Week 10-12
Modernism
What does The Wasteland mean (Lol)?
OK, well, let's unpack that:
1. How has it been interpreted? Use citations.
2. What are some of its key features?
3. In what ways has it been influential??
PoMo
7. What kinda protest song/rap/other media have come out in the last decade? Is there a spirit of protest anymore?
What does The Wasteland mean (Lol)?
OK, well, let's unpack that:
1. How has it been interpreted? Use citations.
2. What are some of its key features?
3. In what ways has it been influential??
PoMo
1. What common qualities do the "Beats" share? Why were they so-named?
2. On what grounds was Ginsberg's HOWL accused of being obscene, and on what grounds was it defended?
3. In what ways are Beat poetry and rap linked?
4. How was Bob Dylan's song Master of War involved in controversy during the Bush administration?
5. What were the links between black protest music and revolutionary political movements, such as the Black Panthers, in the 1960s and how did things play out then and into the 1970s?
6. Identity some linked themes in rap of the 1980s from the period of the previous questions.
5. What were the links between black protest music and revolutionary political movements, such as the Black Panthers, in the 1960s and how did things play out then and into the 1970s?
6. Identity some linked themes in rap of the 1980s from the period of the previous questions.
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ReplyDeleteWhat does The Waste Land mean?
ReplyDeleteLet's unpack that:
1. How has it been interpreted? Use citations.
The most common interpretation of The Waste Land is based on Eliot’s continual reference to the Fisher King, a legend drawn out of Arthurian myth. The Fisher King is crippled by a magical wound and spends his days fishing on a lake near his castle. His lands are desolate, infertile -- a waste land -- until Arthur’s knight Percival heals the king and restores the land to fertility. In Eliot’s own annotations of the poem, “the waste land created by the Fisher King’s wound serves as a central image of the poem”. The motif of the Fisher King appears repeatedly throughout the poem. Some interpret the inclusion of this tale as a metaphor for the desolation of modern civilisation post-WWI.
By extension, the poem as a whole represents “a general crisis in western culture” (Lewis, 2007). It appears to be critiquing the changes in the world and how culture and society have shifted; especially considering how soon after WWI the poem was published, this interpretation becomes particularly relevant. It certainly shares a dismal perspective of society; in III: The Fire Sermon, Eliot describes a woman and her daughter “[washing] their feet in soda water”, the gaudiness and disgusting nature of such a phrase alluding to modern decadence and cheap vulgarity while also draining the word of its Biblical reverence (Eliot, 1922). Surely, the continual referral to Dante’s Inferno that begins in the epigraph with “Il miglior fabbro” (which translates to “the better craftsman” and appears in the Purgatorio section of Inferno) implies that Eliot was comparing life on earth to living in hell. Without Eliot intending to, the poem came to represent the “disillusion of a generation” (Eliot, 1931; cited in Lewis, 2007).
Eliot himself was notoriously unhelpful at explaining the meaning of the poem, preferring to leave it up to the reader to figure it out (“A Very Short Analysis [...]”, 2016). In his annotations of the poem, Eliot claims that the blind prophet Tiresias, who first appears in III: The Fire Sermon, is the vessel through whom we should view the poem, but he also claimed later in his life that the poem was not trying to speak for the entire generation of disgruntled youths post-WWI, which only further disgruntled the scholars who had been arguing the exact opposite. As Wimsatt and Beardsley claim, “the poem is not the critic’s own and not the author’s (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem belongs to the public” (1946, p.470). We can’t turn to Eliot for answers; we can only choose our own interpretation and fight with other people on the Internet about it.
2. What are some of its key features?
ReplyDeleteOne of the key features of The Waste Land is the fact that it is very fragmented. Fragmentation in literature is a style of writing that causes the line of writing to jump from one thought to the next randomly (“What are examples of fragmentation...”, n.d.). There are plenty of examples of fragmentation that could be cited here -- I could honestly bracket the whole poem within quotation marks and call it a day -- but a particular example I like of the flow of thought being interrupted takes place in I. The Burial of the Dead: “Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, / Had a bad cold, nevertheless, / Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, / With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, / Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, / (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)”. This fragment interrupts itself while discussing how Madame Sosostris is the best clairvoyant in Europe to contribute the fact that she had a bad cold, and Madame Sosostris interrupts herself to quote The Tempest while doing a card reading. Most scholars hypothesise that the fragmented nature of the poem is meant to symbolise the fracture and decay of society, but I think Eliot might have disagreed (Morrison, n.d.).
Another significant feature of the poem is how many other texts it references. In the first three acts of the poem alone, at least 26 different texts are referenced or quoted on 38 separate occasions, and that’s just by my count. This is including but not limited to The Divine Comedy by Dante, which Eliot references in first in his epigraph to Ezra Pound, “il miglior fabbro”; the Bible, quoting Ezekiel 2:1 and Ecclesiastes 12:5 in I. The Burial of the Dead; The Tempest by William Shakespeare, peppering variations of the line “Those were pearls in his eyes. Look!” from Act I, Scene 2 of the play throughout the poem; and From Ritual to Romance by Jessie Weston and The Golden Bough by J. G. Frazer, from whose writing Eliot pulled the motif of the Fisher King that provides the prevailing imagery of the poem.
I could go on, but I believe that these are the two most important and notable features of the poem.
3. In what ways has it been influential?
As well as being heavily influenced by/referential to other texts, The Waste Land has had significant cultural influence itself. It epitomises modernist writing and provides a keen baseline for understanding the eccentricity of the genre, especially considering that it is a touch shorter and more digestible than longform modernist novels such as Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927) and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), both of which I have read and found indecipherable. It captured the minds of a generation of writers who ached to evoke the same sensation of disillusionment and social decay in their writing, particularly Allen Ginsberg and his famously controversial power Howl (1956). Most importantly, of course, it came to represent the mindset of a generation of people who were disillusioned after the end of World War I. This disenchantment with violence didn’t take its full effect until the Vietnam War was underway and the draft was introduced, but in 1922, the effect The Waste Land had on society was infectious: it made people feel seen, articulated the current cultural climate of dissatisfaction, and the poem has become known as one of the most important pieces of literature to escape the 20th century.
Hi Sarah,
DeleteAs always your comments are very well-thought out and interesting and I particularly enjoyed your comment on how the Waste Land has been influential on culture in general. I find the Wasteland to be as relevant now as it was when it was written, with many of the themes such as disillusionment being something that I feel modern audiences can relate too. Would you agree?
Hi,
DeleteYes, I completely agree! Even though Eliot claims that the poem wasn't really meant to represent the generation's woes, it has somehow become representational of the modern audience's experiences with life too, particularly in the wake of such travesties as the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the recent Bill passed in Alabama illegalising abortion, and especially the crisis taking place in Sudan at the present. Even if it is a little indecipherable as a text, the poem still has a general air of disenchantment to it even if you can't really grasp it conceptually, which is pretty neat.
WORKS CITED
ReplyDeleteA Very Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. (2016, October 6). Retrieved from https://interestingliterature.com/2016/10/06/a-very-short-analysis-of-t-s-eliots-the-waste-land/.
What are examples of fragmentation in The Waste Land?. (n.d.). Retrieved June 1, 2019, from https://study.com/academy/answer/what-are-examples-of-fragmentation-in-the-waste-land.html.
Eliot, T. S. (1922). The Wasteland. London: The Criterion.
Eliot, T. S. (1931). Thoughts After Lambeth. London: Faber & Faber.
Galvan. (2016, September 24). “The Waste Land” Parts I-II Analysis. Retrieved from https://wp.nyu.edu/communcollab2016/2016/09/24/the-waste-land-parts-i-ii-analysis/.
Lewis, P. (2007). The Waste Land - Modernism Lab. Retrieved from https://modernism.coursepress.yale.edu/the-waste-land/.
Morrison, D. (n.d.). What are the most notable uses of fragmentation in T.S Eliot's The Waste Land and why?. Retrieved from https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-most-noteable-uses-fragmentation-t-s-eliots-295521.
Ross, A. (1984). The Waste Land and the Fantasy of Interpretation. Representations, 8, 134-158. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/2928561?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents.
Wimsatt Jr., W. K., & Beardsley, M. C. (1946). The Intentional Fallacy. The Sewanee Review, 54(3), 468-488. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/27537676.
3. In what ways are Beat poetry and rap linked?
ReplyDeleteThe written word has always been a way for people to provide their own commentary on events within their society, and it could be also argued that these works act as a time capsule for future generations. In this context I am using the metaphor of the time capsule as a device to indicate that these works are snapshots into the zeitgeist of that moment in history and that, as writers, we can view these works through a contemporary lenses and these can be direct and huge influences on movements within music and literature. Beat poetry and Rap are a clear example of where genres were influenced by another, and there are several clear links between the two. In a 2004 article by the Academy of American Poets, it is thought that beat poetry is an originally American genre that came to be through the work of such influential writers as Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso and many more. Originating in the 1940/50s as a response to the environment of post-world war two America and coming to a height in the 1960s, beat poetry was fuelled by LGBT rights, civil rights, hallucinogens and a deep desire to challenge the status quo (Academy of American Poets, 2004.). Rap as a genre has a complex history with no clearly definable origin, but one historical factor that is commonly accepted is the influence of early African oral traditions (Price-styles, 2015). This is important to note as beat poetry also links its origins to these early oral traditions, thus one clearly definable connection between these two genres lies in their historical influence. Moving forward, another connection between these two genres lies within the content. An excerpt from the book ‘The Anthology of Rap’ provided in a 2010 NPR article notes that rap, when looked at through the lens of critical poetry analysis, contains many common similarities such as using rhythm and rhyme, emphasising story telling and using common literary devices such as metaphor and simile (NPR, 2010). One of the most important common connections between rap and beat poetry is the community aspect that was intrinsic to both. As discussed in a 2010 paper by Florian Arleth, beat poetry and rap were both born out of frustration with the mainstream and the desire to have art made by the people for the people, with no limits on who could participate. It could be said that both rap and beat poetry call out the society in their own individual ways, both are adept at providing an alternative to the mainstream culture, using the rhythm of song and poetry to discuss political and social inequalities that face the common man.
Word Count: 445.
References:
American Academy of Poets. (2004). A brief guide to the beat poets. Retrieved from https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-beat-poets
Arleth, F. (2010). The New Beat Generation - Rapmusic in the Tradition of the American Counter Culture. Retrieved from https://www.grin.com/document/190758
Caplan, D. (2015). Six features of hip hop poetry. Retrieved from https://blog.oup.com/2015/04/six-features-hip-hop-poetry/
NPR. (2010). 'The Anthology Of Rap': Lyrics As Poetry. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131125923#131069750
Price-styles, A. (2015). MC origins: rap and spoken word poetry. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-hiphop/mc-origins-rap-and-spoken-word-poetry/CA701816F548AF3AB1B07AF6EEF19125/core-reader
This is a great comment -- 'rap' music in the mainstream Top 40 music is often vapid and insubstantial, so it's good to harken back to the roots of the music and remember where it comes from in terms of protesting and raising awareness about real world issues and injustices in society. My brother is obsessed with rap and hip hop, so I have heard a lot of music that has changed my opinion over the last few years about the quality of rap music as a whole, and it's fascinating to think back to the links between rap music and beat poetry, especially since the two are both such distinct genres in their own right.
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