War Poets and Modernist Literature: An Analysis of Brooke, Owen, Eliot, Joyce, and Woolf, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

Scarica War Poets and Modernist Literature: An Analysis of Brooke, Owen, Eliot, Joyce, and Woolf e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THE WAR POETS when the First World War broke out, thousands of young men volunteered for military service; most of them regarded the conflict as an adventure undertaken for noble ends but in the battle of the Somme in 1916 this sense of pride and exhilaration was replaced by doubt and disillusionment. For the soldiers, life in the trenches was hell. There was also a group of poets who volunteered to fight in the Great War. They managed to represent modern warfare in a realistic and unconventional way. These poets became known as the WAR POETS. RUPERT BROOKE life and woks Rupert Brooke was born in 1887 and was educated at Rugby School and then went to King’s College Cambridge. He was a good student and athlete and became popular for his handsome looks. He was also familiar with literary circle like the Bloomsbury Group. He joined up at the beginning of the conflict but saw little combat since he contracted blood poisoning and died in April 1915. Brooke’s reputation as a war poet is linked to the five sonnets of 1914 in which he advanced the idea that war is clean and cleansing. Traditional not only in form, his poems show a sentimental attitude which was completely lost in the brutal turn that war poetry took in the works of the other War Poets. The publication of Brooke’s war sonnets made him immensely popular, turning him into a new symbol of the “young romantic hero”. THE SOLDIER In this poem Brooke demostrates the love he feels for his country. The protagonist justifies his death and that of others during war. The soldiers are proud to sacriface themself for the country. Brooke gives an idealized and romantic version of england and to underline this he uses the sonnet WILFRED OWEN Wilfred Owen was born in 1893 in Shropshire, England. He concluded his studies at London University and later became an assistant vicar. In 1913 he began working as an English tutor for a family in France but returned to England in 1915 to volunteer for the army and fight in the First World War, where he was involved in the horrific trench warfare in France. In 1917, traumatised by shell shock he was sent to recover in a war hospital in Scotland. Here he met another great war poet, Siegfried Sassoon. Owen was killed just one week before the end of the war. He is part of the War Poets whose poetry focused on revealing the brutality and tragedy of war. POETRY There is no honour or glory in Owen's poetry but what he called 'the pity of war". It was this 'pity' and his own experiences of fighting which generated his creative powers. His work is evocative, passionate and personal and full of irony and distrust for the establishment and their message of glory and honour. His was a 'modern' vision of warfare and one which expresses compassion for senseless human suffering. UNCONVENTIONAL POETRY Owen's poetry was innovative not just in his themes but also technically with his original use of alliteration, internal rhyme, half-rhyme. He also used a variety of tones, from strongly satirical to colloquial. DULCE ET DECORUM EST Dulce et decorum est is based on the poet experience of horrors of war in the tranches and it is an attempt to communicate the “pity of war” to future generations. The latin title means “it is sweet and honourable”. Owen talks about all the crulties, meannes and bestiality of people with his direct and realistic style. the soldiers present a frightened and disappointed altitude, probably because before entlisting they didn’t know the brutality of war. Owens uses the poem because it’s a less idealized and more realistic than the sonnet T.S. ELIOT Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, Thomas Stearne Eliot studied Philosophy at the Sorbonne, Paris and then at Harvard. In 1914 he moved to London where he met the poet and literary critic Ezra Pound, who influenced and promoted his work. He became a British citizen in 1927 and converted to Anglicanism. From this moment his poetry became more religious. Eliot died in London in 1965. At the beginning of his career he claimed to have been strongly influenced by the French symbolist poets, and also John Donne for their combination of sensuousness and intellectualism. However, already in his early works Eliot had created a completely new and unique form of poetry, making him one of the most dominating poetic figures of the English-speaking world. ELIOT’S STYLE Eliot's style rejects traditional poetic images and introduces symbolic images, often out of any context, a technique he described as 'the objective correlative'. In order to understand Eliot's poetry, the reader must focus on the symbolic power of the images and all the connections that can be made to those images. Gradually the poem's message becomes clear as all these images, symbols and memories come together to form one conclusion brilliantly put together with Eliot's use of free verse. WORKS Eliot's work can be divided into two different periods: before and after the conversion to Anglicanism. • The works of the first period are all characterised by a pessimistic vision of the world, without any hope, faith, ideals or values. Prufrock and Other Observations , Gerontion , The Waste Land and The Hollow Men belong to this period. • Purification, hope and joy are the key words of the works of the second period: the poetry of Journey of the Magi, Ash Wednesday, Four Quartets and Murder in the Cathedral. Both these plays are written in verse, have choruses in the manner of Greek tragedy and alternate colloquial and biblical rhythms. THE WASTE LAND The Waste Land is Eliot's most famous poem and defined as the most significant work of modernist literature. Divided into five sections it is dedicated to Eliot's friend and poet, Ezra Pound. The first four sections of The Waste Land correspond to the elements of earth, air, fire and water. The final fifth section is usually interpreted as referring to ether, the fifth element. THE SPEAKING VOICE The waste land rejects any order or unity. It is a collection of indeterminate states of the mind, impressions, hallucinations, situations and personalities. All the fragmentary passages seem to belong to one voice relating to a multiple personality beyond the limits of space and time. THE MAIN THEME The main theme in this poem is the contrast between the fertility of a mythical past and the spiritual sterility, chaos and devastation of the present world. The fragmentation of this poem reflects the breakdown of a historical, social and cultural order, destroyed by the war In 1904 she moved to Bloomsbury and with her sister Vanessa Bell, she became a member of the Bloomsbury Group, the avant-garde of early 20th-century London. Here she developed the stream of consciousness style. She is a feminist. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf, but she is probably homosexual . In 1915 she started her literary career as a talented novelist, essayist and critic. The Second World War increased her anxiety and fears. A Modernist Novel her main aim is to give voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory. She saw the human personality is a continuous shift of impressions and emotions. In her novels the omniscient narrator disappeared and the point of view is shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux. MRS DALLOWAY PLOT The main character, Clarissa Dalloway, is a wealthy London hostess. She spends her day preparing for her evening party. She recalls her life before World War I, before her marriage to Richard Dalloway, and her relationship with Peter Walsh. Septimus Smith is a shell-shocked veteran, one of the first Englishmen to enlist in the war. He is married to Lucrezia, an Italian woman. The climax is Clarissa’s party: it gathers all the people Clarissa thinks about during the day. It is at the party that Dr Bradshaw, the nerve specialist, speaks about Septimus’s suicide. SETTING Set on a single ordinary day in June, it follows the protagonist through a very small area of London. The characters enjoy the sights and sounds of London, its parks, its changing life. Through what Woolf defined as the ‘tunnelling technique’, she allows the to experience the characters’ past sense of their background and personal history. CHARACTERS Clarissa Dalloway is a London society lady of 51, wife of a Conservative MP, Richard Dalloway, who has conventional views on politics and women’s rights. She experienced: • the influence of a possessive father; • the frustration of a genuine love, the need to refuse Peter Walsh, a man who would force her to share everything. All this has weakened her emotional self. She is characterised by opposing feelings: her need for freedom and independence and her class consciousness. To overcome her weakness and sense of failure, she imposes severe restrictions on her spontaneous feelings. SEPTIMUS WARREN SMITH is an extremely sensitive man. He can suddenly fall prey to panic and fear, or feelings of guilt for the death of his best friend,Evans, during the war. He is a ‘shell-shock’ case, a victim of industrialised war. He is haunted by the spectre of Evans, he suffers from headaches and insomnia. He cannot stand the idea of having a child, he is sexually impotent. There is no connection between Clarissa and Septimus, however they are similar in many respects: their response to experience is always given in physical terms and they depend upon their partners for stability and protection. THE DIFFERENCES: She never loses her awareness of the outside world as something external to herself. She finally recognises her deceptions, accepts old age and the idea of death, and is ready to go on. He is not always able to distinguish between his personal response and the nature of external reality. His psychic paralysis leads him to suicide. THEMES AND MOTIFS Significant changes in the social life of the time are represented in the novel: •the spread of newspapers; •the increasing use of cars and planes; •the new standards in the marital relationship; •the success of the cinema. She also adopts a motif, the striking of Big Ben and of clocks in general, which reminds the passing of time and its flowing into death. Life expresses itself in moments of vision which are at the same time objective and subjective, since they are recreated every moment by active consciousness STYLE As for James Joyce, also Virginia Woolf use the stream of consciousness technique. WOOLF VS JOYCE WOOLF’S STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS She never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control; maintains logical and grammatical organisation. Her technique is based on the fusion of streams of thought into a third person, past tense narrative. JOYCE’S STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS Characters show their thoughts directly through interior monologue, sometimes in an incoherent and syntactically unorthodox way. Similar to Joyce’s epiphanies are Woolf’s moments of being: rare moments of insight during the characters’ daily life when they can see reality behind appearances. Joyce epiphany: The sudden spiritual manifestation caused by a trivial gesture, an external object; the character is led to a self-realisation about himself / herself. STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS VS TRADITIONAL TECHNIQUE Steam of consciousness technique: the action or plot is revealed through the mental processes of the character. Character development is achieved through revelation of extremely personal thoughts. The action of the plot moves back and forth through present time, past and future. There are dramatic monologue and free association. Traditional technique: the action or plot is revealed through the commentary of an omniscient narrator. Character development is achieved through dialogue or the narrator’s description. The action of the plot corresponds to real, chronological time. There are narration, description, dialogue and commentary by the narrator. GEORGE ORWELL - LIFE George Orwell, pseudonym for Eric Blair, was born in India in 1903 as a son of a minor colonial official. He didn't agree with the English school system and started developing an independent-minded personality, indifference to accepted values and he professed atheism and socialism. He went to Myanmar to break away from British imperialism and human oppression. Back in England he spent time living in lodging-houses, where he experienced poverty and he started publishing his first works. He married an Oxford graduate and they went to report on the Spanish Civil War with her. When he retourned to England he adopted a child, named Richard. Orwell also joined the BBC and became the editor of an influential weekly called "The tribune". His most famous works were 2 novels: "Animal Farm"(1945) and "Nineteen Eighty-Four"(1949). VIEWS Orwell had a deep understanding of the English character and had the ability to see his country from the outside and to judge its strengths and weaknesses, so he was receptive to new ideas and impressions. He had a conflict between his middle-class background and education and his emotional identification with the working class. He conceived the role of the artist with his essay "Inside the Whale", by considering the literature of the 1920s and the 1930s and he believed that writing interpreted reality and had a useful social function. In fact, he dealt with social themes, conveyed a vision of human fraternity and strongly criticized totalitarianism and tyranny. 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel, which shows a possible future society with its conditions, representing a model of what the world should not become. There's absolute control of the press, communication and propaganda, language, history and thoughts. Any form of rebellion against the rules is punished. The novel reveals the author's sympathy with the victims of the war. PLOT The plot consists of a world divided into three blocks: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Oceania is ruled by the Party, led by the Big Brother, a controlling figure. He uses the Newspeak, an invented language to forbid free thoughts and expressions. Winston Smith, the main character, is 39, physically weak and desires moral and social integrity. He buys a personal diary to register his memories against the Party and at the Ministry of Truth he falls in love with Julia, naive and pessimistic, who also proves to rebel against the government. O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, summons them and presents to them Goldstein's book, the manifesto of a rebelling movement called Brotherhood. He is a mysterious character, with little background information. Eventually Winston and Julia find out that O'Brien is a spy of the Party and they're both arrested. Winston is sent to a place called "Room 101" and is forced to confront his biggest fear: rats on his head. His will is broken, he doesn't love Julia anymore and he has given up his identity. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The novel is set in a state of perpetual war reminiscent of World War II. The idea of the three countries was inspired to Orwell by the Tehran Conference and the society reflects the political atmosphere of the tyrannies in Spain, Germany and the Soviet Union. The character of Big Brother is both Stalin and Hitler, so Orwell made clear that he was against every form of totalitarianism. SETTING The setting of the novel is Oceania, a large country including Airstrip One, previously England. The story takes place in London, in 1984. The political structure is divided into 3 segments: -the Inner Party, the ruling class -the Outer Party, the educated workers -the Proles, the working class. Class distinctions meant for Orwell the existence of conflict. THEMES The novel wants to give a sense of loss and frustration and all emotions belong to the past. Those feelings are symbolized by Winston. Memory and mutual trust become positive themes in the struggle put up by Winston and decency is mutual trust, tolerance and empathy, linked to a view of morality. The novel is a satire on hierarchical societies which destroy fraternity. SAMUEL BECKETT Life and Works He was born in 1906 in Dublin, into a Protestant middle-class family. He became closely associated with James Joyce. He settled in Paris and wrote most of his works first in French, then translated them into English. He was one of a group of dramatists, who developed the THEATRE OF THE ABSURD. For them man’s life appears to be meaningless and purposeless and human beings cannot communicate and understand each other.