Modernism

Unit fifteen ended on the century's end: the late Gothic, decadence, and Wilde's epigrams. This unit opens the twentieth century, the exam's largest share. Its governing idea is that Modernism broke the forms the Victorians trusted, yet kept the tradition they inherited, in fragments, so that a fragmented work is often full of the past. This first part moves in three steps: the break and its causes, with Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Achebe's answer to it; then Yeats and Joyce, two Irishmen; and then Woolf, Lawrence, Forster and Mansfield, closing on Eliot, from Prufrock to his criticism.

We begin with the break and its causes, and with Conrad's journey up an African river.

First, the exam's largest share.

ENL 1501 The Twentieth Century on This Exam

The twentieth century carries twenty-five percent of the questions, the largest share. This course gives it three units: Modernism, writing in Britain and Ireland after nineteen thirty, and Commonwealth and postcolonial writing. Works after nineteen thirty are taught by description. Twenty-five percent; three units. Later works are described, not quoted.

Next, what made the break.

ENL 1502 Modernism: The Break and Its Causes

Modernism, the anchor says, was shaped by Marx, Nietzsche, Freud and Frazer, who questioned the certainties of religion, morality and the self, and by the First World War. Modernists broke narrative continuity, used stream of consciousness and, in Pound's phrase, wanted to "make it new." Freud, the war, make it new. Modernism defined itself against the Victorians.

A Polish sailor became an English novelist.

ENL 1503 Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad, born Józef Korzeniowski in Russian-ruled Ukraine to Polish parents, served at sea and learned English only in his twenties. He became a British novelist of moral crisis, in Lord Jim and other works, and in eighteen ninety commanded a steamer in the Belgian Congo. Polish sailor, English novelist. English was not his first language.

His novella goes upriver.

ENL 1504 Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness, an eighteen ninety-nine novella, tells how the sailor Charles Marlow is sent up an African river for a Belgian company to find Kurtz, an ivory trader who has scrawled "Exterminate all the brutes!" Kurtz dies whispering, "The horror! The horror!" A river journey toward Kurtz. The darkness is inside as well as out.

The story is told within a story.

ENL 1505 Heart of Darkness: Marlow and the Frame

Heart of Darkness is a frame narrative: an unnamed narrator on a boat on the Thames hears Marlow tell his story, which begins, "And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth." The anchor notes it seems a Victorian plot of civilization against savagery but undermines it. A narrator hearing a narrator. London too is a dark place.

A novelist answered Conrad.

ENL 1506 Achebe's Critique of Heart of Darkness

The Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, in his lecture "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness," called Conrad "a thoroughgoing racist" for depicting Africa as "the other world" and denying Africans human expression, even language. The critique reshaped how the novella is read. A novelist answers a classic. Attribute the charge to Achebe.

Now two Irishmen: Yeats, whose style changed across a long career, and Joyce, who left Ireland and wrote only of Dublin.

First, Yeats's long career.

ENL 1507 W. B. Yeats: Life and Phases

William Butler Yeats, a Dublin Protestant, began with Irish myth and the Celtic Twilight, explored the occult, loved the nationalist Maud Gonne, and co-founded the Abbey Theatre. He built a symbolic system of phases and gyres in A Vision, became a senator, and won the Nobel Prize in nineteen twenty-three. Myth, occult, nationalism, system. His style changes across his career.

Early Yeats dreams of an island.

ENL 1508 Early Yeats: "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree," written in eighteen eighty-eight while Yeats was homesick in London's Fleet Street, opens, "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree," imagining a cabin and life alone "in the bee-loud glade" on an island in Lough Gill, in Sligo. A homesick dream of an island. Early Yeats is musical and romantic.

A rising changed his poetry.

ENL 1509 "Easter 1916"

"Easter 1916" responds to the Easter Rising against British rule. Yeats records his torn feelings toward the executed rebels, including Maud Gonne's husband, John MacBride, whom he had disliked. Its refrain declares them "changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born." A refrain: a terrible beauty. The poem is ambivalent about sacrifice.

After the war, history breaks.

ENL 1510 "The Second Coming"

"The Second Coming," written in nineteen nineteen after the First World War, pictures history's gyre breaking: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." It ends with a "rough beast" that "Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born." A widening gyre; a rough beast. The gyre is from Yeats's system.

An old man sails toward art.

ENL 1511 "Sailing to Byzantium"

"Sailing to Byzantium," from The Tower of nineteen twenty-eight, opens, "That is no country for old men." The aging speaker sails to Byzantium, asking to be gathered "Into the artifice of eternity" and to take the form of a golden bird. An old man seeks permanent art. Byzantium stands for art beyond time.

Two more poems of swans.

ENL 1512 "Leda and the Swan" and "The Wild Swans at Coole"

"Leda and the Swan," a sonnet, opens, "A sudden blow: the great wings beating still," and sees in Zeus's assault the seed of "The broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead." "The Wild Swans at Coole" counts "nine and fifty swans" with a sore heart. A god's violence; aging and swans. Leda's story begins the Trojan war.

Now the exile.

ENL 1513 James Joyce

James Joyce, born in Dublin to a declining Catholic family and educated by Jesuits, left Ireland with Nora Barnacle in nineteen-oh-four for Trieste, Zurich and Paris, yet wrote only about Dublin. His works run from Dubliners to Finnegans Wake, of nineteen thirty-nine. An exile who wrote only Dublin. Joyce left Ireland in nineteen-oh-four.

His stories replace the climax.

ENL 1514 Dubliners and Epiphany

Dubliners, fifteen stories published in nineteen fourteen, depicts a city in what Joyce saw as paralysis. The anchor says the stories replace the traditional climax with epiphanies, which Joyce defined as "a sudden spiritual manifestation," a moment of sudden insight. Paralysis and sudden insight. The epiphany replaces the climax.

Two stories end in recognition.

ENL 1515 "Araby" and "The Dead"

In "Araby," a boy idealizing Mangan's sister reaches the bazaar too late and sees himself "as a creature driven and derided by vanity." In "The Dead," Gabriel learns of his wife's dead love, Michael Furey, and watches snow "faintly falling... upon all the living and the dead." Two epiphanies of loss. The endings are moments of recognition.

His first novel makes an artist.

ENL 1516 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, of nineteen sixteen, is a Künstlerroman, a novel of an artist's growth, tracing the religious and intellectual awakening of Stephen Dedalus, Joyce's alter ego, whose surname alludes to the mythical craftsman Daedalus. Pound had it serialized. The making of an artist. Künstlerroman: an artist's bildungsroman.

His great novel is one day.

ENL 1517 Ulysses

Ulysses, published in Paris in nineteen twenty-two, follows three Dubliners on a single day, the sixteenth of June nineteen-oh-four, with parallels to Homer's Odyssey: Leopold Bloom as Odysseus, Molly as Penelope, Stephen as Telemachus. Eliot praised its "mythical method." One day, one city, Homer beneath. It faced an obscenity trial in America.

Now Woolf and the English novelists, a short-story writer from New Zealand, and Eliot.

First, Woolf herself.

ENL 1518 Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf, daughter of the editor Leslie Stephen, was denied the university education her brothers received. A member of the Bloomsbury Group, she founded the Hogarth Press with her husband Leonard, and rejected the Victorian ideal of "the Angel in the House." Bloomsbury, Hogarth, the angel rejected. Woolf wrote novels and essays.

A hostess's single day.

ENL 1519 Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway, of nineteen twenty-five, follows Clarissa Dalloway through a single day in post-war London as she prepares a party, interwoven with Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked veteran. Its stream of consciousness explores time in personal experience. A hostess and a veteran, one day. Clarissa and Septimus never meet.

A family, and time passing.

ENL 1520 To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse, of nineteen twenty-seven, centres on the Ramsay family's visits to the Isle of Skye. Its middle section, "Time Passes," covers years of loss in a few pages, and the painter Lily Briscoe finally completes the picture she began at the start. Three parts; a painting finished. "Time Passes" compresses a decade.

Woolf's essay is material.

ENL 1521 A Room of One's Own

A Room of One's Own, of nineteen twenty-nine, an essay drawn from lectures at Cambridge's women's colleges, argues that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Woolf imagines Shakespeare's sister, equally gifted but denied opportunity. Money, a room, Shakespeare's sister. The argument is material, not mystical.

A miner's son wrote of the body.

ENL 1522 D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence, a Nottinghamshire miner's son, wrote of the unconscious, class and sexuality. His novels, including The Rainbow, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover, faced censorship trials for their portrayals of sexuality and explicit language. The anchor sees him seeking to reunite body and mind. Miner's son; body and mind. Several novels were banned.

His novel of a mother and son.

ENL 1523 Sons and Lovers

Sons and Lovers, of nineteen thirteen, largely autobiographical, follows Paul Morel and his suffocating bond with a demanding mother, who has turned from her coarse husband to her sons, and with two very different lovers, one based on Jessie Chambers. A mother, a son, two lovers. The mother is based on Lawrence's own.

Forster tested convention.

ENL 1524 E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster, a member of the Bloomsbury Group, wrote A Room with a View, Howards End and A Passage to India; Maurice, his novel of homosexual love, was published only after his death. His fiction tests English social conventions and the possibility of human connection. Convention, class, connection. Forster is less experimental than Woolf.

Two novels test connection.

ENL 1525 A Passage to India and Howards End

Howards End, of nineteen ten, whose epigraph is "Only connect," brings the cultured Schlegel sisters into contact with the capitalist Wilcoxes. A Passage to India, of nineteen twenty-four, set under the British Raj, follows Dr Aziz, Mrs Moore and Adela Quested to a disastrous misunderstanding. Only connect; the Raj. Both novels test connection across divides.

Mansfield wrote short fiction only.

ENL 1526 Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield, born in New Zealand, settled in England and became an important Modernist short-story writer, influenced by Chekhov. Her stories explore anxiety, sexuality and identity. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in nineteen seventeen, she died at thirty-four. The modern short story, from New Zealand. Mansfield wrote only short fiction.

Now Eliot, American-born.

ENL 1527 T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot, born in St Louis and educated at Harvard, settled in England, worked at Lloyd's Bank and Faber and Faber, became Anglican and British in nineteen twenty-seven, and won the Nobel Prize. The anchor notes his fragmentation, many voices and the mythic method. American-born, English poet. Eliot became British in nineteen twenty-seven.

His first famous poem is a monologue.

ENL 1528 "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," published in nineteen fifteen through Pound, is a dramatic monologue of a timid man: the evening is spread out "Like a patient etherised upon a table," and he has "measured out my life with coffee spoons." A timid speaker, an etherised evening. The "love song" is never sung.

His great poem is fragments.

ENL 1529 The Waste Land

The Waste Land, of nineteen twenty-two, a four-hundred-thirty-four-line poem, opens, "April is the cruellest month," and moves through a post-war "Unreal City" toward a grail-like search for renewal, ending, "These fragments I have shored against my ruins" and "Shantih shantih shantih." Fragments of a ruined civilization. The poem has many voices.

The poem works by allusion.

ENL 1530 The Waste Land: Method and Allusion

The Waste Land draws on Frazer's The Golden Bough and the Fisher King legend, the anchor notes, and alludes to Ovid, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and even a popular song. Eliot added notes. Its fragments, quotations and languages juxtapose past and present. Allusion and juxtaposition. The notes are part of the published poem.

Eliot also wrote criticism.

ENL 1531 "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

In "Tradition and the Individual Talent," of nineteen nineteen, Eliot argued that a poet must write with the whole literary tradition in mind and that poetry is impersonal, an escape from personality. Elsewhere he proposed the "objective correlative," objects or events that express an emotion. Tradition, impersonality, objective correlative. The objective correlative is from his Hamlet essay.

This first part followed the break. We explained its causes, Freud, the war and the call to make it new. We described Heart of Darkness, its frame narrator on the Thames, and Achebe's charge, attributed to him. We traced Yeats from Innisfree to the terrible beauty, the widening gyre and Byzantium. We described Joyce's epiphanies and his Homeric day, and Woolf's single days, her passing time and her room of one's own. And we met Lawrence, Forster, Mansfield and Eliot, from Prufrock's coffee spoons to tradition and impersonality. Part two turns to late Eliot, the war poets and the methods.