ENG252Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Canadian Authors Association, Cole Porter, Zeitgeist
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
ENG252 Lecture 13
Modernism
-About the modern, the contemporary
-Formal innovations
-Rejects traditions before it
-Applied retrospectively to experimental / avant-garde trends
•Early 20th c.
-Characterised by contradictions, ambivalences and internal conflicts
-Moving away from realism
-Characterised by its rejection of 19th c. traditions
-Against assumed consensus between author & reader
-Often at the peripheries of the contemporary world
•marginalised
-Didn’t pay attention to women writers
•huge gender bias
Free verse
-Poetry that doesn’t conform to regular metre
-Its length of lines and rhythm may be irregular
Canadian Modernism
-Belatedness
•emerged after European and American m/s
•marginalised within other traditions
-The Canadian Modernists Meet, ed. Dean Irvine (2005)
!1
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
-Stands at the interstices between European & American modernisms
-Transnational cultural formation between centres of European & American m/s
Structures of affiliation
-Contiguity - affinities/points of contact
•similar and different from British and American traditions
-Discontinuity - departing from European and American modernisms
Internationalism
-In dialogue with other modernists and wants to situate itself in an international context
-Not just a marker of influence/belatedness
-But also a register of modernism’s localised formations and deformations
Localism and Modernism
-Particular locations inflect the aesthetics and themes of modernism
-Localism - the influence of local registers (terrain, climate, culture, society) on
literature and the arts
A.J.M Smith & Canadian modernism
-The native/national
•romantic nature
•shaped by national culturalism
•parochial
•emotional/sentimental
-The cosmopolitan
•Universally relevant to human experience
•Inclined towards liberal ideas
!2
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
-The cosmopolitan poet:
•heroic endeavour to liberate Canadian poetry from its colonial roots
•Immersing one’s self in the universal civilising culture of ideas [vestiges of
colonialism?]
-anti-colonialism can be seen as advocating a different kind of colonialism
-see what Europe controls
-certain kind of Euro-centricism which was colonial in its own way
•Privileging not the local but what was already valorised as the “Old World” and
universal values
Both aspire to usher in a new order of things
Modernism & socio-political contexts
-Reaction to devastation of humanity (WWI)
-Critical and yet complicates with Modernity
-As much about aesthetics as about politics
-Rejecting the past but also preoccupied with history
Modernity
Modernism
long-standing zeitgeist of the post-renaissance
period
affiliated with modernity
Rationalism
artistic expression (lit, visual, arts, architecture,
etc.)
Authenticity
Questions authenticity, sowing it to be a construct
Improve life through stability
Affiliated with capitalism & nationalism
Critical of m/y’s intimate relationship with
capitalism & nationalism
Technological advances
Pursuit of personal freedom, as well as aesthetic
advancement
!3
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Applied retrospectively to experimental / avant-garde trends: early 20th c. Characterised by contradictions, ambivalences and internal con icts. Characterised by its rejection of 19th c. traditions. Against assumed consensus between author & reader. Often at the peripheries of the contemporary world: marginalised. Didn"t pay attention to women writers: huge gender bias. Poetry that doesn"t conform to regular metre. Its length of lines and rhythm may be irregular. Belatedness: emerged after european and american m/s, marginalised within other traditions. Stands at the interstices between european & american modernisms. Transnational cultural formation between centres of european & american m/s. Contiguity - af nities/points of contact: similar and different from british and american traditions. Discontinuity - departing from european and american modernisms. In dialogue with other modernists and wants to situate itself in an international context. But also a register of modernism"s localised formations and deformations. Particular locations in ect the aesthetics and themes of modernism.
