Modernism in Literature: The Beginnings
(Notes from the graduate seminar: The Modern Aesthetics and Politics, professor Liou Liang-Ya)
Week 2
Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” (1925), The Norton Anthology of English Literature.
Woolf breaks the assumption that modern practice of the art is an improvement upon the old. What is missing from the conventional novels - which she calls “materialist” - is the interiority of the characters. Writers like H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennet, and John Galsworthy are restricted by the conventions of plot, narrative, and description of realistic details. However, Woolf feels that their characters seem fake, lacking in vivacity.
In contrast, Woolf holds James Joyce in high esteem. In Ulysses, Woolf argues, we have life itself. However, she still finds that Ulysses lacks certain rough and realistic details of life (comparing it to Tristram Shandy by Sterne).
Hardy belongs to the Late-Victorian period; when she is already questioning certain conceptions of femininity and sexual dynamics.
In modern fiction, writers are more interested in the dark corners of human psychology. Subsequently, this interest has changed the form of the novel. Woolf notices that Russian writers, and Chekov in particular, are very good at this kind of exploration of human feelings.
/*Pushkin Museum: Namesake is Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799 – 1831). Showing works of western European painters from Neo-Classicism – Impressionism – Cubism strain. */
While Western European culture might often seem to dominate over Russian culture, at this point, Woolf actually admires Russian literature greatly. Especially, “the sense that there is no answer, that of honestly examined life presents question after question” (2152), which is a breath of fresh air for the conventional plots of English literature. However, she still brings back Sterne’s comedy at the end.
/*Woolf, the Bloomsbury Group, and Hogarth Press (which she co-founded with her husband, and brought Freud’s work to England). */
Woolf considers what goes on in a person’s mind on any given day; the multiplicity, randomness, and transiency of one’s thoughts and impressions shall be reflected in novels if the writer is free from shackles of convention. Life is not sequential, ordered events represented in convention narratives. “Life is a luminous halo” (2150).
/*Should this can be considered a manifesto for the stream-of consciousness technique? Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway (1925) in the same year she published this essay. Stream of Consciousness was coined by William James in The Principles of Psychology (1890). */
T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1930), Selected Essays. London, Faber and Faber, 1934.
1. New definition of “tradition”:
Eliot argues for a new, very specific definition of “tradition” in literature. It’s not repetition, and it’s not inherited. Instead, tradition means having “the historical sense”, which involves “a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”. Producing good poems doesn’t only require talent, but must require laborious study of all the literature the has come before. When people question the extremity of this point, he says that while for some people, a historical sense does require rigorous academic studies, for some other poets, they can acquire this by absorbing the “consciousness of the past”, and continuing to “develop this consciousness throughout his career” (17).
/*Eliot’s theory can be compared with Harold Bloom’s (1930-) theory, Anxiety of Influence: in the English poetry tradition, from Milton, to Wordsworth, to Keats, etc., each poet suffers from the anxiety of influence by their “fathers”, and must commit “patricide”. */
Eliot argues that while a new literary work is directed by the order of the past, its appearance also modified the order. Canon and its order are dynamic, differing from era to era. The literary scholar and poets take part in shaping the canon. The way to judge a new work is to compare it with the order of the past, it’s value is the necessary combination of conformity and individuality.
/*Speaking of canon, Eliot has reorganized canon according to his taste. His favorite poet is John Donne, who is a very metaphysical poet. */
Eliot argues that the poet should be aware that “art never improves”, only the material of art changes.
2.The theory of impersonal poetry:
Eliot argues that we should focus on the poems, instead of the poet. Because the poet’s mind is merely the catalyst that aids the production of poetry, it does not interfere. A good, mature poet is a pure medium, his mind accommodates various experiences and feelings, until it falls into place, and through the creative process of “fusion”, a moment of intense pressure, compose into poetry. This is contrasted with the conception of poetry in Romanticism. The poet’s personality, exotic experience, or emotions should not come into the poem, and doesn’t help produce good poetry.
/*c.f. New Criticism (mainstream literary criticism method before structuralism and post-structuralism), the concept of “intentional fallacy”: any criticism should be based on text alone. The intentions of the author are irrelevant. Eliot’s idea seems to be anticipating this attitude. */
/*Liou on reading Woolf’s diary: Woolf thinks that in Victorian or Elizabethan ages, the poems are always a “whole”. However, emotions in modern poetry often read fragmented. This seems to be what Eliot is doing intentionally. */
In Conclusion, Eliot insists that art is impersonal. Eliot urges the poet to live in the “present moment of the past”.
Comments:
1. Eliot’s theory presupposes a kind of homogeneity of human experience, of culture, and of people in general. He is speaking from a very privileged place in history, being a man, white, educated in elite schools, American/Western European roots…etc. This gives him the confidence of attaching himself to this “great tradition” he is organizing. It's no wonder that it is easier for him to identify himself with Homer, Virgil, and so on, and count himself among them. However, he dares to go a step further, and assume that his experience is all human experience, and all writers should think like him.
Liou: Indeed, there are minor traditions, races, and cultures in Europe, not represented in Eliot’s writing.
2. Eliot argues that “one error of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express” (21). Is he referring to the Les Poètes maudits? “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion”(21)
Liou: maybe Eliot particularly wants to avoid emotions, having suffered through a painful divorce.
3. In comparison, Woolf seems to have a more open-minded idea about literature.
4. Although Woolf didn’t get an official education, she still enjoyed the privilege of her class background.
5. Eliot raises an original theory of literary history in this article, namely, the past and the present exists in a dynamic relationship.
Liou: Feminists have actually criticized Eliot very harshly.
“The Name and Nature of Modernism” (1976), Bradbury and McFarlane
Part 1:
20th century art comes from an upheaval of cataclysmic cultural change. As Herbert Read has argued, there is “an abrupt break with all production”(20). C.S. Lewis’s comment. Roland Barthes’ comments. The semantic of “modern” is unstable. There are pros and cons with applying the term “modernity” to this phenomenon. Comparing the term “modernism” with “Romanticism”, they both engender multiple, sometimes contradictory meanings. They are both powerful and International movements. However, while Romanticism has a recognizable general meaning, Modernism doesn’t. The styles of art in the modern period are too multifarious to be reduced. This, Stein has proclaimed, is the only “composition” appropriate to the new dispositions in space and time (23).
Part 2:
Whitehead and Sypher gives 2 definitions of the style of the age. The characteristics of Modernism include shock, Self-realization, the radical remaking of form, self-skepticism, an aesthetic of de-humanization, etc. There is a crisis in culture, and artists are under historical strain. However, many 20th century artists have rejected the label of Modernism. In the crisis of reality, in the chaos, uncertainties of the contemporary world, Modernism is the only possible response (27).
/*Modernity has started way back, but in the 19th and 20th century, Modernism rises in response to the exponential spread of its increasing influence. */
/*At this moment in time, Avant-garde refers to an art movement that seeks to engage with the public, and cause social change. Later, this came to be referred to as historical Avant-garde. */
Part 3:
Trying to pin down the time and place of Modernism. The editors point out that it varies from country to country. According to Cyril Connolly, it originated in France, and spread to Anglo-American literature, spanning from 1880 to 1950. Others, such as Wilson, Bowra, Hough has similar views. Ellmann and Feidelson include key books in languages other than French and English, and extend their inquiry to outside of the realm of literature. They conclude that the peak of Modernism occurs in the first quarter of the 20th century. Alvarez puts this in the first 30 years of 20th century. Kermode puts it between 1907 and 1925.
The crucial turning point? According to Woolf, it’s in December of 1910. Lawrence claims that it is in 1915. Ellmann proposes 1900 instead. Levin argues that 1922 is the most significant year in Modernist literature. Rosenberg refers to Paris during the entire inter-war period.
Post-Modernist characteristics include the art of change and minimalism, Chosisme, Nouveau Roman and non-fiction novel, multi-media forms, and anti-rationalistic anti-art, etc. Many aspects of post-Modernism is continuous with Modernism. For example, between evolutionary psychic exploration and Dada and Surrealism.
/*The definition of post-modernism is debatable. However, post-situational novels, pastiche and collages are always considered post-modernism. */
Early Modernism is more formalist, Neo-Modernism (Post-Modernism) is anti-formalist, though compelled to use the form to subvert it. The editors believe that Post-Modernism is a “new disposition of old forces” (35).
Part 4:
Week 2
 |
| Girl with Mandolin (1910) by Pablo Picasso |
Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” (1925), The Norton Anthology of English Literature.
Woolf breaks the assumption that modern practice of the art is an improvement upon the old. What is missing from the conventional novels - which she calls “materialist” - is the interiority of the characters. Writers like H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennet, and John Galsworthy are restricted by the conventions of plot, narrative, and description of realistic details. However, Woolf feels that their characters seem fake, lacking in vivacity.
In contrast, Woolf holds James Joyce in high esteem. In Ulysses, Woolf argues, we have life itself. However, she still finds that Ulysses lacks certain rough and realistic details of life (comparing it to Tristram Shandy by Sterne).
Hardy belongs to the Late-Victorian period; when she is already questioning certain conceptions of femininity and sexual dynamics.
In modern fiction, writers are more interested in the dark corners of human psychology. Subsequently, this interest has changed the form of the novel. Woolf notices that Russian writers, and Chekov in particular, are very good at this kind of exploration of human feelings.
/*Pushkin Museum: Namesake is Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799 – 1831). Showing works of western European painters from Neo-Classicism – Impressionism – Cubism strain. */
While Western European culture might often seem to dominate over Russian culture, at this point, Woolf actually admires Russian literature greatly. Especially, “the sense that there is no answer, that of honestly examined life presents question after question” (2152), which is a breath of fresh air for the conventional plots of English literature. However, she still brings back Sterne’s comedy at the end.
/*Woolf, the Bloomsbury Group, and Hogarth Press (which she co-founded with her husband, and brought Freud’s work to England). */
Woolf considers what goes on in a person’s mind on any given day; the multiplicity, randomness, and transiency of one’s thoughts and impressions shall be reflected in novels if the writer is free from shackles of convention. Life is not sequential, ordered events represented in convention narratives. “Life is a luminous halo” (2150).
/*Should this can be considered a manifesto for the stream-of consciousness technique? Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway (1925) in the same year she published this essay. Stream of Consciousness was coined by William James in The Principles of Psychology (1890). */
T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1930), Selected Essays. London, Faber and Faber, 1934.
1. New definition of “tradition”:
Eliot argues for a new, very specific definition of “tradition” in literature. It’s not repetition, and it’s not inherited. Instead, tradition means having “the historical sense”, which involves “a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”. Producing good poems doesn’t only require talent, but must require laborious study of all the literature the has come before. When people question the extremity of this point, he says that while for some people, a historical sense does require rigorous academic studies, for some other poets, they can acquire this by absorbing the “consciousness of the past”, and continuing to “develop this consciousness throughout his career” (17).
/*Eliot’s theory can be compared with Harold Bloom’s (1930-) theory, Anxiety of Influence: in the English poetry tradition, from Milton, to Wordsworth, to Keats, etc., each poet suffers from the anxiety of influence by their “fathers”, and must commit “patricide”. */
Eliot argues that while a new literary work is directed by the order of the past, its appearance also modified the order. Canon and its order are dynamic, differing from era to era. The literary scholar and poets take part in shaping the canon. The way to judge a new work is to compare it with the order of the past, it’s value is the necessary combination of conformity and individuality.
/*Speaking of canon, Eliot has reorganized canon according to his taste. His favorite poet is John Donne, who is a very metaphysical poet. */
Eliot argues that the poet should be aware that “art never improves”, only the material of art changes.
2.The theory of impersonal poetry:
Eliot argues that we should focus on the poems, instead of the poet. Because the poet’s mind is merely the catalyst that aids the production of poetry, it does not interfere. A good, mature poet is a pure medium, his mind accommodates various experiences and feelings, until it falls into place, and through the creative process of “fusion”, a moment of intense pressure, compose into poetry. This is contrasted with the conception of poetry in Romanticism. The poet’s personality, exotic experience, or emotions should not come into the poem, and doesn’t help produce good poetry.
/*c.f. New Criticism (mainstream literary criticism method before structuralism and post-structuralism), the concept of “intentional fallacy”: any criticism should be based on text alone. The intentions of the author are irrelevant. Eliot’s idea seems to be anticipating this attitude. */
/*Liou on reading Woolf’s diary: Woolf thinks that in Victorian or Elizabethan ages, the poems are always a “whole”. However, emotions in modern poetry often read fragmented. This seems to be what Eliot is doing intentionally. */
In Conclusion, Eliot insists that art is impersonal. Eliot urges the poet to live in the “present moment of the past”.
Comments:
1. Eliot’s theory presupposes a kind of homogeneity of human experience, of culture, and of people in general. He is speaking from a very privileged place in history, being a man, white, educated in elite schools, American/Western European roots…etc. This gives him the confidence of attaching himself to this “great tradition” he is organizing. It's no wonder that it is easier for him to identify himself with Homer, Virgil, and so on, and count himself among them. However, he dares to go a step further, and assume that his experience is all human experience, and all writers should think like him.
Liou: Indeed, there are minor traditions, races, and cultures in Europe, not represented in Eliot’s writing.
2. Eliot argues that “one error of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express” (21). Is he referring to the Les Poètes maudits? “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion”(21)
Liou: maybe Eliot particularly wants to avoid emotions, having suffered through a painful divorce.
3. In comparison, Woolf seems to have a more open-minded idea about literature.
4. Although Woolf didn’t get an official education, she still enjoyed the privilege of her class background.
5. Eliot raises an original theory of literary history in this article, namely, the past and the present exists in a dynamic relationship.
Liou: Feminists have actually criticized Eliot very harshly.
“The Name and Nature of Modernism” (1976), Bradbury and McFarlane
Part 1:
20th century art comes from an upheaval of cataclysmic cultural change. As Herbert Read has argued, there is “an abrupt break with all production”(20). C.S. Lewis’s comment. Roland Barthes’ comments. The semantic of “modern” is unstable. There are pros and cons with applying the term “modernity” to this phenomenon. Comparing the term “modernism” with “Romanticism”, they both engender multiple, sometimes contradictory meanings. They are both powerful and International movements. However, while Romanticism has a recognizable general meaning, Modernism doesn’t. The styles of art in the modern period are too multifarious to be reduced. This, Stein has proclaimed, is the only “composition” appropriate to the new dispositions in space and time (23).
Part 2:
Whitehead and Sypher gives 2 definitions of the style of the age. The characteristics of Modernism include shock, Self-realization, the radical remaking of form, self-skepticism, an aesthetic of de-humanization, etc. There is a crisis in culture, and artists are under historical strain. However, many 20th century artists have rejected the label of Modernism. In the crisis of reality, in the chaos, uncertainties of the contemporary world, Modernism is the only possible response (27).
/*Modernity has started way back, but in the 19th and 20th century, Modernism rises in response to the exponential spread of its increasing influence. */
/*At this moment in time, Avant-garde refers to an art movement that seeks to engage with the public, and cause social change. Later, this came to be referred to as historical Avant-garde. */
Part 3:
Trying to pin down the time and place of Modernism. The editors point out that it varies from country to country. According to Cyril Connolly, it originated in France, and spread to Anglo-American literature, spanning from 1880 to 1950. Others, such as Wilson, Bowra, Hough has similar views. Ellmann and Feidelson include key books in languages other than French and English, and extend their inquiry to outside of the realm of literature. They conclude that the peak of Modernism occurs in the first quarter of the 20th century. Alvarez puts this in the first 30 years of 20th century. Kermode puts it between 1907 and 1925.
The crucial turning point? According to Woolf, it’s in December of 1910. Lawrence claims that it is in 1915. Ellmann proposes 1900 instead. Levin argues that 1922 is the most significant year in Modernist literature. Rosenberg refers to Paris during the entire inter-war period.
Post-Modernist characteristics include the art of change and minimalism, Chosisme, Nouveau Roman and non-fiction novel, multi-media forms, and anti-rationalistic anti-art, etc. Many aspects of post-Modernism is continuous with Modernism. For example, between evolutionary psychic exploration and Dada and Surrealism.
/*The definition of post-modernism is debatable. However, post-situational novels, pastiche and collages are always considered post-modernism. */
Early Modernism is more formalist, Neo-Modernism (Post-Modernism) is anti-formalist, though compelled to use the form to subvert it. The editors believe that Post-Modernism is a “new disposition of old forces” (35).
Part 4:
The first strain, which the editors call Anglo-American Modernism (the New York-London-Paris axis), is initiated by French symbolism, most importantly, Flaubert and Baudelaire. It culminated in the years preceding and following World War I.
Germanic Modernism, however, involves Germany, Austria (Freud, Schoenberg, Wittgenstein), Scandinavia (Ibsen, Stringberg), and spanning 1880s-1900s. The editors trace from Brandes, to the Modern Poet Characters, Eugen Wolf, and finally when “der Moderne” becomes a sign of decay.
Part 5:
Germanic Modernism, however, involves Germany, Austria (Freud, Schoenberg, Wittgenstein), Scandinavia (Ibsen, Stringberg), and spanning 1880s-1900s. The editors trace from Brandes, to the Modern Poet Characters, Eugen Wolf, and finally when “der Moderne” becomes a sign of decay.
Part 5:
Trilling, in 1961, writes in response to Arnold’s concept of modern back in 1857. The concept of modern changed form a confidence faith in social advance in the 80s, to the crossing of the modern spirit with the spirit of Decadence and Aestheticism (42). The central figure changed from Ibsen to Strindberg. From Realism and Naturalism (positivism) to Modernism (irrational/unconscious forces). The closing years of the 19th century sees a bifurication of the impulse to be modern (44).
Part 6:
Part 6:
In the early 20th century, there is a bifurcation within Modernism. Modernism is a compound of the futurist/nihilistic, revolutionary /conservative, and celebration/condemnation of technology.
/*This is a key question when we talk about Modernist politics. For example, Women of Love is critical of technology. Mrs. Dalloway is critical of the war. */
Some thinks that Modernity is the new Romanticism, because there is a continuity of concerns with “consciousness, self-object relationships, and with intensified experience” (47) However, some disagree.
Interestingly, Modernism fuses contradictory concept, such as reason/unreason, intellect/emotion, subjective/objective (48). Modernists “Irrationalize the rational”, “secularize the spiritual”, “see space as a function of time”, etc.
Modernists don’t see history as an evolving logic, but work “spatially or through layers of consciousness” towards a logic of metaphor or form.
Tasks of Modernist art is “to redeem, essentially or existentially, the formless universe of contingency” (50). Art seeks to “transcend historical sequence by intersecting with it the timelessness of artistic revelation” (51).
/*Why is Becket considered a modernist? Because Post-modernism is more concerned with engaging the public, while modernism is staunchly classist. In Andreas Huyssen’s After the Great Divide, he argues that Dada, surrealism, and constructivism is separate from Modernism.*/
Liou: can art really salvage us from the crisis of modern existence?
Transcribed on Feb. 26, 2019.
/*This is a key question when we talk about Modernist politics. For example, Women of Love is critical of technology. Mrs. Dalloway is critical of the war. */
Some thinks that Modernity is the new Romanticism, because there is a continuity of concerns with “consciousness, self-object relationships, and with intensified experience” (47) However, some disagree.
Interestingly, Modernism fuses contradictory concept, such as reason/unreason, intellect/emotion, subjective/objective (48). Modernists “Irrationalize the rational”, “secularize the spiritual”, “see space as a function of time”, etc.
Modernists don’t see history as an evolving logic, but work “spatially or through layers of consciousness” towards a logic of metaphor or form.
Tasks of Modernist art is “to redeem, essentially or existentially, the formless universe of contingency” (50). Art seeks to “transcend historical sequence by intersecting with it the timelessness of artistic revelation” (51).
/*Why is Becket considered a modernist? Because Post-modernism is more concerned with engaging the public, while modernism is staunchly classist. In Andreas Huyssen’s After the Great Divide, he argues that Dada, surrealism, and constructivism is separate from Modernism.*/
Liou: can art really salvage us from the crisis of modern existence?
Transcribed on Feb. 26, 2019.
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