Imagism, Modernism, and Postmodernism
- The Imagism
- Modernism
The period of Modernism had another artistic period contained within it; the period of Imagism lasted from around 1909 till about 1917. This period was very similar to Modernism but. also had some apparent differences. The period of Imagism included characteristics of concise, direct expression of clear images; the use of vernacular style; absolute freedom in choice of subject matter; the use of free verse: a poet's response to a visual impression as concisely and precisely as possible; and embraces haikus and concentrated poetic forms. Carl Sandburg is an American poet who wrote during the Imagist period. Literary critic David Maas states, "Many of Carl Sandburg's reflective poems provide concrete visual details that vividly illustrate the general semantics extensional devices. Conversely, the general semantics extensional devices provide insights into Sandburg's poetry. Getting extensional seemed a perennial theme for this populist activist poet" (Maas 1).
His poetry contains many of the defining elements of Imagism. Sandburg's poem "Grass" expresses elements of Imagism but also expresses characteristics of Romanticism that are also present in Whitman's and Frost's works (Pilarski, 2021,p3, 4)
Although Queen Victoria died in 1901, Modernism can be said to have been born from contrarian attitudes of the previous centuries. Novels like Tristram Shandy (1759), which lacks a clear plot and in which the protagonists narrates his own birth, and Jude the Obscure (1895), a bleak novel that savagely critiqued Victorian customs, can be seem as forerunners to a period that extolled the divergent and experimental. The most exemplified phase of Modernism, referred to as “High Modernism,” occurred during the inter-war years (1918-1939). This was the time when writers synonymous with Modernism, such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence, thrived. While Victorians typically concerned themselves with rendering reality as they understood it into fiction, Modernists recognized that reality was subjective, and instead strove to represent human psychology in fiction. This is evidenced in the stream-of-consciousness narrative of Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, and Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Modernism is further characterized by a systematic rejection of social and literary norm. In light of the widespread human suffering of the early 20th century, modernists oppose all major ideals and conventions with unrelenting pessimism directly contradicting the social optimism of the Victorian Era. Modernists claim that past movements and ideologies are disconnected from the reality of the human condition (Greenblatt, 2006,p2)
Through abundant literary experimentation, modernists attempt to convey the complexity of a world apparently on the brink of deflagragation. Accordingly, modernists, by their copious experimentation with literary form and style, risk literary incoherence to express the perceived fragmentation and incoherence of the modern world–a feeling rooted in the cosmopolitan origins of the majority of modernist literature. The emergence of a hectic city life coupled with the sense of human decay drove modernists to seek a unifying philosophy. Thus, culture became politically important since it was perceived as the only universal source of identity and social reference (Modernism).
In successful modernist literature, the result of these characteristics is a more complex and nuanced analysis of the world than anything ever produced. Archetypes are rarely reinforced, and no clear interpretation of a subject is commonly found. Not only is the structure of both writing and the world analyzed, but the meaning of words, patterns, and occurrences is subjected to the literary lens with the express intent of avoiding oversimplification. Disorder is observed. As a result, an unprecedented level of literary criticism emerges. In fact, notable modernist writers such as T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats were also accomplished literary critics (Lye, 2007,p17).
- Postmodernism
The commensal nature of the two aesthetics as they react against language's (proper) inability to directly transfer truth from author to reader is perhaps nowhere more evident for the modernist tradition than in the work of Ezra Pound. As proponent of Imagism and also as producer of the most ambitious modern epic poem, Pound attempts to meld the two aesthetic modes we are dealing with; and the vehement didacticism of his literary production provides clear evidence as to the pretensions to authority (over both language and reader) inherent to both aesthetics .
The early part of Pound's career, with Imagism, was concerned with what amounts to a return to the supposed unity of sign and meaning that was crucial to romanticism; Imagism would privilege the poet's mastery over a language regarded as capable of full and unambiguous contact with the truth of perception. It is a poetics that is antagonized by the mediatory and secondary function of language-a function it wishes to suppress in order to present the object of its discourse purged of all encumbrance. Here, quite clearly, we recognize an extreme dissatisfaction with language. The poet wishes to say that "the natural object is always the adequate symboi"S: the absurd goal of such an aesthetic as that statement summarizes is nothing less than the elision of language itself from the act of perception. Thus, as one critic has pointed out. Imagism "stands in an authoritarian relationship to its readers" because it demands that the reader concur with the truth of the natural that is assumed to reside beyond or outside of language's interference(Smith, 1982,p108,109).
Post-modernism is perhaps the most nebulous of all the literary movements. It spans from the end of modernism, with writers such as Samuel Beckett, to present-day authors such as Salman Rushdie. Scholars argue about whether or not we are still in the post-modern era, let alone what its components are. In fact, it’s usually safer to refer to a work containing postmodern thought, rather than being a part of postmodernism. Contentious as the period is, it’s still fairly easy to recognize post-modern writers and trends, and one of the easiest ways to define it is in relation to Modernism. Whereas Modernism can be said to be, in part, a reaction to World War I, Post-Modernism came about after World War II. Unlike Modernists, who generally took themselves and their art seriously, postmodernists treat their subjects ironically or satirically through parody and pastiche, the blending together of seemingly contradictory literary genres or motifs. (Pound, 2007,30).
While there are many ways in which Post-Modernism differs from its preceding movement, it retained and even amplified Modernism’s pessimism and avant-garde predilection. Like the Modernist works The Waste Land and Finnegans Wake, Postmodernism often eschews or inverts traditional narration, possibly even breaking the fourth wall. Postmodernists commonly discards one-dimensions paradigms and insist that every, or no, way of viewing nature is the correct way.
The laws of nature, science, religion, and politics are often deconstructed to reveal the flaws and contradictions of civilization. British Postmodernism is probably best known for its drama. Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, is probably one of the most famous examples of the theater of the absurd and epitomizes the Postmodern combination of comedy and pessimistic philosophy. Tom Stoppard‘s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, a Postmodern reworking of Hamlet centered around two minor characters, and Harold Pinter‘s The Breakfast Party and No Man’s Land are also exemplary works(Sender, 2008,p9).
- References
- Sender, Ayala. “Pedals on a wet, black bough.” 2008.
- Pound, Ezra. ABC of Reading. Berkshire: Faber and Faber, 1991. Print.
- Smith, Paul. "The Will to Allegory in Postmodernism." The Dalhousie Review (1982)
- Lye, John. “Some Attributes of Postmodernist Literature.” 30 Nov 2007
- Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. “The Twentieth Century and After.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature Eighth Edition Volume 2. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc,, 2006. 1827-1850.