Lawrence and Eliot: Modernism

• The unit focuses on English Literature at the beginning of the 20th century
• It covers The Edwardians, Modernist Revolution, The Naturalists and Celtic Modernism

The Edwardians

• The 20th century started with optimism and apprehension, marking the new millennium's approach
• Many believed humankind was entering an unprecedented era due to mechanical and scientific progress
• H.G. Wells's utopian studies, Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901) and A Modern Utopia (1905), captured the optimistic mood
• Optimism came from the conviction that science and technology could transform the world
• To achieve transformation, institutions and ideals had to be replaced to liberate the human spirit
• Queen Victoria's death in 1901 and Edward VII's accession seemed to confirm a franker, less inhibited era
• Writers drew upon the realistic and naturalistic conventions of the 19th century
• Also drew upon Ibsen in drama, Balzac, Turgenev, Flaubert, Zola, Eliot, and Dickens in fiction
• Writers were in tune with the anti-Aestheticism following Oscar Wilde's trial
• Writers saw their task to be didactic
• George Bernard Shaw turned the Edwardian theatre into an arena for debate
• Shaw's plays, including Man and Superman (performed 1905, published 1903) and Major Barbara (performed 1905, published 1907)
• Issues debated included political organization, the morality of armaments, the function of class and professions, the validity of family and marriage, and female emancipation
• John Galsworthy used Strife (1909) to explore the conflict between capital and labor
• In Justice (1910) he lent his support to reform of the penal system
• Harley Granville-Barker changed theatrical production
• He dissected the hypocrisies and deceit of upper-class and professional life in The Voysey Inheritance (performed 1905, published 1909) and Waste (performed 1907, published 1909)

Edwardian Novelists

• Many Edwardian novelists explored the shortcomings of English social life
• H.G. Wells captured frustrations of lower and middle-class existence in Love and Mr. Lewisham (1900); Kipps (1905); Ann Veronica (1909), and The History of Mr. Polly (1910)
• Arnold Bennett detailed provincial life's constrictions in Anna of the Five Towns (1902)
• Bennett covered the self-made business classes in the area of England known as the Potteries
• Galsworthy described the bourgeoisie's destructive possessiveness in The Man of Property (1906),
• Forster portrayed middle class insensitivity, self-repression, and philistinism in Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and The Longest Journey (1907)
• Bennett evoked the destructive effects of time on individuals and communities in The Old Wives' Tale (1908)
• Wells showed the consequences of uncontrolled developments in Tono-Bungay (1909)
• Forster showed how commerce disregarded culture in Howards End (1910)
• Most Edwardian novelists believed constructive change was possible through their writing

Writers and Traditional Forms

• Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, and Edward Thomas sought to revive traditional forms
• Traditional forms included the ballad, narrative poem, satire, fantasy, topographical poem, and essay
• These preserve traditional sentiments and perceptions
• Revival of traditional forms was not a unique event
• A.E. Housman, Walter de la Mare, John Masefield, Robert Graves, and Edmund Blunden represent an important strand of English literature in the first half of the century
• Their traditional poetry was popular
• The new century began with Great Britain involved in the South African War (1899–1902)
• Some felt the British Empire was as doomed as the Roman Empire
• Hardy questioned the human cost of empire building and established a tone and style that many British poets were to use
• Kipling began to speak of the burden of empire and the tribulations it would bring
• Henry James analyzed the decline of imperial civilization
• In The Portrait of a Lady (1881), he showed the loss of energy of the English ruling class
• In The Princess Casamassima (1886), he described instabilities threatening its paternalistic rule
• James noted a disturbing change-the upper class no longer troubled by achieving their morally dubious ends
• James's dismay at this condition gave his fiction much of its gravity and disenchantment
• James's awareness of crisis affected his writing's form and style
• James fiction presented characters within an identifiable social world
• World was increasingly elusive and enigmatic and his own grasp upon them
• Joseph Conrad shared James's sense of crisis but attributed it less to the decline of a specific civilization than to human failings
• Man was a romantic creature of will who imposed his meaning upon the world
• Conrad used his fiction to detail psychological pathologies
• Conrad wrote as a philosophical novelist
• Concerned with the mocking limits of human knowledge
• Writing is marked by gaps in the narrative and by narrators who do not fully grasp the significance of events
• Used 19th-century realism to express 20th-century preoccupations and anxieties

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

• Born in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England on June 2, 1840
• Eldest son of Thomas Hardy and Jemima (Hand) Hardy; father was a stonemason and builder
• Influenced by the countryside, developed a love of reading
• Primary school education lasted until sixteen, an apprenticeship with John Hicks, an architect
• In 1862, Hardy left for London to work as a draftsman in the office of Arthur Blomfield
• Influenced by Charles Swinburne, Robert Browning, and Charles Darwin- Origin of Species, 1856
• Poor health forced Hardy to return to native region in 1867, G.R. Crickmay
• Hardy interrupted his education to work as an architect
• He wanted to attend the university and become an Anglican minister but lacked the funds
• Became more interested in poetry and writing
• Wrote from 17 years old while a practicing architect
• Wrote stories, poems, and plays; the rest of his life
• The Poor Man and the Lady (1867-68), was rejected by publishers
• George Meredith encouraged him
• Desperate Remedies (1871), was accepted and published
• Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), demonstrates a more polished style
• Sent to begin a restoration project of the St. Juliot Church in Cornwall in 1870
• Met Emma Lavinia Gifford who he married in 1874 and who encouraged Hardy to write
• In 1872, Hardy left architecture to devote his time to his literary career
• Hardy left architecture with a contract for 11 monthly installments of a tale with A Pair of Blue Eyes, in Cornhill Magazine
• Reputation as of one England's newer novelists sustained the Hardy family
• Far from the Maddening Crowd (1874), introduced the Wessex area setting, the same for Tess
• The Return of the Native (1878) and The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), established Hardy as a formidable writer
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895), were his last long fiction works
• Last novels challenged the sensibilities of Victorian readers with immoral sex, murder, illegitimate children, and unmarried couples living together
• Heated criticism over these books helped Hardy decide rather write poetry
• He did not write another novel

Hardy's later life

• During this period, he wrote 900 poems on a variety of subjects
• In 1912, Hardy's wife, Emma, died, ending 20 years of "domestic estrangement."
• In 1914, Hardy married Florence Emily Dugdale, with whom he lived until his death on January 11, 1928.
• Hardy was buried at Westminster Abbey in Poet's Corner
• Heart buried in Stinston, England, near the graves of his ancestors and his first wife

The Modernist Revolution and Modernism

• The Period occupied years shortly after the beginning of the twentieth century through roughly 1965
• It was marked by breaks with traditional ways of viewing and interacting with the world
• Modernism resulted from cultural shocks like The Great War
• The first hints stretch back into the nineteenth century and displays a strong sense of cohesion and similarity
• Writers adopted Modern point of view deliberately
• A central preoccupation is with the inner self and consciousness
• Little care for Nature, Being, or the overarching structures of history in contrast to the Romantic world view
• Intelligentsia saw decay and a growing alienation of the individual rather than progress and growth
• Machinery is impersonal, capitalist, and antagonistic to the artistic impulse
• Developed from the devastation of the world wars
• In the twentieth century a greater variety of literary voices won the struggle to be heard
• African-Americans took part in the Harlem Renaissance, with the likes of Langston Hughes at the forefront
• Hilda Doolittle and Amy Lowell became leaders of the Imagist movement

Modernist Literature

• Poet took fullest advantage of the new spirit of times
• Stretched the possibilities of their craft
• General disdain for most of the literary production of the last century
• Imagist poetry dominated the scene, boiling down language to it's absolute essence
• Needed minimalist language, a lessening of structural rules and a kind of directness
• Victorian and Romantic poetry seriously lacked minimalism
• Dreaminess or Pastoral poetry was utterly abandoned
• Poetry was short, unrhymed, and noticeably sparse in terms of adjectives and adverbs
• Gone were the preoccupations with beauty and nature
• Potential subjects for poetry were now limitless
• T. S. Eliot picked up where the Imagists left off, adding some of his own peculiar aesthetics
• Contribution to twentieth-century verse was a return to highly intellectual, allusive poetry
• Blueprints were seventeenth-century metaphysical poets

Eliot's poetry

• Characterized by seamless shifting from very high, formal verse into a more conversational and easy style
• Current underneath which hides secondary meanings
• Ironix mode characterized by deceptive appearances hiding difficult truths
• Literary critics often single out The Waste Land as the definitive sample of Modernist literature
• Exhibits occupation with self and inwardness
• A loss of traditional structures to buttress the ego against shocking realities, and a fluid nature to truth and knowledge
• Artists of the newer generation pursued a more democratic, pluralistic mode
• By the Second World War, commercialism, publicity, and the popular audience was embraced
• True, the influence of Modernist literature continues to be quite astonishing
• Art and perception of truth and reality changed

Anglo-American Modernism

• From 1908 to 1914 there was a productive period of innovation where novellists and poets undertook challenges to literary conventions
• London boasted an avant-garde to rival those of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin
• Leading personality, Ezra Pound, and many figures were American
• Spirit of Modernism -radical and utopian, stimulated by new ideas in anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis
• Expressed rather muted by the pastoral and anti-Modern poets of the Georgian movement
• Expressed well by English and American poets of the Imagist movement whom Pound drew attention to
• Reacting to against the Exhaustion of Poetic tradition allowed for the Refinement of poetic language
• Wanted to make it a vehicle not for pastoral sentiment or imperialistic rhetoric but for the exact description and evocation of mood
• Imagistes experimented with free form and with imagery

World War 1 influences

• Found polemical mouthpiece in Lewis, it's editor
• Enemy of the Stars (1914), Tarr (1918) surprise readers still because violent exuberance
• brought The First period the Modernist revolution to an end
• Novelists and poets parodied received forms and styles, in to the extent that they were made redundant by the immensity and horror of the war
• Pound's angry and satirical Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), carries anguish, with writer's wishes that make form and style the bearers of authentic meanings
• Lawrence traced sickness of modern civilization with The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920)
• Traced it to the effects of industrialization upon the human psyche
• Myth and symbol provide hope for collective rebirth: Sons and Lovers (1913)
• Conversely T.S. Eliot traced sickness with Prufrock and Other Observations * *(1917) and The Waste Land (1922):
• Preferred spiritual emptiness and rootlessness of modern existence
• Lawrence drew upon myth to hold out hope for individual and collective rebirth
• Differed however through self-denial and abnegation

Post War Modernism

• Ensured that Lawrence and Eliot became the leading and most authoritative figures of Anglo-American Modernism in England
• During the 1920s Lawrence and Eliot began to develop viewpoints at odds with previous reputations
• Lawrence revealed attraction to charismatic, masculine leadership with Kangaroo (1923) and The Plumed Serpent (1926)
• Eliot announced his adherence to hierarchy and order -Elitism and paternalism resulted, though Pound left England in 1920
• Drew ideas from the left and right, dismissing democracy as a sham
• Judgements remain divided: The Cantos (1917–70) and Lewis's The Human Age- The Childermass, 1928; Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta, both 1955

Ts Eliot Biography

• Born in louis, Missouri, in 1888; lived in St. Louis for the first eighteen years of his life
• Attended Harvard University
• He left United States for the Sorbonne, with undergraduate and master degrees, several poems
• Returned to Harvard in 1914 to returned to England and married Hay-Wood
• Worked first as a teacher, and later for Lloyd's Bank
• Under the influence of Ezra Pound; published the influential "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Poetry
• published in 1917, and established him as a leading poet of the avant-garde
• The Waste Land (1922), influenced the poetic work of the twentieth century, mythic proportions occurred
• Dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism
• Transmuted his affinity for the English metaphysical poets (John Donne) and French symbolist poets (Baudelaire and Laforgue) into radical innovations in poetic technique
• His verse articulated disillusionment
• Books of literary and social criticism include The Sacred Wood (1920), The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange Gods (1934), and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1940)
• Plays included Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party. -British citizen in 1927, and became director of the firm.
• Eliot’s influence continued after death, as he received a Nobel prize

Celtic Modernism

• Major contributors were William Yeats and James Joyce
• had less immediate impact and influence, less focused on nationalist movements, and more on Irish culture
• was influenced to the Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite movements
• hoped to instill in pride in the Irish past.
• Best mature style combined passion and precision with powerful symbol - selfhood, history, nature, and time
• Wrote short-stories, novels, and works like the Ulysses.
• James Joyce wrote an experimental polygot, creating universal connection to irish stories

William Butler Yeats context

• Born in Dublin in 1865 to a chaotic, artistic family
• Father, moved the famly to London when Yeats was two, and much of his childhood was between the city and country side
• Began writing prose early, and first work in 1885
• Met Maude Gonne, loved her for rest his life; virtually every he beoved can be understood a reference to her
• Irish partiot, revolutionary
• Gonne did not return his love, and though they re closely associated, they were not romantically involved
• Proposed to her doughter late, and was rjected again
• Yeats lived in tumultuous time, during political rise of Parnell
• Devoted to literary revival; Irish mythology - though Irish parentage, little part in the conflict in between
• Helped Abbey theatre, culture and in Ireland
• In 1923, Nobel prize for lit
• Facts one, only reached powers between 50 to 75 Poetry defied after 40; was the testament transformative Worked on his inner life in poetry Made great stride nineteenth to twentieth Modern 60 and 70's, was greatest poet centuries
• Analysis. greatest of Ireland, and poet in English

William Butler Yeats Analysis

• Images metaphors encompasses personal, nation expeirence
• Great poject reifu own life's thouhts speculatations dreas Not autobiography; not the man eats breakfa
• Thematic focus even theory of universe as an occult
• Great poems however, mitigated, grandisosits with a deep feel Expericnesees not far from the poems abtract

James Joyce

• Born in Dublin, attended Jesuit, then College
• Moved to Paris, 1904, returned to Trierste w his partner and children
• During the Zurich living death, Nazi division
• Language modernist with resistance
• was serialized the limited states
• Pound wrote Music quality distinction
• Lyric Poet based song musical
• Poems written to music - lyrics not a novelist
• Stopped writing altogether

Naturalists

• Naturalistic visual arts centuries
• Inspiration scientific, darwinan, literature
• Extended the faithful and "lice of life"
• Literary determinism that emphasized phsiologival
• Produced with heredity social eco
• Naturalism france critical
• announced the cause of all thing as are vurtue and sugar Literary always bioses Predilection simple charactes Overpowerin effects Oppress enviro details Contribute The impression constants with interdependently livw

Explore the themes and ideas of D.H. Lawrence and T.S. Eliot, two leading figures of Anglo-American Modernism. The lesson sheds light on their views on societal rebirth, leadership, and the sickness of modern civilization. Examine their critical perspectives and their impact on literature.