Grade Distribution

First Essay= 15%

Midterm=20%

Final Essay= 25%

Final Exam=30%

Participation=10%

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On Auden

Here are some things to keep in mind while reading Auden: (1) He questions the capitalist system, and the booming consumer society he feels is taking over the modern world. (2) His poetry combines popular art with the formal elements of high art, bringing together two distinct reading publics (high and low brow).  (3) He embraces the ordinary every day, relying on the movement of the city and its citizens in depicting the modern situation. (4) Poetry, for Auden, was a way to reveal a truth about something, not a way for the poet to serve his own political needs.

Discussion Questions: (1) How does the poem  “Lullaby” depict the modern version of “love”? How does Auden’s homosexuality change our reading of the poem? :What do the lines, “Lay your sleeping head my love/ human on my faithless arm” (1-2), mean?

(2) “In the Memory of W.B. Yeats” – What does Auden reveal about the power of poetry and the power of the poet? What is Auden’s poem trying to accomplish at the end; what are we, as readers, supposed to “praise’?

(3) How does the “Unknown Citizen” represent the “ideal” modern man? What  aspects of the modern condition are revealed in this poem?

 

Try to think of points of connection between Yeats and Auden. What are their similarities? Their differences? What are some good ways to tell them apart, say on a midterm?

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On Yeats

In preparation for discussion I want to give you all a brief summary of the Easter 1916 uprising in Ireland. The uprising served to end British rule in Ireland, establishing the Irish Republic. It is important to keep in  mind that though the uprising failed to achieve its goals, it was the first significant rebellion in Ireland since 1798 .  It lasted from April 24^th to April 30th and ended with the execution of the main leaders (some of whom Yeats references in “Easter, 1916). The “scope” was to seize public space in Dublin, taking over hotels, buildings, a castle, and streets. Public space, the city, the streets, etc… these are all extremely important in most modernist texts.

QUESTIONS: Yeats disapproved of violence and had mixed feelings about many of the individuals he lists in the poem. How do we read “Easter, 1916”? What does he mean by “polite meaningless words” (6) and by  “a mocking tale or a gibe” (10)? What are the narrator’s attitudes toward the actions he describes?

(2) Many scholars have identified “Three Phases” of Yeats’ writing: Romantic, Political, and Mythic. What poems would you place inside these categories? How does “Down by the Salley Gardens” differ from “The Second Coming” or “Sailing to Byzantium”?

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Things to Keep in Mind

Just a few formating reminders for the paper:

(1) Page Numbers

(2) Heading (include your name, the date, the course, the section you are in and the time)

(3) Justfy your document

(4) Do not forget to cite your sources

(5) Please have a title

(6) Put line numbers after the text you quote . For example: “Let us go then you and I” (1).

Note: Late papers will recieve a letter grade reduction for each day they are late.

 

Good luck!

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MLA Format and then some…

Look here for a very sketchy view of how to cite certain sources: http://www.studyguide.org/MLAdocumentation.htm

Also check out the Yale Modernism Lab! It is a great archive for all modernists: http://modernism.research.yale.edu/

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3 Sample Beginning Paragraphs

Find the Thesis Statement in each paragraph. Which one is the best opening paragraph? Why? What makes a good first paragraph? What are the strengths and the weaknesses in each?

 (1)   In his essay, “On Forgiveness,” Derrida reminds us that forgiveness is “often confounded, sometimes in a calculated fashion, with related themes: excuse, regret, amnesty, prescription, etc.” The narrator and leading character of Ernesto Sabato’s novel, El Tunel, Juan Pablo Castel, develops a self-confessional narration in which he realizes and confesses his “guilt,” subsequently engaging in the act of forgiveness, establishing a dialogue between his guilty-self and victim-self. Castel is a leading participant in Derrida’s “theatre of forgiveness,” part of the existential tradition previously established by characters such as Meursault and Clamence, creations of Albert Camus.[1] However, unlike his predecessors, Castel creates a paradox within his narration, one that mimics Derrida’s concept of ‘pure unconditional forgiveness’ in form and content, and expands upon the fifth ‘theme’ Derrida does not consider (‘etc’) in his analysis. 

  (2)   William Shakespeare’s, The Tempest, lives on though its ingenious manipulation of language. Every reading and stage performance reveals a new mystery created by words through their ability to transform one insight into countless others, for the reader or audience member.  The carefully structured musical harmony, entangled with Shakespeare’s mythological recreations, generates a magic-based plot that unravels in our imaginations, similar to the way words are articulated and loosened by sound.  In five acts, mirroring the five acts of Shakespeare’s final ars poetica, I will attempt to form interpretations by allowing the language to guide and redirect me toward the character and action formations, as well as the dramatic and harmonic construction of The Tempest.

 (3)   In Toni Morrison’s novels, specifically in Sula and Beloved, each chapter creates its own story, intermingling time in such a way that the past often has precedence over the present. Language for Morrison acts as a form of storytelling, and a means of living which captures many lives on many pages, written down in the form of ancestral history. She demands that her readers make sense of the fragmented stories and implications scattered throughout, writing in such a way that “the reader supplies the emotions.”[2] In fact “the reader supplies even some of the color, some of the sound.”[3] In Sula language explains the passing of time, and the changes that occur in reply to progress, mobility, immobility, and societal norms. Sula, a mobile being, creates her own existence, and in doing so loses community acceptance. In Beloved we are introduced to language as means of both remembering and un-remembering the past. This particular novel creates descriptions which help explain the process of growing out of the past and into the present. Morrison, by claiming that “a writer uses the words he does not use in order to get a certain kind of power,”[4] encourages us to discover (or at least embark on the process of discovery) the words she leaves out.

 

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Welcome !

Hello all! This blog will hopefully allow you to discuss your readings with your classmates. I am hoping that we can all contribute questions, responses, concerns, or any thoughts about the modernist literature we are reading. I will post any information, such as paper tips, discussion questions, sample thesis statements, external links etc, under the tab entitled “Irina’s Section”  and Kellye will do the same for her sections. Since this blog will put you in contact with some of the other students, not only those in your section, I ask all of you to please put down the section you are in (whether you are in mine or in Kellye’s) and the time of your section. You will not be graded on any of this, it is a merely a tool which I am hoping will allow you to discuss your weekly thoughts about the readings. Please feel free to ask questions and make as many connections as possible!

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Hello world!

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