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20th Century Poetry

This lecture will cover


• A quick review of Victorian literature
• Modern literature
• Modern poetry
• Thomas Hardy as a transitional poet
Victorian Age: 1832-1890

• 1832: First Reform Act made


• 1837: Queen Victoria came on the throne.

• Poetry: Tennyson (1809-1892), Robert Browning (1812-1889),


Elizabeth Browning (Browning's wife) (1806-1861), Matthew
Arnold (1822-1888), A.H. Clough (1819-1861).

• Prose: Thomas Carlyle (1895-1881), John Ruskin (1819-1990),


Macaulay (1800-1859), Cardinal Newman (1801-1890).

• Novel: Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Thackeray (1811-1863),


Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), Emily Bronte (1818-1848), George
Eliot (1819-1880), Thomas Hardy (1840-1928).
Modern Age 1890-1980
• 1890: Naughty Nineties revolted against their ancestors. Oscar
Wilde, Hardy, Yeats, Kipling etc.
• 1901: Death of Queen Victoria.

• Poetry: W.B. Yeats (1885-1939); Georgian Period (1910 to 1935),


Imagist Movement formed in 1912 in London: Poets like Ezra
Pound and T. Hulme as the exponents; War Poetry: Poets like
Rupent Brooke, Sassoon, Graves, Wilfred Owen; T.S. Eliot (1888-
1965), Stephen Spender (1909 born), Dylan Thomas (1914-1953),
The Movement Poets (1950's): Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Larkin
etc., Later Poets: R.S. Thomas (born 1913), Keith Douglas (1920-
1944), Ted Hughes (born 1930), Thom Gunn (born 1929), Seamus
Heaney (Born (1930).
Modern literature
• The modern Age in English literature starts from the
beginning of twentieth century and it follows the
Victorian Age
• Literature in the last decade of the 19th century was
transitional.
• the period combined the traditional and the
experimental.
• As a result, modern Age became the Age of
complexity and confusion.
Common features of modern literature

 the authors of the modern Age revolted against


the trends of the Victorian Age. The young writers
of the early years of the 20th century regarded the
Victorian Age as hypocritical.
 everything was questioned. What the Victorians
had considered as honourable and beautiful, the
modern authors considered it as mean and ugly.
• Bernard Shaw "Question" "Examine" and "Test"
 Another feature of the modern Age is
disintegration of values
• there was disintegration of values in the 20th
century.
• As a result literacy became a normal thing.
• enormous output of books
• The effect on literature too was profound.
• increase in the number of readers, authors and
publishers.
• literature offered better financial prospects.
 literature of social purpose

• The literature of the early period of the modern


Age can be called the literature of social
purpose.
• The future reformers had faith in the printed
word.
• The theatre was used for social propaganda.
 The dominance of the Novel can be
given as the next feature of the
modern Age.

• For the first time in its history, the novel


became the dominant literary form in English.
• novel is more accessible to the masses than
drama
• novel is suited as a vehicle for the sociological
studies .
 the revival and rapid growth of
drama.
• After a long period of insignificance, drama
appeared as an important literary form.
• Drama was concerned with social life.
• the revival of poetic drama in the hands of
authors like T.S. Eliot
 The modern age is often described as
the age of technical experiments

• The authors desired for new forms and


methods of presentation.
 Lack of common ground is a typical
feature of the modern Age

• There is no common ground for the meeting of


the writers and the readers.
• Modern Age which contains disillusionment,
discomfort and doubt.
• As a result, modern authors have different
attitudes such as of lament, nostalgia and
thoughts
• they create new values to replace the old ones
 The next feature of the modern
literature is its uniqueness

• It is difficult to divide the literature of the Age


into schools.
• It is full of adventures and experiments
 the literature of the modern age,
is governed more by realism than
by romance
• Modern authors have concentrated their
attention on the problems of modern life
• However, authors like Butler and Huxley have
attacked the modern craze for materialism and
machinery
The next feature found in modern
literature is pessimism
• It is mainly produced by industrial growth of
our age. it reflected the sadness of the Age.

• Pessimism is also found in the poetry of the


war poets. Poets like Dylan Thomas and Hardy
are highly pessimistic in their works.
 Love and Nature are the features
of the modern Age which are
continued from the past.

• Love no longer remains romantic and magical.

• Nature is not treated in the way Wordsworth


did but it was taken as force
 Finally , literature of modern Age also
is influenced by foreign artists in the
field of drama, poetry and fiction.

• Shaw modelled his plays of ideas on the plays of


Ibsen.
• the novels of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf
have been greatly influenced by the
philosophical theories of Bergson and Freud.
20th century poetry
• the poetry of twentieth century also is both
traditional and experimental.

• It is traditional in the sense that romantic and


neo-classical modes of writing are followed.
Traditional poetry can be sub - divided into
Edwardian, Georgian and the Great War -poetry.

Experimental poetry can be subdivided into


Imagist Poetry, Neo – Metaphysical poetry, Neo -
Romantic Poetry and Surrealist Poetry.

But, experimental poetry is more characteristic of


the Age
The characteristic features of the
poetry of 20th century
1- One of the main features of modern
poetry is the abundance of its output

• this abundance has naturally resulted in the


lowering of quality.
2-modern poetry has variety of themes

• Modern poets have not fixed their area of


interest.
• They finds inspiration from
railway trains, tramcars, telephones ..etc
• The themes of modern poetry are related to
religion, mysticism, science and fairyland.
• This has given birth to a wide variety of poems.
3-Realism
• It is mainly caused by the impact of science

• Romanticism and pastoral aspects have become


things of the past.

• Realistic factors like wars, slums, ugliness, terror


and poverty have formed the themes of
modern poetry.
4-pessimism and disillusionment
• The modern Age has been rightly described as "the
age of anxiety". full of tensions and anxieties.
• Disappearance of faith in religion has added to the
gloominess of the age.

• This note can be found in the poetry of many great


poets like Hardy, Huxley and Eliot.

• Pessimism is more intellectual and more


impersonal.
5-Religion and mysticism
• Scepticism and faith are dealt with and some
poets satirise modern people for becoming
sceptic.

• D.H. Lawrence and W.B. Yeats too, are great


mystical poets.
• Dylan Thomas has written poems like
"Churchgoing" in which he has laughed at the
loss of faith of modern people.
6-Symbolism and Imagism

• modern poets chose symbolism over direct


'description.
• Symbols and metaphors made modern Poetry
impressive
7-love forms the subject of many
modern lyrics

• Robert Bridges ,W.B. Yeats , John Masefield

• Both physical and spiritual kinds of love are


mentioned in modern poetry
8- Love for nature

The poets loved nature. But they did not


spiritualize Nature like Wordsworth. they present
Nature realistically and precisely.
9- humanitarian spirit

• Modern poets love not only Nature but also the


creatures who live in her lap.
10-Modern poetry also bears the
metaphysical note

• Many modern poets have reflected


intellectual qualities of the
metaphysical poets.

• Eliot -> has done much to revive


metaphysical elements.
11- Complexity and psychological
element
• The leading qualities of modern poetry

• The revolt against the plain writing of earlier period


was under- taken by Eliot and Ezra Pound.
• Allusions, symbols, images, abrupt contrasts,
elimination of conjunctive phrases etc. have made
modern poetry complex.
• Psychological factors (Interior monologue) used as
a medium of expression.
• inspired by Psychologists like Freud and Jung.
12- different style and diction

• Poets were experimenting with new verse -


forms and poetic techniques
• The language of poetry resembles common
speech.
End of the slides

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