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Modernism Walker and Prarthi

Modernism Walker and Prarthi. Definition of Modernism It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernism rejected the sentiment and

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Page 1: Modernism Walker and Prarthi. Definition of Modernism It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernism rejected the sentiment and

Modernism

Walker and Prarthi

Page 2: Modernism Walker and Prarthi. Definition of Modernism It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernism rejected the sentiment and

Definition of Modernism•It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism.

• Modernism rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of Romanticism and Victorian literature for poetry that instead favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language.

•Notable for its reprise, incorporation, rewriting, revision, imparity of traditional poetic devices and forms.

•Era when artists were fundamentally questioning and reinventing their artforms. modernist literature struggled with the new realm of subject matter brought about by an increasingly industrialized and globalized world.

•The desire to break with the past, rejecting literary traditions that seemed outmoded and diction that seemed too genteel to suit an era of technological breakthroughs and global violence.

•Modernist poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, with its emphasis on traditional formalism and ornate diction.

•Much of early modernist poetry took the form of short, compact lyrics. As it developed, however, longer poems came to the fore.

•In its earliest incarnations, modernism fostered a utopian spirit, stimulated by innovations happening in the fields of anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis.

•Modernism was characterized by a self-conscious break from traditional aesthetic forms.

•The Modernist impulse was fueled in by industrialization and urbanization and by the search for an authentic response to a much-changed world.

•Modernism as a literary movement is typically associated with the period after World War I. The enormity of the war had undermined humankind’s faith in the foundations of Western society and culture, and postwar Modernist literature reflected a sense of disillusionment and fragmentation.

Page 3: Modernism Walker and Prarthi. Definition of Modernism It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernism rejected the sentiment and

Modernist Poetry Movements•Cubism:

An early 20th-century style and movement in art where a single viewpoint was abandoned and used simple geometric shapes, interlocking planes, and collage (despite being a primarily visual movement elements were incorporated into poetry)•Constructivism

A style or movement in which assorted mechanical objects are combined into abstract mobile structural forms. •Futurism

An artistic movement that violently rejected traditional forms and celebrated and incorporated into their art the energy and dynamism of modern technology.•Imagism

A movement in early 20th-century English and American poetry that sought clarity of expression through the use of precise images.

Page 4: Modernism Walker and Prarthi. Definition of Modernism It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernism rejected the sentiment and

Aspects of Modernism•Formal/Stylistic characteristics

•Juxtaposition could be used for example in a way to represent something that would be oftentimes unseen.

•Juxtaposition, irony, comparisons, and satire are elements found in modernist writing.

•The most obvious stylistic tool of the modernist writer is that it is often written in first person. Rather than a traditional story having a beginning, middle and end, modernist writing typically reads as a long stream of consciousness similar to a rant. This can leave the reader slightly confused as to what they are supposed to take away from the work.

• Irony and satire are important tools for the modernist writer in aiding them to make fun of and point out faults in what they are writing about, normally problems within their society, whether it is governmental, political, or social ideas.

•Modernist writers have also been known to create their text in a stylistic and artistic way, using different fonts, sizes, symbols and colors in the production of their writing. Modernists used revolutionary techniques of composition, such as the collage. Modernists also used traditional devices (blank verse, rhyme, narrative, the sonnet form) but put a slant on these traditional paterns.

•With its fragmentary images and obscure allusions, Modernism requires the reader to take an active role in interpreting the text.

•Thematic characteristics

•The plot, characters and themes of the text are not always linear.

•The goal of modernist literature is not heavily focused on catering to one particular audience in a formal way. Modernist writing is more interested in getting the writer's ideas, opinions, and thoughts out into the public at as high a volume as possible.

•For the first-time reader, modernist writing can seem frustrating to understand because of the fragmentation and lack of conciseness of the writing.

•Modernist literature often forcefully opposes or gives an opinion on a social concept. The breaking down of social norms, rejection of standard social ideas and traditional thoughts and expectations, objection to religion and anger towards the effects of the world wars, and the rejection of the truth are topics widely seen in this literary era.

•A rejection of history, social systems, and a sense of loneliness are also common themes.

Page 5: Modernism Walker and Prarthi. Definition of Modernism It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernism rejected the sentiment and

Formal characteristics of Modernism

• Characteristics:•Free verse

•Discontinuous narrative

•Juxtaposition

•Intertextuality

•Classical allusions

•Borrowings from other cultures and languages

•Open Form

•Unconventional use of metaphor

•Metanarrative

•Fragmentation

•Multiple narrative points of view (parallax)

Page 6: Modernism Walker and Prarthi. Definition of Modernism It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernism rejected the sentiment and

Thematic characteristics

•Themes: •Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties •Dislocation of meaning and sense from its normal context•Disillusionment •Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past, borrowed without chronology •Product of the metropolis, of cities and urban landscapes •Stream of consciousness •Overwhelming technological changes of the 20th Century

Page 7: Modernism Walker and Prarthi. Definition of Modernism It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernism rejected the sentiment and

Ezra pound

•Ezra pound major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry (most influential before WWI). Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry.

•His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation of Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry—stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter

• He became known for his role in developing Imagism, which, in reaction to the Victorian and Georgian poets, favored tight language, unadorned imagery, and a strong correspondence between the verbal and musical qualities of the verse and the mood it expressed.

•WWI greatly effected Pound's work: After World War I Pound’s verse took on new qualities of economy, brevity, and clarity as he used concrete details and exact visual images to capture concentrated moments of experience.

•Pound’s verse took on new qualities of economy, brevity, and clarity as he used concrete details and exact visual images to capture concentrated moments of experience.

•He believed that to change the structure of your language is to change the way you think and see the world. His aim was clarity: a fight against abstraction, romanticism, rhetoric, inversion of word order, and over-use of adjectives. (different from many other modernist poets)

•Trademarks: 1. Direct treatment of the "thing" whether subjective or objective. 2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.

•According to Pound superfluous words, particularly adjectives, were to be avoided.

Page 8: Modernism Walker and Prarthi. Definition of Modernism It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernism rejected the sentiment and

E.E. Commings

•In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression using simple language as possible.

•Despite Cummings' association with avant-garde styles, much of his work is quite traditional. Many of his poems are sonnets, albeit often with a modern twist, and he occasionally made use of the blues form and acrostics.

•Cummings' poetry often deals with themes of love and nature, as well as the relationship of the individual to the masses and to the world.

•His poems are also often filled with satire.

•Cummings’s moods were alternately satirical and tough or tender and whimsical. He frequently used the language of the streets and material from burlesque and the circus.

•While his poetic forms and themes share an affinity with the romantic tradition, Cummings' work universally shows a particular idiosyncrasy of syntax, or way of arranging individual words into larger phrases and sentences. Many of his most striking poems do not involve any typographical or punctuation innovations at all, but purely syntactic ones.

• E. E. Cummings ecperimented with the superficial look of his poems- where all the words were in lower-case letters and in parenthesis [ex. 1) "(a leaf falls)", 2)may separate the "l" from "oneliness."]

Page 9: Modernism Walker and Prarthi. Definition of Modernism It was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Modernism rejected the sentiment and

Gertrude Stein•Gertrude stein was influenced by cubist painting and incorporated its characteristics into her poetry.

•By 1913, Stein's support of cubist painters and her increasingly avant-garde writing Tender Buttons clearly showed the profound effect modern painting had on her writing.

•In these small prose poems, images and phrases come together in often surprising ways—similar in manner to cubist painting.

•Her writing, characterized by its use of words for their associations and sounds rather than their meanings, received considerable interest from other artists and writers, but did not find a wide audience.

• These stream-of-consciousness experiments, rhythmical essays or "portraits", were seen as literature's answer to Cubism, plasticity, and collage.

•Many of the experimental works such as Tender Buttons have since been interpreted by critics as a feminist reworking of patriarchal language.

• Her use of repetition is used to describe the nature of her characters [ ex. The Making of Americans- where the narrator is described through the repetition of narrative phrases such as "As I was saying" and "There will be now a history of her."]

•Social judgement is absent in her writing, so the reader is given the power to decide how to think and feel about the writing. Anxiety, fear and anger are also absent, and her work is harmonic, sympathetic and collective.

Stein predominantly used the present progressive tense [the present progressive is used to indicate actions happening at the time of speaking, or right now], creating a continuous “present” in her work.

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