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Imagism. Dr Rose Lucas. Victorian Poetry. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘The Lady of Shalott ’: On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky: And thro’ the field the road runs by To many tower’d Camelot ;. Imagism.
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Imagism Dr Rose Lucas
Victorian Poetry • Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘The Lady of Shalott’: On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky: And thro’ the field the road runs by To many tower’d Camelot;
Imagism Imagismwas a literary movement begun in the early twentieth century by the American poets Ezra Pound, Hida Doolittle (H.D.) and Amy Lowell. Its key rationale was to break with what they saw as the florid and excessive style of Victorian poetry.
Imagism In an essay on Imagism, Pound wrote that Imagist poetry required three things” That is should involve ‘direct treatment of the subject.’ That it should ‘use no word that does not contribute to the presentation.’ That the Imagist poet should ‘compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.’
Imagism The Imagist poem thus tends to be: Short and direct, not using excessive adjectives or sentimentality; Making use of the rhythms of ordinary speech and free verse; A focus on the precision of the image as the key vehicle for the poem’s ‘meaning’ – shearing away any distracting description or elaboration.
Imagism to Modernism The tight and crystallised image of the Imagist poem, with its emphasis upon newness/a break with the old, became the basis for the emergence of literary Modernism. Poetic Modernism as an extended version of Imagism, using the building blocks of Imagism to construct new views of a new and confronting world. Poets such as Pound, H.D. William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot.
Factors behind Modernism • Modernism was a literary, artistic and cultural ‘movement’ which began in the first decade of the twentieth century and continued until the beginning of the second world war in 1939. • Key Literary Proponents: • James Joyce • Ezra Pound • Hilda Doolittle • Virginia Woolf • T.S Eliot
Influences • A response to: • Formalism and traditionalism of much 19thC art • Darwin 1859 Origin of the Species • Marx 1867 Das Kapital • Freud 1891 The Interpretation of Dreams • Einstein 1916 Theory of Relativity • World War I, 1914-1918
Modernism Ezra Pound, from ‘Hugh Selwyn Mauberly,’ 1920: ‘The age demanded an image Of its accelerated grimace…’
Aspects of Modernism • A reappraisal of art forms – on the understanding that art needs both to reflect and be meaningful to a contemporary audience. • A response to fundamental challenges to ways of thinking about the social, the religious, even the idea of the self and of the mind. • A tendency to deconstruct narratives and styles of the past – and then to put them back together into different shapes • A re-using of classical sources: eg Dante, Shakespeare, Greek, Chinese, Japanese literature
Aspects of Modernism • Techniques of literary collage, juxtaposition, multiple voices and/or simultaneous perspectives • Use of a ‘stream of consciousness’ (William James, Freud, Woolf) • A loss of absolute meaning – but a concommitant struggle to re-establish meaning (in contradistinction to postmodernism)
Modernism William Carlos Williams wrote, in a review of Marianne Moore’s poetry, that the modernist poem developed from the ‘flaw, the crack in the bowl’ of previous literary style. To consciously change poetic style, was an attempt to both reflect and embody a changing world (WWI, post Darwin, Freud, revolution…), and to critique it.
‘A love song’ What have I to say to you When we shall meet? Yet— I lie here thinking of you. The stain of love Is upon the world. Yellow, yellow, yellow, It eats into the leaves, Smears with saffron The horned branches that lean Heavily Against a smooth purple sky. There is no light— Only a honey-thick stain That drips from leaf to leaf And limb to limb Spoiling the colours Of the whole world. I am alone. The weight of love Has buoyed me up Till my head Knocks against the sky. See me! My hair is dripping with nectar— Starlings carry it On their black wings. See, at last My arms and my hands Are lying idle. How can I tell If I shall ever love you again As I do now? http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19911
Piet Mondrian, ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie’ 1942 Mondrian’s visual art reflecting the image and pulse of NYC, being the thing, as well as commenting on it.
