Tekstanalyse og –historie (Spring 2011)

Session Four: Poetry I

Agenda

• American and British Literary History

• What is Poetry? (According to Sylvia Plath)

• Romanticism, Modernism, and American Poetry After 1945

• Group Work: Sylvia Plath, ”Lady Lazarus”

• Group Discussion

American and British Literary History

American literary projects in the 19th and 20th centuries

• 19th century: inventing America

• Pre-1960: Desire for national unity and cultural homogeneity: the essence of America – the American way of life:

• Ernest Hemmingway:

• John Steinbeck:

• The great American novel

American literary projects in the 19th and 20th centuries

Post-1960: Against national conformity - conflicts along the lines of ethnicity (and gender). Traditions rather than tradition:

Jewish, African, Asian, Native, Latino, Italian, Irish Americans

Sexual identity, gender, disability, region, religion, class

20th century British fiction

• Modernism

• Anti-modernism (realism)

• Postmodernism

• Postcolonialism

What is Poetry? (According to Sylvia Plath)

• Taking ”Daddy” as your point of departure, define the genre of poetry

• Find contrasts and similarities with other genres (narrative, drama)

Plath and Poetry

• ”I cannot sympathise with those cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife. … I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences, even the most terrifying … with an informed and intelligent mind” (NAe, p. 2968)

”Daddy”

• Examples of her ability ”to control and manipulate experiences” in ”Daddy”

Poetry and Emotion: Romanticism

• Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility (William Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800)

Poetry and Emotion: Romanticism

• Emotion:

• Spontaneous

• Powerful

• ”recollected in tranquility”

• Moment of feeling / moment of composition

• Experience / memory

Poetry and Emotion: Modernism

• There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse […]. But very few know when there is an expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. (T.S. Eliot, ”Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1921))

Poetry and Emotion: Modernism

• Emotion:

• Significant vs sincere

• Impersonal vs personal

• Poetry (tradition) vs individual life

Poetry and Emotion: Modernism

• Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to escape from these things. (T.S. Eliot, ”Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1921))

Poetry and Emotion: Modernism

• Escape from emotion and personality

• Depersonalisation

• Universalisation

Romanticism, Modernism and American Poetry After 1945

• The poem in relation to the moment of feeling: Temporal relations: emotion and composition

• The poem in relation to the nature of feeling: Relations of significance: public – private, universal – personal

Romanticism, Modernism and American Poetry After 1945

• Frank O’Hara and the diary poem: ”A Step Away from Them”

• Outline the emotion(s) the poem concerns.

• Consider the sincerity and significance of the emotion(s)

• Consider the temporal relation between feeling and poem