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Joyce, blast , modernism

Joyce, blast , modernism. An Introduction to c20 literature. C20: A few Major Events. 1905 – Einstein (myth) and Freud 1906-14 – liberal reforms 1914 -1918 – WWI 1916 – Easter Rising in Ireland 1918 – Women of 30 given right to vote; full right in 1928

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Joyce, blast , modernism

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  1. Joyce, blast, modernism An Introduction to c20 literature

  2. C20: A few Major Events • 1905 – Einstein (myth) and Freud • 1906-14 – liberal reforms • 1914-1918 – WWI • 1916 – Easter Rising in Ireland • 1918 – Women of30 given right to vote; full right in 1928 • 1922 – Irish Free State established • 1930-45 – Great Depression • 1936-39 – Spanish Civil War • 1939-1945 – WWII • 1918-1947 – Decline of the British Empire • 1947-1997 – Decolonization and End of Empire

  3. C20 literature overview • Many C20 writers alienated in various ways (p. 1923) • Vs. Victorians and Edwardians, taking stock of present (p. 1924) • Modernism – why their innovations different than previous generations (p. 1925) • Increasing sense of Fragmentation / Mistrust in “Unity” (p. 1925) • Skepticism – unsure of experiments’ outcomes and of public taste (p. 1925-26) • Social values are arbitrary constructions; sense of lost moorings (p. 1926) • Nietzschean revaluation of all values (p. 1926) (cf. magazines) • “God is Dead” – transcendent standards of truth are gone (p. 1927) • Newtonian physics overthrown – 300 years of clockwork universe – certain and predictable – myth that after Einstein “all is relative” (p. 1927) • *** Arnold / Einstein (p. 1928) *** • Mistrust in civilization and Empire (p. 1928) • Technology “symptomatic” of modernity (p. 1928)  cf. Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936)

  4. modernism • Find new values, sensibilities, and styles appropriate to modern age (p. 1929) • Form and content (p. 1929) • Revolutionary style and subject matter • Difficulty – no exposition, force reader into vicarious experience (in medias res) • Focus on revelatory image or moment – Imagism (p. 1930) • Cf. “In a Station of the Metro” • Vs. Bourgeoisetaste • Intertextual (see quotation and allusion in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land) • Bibliographic coding – technologies of print affect text itself (cf. BLAST) • Emphasis on modern city (p. 1932) • Alienation – from ourselves and each other (p. 1934) • Isolation, the subconscious and repressed memories • Good quote on censorship and culture (Arnold?) (p. 1936)

  5. imagism • “Imagisme” coined by American exiled poet Ezra Pound. • Poetic sensibility within the modernist movement. • Lucid economy of phrasing (p. 2216) • Precision, sharpness, concreteness • Emphasis on the visual or other sense experience, rather than the event • Dramatic understatement • Vs. Victorian, Edwardian, and Georgian sentimentality, ornamentation, and moralizing tone

  6. Pound’s imagist dicta • Direct treatment of the 'thing' whether subjective or objective • To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation • As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.

  7. Ezra pound (1885-1972)

  8. James joyce (1882-1941) • Irish, self-imposed exile • Fought the three traps of Religion, Family, and Nation (Victorian) • Fond of saying he was a servant of two masters, the British Crown and the Catholic Church • Began as a poet (2215), and can see it in his prose • His prose is grounded in epiphanic moments, like aesthetic and decadent poetry (2216) • Wrote greatest novel of the 20th Century: Ulysses (1922)

  9. James Joyce (1882-1941)

  10. Blast& vorticism • BLAST Edited & largely composed by Wyndham Lewis • London avant-garde • Individualism • Anarchism • Militant attitude against mainstream culture and institutions (gov’t, marriage, education, etc.) • Grows out of Imagism: clearness, hardness • Vorticism the guiding "ism" of BLAST – • Began with Wyndham Lewis’ Rebel Art Centre in 1912 • Vortex = a whirlpool or tornado • Group believed it represented the point of maximum energy and efficiency before an explosion. • The heart is “a great silent place, where all the energy is concentrated. And there, at the point of concentration, is the Vorticist.” (Lewis) • Reaction vs. Futurism: Worship of machines and speed, attempt to represent motion and flux. • Vorticism is more about the still, geometrical representation of the latent dynamism of a moment. (show) • Contributors include Ezra Pound, Jessica Dismorr, Edward Wadsworth, Ford MadoxHeufer (Ford), T.S. Eliot, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

  11. Blast & Advertising typography The New Age (Sep 19, 1912) BLAST (Jun 20, 1914)

  12. Wyndham lewis (1882-1957) Vorticist WWI Artillery Officer

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