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Table of Contents
Liter'ary Modernism: The Struggle for Modern History
Course Title clcevi,.F 1~" . f(Ct_F t}ru 1r I , r
Professor Biography .............................................................. 1
Scope:
Course Scope .................................................................. ..... 3
In these eight lectures we examine modernism and its two primary divisions,
Lecture One: Introduction: Modernity and Modernism ...................... 5 '
~ecture Two: Transition .......................................................... 8
paleomodernism and neomodernism. Through the works ofT.S. Eliot, William
Carlos Williams, Henry James, Ezra P.ound, and others we discover the conflicts
~ecture Three: Agamst Theory ................................................ I 0
.t
ecture F~ur: Waste Lands ..................................................... 12
ecture Five: The Complete Consort .......................................... 14
that have kept alive debates throughout the twentieth century.
Lecture One contrasts two poems possessing completely different styles but
nearly identical conclusions. William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelban-ow"
ecture Six: Modernist Theater ................................................. 16 and T.S. Eliot's "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service" are examples of
neomodernist and paleomodernist poetry, respectively. We learn that the two
ecture Seven: Apocalypse ...................................................... 18
schools of modernism developed at the same time and that enthusiasts of one
tecture Eight: Postwar, Postmodern, Postculture ............................ 21
-iossary ... .......................................................................... 23
· school mistrusted those of the other.
In Lecture Two we follow T.S. Eliot from philosophy student to poet. Eliot had
iographical Notes .............................................................. .. 24 little patience for the philosophical debates of the early twentieth century. We
ibliography ....................................................................... . 26 learn that Eliot felt that philosophers had mistakenly moved away from the study
of fictions at work and toward a quest to find an ultimate reality. Eliot rejected
the practice of philosophy and became a poet.
Chapter Three traces the shifting styles of W.B. Yeats and Henry James. Yeats
began his career as a romantic poet but later shifted to realism and then to
paleomodernism. James started out as a realist, as exemplified in his book,
Portrait of a Lady. He later became a symbolist.
Lecture Four describes the impact of World War Two on the modernists. We
learn Eliot's motivations for writing "The Waste Land" and for his conversion to-
Christianity following his evident disenchantment with the secular world. D.H.
Lawrence was famous for his paganism but he too was disenchanted with society
and seemed to endorse a restoration of Christianity.
James Joyce's book Ulysses is a prime example ofpaleomodernism, and we
spend Lecture Five studying several of the book's chapters. Chapter 15, "Circe"
is rich with characters and chaos, something inspired by Freud's dream work.
While modernist literature has thrived, modernist theater has failed. Henry James
lamented that "I may have been meant for the drama but certainly not for the
theater." Modernists believed that realist drama belonged to the bourgeoisie and
there was great resentment of middle class taste. Yeats attempted to make drama
the battleground against what he viewed as the middle class monopoly on art. In
Lecture Six we examine several of Yeats' plays and learn how Eliot handled
commercial theater.

The final lectures, Lectures Seven and Eight, cover the modernists during and
after the Second World War. Literary politics and their impact are studied in

©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership ~l 1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 3
these two discussions. We learn about the politics of the left and right and how
the modernists were divided in support of the Axis and Allied powers. We also Lecture One
study the failed efforts to make art for the working class and how Ezra Pound Introduction: Modernity and Moderation
attempted to recreate society through his support for Mussolini. Finally, we look
at the modernists' postwar consensus through the works of Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, Scope: This lecture discusses the two kinds of modernism: paleomodernism
and Samuel Beckett. and neom~dernism. A poem by William Carlos Williams, "The Red
Wheelbarrow" is presented as the neomodernist response to tl:1e
paleomodernism of T.S. Eliot and others. The lecture then begins the
examination of the characteristics that differentiate the.two schools.

Outline
I. The subjects of the first two lectures are two words: modernity and
modernism.
A. This first lecture will examine the word modernism.
B. The ambition "is to make those words so complicated, so difficult, and
so ramified, that you will never want to use either of them again."
II. Modernist literature cannot be understood without understanding how
modernism became a word.
A. There is no such thing as modernism.
B. There are only modernisms.
III. The British critic Frank Ke1mode distinguishes between two kinds of
modernism:
A. Paleomodernism, which is original mo.dernism.
B. Neomodernism, which is new modernism.
IV. Two modernist poems provide illustration of these types of modernism.
A. William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" is a poem meant'to
be read, not spoken.
I. The poem is to be read as an exclamation.
2. Williams has selected a very difficult syntax.
3. The poem is intensely ideological and constitutes an assault on T.S.
Eliot through the use of simplicity.
B. "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service" by T.S. Eliot is also modernist,
but it is radically different from "The Red Wheelbarrow."
I. The final stanza of Eliot's poem brings the reader to approximately
the same place as Williams' poem.
2. The final sentence undermines all the learnedness of the rest of the
poem.

4 © 1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership f?\ 1C\(\1 TL...-.. T ............... t...; __ f " I - - - - - - - · T _: __ _:....__ ...1 n. _ __.._ __ _
 C. These two poems bring to light the enhancement of everyday life, but A. The precursor modernist poetry is that of Walt Whitman.
one is neomodemist while the other is paleomodemist. I. His "Song of Myself' makes light of classic gravity and rambles
1. Williams asks: why should we put up with the complexity of Eliot's
purposefu Ily.
poem?
2. Coherence is forced and immoral, Whitman claims.
2. Neomodemism is the modernism of William Carlos Williams,
Gertrude Stein, the Dada movement, and the surrealist movement. B. The "Lost Generation" of Gertrude Stein made up its own rules for art.
3. Paleomodemism is the modernism ofT.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, X. Anticlassism was admired by the neomodernists, as were iconoclasm and
William Butler Yeats, and Igor Stravinski. regionalism.
V. There are few similarities between paleomodemism and neomodemism. A. Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams were the leading critics of
A. These two schools make up diametrically opposed but mutually classical modernists.
dependent philosophies of history. B. Mistrust of the paleomodernists also was a symptom of the
1. They represent two definitions of the word "modem." neomodernists' mistrust of Europe.

2. We are taught that the modem period began with the Renaissance.
B. The Renaissance was invented in France by intellectuals as a tool for Recommended Reading:
social change, through a rebirth of classical antiquity. Eliot, T.S. "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service"
VI. Fredrich Nietzsche called upon people to look back on an old view of Williams, Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow".
humanity. Whitman, Walt, "Song of Myself'
A. Nietzsche did not see his views as radical or revolutionary, but rather as
reactionary. Supplemental Reading:
B. Nietzsche said the early Greeks knew that the will to reproduce and the Kermode, Frank. "The Modern"
will to power are holy.
1. Instinct is always good arid the suppression of instinct is always Questions to Consider:
bad. I. What are the principle defining characteristics of paleomodemism and
2. Ambivalence, Nietzsche said, is productive. neomodernism?
C. Nietzsche's views were heresy to the rationalists. 2. Why were the neomodemists attracted to iconoclasm?
VII. "The Mind of Europe" was Nietzsche's metaphor that established a
psychological culture of Europe.
A. Paul Valery, T.S. Eliot, and Freud all accepted the metaphor.
B. The pilleomodernists believed that there should be a reevaluation of the
present by associating it with the past.
VIII. The paleomodern claim is that modernism is the climax of everything that is
modern.
A. James Joyce's rewrite of Homer's poem is the classic example.
B. Professional readers and writers have become less impressed with
paleomodernism over time.
IX. Neomodernism and paleomodernism begin at roughly the same time, with
paleomodernism dominating prior to the Second World War, and
neomodernism coming to the fore after the war.

6 ©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership © l 99 l The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 7
 Lecture Two Recommended Reading:
Transition Eliot, T.S., Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F.H. Bradley.

Supplemental Reading:
Scope: The neomodemist view is examined at the beginning of this lecture.
We learn that T.S. Eliot's work was influenced by his early study of Geertz, Clifford, "Blurred Genres" American Scholar.
philosophy and that he disagreed with the direction taken by Questions to ConsiCler:
philosophers. Therefore, Eliot chose the discourse of poetry over that
1. Why did Eliot and Williams differ on the importance of new ideas?
of philosophy.
2. Why did Eliot say that philosophy should be a conversation and not a
Outline science?

I. Eliot was, for Williams, the embodiment of a bad idea.

A. Williams called Eliot's work Hellenic, or classical.
B. Eliot's dislike of new ideas gave urgency to Williams' sense that a new
idea should be born
II. The terms have been made backward.
A. Classic modernist poets and aesthetics are one logical endpoint of a
radical, uncompromising relativity.
B. Neomodernism may, in fact, derive from a variety of philosophical
absolutism.
C. Neomodernists believe the Platonic view that things exist
independently.
D. Eliot descends from every type of absolutism or objectivity.
E. For Eliot, culture is human nature, and reality is its product.
III. Eliot developed as a philosopher first, then as a poet.
A. Eliot's unpublished notebooks fonn a strong critique of philosophy.
B. Eliot has been tenned a post-philosopher who believed that the chief
problem of philosophy was its language
C. He felt that philosophers had moved away from the study of "fictions at
work" to the quest to find an ultimate reality, which Eliot regarded as a
mistake.
D. Eliot said that philosophy was a conversation, not a science.
E. Eliot finished his critique of philosophy in 1916, and then he left the
discipline and took up poetry.
IV. Paleomodernists assert that meaning is a matter of context.
A. Eliot said the neomodemists were arbitrary.
B. On the other hand, the neomodemists felt their preference for the
objective statement is a return to pure theory

8 ©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership ((')1991 The Teachirn! Conmanv Limited Partnershio 9
 Lecture Three VI. Eliot felt that the while of modern literary theory and practice is united in
the pursuit of the reconstitution of classic, authentic tradition.
Against Theory
A. Romanticism and neoclassicism were personalities that had once been
Scope: We review the career of W.B. Yeats and trace his shift from symbolist joined.
to realist. Conversely, Henry James' career is examined because it B. Eliot could be considered a post-Romantic, admiring the classics but
moves from realist to symbolist. At the end of the lecture we hear T.S. preferring.the clarity of the Romantics.
Eliot's assertion that romanticism and neoclassicism are personalities
that were once joined.
Recommended Reading:
Eliot, T.S., "In Memory of Henry James"
Outline
Wells, H.G.,"Of Art, of Literature, of Mr. Henry James"
I. The paleomodemists had a strong resistance to ideas.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.
A. Eliot said ideas are implicit in the experience of everyday, but when
ideas are extended they become separated from reality. Supplemental Reading:
- B. Nietzsche argued that history is circular and that there would be a Pound, Ezra, "A Retrospect"
reunification of culture.
Questions to Consider:
C. Modernism became a fusion of opposed poetics.
1. Do the transitions of Yeats and James indicate that the lines separating the
II. W.B. Yeats moved from symbolist to realist. modernists were artificial?
A. Yeats was born to a Romantic household. 2. Why did H.G. Wells and others believe that art should be realistic?
B. His early works were like those of Keats and Shelly, but later he
switched from romantic poetry to symbolist poetry.
C. Around 1912, Yeats began to rnove his poetry toward realism, yet even
then, his essays continued to attack realism.
D. Yeats moved to a fourth stage 'in the 1920s when he became a classic
paleomodernist.
III. To the degree that the transcendent and reality are indistinguishable, they
are in-econcilable.
A. Yeats had reached the same conclusion that Eliot had.
B. Others who shared this view (e.g., Henry James, Leo Tolstoy) were
from areas outside Western power.
IV. Henry James moved from realist to idealist.
A. Portrait of a Lady is a realist novel.
B. James had concerns about consciousness as the origins of perception.
V. Neomodernists disliked and feared the absorption of the paleomodernists.
A. The paleomodernists pursued wholeness.
B. H.G. Wells and other neomodernists believed that art should be
realistic.

ID 1991 The Teach in!! C:omnanv Timitecl Partnf'r<:hin 11

10 ©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
 Lecture Four Recommended Reading:
Waste Lands Eliot, T.S., "The Waste Land"
Lawrence, D.H., "Apocalypse", "The Risen Lord", The Man who Died.
Scope: The effects of the Depression and the Second World War were
Supplemental Reading:
profound, and the modernists reflected their concern in art. T.S. Eliot,
D.H. Lawrence, and others viewed their role to be therapists to the Macquarrie, John, The Scope of De-Mythologizing.
world. Eliot's "The Waste Land" and works by Lawrence called for a
Questions to Consider:
new religion to lead to the rebirth of society.
1. From Lawrence and Eliot's points of view, what is necessmy to reawaken
Europe and bring its citizenry back to life?
Outline
2. How dOes Dickens influence "The Waste Land"?
I. The modernists viewed the Depression and the World Wars as the effects
of a worldwide nervous breakdown.
A. Modernists viewed themselves as therapists to the world.
B. Eliot decided in 1920 to write "The Waste Land" to respond to the
world situation.

II. Eliot's poem cannot be viewed as a reflection of the author's malaise.

A. Charles Dickens influences Eliot, and the reader of the poem is
Ebenezer Scrooge.
B. The poem echoes the modernist theory of the death of Europe.

III. Eliot was shunned by modernists after his Christian conversion.

A. A The visions of conservative and radical modernists were similar,
yet admirers ofD.H. Lawrence were forbidden to read Eliot.
B. Eliot did not make matters better when he called modernists, "modern
heretics."

IV. Eliot and Lawrence shared a view of a paralyzed society with its citizens
mired in frivolity.
A. Eliot concludes that most people are only very little alive.
B. Lawrence, in St. Mawr and the Man who Died, concludes that" hardly
anybody in the world really lives, and hardly anyone really dies.
C. Lawrence and Eliot are especially critical of the church and its failure
to tend to the people.

V. Lawrence believed that myths were essential to human life.

A. Famous for his paganism, Lawrence reassessed his hatred of
Christianity.
B. In 1928 he wrote The Man Who Died, a novel bout Christ's
resurrection.
C. Some fo1m of Christianity, Lawrence believed, was Europe's last
hope.

12 © 1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership © 1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 13
 •
Lecture Five A. The critics appreciate Joyce's feel for chaos.
The Complete Consort B. Post-modernists simply ignore the structure of the novel.
VII. Chapter 15 ("Circe") is a dramatic chapter starring every character and
icope: James Joyce's Ulysses is presented as the ultimate paleomodernist every inanimate object in the book.
novel. Joyce was trying to capture the full circle of history and the
A. "Yes and no" is the paradox running through the novel.
novel's structure uses chaos and opposing themes to create one
phenomenon. Even postmodernists admire the work because of the use B. Joyce draws· on Aristotle's word "entelechy," where phenomena do not
of chaos. exist except in process.
C. Chaos is rigidly structured in this chapter.
Outline D. The chapter is set in Nighttown, and only the laws of dreaming apply.
[. The lecture begins with a summary of the previous lecture on E. Joyce is paraphrasing Freud's "dream work."
paleomodernism. VUI. In Chapter 18, "Penelope", Molly Bloom recreates the world.
A. James Joyce's Ulysses is the summary statement of high modernism. A. Her soliloquy rewrites the entire novel.
B. It is published the same year as "The Wasteland" and Ezra Pound's B. Joyce's novel is a theodicy redefined as a defense of the universal
early cantos. order.
C. Ulysses blended all modernist themes.
Essential Reading:
Joyce's selection of the title was bold and shocking.
Joyce, James, Ulysses.
A. The title signifies Joyce's descent to, in Hegel's definition, "the
bourgeoisie epic in prose." Freud, Sigmund, Introduct01J; Lectures on Psychoanalysis
B. The title indicates the belief that the twentieth century was the Ithaca of Aristotle, "The Metaphysics"
history, where history had come· full circle.
Supplementary·Reading:
III. The structure of the novel is set out with the first sentence. Senn, Fritz, Joyce's Dislocutions
A. The first sentence begins, "stately, plump."
Questions to Consider:
B. Joyce is using two opposite terms to create a phenomenon.
1. Why are opposing themes impotiant to the structure of Joyce's book?
IV. A return to pagan classicism is rejected in the novel.
A. Joyce offers instead a kind of classicism where Greece and Zion are 2. How is chaos "structured" in Ulysses?
united.
B. Joyce is asserting that the Hebrew Bible is authentic but the New
Testament is not.
V. Realism and symbolism in Joyce.
A. Ulysses dissolves artificial distinctions as Eliot does in his
philosophical work.
B. The novel blends realism and symbolism, along with elements of fiction
and poetry, as does Yeats' work.
C. Based upon Homer's novel ofreturn, Ulysses paiiicipates in a
Nietzschean expectation that history must come full circle, making the
novel a prime example of paleomodernism.
VI. And yet, post-modernists are among the novel's admirers.

14 ©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership © 1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 15
 Lecture Six VI. T.S. Eliot's incursion in the 1940s and 1950s commercial theater was
modernist and successful.
Modernist Theater
A. Eliot, unlike others, said that ai1 should respond to the public.
Scope: While modernist literature thrived, we learn from this lecture that B. Eliot sought to make his unlikely material a modernist and poetic
modernist drama failed to win popular supp011. Some poets such as version of ancient ritual tragedy.
Yeats decided to do battle with the middle class through drama. By the C. Eliot sought to unite modernity with its greatest enemy, modernism.
1940s, T.S. Eliot had decided that ai1 should respond to the public and
he was able to find commercial success. Essential Reading:
Yeats, W.B., Collected Plays
Outline Eliot, T.S., "The Cocktail Pai1y", "The Confidential Clerk" "The Elder
Statesman"
I. Modernism exists in many genres but not always successfully.
Supplementary Reading:
II. The modernistic novel is a success.
Notle, F.O., The Early Middle Class Drama.
-A. Drama is failed by modernism
B. Henry Joyce ceded that "I may have been meant for the drama but Questions to Consider:
certainly not for the theater." 1. Was T.S. Eliot abandoning modernism with his plays of the 1940s and
. III. Realist prose drama belongs to the middle class. 1950s?
A. The middle class had imposed its taste on the arts. 2. How did Yeats seek to transfonn theater?

B. Yeats chose drama as the battleground against the middle class

monopoly.
IV. Yeats' views of society and social tension are expounded in his dramas.
A. Yeats felt that drama was overly theatrical, and his response was the
creation of a theater where as much as possible was made a11ificial.
B. In the "Four Plays for Dancers," the characters wear masks, and all
expression and the masks convey character.
C. In "The Words Upon the Window Pane," Yeats brings realist prose
drama into direct conflict with modernist spirit drama by placing a
modernist play within a realist frame play.
D. "The Land of Heart's Desire" and "On Baile's Strand" contrast family
life with freedom.
E. "Purgatory" is the penultimate play to fuse stylization and realism.
V. The basic ordering myth of"Purgatory," as with totalitarian movements, is
the myth of annual renewal.
A. The play p011rays the struggle between generations.
B. "Purgatory looks forward to the Cold War and the comjng work of
Samuel Beckett.

16 ©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership © 1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 17
 Lecture Seven D. The Depression and the war in Spain shaped the generation.
1. Auden wrote his poem, "Spain," about the conscious acceptance of
Apocalypse guilt in the "necessary murder", meaning murder for a just cause.
2. This remark brought the wrath of George Orwell, who called it
Scope: The Depression and the Second World War altered the focus of the "written by a poet to whom murder is at most a word."
modernists. Most modernists were involved in politics but the
movement was represented on both the right and left. The Spanish IV. Ezra Pound represented the political far right.
Civil War had a tremendous impact on the writers. The politics of Ezra
A. Pound moved from Paris to Italy in 1924. In 1941 he broadcast over
Pound are examined at the end of the lecture.
Roman radio at the invitation of Mussolini.
B. In 1943, Pound was indicted in absentia for treason.
Outline
C. He was an-ested by American troops in 1944, found not guilty of
I. The final two lectures will discuss the Second World War, literary politics, treason by reason of insanity, and sent to St. Elizabeth's mental hospital
and the impact of the war on literary politics. in Washington, D. C.
A. In this lecture we will talk about the "party line," with the , D. Pound was not released until 1958, whereupon he left for Spain.
neomodernists tending to be on the political left in support of the Allies. E. In the 1960s Pound fell silent, apparently as an act of penance.
B. Those who were paleomodernist (or classic or high modernists) tended
V. To explain Pound, it helps to return to the beginning of the lecture series
to be right-wing and support the Axis powers.
and the idea of the Renaissance.
C. The final lecture will reject this "party line."
A. Jacob Burckhardt argues in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
that the rebirth of ancient culture in the fifteenth century would not have
II. The "30s Generation" is the key neomodernist group in England and is
occmTed ifthere had not been a rebirth of political order.
comprised of political leftists including Cecil Day Lewis, George Orwell,
Christropher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, and others. B. Burckhardt calls this order "the state as a work of art," with cultural
aspirations.
A. By leftist we do not mean a commitment to liberalism or socialism.
C. Interest in the Renaissance is nowhere more apparent than in the writing
B. Most writers who supported the left or right did so not in spite of the
of Ezra Pound.
violence, but, rather, because of it.
D. Pound's cantos exist to provide a blueprint for a renaissance with art
C. Even the moderates began as extremists in the 1930s. T.S. Eliot began
creating a healthy society.
as a monarchist and Franco supporter.
E. Pound felt that he was the "Mind of Europe" and could influence
III. The 30s Generation grew up reading Eliot's poems but became disillusioned Mussolini.
by his religious conversion. F. Pound's tragedy was that he realized too late that human life might be
A. They turned to everything that Eliot did not represent-notably, impervious to perfection.
simplicity and appeal to the working class.
B. Auden and the other leaders of the 30s Generation sought to create Essential Reading:
mass art untainted by commercialism, but the effort failed. Pound, Ezra, "America: Chances and Remedies", The Cantos, Guide to Kulchur,
C. The 1930s poets were often called the "schoolboy poets," for they had Jefferson and/or Mussolini, Social Credit: An Impact
come from the upper class and were trying in vain to hide their Auden, W.H., The Ascent of F6, "Spain"
privileged backgrounds.
Supplementary Reading:
Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
Redman, Tim, Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism

18 ©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership ©I 99 I The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 19
Questions to Consider: lecture Eight
1. Did the Renaissance play a role in convincing Pound that he could bring Postwar, Postmodern, Postculture
about a new society through art?
2. Why were many modernists drawn to political violence? Scope: This final lecture takes us from Evelyn Waugh, who presented us with a
'"Hollywood metaphysics" in which the fake world is ideal, to Samuel
Beckett, who unites the themes of modernism and thus helps define
modernism's end. The modernists are no longer against the bourgeoisie
and are trying to find ways to understand and influence the middle
class.

Outline

I. Modernism after World War II.

A. T.S. Eliot in 1939 said that he feared that the hostilities would continue
to be fought in literature.
B. Sartre feared that the hostilities would stop after the war.
C. Both viewed the war as something complex that battles could not solve.
II. By 1948 Eliot had declared himself an adversary of Sartre.
A. In "The Cocktail Party," Eliot tells Sartre that other people constitute
our salvation and not our hell, as Sartre said.
B. Whatever the appearance of dispute, this lecture will assert that there
has been a postwar consensus.
C. Postwar consensus can be examined in the work of T.S. Eliot, Evelyn
Waugh, and Samuel Beckett.

Ill From the 1940s on, Eliot's works are war prose.
A. Eliot felt he was now in agreement with his old adversaries-
Shakespeare, Milton, Kipling, and others-but he said that his work
was a failed variation of theirs.
B. His assumption was that all perspectives were somehow valid and
indispensable.
C. He saw that modernism was coming to an end and called for a new
simplicity.
D. This signaled a conversion to mediocrity and a shift to the
neomodernists' project ofresisting high culture.

IV. The premise of postwar consensus is illustrated by Evelyn Waugh's work.

A. Waugh's fiction reflects an obsession with the Second World War as a
revelation of the meaning of culture.

20 ©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership © 1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 21
 -
B. The Loved One, ostensibly about a pet mortuary, is the study of what
ues Waugh called the Anglo-American cultural impasse.
Glossary
C. Waugh gives us Hollywood metaphysics in which a fake world is the Dada Movement: An artistic and literary movement that rose in Zurich and
artist's homeland. New York. Its headquarters were in Paris and the emphasis was on expression
D. At the end of The Loved One, Waugh takes on the art world, arguing free from restraints. The photographer Man Ray was a member of the group.
that modem artists were the first to fall in love with death. The movement lasted until the mid- l 920s.
E. Waugh then moved toward iconoclasm, toward William Carlos Neomodernism: The movement to recreate art and literature by throwing out all
Williams and recoiling from complexity and contradiction. structure and meaning. The poet William Carlos Williams is an example of a
neomodemist. ·
V. In Waiting/or Godot, Samuel Beckett heralded the end of modernism. Modernism: A term used since the early 20th century. The meaning has
A. The play lacks all development, has no character, and reflects a developed and changed but is generally defined as the international movement of
resistance to standard Western assumptions. literature, drama, aii and music that dominated the first four decades of this
B. Later, Beckett returns to high modernist aesthetics with his plays of the century.
1970s and 1980s.
Paleomodernism: The modernists who sought to adapt classical style are
C. The shadow war of modernism and postmodernism 'was no longer refeITed to by this category, notably T.S. Eliot and James Joyce.
relevant.
Realism: Its characteristics include factual description and naITation. Realism is
D. The 1972 play "Not I" has a plot and a sense of closure.
viewed as literature in opposition to sentimentalism.
E. Beckett faced the atrocity of what this century has been and responded
to it by evoking pity from his audience. Surrealism: The movement was a radical effort in art and beyond intended to
bring about social and political reform. Art and literature was influenced by
Freudian theories of dreams. In literature, the unconscious process was liberated
Essential Reading: from conscious censorship, allowing encounters between two otherwise
Beckett, Samuel, Endgame, Waiting for Godot, Ends and Odds unrelated elements and the melding of dream and reality.
Eliot, T.S., The Cocktail Party, Four Quartets Symbolism: Associated primarily with a school of French poets writing in the
Sartre, Jean-Paul, No Exit and Other Plays late 19th century. The work of Baudelaire was its inspiration and Paul Verlain is
Waugh, Evelyn, The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy associated with the movement, as is Edgar Allen Poe. Symbolism developed
from Romanticism but it was more intellectual. The Symbolists were of
Supplementary Reading: influence to T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats.
Waugh, Evelyn, The Letters of Evelyn Waugh

Questions to Consider:
I. Why did T.S. Eliot call for a new simplicity?
2. How did the war alter the aiiists' perspective on their work?

© 1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 23

22 ©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
 -
Creeley, Robe11. A Sense of Measure,_ London: Calder & Boyars, 1972.
Bibliography
Davie, Donald. "T.S. Eliot: The End of an Era," Twentieth Century, vol. 159
(April 1956).
dure One: Introduction: Modernity and Modernism
Eliot, T.S. "Francis Herbert Bradley" (1927) and "What Is Minor Poetry?"
(1944), Selected Essays, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1964
'istotle. Poetics, trans. Stephen Halliwell, Chapel Hill: University of North
_ _ _ _ _. Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F.H Bradley
Carolina Press, 1987.
(completed 1916, first published 1964 ), New York: Columbia University
1rckhardt, Jacob: The Civili~ation of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), 2 vols., Press, 1989.
trans. S.G.C. Middlemore, New York: Harper & Row, 1958.
_ _ _ _ _. "New Philosophers," New Statesman 11 (July 1918)
iot, T.S., "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service" ( 1918), Collected Poems,
_ _ _ _ _."Why Mr. Russell Is a Christian," Monthly Criterion 6 (August
1909-1962, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1963
1927).
_ _ _ _. "Preface" to E.A. Mowrer, This American World London: Faber
& Gwyer, 1928. · Geertz Clifford. "Blurred Genres,: American Scholar, vol. 49 (spring 1980)
_ _ _ _ _."Thick Description," The Inte1pretation of Cultures, New York:
~nnode, Frank. "The Modern" (1966), Modern Essays, London: Fontana,
1971. Basic
Books, 1973.
ietzsche, Friedrich: Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufinann. New
York: Random House, 1966. Gunn, Thom. The Occasions of PoetJy, London: Faber, 1982.
7ilosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, trans. Marianne Cowan. Chicago: Quine, W.V. "On What There Is," From a Logical Point of View, New York:
Regnery, 1962. Harper & Row, 1963.
mofsky, Erwin. "'Renaissance'--Self-Definition or Self-Deception?" Rorty, Richard. "Nineteenth-Century Idealism and Twentieth Century
Renaissance and Renascence in Western Art, New York: Harper & Row, Textualism," Consequences of Pragmatism, Minneapolis: University of
1969. Minnesota Press, 1982.
ein, Gertrude. "Poetry and Grammar" and "Portraits and Repetition," Writings Williams, William Carlos. "Prologue to Kora in Hell" (1920), Selected Essays,
and Lectures, 1909-1945, Harrnondsw011h: Penguin, 1967 New York: New Directions, 1954.
:tlery, Paul: "Letter from France: The Spiritual Crisis, "The Athenaeum, 11 Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe,
April 1919, pp. 182-83. New York, Macmillan, 1953.
hitman, Walt. Song of Myself (1855), Collected Poet1y and Prose, New York:
Library of America, 1982. Lecture Three: Against Theory
'illiams, William Carlos: "Al Pound Stein" (1935) and "Prologue to Kora in
Hell" (1920), Selected Essays, New York: New Directions, 1954
Eliot, T.S. "In Memory of Henry James," Egoist 5:1January1918.
_ _ _ _. "The Red Wheelbarrow" (1923), Complete Poet1y, vol. 1, New
_ _ _ _ _. The Letters of T.S. Elliot, vol 1. New York: Harcourt, Brace
York: New Directions, 1986.
1988.
'oolf, Virginia. DiaJy, Vol. 2 (1920-1924) New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1978.
_ _ _ _ _."Ulysses, Order and Myth" The Dial 75:5, Vobember 1923.
eats, W.B. "A General Introduction foriny Work" (1937), Essays and
_ _ _ _ _. The Use of Poet1y and the Use ofCriciticsm, Cambridge:
Introductions, New York: Macmillan, 1968.
Harvard University Press, 1933.
James, Henry. The Beast in the Jungle, in the Better Sort, New York: Scribner's,
ecture Two: Transition 1903.
Logenbach, James. At Stone Cottage, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
ostello, H.T. Josiah Rovce's Seminar, 1913-14, ed. Grover Smith, New 1989.
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963.

© 199 l The Teaching Company Limited Partnership © 199 l The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 27
Mallarme, Stephane. Selected Poet1y and Prose, ed. MA Caws, New York: New Lecture Five: The Complete Consort
Directions, I 982. Aristotle: "The Metaphysics," The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of a Tragedy, (I 872), trans. Francis Golffing, McKeon, New York: Random House, 1941.
New York: Doubleday, I 956. Eliot, T.S. "Ulysses, Order and Myth," The Dial 75:5, November 1923, pp.
Pound, Ezra. "A Retrospect" (1913, I 918), Literary Essays, ed. T. S. Eliot, New 480-83.
York: New Directions 1935. Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce, New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
Schlegel, Friedrich. Dialogue on Poet1y and Litermy Aphorisms (1797-1800), Ulysses on the Liffey, New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).
trans. Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, University Park: Pennsylvania State Freud, Sigmund. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis ( 1916-17), trans.
University Press, 1968. James Strachey, New York: Notion, 1966.
Wells, H.G., "Of Art, of Literature, of Mr. Henry James", Boon. London, 1915. "Psychoanalytic Notes Upon an Autobiographical Account of a Case of
Wilson, Edmund. Axel's Castle, New York: Scribner's, I 931. Paranoia" (1911), Three Case Histories, ed. Philip Rieff, New York:
Collier, 1963.
Yeats, W.B. "The Circus Animals' Desertion" (1937-38), "The Fascination of
What's Difficult" (1909-1910), The Green Helmut and Other Poems Kenner, Hugh. Dublin's Joyce (1956), New York: Columbia University Press,
· (1910), "the Man Who Dreamed ofFairyland" (1891), "The Tower" (1925), 1987 edition.
"Red Hamahan's Song about Ireland" (1894), and "The Wanderings of Joyce's Voices, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Ulysses.
Oisin (1889) in Collected Poems, New York: Macmillan, 1956, A Vision London: Allen & Unwin, 1980.
(1925) New York: Macmillan, 1937. Senn, Fritz. Joyce's Dislocutions, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1984.
Lecture Four: Waste Lands
Lecture Six: Modernist Theater
Eliot, T.S. After Strange Gods: A primer qf Modern Heresy, New York: Edel, Leon. The Life of Hemy James, vol. 3, New York: Avon, 1962, pp.
Harcomi, Brace, 1934. , 279-345.
_ _ _ _ _. "Gerontion" (1919), Collected Poems, 1909-1962, New York: Eliot, T.S. The Cocktail Party, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950.
Harcourt, Brace, 1963. _ _ _ _ _- The Confidential Clerk, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954.
_ _ _ _ _ . The Waste Land: Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts _ _ _ _ _. The Elder Statesman, New York: Fan-ar, Straus, 1959.
Including Annotations of Ezra Pound, ed. Valerie Eliot, (New York:
_ _ _ _ _.The Family Reunion, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939.
Harcourt, Brace, 1971.
_ _ _ _ _."Poetry and Drama" (1951), On Poet1y and Poets New York:
Kenner, Hugh. "The Anymous," The Pound Era, Berkeley: University of
Fan-ar, Straus, 1957.
California Press, 1971.
_ _ _ _ _."Ulysses, Order, and Myth," The Dial 75:5, November 1923, pp.
Lawrence, D.H. Apocalypse (1930) Harmondsworth: Penguine, 1974. "The
Risen Lord" (1929), Assorted Articles, New York: Random House, 1930, St. 480-83.
Mawr and the Man Who Died (1925, 1928), New York: Vintage, 1953. Joyce, James. "Drama and Life" (1900), Critical Writings, New York: Viking,
Macquan-ie, John. The Scope of De-mythologizing, London: SMC Press, 1960. 1959.
Stravinsky, Igor. The Poetics of Music, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Kennode, Frank. "Poet and Dancer Before Diaghilev," Modern Essays. London:
1940. Fontana, 1971.
Yeats, W.B. "The Second Coming" (1919),_Collected Poems, New York: Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy (1872), trans. Francis Golffing, New
Macmillian, 1956. York: Doubleday, 1956.
Nolte, F.O. The Early Middle Class Drama, Lancaster, PA: Lancaster Press,
1935.

28 © 1991 The Teachine. Comoanv Limited Partnershio ©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 29
 Stock, Noel. The Life of Ezra Pound, New York, Avon, 1970.
-
rien, Conor Cruise. "Passion and Cunning: An Essay on the Politics ofW.B.
Yeats," In Excited Reverie, ed. A.N. Jeffares and K.G.W. Cross. New
York: Macmillan, 1965. Lecture Eight: Postwar, Postmodern, Postculture
vens, Wallace. The Necessary Angel,(New York: Vintage, 1951.
1ts, W.B. Collected Plays, London: Macmillan, 1934. Beckett, Samuel. Endgame, New York: Grove, 1958.
____. Essays and Introductions , London: Macmillan, 1961. _ _ _ _ _. Ends and Odds, New York: Grove, 1976.
____. Explorations, London: Macmillan, 1962. _ _ _ _ _. Waiting/or Godot, New York: Grove, 1954.
____.Ideas of Good and Evil, London: Macmillan, 1903. Eliot, T.S. Christianity and Culture, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949.
____. On the Boiler, Dublin: Cuala Press, 193 8. The Cocktail Party, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950.
____. Pages fi·om a Diary Written in Nineteen-Hundred and Thirty, Four Quartets, New York: Harcomi, Brace, 1943).
Dublin: Cuala Press, 1944. "Last Words," The Criterion 18, January 1939.
_ _ _ _. Plays and Controversies, London: Macmillan, 1923 On Poet1y and Poets, New York: Noonday, 1957.
_ _ _ _."The Symbolism of Poetry," The Dome, April 1900. "The Social Function of Poetry," Norseman 1, November, 1943.
''T.S. Eliot Talks About His Poetry," Columbia University
cture Seven: Apocalypse Forwn 2 Fall 1958.
Richardson, John. "The Catch in the Late Picasso," New York Review of Books,
1den, W.H. (with Christiopher Isherwood), The Ascent of F6, in Two Great 19 July 1984.
Plays, New York: Vintage, 1935. "Spain" (1937), Selected Poems, New Sartre, Jean-Paul. No Exit and Other Plays, trans. S. Gilbert, New York:
York: Vintage, 1979. Vintage, 1949.
trckhardt, Jacob. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S.G.C. Stravinsky, Igor and Robert Craft: Retrospectives and Conclusions New York:
Middlemore, New York: Harper & Row, 1958. Knopf, 1969.
tace, William. The Political Identities of Ezra Pound and TS. Eliot, Stanford, Waugh, Evelyn: The Letters of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Mark Amory, New York:
University Press, 1973. Ticknor & Fields, 1980, pp. 214, 248, 259, 319-20, 369
tnningham, Valentine. British Writers of the Thirties, Oxford: Oxford The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy, Boston: Little, Brown, 1948.
University Press, 1989. Williams, William Carlos. "Prologue to Kora in Hell" ( 1920), Selected Essays,
npson, William. "Just a Smack at Auden" (1937) in Robin Skelton, ed., Poet1y New York: New Directions, 1954.
of the Thirties, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964
regor, A. James. Young Mussolini and the lntellectural Origins of Fascism,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.
rwell, George. Homage to Catalonia, New York: Harcourt, Brace 1952.
mnd, Ezra. "America: Chances and Remedies" New Age 5 June, 1913.
The Cantos, New York: New Directions, 1950.
Guide to Kulchur, New York, New Directions, 1970.
Jefferson and/or Mussolini London: Liverright, 1970.
"Murder by Capital" The Criterion 12:49 July 1933.
_ _ _ _. Social Credit: An Impact, Loindon: Nott, 1935
edman, Tim. Ezra Pound and Italian Fascism, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1991.

©1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 31

 NOTES
Recommended Secondary Readings

Bloom, Harold. A Map of Misreading ,New York: Oxford University Press,

1975.
Cunningham, Valerie. British Writers of the Thirties, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989.
Green, Christopher. Cubism and Its Enemies, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987.
Jameson, Fredric. Fables ofAggression, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1979.
Kenner, Hugh. A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers, New York: Knopf,
1983 .
A Ho111e111ade World: The American Modernist Writers, New York: Knopf,
1975.
The Pound Era, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers, New York: Knopf, 1988.
Kermode, Frank. Modern Essays, London: Fontana, 1971.
Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: A Secret Hist01y of the Twentieth Century.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Perl, Jeffrey. Skepticism and Modern Enmity, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1989. ,
The Tradition of Return, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Perloff, Marjorie. The Dance of the Intellect, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.
Poggio Ii, Renato. The The01y of the Avant-Garde, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1968.
Quinones, Ricardo. Mapping Literwy Modernism, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985.
Rorty, Richard. Consequences of Prag111atis111, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1982.
Vendler, Helen. Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poet1y,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980
Zwerdiling, Alex Virginia Woolf and the Real World Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1986.

'.l.') ({")I QQ I ThP TP.:>f'hino rnmn.:>n~: I irnitPtl P.:>rtnPrd1in © 1991 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 33