ELIT 48 C: Class 2

Spelling Error #1Using “accidently” instead of “accidentally.”

There are quite a few words with -ally suffixes (“incidentally”), and these should not be confused with words having -ly suffixes (“independently”). Accidently makes it into some dictionaries but it’s regarded as a variant. It’s wise to avoid variants if you can, because some people will become more concerned about your spelling than what you’re selling.

Spelling Error 2

• : Don’t Misspell “bated breath.” o If you write baited breath, everyone will

suspect fishing is your favorite hobby. The word should be spelled bated, which comes from abated, meaning held.

AGENDA• Teams• Introduction to the “Modernist

Manifestos” • Discussion:• Modernist Manifestos• Marinetti Loy• Pound Cather• Williams Hughes• Author Introduction: F. Scott

Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby

2. The teams will change on or near exam dates. 3. You must change at least 50% of your team

after each project is completed. 4. You may never be on a team with the same

person more than twice. 5. You may never have a new team composed of

more than 50% of any prior team.

1. We will often use teams to earn participation points. Your teams can be made up of 4 or 5 people.

• Points will be earned for correct answers to questions, meaningful contributions to the discussion, and the willingness to share your work. Each team will track their own points, but cheating leads to death (or loss of 25 participation points).

• Answers, comments, and questions must be posed in a manner that promotes learning. Those who speak out of turn or with maliciousness will not receive points for their teams.

At the end of each class, you will turn in a point sheet with the names of everyone in your group and your accumulated

points for the day. It is your responsibility to make the sheet, track the points, and turn it in.

Sit near your team members in class to facilitate ease of group discussions

Your First Group!

• Get into groups of four. (1-2 minutes)

• If you can’t find a group, please raise your hand.

• Once your groups is established, choose one person to be the keeper of the points. o Write down members’

nameso Turn in your sheet at

the end of the class period.

Take 10 minutes to discuss the following:

• Modernism• The modernist

manifestos and their authors

• Your QHQs

Literary and Artistic Modernism

• “Modernism” refers to artistic works that do some or all of the following: o represent the transformation of traditional

society under the pressures of modernityo break down traditional literary forms o depict the modern world not as a triumph of

human civilization but as an experience of losso call into question the religious, political, social,

and artistic conventions of the pasto interpret the world as disparate fragments

rather than an integrated whole

What is a Modernist Manifesto?

What is a Modernist Manifesto?

“The modernist manifesto is a public declaration of artistic convictions, relatively brief, often highly stylized or epigrammatic in the mode of other forms of modernist writing, and almost always an aggressively self- conscious declaration of artistic independence” (NAAL 335).

Modernist Manifestos

F. T. Marinetti Marinetti was a relatively

obscure Italian poet before publishing “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism,” which “attracted an international circle of artists and writers into Marinetti’s orbit, including painters, architects, poets, sculptors, playwrights, and film directors. Across all the arts, futurism scorned traditional standards of artistic beauty, celebrated modern technologies of speed, and aimed to shock audiences” (NAAL 336).

QHQ Marinetti• Q: Did all(or most) people who took part in the

Futurism movement have the same or similar ideals that Marinetti’s Manifesto depicts? Or were there some futurists that had completely different perspectives on the movement that could possibly completely contradict Marinetti’s vision of what the new world and its new beauty would be?

We stand on the last promontory of the centuries! . . . Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.

—from Manifesto of Futurism

F. T. Marinetti

While many modernist writers depicted the modern world as an experience of loss, Marinetti wholeheartedly embraced the idea that modern technology has ushered in a secular millennium.

1. Why does Marinetti choose speed and cars to represent the “new beauty” that he believes the world’s magnificence has been enriched with?

We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.

—from Manifesto of

Futurism

These two points from the Manifesto of Futurism represent potentially troubling aspects of Marinetti’s worldview: his celebration of war and his denigration of women (he glorifies “scorn for woman” and promises to “destroy . . .feminism”).

1. How does this prowar, antiwoman stance relate to Marinetti’s futurist philosophy? Does it seem to be an afterthought? Or are the glorification of war and the denigration of women integral to Marinetti’s thinking?

Mina Loy Mina Loy was a self-described feminist poet and writer, and, oddly enough, the sexual partner of the apparently antifeminist F. T. Marinetti. She wrote (but did not publish) her “Feminist Manifesto” during her association with Marinetti.

1. Does Loy’s manifesto read as a response to Marinetti’s? As a criticism of it? Are the two manifestos written in a similar form, or are there formal differences as well as differences in content?

Women . . . you are on the eve of a devastating psychological upheaval—all your pet illusions must be unmasked—the lies of centuries have got to go—are you prepared for the Wrench—? There is no half-measure—NO scratching on the surface of the rubbish heap of tradition, will bring about Reform, the only method is Absolute Demolition.

—from Feminist Manifesto

1. One of most immediately noticeable features of Loy’s manifesto is its typography: She increases the font size at strategic moments, underlines text, puts letters in boldface, and employs irregular capitalization. What is the effect of this?

2. Does Loy’s message of “Absolute Demolition” (rather than mere “Reform”) require that she radically alter the appearance of her text? That is, does the message of her text determine the form that it takes?

3. Loy’s militaristic language of demolition and destruction recall Marinetti’s glorification of war, but her profeminist message runs entirely counter to Marinetti’s. How might we account for this conflict?

Loy QHQ1. Q: How does Mina Loy believe the role

of women shifts in between the two world wars?

2. Why is woman not the equal of man? 3. Are men and women truly equal or truly

unequal? If there are no stereotypes or gender roles would it be fair to compare men and women?

Ezra PoundPound was an American expatriate living in Europe. He was hugely influential in the circle of other expatriate writers and artists not only for his own work as a poet but also for the advice that he offered to other writers. “A Retrospect” is Pound’s manifesto on Imagism, a school of poetry that argued for the central—if not defining—place of the image in modern poetry.

• An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.

• It is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works.

• Use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something.

—from “A Retrospect”

1. Is Ezra Pound offering a radical new vision of poetry, or are his comments simply good advice for writers of any kind?

2. What do you find radical in Pound’s approach as laid out in “A Retrospect”?

In a Station of the MetroThe apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.

1. One of Pound’s most famous Imagist poems is “In a Station of the Metro.” Does he practice what he preaches in “A Retrospect” in this poem?

2. After reading this poem, are you inclined to think differently about the advice Pound offers in “A Retrospect”?

3. After reading an Imagist poem, do you think that “A Retrospect” is offering something more than just general advice for writers?

Willa Cather Willa Cather was born in the Midwest but spent most of her career as a novelist in cosmopolitan cities such as London and New York. In “The Novel Démeublé,” Cather implicitly asks what nineteenth-century novelists can teach twentieth-century writers. In so doing, she rejects realist novels as mere “amusement” and looks to “American romances” such as Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter for inspiration.

There are hopeful signs that some of the younger writers are trying to break away from mere verisimilitude, and, following the development of modern painting, to interpret imaginatively the material and social investiture of their characters; to present their scene by suggestion rather than by enumeration.

—from “The Novel Démeublé”

1. The realist literature of an earlier tradition was committed to the “verisimilitude” that Cather here rejects. What is Cather offering in the place of verisimilitude?

2. What does it mean “to interpret imaginatively” and “to present . . . by suggestion rather than by enumeration”?

QHQ: Cather1. Q: Why does Cather believe physical

descriptions of people and things don’t have value?

2. If an author succeeds in producing a work of novelty, is the meaning of the novel more important or how it subjectively affects the reader emotionally?

William Carlos Williams So far, all of the

manifestos that we have read are serious invectives. Yet, here we encounter the playfulness in Williams’s Spring and All. Given the playful, ironic, and humorous tone of Williams’s manifesto, it may be difficult to tell how deadly serious he is about his vision for modern poetry.

It is spring! but miracle of miracles a miraculous miracle has gradually taken place during these seemingly wasted eons. Through the orderly sequences of unmentionable time EVOLUTION HAS REPEATED ITSELF FROM THE BEGINNING.

—from Spring and All

1. The language from Spring and All invokes both the creation story in the book of Genesis and the theory of evolution. Why does Williams do this?

2. And how does he make both religion and science serve “the meaning of ‘art’”?

QHQ: Williams1. What implications is Williams trying to

convey about humans?2. What does Williams repetition of

“imagination” in the excerpt from “Spring and All” have to do with the manifesto?

3. What is Williams trying to accomplish in this manifesto?

Langston Hughes

Many modernist writers supported the idea that artists and writers should be fiercely committed to their personal vision regardless of what the market, critics, or other writers said. In “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Langston Hughes argues that an artist’s racial identity complicates this commitment to personal vision in ways that white writers had not fully appreciated.

I am ashamed for the black poet who says, “I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet,” as though his own racial world were not as interesting as any other world . . . An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

—from “The Negro Artist and

the Racial Mountain”

There’s a tension in the statement between individual choice (“An artist must be free to choose what he does”) and a manifesto-like prescription of what African-American poets must do (“I am ashamed for the black poet who says . . .”).

1. Why doesn’t Hughes encourage his fellow blacks to be themselves, but while also still being a part of America?

2. What kinds of attitudes does Langston Hughes want young African-American artist to adopt towards art?

3. Must an artist only create art based on their race/culture to be considered genuine?

QHQ: Hughes1. How does the “self-embracing” of a “Negro” artist differ from that

of a white artist? What are the consequences, both positive and negative, of African Americans fully embracing their racial identities?

2. Who does Langston Hughes think is responsible for creating the “racial mountain”? Is the “racial mountain” still present in todays society?

3. Would Langston Hughes’ rhetoric apply to the African American artist today? Is it still necessary to racially identify African American artists?

4. Is Hughes’ point regarding embracing one’s culture regardless of social prejudice a helpful and honest tip in order to achieve literary success, or is it a romanticized ideology that does not fully take into account the challenges of the time period?

5. How can African-Americans recover from internalized racism when mainstream culture is focused on white standards?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL05VV040Ls

1896-1940F. Scott

Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald came from two widely different families. He had early on developed an inferiority complex in a family where the “black Irish half … had the money and looked down on the Maryland side of the family who had, and really had … ‘breeding,’” (Scott Donaldson: Dictionary of Literary Biography.) Out of this divergence of classes in his family background arose what critics called F. Scott's “double vision.” He had the ability to experience the lifestyle of the wealthy from an insider's perspective, yet never felt a part of this clique and always felt the outsider.

• Read: The Great Gatsby: ALL• Post #2: Choose One• Write a character sketch of Daisy or Tom or

Jordan, focusing on the recurring “tag” used to describe them. Daisy leans forward and talks in a low voice; Tom is restless and hulking; Jordan balances something on her chin almost in an athletic stance. What is Fitzgerald’s purpose in thus describing them?

• OR Discuss how the reunion of Daisy and Gatsby signals both the beginning and the end of Gatsby’s dream and of his success.

• OR Trace the recurring image of eyes, and ascertain the purposes of those images. Consider blindness on any level as well as sight.

• OR Your own QHQ

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