Page 192 - DENG402_HISTORY_OF_ENGLISH_LITERATURE

Unit 25: Twentieth Century (Modern Novel-Lawrence, Stream of Consciousness)

Notes

Did u know? The fragmented, non-chronological, poetic forms utilized by Eliot and Pound
revolutionized poetic language.

Modernist formalism, however, was not without its political cost. Many of the chief Modernists
either flirted with fascism or openly espoused it (Eliot, Yeats, Hamsun and Pound). This should not
be surprising: modernism is markedly non-egalitarian; its disregard for the shared conventions of
meaning make many of its supreme accomplishments largely inaccessible to the common reader.
For Eliot, such obscurantism was necessary to halt the erosion of art in the age of commodity
circulation and a literature adjusted to the lowest common denominator.
It could be argued that the achievements of the Modernists have made little impact on the practices
of reading and writing as those terms and activities are generally understood. The opening of
Finnegans Wake, "riverrun, past Eve's and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us
by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs," seems scarcely less
strange and new than when it was first published in 1939. Little wonder, then, that it is probably
the least read of the acknowledged "masterpieces" of English literature. In looking to carry on
many of the aesthetic goals of the Modernist project, hypertext fiction must confront again the
politics of its achievements in order to position itself anew with regard to reader. With its reliance
on expensive technology and its interest in re-thinking the linear nature of The Book, hypertext
fiction may find itself accused of the same elitism as its modernist predecessors.

25.2 Modern Drama

This is the most important and popular literary medium in the modern times. It is the only literary
form which can compete for popularity with the film and the radio, and it is in this form that a
great deal of distinguished work is being produced. The publication of a new novel by a great
novelist is received now with the same enthusiastic response as a new comedy by Dryden or
Congreve was received in the Restoration period, and a new volume of poems by Tennyson
during the Victorian period. Poetry which had for many centuries held the supreme place in the
realm of literature has lost that position. Its appeal to the general public is now negligible, and it
has been obviously superseded by fiction.
The main reason for this change is that the novel is the only literary form which meets the needs
of the modern world. The great merit of poetry is that it has the capacity to convey more than one
meaning at a time. It provides compression of meaning through metaphorical expression. It
manages to distil into a brief expression a whole range of meanings, appealing to both intellect
and emotion. But this compression of metaphor is dependent upon a certain compression in the
society. In other words, the metaphor used in poetry must be based on certain assumptions or
public truths held in common by both the poet and the audience. For example the word ‘home’
stood for a settled peaceful life with wife and children, during the Victorian home. So if this word
was used as a metaphor in poetry its meaning to the poet as well to the audience was the same. But
in the twentieth century when on account of so many divorces and domestic disturbances, home
has lost its sanctity, in English society, the word ‘home’ cannot be used by the poet in that sense
because it will convey to different readers different meanings according to their individual
experiences.
For poetry to be popular with the public there must exist a basis in the individuals of some
common pattern of psychological reaction which has been set up by a consistency in the childhood
environment. The metaphors or ‘ambiguities’ which lend subtlety to poetic expression are
dependent on a basis of common stimulus and response which are definite and consistent. This is
possible only in a society which in spite of its eternal disorder on the surface, is dynamically
functioning on the basis of certain fundamentally accepted value.
The modern period in England is obviously not such a period when society is functioning on the
basis of certain fundamental values. This is the age of disintegration and interrogations. Old
values have been discarded and they have not been replaced by new values. What Arnold said of
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