Survey 2 Flashcards

Question

Tennyson: In Memoriam, A.H.H. (1850)

Answer 1

▪ Closest friend of Tennyson, Arthur Henry Hallam, died age 22 in 1833 ▪ Long sequence of 131 lyrics / sections ▪ Lyrics in the shape of several quatrains with “abba” rhyme scheme ▪ A “poetic therapy”, grappling with deep grief ▪ Asking philosophical questions about doubt, faith, religion and belief, evolution… ▪ Aspects of queering the speaker (VI)

Answer 2

(1842) ▪ Performative and theatrical nature of identity ▪ The Dramatic Monologue ▪ Not a lyrical “I”, but a persona is speaking the poem ▪ Has elements of dramatic set-up within the speech ▪ In this case: a Renaissance Duke, in front of a portrait of his deceased wife ▪ Throughout the poem, reader gradually realises he killed her Possibly based on actual story of Isabella de’ Cosimo de Medici, c.1574 Even had you skill In speech—which I have not—to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse— E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive.

Answer 3

▪ First Avantgarde Art movement, created by art students in 1848 ▪ “Ut Pictora Poeisis”: painting poetry, writing images ▪ Combination of the artforms ▪ Great “Tennyson fans” ▪ Steeped in medievalism on the one hand, a new aesthetics on the other hand ▪ Obsession with the visual, miniature detail ▪ Became very influential in the aesthetics of the second half of 19th century / fin de siècle ``` Important names: ▪ William Holman Hunt ▪ John Everett Millais ▪ Dante Gabriel Rossetti ▪ William Morris ▪ Christina Rossetti ▪ Algernon Swinburne (“fleshly school of poetry”) ▪ “Narrative” painting: Millais, Ophelia, 1851 ```

Answer 4

Traditional Canon of Romantic Poets ▪ 1st generation: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge - -> At first, enthusiastic supporters of French revolution, Blake: abolition fighter - -> Innovators, trying to bring out a new form of poetic expression that looks for links in the far European past, re-valuates the local and rural - -> Transcendental and mystic connections - -> Intense emotional reactions to nature – but also to injustice… Sensibility as a natural "moral compass" ▪ Emotion and Feeling might lead to more “humane” decisions in life than reason alone (reaction to the “cold logic” of some Enlightenment thought) ▪ Based on Rousseau’s assumption that there is sth. like a “natural state” of the human being, and that humans in their natural state are “good” --> direct contradiction to English early Enlightenment thought (Hobbes) --> Sensibility, Philanthropy and Benevolence _________ "Young Radicals" ▪ 2nd generation: Byron, Shelley, Keats - -> Born after the French revolution - -> Much more radical political ideas, promoting Independence movements in Europe, atheism - -> Cynicism, alienation, human darkness - -> Complex characters: Byronic Hero, as established in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), Manfred (1819) - -> Idolisation of Byron, who was a celebrity before and after his death Transgression, Strangeness, Darkness - “The Gothic” - Interest in excess (esp. Byron and Shelley) - Narcotics - The Exotic / Oriental

Answer 5

NATURE Nature and “the sublime”: ▪ Nature in its awe-inspiring form, which evokes both terror and fascination ▪ The Alps as prototype, but also storms, massive trees, waterfalls, glaciers, shipwrecks… ▪ Creating a feeling of being overwhelmed --> Link to bringing forth revolution --> Showing the instability of human order ___ NATURE and emotions By experiencing nature, the human being experiences him/herself ▪ The “outside” of nature, as it is without stable cultural / civilizational signification, becomes the mirror of the “inside” of the wanderer, f.e ▪ Making possible a transcendent experience of “oneness” with all creation “I wandered lonely as a cloud…” Tintern Abbey _______ the GOTHIC ▪ An aestheticized evocation of an imaginary “medieval” quality in buildings, artworks, stories and settings: ▪ Connotation of a “before”, before the Renaissance, Reformation and Scientific revolution: irregularity, “barbaric”, disordered ▪ In literature, texts which evokes such “disordered” feelings by effects of ▪ Terror ( Poplawski 297 ) ______ the ORIENTAL ▪ Orientalism (Edward Said, 1978) ▪ Like nature, the “other”, located in the East, becomes defined as everything that is unmodern, “barbaric” etc., that defines what the West is not ▪ Even if this was valued positively in the Romantic age, it essentialised Eastern cultures and leaves a difficult legacy of how our imaginaries of “the Other” work ▪ First deeper European research interest into Levantine, Arabic and Asian cultures ▪ “Oriental Renaissance”: growing fascination with Eastern languages and philosophies; but also simply fashion, fabrics, design ▪ The Thousand and One Arabian Nights were translated from 1704 ▪ The East came to signify the sensual, magical, non-rational, despotic, cruel ▪ Eastern knowledge as “deeper” knowledge _____ EXAMPLES Humanity “Enslav’d” William Blake: ▪ “Visions of the Daughters of Albion”, 1793 - Blake had already long been active in the abolitionist movements, friend and supporter of Mary Woolstonecraft (1st feminist thinker) - The focal character, Oothoon, is represented as a slave, raped, beaten, punished - The poem transgresses the slavery theme by the establishment of similarities: - Like black slaves, all women are suppressed by the rules of society which disable their abilities and make them solely dependent on the goodwill of fathers / husbands - Like black slaves, the English are suppressed by the rigid demands of the Puritan codes (work, self-discipline, guilt when doing things for pleasure) - Political, Economical and ideological systems make everyone unfree, disable human capacities for altruism, joy, love; being fully human ____ Nature William Wordsworth: “Tintern Abbey” (1798) The development of “learning” from nature throughout his life: - Physical joy - Passionate, overwhelming feelings (sensuality) - Sense and Thought joined together - The importance of nature as a source for understanding self & world - -> Mood of Remembering Experience of Nature - -> Epiphany Influential image/idea - American Renaissance / transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Nature” (1836): “ I become a transparent eyeball – I am nothing, I see all”. The idea of an “original” relation to the universe, mediated only by nature. _____ Oriental Samuel Coleridge: “Kubla Khan” (1816) ▪ “Meta-poetry”: a poem about how the creation of poetry works (in the Romantic understanding) – imagination / inspiration ▪ Vision of an unspecified imaginary tartar “China” ▪ “A vision in a dream”: the whole poem came to him while falling asleep under prescribed pain-killer influence: opium.

Answer 6

Key points aestheticism Oscar Wilde Fabianism and Femininism ``` Fin de Siècle / Aestheticism (around 1900) ▪ Fabianism: early socialism ▪ Woman Question: suffragettes ▪ Popular Culture: increasing… ▪ …Diversification ▪ Dandyism: Aestheticism ▪ “Jugendstil”: Beginning of movements for “organic” life-styles ``` KEY POINTS ▪ Art for art’s sake: severing of art and moral message ▪ Beauty becomes a goal in itself ▪ Certain markers and codes for the aesthetic kind of beauty (the peacock feather, the sunflower, Japanese aesthetics) ▪ In Lit: Oscar Wilde ▪ Partially, also a critical impulse: a re-evaluation of the hand crafted in opposition to the mass-produced ▪ Value of the labour of the craftsman → Critique of urban industrialism and materialism ``` OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900) • Salome (1891) • The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) • The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890) • De Profundis (1905) ``` - Born to upper class Anglo-Irish parents - Writes fairy-tales, poetry, essays, parables, goes on lecture series in the US - Becomes London’s most famous playwright in the 1890s - Is convicted for “gross indecency” under antihomosexuality laws to great public scandal - Dies sick and impoverished in Paris ``` ____ Social Movements: FABIANISM ▪ The “Fabian Society” founded in 1884 ▪ “mild” form of centralist socialists ▪ Want to reach a government form of democratic socialism via reforms, not revolution ▪ Push for social reforms, criticism, push for worker education ▪ Many writers involved, f.e.: George Bernard Shaw, Beatrix Potter, H.G. Wells ``` ___ Social Movements: The WOMAN QUESTION ▪ Suffragette movement ▪ Women’s Right To Vote: Movements start in Manchester in 1867 ▪ Emmeline Pankhurst & her daughters, leaders of the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union), since 1903 ▪ Increasingly militant protest of women puts pressure on ruling parties to grant women voting rights (hunger strikes & property demolitions) → the rigid Victorian gender hierarchy is starting to be attacked – but the status quo attacks back fiercely. Also..... H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, 1905 ▪ A second earth, where everything and everyone has a “duplicate” ▪ Centralised “world state”, sole landowner ▪ Nearly no manual labour: “there appears to be no limit to the invasion of life by the machine” ▪ Extensive discussion of gender relations, women supposed to be “as free as men” ▪ Led by “the Samurai” ▪ Rigid ordering of human types according to ability, with the creative ones ranked highest ___ Falkenhanyer book Tip: ▪ A. S. Byatt, The Children’s Book, 2009 ▪ Novel that follows several entangled artist families from 1895 through to after World War I ▪ Opens the panoply of possibility for futures that were developed at the end of the 19th century, and how they were smashed by the war

Answer 7

▪ Key points ▪ T.S. Eliot / Ezra Pound (poetry) ▪ Virginia Woolf / James Joyce (novel) Modernism: ▪ What is truly modern literary form? ▪ Shedding Victorian values: psychology and sexuality → Freud, Jung, later, Lacan ▪ Experiment in form ▪ Changing relations between sexes, classes ▪ Experiences of trauma: mechanised warfare is a cultural shock → How can one write literature now? ▪ The end of old certainties ▪ multiperspectivity Modernism: Not only a literary movement ▪ The next “big thing” after Romanticism? →Like during R, political rifts change people’s perception of and relation to their life and surroundings →Feeling that old values and forms don’t fit anymore →Writing openly about sexuality →Psychoanalysis as an important influence →drives and subconsciousness →a culture of acceleration ``` Differentiations and sub-strands ▪ High Modernism (Eliot, Pound, Woolf, Joyce, Richardson, Stein) ▪ American Modernism (Hemingway, Dos Passos, Fitzgerald) ``` ``` Substrands: ▪ Naturalism ▪ Futurism ▪ Cubism ▪ Imagism ▪ Vorticism ▪ Expressionism ▪ Surrealism _____ Literary modernism – key concepts ▪ Generally, “non-realist” techniques ▪ All Victorian “certainties” are questioned “the experimental and innovative literature of the period roughly between 1890 and 1939” “traditionally, critics have emphasised formal or technical experimentation over newness of theme or content” → Box in Poplawski, 497 ``` TWO MAIN TYPES ▪ Experimental Modernism: poetic density, extensive use of metaphor, analogy, cultural references, different forms of expression of perception ▪ Traditional Social Realism: transparency of meaning, preference for use of metonomy or ‘simple’ metaphor (Crown for Queen) ▪ Mixtures of both types ``` High Modern Poets: constructivism of language and reality T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) - Relies heavily on mythical symbols - Changes in sentence structures or unusal connections of registers defy clear referentiality - No logical narratives but - Ambiguity - Shifts of meaning ``` IMPORTAN WORKS T.S.ELIOT ▪ “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915) ▪ “The Waste Land” (1922) ▪ “The Hollow Men” (1925) ▪ “Ash-Wednesday” (1927) ▪ “Four Quartets” (1936-1942) ▪ Also, large body of essays, talks and literary criticism ____ Ezra Pound (1888-1965) ▪ The modernist “sage”: The ABC of Reading (1934) ▪ A redevelopment of what poetic reading (and writing) means / can be ▪ Poetry as the acute expression of one moment ▪ Draws inspiration out of non-Western poetic traditions (India, Japan → “in a station of the metro”, 1913) ▪ Discredited because he became a fascist, deeply anti-Semitic ``` _____ High Modern Novelists ▪ James Joyce (1882-1941) ▪ The Dubliners (1914) ▪ Finnegan’s Wake (1939) ▪ ULYSSES (1922) ▪ The day of Leopold Bloom, June 16 1904 → “real time” novel → Stream of consciousness → Stylistic frame similar to Eliot’s poetry (esp. The Waste Land) → Intertext to the Odyssey ``` STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS - a persons's thoughts and conscious reactions to events, perceives as a continuous flow. The term was introduced by William James in Principles of Psychology (1890) - a literay style in which a character's thoughts, feelings, and reactions are depicted in a continuous flow uninterrupted by objective description or conventional dialogue. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Marcel Proust are among its notable early exponents. __ ``` VIRGINIA WOOLF ▪ Novelist ▪ Essayist ▪ Cultural critique ▪ Publisher ▪ Feminist --> A Room of One’s Own (1929) ``` ``` IMPORTANT WORKS ▪ Mrs Dalloway (1925) ▪ To the Lighthouse (1927) ▪ Orlando (1928) ▪ The Waves (1931) ▪ Between the Acts (1941) ```

Answer 8

``` THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST 1895 - John Worthing, caring guardian of orphaned rich Gewndolyn, living in a stately countryhouse, invents fictious brother “Earnest” to lead a care-free dandyish double-life in London - This leads to quite some chaos - Basic structure of the comedy of manners - Makes fun of many mores and morals of Victorian society, especially via the character of Lady Augusta → Modern impulse to shun and ironize Victorian culture → Samuel Butler, Erewhon, 1872 → George Bernard Shaw’s plays ```

Answer 9

1922 ▪ Structural complexity ▪ Shifts between different times, places, speakers ▪ Connects personal, seemingly everyday experiences with such of mythical magnitude and nature ▪ Uses different languages, high / low register ▪ What is “the waste land”?

Answer 10

1927 ▪ Set in 2 days, 10 years apart ▪ Ramsay family’s trip to the lighthouse, anticipation / reflection ▪ Creative struggle of painter Lily Briscoe amidst family chaos and drama ▪ Life in and atmosphere of a nation at war ▪ Male figures lean emotionally on the female ones ▪ Written in inner monologues (→ s.o.c.)

Answer 11

``` ▪ Angry Young Men ▪ Kitchen Sink ▪ Theatre of the Absurd ▪ Rise of political and social equality ▪ Realistic techniques ▪ Social criticism ▪ Loss of Empire ▪ Beginning of Multi-Ethnic Britain ▪ Rise of Popular Culture ``` SUM UP ▪ Growing dominance of popular culture ▪ Poetry: Social realism vs “new universalism” ▪ Theatre, novel, film: social realism vs absurdity ▪ Society:A new kind of society predicated on social democratic ideals, but financially / economically increasingly precarious ▪ Youth cultures ▪ Loss of empire ________ Britain after WW2 ▪ WWII: “Britain’s Finest Hour”, defeating Germany, but bankrupt (Churchill?) ▪ Falling apart of Empire, 1947: Indian independence ▪ Festival of Britain 1951: took place a century after the Victorian Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace, and was meant to be a similar landmark event ▪ Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, live broadcast, first ceremonial television media event Start of post imperial migration waves towards Britain, first from the Caribbean, then Subcontinent, African countries Britain loses its status as world power THE NOVEL AFTER 1945 ▪ Mostly realist, social criticism ▪ “Angry Young Men” novelists: criticise that change and reform of British social system did not go far enough ▪ John Braine Room at the Top (1957) ▪ Alan Sillitoe Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) ▪ Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim (1954) ▪ New “moral” novels: ▪ Graham Greene The Quiet American (1955) → Conflict in Indochina, American involvement there ▪ William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954) → re-writing of the Victorian genre of the boys’ adventure novel, notably Ballantyne’s The Coral Island (1857). ▪ Also important start in 1960s: feminist writing / “women’s writing”, Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook, 1962 ▪ importance of Women’s Movement in 1960s and 70s; explicitly feminist writers of 70s: Zoe Fairbairns, Fay Weldon ▪ publishing houses for women’s writing founded: The Women’s Press, Virago ``` Rise of youth and counter cultures, anti Vietnam protests, ‘free love’, Beatles, Stones,Stones,“Sex, drugs, Rock’n Roll” ``` ____ Drama from 1945-1960s ▪ Dominance of London ▪ West End theatres ▪ National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company commission plays, further young playwrights ▪ ‘Angry Young Men’ in Drama: ▪ John Osborne, Look Back in Anger (1956) ▪ ‘Kitchen Sink’ Drama: ▪ Shelagh Delaney (A Taste of Honey, 1958), Arnold Wesker (Chicken Soup with Barley, 1958; The Kitchen, 1959). → Working and lower middle class domestic realism, class conflict, gender conflicts, connection of private and politcal THEATRE OF THE ABSURD ▪ Influence of Bertold Brecht, esp. on John Arden, Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance (1959) ▪ Antonin Artaud ▪ Existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus →Plays that focus on the inability to express meaningful lives, to have a purpose in life →nihilism ▪ Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot (1952/4) – genre defining play of absurdist theatre ▪ Harold Pinter: “Pinteresque” ▪ 1957: The Room and The Dumb Waiter: threat: an anonymous force breaking into a seemingly secure place ▪ 1959: The Caretaker: a tramp invading the world of two brothers and breaking it apart ▪ an element of threat – “comedies of menace” THEATRE AS PROVOCATION ▪ 1968 trial against Penguin Publishers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover: near abandonment of censorship laws →Violence and sex become possible on stage →Edward Bond, Saved (1965) →John Orton, Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1964), Loot (1965) What the Butler Saw (1969), ____ Poetry after 1945_ anti-modernism ▪ Dylan Thomas: emotional existentialism, excess of feeling Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” (1951/1952) ▪ MOVEMENT-poets: Larkin, Robert Conquest’s Anthology New Lines (1956): parochial, domestic topic, accessibility Philip Larkin, “Coming” “Talking in Bed” ▪ Ted Hughes: poet laureate from 1985, vitalistic, nature, mythology, influence on Seamus Heaney Ted Hughes “Examination at the Womb Door” (fromCrow )

Answer 12

``` ▪ No stable meaning ▪ No stable form ▪ Meta-literary forms ▪ Non-linearity ▪ Unreliable narration ▪ Questioning of “grand narratives” of history and science ▪ Stress on the constructedness of abstract notions deemed fundamental in previous periods ``` ``` ▪ 1. Postmodernism – what is it? ▪ 2. Key Features in Fiction ▪ 3. Postmodern British Novels Trends in ▪ 4. Drama (to 1990) ▪ 5. Poetry: Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) ``` _____ What is it? … like modernism, less a temporal than an aesthetic category, but is still often used as such (in the sense of late-capitalist) … not only a literary category, but also pertaining to art, architecture, etc. CAVE: Postmodernism shares features with / is influenced by and influences, but is NOT the same as poststructuralism as a movement in cultural critique and literary and cultural theory!!! AGE OR STYLE? “There are clearly a number of definitions of the 'postmodern' in operation here. The first is linked to the branding, dilution (under the guise of accessibility) and commodification of intellectual and creative activity which have become key features of the 'postmodern' era. The second relates to the formal and conceptual features of 'postmodernism' as it has developed in relation to other disciplines such as architecture and the visual arts.” Redell Olson, “Postmodern Poetry in Britain “The Postmodern is often equated mistakenly with the contemporary, and those writers who are committed to the idea of […] art having a referential function, are seen as lagging behind the times. This notion of the relationship between realism, modernism and postmodernism as a series of progressive stages in literary history should be resisted.” (Poplawski 570) → BUT: Decidedly strong trend in British novels especially in the 1970s and 1980s, becomes less dominant from later 1990s. English Post-Modernism tends to be more accessible to general audience than French / Italian postmodern texts EXAMPLE Monty Python, “Hamlet”, 1974 ▪ Quotation, imitation, juxtaposition of texts of different origins ▪ intertextuality / intermediality ▪ Makes fun of “grand tradition” → Hamlet ▪ Debunking heroes, traditions, received truths ▪ Defying a “real” sense of meaning ▪ Making fun of the idea of the “real” (“I’m a real psychiatrist”) _____ 2. key features in fiction ▪ Link to structuralism / poststructuralism: the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary / formed by tradition (Saussure) → This link is in fact unfixed (Derrida), meaning therefore is perpetually deferred and always liminal → A hub to question the way things are, are presented to always have been, should be… …an opening venue for textual play ▪ Word play ▪ Intertextuality and intermediality ▪ Pastiche (playful imitation of styles and genres) ▪ Metanarrative: authorial voice comments on own narration, metalepsis (jumps between narrative levels) ▪ Metafiction: play with what one perceives as “real” and the imaginary ``` ____ 3- British Novels John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) ▪ Metahistorical novel ▪ Pastiche of a Victorian novel ▪ Metanarrative devices ``` J. G. Ballard: The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) ▪ Fully experimental collection of “condensed novels” or short stories / vignettes that were all published individually before in journals ▪ Protagonist changes his name (Talbert, Traven, Travis, Talbot) ▪ Fully immersing himself in media events, protagonist gives over to psychosis ▪ Notes by the author on the margins in later editions, illustrations Intermediality in Ballard ___ Mediatization: author’s note to “The Enormous Face” “A unique collision of private and public fantasy took place in the 1960s, and may have to wait some years to be repeated, if ever. The public dream of Hollywood for the first time merged with the private imagination of the hyperstimulated 60s TV viewer” → Simulacra (Baudrillard): experiences of copies without originals __ Martin Amis: London Fields (1989) ▪ “This book is a cheat. A con-trick. From start to finish, all 470 pages of it, it's an elaborate tease. A whodunnit without a motive. A meditation on the way the world ends which turns out to be just another metaphor for the writing of fiction.” (review in The Guardian) ``` ____ 4. Drama ▪ Tom Stoppard → drama with postmodern elements ▪ Rosecrantz and Güldenstern are Dead (1966) ▪ Arcadia (1993) ▪ Shakespeare in Love (screenplay, 1998) ``` ``` Other Trends until 1990 in drama ▪ Peter Shaffer ▪ Alan Ayckborn ▪ Christopher Hampton ▪ Patrick Marber ▪ Female playwrights (from 1980s) ▪ Caryl Churchill, Top Girls (1982) ▪ Commercial theatre: London West End Musical Industry (Andrew Lloyd Webber) --> Cats - Premiered in 1981 - Based on T.S. Eliot’s Poem collection “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” (1931) - Transformed into a million dollar business (407.7 million $ on Broadway alone) ``` ``` ____ 5. Poetry ▪ Dominant Poetic Voice: Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) ▪ Irish ▪ Influenced by Ted Hughes ▪ Nature, History, Memory ▪ “Bog Poems” (1975): the Iron-Age bog mummies, become metaphors for Ireland being punished as the bodies of the dead women where in their time ▪ New English translation of Beowulf (1999) ```