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Dr. Bordelon's American Lit II On Campus | |||
Ezra Pound
Missing section from the poem: Mauberley 1920 Terms | Life | Times | Class Discussion | Group Questions | Links | Pictures | Quotes from Critics Terms to Know modernism: A general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in the literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century, including Symbolism , Futurism , Expressionism , Imagism , Vorticism , Ultraismo , Dada , and Surrealism , along with the innovations of unaffiliated writers. Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th-century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader: the conventions of realism, for instance, were abandoned by Franz Kafka and other novelists, and by expressionist drama, while several poets rejected traditional metres in favour of free verse . Modernist writers tended to see themselves as an avant-garde disengaged from bourgeois values, and disturbed their readers by adopting complex and difficult new forms and styles. In fiction, the accepted continuity of chronological development was upset by Joseph Conrad , Marcel Proust , and William Faulkner , while James Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted new ways of tracing the flow of characters' thoughts in their stream-of-consciousness styles. In poetry, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot replaced the logical exposition of thoughts with collages of fragmentary images and complex allusions . Luigi Pirandello and Bertolt Brecht opened up the theatre to new forms of abstraction in place of realist and naturalist representation. Imagism: poetic movement of England and the United States, flourished from 1909 to 1917. Its credo, expressed in Some Imagist Poets (1915), included the use of the language of common speech, precision, the creation of new rhythms, absolute freedom in choice of subject matter, the evocation of images in hard, clear poetry, and concentration. Originating in the aesthetic philosophy of T. E. Hulme, the movement soon attracted Ezra Pound, who became the leader of a small group opposed to the romantic conception of poetry and inspired by Greek and Roman classics and by Chinese, Japanese, and modern French poets. In the U.S., the group was represented in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse by Pound, H. D., John Gould Fletcher, and Amy Lowell, and by such English poets as F. S. Flint, Richard Aldington, and D. H. Lawrence. Pound collected some of their work in Des Imagistes: An Anthology (1914), after which his interest began to wane; Amy Lowell then assumed active leadership, advocating that the group subscribe to a fixed program and hold together for at least three years. Under her guidance were published several anthologies, all entitled Some Imagist Poets. For a more thorough overview, see Scott Ashley "Imagism and American Poets" The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature . Jay Parini. Oxford University Press 2004. Oxford Reference Online . Oxford University Press. stream of consciousness: The continuous flow of sense-perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and memories in the human mind; or a literary method of representing such a blending of mental processes in fictional characters, usually in an unpunctuated or disjointed form of interior monologue . The term is often used as a synonym for interior monologue, but they can also be distinguished, in two ways. In the first (psychological) sense, the stream of consciousness is the subject-matter while interior monologue is the technique for presenting it; thus Marcel Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) is about the stream of consciousness, especially the connection between sense-impressions and memory, but it does not actually use interior monologue. In the second (literary) sense, stream of consciousness is a special style of interior monologue: while an interior monologue always presents a character's thoughts 'directly', without the apparent intervention of a summarizing and selecting narrator, it does not necessarily mingle them with impressions and perceptions, nor does it necessarily violate the norms of grammar, syntax, and logic; but the stream-of-consciousness technique also does one or both of these things. An important device of modernist fiction and its later imitators, the technique was pioneered by Dorothy Richardson in Pilgrimage (1915 - 35) and by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922), and further developed by Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway (1925) and William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury (1928). For a fuller account, consult Robert Humphrey, Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel (1968). "stream of consciousness." The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 15 March 2009 The Life The Paris Review 1962 interview of Pound The Times Additionally, to understand why Pound was so moved by WWI, view this photo essay on World War I. Class Discussion
"A Pact"
"In a Station of the Metro"
"The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter"
"Hugh Selwyn Mauberly" Fragmented poem. "Ezra Pound's 1920 poem "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" is a landmark in the career of the great American modernist poet. In the poem, Pound uses two alter egos to discuss the first twelve years of his career, a period during which aesthetic and literary concerns fully engaged Pound's attention. The poem reconstructs literary London of the Edwardian period, recreating the dominant feeling about what literature should be and also describing Pound's own rebellious aesthetic beliefs. The poem also takes us to the catastrophe of the early twentieth century, World War I, and bluntly illustrates its effects on the literary world. The poem then proceeds to an "envoi," or a send-off, and then to five poems told through the eyes of a second alter ego. In the first section of the poem, Pound portrays himself as "E. P.," a typical turn-of-the-century aesthete, and then in the second he becomes "Mauberley," an aesthete of a different kind. Both E. P. and Mauberley are facets of Pound's own character that, in a sense, the poem is meant to exorcise. After composing this poem, Pound left London for Paris and, soon after, for Italy , where his view of his role as a poet changed dramatically. No longer would his work be primarily concerned with aesthetics; after 1920, he started to concentrate on writing The Cantos and on studying politics and economics. "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" is not just Pound's farewell to London ; it is Pound's definitive good-bye to his earlier selves."
"Overview: 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'." Poetry for Students . Ed. David M. Galens. Vol. 16. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center . Gale. OCEAN COUNTY COLLEGE. 15 Mar. 2009
Links Ezra Pound reading Missing section from the poem -- Mauberley 1920 Critical Essay on "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" . Greg Barnhisel. Poetry for Students . Ed. David M. Galens. Vol. 16. Detroit: Gale, 2002. From Literature Resource Center . Pictures, Pictures, Pictures
Modernist paintings All Modernist images from wikimedia Quotes from Critics Pound "Ezra Pound had a lot to say about the place of reading in the poet's life. In Guide to Kulchur he insisted that before attempting anything new, a writer needed to read not only in one's own literary tradition but also in the traditions of other cultures, so that one "might acquire some balance in not mistaking recurrence for innovation."8 On the need for intelligent literary comparison as a means . of thoughtful evaluation of new work, he resorted to that favorite of the Modernists, the scientific example: "You can't judge any chemical's action merely by putting it with more of itself. To know it, you have got to know its limits, both what it is and what it is not."9 He also said, in a letter to Marianne Moore, "The idea of civilization includes an occasional exchange of knowledge,"10 and, in ABC of Reading: "You would think that anyone wanting . to know about poetry would do one of two things or both. I.E., LOOK AT it or listen to it. He might even think about it?"11 And, as a final word on reading, here is Pound on the works he would include in his ideal literature textbook: YOU WILL NEVER KNOW either why I chose them, or why they were worth choosing, or why you approve or disapprove of my choice, until you go to the TEXTS, the originals. And the quicker you go to the texts the less need there will be for your listening to me or to any other long-winded critic.12" American Poetry Review, The, Mar/Apr 2006 by Levin, Dana
© David Bordelon 2009
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