Modernism Movement

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Modernism Movement

• Ortecia Guity
• Aaliyah Carson
• Bri-Jae Scarbrough
• Winsinslow

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What is the modernism movement ?

• Modernism is characterized as a revolutionary
  force
• In science Einstein was reassessing time, space,
  and our relationship to these concepts
• In global politics two world wars was bracketed
  decades of intense technological advances in the
  mass killing of soldiers and civilians
• In visual arts surrealism, futurism, abstraction,
  and cubism overthrew most accepted traditional
  ideas about pictorial representation.

Surrealism
Cubo-Futurism
Semi-Abstract
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Techniques of modernism

• experimentation,
• anti-realism,
• individualism
• intellectual
• verbal cleverness
• Juxtaposition,
• irony, comparisons,
• satire

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Themes of modernism

• The breaking down of social norms,
• rejection of standard social ideas ,traditional
  thoughts and expectations,
• objection to religion
• anger towards the effects of the world wars
• the rejection of the truth
• rejection of history,
• social systems
• sense of loneliness
• Reject Romanticism and Victorian Literature

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Wallace Stevens

• Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
• attended Harvard University as an undergrad from
  1879 to 1900
• due to shortages of family funds he had to
  withdraw from the university
• once out of Harvard he worked as a journalist for
  the New York Evening Post
• his father counseled him to study law so he
  graduated from New York School of Law in 1904 and
  practiced law in New York city until 1916
• moved to Connecticut where he became vice
  president of a health insurance company

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Notable works

• Harmonium (1930)
• Ideas of Order (1935)
• The Man with the Blue Guitar (1942)
• Collected Poems (1954)

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The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

• One must have a mind of winter
• To regard the frost and the boughs
• Of the pine-trees crusted with snow
• And have been cold a long time
• To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
• The spruces rough in the distant glitter
•  
• Of the January sun and not to think
• Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
• In the sound of a few leaves,
•  
• Which is the sound of the land
• Full of the same wind
• That is blowing in the same bare place
•  
• For the listener, who listens in the snow,
• And, nothing himself, beholds
• Nothing that is not there and the nothing that
  is.

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Snowman Analysis

• overview man realizes that he must
• the snowman symbolizes the mind of winter
• mind of winter is an extended metaphor of a
  mind that holds nothing
• diction and imagery cause a gloomy/miserable tone
• repetition of nothing
• theme the relation between imagination and
  reality

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T.S Elliot

• born September 26, 1888, St. Louis, Missouri,
  U.S.died January 4, 1965, London, England
• T.S. Eliot was an American-English poet,
  playwright and literary critic
• He won the Nobel Prize in 1948.
• His first masterpiece was "The Love Song of J.
  Alfred Purfrock,"
• a leader of the modernist movement in poetry in
  such works as The Waste Land (1922) and Four
  Quartets(1943)

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Notable Works

• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 1915
• Gerontion (1920),
• The Waste Land (1922),
• The Hollow Men (1925),
• Ash Wednesday (1930),
• Four Quartets (1945)

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THE HIPPOPOTAMUSby T.S. Eliot (1920)

• The broad-backed hippopotamus
• Rests on his belly in the mud
• Although he seems so firm to us
• He is merely flesh and blood.
• Flesh-and-blood is weak and frail,
• Susceptible to nervous shock
• While the True Church can never fail
• For it is based upon a rock.
• The hippo's feeble steps may err
• In compassing material ends,
• While the True Church need never stir
• To gather in its dividends.
• The 'potamus can never reach
• The mango on the mango-tree
• But fruits of pomegranate and peach
• Refresh the Church from over sea.

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Figurative Language

• Tone
• Biblical allusion
• Symbolism

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E.E Cummings

• American poet, painter, essayist, author, and
  playwright
• Produced 2,900 poems, two autobiographical
  novels, four plays and several essays
• Also produced numerous drawings and paintings (an
  artist)
• Wife and daughter (the effect of an affair)
• Born on October 14, 1894 Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Died of Hemorrhage at age 67
• Religion Unitarian

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Notable Works

• Spring
• Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town
• Snow
• A Pretty a Day
• I Carry Your Heart With Me

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Anyone lived in a pretty how town   by E. E.
Cummings

• anyone lived in a pretty how town
• (with up so floating many bells down)
• spring summer autumn winter
• he sang his didn't he danced his did
•  
• Women and men(both little and small)
• cared for anyone not at all
• they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
• sun moon stars rain
•  
• children guessed(but only a few
• and down they forgot as up they grew
• autumn winter spring summer)
• that noone loved him more by more
•  
• when by now and tree by leaf
• she laughed his joy she cried his grief
• bird by snow and stir by still
• anyone's any was all to her

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Poetry Analysis

• Notes
• Anyone is a generalized term for joyous
  townspeople
• No one is the woman referred to in the poem, so
  anyone is in love with no one
• Overall message mankind is selfish and only
  cares for the living (disregards the dead)
• Literary Devices
• Metaphors
• Symbolism
• Couplet (rhyme used in two consecutive lines)
• Repitition
• Form
• Quatrain (stanza of four lines)

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Hilda Doolittle

• Born September 10, 1886 in Bethlehem,
  Pennsylvania
• An American poet, she attended University of
  Pennsylvania
• Known for her association with the early imagist
  movement.
• Work later developed into a more female centric
  version of modernism
• Married once, but had a number of heterosexual
  and lesbian affairs.
• She had an interest in Greek literature and her
  poetry often borrowed from Greek mythology

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Notable Work

• "Sea Rose"
• "Garden"
• "Mid-day"
• "Hermes of the Ways"
• "The Helmsman"
• "Helen"

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HelenBy Hilda Doolittle

• Helen All Greece hates the still eyes in the
  white face, the lustre as of olives where she
  stands, and the white hands. All Greece
  reviles the wan face when she smiles, hating it
  deeper still when it grows wan and
  white, remembering past enchantments and past
  ills. Greece sees, unmoved, God's daughter,
  born of love, the beauty of cool feet and
  slenderest knees, could love indeed the
  maid, only if she were laid, white ash amid
  funereal cypresses. Hilda Doolittle 

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Analysis of Helen

• Literary Devices
• Allusion
• Imagery
• Repetition
• Irony
• Symbolism
• Tone
• Compare and Contrast
• Form
• End-stopped

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Writing Prompts

• Wallace Stevens constantly implanted aesthetic
  philosophy, dealing with the nature of beauty and
  art, in his poetry. In the following poems he
  discusses the conditions of winter. Read both
  poems carefully. Then write an essay in which you
  compare and contrast the two of them and analyze
  the relation between them.
• The following poem is taken from Harmonium, a
  collection of poems written by the American poet
  Wallace Stevens. Read the poem carefully. Then
  write a well organized essay in which you analyze
  how he communicates his opinion about the power
  of imagination.
• Write a well organize essay in which you analyze
  the literary techniques the author uses to
  characterize winter.

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Quiz Questions

• 1. Which of the following was not a key
  element of modernist poetry?
• experimentation
• anti-realism
• realism
• individualism
• 2. What ideas did the modernist movement
  borrow from Romanticism?
• an urban setting
• willingness to break taboos
• artist-centered view and retreat into
  irrationalism
• stress on the cerebral
• 3. What theme does Stevens, The Snowman
  embody?
• the misery of winter
• the importance of a snowman
• the relationship between imagination and reality
• speech of nature

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Quiz Questions

• 1. What group of poets was Hilda Doolittle
  apart of before Modernism?
• a. Harlem Renassaince
• b. Realistic
• c. Romanticism
• d. Imagist
• What was the tone of the poem Helen
• a. Depressed
• b. Happy
• c. Unforgiving
• d. Aposrtophe

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Resources

• http//curiosity.discovery.com/question/what-is-mo
  dernism
• http//www.poemhunter.com/hilda-doolittle/
• http//www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hd/
  hd.htm
• http//www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/156
• http//www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/e-e-cummings
• http//www.internal.org/e_e_cummings
• http//www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/wallace-steven
  s
• http//www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/ste
  vens/bio.htm
• http//www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/
  laureates/1948/eliot-bio.html
• http//www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eli
  ot/eliot.htm