lecture9：美国现代诗歌的兴起.doc

Lecture Nine: Modern PoetryDuring the first decades of the 20th century, modernism became an international tendency against positivism and representational art in art literature. It is assumed that modernism was the consequence of the transformation of society brought about by industrialism and technology in the course of the 19th century. The essence of modernism was a break with the past, and it also fostered a belief in art and literature as an avenue to self-fulfillment. It included a wide range of artistic expressions such as symbolism, impressionism, post-impressionism, futurism, constructivism, imagism, vorticism, expressionism, dada, and surrealism.1. Modernism dramatized discontinuity (a sense of disjunction) and imminent severance from the past while making determined efforts to use the past, its values and artistic forms by incorporating them in new literary production.2. Modernists had a sense of fragmentation in social communities and the fragmentation within the individual himself. 3. The distinctive feature of literary modernism was its strong and conscious break with traditional forms, perceptions and techniques of expression, and its great concern with language and all aspects of its medium.Imagism:Major feature: Imagism was only one of the new techniques of writing poetry that was part of the modernist period and it was one of the most essential techniques.1. With a spirit of revolt against conventions, imagism was anti-romantic and anti-Victorian.2. Imagism produced free verse without imposing a rhythmical pattern. The rhythm was composed as if the poet were making a musical phrase.3. In a sense, imagism was equivalent to naturalism in fiction. Imagism in poetry came from the same basis as naturalism in fiction.4. Imagism tried to record objective observations of an object or a situation without interpretation or comment by poet.The most outstanding figures of the movement were Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell and Hilda Doolittle. Pound championed the movement from 1912 to 1914, setting down the Imagism principles.Ezra Pound (1885-1972)Often identified as the father of modern American poetry, he led the experiment in revolutionizing poetry. Pound was Americas first self-conscious innovator in poetry and one of the most important imagist poets and critics of his time. His major work of poetry is the Cantos, a long poem which he wrote from 1915-1949.Three principles of Pound: 1. Direct treatment of “thing” whether subjective or objective.2. Use no word that does not contribute to the presentation.3. As regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome. TSEliot (1888-1965)Eliot was a poet, playwright, and literary critic. His literary reputation is generally deemed great that his teacher Ezra Pound. TS Eliot became the acknowledge leader of the new poetry and criticism by 1925 and almost dominated poetry and criticism in the period between two world wars and shaped the tastes and the critical vocabulary of a generation.Major works: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, Four QuartetsThe Waste Land shows the search for regeneration by people who live in a chaotic world, and it is the masterpiece of T.S. Eliot It consists of five segments, each of which contains many fragments incorporating in a variety of voices and characters not only literary and historical allusions but bits and pieces of contemporary life, of the historical past, and of myth and legend. The organizing principle of the poem is the myth of death and rebirth. The poem is not affirmative as the quest for regeneration remains unfulfilled. The Waste Land reads like the manifesto o f the “Lost Generation”. It has evoked a great deal of comment on its originality and on its severe attack on postwar Europe. Eliot was different from Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman wrote a kind of poetry that was designed to praise American dreams; he wanted to praise American dreams and to have a wide audience of the common people reading what he wrote. So Whitman wrote with the accepted tradition of American life, try to express the common aspirations of Americans. Eliot was different from Whitman. He did not accept the validity of the American dream. He was not optimistic like Whitman. This changed his audience. His audience was not the common people but elitists who took a view of society different from mass culture. Eliot did not accept those commercial values. He criticized the trend in society, so he withdrew from mass culture to an elite culture. His audience was small, and in some ways, he was pleased that his audience was small.Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963)During the course of his career, he changed from a national critic to a national hero. His verse at first was terrifying, showing a dark side of human life, human society, and the problems which confronted his own life. By the end of his life, his poems were filled with more sunshine.Frosts poems are New England in their setting, and are characterized by the familiar speaking voice of daily life. The subjects come from daily life or ordinary people. Frost wrote rural poetry in the pastoral tradition. In both emotion and language, he was restrained, conveying his message by implication. Frost did not write pastoral poetry as a way to escape from modern life. He did it as a way to understand modern life.Frosts poetic style is highly appreciated in the countr