Modernism:
What does 'The Wasteland' mean?
1) how has it been interpreted? (cite examples)
2)what are some of the key features
3) In what way has it been influential
Post-Modernism
1) What common qualities do 'the beats' share? Why 'beats'?
2) How is beat poetry linked to rap?
3) How was Bob Dylan's 'Masters of War' involved in controversy during the Bush administration?
4) On what grounds was 'Howl' accused of being obscene - grounds for the defense?
5) What kind of protest song/rap other media have come out in the last decade? Is there a spirit of protest anymore?
What does 'The Wasteland' mean?
1) how has it been interpreted? (cite examples)
2)what are some of the key features
3) In what way has it been influential
Post-Modernism
1) What common qualities do 'the beats' share? Why 'beats'?
2) How is beat poetry linked to rap?
3) How was Bob Dylan's 'Masters of War' involved in controversy during the Bush administration?
4) On what grounds was 'Howl' accused of being obscene - grounds for the defense?
5) What kind of protest song/rap other media have come out in the last decade? Is there a spirit of protest anymore?
1) how has it been interpreted? (cite examples)
ReplyDeleteThe story of “The Wasteland” (1922) has been interrupted in multiple ways, it is a very complicated and philosophical poem written by T.S. Eliot. In my readings of it, it can be described as a slow descent into chaos. Examples to prove this point are from section 1, so labeled “The Burial of the Dead” and “Death By Water”.
The first example is from “The Burial of the Dead” on line 76, having been translated from French “Omg! hypocrite reader! -my similar , -my brother !”
This example proves that the writer was a times at odds with what he was writing.
The next example is from “Death By Water” from line 357 to 358, “Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop, But there is no water.”
This example with the repetition of the word both “drip” and “drop” only go to show that the story will meet an untimely confusing end.
And from another point of view, certain people believe that the poem is for Buddhism or some people say that the poem is with regard to the nihilistic thought which is after the World War I. The reason the poem has been interpreted into various way is that Eliot used various citations or grammars that have not been used and seen so far. Furthermore, he annotated his poem. He made messages in the poem through ideas of other poets or authors such as Shakespeare, Frazer, Wagner and Dante.
Reference：
Eliot, T. (1992). The wasteland. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg.
Pericles, L. (n.d.). The Waste Land. Retrieved May 24, 2017, from http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Waste_Land
2)what are some of the key features
ReplyDeleteThis question was really tough to me because I can see some features from the poem but it is too objective to get true meanings or features I think.
After reading the story “The Wasteland”, I have found it has many voices. If you only read it, these voices make “The Wasteland” seem like a long never ending and droning story. (Eliot, S, T. 1922). This spoken word version of “The Wasteland” offers the reader with a clearer understanding of who is speaking at each section and what gender, age and ethnicity they are (what are important to the overall story). Having multiple voices in this text stretches the narrative and makes it more believable as it is not a story only from one person’s perspective.
The usage of narrative direction and choice given by the titles of each section. The five sections as follow: The burial of the dead, A game of chess, The fire sermon (huge section, half of the text), Death by water and What the thunder said. I think it could help the readers understand scenes and sentences and the poem itself.
Contains a lot of imaginative and metaphoric phrases (I think). Like Line 177-178, “The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends.” This paints in my mind and perhaps the reader's mind a very clear picture of what is going on and this kind of sentence and dialogue of a similar nature help to create a depth to the story. So I’d say the use of metaphor in his story and strong imagery is one of its most key features.
These are three key features I have found in the poem.
3) In what way has it been influential
ReplyDeleteAt first, I think T.S.Eliot’s “The Wasteland” created whole new ways and genres to explore in text and maybe in life (The lone wanderer theme or motif), for example stories like the Walking dead with multiple character perspectives. With the creation of video games since the 1970’s, I believe he helped to give a narrative base to the following games and movies:
The Wasteland (1984) and Wasteland 2 (2014)
Fallout 3 (2008) and Fallout New Vegas (2010)
Mad Max Trilogy (1979-1985 and the modern tale, 2015)
Secondly, I think its influence lies in encouraging people to emerge from years of war. The Wasteland (1922) was written after the World War I (1914～1918). At the period after the war Europe and European were absolutely devastated. People would like to recover the world and themselves to they were before the World War I. However, they were hurt in their mind and to recover them was not easy at all. Then Elliot might want people restore themselves as what mentioned in poem --cold ice melt through the sunshine in spring. Therefore, he wrote the poem for people. Furthermore, he might want as well the people who are in modern society restore as well if they are hurt by sciences and civilizations coming. So it has been influential through recovery people hurt by war, sciences, revolution and civilizations.
Reference:
Eliot, T. (1992). The waste land. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg.
Calareso, J. (n.d.). The Waste Land: Structure and Style Explained. Retrieved 24 May 2017, from http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-waste-land.html
Johnson, M. (2015). Opinions about “The Wasteland”.
Leverson, M. (1984). A Genealogy of Modernism: A study of English literary doctrine. (PP 212-216). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Post-modernism
ReplyDelete1. The common qualities the Beats share is that of a rejection of the ’then’ current narrative values of the generation that they live in. They espoused sexual liberation, a rejection of materialism and the push to have the ‘American Dream’. They also gravitated towards sexual freedom and exploration, the use of drugs to delve into and enhance their creativity. They similarly, started to focus on the human condition and the individual characters or their subject matter.
a. The Beats were essentially a group of male writers that got together in the mid-1940’s and really started a radical movement as such when it came to the written creative word in poetry, fiction and public comment. They formed as a group whilst they were still at university and they were made up of males.
b. Allen Ginsberg was later asked who or what the Beat generation was. He replied that there was no beat generation just a bunch of guys who are trying to get published.
c. However, it was Jack Kerouac who coined the phrase the ‘beat generation’ in 1948.
4. Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ was accused of being obscene based on the social morays of the time. The actual details of the case evolved around the publisher of Ginsberg’s book being charged with selling obscenity. The definition of obscenity at the time was, according to the US Supreme Court: Material which deals with sex in a manner appearing to prudent interest, utterly without redeeming social important.
The central issue was held with a running description of homosexuality and sex acts, and a broad range of words and activities that would have disturbed the ‘then’ guardians of moral authority in their pilgrim beds.
A number of literature critics and English literature professors were brought into the trail to give expert opinion on the question of what was obscenity in the writing. Mark Schorer, an English Professor defended the poetry by saying that “you cannot translate poetry into prose.” Luther Nichols, a literary critic with the San Francisco Examiner, viewed it as a form of jazz phraseology. Ultimately, the judge found that the ‘Howl’ poem did/does have some redeeming social importance. This ultimately contributed towards the freeing up of the written word and the ability to use untrammelled self-expression.
As an aside to this, at roughly the same time in New Zealand, we were also starting to go through our own ‘witch hunt’ for obscenity and wayward youth. About two years before the ‘Howl’ obscenity trail, we had the Christchurch trail of Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme - ‘Heavenly Creatures’. Much of the news reporting at the time made mention of a lesbian connection between the two female killers. An off shoot of this was a country-wide report commissioned on the moral delinquency of children and adolescents - The Mazengrab Report (1954).
It’s interesting that you brought up that the beat generation was made up of all male writers. As a group of forward thinking and non-conforming men, why were the women undermined in this movement? It isn’t that they did not exist in their lives or played a part in the movement, there certainly were quite a few well educated women who surrounded these men, but were merely set aside. Especially the women who found themselves in relationships with these men such as Carolyn Cassady and Joyce Johnson. The whole of the beat generation and movement is all connected by the relationships they all had with one another. It is a real shame that these women are mostly remembered for their relationships with the men such as Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg when they themselves are also accomplished writers. Some even publishing more work than their male counterparts. Even some of their most popular published works are the memoirs of their time with these men.
DeleteJohnson even claims, “The whole Beat scene had very little to do with the participation of women as artists themselves. The real communication was going on between the men, and the women were there as onlookers… You kept your mouth shut, and if you were intelligent and interested in things you might pick up what you could. It was a very masculine aesthetic.”
Even the female characters within the male writer’s books were portrayed as stereotypical, traditional women of the 1950’s. As pioneer’s of the rejection of the ‘American Dream’ and sexual liberation they still held onto the patriarchal ideals of their time and how inferior women are compared to them. Both the men and the women of the beat generation only rebelled to a certain point. Most of the women, usually the wives, rebelled against society just enough to where they were unconventional but were not completely ostracized. This could be why they were less popular or well known because they were not able to take the same risks like their male counterparts could.
The beat generation did pioneer an important counterculture during a very conservative 1950’s America, but they only rebelled so far. The movement was unfair to women even in a post first wave feminism society, but this movement was a precursor to the hippie movement which does lead into second wave feminism and a stronger lgbt community.
References:
Beat Generation. (2017). En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 31 May 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_Generation#Women_and_the_Beats
Farrugia, J. (2017). Missing Beats: Marginalised Women of the Beat Generation | The Artifice. The-artifice.com. Retrieved 31 May 2017, from https://the-artifice.com/beat-generation-women/
Wills, D. (2017). Women of the Beat Generation. Beatdom. Retrieved 31 May 2017, from http://www.beatdom.com/women-of-the-beat-generation/
What kind of protest song/rap other media have come out in the last decade? Is there a spirit of protest anymore?
ReplyDeleteOne of the most powerful denunciations of war and popular music is Bod Dylan’s song ‘Masters of War’. The song was written during the Cold War period in America and rebels against the people who took America to the ruins. Since than there have been many songs written that protest against one thing or the other. Songs such as Lady Gaga’s “Born this way” is one song to name. The motive been this song is to spread love and to love each other as they are and should be accepted by the society; the lyrics “I’m on the right track baby I was born this way” carries the whole person of this song. The song was also surrounded with controversies when it first came out, which proves that things like songs or anything in general that stands against the social norms or tries to make a positive impact on society will always be treated differently. But the spirit of protest is still alive in today’s society with artists taking responsibility to raise awareness towards a social injustice like the “Born this way” song. The song can be described as rebelling against what in the society is right and what people are supposed to be like. The song contradicts this and tells us that everyone is beautiful and that we should be comfortable with the type of people we are as we were “born this way”. If we think about it than Gaga’s song could have possibly been a very powerful self-acceptance anthem which was criticised by many during the the release of this album (Hall, 2016). This might be because things were a lot different in 2011 than now. Those were the times when there was less awareness about loving ourselves and more about fitting into what the society wants which is why Gaga’s protest against the society’s outlook was criticised.
Reference:
Hall, J. (2016). A look back at Lady Gaga’s misunderstood masterpiece. Retrieved from Dazed: http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/31300/1/a-look-back-at-lady-gaga-s-misunderstood-masterpiece