1. Twentieth-Century Literature in Perspective May 18, 2012

2. Background Population growth Increased mobility Mass circulation and mass distribution Participation in World War I

3. Literature in Perspective Pre-War realism and nationalism (p.151) Great poetry boom as represented by the Imagist Movement (p.151-152) “Lost Generation” American theatre Harlem Renaissance Multicultural literature

4. American Imagism Imagism was a movement in early 20th- century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. Imagism called for a return to what were seen as more Classical values, such as directness of presentation and economy of language, as well as a willingness to experiment with non- traditional verse forms.

5. Group publication of work under the Imagist name appearing between 1914 and 1917 featured writing by many of the most significant figures in modernist poetry in English, as well as a number of other Modernist figures prominent in fields other than poetry. The poets attempt to isolate a single image to reveal the essence of an object. It also mirrors contemporary developments in avant-garde art, especially Cubism. Pound's Ideogrammic Method of juxtaposing concrete instances to express an abstraction is similar to Cubism's manner of synthesizing multiple perspectives into a single image.

6. Image According to Hulme, the image must enable one to “dwell and linger upon a point of excitement, to achieve the impossible and convert a point into a line”. According to Pound, an image is “a cluster of fused ideas”. It can present an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. Rciahrd Aldington argues that an image must bring the effect of the object before the reader as it presented itself to the poet’s mind at the time of writing.

7. Representatives T. E. Hulme: English writer, the first Imagist theorist. According to him, poetic techniques should become subtle enough to record exactly the momentary impressions, the expression of which is mainly through th euse of a dominant image. Ezra Pound (1885-1972): three Imagist principles Amy Lowell

8. Imagist Principles Direct treatment of the “thing”, subjective or objective Words closely contributing to the presentation Rhythm to be composed in the sequence of the musical phrase, instead of a metronome Free verse

9. Other Poets T. S. Eliot William Carlos Wallace Stevens Carl Sandburg Edwin Arlingtong Robinson Robert Frost Hart Crane (p.152)

10. Loss and Disorientation American profit form the War and economic boom Materialism and disillusionment with World War I Loss of faith

11. Literature of 1920s and 30s F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (1926) Ernst Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929) William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury (1929) John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

12. Theatre Eugene O’Neill: The Emperor Jones (1920), Anna Christie (1921), The Hairy Ape (1922), The Icemand COmeth (1946), Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956) Tennesse Williams: The Glass Menagerie (1945), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman(1947) Edward Albee: The Sandbox (1961), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)