The Times They Are a Changin'

The 20th century changed the world of poetry. Major world events boded on the mind of many a writer, reflecting in their work. Diaspora in the British Empire, the two World Wars, and cultural and societal events was behind the poetic change that took place in the early 1900's.

Claude McKay's "If We Must Die" is a poem that depicts the racial issues he experienced as a Jamaican born citizen living in white neighborhoods. His prose is as full of eloquence as any Romantic or Victorian writer, but the issue he is writing about is something either of those writers could not relate to: being persecuted or even killed because of skin color. "If we must die, O let us nobly die/ So that our precious blood may not be shed/ In vain; then even the monsters we defy/ Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!" (Greenblatt et al, 2006). When reading his poem from an objective stance, one could assume he is describing a bloody battle in any war during any time period. His ultimate message of the poem could be achieving honor, even in death.

Seamus Henley writes about a blacksmith, ever present and non-changing though the world is changing around him: "He leans out the jamb, recalls a clatter/ Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows/ then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick/ To beat iron out, to work the bellows," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Though the job of the blacksmith has not differed for decades upon decades, the world has, bringing with it industry and technology.

The world that these poets saw was very different from the world of the Romantics and Victorians. Things in the world of the Romantics and Victorians were easier in a way, more black and white. While the world of the 20th century writer became muddled with grey, full of detail and chaos.

References:

Greenblatt, et al. [Eds]. (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic

Period Through the Twentieth Century [vol. 2] (8th ed.). New York,

NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Tradition

Tradition. It is a word that has many different meanings, as plenty of words tend to do. For writers, it means repetition, boredom. To T.S. Eliot and other poets of his era, tradition meant a certain quality of writing. Specifically, tradition came into play when comparing modern poets with Romantics and Victorians. Romantics and Victorians influenced writers for generations to come.

The writing styles of the Romantics and Victorians have their differences and their points of agreement. While the Romantic writer fancied nature and created poems with ethereal backdrops, the Victorian writer had a more modern standpoint and wrote more realistically about nature and issues that interested them. This is not to say that either of the the writers had more imagination than the other, but they merely used it in ways that suited them. Poets of the 20th century seemed to have taken both of these styles and merged them, to create poems that are full of modern sentiment, but romantically spoken.

English writer T.E. Hulme would have disagreed because he was a man who longed for writers to lose their "romantic view[s] which drag in the infinite," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). He believed that Romantic poems were always "moaning or whining about something or other [...and true romance and...] beauty may be a small, dry thing," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Many of T.S. Eliot's works echo this sentiment, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". In this poem, Eliot writes of the mundane but presents it in such light that it takes on a life of it's own: "Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets/ the muttering retreats/ of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels/ and sawdust restaurants with oyster shells" (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

Eliot's view of traditionalism stemmed from his respect for Hulme and his base of literary history. He believed that in order to be a great writer, one had to study about literature. By learning different styles and reading about different stories, a writer would know better about how to develop their own style; "This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity," (Greenblatt et al, 2006)".

References:

Greenblatt, et al. [Eds]. (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period Through the Twentieth Century [vol. 2] (8th ed.). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Feminism Through the Eyes of Woolf and Loy

Feminism was never better defined than it was by two women: Virginia Woolf and Mina Loy. Both women wanted more freedom and independence for women during a time when women were still held back by the confines of society. However, both women differed in opinion on the definition of feminism and how said independence should be obtained.

Virginia Woolf defines feminism as a woman that could secure financial means for herself, effectively gaining a space for herself, or, as the title of her famous essay suggests, "A Room of One's Own", (Greenblatt et al, 2006). In her collective narrative, she tries to come to terms with how it would be possible for a woman to be financially independent, because women could not own property and were considered property themselves.

Mina Loy believes that woman should not only have their own money and place to live, but that they should own the entire world. She wanted women to "be brave and deny at the outset--that pathetic clap-trap war cry woman is the equal of man---she is not!" (Greenblatt et al, 2006). To Loy, women and men are equal; women are above men and should shove their way to the top.

Woolf asserts her standpoint quietly, while Loy presents her ideas with passionate abandon. Loy seems almost angry at times during her manifesto, and perhaps she has a right to be. Woolf may have been angry internally, but her writing style is objective, if not a bit depressed.

The sometimes tedious diction of Woolf made it hard to follow sometimes. It is as if she wrote down her thoughts themselves, and as thoughts do, her sentences became run-on sentences that had many different avenues for the reader to follow. Loy's style made it a bit easier to read, because she was so direct. There was no mistaking her views, or her disdain for all men.

One thing that both of the writers seemed to agree on was the "effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer," (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

References:

Greenblatt, et al. [Eds]. (2006). The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic

Period Through the Twentieth Century [vol. 2] (8th ed.). New York,

NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Kurtz and Marlow: The Dualities of Human Nature

In Joseph Conrad's novella "The Heart of Darkness", there are two main characters that are meant to complement one another, Charles Marlow, and a man referred to simply as Kurtz.

Marlow is a gruff sort of fellow who appears not to care about anyone but himself. However, he shows a distaste for the way the the Natives are treated. In one particular instance, he watches a group of chained slaves pass by him and remarks upon it to himself, "All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages" (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

Most colonists would have looked away from the slaves, and not even thought of them as men, but Marlow mused upon the state of them. His thoughts eventually culminated to a grandoise conclusion that pretty much summed up the moral challenges in the story: "I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men -- men, I tell you," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). The men that led the slaves past Marlow were what he considered to be 'devils'.

Kurtz is an infamous man that Marlow meets after only hearing rumors about him. Marlow says of him, "I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too," (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

Marlow was not a perfect character, and neither was Kurtz, just as no one person is perfect. Every person has the potential for great evil, even if they are creative, kind, and articulate like Kurtz is. Marlow is more of the neutral man who witnesses all the wrongs being committed, internally condemns them, but can do nothing to stop them. Kurtz is a man who knows that his lust and greed for ivory have gone too far, but he still went goes on with it. Only on his deathbed does he grasp the scope of the life he has wrought, and the pain he has brought upon others.

Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Science in a Victorian Age

Both Charles Darwin and Robert Louis Stevenson were Victorian writers that shared common threads in their works: science and change.

"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is Stevenson's novella about a man that experiments on his own nature, specifically his good and evil nature. Dr. Jekyll creates a potion that separates his free will and conscience from his morality and reasoning, ultimately creating a separate persona that is Mr. Hyde. The main character of the story is a scientist who wishes to test and prove a new theory, much like the real-life scientist, Charles Darwin.

By writing "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man", Darwin was not opening up the idea of evolution, but making it more plausible with his own theory of natural selection, (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Evolution had been a theory lightly discussed by scientists of the time, but Darwin's research made it all the more believable. With the printing of Darwin's writings, great debate and change began in the scientific community, and even amongst the general populace. Before, it had been an accepted mode of thought that animals were a separate from humans, with both being unable to change unless the Creator saw fit to do so. After Darwin made a compelling argument for evolution and for his new idea of natural selection, people began to see the world differently.

Stevenson also took a staid idea (the concept of good and evil), and brought it to the forefront with his story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. On a deeper level, his story was ultimately alluding to the fact that there is good and evil in every person and that it cannot be denied. If one tries to deny it, or repress it with potions like Dr. Jekyll was eventually forced to do, than they may create a split-personality of Mr. Hyde-caliber. Repression, even in nature and especially in society, often leads to rapid and sometimes violent revolutions.

The works of Stevenson and Darwin have changed through the 20th century into the 21st century. In the 20th century, both works may have been hard to accept, for the moral and scientific truths they portray. Yet, from a modern perspective, the works of Stevenson and Darwin are so widely accepted that they are a part of the everyday cultural language. For example, when one is explaining evolution or natural selection, they may refer to it as "Darwinism". Also, when referring to a person that is acting strangely in opposing fashion, they would be described as being "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde".

Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Why be Romantic When You Can be Victorian?

While Victorian writers displayed immense knowledge of the English language (and how to manipulate it to evoke emotion), they did not display the whimsical creativity that the Romantics had only a generation before. Writing about places like Kubla Khan, a 'lady in the meads', or personifying clouds like William Wadsworth Longfellow seemed more of a luxury than a necessity. What seemed to concern the Victorian poets were social issues of the day.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Cry of the Children" is a poem that summarizes child labor taking place in coal mines and factories. The conditions the children had to endure were horrific, ultimately leading to a death they knew was soon to come: "'True' say the children, 'it may happen That we die before our time," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). Each child would lead a short and brutal life in the poem, not even being allotted a proper funeral for their troubles: "Her grave is shapen like a snowball, in the rime," (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

Rudyard Kipling had strong feelings about imperialism and why he thought it was needed, and he let those feelings be known in his poem, "The White Man's Burden". "Fill full the mouth of famine/ And bid the sickness cease," (Greenblatt et al, 2006); Kipling had noble intentions about the savage countries he thought to be filled with "sullen peoples/ Half-devil and half-child," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). From a more objective view, his poem was more patronizing and oppressive than it was an ode to aide the needy impoverished.

The Victorian poets were creative, but they used their creativity in different ways compared to the Romantics. Victorians did not merely want to bring art and beauty to the world via prose; they wanted to change the world. It was an understandable perspective, considering the world around the Victorians was changing greatly. Technology was helping to reshape the world, making it a smaller and less mysterious place, and one worthy of critique.

Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Friendship Between Wordsworth and Coleridge

The Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were close friends who sought to create a new kind of poem centered on emotions and a sort of conversation between the reader and narrator. Even though many of their poems seem to be addressed to women, they "can be read as 'fragments of an agon', moments of an agonizing struggle between two male rivals apparently friends but locked in a secret and mortal combat for the deadly right to be 'the speaker' of 'the word'," (Lauder, 2001, p. 68). To showcase their works and their new theme, they collaborated on a volume of poetry entitled "Lyrical Ballads".

There are connections that can be found between the different works of the two poets, beginning with their vigorous use of nature in an otherworldly context. In his poem "Kubla Khan", Coleridge includes nature to complete the picture of another world, or another part of the world, the East: "And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills/ Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree/ And here were forests ancient as the hills/ Enfolding sunny spots of greenery," (Greenblatt et al, 2006). 

Similarly, but of course in a contrasting way, Wordsworth's view of nature is less exotic and more tangible. In other words, Coleridge's words made nature part of a fantasy world, but Wordsworth's approach was one that the average reader could relate to. For example, in his poem, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,", nature is described simply but still in a way that evokes emotion; "I saw a crowd [...] of golden daffodils/ beside the lake, beneath the trees/ fluttering and dancing in the breeze," (Greenblatt et al, 2006).

One last notable connection between the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth would be their use of "I". By using "I", it is as if they are addressing the reader, or what is, more likely, a character within the poem. It is the "I" that connects the reader deeper with the narrator of the poem, creating the illusion of not just a poem, but a conversation.

References:

Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.\

Lauder, B. (2001, Winter). Secret(ing) conversations: coleridge and wordsworth. New Literary History, 32 (1), 67-89. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057648