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21 Class Notes 1
APE Modernism and Postmodernism Dan Parker
1 Modernism
- important associations with Modernism:
- new
- modern
- WWI
- one truth
- disillusionment
- psychological focus
- “make it new”
- we should have a revolution in arts and philosophy
- after all, the old generations and old philosophies had led us to war and disaster with their ways
of thinking
- such a revolution would prevent the reoccurrence of similar atrocities
- a purer vision of the “universal truth” is need
- obviously, the movement ended with WWII
1.3 Superimposition
- the idea that everyone should try to see things from different points of view
- modernists were suspicious of writers forcing their idea upon anyone
- neutrality was a virtue
- “We were always suspicious of the words” - Hemmingway
- many thought that the arts had somehow been partly responsible for the war
e: art (including literature) must avoid manipulation
- they try to create a new contract with much greater audience involvement to do this
2 Postmodernism
- the Modernists were older and more mature by the beginning of WWII
- they were not to quick to judge or condemn
- they had a lot of momentum by this point
- many were very well-respected and popular
e: the movement wasn’t immediately quashed by the war
- WWII was not the only factor in ending the movement
- it shock it up
- created new ‘angry, young men’ who don’t quite know what to say
2011.3.21 Class Notes 2
APE Modernism and Postmodernism Dan Parker
2.1 TV
- TV had a large impact on Postmodern thought
- the mass culture made authors consider new things
- adopted in the US first
- thus modernism ended in [1945] in the US
- not until [early 1960s] in Britain
- Postmodernism is basically Modernism without the idea of universal truth but with irony
- due to TV and easy access to different viewpoints, the universal truth stated to erode
- it uses the same techniques as Modernism, for the most part
- ‘all truth is local’
- apparently this is because of Quantum Mechanics
- TV blends ‘high and low culture’
- for example, operas about Elvis
2.2 Self-Reference
- the pretense that an invented world — TV, opera, essays, the setting of a novel, or whatever —
exist in the same way we do
∴ characters in The Simpsons can be on a Budweiser commercial
∴ a book character can talk about being in a book
- characters know they are fictional
2.4 Surrealism
- another connection to art
- like Monty Python or Dalı́
- see the website for pictures of surreal art
- now it is fading
- “a penny for the old guy”
- this is an allusion of Guy Fawkes
- at the same time, it references Charon
- the Greeks and Romans held that unless you were buried properly (often with money to pay)
Charon would make you wait on the banks of the Styx for one hundred years before ferrying you
across
- “Mista Kurtz — he dead.”
- just as Kurtz went so far he couldn’t could make, so did Europe in WWI?
- why was this particular part of Heart of Darkness referenced?
- perhaps becuas Kurtz had “direct eyes’, unlike the hollow men
- ‘Modern life is like purgatory — Eliot’
- “prickly pear” and “5 o’clock”
- this is the same tune as the old Mulberry Bush rhyme
- of course, we have a cactus instead now
- 5 AM is the time that Jesus was said to have rose from the dead
- moreover, for most people 5 AM gives a very disagreeable connotation because it is annoying to
wake up so early
- Eliot appears quite disenchanted with religion
- note that there are no positive references
- each stanza has a different point of view
- “stuffed men”
- stuffed full of society’s values
- they are “hollow”, yet still “stuffed”
- they are also a reference to Guy Fawkes
- his effigy is burned on the day he died
- effigies are usually clothes stuffed with straw or some other material
∴ stuffed
∴ symbolic of men that cannot carry things through
- note that there is a motı́f of impotence
- Fawkes is a conceit
- is this meta-modernism?
- the modernists are like Fawkes, unable to bring about change
- they are hollow, ineffectual authors
- “multifoliate rose”
- this refers to Jesus
- this is a traditional reference from the Middle Ages