T. S Eliot

 a long poem (434 lines) by Modernist writer Thomas Sterne Eliot;  Written in 1922 – a seminal year for Modernism;  Regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20 th century;  Depicts life post-WW1.

In what ways might it be considered a ‘wasteland?’

qQVaD9Y Watch this short documentary and add to your notes.

What is the poem about? ‘’ It is about spiritual dryness, about the kind of existence in which no regenerating belief gives significance and value to men's daily activities, sex brings no fruitfulness, and death heralds no resurrection” Norton Anthology The decay of moder n society Disdain at unchecked sexuality Spark Notes the sex-horror stems from the false intimacy that desire can forge in the place of genuine connection It is about the failure of men and women to get through to one another ‘a chart of [the] devastated world’ of post war Britain... a feeling of universal ruin... The moral, sexual and spiritual decay – the sterility and deep intellectual uncertainty... Widespread questioning of confidence, and the failure of science, sociology, religion, politics and the arts to provide a consistent metaphysical view of modern man.’ Stephen Coote, Penguin Critical Studies

 Unlike Atwood’s ‘speculative fiction,’ Eliot’s text is not ‘speculative’ but descriptive of the state of Britain (Europe) post war.  In what ways might it therefore be ‘dystopian’?

 What do you already know about Modernism as a style?

 Started in the 1880s and gained strength in the 1910s and 1920s (post war);  Reacted against Victorian styles (chronology, ‘safe’ endings, melodrama);  Focused on society/ the individual and criticism of both;  Played with language, form and structure and tried to ‘make it new’ (Esra Pound);  Often elitist, drawing on high-culture texts and using intertextuality; did not appeal to the masses (as Victorian literature did);  Important modernist writers: T. S Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce, Esra Pound, Ernest Hemingway;  Other artists: Bertholt Brecht in drama, and artists like Pablo Picasso and Duchamp. Want to know more? Read/ look at some of their work/ read about The Bloomsbury Group/ watch Life in Squares.

How would you describe the modernism aesthetic? 6kIGm_Q&list=PL7D797EBD172C452D

Understanding of the Modernist Style The Hay-Wain by John Constable, painted in 1821 Authority Narrative Realism Three Musicians by Pablo Picasso, painted in 1921 Rejection of Victorian: In favour of: Fragmentation Subjectivity Fractured Montage Alienation

Juxtaposition of Antiquity and Modernity Despairing at the modern world, Eliot turned to the Golden age of British Literature, to Shakespeare, to Edmund Spenser, contrasting their beauty to what he perceived to be the paucity of the rise of mass culture. In an essay on James Joyce’s Ulysses, he described what he called the Mythical Method.

The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness... Is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were... Really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words. Henry James In a letter written the day after Britain entered World War One ‘Eliot seems to capture the modernist zeitgeist: i.e., that of crisis and rupture — the sheer absence of one, totalizing view of the world’ Professor Gerald Lucas

 Listen to/ read the first part of the poem. 7rbNXk  In what ways: - Does it depict post ww1 Europe? - Is is Modernist? Don’t expect to understand most/ much of it…yet (and don’t worry that you don’t).

Montage: Montage is the selecting, editing and positioning of two or more shots of film together. Sergei Eisenstein theorised about the effects possible due to the juxtaposition of different images. Eisenstein directed the silent film ‘The Battleship Potemkin’ with its famous ‘Odessa Steps Sequence’ ‘Odessa Steps Sequence (watch from nine minutes)m As you watch the final three minutes of the Odessa Step scene, consider the effects created through Eisenstein’s use of juxtaposition.

Homework: Read Eliot’s essay ‘Ulysees, Order and Myth at m m Make notes on: Eliot’s need for past literature in post war Britain; What Eliot is saying about the essence of human nature; The effects of his use of a past literature; How he uses his literary heritage to comment on the present.