Download Modernism Class 1 – Teaching Notes

Modernism Class 1 – Lesson Plan
WHAT IS MODERNISM?
There are many definitions and ways of thinking about this. And in fact, I think one of
modernism’s great strengths is there are so many competing opinions about what it is.
Good: You may find that you can define in a way that really speaks to you. Bad: We
may find we’re all talking about slightly different things.
The first, and most basic, definition of modernism is given on the syllabus. It’s a
definition by dates. Literature from 1900-1950. This definition assumes a linear
history:
Pre-modernism (1900)  Modernism (1950)  Postmodernism (Now)
Elicit authors that fit into any of these three categories.
In what ways is this definition insufficient? Modernism is simply a period term. What
about texts such as Edgar Rice Burrough’s s Tarzan of the Apes (1914) – an adventure
story? Or Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse comics (1928)? What about Tolkien’s The
Hobbit (1937)? Why are we hesitant to call these modernism?
Premodernism  Modernism
Non-Modernism
 Postmodernism
 Postmodernism
How do we distinguish between modernism and non-modernism between 1900 and
1950?
option a: Difficulty? Why is modernism difficult, because by definition it’s a
difficult form of literature. (Don’t expect an easy course). Modernism is relfective,
philosophical, engaged etc. Is modernism always difficult? What about this classic
modernist poem by Pound (1914):
In a Station of the Metro
THE apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Is it very difficult? No. BUT it at the same time it doesn’t make concessions to the
reader. It doesn’t tell you what to think. And it’s not trying to be popular.
How do we conceive the opposition between what is modernist and what isn’t? option
b: High culture vs. Low or Popular Culture.
Andras Huyssen’s After the Great Divide.
What’s the problem with this divide?
Is it possible to have a non-modernist work, which isn’t popular culture?
Look at the two poems on the handout from Poetry Magazine 1914. Discuss in
groups. Which one would you say is modernist?
option c: formal differences. What is it that makes Pound’s work modernist?
Sense of trying to overcome tradition… having exhausted old forms. Getting closer to
the thing itself. Trying to say something new when it seems like everything has been
said already. Seeing the world anew for what it really is. And why? – Alert them to
Imagist Manifesto, A Retrospect, and “A Few don’ts)
So what happens in the splitting arrow. What is the modernism arrow splitting away
from? TRADITION.

Pre-modernism ----the line of tradition-----Non-modernist works
Modernism
We’ve talked about what distinguishes modernist texts from non-modernist texts, but
this still doesn’t explain modernism or why it happens when it happens. 
What happened in the 19th Century to cause modernism? Why did modernism occur
when it did?
Elicit suggestions for what happened between 1850 and 1920 and write them on the
board in three broad categories.
New Material Conditions
Technology, war.
New Aesthetics
New ideas about art – Wilde, decadents.
New Ideas in the 19th Century.
Freud, Marx, Darwin, Nietzche.
For each of these ask what history looked like in 1850?
Adam and Eve – Jesus – Judgment Day
Amoeba – Ape – Man - ?
Feudalism – Capitalism - Class struggle - ?
No transcendental good and evil.
Freud: uncertainty about your own motives, about your own consciousness.
Stream of conscious: how would you theorize this more generally as part of its
period?
Line a (modernism) worries about these changes
Line b (non-modernism) and the line of tradition doesn’t.
Modernism in this sense is self-critical – it is a form of art or literature that drives the
contradictions in art or literature into the open. Contemporary literature (Dan Brown)
often is not critical in the same way. This is one attraction of modernism: facing up to
a contemporary existential crisis.
Think more about material conditions – new technology, industrialisation – the
rationale for Futurism.
Start reading from the Futurist Manifesto.
Remind them of their homework – email me with a presentation.
Remind them to go and visit the Guggenheim before next week.