions directly, unfiltered by explanations, their immediacy and directness paradoxically contribute to their difficulty”

3. Emphasis on the imagination - “Modern poets search for adequate fictions, fictions verging on facts, what is imagined reshaping what is seen, and their imaginative quest may be said to culminate in Stevens’s pursuit of a ‘supreme fiction’”

* Modernist poets either refused to follow any tradition in poetry or united those traditions with their own understanding and created a completely new kind of poetry.

The 1920s-1930sEffects of the Great War

Decline of social valuesThe collapse of the previous status quo seemed obvious to a generation that had seen millions die fighting over scraps of earthThe beginning of a machine age altered the conditions of life—machine warfare became a standard of reality. Traumatic nature of the experience The opinion that mankind was making slow and steady progress was no longer one that held in light of the ruthless slaughter “Some writers rejoiced while others lamented; some anticipated future utopias and others believed that civilization had collapsed; but all believed that old forms would not work for the new times, and all were inspired by the possibility of creating something new” (Norton Anthology Vol. D Introduction 1072).

The 1920s-1930sCritical movements such as Dada came to define the modernist period

Dada was a cultural movement that sought to redefine all traditional culture and aesthetics of the various literary forms. It was anti-war and anti-art.“For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art was to appeal to sensibilities, Dada was intended to offend. Through their rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics the Dadaists hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics.”

Art in many forms reinforced the public opinion that the world was changing.

Change was the norm of the time as new advances in technology, radical new social theories, and two brutal world wars changed the face of the world forever. The violence of both World War I and World War II was unprecedented and terrible, and these two conflicts help to shatter all illusions of the romanticism of war

New uncertainty and complete ambiguity became the true style of this time.

The 1930sDeveloped a self-conscious theory of its own importance

Popular culture fueled much modernist innovation

Began to be looked to as the source for ideas to deal with the challenges of the era with the increasing urbanization of populations

The New Yorker magazine began publishing new and modern ideas by young writers and humorists like Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, E.B. White, S.J. Perelman, and James Thurber

The Russian Revolution was the catalyst to fuse political radicalism and utopianism, with more expressly political stances. W. H. Auden is one of perhaps the most famous exemplars of this Modernist Marxism.

However this does not associate Modernism to “the left” (or, in other words, Marxism, which aims at creating a more democratic distribution of wealth and privilege)

The 1930sOne of the most visible changes of this period is the adoption of objects of modern production into daily life. These created the need for new forms of manners, and social life.

Modernism as leading to social organization would produce inquiries into sex and the basic bonding of the nuclear, rather than extended, family.

The Freudian tensions of infantile sexuality and the raising of children became more intense, because people had fewer children, and therefore a more specific relationship with each child

Important Influences

Invention of machinery e.g. household appliances, weapons

The Industrial Revolution

Individuality – what makes the individual freeo A common feature in poems of this period

emphasised how Man becomes a a statistic and is no loner unique (e.g. The Unknown Citizen)

Background InformationModernist poetry

Departs radically from the traditional school of the old masters

Ignores the necessity of rhyme and consistent meter Rejects the imagery of traditional poetry Departs noticeably from traditional modes of expression

Formal canons, thematic and imagistic conventions, as well as mystical dimensions of the traditional school are by and large abandoned,

Poets adapt the form of their poems to the requirements of their individual tastes and artistic outlooks

Examples of Modernist Poetry/Poets

D.H. LAWRENCE

W.H. AUDEN E.E. CUMMINGS

3 Chosen Poems

1. Spring is like a perhaps hand by E. E. Cummings

2. In Church by D. H. Lawrence

3. The Unknown Citizen by W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh AudenAnglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen

Auden grew up in Birmingham in a professional middle class family and read English literature at Christ Church, Oxford.

Established his reputation as a left-wing political poet and prophet. He became uncomfortable in this role in the later 1930s, and abandoned it after he moved to the United States in 1939

His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content.

The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.

21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973

David Herbert Richard Lawrence (1885-1930)

English author, poet, playwright and literary critic

Collected works represent extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation

Issues commonly dealt with: emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct

Believed strongly in the individual

Lawrence’s opinions earned him many enemies, and he endured much persecution, censorship and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life

Discussion Questions (In Church)

What is the message of the poem?

What are some of the key issues presented and what are Lawrence's sentiments with regard to them?

Think of the poem with regard to specific devices. How are they used to craft meaning?