EN 206 Unit 3: The English Modern Period: Quotes/Notes Exam 3 Pionke
Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
-All about art but NOT art for change -Art for Social Elite (high culture) -More abstract, symbolically dense Decadence: the view of art seen by some as immoral, obscure, objectionable
Big 5 Themes
1. Alienation/Disillusionment 2. Consciousness-Formation 3. Art for Art's Sake/Decadence 4. Technology 5. Imperial Decline
Authors
1. Auden 2. Conrad 3. Eliot 4. Hardy 5. H.D. 6. Joyce 7. Lawrence 8. Marinetti 9. Owen 10. Woolf 11. Yeats
Auden
1. Musée des Beaux Arts 2. The Shield of Achilles
Texts
1. Musée des Beaux Arts 2. The Shield of Achilles 3. Heart of Darkness 4. The Hollow Men 5. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock 6. Tradition and the Individual Talent 7. Hap 8. Channel Firing 9. Neutral Tones 10. The Ruined Maid 11. The Oread 12. Sea Rose 13. The Dead 14. Araby 15. Why the Novel Matters 16. The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism 17. Dulce Et Decorum Est 18. Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown 19. A Room of One's Own 20. The Lake Isle of Innisfree 21. Easter, 1916
H.D.
11. The Oread 12. Sea Rose
Joyce
13. The Dead 14. Araby
Lawrence
15. Why the Novel Matters
Marinetti
16. The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism
Owen
17. Dulce Et Decorum Est
Woolf
18. Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown 19. A Room of One's Own (chaps. 1&6)
Yeats
20. The Lake Isle of Innisfree 21. Easter, 1916
Conrad
3. Heart of Darkness
Eliot
4. The Hollow Men 5. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock 6. Tradition and the Individual Talent
Hardy
7. Hap 8. Channel Firing 9. Neutral Tones 10. The Ruined Maid
The Shield of Achilles
Author: Auden Summary: Auden's response to the detailed description, or ekphrasis, in Homer's epic poem, The Iliad of the shield borne by the hero Achilles
Musée des Beaux Arts
Author: Auden Summary: Explores the enduring human response to tragedy and challenges the accepted categorization of "ordinary" life experiences. The poem's title refers to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, an institution Auden visited in 1938. While there he viewed the Brueghel alcove which contains a number of works including Icarus, the canvas the poem refers to in detail.
Heart of Darkness
Author: Conrad Summary: Heart of Darkness follows one man's nightmarish journey into the interior of Africa—but don't worry. No one's going to get eaten by a lion. It all takes place in the past, because what we have here is a frame story. Aboard a British ship called the Nellie, three men listen to a dude named Marlow recount his journey into Africa as an agent for the Company, a Belgian ivory trading firm. (Mercifully, he doesn't force them to look through 1000 of his trip photos on Facebook.) Along the way, he witnesses brutality and hate between colonizers and the native African people, becomes entangled in a power struggle within the Company, and finally learns the truth about the mysterious Kurtz, a mad agent who has become both a god and a prisoner of the "native Africans." It's more exciting than it sounds, we promise. After "rescuing" Kurtz from the native African people, Marlow watches in horror as Kurtz succumbs to madness, disease, and finally death. In the end, Marlow decides to support Kurtz rather than his company, which is possibly morally dubious and definitely a bad career move. The novel closes with Marlow's guilt-ridden visit to Kurtz's fiancée to return the man's personal letters, and, on that ambiguous note, we end.
Tradition and the Individual Talent
Author: Eliot Summary: "Tradition and the Individual Talent," one of Eliot's early essays, typifies his critical stance and concerns; it has been called his most influential single essay. Divided into three parts, appearing in The Egoist in September and December, 1919, the essay insists upon taking tradition into account when formulating criticism—"aesthetic, not merely historical criticism."
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
Author: Eliot Summary: J. Alfred Prufrock performs his "love song" in the form of a dramatic monologue in verse. At the beginning of the poem, he asks an unknown "you" to accompany him on a walk through the red light district.
The Hollow Men
Author: Eliot Summary: The poem begins with two epigraphs: one is a quotation from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness remarking on the death of the doomed character Kurtz. The other is an expression used by English schoolchildren who want money to buy fireworks to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. On this holiday, people burn straw effigies of Fawkes, who tried to blow up the British Parliament back in the 17th century. The poem is narrated by one of the "Hollow Men."
Sea Rose
Author: H.D. Summary: A rose. There. Easy, wasn't it? Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. See, this rose is a sea rose - something that we don't see all that often. It's not the sort of rose you'd find in a flower shop. And as H.D. adds layers of description onto the poem, we begin to understand how unique it really is.
The Oread
Author: H.D. Summary: Oread, a mountain nymph, yells at the sea. She tells it to "whirl up," and compares the peaks of its waves to pine trees in the forest. She commands the sea to "splash" its "pines" (well, really its waves) upon the rocks. She commands it to "hurl" itself over the land, and to cover all of us landlubbers with water. The end. She's a pretty bossy nymph, if we do say so ourselves.
The Ruined Maid
Author: Hardy Summary: "The Ruined Maid" is a dialogue between two women who bump into each other in the street. The first to speak is an unnamed woman, who comments on 'Melia's (short for Amelia's) new clothes and look (she seems cleaner, more elegant, etc.). As the poem continues, the woman comments on the way 'Melia used to look (she had no shoes when she left the farm where the two worked together, she was in "tatters"). Each time the woman comments on something, 'Melia responds with a short, semi-snobby retort, usually to the effect of "Well, I'm ruined and this is what I get." By the end, the other woman admits that she too wishes she had all the nice things 'Melia does, to which 'Melia basically says, "You're a raw country girl and you ain't ruined—so too bad."
Hap
Author: Hardy Summary: 'Hap is one of Thomas Hardy's earliest great poems, composed in the 1860s while he was still a young man in his twenties. Its theme is one that would return again and again in both Hardy's poetry and in his fiction: the seeming randomness of the world, and the ways in which our fortunes (and our misfortunes) are a result of blind chance rather than some greater plan.
Neutral Tones
Author: Hardy Summary: Thomas Hardy's poem "Neutral Tones" is a dramatic monologue consisting of four tetrameter quatrains. The speaker addresses an estranged lover and reminisces about a foreseen moment in their past, which anticipated the demise of their relationship. The first three stanzas describe the past incident, and the fourth stanza reflects upon this incident and the nature of love. It is a sad, pessimistic poem that portrays love as painful and doomed.
Channel Firing
Author: Hardy Summary: Thomas Hardy's poem 'Channel Firing' is one of his most popular poems; it was also, perhaps, the most prophetic. Written in April 1914 and published in May of the same year, just a few months before the outbreak of the First World War, it anticipates the conflict that would break out later that year.
Araby
Author: Joyce Summary: In "Araby," the story's narrator is infatuated with a girl known only as "Mangan's sister." The narrator promises to buy her a present from the titular bazaar, but leaves without one, disappointed with the idle chatter of a saleswoman he meets. The narrator lives with his aunt and uncle. The former tenant of his house died and left behind a library that intrigues the narrator. Mangan's sister asks the narrator if he plans on attending a bazaar called Araby, and he promises to get her something from the fair as a gift. The narrator is delayed in leaving to go to the fair as his uncle returns late from work with the money.
The Dead
Author: Joyce Summary: The story centres on Gabriel Conroy, a teacher and part-time book reviewer, and explores the relationships he has with his family and friends. Gabriel arrives late to the party with his wife Gretta, where he is eagerly received. After a somewhat awkward encounter with Lily, the caretaker's daughter, Gabriel goes upstairs to where the party attendants are dancing. Gabriel worries about the speech he is to give, especially that it contains too many academic references for his audience, and Freddy Malins arrives drunk, as the hosts had feared.
Why the Novel Matters
Author: Lawrence Summary: In this essay Lawrence speaks about the importance of the novel and tries to establish the superiority of the novelist above other professions. In an attempt to illustrate the importance of the novel Lawrence explains the importance of life and the living man. He says that the whole living man, the man alive, is more important than his thoughts, ideas, his mind, or his stomach or liver or kidney or any other parts of his body. Lawrence says that this is what scientists and philosophers fail to understand. According to Lawrence a novel shows life and its characters are nothing but man alive. The novelist understands the importance of life and the man alive. Therefore the novelist is better than the scientist or the philosopher.
The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism
Author: Marinetti Summary: "The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism" written by Filippo Marinetti highlights the key ideas behind the Futurist movement in which Marinetti himself is the initiator. Marinetti starts his manifesto by describing old versus new, personifying various places and machines.
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Author: Owen Summary: In "Dulce et Decorum Est," Wilfred Owen vividly depicts the horrors of war. As a soldier in World War I, he experienced the ignobility of war firsthand. By depicting the death and destruction in detail, he proves that war isn't heroic at all. Owen depicts soldiers trudging through the unsanitary trenches, weakened by injuries and fatigue. Suddenly, the men come under attack and must quickly put on their gas masks to prevent the green gas from choking them. One man dies horrifically in front of the speaker. The speaker argues that if the reader had seen this man die, they wouldn't glorify war. He knows that the general public has a glamorized view of war, and he wants to dispel it.
Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown
Author: Woolf Summary: In 'Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown' Woolf analyses the state of modern fiction by contrasting two generations of writers. The essay is framed as a response to an essay by novelist Arnold Bennett in which he declares that the current generation of 'Georgian' authors - D H Lawrence, James Joyce, T S Eliot - have failed as writers because they have not created real, convincing characters. But Woolf challenges Bennett's concept of 'reality':
A Room of One's Own
Author: Woolf Summary: The dramatic setting of A Room of One's Own is that Woolf has been invited to lecture on the topic of Women and Fiction. She advances the thesis that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Her essay is constructed as a partly-fictionalized narrative of the thinking that led her to adopt this thesis. She dramatizes that mental process in the character of an imaginary narrator ("call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance") who is in her same position, wrestling with the same topic.
Easter, 1916
Author: Yeats Summary: 'Easter, 1916' is a poem by Irish writer William Butler Yeats, commemorating the Easter Rising in Dublin on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. Then under British rule, Ireland had been promised independence from Britain once World War I had ended, but the Irish people felt resentment at having to provide the English with men and supplies during the war. During the rebellion, leaders of a political party called the Sinn Feiners (meaning 'We Ourselves' in Gaelic), who favored Irish independence, occupied key buildings in Dublin. After six days, the rebels surrendered to British forces, and sixteen of the Sinn Fein were executed.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Author: Yeats Summary: The speaker says he's going to go to Innisfree to build a small, simple cabin. He'll have a little bean garden and a honeybee hive. He wants to live alone in peace with nature and the slow pace of country living. Sounds like a plan, buddy. In the last stanza, the speaker restates that he's leaving and explains it's because every night he hears the water lapping against the shore (of Innisfree). Even though he lives in a more urban place with paved roads, deep down inside he's drawn to the rural sounds of Innisfree. It's all about rustling trees, not bustling buses for this speaker.
Imperial Decline
Inspired by the decline of the British Empire and colonization due to uprising, conflicting opinions about democracy and money. Also, features consequences of imparted sales, racism, and segregation between varieties of races.
Consciousness-Formation
Interest in the formation of the personality that can be determined by circumstances based on other opinions, authoritative figures, and your own self-consciousness. They had fascinations with psychoanalysis and the subconscious such as Sigmund Freud and his studies involving the Talking Cure and the Oedipus Complex. -Answers 3 questions through psychoanalysis (influence of Sigmund Freud): 1. How is the self formed? 2. How much is consciousness determined by circumstance? 3. Is representing/resisting psychological development determined by modern technology?
Technology
Technology as it relates to the Modern period of literature was a shift from Victorian medievalism to Modern Futurism. Technology is both the rise and fall of positivism. The rise of technology ushered in the rise of positives because it was advancement to the human race and had the potential to increase the welfare of human life. On the other hand, the fall of positivism was brought about by the advancement of technology used as weaponry. These advancements in technology drove the number of casualties in wars up by the discovery of chemical warfare and invention of tanks. As war became more violent, people started to realize the negative impact of technology and grew apprehensive of it. -Automobiles -French Warfare (chemical warfare,) -Airplanes, Tanks, Assembly line -The rise and fall of positivism (people thought the human condition would continuously improve through technology)
"If by good luck there had been an ash-tray handy, if one had not knocked the ash out of the window in default, if things had been a little different from what they were, one would not have seen, presumably, a cat without a tail. The sight of that abrupt and truncated animal padding softly across the quadrangle changed by some fluke of the subconscious intelligence the emotional light for me."
Title: A Room of One's Own Author: Woolf Theme: Consciousness-Formation
"Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry."
Title: A Room of One's Own Author: Woolf Theme: Consciousness-Formation
"Perhaps to think, as I had been thinking these two days, of one sex as distinct from the other . . . interferes with the unity of the mind. . . . The mind is certainly a very mysterious organ, I reflected, drawing my head in from the window, about which nothing whatever is known, though we depend upon it so completely. Why do I feel that there are severances and oppositions in the mind, as there are strains from obvious causes on the body? What does one mean by 'the unity of the mind'? I pondered, for clearly the mind has so great a power of concentrating at any point at any moment that it seems to have no single state of being. . . . if one is a woman one is often surprised by a sudden splitting off of consciousness, say in walking down Whitehall, when from being the natural inheritor of that civilization, she becomes, on the contrary, outside of it, alien and critical. Clearly the mind is always altering its focus, and bringing the world into different perspectives. But some of these states of mind seem, even if adopted spontaneously, to be less comfortable than others. In order to keep oneself continuing in them one is unconsciously holding something back, and gradually the repression becomes an effort."
Title: A Room of One's Own Author: Woolf Theme: Consciousness-Formation
"So I went back to my inn, and as I walked through the dark streets I pondered this and that, as one does at the end of the day's work. I pondered . . . what effect poverty has on the mind; and what effect wealth has on the mind; and I thought of the queer old gentlemen I had seen that morning with tufts of fur upon their shoulders; and I remembered how if one whistled one of them ran; and I thought of the organ booming in the chapel and of the shut doors of the library; and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in;"
Title: A Room of One's Own Author: Woolf Theme: Consciousness-Formation
"A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, Loitered about that vacancy; a bird Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone: That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept Or one could weep because another wept."
Title: Auden Author: The Shield of Achilles Theme: Technology
"A touch of cold in the Autumn night— I walked abroad, And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge Like a red-faced farmer. I did not stop to speak, but nodded, And round about were the wistful stars With white faces like town children.""Whirl up, sea— Whirl your pointed pines Splash your great pines On our rocks, Hurl your green over us, Cover us with your pools of fir."
Title: Autumn Author: Hulme Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgement-day And sat upright."
Title: Channel Firing Author: Hardy Theme: Technology
"Till God called, 'No; It's gunnery practise out at sea Just as before you went below; The world is as it used to be: 'All nations striving to make Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters"
Title: Channel Firing Author: Hardy Theme: Technology
"—O Lily, he said, thrusting it into her hands, it's Christmastime, isn't it? Just... here's a little. . . . He walked rapidly towards the door. —O no, sir! cried the girl, following him. Really, sir, I wouldn't take it. —Christmas-time! Christmas-time! said Gabriel, almost trotting to the stairs and waving his hand to her in deprecation. The girl, seeing that he had gained the stairs, called out after him: —Well, thank you, sir."
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme:
"An idea came into his mind and gave him courage. He would say, alluding to Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia: Ladies and Gentlemen, the generation which is now on the wane among us may have had its faults but for my part I think it had certain qualities of hospitality, of humour, of humanity, which the new and very serious and hypereducated generation that is growing up around us seems to me to lack. Very good: that was one for Miss Ivors. What did he care that his aunts were only two ignorant old women?"
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his forehead."
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"The table then spoke of Mount Melleray, how bracing the air was down there, how hospitable the monks were and how they never asked for a penny-piece from their guests. —And do you mean to say, asked Mr. Browne incredulously, that a chap can go down there and put up there as if it were a hotel and live on the fat of the land and then come away without paying anything? —O, most people give some donation to the monastery when they leave, said Mary Jane. —I wish we had an institution like that in our Church, said Mr. Browne candidly."
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"—I know all about the honour of God, Mary Jane, but I think it's not at all honourable for the pope to turn out the women out of the choirs that have slaved there all their lives and put little whipper-snappers of boys over their heads. I suppose it is for the good of the Church if the pope does it. But it's not just, Mary Jane, and it's not right. She had worked herself into a passion and would have continued in defence of her sister for it was a sore subject with her but Mary Jane, seeing that all the dancers had come back, intervened pacifically: —Now, Aunt Kate, you're giving scandal to Mr. Browne who is of the other persuasion."
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"Lancers were arranged. Gabriel found himself partnered with Miss Ivors. She was a frank-mannered talkative young lady, with a freckled face and prominent brown eyes. She did not wear a low-cut bodice and the large brooch which was fixed in the front of her collar bore on it an Irish device and motto. When they had taken their places she said abruptly: —I have a crow to pluck with you. —With me? said Gabriel. She nodded her head gravely. —What is it? asked Gabriel, smiling at her solemn manner. —Who is G. C.? answered Miss Ivors, turning her eyes upon him. Gabriel coloured and was about to knit his brows, as if he did not understand, when she said bluntly: —O, innocent Amy! I have found out that you write for The Daily Express. Now, aren't you ashamed of yourself? —Why should I be ashamed of myself? asked Gabriel, blinking his eyes and trying to smile. —Well, I'm ashamed of you, said Miss Ivors frankly. To say you'd write for a paper like that. I didn't think you were a West Briton."
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"She broke loose from him and ran to the bed and, throwing her arms across the bed-rail, hid her face. Gabriel stood stockstill for a moment in astonishment and then followed her. As he passed in the way of the cheval-glass he caught sight of himself in full length, his broad, well-filled shirt-front, the face whose expression always puzzled him when he saw it in a mirror, and his glimmering gilt-rimmed eyeglasses. He halted a few paces from her and said: —What about the song? Why does that make you cry? She raised her head from her arms and dried her eyes with the back of her hand like a child. A kinder note than he had intended went into his voice. —Why, Gretta? he asked. —I am thinking about a person long ago who used to sing that song. —And who was the person long ago? asked Gabriel, smiling. —It was a person I used to know in Galway when I was living with my grandmother, she said. The smile passed away from Gabriel's face. A dull anger began to gather again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to glow angrily in his veins. —Someone you were in love with? he asked ironically."
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"All the guests stood up, glass in hand, and turning towards the three seated ladies, sang in unison, with Mr. Browne as leader: For they are jolly gay fellows, For they are jolly gay fellows, For they are jolly gay fellows, Which nobody can deny. Aunt Kate was making frank use of her handkerchief and even Aunt Julia seemed moved. Freddy Malins beat time with his pudding-fork and the singers turned towards one another, as if in melodious conference, while they sang with emphasis: Unless he tells a lie, Unless he tells a lie, Then, turning once more towards their hostesses, they sang: For they are jolly gay fellows, For they are jolly gay fellows, For they are jolly gay fellows, Which nobody can deny. The acclamation which followed was taken up beyond the door of the supper-room by many of the other guests and renewed time after time, Freddy Malins acting as officer with his fork on high."
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme: Consciousness-Formation
"Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part of the hall gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but he could see the terra-cotta and salmon-pink panels of her skirt which the shadow made appear black and white. It was his wife. She was leaning on the banisters, listening to something. . . . He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light ones. Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter. .......... At last she turned towards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and that her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of his heart."
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme: Consciousness-Formation
"She leaned for a moment on his arm in getting out of the cab and while standing at the curbstone, bidding the others good- night. She leaned lightly on his arm, as lightly as when she had danced with him a few hours before. He had felt proud and happy then, happy that she was his, proud of her grace and wifely carriage. But now, after the kindling again of so many memories, the first touch of her body, musical and strange and perfumed, sent through him a keen pang of lust. Under cover of her silence he pressed her arm closely to his side; and, as they stood at the hotel door, he felt that they had escaped from their lives and duties, escaped from home and friends and run away together with wild and radiant hearts to a new adventure."
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme: Consciousness-Formation
"The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live. .......... The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
Title: Dubliners Author: Joyce Theme: Consciousness-Formation
"Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . . Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning."
Title: Dulce Et Decorum Est Author: Owen Theme: Technology The major theme reflected in this poem is technology and its negative impact on society. This advancement in technology created efficient and gruesome ways of killing people during World War II. In this particular text, Mustard gas enabled the execution of many people at once. This left permanent scars in the minds of the veterans who survived. This is evident in the last two lines where he expresses his flashbacks from the war
"This other man I had dreamed A drunken, vainglorious lout. ---------------------------------- He, too, has resigned his part In the casual comedy; He, too, has been changed in his turn, Transformed utterly:"
Title: Easter, 1916 Author: Yeats Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died?"
Title: Easter, 1916 Author: Yeats Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain."
Title: Hap Author: Hardy Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. . . . these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from over the sea."
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline
"Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision,—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath— 'The horror! The horror!'"
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline
"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die."
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline
"His covering had fallen off, and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a winding-sheet. I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze."
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline
"I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it now, but I am not sure--not at all. Certainly the affair was too stupid--when I think of it--to be altogether natural. Still. . . . But at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry up the river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer skipper, and before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, I had plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river."
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline
"I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he was before me, in motley, as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain—why he did not instantly disappear."
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline
"I would no doubt have been properly horrified, had it not occurred to me that he and his chaps must be very hungry: that they must have been growing increasingly hungry for at least this month past. They had been engaged for six months (I don't think a single one of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the end of countless ages have. They still belonged to the beginnings of time--had no inherited experience to teach them as it were), and of course, as long as there was a piece of paper written over in accordance with some farcical law or other made down the river, it didn't enter anybody's head to trouble how they would live."
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline
"I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies,—which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world—what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by letting the young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretense as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims."
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline
"One evening a grass shed full of calico, cotton prints, beads, and I don't know what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer, and saw them all cutting capers in the light, with their arms lifted high, when the stout man with mustaches came tearing down to the river, a tin pail in his hand, assured me that everybody was 'behaving splendidly, splendidly,' dipped about a quart of water and tore back again. I noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his pail."
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline
"These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing--food for thought and also for the vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky; but at all events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole. . . . Rebels! What would be the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers--and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their sticks."
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline
"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty rails."
Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Conrad Theme: Imperial Decline In this passage from the novel "Heart of Darkness" written by Joseph Conrad there is an evident theme of imperial decline. This is because the images of rust and distortion/decay show signs of regression of the British Empire in a figurative way. Conrad compares the machinery to animals, which further shows the regression due to the naturalistic of animals being inferior to technology in terms development and progress into the future. The dark images created in this expert also contributes to the idea of an end to the era due to an imperial decline.
"if you think of these books, you do at once think of some one character who has seemed to you so real (I do not by that mean so lifelike) that it has the power to make you think not merely of itself, but of all sorts of things through its eyes—of religion, of love, of war, of peace, of family life, of balls in country towns, of sunsets, moonrises, the immortality of the soul. . . . in all these novel all these great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise, they would not be novelists; but poets, historians, or pamphleteers"
Title: Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown Author: Woolf Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But it was not for him an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water;"
Title: Musée des Beaux Arts Author: Auden Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing Alive enough to have the strength to die; And a grin of bitterness swept thereby Like an ominous bird a-wing . . . Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, And a pond edged with grayish leaves"
Title: Neutral Tones Author: Hardy Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"Rose, harsh rose, marred and with stint of petals, meagre flower, thin, sparse of leaf, more precious than a wet rose single on a stem— you are caught in the drift. Stunted, with small leaf, you are flung on the sand, you are lifted in the crisp sand that drives in the wind. Can the spice rose drip such acrid fragrance hardened in a leaf?"
Title: Sea Rose Author: H.D. Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"A crowd of fishermen with handlines and gouty naturalists were already swarming around the prodigy. With patient, loving care those people rigged a tall derrick and iron grapnels to fish out my car, like a big beached shark. Up it came from the ditch, slowly, leaving in the bottom, like scales, its heavy framework of good sense and its soft upholstery of comfort. They thought it was dead, my beautiful shark, but a caress from me was enough to revive it; and there it was, alive again, running on its powerful fins!"
Title: The Founding of Manifesto and Futurism Author: Marinetti Theme: Technology
The oldest of us is thirty: so we have at least a decade for finishing our work. When we are forty, other younger and stronger men will probably throw us in the wastebasket like useless manuscripts—we want it to happen! . . . They'll storm around us, panting with scorn and anguish, and all of them, exasperated by our proud daring, will hurtle to kill us, driven by a hatred the more implacable the more their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. Injustice, strong and sane, will break out radiantly in their eyes. Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice."
Title: The Founding of Manifesto and Futurism Author: Marinetti Theme: Technology
"In this hollow valley This broken jar of our lost kingdoms In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech"
Title: The Hollow Men Author: Eliot Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper."
Title: The Hollow Men Author: Eliot Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar"
Title: The Hollow Men Author: Eliot Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star."
Title: The Hollow Men Author: Eliot Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence The theme seen here is Art for Art's Sake/Decadence. This is shown because the author is explaining the relationship of the decline of England to the man. This poem states that as the English monarchy dies, so do the hopes and dreams of the people.
"I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core."
Title: The Lake Isle of Innisfree Author: Yeats Theme: Alienation/Disillusionment
"For I have known them all already, known them all; Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, [. . .] And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, [. . .] And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl."
Title: The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock Author: Eliot Theme: Consciousness-Formation
"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool."
Title: The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock Author: Eliot Theme: Consciousness-Formation
"Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question . . . Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit."
Title: The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock Author: Eliot Theme: Consciousness-Formation The theme Focused on in this passage is Consciousness - Formation or the interest in the formation of the personality that can be determined by circumstances based on other opinions, authoritative figures, and your own self-consciousness. They had fascinations with psychoanalysis and the subconscious, such as Sigmund Freud and his studies involving The Talking Cure and The Oedipus Compex. In this passage, the author is the patient and he is speaking to the therapist, making a metaphor of the streets as a map for his mind that they have to get through to get to the underlying question.
"Whirl up, sea— Whirl your pointed pines Splash your great pines On our rocks, Hurl your green over us, Cover us with your pools of fir."
Title: The Oread Author: H.D. Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that he must inevitably judged by the standards of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canon of dead critics. It is a judgment, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other."
Title: Tradition and the Individual Talent Author: Eliot Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases [oxygen and sulfur dioxide] previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. . . . the more perfect the artist . . . the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material."
Title: Tradition and the Individual Talent Author: Eliot Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"my meaning is, that the poet has, not a 'personality' to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality."
Title: Tradition and the Individual Talent Author: Eliot Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"we might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism."
Title: Tradition and the Individual Talent Author: Eliot Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them."
Title: Tradition and the Individual Talent Author: Eliot Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
"To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that is the point. And at its best, the novel, and the novel supremely, can help you. It can help you not to be dead man in life. So much of a man walks about dead and a carcass in the street and house, to-day; so much of a woman is merely dead. Like a pianoforte with half the notes mute. But the novel you can see, plainly, when the man goes dead, the woman goes inert. You can develop an instinct for life, if you will, instead of a theory of right and wrong, good and bad."
Title: Why the Novel Matters Author: Lawrence Theme: Art for Art's Sake/Decadence
Alienation/Disillusionment
Withdrawing or separation of a person or person's affections from an object of position or former attachment. Many poets experienced this through disappointment that is felt when there is a realization that something that was thought to be true wasn't or a sudden realization that what was thought as good is not as good as we believed it was. -WW1/Industrialization -Response to society's refusal to improve/enact social change -Escalating violence becoming a social movement (Anarchism) -Economic Downturn -Movement from patriotism -Division between the upper and lower class (Elite vs. Common Society)
