Modernism in the USA: William Faulkner

Modernism

Modernism is a trend that developed in the arts at the beginning of the XXth century striving to break away from tradition and innovate. In literature, modernists opposed realism and sought to represent human reality in a freer way, with such elements as stream of consciousness (the transcription of thoughts as they arise in the human consciousness, without imposing an order on them), fragmentarism, multiplicity of points of view within a narration, a different approach to time (a long book may narrate events that happened in just a few hours, for example), a narrator that is unreliable or is the voice of multiple characters... In essence, modernism was about breaking free from the constraints that existed in nineteenth century literature.

Modernism was influenced by the ideas of such thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Nietzsche, Marx... and by the rest of avant-garde art movements (expressionism, impressionism and cubism in painting and atonalism in music, for example).

An American modernist: William Faulkner

William Faulkner (1897-1962) is the most innovative American novelist of his generation. In his works, he mixes a depiction of Southern rural America with strong modernist innovation in his style. This earned him the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1949. His two best novels are The Sound and the Fury and As I lay Dying. He portrays often degenerate or insane characters in his novels that are a reflection of the decadence of the southern states.

                                                            

Here is a part of his novel As I lay Dying. In this novel, each fragment is the interior monologue of one of the members of a disfunctional family that fundamentally hate each other. The family is transporting the body of the recently deceased mother to another city where she had wished to be buried. Try to guess why the tone of the dialogue of this character is so peculiar. Who is Vardaman?

Vardaman

Darl and Jewel and Dewey Dell and I are walking tip the hill, behind the wagon.

Jewel came back. He came up the road and got into the wagon. He was walking.

Jewel hasn't got a horse anymore. Jewel is my brother. 'Cash is my brother. Cash

has a broken leg. We fixed Cash's leg so it doesn't hurt. Cash is my brother.

Jewel is my brother too, but he hasn't got a broken leg.

Now there are five of them, tall in little tall black circles.

"Where do they stay at night, Darl?" I say. "When we stop at night in the

barn, where do they stay?"

The hill goes off into the sky. Then the sun comes up from behind the hill

and the mules and the wagon and pa walk on the sun. You cannot watch them,

walking slow on the sun. In Jefferson it is red on the track behind the glass.

The track goes shining round and round. Dewey Dell says so.

Tonight I am going to see where they stay while we are in the barn.

Modernism in the British Isles: James Joyce

Modernism

Modernism is a trend that developed in the arts at the beginning of the XXth century striving to break away from tradition and innovate. In literature, modernists opposed realism and sought to represent human reality in a freer way, with such elements as stream of consciousness (the transcription of thoughts as they arise in the human consciousness, without imposing an order on them), fragmentarism, multiplicity of points of view within a narration, a different approach to time (a long book may narrate events that happened in just a few hours, for example), a narrator that is unreliable or is the voice of multiple characters... In essence, modernism was about breaking free from the constraints that existed in nineteenth century literature.

Modernism was influenced by the ideas of such thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Nietzsche, Marx... and by the rest of avant-garde art movements (expressionism, impressionism and cubism in painting and atonalism in music, for example).

A modernist writer: James Joyce

James Joyce (Dublin, 1882 - Zurich, 1941) is the quintessential modernist writer. Born in Ireland and educated in Catholic schools, soon he felt he had to leave for other countries in search of creative freedom. He settled first in Croatia, then in the Italian city of Trieste with his Irish wife, Nora Barnacle, earning his living as an English teacher. He is especially famous for four books, which also chronicle his journey into an increasingly free and obscure style:

- Dubliners. A book of short stories with main characters from his native city.

- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A veiled biographical account of his childhood and youth, protagonised by his alter ego Stephen Dedalus.

- Ulysses. A long book whose action happens in just one day in Dublin. The characters are two alter egos of Joyce (Dedalus and Leopold Bloom) and one of his wife (Molly).

- Finnegan's Wake, written already in a hardly comprehensible language.

This is the beginning of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Read it and do the task below.

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming

down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road

met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a

glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne

lived: she sold lemon platt.

O, the wild rose blossoms

On the little green place.

He sang that song. That was his song.

O, the green wothe botheth.

When you wet the bed first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother put

on the oilsheet. That had the queer smell.

His mother had a nicer smell than his father. She played on the piano

the sailor’s hornpipe for him to dance. He danced:

Tralala lala,

Tralala tralaladdy,

Tralala lala,

Tralala lala.

Uncle Charles and Dante clapped. They were older than his father and

mother but uncle Charles was older than Dante.

Dante had two brushes in her press. The brush with the maroon velvet

back was for Michael Davitt and the brush with the green velvet back

was for Parnell. Dante gave him a cachou every time he brought her a

piece of tissue paper.

The Vances lived in number seven. They had a different father and

mother. They were Eileen’s father and mother. When they were grown up

he was going to marry Eileen. He hid under the table. His mother said:

–O, Stephen will apologize.

Dante said:

–O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes.–

Pull out his eyes,

Apologize,

Apologize,

Pull out his eyes.

Apologize,

Pull out his eyes,

Pull out his eyes,

Apologize.

                                   Your turn! Try to identify what is happening in this text and why the way the narrator speaks is so peculiar.

Poetry: Robert Frost

Born in 1874 and dead in 1963, Robert Frost is one of America's iconic poets, certainly one of the most important of the beginning of the twentieth century. His poetry often uses rural settings of New England to examine universal human and philosophical themes.

In providing an overview of Frost's style, the Poetry Foundation places Frost's work "at the crossroads of nineteenth-century American poetry [with regard to his use of traditional forms] and modernism [with his use of idiomatic language and ordinary, every day subject matter]." They also note that Frost believed that "the self-imposed restrictions of meter in form" was more helpful than harmful because he could focus on the content of his poems instead of concerning himself with creating "innovative" new verse forms.

                    Your turn!    1. Can you think of a Spanish poet born around the same date as Robert Frost and who used country settings to speak about human issues? 
                                    2. Search and explain what part of the United States is New England.
                                    3. What is Modernism in the English speaking world? How is it different from Spanish "Modernismo"?
                                    4. Do you agree with the last idea expressed about having form restrictions being positive so that the poet can focus on content rather than form? Is it                                                        always a positive thing, in your view?


Read the following two poems by Robert Frost. For each of them, say what you think is the idea the author wants to communicate and what the form of the poem is (metre, rhyme, stanza...).

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

     

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.