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Imagism and Ezra Pound

Imagism and Ezra Pound. Content. Ⅰ. Modernism Ⅱ. Modern Poetry: Imagism Ⅲ. Ezra Pound. Preview Questions. 1. What are the major characteristics of the literature of Modernism? 2. What are the main artistic expressions in Modernism? And who are the representatives?

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Imagism and Ezra Pound

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  1. Imagism and EzraPound

  2. Content Ⅰ. Modernism Ⅱ. Modern Poetry: Imagism Ⅲ. Ezra Pound

  3. Preview Questions 1. What are the major characteristics of the literature of Modernism? 2. What are the main artistic expressions in Modernism? And who are the representatives? 3. What is Imagism? Who is the outstanding poet of Imagism?

  4. Your Place in History 15th C 1900 1945 2000 Native Postmodernism Modernism Puritanism Enlightenment Romanticism Realism Naturalism You were / are here

  5. (Ⅰ) Background of Producing Modernism 1. The Origin of Species(1859) radically altered the nineteenth century romantic view. 2. Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinismreconciledindividualismwith capitalism. 3. The work ofMarx, Freud, and other greatintellectual explorershad mounted an assault against orthodox religious faith. 4. World War I and the acceleration of thetransformation of American societyin particular deepened doubt, reauthorizeddisillusionment.

  6. (Ⅰ) Background of Producing Modernism • Early 1900s: • World War I • Worldwide poverty & exploitation • Intellectual upheaval: • Freud: psychoanalysis • Marx: class struggle • Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Neitzsche • Picasso, Stravinsky, Kafka, Proust, • Brecht, Joyce, Eliot

  7. (Ⅰ) Background of Producing Modernism Modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations that accompany specific stages of capitalism 1. Market capitalism: 18th-19th C.Steam locomotive Realism 2. Monopoly capitalism: Late 19th C to WWIIElectricity and automobile Modernism 3. Multinational/consumer capitalismNuclear and electronics Postmodernism

  8. (Ⅱ) Definition and Major Characters 1. Modernism is acultural movementthat generally includes the progressiveartandarchitecture,design,literature,music,dance, paintingandother visual artswhich emerged in the beginning of the 20th century , particularly in the years following World War I. 2. The artistic expressions of this avant-garde movement include Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Constructivism, De Stijl, Imagism, surrealism and Abstract Expressionismetc..

  9. Cubism Surrealism Dadaism Expressionism

  10. (Ⅱ) Definition and Major Characters 3. The key elements are experimentation, anti-realism, individualism and a stress on the cerebral rather than emotive aspects. 4. The work of Modernism writers is characterized by showing the disenchantment, dislocation, and alienation of men in the world, and by the emphasis on experimentation and formalism and objectivism. 5. The best-known Modernists are T.S.Eliot, Ezra Pound, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and so on.

  11. The Differences Among Realism,Modernism and Postmodernism

  12. (Ⅲ) Major Schools Modern poetry: experiments in form (Imagism) 2. Prose Writing: modern realism (the Lost Generation) 3. Novels of Social Awareness 4.The Harlem Renaissance (African American Literature ) 5. The Fugitives and New Criticism 6. The 20th Century American Drama

  13. Ⅱ. Modern Poetry: Imagism • In America, it started in Chicago in 1912 when a new magazine was launched under the title of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. This movement/event marked a poetic renaissance in the United States and the beginning of modern American poetry in rebellion against Victorian poetry and against theconventional technique of the time. • Major features 1. Anti-romantic and anti-Victorian 2. Free verse without metrical restriction 3. Based on scientific observation, just presenting concrete, firm and definite images with no attempt to get inside of them like Naturalism in fiction 4. Record objective observations of an object or a situation without interpretation or comment by the poet

  14. Ⅱ. Modern Poetry: Imagism • Comment 1. It was only one of the new techniques of writing poetry that was part of the modernist period and it was one of the most essential techniques. 2. Pound championed the movement from 1912 to 1914, setting down the Imagist principles. 3. Free verse is one of the lasting influences of imagism. Each line is its own unique unit. The apparent indiscriminate line breaks reflects the discontinuity in life itself.

  15. Ezra Pound (1885- 1972) T.S.Eliot (1888 - 1965) Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955) William Carlos Williams (1883 - 1963) Robert Frost (1874 - 1963) E.E.Cummings (1894 - 1963) Ⅲ. Ezra Pound Representative Modernist Poets

  16. Ⅲ. Ezra Pound (1885- 1972) The father of modern Amrican poetry The most influential leader of the Imagist Movement The father of Imagist poetry 1. Life 2. Major Works 3. Poetic Features

  17. 1. Life of Ezra Pound • born in Hailey, Idaho • grew up and was educated mainly in Pennsylvania. • In 1901 at the age of 15, he entered the University • of Pennsylvania • Two years later, transferred • to Hamilton College Hamilton College

  18. 1. Life of Ezra Pound • In 1908 he moved to Europe, living first in Venice but • eventually settling in London. • Pound self-published A Lume Spento, his first published collection of short poems, while living in Venice. • In the years before the World War I, Pound was largely responsible for the appearance of Imagism, and coined the name of the movement Vorticism. • Ezra married the artist Dorothy Shakespear in 1914.

  19. 1. Life of Ezra Pound • In 1920, he moves to Paris and got acquainted with Gertrude stein and her circle of friends, then settled in Italy in 1924. • During the second World War, he leaned in the direction of Mussolini’s fascist totalitarianism. • Having made anti-American radio broadcasts, • he was arrested as a traitor in 1945 . • Sent to the US, where he was deemed • mentally unfit to stand trial for treason.

  20. 1. Life of Ezra Pound “The River-Merchant‘s Wife: A Letter” (庞德根据李白的《长干行》译的英文） was published in 1915 in Ezra Pound's third collection of poetry, Cathay • Pound was confined for 12 years in a hospital (actually prison) for the criminally insane in Washington. • During this time he translated works of ancient Greek and ancient Chinese literature . • While in prison ,he was awarded a prestigious poetry prize in 1949 for his last Cantos.

  21. A Chinese imagistic poetry: Autumn Evening crows perch on old trees wreathed with withered vine, Water of a stream flows by a family cottage near a tiny bridge. A lean horse walks on an ancient road in western breeze, The sun is setting in the west, The heart-broken one is at the end of the Earth. 《天净沙·秋思》 马致远 枯藤、老树、昏鸦，小桥、流水、人家， 古道、西风、瘦马，夕阳西下，断肠人在天涯。

  22. 2. Major Works Pound wrote 70 books and over 1500 articles in his life. 1) Cathay《华夏集》: It is based on translations from ancient Chinese poets like Li Bai. 2) Homage to Sextus Propertius《晚歌十二首》 3) The Cantos《诗章》 4) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley《休·西尔文·毛伯莱》 5) A Pact《盟约》 6) In a Station of the Metro《在地铁站里》

  23. 2. Major Works In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. 人群中幽然浮现的一张张脸庞， 黝黑的湿树枝上的一片片花瓣。 1) The “Metro” is the underground railway of Paris. 2) "Apparition" meaning:a) “appearance”, in the sense of something which appears, or shows up; something which can be clearly observed; b) Apparition meaning something which seems real but perhaps is not real; something ghostly which cannot be clearly observed.

  24. 2. Major Works 3) He tries to renderexactly his observation of human faces seen in an underground railway station. 4) Repeating it, you can have a colorful picture, also you can feel the beauty of musicthrough it’s repetition of different vowels and consonants, such as /p/ and /au/. Especially the repetition of /e/ in the second line emphasize it’s sense of music. 5) In this brief poem, Pound uses thefewest possible words to convey an accurate image, according to the principles of the “Imagists”. 6) Whether truth or myth, the piece has become a famous documentin the history of Imagism.

  25. 3. His Poetic Features 1) Most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry. His critical theories have great influence onmany important American and British poets. 2) The leader of the Imagist school in poetry. He believed that good poetry was based onimagesrather than ideas. 3) Advocated and followed the imagist credo, writing succinct verse of dry clarity and hard outline in which an exact visual image made a total poetic statement. 4) On one hand he stressed clarity, precision, and economy of language, on the other hand, Pound mused the traditional rhyme and meter

  26. T.S.Eliot (1888 - 1965) His works Prufrock (1917) 《普鲁弗洛克的情歌》 Four Quartets (1943) 《四个四重奏》 The Waste Land (1922) 《荒原》 Ash Wednesday (1930) 《灰色星期三》 Murder in the Cathedral (1935)《大教堂凶杀案》 The Family Reunion (1939) 《全家重聚》 The Cocktail Party (1949) 《鸡尾酒会》 The Confidential Clerk (1954) 《机要秘书》 The Elder Statesman(1959) 《政界元老》 Notes towards the Definition of Culture (1948) 《关于文化的定义的札记》 Poetry Drama

  27. Homework Please preview the poems written by Stevens and Frost in Selected Readings.

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