1. Literary Modernism from 1 st two decades of 20 th century... (to today ?) Belief in Western Science & Technology to effect Progress achieves status of a religion in pre-World War I Western Europe Western European Imperialism: dominates 4/5 of Earth’s land surface, represented as enlightened force of peace & progress Industrialism’s 2 nd wave: electricity, chemicals, oil, trans- portation, communica- tion technology prep for automobile, telephone, radio, airplane

2. Later C19th Mood (1870-1901) e.g Thomas Hardy: Dark mood of human winter; stern, stoic look at senseless universe > anarchy & perverse tragic ironies of elemental human passions & fate’s “Crass Doomsters” (Chance, Time, Causality) Aesthetic Movement, Decadence, Fin-de- siecle - e.g. Oscar Wilde (1) Artists/Writers alienated by “Philistine” middle-class culture e.g. > Matthew Arnold

3. Late 19 th century Mood, cont. (2) Art for Art’s Sake: Art’s Independence as (pseudo-religious) end in itself: Unique, special (mythic-symbolic) value in form, language inseparable from meaning (3) Aestheticism descends into excesses of Decadence: hedonistic, emotional debauchery, degeneration Fin de siecle [>French = “end of century”] mood: melancholy, witty, sophisticated ennui (world weariness), doom Eve of earth-shaking changes

4. Edwardian (1901-1910) & Georgian England (1910 – 1914+): Pre-World War I Storm Edwardian England > Edward VII (r. 1901- 1910) = hedonism, conspicuous consumption (by those who could afford it) Consciously anti- Victorian: attacks on Victorian art & respectability (family, education, religion), position of women, British Empire e.g. Samuel Taylor Butler’s Way of All Flesh (1884; 1903); & Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918) Anti-colonialism > fueled by U.K.-Boer War (1899-1902), Irish nationalism, & works like Heart of Darkness

5. Literary Modernism Early 20th century - Post-WW I Artists’ alienation from grey, bureaucratic, urban contemporary society = a sterile, materialistic “waste land” of “hollow men”: “Mistah Kurtz—he dead” [>Conrad, HofD] Radical break from “hollow” religion, art history, knowledge, morality, self of trad. Western civilization Artists & writers seek inspiration from new sources + turn inward to create new artistic forms for rendering contemporary chaos, disorder, alienation; & search for meaning

6. Modernist Poetic Revolution Imagism (Ezra Pound) in US, UK & W. Europe: “Make It New!” Hard, clear, precise images > haiku (vs. Rom. fuzziness & emotionalism) Direct treatment of the thing (subjective or objective) Free metrical movement Short, sharply etched, descriptive lyric (but no method for longer, complex poems)

7. The Great War (to end all wars) 1914-1918 New Apocalypse: Idealism replaced by profound disillusion- ment, cynicism, despair Catastrophe of WWI further shook faith in Western civilization, imperialism, & cultural values Wilfred Owen (1893- KIA: 1918): “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori”

8. W. B. Yeats (Irish, 1865-1939) W. B. Yeats’s career spans literary movements: 1890s’ Aestheticism gives way to tough, spare, ironic language of Modernism, but also heir of Romantics: >Wm Blake: create own system of be enslaved by another’s; warring contraries=progression; Creates complex mystical system (like Blake) Spiritus Mundi = storehouse of all human experience & know- ledge(Jung: archetypes, collective unconscious)

9. Yeats & “Second Coming” Human history: alternating 2000-year cycles, @ antithetical to values, beliefs of cycle before ca. 1900 = at end of Christian era -”center cannot hold”-antithetical new era (“rough beast” ) now slouching toward Bethlehem to be born Yeats’s metaphor: interlocking cones or spirals (“widening gyre”): Blake: without warring Contraries,” no progression

10. Yeats & “Second Coming” New Apocalypse: “Second Coming” rivals Heart of Darkness as source of phrases and metaphors used to describe the Modern experience of the 20 th century WWI fosters Modernism: chaos of (dis)belief, ominous forbidding future Yeats’s verbal magic: rich symbols, haunting cadences, emotionally suggestive