Modern Poetry 美国现代诗歌.pptVIP

Modern Poetry Overview Background 1912-1922 a great poetry boom: 1000poets and 1000 volumes of poetry Two Themes in the 20th cent. In American poetry: introspection and social criticism (introspective social criticism) : the poet explores the depths of his own feelings with regards to what appears to him to be the injustices of the society that forms his environment modernism 1890’s-1940’s, Germany: W. W. I, loss of faith, cheap commercial values and sham business ethics a general term applied retrospectively to the wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends in the literature (and other arts) of the early 20th century.... A break with the past, a belief in art and literature as an avenue to self-fulfillment A wide range of artistic expressions: Symbolism, impressionism, futurism, constructivism, imagism, vorticism, expressionism, dada, and surrealism Modernism (continued) Modernism dramatized discontinuity 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, a lot of allusions (T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound) Critical of received beliefs; disillusioned, a strong sense of alienation, of loss and of despair. Fragmentation became a common theme; anti-hero: the person who is the main focus of the work as a hero should be, but he is weak, ineffective, inapt, not strong, brave, courageous Modernism (continued) Persistently experimental: remaking the language of literature, interest in technique and craftsmanship: streams of consciousness, the use of myth, poetic image Distinctive feature: Its strong and conscious break with traditional forms, perceptions, and techniques of expressions, and its great concern with language and all aspects of its medium Modernism (continued) In fiction, the accepted continuity of chronological development was upset by Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner, while James Joyce and Virginia Woolf attempted new ways of