Modernism: Ernest Hemingway and T. S. Eliot Essay Sample
Modernism. in its broadest definition. is modern idea. character. or pattern. More specifically. the term describes a set of cultural inclinations and motions. originally originating from wide-scale and far-reaching alterations to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s. The term encompasses the activities and end product of those who felt the “traditional” signifiers of art. architecture. literature. spiritual religion. societal organisation and day-to-day life were going outdated in the new economic. societal and political conditions of an emerging to the full industrialized universe. The first half of the twentieth century is so usually referred to in literary histories as ‘Modernism’ . a really general term used to speak about a series of different motions and inclinations ( Impressionism. expressionism. imagism. futurism. Dadaism. surrealism… ) that tried to interrupt with old tradition and the realistic construct of art.
Modernism challenged the premise of world which is at the roots of pragmatism: that there is a common phenomenal universe that can be faithfully described. Psychoanalysis. Darwinism. Nietzche and Marxism questioned traditional premises and so did World War I and the disbelieving spirit it brought approximately. They all helped to shatter traditional beliefs. ( ( ( Regardless of the specific twelvemonth it was produced. modernism is characterized chiefly by a complete and unambiguous embracing of what Andreas Huyssen calls the “Great Divide. ” [ 7 ] That is. it believes that there is a clear differentiation between capital-A Art and aggregate civilization. and it places itself steadfastly on the side of Art and in resistance to popular or aggregate civilization. ( Postmodernism. harmonizing to Hussein. may be defined exactly by its rejection of this differentiation.
The artistic response to all these alterations took topographic point both in the kingdom of signifier and content. From the point of position of content. the horrors of WW I and the reaching of the thoughts mentioned before brought about a general spirit of pessimism. disenchantment and incredulity ( reflected in The Waste Land. for case ) . There was an of import group of American authors ( Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Dos Passos. e. e. Edward Estlin Cummingss. Hart Crane ) who shared this spirit of post-war disaffection and lived in Paris for some clip. who came to be known as the Lost Generation.
1. High Modernism
Merely as in painting creative persons were looking for a new signifier of look. in literature authors were seeking to experiment and happen a new vocabulary and new techniques. Poets dislocated grammar and punctuation looking for new images and ways of look. and novelists experimented with new points of position and a different construct of clip and secret plan to seek to reflect the concealed consciousness of the characters. The term ‘HIGH MODERNISM’ is sometimes used to depict a group of authors peculiarly interested in this formal revolution. With the exclusion of William Faulkner. this group is more European-based than American. The two chef-d’oeuvres in English that best represent this motion are likely T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and James Joyce’s Ulysses. both first published in 1922. These are some of the FORMAL INNOVATIONS introduced by these authors:
In poesy. the construct of ‘image’ ( Imagism ) : the writer’s response to a ocular object or scene.
Obscurity. opacity. The reader is required to do an attempt to understand the plant. In Eliot’s and Pound’s poesy. for illustration. there are all sorts of cultural mentions the reader must work hard to understand.
Time is non presented in chronological order. Flashbacks and flash-forwards are used alternatively.
Disconnected secret plans. sometimes without a beginning or an terminal are besides frequent.
Disappearance of the traditional omniscient storyteller in the novel. In their hunt for different ways to stand for world. they replaced this storyteller by partial points of position or by interior soliloquies or monologues that try to reproduce the ‘stream of consciousness’ of the characters. A few theoretical considerations will likely be welcome: bearing in head the differentiation between focalisation and narrative ( ‘who sees? ’ versus ‘who speaks? ’ ) . we can set up different sorts of storytellers:
First individual storyteller ( major participant. as in Huck Finn ; minor. as in The Great Gatsby ; or even non-participant. as in The Scarlet Letter ) . In some instances. the storyteller is undependable. and hence everything that s/he Tells is fishy and must be interpreted by the reader ( for illustration. kids stating narratives where grownups do things they don’t truly understand. Huck Finn might be a good illustration ) .
Second individual storyteller. Quite uncommon. An illustration: Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter Night a Traveller.
Third individual storyteller. When the narrative is in the 3rd individual. the focalisation becomes highly of import. We can so speak about an all-knowing point of position ( typical of 19th century realist novels. The voice that tells the narrative is in entire control. knows everything and has important value ) . a dramatic or nonsubjective point of position ( Hemingway’s short narratives: the storyteller is like the lens of a camera that merely records what s/he sees ) . or a selected or limited point of position ( besides called ‘Jamesian’ after Henry James: a character is the ‘focus’ or ‘center of consciousness’ . and the reader sees the action through the focal point of that character ) .
Modernist fiction became highly interested in characters’ psychological science and the construct of ‘stream of consciousness’ that psychologist William James had developed. This term refers to the ideas. memories and feelings that exist in our head in what he called the Pre-Speech degree. They are non censored. rationally controlled or logically ordered and are formed alternatively by a method of free association. Modernist authors tried to demo the concealed facets of a character’s personality through the representation of this degree of consciousness. and the different techniques they developed were:
Description: the storyteller describes with his/her ain linguistic communication the concealed ideas of a character.
Interior Monologue: reproduction of these ideas in the character’s ain linguistic communication.
Soliloquy: Its intent is non merely to pass on psychic individuality ( like the interior soliloquy ) . but besides to progress the secret plan. It communicates thoughts and emotions which are related to secret plan and action.
This period has sometimes been described as the ‘coming of age’ of American Literature. and it is surely an inordinately productive clip with an outstanding figure of first-class authors in English. whether British. Irish or American.
JAMES JOYCE ( 1882-1941 ) might the best modernist author in the English linguistic communication. Born in Dublin. he left his native metropolis ne’er to come back. but he kept composing about it for all his life. He wrote Dubliners ( 1914 ) . A Portrayal of the Artist as a Young Man ( 1917 ) . Ulysses ( 1922 ) . and Finnegan’s Wake ( 1939 ) . Ulysses is likely the most characteristic novel of this period. It was published in Paris and for a long clip was censored in Ireland. It has no existent secret plan. following alternatively the rovings and ideas ( watercourse of consciousness in interior soliloquies ) of Leopold Bloom in Dublin on a individual twenty-four hours ( Bloom’s twenty-four hours ) . Each chapter corresponds to an episode in Homer’s Odyssey and has a distinguishable manner of its ain ( for case. in the Maternity Hospital scene the prose imitates all the English literary manners get downing with Beowulf. typifying the growing of the fetus in the uterus in its steady motion through clip ) . It is one of the most ambitious novels of the century every bit good as one of the best accomplishments of modernist literature.
GERTRUDE STEIN ( 1874-1948 ) lived in Paris and her poetic work and her function as wise man and art aggregator made her indispensable for the development of American modernism. Her experimental poesy is a mixture of extravagancy and mastermind. She tries to depict world in a wholly new manner. sometimes about impossible to understand. Tender Buttons ( 1914 ) .
But the most of import poets of the group were EZRA POUND ( 1885-1972 ) and T. S. ELIOT ( 1888-1965 ) . who were both born in America but spent most of their lives in Europe. EZRA POUND ( 1885-1972 ) . From 1909 through the 20s. he was involved in most of the major artistic motions. A leader of the ‘Imagist’ school of poesy. where an image is described as the writer’s response to a ocular object or scene. His poesy is full of allusions to plants of literature and art from many epochs and civilizations. Influenced by Asiatic literature. he edited Eliot’s The Waste Land and was an of import nexus between the United States and Britain. His chief plants are Hugh Selwyn Mauberley ( 1920 ) and the Cantos ( 1925-1972 ) .
T. S. ELIOT ( 1888-1965 ) went to England early and stayed at that place. where he became a major figure. The Waste Land ( 1922 ) is likely the most of import American verse form of the twentieth century both officially ( because of its modernist techniques ) and thematically ( because of the disenchantment. incredulity and degeneracy of the modern universe shown ) . Like Pound. he was influenced by Eastern doctrine and literature and he made mentions to all sorts of plants of literature and art.
VIRGINIA WOOLF ( 1882-1841 ) was an English novelist. portion of the alleged “Bloomsbury group” . Writer of Mrs Dalloway ( 1925 ) . To the Lighthouse ( 1927 ) and Orlando ( 1928 ) .
Other of import American poets of this motion are:
· WALLACE STEVENS ( 1879-1955 ) . Wrote abstract. hard poesy. with really deep significances: “Poetry must defy the intelligence about successfully” . he said. One of his most celebrated verse forms is “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
· HILDA DOOLITTLE or H. D. for short ( 1886-1961 ) and MARIANNE MOORE ( 1887-1972 ) were influenced by Pound and imagism and wrote first-class poesy.
· e. e. Edward Estlin Cummingss ( he ne’er wrote capitals in his name ) ( 1894-1962 ) . A member of the ‘Lost Generation’ . Advanced poetry distinguished for its wit. jubilation of love and erotism. and the experimentation with punctuation and ocular format on the page. “O sweet spontaneous”
· WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS ( 1883-1963 ) . Influenced by Eliot and Pound. but more interested in the linguistic communication and scenes of mundane life. Warmer feeling for existent people and existent life. Colloquial linguistic communication. Easier to understand. “The Young Housewife” . “The Dead Baby” . > See Poems in “Twentieth Century Poetry” . pp. 177 & A ; 178. by Ezra Pound. H. D. Gertrude Stein. Wallace Stevens and Edward Estlin Cummingss.
2. THE LOST GENERATION
There was an of import group of American authors ( Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Dos Passos. e. e. Edward Estlin Cummingss. Hart Crane ) who shared this spirit of post-war disaffection and lived in Paris for some clip. who came to be known as the Lost Generation ( term used by Gertrude Stein speaking to Hemingway ) . They were ‘lost’ because they had lost their ideals. ‘lost’ to America because they lived abroad. and ‘lost’ because they did non accept older values but couldn’t truly happen the writer’s topographic point in this new society
FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD ( 1896-1940 ) found rapid success in the 20s with his novel This Side of Paradise ( 1921 ) and his Narratives of the Jazz Age ( 1922 ) . with which he became the official spokesman of the ‘Jazz Age’ . The Great Gatsby ( 1925 ) was besides received with enthusiastic reappraisals. but shortly afterwards his literary occultation started. He went to Hollywood to work as a scriptwriter. but did non happen success and in 1940 died hapless and disregarded. The Great Gatsby is his chef-d’oeuvre. an first-class novel about the American Dream and the failure associated with success. Through the eyes of Nick Carraway. the storyteller. we see both the glamor and the moral ugliness of the mid-twentiess. Gatsby is perchance a felon. but besides a true romantic. person able to prosecute a dream. even if it is impossible to accomplish. The fresh combines symbolism and psychological pragmatism in a manner that has been described as a “symbolist tragedy” . Fitzgerald besides dealt with similar subjects in his short narratives. some of which are besides deserving adverting. like “The Diamond every bit Big as the Ritz” or some of the Pat Hobby narratives about his Hollywood failure.
WILLIAM FAULKNER ( 1897-1962 ) is likely the best representative of ‘high modernism’ in the American novel. His usage of different narrative voices and focalisations. interior soliloquies and monologues. or usage of ‘continuous present’ ( mixture of yesteryear. nowadays and future actions ) make novels like The Sound and the Fury ( 1929 ) or As I Lay Diing ( 1930 ) . Light in August ( 1932 ) or Absalom. Absalom! ( 1936 ) stand out as some of the best of twentieth century universe literature. Faulkner was besides the first author to make a fictional district ( Yoknapatawpha County ) in which all his narratives take topographic point. This district was based on Oxford. Mississippi ( where Faulkner had been born ) and is the background for characters that appear and reappear in different novels making a complete fictional universe of fabulous proportions. In his novels and short narratives. Faulkner analyzes single psychological science every bit good as societal struggles. peculiarly racial jobs in the South that had lost the war. He received the Nobel Prize in 1949 and is universally acclaimed as one of the best authors of the century.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY ( 1899-1961 ) was a really different sort of modernist. He developed a sparse. concise manner which he combined with what has been called the ‘Dramatic’ or ‘Objective’ point of position. that is. the position of an impartial perceiver who describes everything from the exterior. without accounts or remarks. Hemingway says every bit small as possible. and he so lets the characters speak. Therefore. his usage of duologue becomes cardinal to understand both the action and the characters’ motivations. He besides described his technique of connoting things instead than explicating them utilizing the metaphor of an iceberg ( “There is seven-eighths of it under H2O for every portion that shows” ) . All these techniques are typically modernistic. because they put the reader in an uncomfortable place: he/she has to do an attempt to think what precisely is traveling on and what the deductions and possible deeper significances are. Hemingway lived in Paris between 1921 and 1928 and this is the clip when he wrote some of his best short narratives ( “Hills like White Elephants” and “The Killers” among them ) . collected in In Our Time and Men Without Women.
His experience in Spain was reflected in The Sun Besides Rises ( Fiesta ) ( 1926 ) . Death in the Afternoon ( 1932 ) and For Whom the Bells Toll ( 1940 ) . In these and his other novels and narratives ( like “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” . A Farewell to Arms or “The Short. Happy Life of Francis Macomber” ) we see the development of the typical Hemingway hero: a stoic adult male of few words who may be sensitive but ne’er shows it. and who often shows a misogynous attitude. He liked to set his heroes in state of affairss between life and decease ( toreadors. soldiers. huntsmans ) where they would demo their existent ego. His last novel was The Old Man and the Sea ( 1952 ) . after which he received the Nobel Prize. He was likely the most popular American novelist at the clip. but the misogynous attitude of some of his plant has put Hemingway in an uncomfortable place in the American canon in these yearss of political rightness.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON ( 1876-1941 ) was a precursor of Modernism. Considered by Faulkner “the male parent of [ his ] coevals of writers” . his best work is Winesburg. Ohio ( 1919 ) . a series of interrelated short narratives taking topographic point in the same town and narrated by the same character. Thematically it is portion of a motion called the ‘Revolt from the Village’ which tried to demo the many ways in which people were damaged by the narrowness of life in small-town America. But the book is besides modernist because of its usage of clip. the importance of signifier over content and its accent on the jobs of perceptual experience and communicating. There isn’t truly a secret plan. and alternatively the author efforts to capture particular and important minutes in the lives of the citizens of Winesburg. minutes that are like Windowss into the true nature of a character ( a construct similar to Joyce’s ‘epiphanies’ ) .
JOHN DOS PASSOS ( 1896-1970 ) . A leftist group in the beginning. he combined a realistic usage of linguistic communication with modernist techniques to seek to demo the day-to-day life of citizens in Manhattan Transfer ( 1925 ) or the development of the recent history of his state in U. S. A. . a trilogy that included The 42nd Parallel ( 1930 ) . 1919 ( 1932 ) and The Big Money ( 1936 ) . He shared with the ‘Lost Generation’ the spirit of disenchantment. with the naturalists before him a strong sense of destiny and a realistic manner. and with the modernists the thoughts about the trouble of comprehending world. His solution to seek to reflect the complex world of life is to utilize schemes coming from the films. like the combination of whole scene ‘shots’ with ‘close-ups’ to demo the feelings of single people. He besides used ‘collage’ techniques. blending popular vocals with newspaper headlines. phrases from advertizements. short lifes of modern-day public figures and impressionistic visions of world ( that he called ‘camera eye’ ) .
3. OTHER WRITERS
There are other first-class authors who shared the spirit of the times but were non portion of any group and did non try a formal revolution. In the United States. these are some of import poets:
· CARL SANDBURG ( 1878-1967 ) is likely the clearest inheritor of the Emerson-Whitman spirit. and portions with them his religion in America and natural optimism. His best well-known verse form is Chicago ( 1914 ) .
· ROBERT FROST ( 1874-1963 ) . Very popular poet. A husbandman in New England. most of his verse forms trade with agriculture and nature. He uses ‘unliterary’ direct linguistic communication. but behind their evident simpleness his verse forms hide deeper significances ( for him. a good verse form “begins in delectation and ends in wisdom” ) . Some celebrated verse forms by Frost are “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Mending Walls” .
· Harlem Renaissance. A motion of African American authors connected with the Harlem wind nines of the 20s and 30s who vindicated their ain literary individuality. LANGSTON HUGHES ( 1902-1967 ) . JEAN TOOMER ( 1894-1967 ) and COUNTEE CULLEN ( 1903-1946 ) are the three most of import poets of the motion.
And some American novelists:
SINCLAIR LEWIS ( 1885-1951 ) . A socialist. his authorship is more realistic than modernistic. but shows a new spirit: alternatively of portraying the typical realistic battle for life. his characters have everything they need from a material point of position. but they show a sort of religious dissatisfaction. Main Street ( 1920 ) satirized humdrum. hypocritical small-town life. Babbit ( 1922 ) is the narrative of a defeated man of affairs. In 1930. he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
JOHN STEINBECK ( 1902-1968 ) . A late inheritor of the Naturalist motion. his work is a response to the Depression epoch after the 1929 Stock Market Crash. The Grapes of Wrath ( 1939 ) is likely the book that has best pictured the spirit of the times. It’s another narrative of a trip to the West and a sweet-and-sour portraiture of the American Dream. a mixture of pragmatism and deep concern about other human existences. Besides a Nobel Prize. other of import plants of Steinbeck are Of Mice and Men ( 1937 ) and East of Eden ( 1952 ) . He is portion of a motion called Proletarian Realism. to which JAMES AGEE ( 1909-1955 ) and MICHAEL GOLD ( 1896-1967 ) besides belong.
Apart from the ‘sacred cows’ ( Fitzgerald. Hemingway. Faulkner ) and the authors described supra. there are other novelists that don’t tantrum precisely within any of the motions mentioned but that should at least be mentioned: THOMAS WOLFE ( 1900-1938 ) . whose autobiographic ‘anti-novels’ were old ages in front of his clip ; HENRY MILLER ( 1891-1980 ) . a large Rebel whose ‘obscene’ novels. like Tropic of Cancer ( 1934 ) . could non be published in the USA until the sixties. when he became a sort of guru for the ‘beats’ and ‘hippies’ ; and NATHANIEL WEST ( 1902-1940 ) . whose Dayss of the Locust ( 1939 ) is an inversion of the American Dream set in Hollywood.
In the American South. a motion called ‘The Fugitives’ ( J. C. RANSOM. ALLEN TATE AND ROBERT PENN WARREN ) criticized the concern and commercial base of American society and praised the agricultural traditions of the Old South. Besides from that portion of the state. KATHERINE ANN PORTER ( 1894-1980 ) combined the false universe of dreams and phantasies with the inhuman treatment of existent experience. In her plants. tradition and the nostalgic yearning for a romantic yesteryear create a suffocating ambiance.
In ENGLAND. there are several of import novelists that shared clip and thoughts with the modernists. but did non take portion in their deep formal experimentations:
– D. H. LAWRENCE ( 1885-1930 ) . Writer of Lady Chatterley’s Lover ( 1928 ) . Sons and Lovers ( 1913 ) . He showed physical love and human passion in his novels. which meant that some of his novels could non be published in the UK for a long clip.
– E. M. FORSTER ( 1879-1979 ) wrote dry. well-plotted novels analyzing category difference and lip service and besides the attitudes towards gender and homosexualism in early 20th-century British society. A Room with a View ( 1908 ) . A Passage to India ( 1924 ) . Howard’s End ( 1910 ) .
– JOSEPH CONRAD ( 1857-1924 ) is another of import literary figure. often considered a precursor of Modernist literature. Born in Poland. he learned English as an grownup and managed to compose first-class novels like Lord Jim ( 1900 ) and Nostromo ( 1904 ) . Heart of Darkness ( 1902 ) is a symbolic novelette of a journey into the Congo river every bit good as into the human mind. It is the beginning of the movie Apocalypse Now.
– EVELYN WAUGH ( 1903-1966 ) wrote sarcasms of British high society. ALDOUS HUXLEY ( 1894-1963 ) is the writer of the dystopia Brave New World ( 1932 ) . KATHERINE MANSFIELD ( 1888-1923 ) was born in New Zealand but developed her short literary calling in England. A really good short-story author.
Poets from the British Isles
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ( 1865-1939 ) . an first-class Irish poet and playwright. he has been considered one of the twentieth century’s cardinal English linguistic communication poets. Received the Baronial Prize in 1923. A maestro of traditional signifiers and symbolism. DYLAN THOMAS ( 1914-1953 ) was born in Wales and wrote merely in English. Images from the Bible and from Welsh folklore. W. H. AUDEN ( 1907-1973 ) was born in England but subsequently became an American citizen ( “Funeral Blues” ) .
