English Extra Credit
Topic 5
Modernism
is a philosophical, religious, and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, architecture, new technologies, and war. Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it New" was the touchstone of the movement's approach.
Modernist innovations included abstract art, the stream-of-consciousness novel, montage cinema, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and modern architecture. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and made use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists also rejected religious belief. A notable characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness concerning artistic and social traditions, which often led to experimentation with form, along with the use of techniques that drew attention to the processes and materials used in creating works of art.
While some scholars see modernism continuing into the 21st century, others see it evolving into late modernism or high modernism. Postmodernism is a departure from modernism and rejects its basic assumptions.
The five most striking features of modernism are individualism experimentation absurdity symbolism formalism.
TPCASTT can help you analyze a poem.
Robert Lee Frost
(March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.
Frequently honored during his lifetime, Frost is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution". He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont.
The ‘The Mending Wall’ describes how the speaker and a neighbor meet to rebuild a stone wall between their properties—a ritual repeated every spring. This ritual raises some important questions over the course of the poem, as the speaker considers the purpose of borders between people and the value of human work.
‘After apple picking’ focuses on someone who's exhausted after a long day's work in an apple orchard. Drifting between wakefulness and sleep, the poem's speaker replays the day's events while feeling anxious about all the apples left unpicked.
The ‘The Mending Wall’ describes how the speaker and a neighbor meet to rebuild a stone wall between their properties—a ritual repeated every spring. This ritual raises some important questions over the course of the poem, as the speaker considers the purpose of borders between people and the value of human work.
‘After apple picking’ focuses on someone who's exhausted after a long day's work in an apple orchard. Drifting between wakefulness and sleep, the poem's speaker replays the day's events while feeling anxious about all the apples left unpicked.
An infinitive is a verbal consisting of the word to plus a verb (in its simplest "stem" form) and functioning as a noun, adjective, or adverb. The term verbal indicates that an infinitive, like the other two kinds of verbals, is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being.
An infinitive is a verbal consisting of the word to plus a verb (in its simplest "stem" form) and functioning as a noun, adjective, or adverb. The term verbal indicates that an infinitive, like the other two kinds of verbals, is based on a verb and therefore expresses action or a state of being.
Infinitives can be used nominally eg: He likes to run. [a direct object]
Infinitives can be used as adjectives eg: I need a book to read. [a modifier of book]
Infinitives can be used as adverbs eg:To listen well, you need a quiet place. [Why do you need a quiet place?]
Infinitives can be used nominally eg: He likes to run. [a direct object]
Infinitives can be used as adjectives eg: I need a book to read. [a modifier of book]
Infinitives can be used as adverbs eg:To listen well, you need a quiet place. [Why do you need a quiet place?]
Topic 6
Imagism
was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism is sometimes viewed as "a succession of creative moments" rather than a continuous or sustained period of development. The French academic René Taupin remarked that "it is more accurate to consider Imagism not as a doctrine, nor even as a poetic school, but as the association of a few poets who were for a certain time in agreement on a small number of important principles". Imagism called for a return to more classical forms of writing, such as directness of presentation and economy of language, and a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms such as free verse. Although imagists called for a return to classical writing styles, it is important to note they did not advocate for a return to classical values, beliefs, or ideas. This is critical, as imagism followed the modernist doctrines of rejecting such beliefs.
William Carlos Williams
poems, his writing in verse form, are considered major works of the twentieth century. He was an Imagist, using colloquial, or everyday, language to create pictures, or images, in his poems. He also used idioms, or expressions comprised of common language, in his writing.
“This Is Just To Say” can be understood as a poem about the simple pleasures of everyday life. To illustrate this, the poem features a speaker who has eaten chilled plums that another person—perhaps the speaker's lover—was saving.
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
(30 October 1885– November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem, The Cantos (c. 1917–1962)
"In a Station of the Metro"
Is a poem by American writer Ezra Pound, originally published in 1913. Pound's two-line poem is a famous example of "imagism," a poetic form spear-headed by Pound that focuses above all on relating clear images through precise, accessible language. In just 20 words (including the title!), this poem manages to vividly evoke both a crowded subway station and petals on a tree branch. By juxtaposing these two very different images, the poem blurs the line between the speaker's reality and imagination and invites the reader to relate urban life to the natural world—and to perhaps consider each of these realms in a new light.
The reflexive pronouns are compound words. In each one, the first part is a personal pronoun and the second part is always self. They are often used for emphasis.
An intensive pronoun is a word ending in -self or -selves that is used in combination with a noun or pronoun to place special emphasis on it. For example, “myself” in the sentence “I did it myself” is an intensive pronoun used to emphasize the subject pronoun “I.”
Demonstrative pronouns are four common and easy pronouns (usually used nominally, but sometimes adjectivally) that call attention to the antecedents. They are typically present in the immediate verbal or physical context.
Interrogative pronouns, which we use in questions every day.
Indefinite pronouns, which are indefinite because they are typically used without any clear, specific antecedents. They are sometimes organized into several overlapping groups.
Topic 8
The Lost Generation
The Lost Generation was the social generational cohort in the Western world that was in early adulthood during World War I. The generation is generally defined as people born from 1883 to 1900 and became of age in either the 1900s or the 1910s. The term is also particularly used to refer to a group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s.Gertrude Stein is credited with coining the term, and it was subsequently popularised by Ernest Hemingway, who used it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises: "You are all a lost generation."Lost" in this context refers to the "disoriented, wandering, directionless" spirit of many of the war's survivors in the early postwar period
‘The snows of kilimanjaro’
Harry, a writer, and his wife, Helen, are stranded while on safari in Africa. A bearing burned out on their truck, and Harry is talking about the gangrene that has infected his leg when he did not apply iodine after he scratched it. As they wait for a rescue plane from Nairobi that he knows won't arrive on time, Harry spends his time drinking and insulting Helen. Harry reviews his life, realizing that he wasted his talent through procrastination and luxury from a marriage to a wealthy woman that he doesn't love. In a series of flashbacks, Harry recalls the mountains of Bulgaria and Constantinople, as well as the suddenly hollow, sick feeling of being alone in Paris. Later, there were Turks, and an American poet talking nonsense about the Dada movement, and headaches and quarrels, and watching people whom he would later write about. Uneasily, he recalls a man who'd been frozen, his body half-eaten by dogs, and a wounded officer so entangled in a wire fence that his bowels spilled over it. As Harry lies on his cot, he is aware that vultures are walking around his makeshift camp, and a hyena lurks in the shadows. Knowing that he will die before he wakes, Harry goes to sleep and dreams that the rescue plane is taking him to a snow covered summit of Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. Its Western summit is called the Masai "Ngàje Ngài," the House of God, where he sees the legendary leopard. Helen wakes, and taking a flashlight, walks toward Harry's cot. Seeing that his leg is dangling alongside the cot and that the dressings are pulled down, she calls his name repeatedly. She listens for his breathing and can hear nothing. Outside the tent, the hyena whines — a cry that is strangely human.
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
Francis Macomber is on an African safari; Macomber is thirty-five years old, a trim, fit man who holds a number of big-game fishing records. However, at the moment, he has just demonstrated that he is a coward. However, members of the safari are acting as though "nothing had happened." The natives at camp carried Macomber into camp triumphantly, but the gun-bearers who witnessed Macomber's cowardice do not participate in the celebration. In a flashback, the reader realizes that Macomber and his beautiful wife, Margot, are wealthy Americans, and that this jaunt is their first safari — and that Macomber, when faced with his first lion, bolted and fled, earning the contempt of his wife. Of course, though, she has been contemptuous of him for some time; Francis' running from the lion like a scared rabbit has only increased her dislike for her unmanly husband. She makes no secret of this as she slips off in the middle of the night for a rendezvous with the safari guide, Robert Wilson. Next day, as she observes Francis gaining a measure of courage as he engages in a standoff with a charging water buffalo, she realizes that if Francis continues to prove himself strong and willful and courageous, he might leave her and rid himself forever of her sharp-tongued ridicule. As the standoff with the second water buffalo becomes more intense as the water buffalo's horns inch closer and closer to goring Francis, Margot takes aim at the water buffalo, shooting Francis in the back of the head, and he dies at the most courageous moment of his "short happy life."