English 2328 Spring 2011

Unit Two: Early Twentieth Century
Review Sheets

|Survey Highlights |Modernism in American Literature |Imagism, Imagery, Image |
|Major Authors |Some distinguishing characteristics— |From Pound's "A Retrospect": |
|Historical Context |Rejection of traditional values and assumptions, in society and art. |—Three principles of Imagism: |
|Intellectual Movements |Strong break with traditional literary forms and techniques of |1. Direct treatment of 'thing' whether subjective or objective. |
|Genres, Elements of Literature |expression. |2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the |
|Authors |—Avant-garde, innovative |presentation. |
|Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot |—Frost's "old-fashioned way to be new" |3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical |
|Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams |—Pound's "making it new" |phrase, not in sequence of a metronome. |
|Langston Hughes |Disconnected with the past, and disconcerted about the future. |Also discusses language, symbols, technique and form. |
|Eugene O'Neill, The Hairy Ape |— Eliot on tradition and the "historical sense"; "time and |—"An 'Image' is that which presents an intellectual and emotional |
|F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Babylon Revisited" |timelessness" |complex in an instant of time." |
|William Faulkner, "That Evening Sun" |—Sense of fragmentation in both style and |From Abrams: |
|Ernest Hemingway, "Big Two-Hearted River" |substance |"The typical Imagist poem is written in free verse and undertakes to|
|Literary and Intellectual Movements |Celebration of passion and free will over reason and social morality |render as precisely and tersely as possible, and without comment and|
|Modernism, Imagism |(and especially organized religion) |generalization, the writer's impression of a visual object or scene;|
|Impressionism, Expressionism, Symbolism |—Subjectivity and objectivity |often the impression is rendered by means of metaphor, or by |
|Genres |—Further elevation of individual man |juxtaposing, without indicating a relation, the description of one |
|Poetry |and inner psychology over society |object with that of a second and diverse object." |
|Drama |—Self-referential if not solipsistic | |
|Fiction |Mythopoetic impetus | |
| |—Creating one's own myth in the absence | |
| |of traditional myth | |
| |— Creating a world in the act of | |
| |perceiving it | |
| |"Lost Generation" | |
| |—Alienation, disillusionment, historical | |
| |—Satire, irony | |
|Imagery |Symbolism |Distinctions? |
|"'Imagery' (that is, 'images' taken collectively) is used to signify |Movement in literature and the visual arts that originated in France |A metaphor evokes comparison to an object in order to illustrate an |
|all the objects and qualities of sense perception referred to in a |in the late 19th century. In literature, symbolism was an aesthetic |idea or demonstrate a quality, whereas a symbol embodies the idea or|
|poem or other work of literature, whether by . . ." |movement that encouraged writers to express their ideas, feelings, and|the quality. |
|—Literal description |values by means of symbols or suggestions rather than by direct |Genre |
|—Allusion |statements. |Drama |
|—Vehicles of similes and metaphors |Symbolist writers, in reaction to earlier trends, proclaimed that the |Aristotle and the imitation of life |
|Emphasis on the senses, especially visual images and scenes. |imagination was the true interpreter of reality. |Prose or verse composition, especially one telling a serious story, |
|Also include auditory, tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), |Represent and/or suggest intensive emotions of poet, personal emotions|that is intended for representation by actors impersonating the |
|olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic (sensations of |which are, at heart, always in flux and almost impossible to |characters and performing the dialogue and action. |
|movement). |communicate. |Dramatic poetry, for instance, includes dialogue, monologue, |
|Related Movements |Figurative Language |vigorous diction, blank verse, or the stressing of tense situation |
|Impressionism |Metaphor |and emotional conflict. |
|A theory or style of painting originating and developed in France |Analogy; comparison between unlike objects; implied vs. expressed |Dramatic Conventions |
|during the 1870's, characterized by concentration on the immediate |(simile). |Actors as characters |
|visual impression produced by a scene and by the use of unmixed |Symbol |Lines of dialogue, choruses, soliloquies, asides, costuming |
|primary colors and small strokes to simulate actual reflected light. |A trope or turn which combines a literal and sensuous quality with an |Defining framework |
|Expressionism |abstract or suggestive aspect |—By the limits of the stage (proscenium arch as the fourth wall) |
|Movement in the arts, following Impressionism, during the early part |Evokes objective, concrete reality and prompts that reality to suggest| |
|of the 20th century that emphasized subjective expression of the |another level of meaning |—By the stage directions of the playwright |
|artist's inner experiences. |Includes universal suggestions of meaning, such as flowing water | |
|Described as the effort to "objectify inner experience." |suggesting the flux of time and eternity or a voyage suggesting life. | |
|Classical Dramatic Structure |Prose Fiction |Authoritative—Not representations of truth, but truth itself. |
|Acts, scenes |Narrative writing drawn from the imagination rather than from history |Central concerns of mythology include creation, divinity, and |
|Introduction, rising action, climax or crisis, falling action, |or fact. |religion; meaning of existence and death; explanation of natural |
|catastrophe |Short stories, novels, autobiographical fiction, roman á clef. |phenomena; life and adventures of a hero. |
|Hero, protagonist, antagonist |Narration is a basic mode of composition, along with description, |Conflict |
|Exposition, complication or conflict, exciting force, opposing force,|exposition, persuasion. |Struggle which grows out of the interplay of two opposing forces in |
|denouement, comic relief |Focus on recounting events (time), but often enriched with description|a plot. |
|Poetry |(place). |At the heart of interest and suspense in fictional representation |
|Various forms that human beings have used for rhythmic expression of |Short Story |Short story, drama, or poetry |
|intense perceptions of the world, themselves, and the relation of the|Brief fictional narrative in prose. |Usually focused on the struggle of the protagonist against: |
|two. |Distinguished from sketch or tale (or episode) in having definite |—Forces of nature |
|Conscious rhythmical patterning, versification: rhythm, rhyme, |formal development and a firmness in construction. |—Another person, often an antagonist |
|syllables, accents, lines, stanzas, stress, pauses, repetition, |Emphasis on unity |—Society or culture as a force |
|alliteration, assonance |—Plot, effect, theme, character, tone, mood, style, etc. |—Two elements within character |
|Variety in uniformity, compactness, unity, concreteness. |Characterized by self-conscious skill on the part of the author. |Alienation |
|Prose |Some Themes and Concepts |Act of alienating or condition of being alienated (unfriendly or |
|Written or spoken expression not having sustained regular rhythm. |Myth |hostile; withdrawn or unresponsive). |
|Characterized by logical grammatical order; ideas stated and |Traditionally, anonymous, essentially religious formulation of cosmic |Estrangement; emotional isolation or dissociation. |
|developed rather than merely listed or even suggested. |view of a people or culture. |In psychology, state of estrangement between the self and the |
| |Archetypal—Imagination looks for universal meanings embodied in |objective world (other people, society, or work), or between |
| |physical objects; something at once familiar and strange. |different parts of the personality. |
| | |Blocking or dissociation of a person's feelings. |
|Alienation and Philosophy |The Waste Land |The Hairy Ape |
|In philosophy, produced by a shallow and depersonalized society. |Poem on the theme of the sterility and chaos of the contemporary world|Expressionist play by O'Neill, produced and published in 1922. It |
|Saint Augustine, our sinful nature alienates man from God. |by T. S. Eliot, published in 1922. This most widely known expression |is symbolic of the perversion of human strength by technological |
|Freud, alienation results from split between the conscious and |of the despair of the postwar era has as a structural framework the |progress. |
|unconscious parts of the mind. |symbolism of certain fertility myths that reputedly formed the pagan |In the cramped forecastle of a transatlantic liner, Yank—brutal, |
|French social theorist Émile Durkheim suggested that alienation |origins of Christian Grail legend. |stupid, and profane—is the recognized leader of the stokers, who are|
|stemmed from a loss of societal and religious tradition. |The Waste Land itself is a desolate and sterile country ruled by an |the ultimate products of a society subservient to machines. When |
|Existentialists, some measure of alienation is an inevitable part of |impotent king, and the poem is divided into five parts: "The Burial of|Mildred Douglas, daughter of the ship's owner, makes a slumming |
|the human condition. |the Dead," representing the rebirth of the land after the barren |visit to the stokehole, she is shocked by the lurid atmosphere, and |
|Lost Generation |winter; "The Game of Chess," a contrast between the splendor of the |faints at encountering Yank's unashamed brutality. Although he is |
|Significance of World War I— |past and the squalor of modern life; "The Fire Sermon," vignettes of |completely adapted to this environment, he now discovers that there |
|"All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost |the sordidness of modern life; "Death by Water," the vision of a |is a world in which he does not belong, and "the Hairy Ape," as his |
|generation.… You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves |drowned Phoenician sailor who at least dies by water, not thirst; and |friend Paddy calls him, becomes sullen and morose, beginning to |
|to death." |"What the Thunder Said," representing the decay of modern Europe |think of his position. In New York on Easter Sunday, he swaggers in|
|—Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway. |through symbols of the Grail legend. The poem concludes with |dirty dungarees up Fifth Avenue, trying in vain to insult the |
|"Sunday Morning" |quotations from the Upanishads, its last word, three times repeated, |aristocratic strollers, who politely ignore him. Arrested, he is |
|Verse, structure, dialogue |being "Shantih," meaning "the peace which passeth understanding." In |sent to Blackwell's Island, where the prisoners, misunderstanding |
|Speaker, character |the 433 lines of the poem are included quotations from, allusions to, |his rebellion, advise him to join the I.W.W. Rejected by the labor |
|Setting |or imitations of some 35 different writers, as well as several popular|organization, he goes to the zoo to see the ape, the only creature |
|Meditation "upon secular and religious conceptions of reality, death,|songs and passages in six foreign languages, including Sanskrit. The |with whom he can now feel kinship. When he liberates it, to help him|
|and the pleasures and beauties of this world as against those of |original poem was far longer than the published text, which was |wreak destruction, the beast crushes him to death. |
|heaven" (Oxford Companion). |severely pruned and edited by Ezra Pound, to whom the work is | |
|Striking lines— |dedicated. The original version with Pound's annotations was published| |
|"Death is the mother of beauty" (l. 63) |in 1971. |***Summaries from The Concise Oxford Companion to American |
| | |Literature.*** |
|Reading Inventory |Eliot on "Tradition and the Individual Talent" |Ezra Pound |
|Genre |Historical sense |"The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter" |
|Prose Fiction, Poetry, Drama |—Modernist poetry encompasses the significance of the traditional |"A Pact" |
|Lyric, Dramatic, Epic |works while at the same time altering the traditions. New Princeton |"In a Station of the Metro" |
|Narrative, Description, Exposition, Storytelling |Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics |From Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Life and Contacts) (ll. 1-95) |
|Poetry and the Poetic—Types, Verse, Repetition, Figurative Language |—Compare Frost's "old-fashioned way to be new." |T. S. Eliot |
|Drama and the Dramatic |Subjectivity |"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" |
|Characterization, Conflict |Quality in artwork of originating and existing in the mind of a |The Waste Land |
|Setting, Context |perceiving subject and not necessarily corresponding to any object |Wallace Stevens |
|Time and Place |outside that mind. |"Sunday Morning" |
|Situation |Objectivity |"The Plain Sense of Things" |
|Voice, Point of View, Tone |Quality in artwork of impersonality and freedom from the expression of|"Of Mere Being" |
|Plot and Structure |personal sentiments, attitudes, or emotions by the author. |William Carlos Williams |
|Figurative Language |Eliot's "impersonal theory of poetry" |"The Young Housewife" |
|Metaphor, Imagery |"Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the|"The Red Wheelbarrow" |
|Symbolism |poet but upon the poetry." |"This Is Just to Say" |
|Allusion |Selected Poetry/Works |Langston Hughes |
|Themes and Concepts |Robert Frost |"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" |
|Artistic and Literary Movements |"Mending Wall" |"The Weary Blues" |
|Realism, Regionalism, Naturalism |"Home Burial" |"Dream Boogie" |
|Modernism, Imagism, Expressionism, Primitivism, Symbolism |"The Road Not Taken" |"Harlem" |
|Patterns |"Fire and Ice" |Eugene O'Neill, The Hairy Ape |
|Passages |"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" |F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Babylon Revisited" |
|Significance |"Desert Places" |William Faulkner, "That Evening Sun" |
|To Work | |Ernest Hemingway, "Big Two-Hearted River" |
|To Movements | | |
|To American Literature | | |