Chapter 5 The Modern Period
Section 1 The 1920s
I. Introduction
The 1920s is a flowering period of American literature. It is considered “the second renaissance” of American literature. The nicknames for this period:
(1) Roaring 20s – comfort
(2) Dollar Decade – rich
(3) Jazz Age – Jazz music
II. Background
a) First World War – “a war to end all wars”
(1) Economically: became rich from WWI. Economic boom: new inventions. Highly-consuming society.
(2) Spiritually: dislocation, fragmentation.
b) wide-spread contempt for law (looking down upon law)
1. Freud’s theory
III. Features of the literature
Writers: three groups
(1) Participants
(2) Expatriates
(3) Bohemian (unconventional way of life) – on-lookers
Two areas:
(1) Failure of communication of Americans
(2) Failure of the American society
Imagism
I. Background
Imagism was influenced by French symbolism, ancient Chinese poetry and Japanese literature “haiku”
II. Development: three stages
1. 1908~1909: London, Hulme
2. 1912~1914: England - America, Pound
3. 1914~1917: Amy Lowell
III. What is an “image”?
An image is defined by Pound as that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time, “a vortex or cluster of fused ideas” “endowed with energy”. The exact word must bring the effect of the object before the reader as it had presented itself to the poet’s mind at the time of writing.
IV. Principles
1. Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective;
2. To use absolutely 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.
V. Significance
1. It was a rebellion against the traditional poetics which failed to reflect the new life of the new century.
2. It offered a new way of writing which was valid not only for the Imagist poets but for modern poetry as a whole.
3. The movement was a training school in which many great poets learned their first lessons in the poetic art.
4. It is this movement that helped to open the first pages of modern English and American poetry.