Dr. Jordan
WCW versus T.S Eliot Round 1
William Carlos Williams also known as WCW, was an American poet whose concept centered on modernism and imagism. He is very much a centrist of post war poetry, heavenly in the United States, and commenced the habit of open and organic form. He was concerned with everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. His most anthologized poem is “The Red Wheel Barrow” and published as part of Spring and All, which is regarded as some of his best work. Although, Williams’s diction about poetry agrees with their high modernist principles, he was not hesitant about his disagreements with major writers such as T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound.
In the poem Spring and All, it is clear that spring is an important part of this poem. Eventually it emerges as a main character taking on almost human characteristics, as it changes the world of the poem. In (lines 14-15); our first glimpse of spring is described as being “sluggish and dazed” These words usually apply to humans but are used as personification for an object or idea of spring, paradoxically T.S Eliot uses spring, particularly April as “April is the cruellest, month, breeding”, “Lilacs of the dead land(Lines 1-2)”. Both use imagery particular spring as a metaphor for the sweeping changes over the whole world in the early 20th Century. World War one is over and Carlos promotes the good of people producing new and exciting art and philosophy and new prosperity. Contrastingly T.S Eliot, though its shifts between satire and divination paints a visual of modern day through obscurity as dark, futile, full of uncertainty and despair, while still incorporating or re-working the literary past of the British customs.
It is some of those dictions, and poetic devices why Williams in his 1919 prologue to Kora in Hell, denounced Eliot as well Ezra Pound as “conformists, preoccupied with rehashing the literary glories of the past, (285)”. Carlos argument stems from his notion of speaking in modern-verse, in the language of the United States, with “verse to be alive, infusing into something of the same order, some tincture of disestablishment, in the nature of an impalpable revolution (284).” Although, Pound asserted agreeably that poetry should make a new, he discouraged Williams with the notion, past and present can make a new, by that meaning, the past is capable of modernization. For a more modern day example, Hip hop artist Kanye West’s song “Gold digger”, uses the cameo from Ray Charles “ I Got A Woman” and incorporates Kanye’s modern day depiction of a gold digging woman. The track mixes the past musical style of rhythm and blues with a present or modern bouncy hip hop beat. Eliot would agree with this example because it puts the “old and the “new” in a paradox, keeping the past unchanged and the present unpretentious, and evolutionary.
To close T.S Eliot , and WCW share high modernist principles in a broader concept such as wearing out of language, cliché and starting a new, and unpretentious art. They only differ in the issue of determining if the past is a necessity when incorporating the new.
Works Cited
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Jahan Ramazani, pp 284-285, 291-292, 474-479
Pound, Eliot, and the Rhetoric of The Waste Land
Author(s): Marshall McLuhan
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 10, No. 3, Anniversary Issue: I (Spring, 1979), pp. 557-580
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468929
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Eliot's Religious Connection( Blog question #7)
Gaston Mclemore
Dr. Jordan
T.S Eliot Religious Influence
Thomas Sterns Eliot, author of The Waste Land, has been called the most influential poet of the twentieth century. A pioneer of the modernist movement, T.S Eliot is known for fragmented, elusive poetics, and became, in his own words, a “classicists in literature, royalists in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion (Brooks, Cleanth 1948).” Eliot’s Waste Land, shows the obscure work of dark despair, yet a clear portrayal of evolvement in poetics, and literature leaning towards the modernist movement (F. R. Leavis).
Anglicanism is a tradition within the Christianity compromising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worships or church structures. It is basically an adaption of many faiths such as Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. This circle of religious beliefs make sense in context with the many societal themes in The Waste Land, such as lack of faith, lack of communication, fear of both life and death, corruption of life-water symbol, and a corruption of sex. As such, it is open to a multitude of interpretations and no two critics agree completely on its meaning. It is clear that he unequivocally believed that the very existence of the Western Civilization was threatened. The Waste Land had poignantly described the decay of civilization, and events that captured Eliot for religious and political reasons. The peace agreement between Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 confirmed Eliot’s worst fears of the weakness of the West. “Our national life seemed fraudulently,” he remarked after Munich Pact (F. R Leavis). With these dramatic events taking shape Eliot visualized a destabilization of the West or a decent into authoritarianism. Eliot had an epiphany and felt it necessary to have “a vigorous rediscovery of what it means to live Christianly. He believed that unless England and America recovered a form of Christian society, they would fall into the paganism of Russia and Germany (F.R. Leavis).
In a 1932 essay “Christianity and Communism” Eliot argued that the only Christian scheme made a place for the values “which I maintain or perish, the belief, for instance, in holy living, and holy dying, in sanctity, chastity, humility, and austerity (Christiancentury.org). This statement is of significance because Eliot portrays two kinds of people in the modern waste land. These are seen in the crowd that flows over London Bridge (62-65). He states, “I had not thought death had undone so many.” This is a reference to Dante description of the people in limbo. They were the dead who were neither bad nor good, just secularized. This is one category of people in the waste land. The other is given by another reference to Dante: “Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.” This is descriptive of people in the first level of hell, those who were born before Christ. They have no knowledge of salvation and cannot be saved (According to Dante).
The reference shows that there are also people in the twentieth century that have no faith. Eliot illustrates the lack of faith at several points. In lines 301-302, one of the Thames daughters states, “I can connect/ Nothing with nothing” Since she has no faith there no connections or meaning in her life (Wheelwright 97). There are several references in the poem “the hooded hordes walking in a ring.” Madame Sosostris sees them and the protagonist meets them as he journeys to the Perilous Chapel. The Hooded hordes are hooded because they cannot see the hooded figure, the “third that always walks beside you,” who represents Christ (Brooks 26). They are walking in a ring with no sense of purpose or direction because they have no faith.
Eliot surely did his part to redeem the time and help preserve the faith. He did this mainly through his poetry, which brilliantly displays the moral disparity of our time and recounts his own pilgrimage of faith.
Works Cited
T. S. Eliot and the Life of English Literature Author(s): F. R. Leavis Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter, 1969), pp. 9-34 Published by: The Massachusettes Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087797
Brooks, Cleanth. "The Waste Land: An Analysis." T.S. Eliot. ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Wheelwright, Phillip. "Eliot's Philosophical Themes." T.S. Eliot,.ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Philip Yancey, http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1076, www.christiancentury.org
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Waste Land 474-485
Dr. Jordan
T.S Eliot Religious Influence
Thomas Sterns Eliot, author of The Waste Land, has been called the most influential poet of the twentieth century. A pioneer of the modernist movement, T.S Eliot is known for fragmented, elusive poetics, and became, in his own words, a “classicists in literature, royalists in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion (Brooks, Cleanth 1948).” Eliot’s Waste Land, shows the obscure work of dark despair, yet a clear portrayal of evolvement in poetics, and literature leaning towards the modernist movement (F. R. Leavis).
Anglicanism is a tradition within the Christianity compromising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worships or church structures. It is basically an adaption of many faiths such as Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. This circle of religious beliefs make sense in context with the many societal themes in The Waste Land, such as lack of faith, lack of communication, fear of both life and death, corruption of life-water symbol, and a corruption of sex. As such, it is open to a multitude of interpretations and no two critics agree completely on its meaning. It is clear that he unequivocally believed that the very existence of the Western Civilization was threatened. The Waste Land had poignantly described the decay of civilization, and events that captured Eliot for religious and political reasons. The peace agreement between Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 confirmed Eliot’s worst fears of the weakness of the West. “Our national life seemed fraudulently,” he remarked after Munich Pact (F. R Leavis). With these dramatic events taking shape Eliot visualized a destabilization of the West or a decent into authoritarianism. Eliot had an epiphany and felt it necessary to have “a vigorous rediscovery of what it means to live Christianly. He believed that unless England and America recovered a form of Christian society, they would fall into the paganism of Russia and Germany (F.R. Leavis).
In a 1932 essay “Christianity and Communism” Eliot argued that the only Christian scheme made a place for the values “which I maintain or perish, the belief, for instance, in holy living, and holy dying, in sanctity, chastity, humility, and austerity (Christiancentury.org). This statement is of significance because Eliot portrays two kinds of people in the modern waste land. These are seen in the crowd that flows over London Bridge (62-65). He states, “I had not thought death had undone so many.” This is a reference to Dante description of the people in limbo. They were the dead who were neither bad nor good, just secularized. This is one category of people in the waste land. The other is given by another reference to Dante: “Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.” This is descriptive of people in the first level of hell, those who were born before Christ. They have no knowledge of salvation and cannot be saved (According to Dante).
The reference shows that there are also people in the twentieth century that have no faith. Eliot illustrates the lack of faith at several points. In lines 301-302, one of the Thames daughters states, “I can connect/ Nothing with nothing” Since she has no faith there no connections or meaning in her life (Wheelwright 97). There are several references in the poem “the hooded hordes walking in a ring.” Madame Sosostris sees them and the protagonist meets them as he journeys to the Perilous Chapel. The Hooded hordes are hooded because they cannot see the hooded figure, the “third that always walks beside you,” who represents Christ (Brooks 26). They are walking in a ring with no sense of purpose or direction because they have no faith.
Eliot surely did his part to redeem the time and help preserve the faith. He did this mainly through his poetry, which brilliantly displays the moral disparity of our time and recounts his own pilgrimage of faith.
Works Cited
T. S. Eliot and the Life of English Literature Author(s): F. R. Leavis Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter, 1969), pp. 9-34 Published by: The Massachusettes Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087797
Brooks, Cleanth. "The Waste Land: An Analysis." T.S. Eliot. ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Wheelwright, Phillip. "Eliot's Philosophical Themes." T.S. Eliot,.ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Philip Yancey, http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1076, www.christiancentury.org
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Waste Land 474-485
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Expatriate Movement( The Sun Also Rises)
Gaston Mclemore
AML 3311
Dr. Jordan
The Expatriate Movement
In its broadest sense, expatriate is any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen. The phenomenon and image of Americans living abroad is associated with certain cultural movements, particularly literature, in which expatriate individuals and communities were portrayed. Some prime examples are American literary notables who lived in Paris, from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression or the so-called Lost Generation, including Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound to name a few.
Many of the expatriates began their exodus for a multitude of reasons; World War I and the effects that it impacted on the writers of the time, the roaring twenties and the post war psychological effects that created the lost generation that many writers fell into. This attitude led to books such as Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”. George Steiner says, “Writers of the lost generation are often less reliable citizens of their nation, and frequently carry in their mind a map of the world, an imagistic or fantastic or writer geography, on which the capitals and frontiers seem at odds with the familiar political atlas.”(Steiner) He goes on to say, “The one thing that makes this affair possible is minimal equipment needed by a writer such as an imagination, intelligence, paper and a pen or a typewriter, and financed by the oblique economics of patronage, royalty, or private income, the writer has less to bind them than most of us, is freer to choose his working location in the context of pleasure or stimulus and is more disposed to mythicize and justify the activity, to attach a dramatic value to it.”(Steiner)
Some of the reasoning behind this self-exile was the disagreement of leaders and actions of America at this time. The lost generation suffered from many non-diagnosed or recognizable disorders, most commonly was post-traumatic stress disorder. The masses that left America were not only writers and artists but many of the wealthy elite, the intellectuals, college graduates and the lost generation of war veterans. In the 1920’s African-American writers, artists, and musicians arrived in Paris and popularized jazz in Parisian nightclubs, a time when Montmartre was known as “the Harlem of Paris” (Steiner). In France, the artist movement revolved heavily around Gertrude Stein, and the emergence of Avant-Garde. She was one of the major American figures in this movement. Expatriates, writers, and artists tried to have an introduction to her in hopes of getting on her good side. “America is my country” and “Paris is my homeland” (stein). This set the bar for the expatriate movement that everybody followed.
Later on the twenties, a time of post war and economic optimism, came the influx of jazz and many African American notables such as Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Larry Potter, Mildred Thompson, and Sam Middleton.
The Expatriate movement served as one of the staples for many of the most polished American as well African American writers, artists and musicians. These expatriates suffered through a lot of uncertainty, and hardship but have triumph to help take shape the modernist movement we have today.
Works Cited
Roaring Twenties Rayburn, Kevin (1997-2000). The 1920s. [Online] http://www.louisville.edu/~kprayb01/1920s.html
LITERARY EXPATRIATES IN PARIS, The library of UNC
http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/french_expatriates/paris.html
Second Countries: The Expatriate Tradition in American Writing Author(s): Malcolm Bradbury Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 8, American Literature Special Number (1978), pp. 15-39 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3506762
AML 3311
Dr. Jordan
The Expatriate Movement
In its broadest sense, expatriate is any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen. The phenomenon and image of Americans living abroad is associated with certain cultural movements, particularly literature, in which expatriate individuals and communities were portrayed. Some prime examples are American literary notables who lived in Paris, from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression or the so-called Lost Generation, including Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound to name a few.
Many of the expatriates began their exodus for a multitude of reasons; World War I and the effects that it impacted on the writers of the time, the roaring twenties and the post war psychological effects that created the lost generation that many writers fell into. This attitude led to books such as Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”. George Steiner says, “Writers of the lost generation are often less reliable citizens of their nation, and frequently carry in their mind a map of the world, an imagistic or fantastic or writer geography, on which the capitals and frontiers seem at odds with the familiar political atlas.”(Steiner) He goes on to say, “The one thing that makes this affair possible is minimal equipment needed by a writer such as an imagination, intelligence, paper and a pen or a typewriter, and financed by the oblique economics of patronage, royalty, or private income, the writer has less to bind them than most of us, is freer to choose his working location in the context of pleasure or stimulus and is more disposed to mythicize and justify the activity, to attach a dramatic value to it.”(Steiner)
Some of the reasoning behind this self-exile was the disagreement of leaders and actions of America at this time. The lost generation suffered from many non-diagnosed or recognizable disorders, most commonly was post-traumatic stress disorder. The masses that left America were not only writers and artists but many of the wealthy elite, the intellectuals, college graduates and the lost generation of war veterans. In the 1920’s African-American writers, artists, and musicians arrived in Paris and popularized jazz in Parisian nightclubs, a time when Montmartre was known as “the Harlem of Paris” (Steiner). In France, the artist movement revolved heavily around Gertrude Stein, and the emergence of Avant-Garde. She was one of the major American figures in this movement. Expatriates, writers, and artists tried to have an introduction to her in hopes of getting on her good side. “America is my country” and “Paris is my homeland” (stein). This set the bar for the expatriate movement that everybody followed.
Later on the twenties, a time of post war and economic optimism, came the influx of jazz and many African American notables such as Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Larry Potter, Mildred Thompson, and Sam Middleton.
The Expatriate movement served as one of the staples for many of the most polished American as well African American writers, artists and musicians. These expatriates suffered through a lot of uncertainty, and hardship but have triumph to help take shape the modernist movement we have today.
Works Cited
Roaring Twenties Rayburn, Kevin (1997-2000). The 1920s. [Online] http://www.louisville.edu/~kprayb01/1920s.html
LITERARY EXPATRIATES IN PARIS, The library of UNC
http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/french_expatriates/paris.html
Second Countries: The Expatriate Tradition in American Writing Author(s): Malcolm Bradbury Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 8, American Literature Special Number (1978), pp. 15-39 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3506762
Willa Jewett (Blog Question #3)
Gaston Mclemore
AML-3311
Dr. Jordan
Willa Jewett?
Students of American Literature are aware of the literary relationship between Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Cather which goes beyond the fact that each wrote of a period in American Life which both had known and loved, and which no longer exists. Miss Cather dedicates O Pioneers Miss Jewett in an acknowledgment of indebtedness to Sarah’s counsel to recapture in writing her early memories and to make style subordinate to truthful presentation. Her appreciation of Jewett and Whitman is present in her attributes in clear, fresh writing to her literary maternal heritage. Not to mention the similarity in ideals and a preference for women protagonists. The power of nature and innate connection with the animals and country life are essential to both texts. Although, one can argue that Cather’s O Pioneers expresses more universal appeal than emphasis on locale color like, Jewett’s A White Heron.
In Cather’s O Pioneers as well as Jewett’s A White Heron, Both writers share a tendency to see people in a resemblance to things of nature, and attributes nature thoughts and feelings of people. In addition, both have an implication of passion, romantic love or an embracement of female sexuality juxtaposed to nature. In part one of O Pioneers, Cather calmly says “The road led southwest, toward the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered in the leaden sky. The light fell upon the two said young faces that were turned mutely towards it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be looking with such anguished perplexity into the future; upon the somber eyes of the boy, who seemed already to be looking in the past.”(Cather 11). Willa Cather uses “watery light” as a catalyst for optimism, for the land and almost as an awakening, giving “watery light” a voice and God-Like power. Similarly, Jewett’s depiction of Sylvia within nature is underscored through attributing human characteristics through non-human beings. Sylvia begins to climb a pine tree; the tree is presented as an active being; “the tree seemed to lengthen itself out”, “The old pine must have loved his new independent, “it must have truly been amazed that morning.” (Jewett 55). Like the depiction of Cather’s “watery-light”, Jewett’s description of the tree creates a climax and expands the relationship with nature giving it, Garden of Eden imagery.
As part one, The Wild Land continues Alexandra goes in-depth to reveal her relationship with the seasons and the soil. Even during a drought, she feels closeness with the country and tries to buy more land despite her brother’s wishes. Like Jewett, Cather portrays her harmonious relationship between women and land. This connection is partially inherent, because women and the earth experience seasonal-menstrual rhythms and reach out to and are responsive to others (Benjamin1986; Weedon 1987). The connection is also social, in that women’s cultural roles bind them to land. They recognized that women were economically and socially central to the frontier landscape (Gilbert and Gubert 1989). Both women have fantasies or sensual dreams reflecting sexuality. Sylvia’s decision to reveal the location of a beautiful white heron and its nest to a visiting hunter, but it also may be metaphorically interpreted as Sylvia’s exploration of her sexuality. She fantasies about a visiting hunter, denies the relinquishment of her virginity, climaxes and he leaves disappointed. In relation to Jewett, Cather uses little Marie and Emil to explore the Garden of Eden and find her sexuality leading to her climax.
In short, Both Jewett and Cather touched on gendered related stereotypes and created female individualists rather than imitations of male protagonists. Cather and Jewett’s writings accurately depict the society of the 1960’s and struggle of change into the mid to late nineteenth century.
Works Cited
O Pioneers, Willa Cather pgs- 6-12
Geographical Literary Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Apr,. 1995), pp- 217-228
AML-3311
Dr. Jordan
Willa Jewett?
Students of American Literature are aware of the literary relationship between Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Cather which goes beyond the fact that each wrote of a period in American Life which both had known and loved, and which no longer exists. Miss Cather dedicates O Pioneers Miss Jewett in an acknowledgment of indebtedness to Sarah’s counsel to recapture in writing her early memories and to make style subordinate to truthful presentation. Her appreciation of Jewett and Whitman is present in her attributes in clear, fresh writing to her literary maternal heritage. Not to mention the similarity in ideals and a preference for women protagonists. The power of nature and innate connection with the animals and country life are essential to both texts. Although, one can argue that Cather’s O Pioneers expresses more universal appeal than emphasis on locale color like, Jewett’s A White Heron.
In Cather’s O Pioneers as well as Jewett’s A White Heron, Both writers share a tendency to see people in a resemblance to things of nature, and attributes nature thoughts and feelings of people. In addition, both have an implication of passion, romantic love or an embracement of female sexuality juxtaposed to nature. In part one of O Pioneers, Cather calmly says “The road led southwest, toward the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered in the leaden sky. The light fell upon the two said young faces that were turned mutely towards it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be looking with such anguished perplexity into the future; upon the somber eyes of the boy, who seemed already to be looking in the past.”(Cather 11). Willa Cather uses “watery light” as a catalyst for optimism, for the land and almost as an awakening, giving “watery light” a voice and God-Like power. Similarly, Jewett’s depiction of Sylvia within nature is underscored through attributing human characteristics through non-human beings. Sylvia begins to climb a pine tree; the tree is presented as an active being; “the tree seemed to lengthen itself out”, “The old pine must have loved his new independent, “it must have truly been amazed that morning.” (Jewett 55). Like the depiction of Cather’s “watery-light”, Jewett’s description of the tree creates a climax and expands the relationship with nature giving it, Garden of Eden imagery.
As part one, The Wild Land continues Alexandra goes in-depth to reveal her relationship with the seasons and the soil. Even during a drought, she feels closeness with the country and tries to buy more land despite her brother’s wishes. Like Jewett, Cather portrays her harmonious relationship between women and land. This connection is partially inherent, because women and the earth experience seasonal-menstrual rhythms and reach out to and are responsive to others (Benjamin1986; Weedon 1987). The connection is also social, in that women’s cultural roles bind them to land. They recognized that women were economically and socially central to the frontier landscape (Gilbert and Gubert 1989). Both women have fantasies or sensual dreams reflecting sexuality. Sylvia’s decision to reveal the location of a beautiful white heron and its nest to a visiting hunter, but it also may be metaphorically interpreted as Sylvia’s exploration of her sexuality. She fantasies about a visiting hunter, denies the relinquishment of her virginity, climaxes and he leaves disappointed. In relation to Jewett, Cather uses little Marie and Emil to explore the Garden of Eden and find her sexuality leading to her climax.
In short, Both Jewett and Cather touched on gendered related stereotypes and created female individualists rather than imitations of male protagonists. Cather and Jewett’s writings accurately depict the society of the 1960’s and struggle of change into the mid to late nineteenth century.
Works Cited
O Pioneers, Willa Cather pgs- 6-12
Geographical Literary Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Apr,. 1995), pp- 217-228
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