chapter 15 20th-century poetry
TRANSCRIPT
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Chapter 15
Early 20th-Century Poetry
FromAn Outline of English Literatureby
Thornley and Roberts
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English Poetry
in the Early 20th Century Support the remark that poetry is a private art
form (p.181)
Each poet works as a private and separate
person who makes his or her own world from
his or her own deep concerns
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W. B. Yeats
Born in Ireland (p.181)
Theme in his early poems -- shows and honors thenature and character of Ireland and the Irish people
Theme in his later work -- was more universal, howpeople and the world, divided, can be made whole
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
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The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes droppingslow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
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T. S. Eliot
Writes as a man living through the years after WWI inwhich mens lives had been lost or damaged, hopesdestroyed and promises broken (p.187)
Sees poetry and ceremony as forces that can givemeaning to the emptiness and confusion of the modernworld
References to ceremonies come from the Christian churchand from much earlier beliefs in ceremonies that broughtlife and hope back to a dry dead hopeless world.
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T. S. Eliot The Waste Land
1. A highly complex poem that brings together a group of characters
as different in kind
2. Brings together the ancient beliefs in the circularity of the natural
worlds movement through life and death to new life, with the
Christian belief in spiritual life after physical death3. Much of the picture of human unhappiness in the poem comes
from the fact that the characters cannot understand the meaning of
their own experiences.
4. Sees the root of the modern worlds unhappiness and confusion as
the fact that people cant bring together the different areas of their
experience to make a complete and healthy whole
5. His aim is to bring together a great variety of human voices and
experiences.
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T. S. Eliot
Four Quartets(1944)1. Shows different ways of experiencing God and
reality in different times
2. The force of religion will give wholeness and purposeto mans life and mind.
3. Shows different kinds of time through the lives of
different people, universal history and sudden
moments when truth about life and God is made clear
4. In the middle of the confusion and suffering of the
modern world, timeless values still exist and can still
be touched
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W. H. Auden
Early Poemsshows a concern for the important
political and social events, and a wish to become partof them (p.189)
Saw changes in the forms and subjects of literature asa way of helping political and social change
Writes about political events and their effect onprivate lives
By the end of WWII, he lost his earlier hope that theworld could be changed and made better by decisive
human action After this, his poetry became in many ways more
personal and, increasingly, looking for spiritualqualities in the life around him
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W. H. Auden
Communicate a strong sense of the realities of
everyday life
Lyric Poems:
Musee des Beaux Arts
As I Walked Out One Evening
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Musee des Beaux Arts About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understoodIts human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dullyalong;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waitingFor the miraculous birth, there always must beChildren who did not specially want it to happen, skatingOn a pond at the edge of the wood:They never forgotThat even the dreadful martyrdom must run its courseAnyhow in a corner, some untidy spotWhere the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horseScratches its innocent behind on a tree.In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns awayQuite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the greenWater; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seenSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
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The title refers to the Museum of FineArts in Brussels. Auden visited themuseum in 1938 and viewed the
painting by Brueghel, which the poem
is basically about. Generalizing at first,and then going into specifics the poemtheme is the apathy with whichhumans view individual suffering.Auden wrote that "In so far as poetry,
or any of the arts, can be said to havean ulterior purpose, it is, by telling thetruth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.
The poem juxtaposes ordinary events
and extraordinary ones, althoughextraordinary events seem to deflate toeveryday ones with his descriptions.Life goes on while a "miraculous birthoccurs", but also while "the disaster"of Icarus's death happens.
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The reader of the poem is placed in front of the
Breughel painting in a museum, and at the same
time is expected to project those images andtruths to the world outside. This allows a reader
to become aware of his human position.
The poem first discusses a "miraculous birth",and at the end "the tragedy" of a death. The
theme in the poem is human suffering.
The poem suggest a religious acceptance ofsuffering. Religious acceptance basically means
coming to terms with the ways of the world.