Modernism

Question 2

The 19th century brought a shift

Answer 2

in the
conceptualisation of creativity.

Question 3

The neoclassical age conceived of poetic agency as

Answer 3

invention.

Question 4

Romantic cultural sensibility and agency was
internally

Answer 4

heterogeneous

Question 5

The end of the Victorian age marks a shift in the

Answer 5

Western paradigm of thought.

Question 6

What does Modernism reject

Answer 6

Modernism rejects long-held metaphysical and
aesthetic beliefs most theorists from Plato to
Coleridge took for granted.

Question 7

Matthew Arnold

Answer 7

English poet and critic.
Dover Beach is
one of the first examples
of modern sensibility
in English poetry.

Question 8

Arnold the poet

Answer 8

shares in the Romantic
sensibility.

Question 9

Arnold the critic

Answer 9

seeks to replace the Romantic focus
on feelings with a renewed focus on ideas.

Question 10

What does T. S. Eliot argue about poetry

Answer 10

T. S. Eliot continues the “de-romanticizing” of
theory, arguing that poetry is essentially a depersonalizing process

Question 11

Who are the precursors of objective theories that dominate the beginning of the modern age

Answer 11

Arnold and Eliot are precursors of objective
theories that dominate the dawn of the modern
age.

Question 12

Creative faculty

Answer 12

most fully expresses itself in the
synthesis of existing ideas.

Question 13

critical faculty

Answer 13

creates these ideas to begin
with

Question 14

How do critics create new ideas

Answer 14

Critics create new ideas through analysis and
discovery, by seeing objects as they are (i.e., not
as they are perceived by the creative poet)

Question 15

In an epoch of expansion

Answer 15

a culture is rich with new
and fresh ideas. poets are needed to
harness intellectual energy and convert it into
great works of art. In an epoch of expansion poets embody the
Zeitgeist.

Question 16

An epoch of concentration

Answer 16

is conceptualized as an
age in which ideas are stagnant and the free
exchange of ideas is stifled. Critics are needed during epochs of concentration
to help create and foster a free flow of ideas
that will initiate a new epoch of expansion.

Question 17

great literature is the product

Answer 17

of a
creative fusion between a great poet and an epoch
of expansion.

Question 18

The “best” is what is now known as

Answer 18

“the
canon”, the Great Books of the Western world
(e.g. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, etc.)

Question 19

Poet and critic are

Answer 19

interdependent

Question 20

Criticism

Answer 20

a disinterested endeavour
to learn and propagate the best that is known and
thought in the world

Question 21

Disinterested, as opposed to uninterested

Answer 21

, signifies
a critical approach that is removed, objective,
and free from all political agendas. (cf. Kant’s
idea of purposeless purpose)

Question 22

Arnold’s view is such that canonical works are

Answer 22

aesthetically superior and could be shown to be
so by objective, disinterested criticism.

Question 23

What did Arnold’s theoretical reasoning emphasize

Answer 23

Arnold’s theoretical reasoning increased the
emphasis on the importance and centrality of
literary criticism.

Question 24

What did critical reading start focusing on

Answer 24

Critical reading started focusing on the
properties of the text in and of itself.

Question 25

T.S. Eliot

Answer 25

Poet and critic,
who was awarded the
Nobel Prize
for literature in1948.
The Wasteland is
a poetic icon of
literary modernism.

Question 26

Eliot replaced the Romantic emphasis on
spontaneity, originality, and novelty with a new
focus on

Answer 26

history, culture, and tradition.

Question 27

Writing means being conscious both of

Answer 27

the pastness
of the past and its presentness

Question 28

Literary maturity is conveyed through

Answer 28

the
writer’s sense of the past, confidence in the
present and no doubt of the future

Question 29

Literary creativeness

Answer 29

has to do with maintaining
an unconscious balance between tradition and
originality.

Question 30

Tradition “cannot be inherited”, but must be

Answer 30

“obtained by great labour”

Question 31

Poetry is not the expression of a strong personality
(as it was for the Romantics) but the

Answer 31

“continual
extinction of personality”, a means of
depersonalisation.

Question 32

For Eliot, poetry is an

Answer 32

artistic process rather than a
subjective perception.

Question 33

Objective correlative

Answer 33

refers to a set of objects,
situation, or chain of
events that correlate to
an internal emotion.

Question 34

The poet is conceived as a site of the fusion
between

Answer 34

the external and the internal.

Question 35

Both Arnold and Eliot increasingly turn their
attention away from

Answer 35

artists to ideas about art.

Question 36

What does Arnold highlight regarding the significance of context and historical moment for artistic endeavor

Answer 36

In thinking about (intellectual) history in
aesthetic terms, Arnold highlights the
significance of context and the historical
moment for the artistic endeavour.

Question 37

Eliot reacts against the Wordsworthian notion
of creation as a “spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings recollected in tranquility”
and opposes

Answer 37

he seemingly autonomous agency
of the artistic subject to the idea of the artist as
a catalyst participating in historical processes
that exceed the individual creator.

Question 38

What aspects of Eliot’s critique extend into his reasoning about depersonalization and the objective correlative

Answer 38

Eliot’s critique of the Romantic fondness for affect
extends into his reasoning about depersonalisation
and the objective correlative, both of which, in
conjunction with the sense of tradition, explain how
an individual talent joins the league of artists.

Question 39

What does the thinking of Arnold and Eliot reveal about Romantic epistemology and aesthetics

Answer 39

Arnold’s and Eliot’s
thinking reveals the complexity and heterogeneity
of Romantic epistemology and aesthetics.