The Modern and Postmodern Periods (1901- Present)
1. "Yesterday, we split the atom...And because of this, the great dream and the great nightmare of
centuries of human thought have taken flesh and walk beside us all, day and night".
- Doris Lessing, from "The Small, Personal Voice"
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2. World War II and the Loss of the Empire: The aggression of Germany and Japan led inevitably to
World War II. When Hitler’s armies overran Europe, the English stood defiantly alone, shielded by the English Channel and the Royal Air Force. It was, Winston Churchill said, "their finest hour".
*In 1942, Russia blunted the German advance, America was in the war and the tide turned against the aggressors. After nearly six years of struggle, England emerged from the war victorious, battered, and impoverished.
* England's former colonies became independent colonies. The Indian subcontinent, where Gandhi had led an independence movement, was divided into the nations of India and Pakistan in 1947.
* The imperial British lion gave a dying gasp in 1956 when Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt to keep the control of the Suez Canal. However, the United States intervened, the Egyptians kept the Canal, and British troops came home to a country ashamed of its government's actions.
* Suez was forgotten in the cultural upheaval in 1960s, when British fashion and British rock musicians carried the flag around the world in a kind of cultural conquest. Also, writers from England's former colonies were engaged in their own re-conquest, enriching English literature.
* As the century closed, the violence in Northern Ireland seemed to be ending. Also, England pondered its involvement with Europe, not accepting the common currency, the Euro, but cooperating in a
drilling a tunnel under the English Channel, which joined England to the Continent. Do Sir Edward Grey's words still have a prophetic ring? Many thought the lamps came on again when the Berlin Wall fell. However, countries cobbled together in the aftermath of World War I- Yugoslavia and Iraq- have been the sites of bitter conflict.
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3. Vocabulary:
*generation- noun. all of the people born and living at the same time
*materialism- noun. Belief in comfort, pleasure, and wealth as the highest values
*colonial- adj. of or relating to the colony or colonies of a mother country
*propriety- noun. Display of proper manners or behavior
*aristocracy- noun. Ruling class; nobility
*fascism- noun. Type of government ruled by one party, which puts down all opposition
*inclusive- adj. tending to include; taking everything into account
*evocative- adj. calling up a particular image or reaction
*allusions- noun. Indirect references
4. Women and Writers: The work of Virginia Woolf revealed a new freedom that women were finding in literature as well. Woolf's experimental fiction broke new ground, and her nonfiction explored the social
conditions that would help women succeed in the arts.
* The bicycle as product and the right to vote as principle were part of the century-long process of loosening the rigid rules of class, propriety, and morality that bound the Victorians. this process applied to such areas as access to higher education, health care, marriage laws and customs for ordinary people and monarchy, home ownerships, pensions, and working conditions.
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5. Music and Literature in the Sixties: Things were at their brightest in the next decade: the Swinging Sixties. Plato said: "When the modes of music change, the walls of the city are shaken". The walls were rocked by The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Although not as famous as these songwriters and singers, poets like Ted Hughes and peter Redgrove nevertheless opened their minds and their styles to a wide range of new influences.
*The pendulum slowed in the eighties. Margaret Thatcher, the first and only female prime minister of Britain, reversed many of the economic changes of the previous twenty-five years. However, there could be no reversing the social changes. Early in her administration, the army and navy crushed Argentina's attempt to seize the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. This was the final flick of the imperial lion's tail.
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6. George Orwell: More Relevant than Ever!-
Big Brother, Newspeak, doublethink are words that probably sound familiar because you hear them frequently. They were all coined in the 1940s by British author George Orwell for his novel 1984 (published in 1949). After World War II, Orwell was alarmed by a trend toward repressive totalitarian rule. Believing that language is the first weapon dictators use to seize power, he employed his own words as a warning. In the futuristic tyranny portrayed in his novel, words are used to obscure and destroy meaning:
- The official language, Newspeak, has been stripped of meaning
-The tyrannical ruler is deceptively named Big Brother
- Dissenters face torture in the innocently named Room 101
- Citizens are adapt at doublethink the ability to accept blatant contradictions, as in the government declaration "War is Peace".
* Sixty years later, these terms and others coined by Orwell still ring true. In fact, Orwell's own name is used as an adjective, Orwellian to describe this kind of abuse of language. Pundits, reporters, citizens, and bloggers alike use Orwell's words to criticize Orwellian practices. The year 1984 has come and gone, but Orwell's words live on.
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8. Reading Journal: the Lake of Innisfree: The poet declares that he will arise and go to Innisfree, where he will build a small cabin “of clay and wattles made.” There, he will have nine bean-rows and a beehive, and live alone in the glade loud with the sound of bees (“the bee-loud glade”). He says that he will have peace there, for peace drops from “the veils of morning to where the cricket sings.” Midnight there is a glimmer, and noon is a purple glow, and evening is full of linnet’s wings. He declares again that he will arise and go, for always, night and day, he hears the lake water lapping “with low sounds by the shore.” While he stands in the city, “on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,” he hears the sound within himself, “in the deep heart’s core.”
Reading Journal: When You Are Old: The idea of love in age is an ancient one, meant to express the fact that love inheres not merely in youth, but in something deeper and more lasting. Yeats capitalizes "Love," thus personifying the concept, which is a nod to the poem's 16th century roots. Although monotheism had taken over Europe, Greek and Roman gods were very much a part of 16th century consciousness. Yeats's "Love" is a modernization of the ancient figure, Eros.
9. Answer #2 p1141: The "veils of the morning" is a reference of the mists [fog] of early morning. Crickets sing at night. So, Yeats is actually saying that the "peacefulness" of the Innisfree scene lasts from dawn to nightfall. The slow dropping of peace is a contrast of the rural, slow-paced, peaceful life of County Sligo [where the island of Innisfree in the lake of Lough Gill is located] with the fast-paced, turmoil-filled, unpleasantness of the city..
10. Literary Response:
I would personify death as a baby boy. It can represent the end of life while looking like the beginning of life. It would always be a male, because he would represent death while females represent life (they can give birth).
The baby would not be a demon or angel. He would merely be neutral and would stand for people who have not been bonded to heaven or hell since they have just died. With that said, the baby will neither be good or evil, but emotionless and dutiful. He would guide the dead to the their destinations and never be favorable or unfavorable to any of his 'clients'.
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12. Critical Reading 1-6:
1) Yes, I have been moved by my two pet gerbils Lena and Ginny. I find that they are probably one of the most resilient little rodents alive, because no matter what burdens them they always have energy to replenish in.
2) In the second stanza, Yeats admits that it is nineteen years since he first counted the swans on Coole Lake. By emphasizing the word autumn here, he is showing that he views himself as being in the autumn of his years.
3) He remembers that the swans flew away loudly as a group in huge broken circles. This sudden flight disturbed the tranquility of the scene.
4) When he first heard the bell like beat of the swans’ wings he walked more energetically and with a happier heart. Unlike him, the swams have not grown weary and is still energetic and happy with life.
5) The flight might represent his loss of respect for nature and life. It is painful because although he has grown weary, he does not want to be like that.
6) While they have also gone through the 19 years that has passed, the swans are still lively while Yeats is weary where he once wasn't. I think as time goes by people realize that they become filled with more burdens that they once had.
13. Images of Modernism: When you take a photograph, you record and preserve what is happening now. Modernism could be thought of as a complex response to what photographs imply. Some Modernists, such as the American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and the British poet T.S. Elliot, wrote poetry as if they were taking snapshots of the world and then cutting and pasting them into collages. Elliot celebrated what he called objectivity in poetry. He relied on images, well-chosen and artfully rendered, to encapsulate a feeling or prospective.
On the other hand, the British Modernist novelist Virginia Woolf perfected techniques for conveying an individual’s moment-by moment experience. For Woolf, the mind is like a camera filming continuously. Her writing record what the moment looks like to an individual. A photograph shows us exactly what the world looks like; Woolf suggests that what the world looks like depends on who is looking.
14. Literary Analysis: Modernism was an early twentieth century movement in the arts. The movement responded to the fragmented modern world created by industrialization, rapid transportation and communication, and a feeling of alienation caused by mass society and the growth of cities. Eliot led the movement for Modernism in poetry, which had several features:
- A new objectivity or impersonality in poetry, in which a work is built from images and allusions rather than from direct statements of thoughts and feelings
- A rejection of realistic depictions of life in favor of the use of images for artist effect
- Critical attention to social conditions and the spiritual troubles of modern life.
As you read, look for details that reflect Modernism in Eliot’s poems.
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19. Literary Analysis: Searching for forms suited to modern experience, Modernist writers tested different points of view, perspective from which a story is told.
- A first-person narrator tells his or her own story. With this technique, authors can probe the thoughts of the narrator.
- A third-person narrator tells what happens to others. An omniscient third person has the ability to reveal the thoughts of several characters. A narrator with limited-omniscience sees only into the mind of one or few characters.
-Stream-of-consciousness narration follows the flowing, branching currents of thoughts in a character’s mind.
Writers began using stream-of-consciousness technique under the influence of the emerging science of psychology. As you read, compare and contrast the effects of different forms of narration in other stories.
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23. *Elements of the Short-Story p1216: the short story shares basic narrative elements with the novels
-Plot: a sequence of events that explores characters in conflict. In many modern stories, the plot builds to a crucial moment in which the conflict is altered in some way, but not necessarily resolved.
-Conflict: A struggle between two opposing forces
-Setting; the time and place of the action of the story. Because of their length and focus, short stories often have a single setting.
-Character: a person or creature that participates in the action of the story. Short stories generally have few characters, yet they must be depicted believably and concisely. In many short stories, one main character, or protagonist, develops a conflict that dominates the length of the story. The way in which a writer creates and develops characters is called characterization.
-Theme: the central idea, message, or insight of the story. A short story, usually has a single theme, which may be revealed in a crucial moment of insight or in clues that must be pieced together.
*Narrating a Short Story: Short stories are narrated from a specific vantage point called point of view. Point of view is determined by what type of narrator tells the story. As the voice telling the story, the narrator determines what information is revealed to the reader-what information is left out of the telling. The three commonly used points of view are first person, third-person omniscient, and the third-person limited.
- First Person: the narrator is a character who speaks in the first person, using first-person pronouns- I, me, and we. The reader sees, hears, and knows only what the character sees, hears, and knows and then learns only what the character chooses to reveal.
- Third person: The narrator is not a character in the story, but rather a voice outside the action that speaks using third-person pronouns- he, she, it, or they. A third-person narrator may be either omniscient or limited.
-Third-person omniscient: an all-knowing narrator who can describe everything that happens and may reveal all the characters’ thoughts and feelings. You know the narrator is omniscient when you are aware of the thoughts and feelings of more than one character.
-Third-person limited: a narrator who sees the world through a single character’s eyes and reveals only what he or she is experiencing, thinking, and feeling. That character’s feelings color the whole story.
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37. Reading Journal: The speaker is looking out at Dover beach on the English coast. It is a moonlit night, and he calls his beloved to the window to breathe the sweet night air. He hears the endless roar of the waves flinging pebbles on the shore, the sound suggests eternal sadness. The speaker remarks that ancient Greek dramatist Sophocles long ago heard the same sound and it also reminded him of the ebb and flow of human misery. According to the speaker, the Sea of Faith, once full like the tide, is now retreating to the edges of the earth. The speaker cries out to his beloved, imploring that they be true to one another. Although the world seems beautiful and fresh, the speaker believes it is actually joyless, cruel dark, and uncertain. Conflict and pain, he believes, are unavoidable and people fight without knowing why. Thus there is only consolation and meaning in honest and loving human relationships.
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