1) How do ideas about 'poetry' differ for Romantic and Modernist poets? Compare at least one piece of poetry criticism from the Romantics (Wordsorth, Keats, Mill) with one piece of poetry criticism from the Modernists (Pound, Yeats, Hulme, Eliot).
Wordsworth associated Tintern Abbey not with some Romantic love for the Middle Ages but with the French Revolution and fall of the Bastille in 1789. Far from being devoted to the feudal social order, Wordsworth hoped for its overthrow. Nor did he want to revert back to the traditional religion of past centuries bur rather all five paragraphs of “Tintern Abbey” were “a secular poem that gives us something to believe in” (Johnston, 1993, p. 123). At the beginning of the poem, Wordsworth refers to the beggars and vagrants around the abbey and “the still, sad music of humanity” that really needs radical change in the present social, political and economic system (Johnston, p. 124). He did not regard nature as simply a means of escaping the problems and stresses of the modern world. On the contrary, he stated emphatically that “love of nature leads to love of Mankind” (Johnston, p. 124). He does not know if the revolution will be successful or radical reforms will come to Britain, as indicated by his very tentative language and frequent use of the term “if”, as in “If this/Be but a vain belief” (Johnston, p. 125). Certainly Wordsworth was tired of the stresses and strains of everyday life in the cities and concerned that all his early hopes for revolutionary change would come to nothing. In paragraph two, he sounds almost despairing or cynical when he mentions “the heavy and weary weight/Of all this unintelligible world” (Johnston, p. 126).
T.S. Eliot was also critical of modern civilization, including its mindless devotion to science, technology and consumerism, and was skeptical of democracy. He found solace in conversion to the Anglican Church, which occurred around the time that his poem “The Hollow Men” was published in 1925. Compared to his earlier work like The Waste Land, this poem is characterized by “explicit religiousness” and desire to find some hope in a world full of emptiness and despair (Perkins, 1987, p. 19). It is also more clearly a poem than The Waste Land and “lacks fragments of dramatic scenes and passages of extended narration”, which from this point onward would be mostly found in Eliot’s plays rather than his poetry (Perkins, p. 19). This poem is best known for its “simple diction and repetitions” that describe the Hollow Men of the modern age, such as “This is the dead land/This is the cactus land” (Perkins, p. 20). Eliot leaves no doubt about the condition of the modern men and their empty, meaningless, hopeless lives. Eliot answer to the problems of the ‘waste land’ or ‘dead land’ of modern life was a turn to traditional Christianity, which surprised many of his friends and supporters. He argued that he found Christian doctrines less unbelievable that any of the modern political and economic ideologies. Eliot has vague and indeterminate references to Dante and the Virgin Mary, and he seems uncertain about whether salvation is possible when he writes about the eyes that “do not appear” and “death’s dream kingdom” (Perkins, p. 20).
2) Waiting for Godot supplies the model for the definition of postmodernism as "an incredulity towards metanarratives". Discuss.
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is not only a postmodernist or existentialist play, but a post-World War II play, written for a world that was still in a state of shell shock from tens of millions of deaths, mass destruction, genocide and the use of nuclear weapons. Unlike Wordsworth, Beckett finds no salvation in radical or revolutionary ideologies, and unlike Eliot he cannot bring himself to believe in Christianity or any traditional religion. Just the opposite, the tramps in the play mock all religion, politics and philosophy, turning it all into mush, drivel and nonsense. Not only does the play lack a ‘metanarrative’, it has no plot or narrative at all in the traditional sense. Nothing really happens in the world of this play and nothing ever will happen, and there is no overarching goal or purpose of any kind. All of the dialogue the characters engage in is as meaningless and empty and static on a radio or television set, and their actions are as pointless and senseless as their words. Godot reflects the “postmodern loss of faith in the power or either sacred or secular narrative to make sense of the human experience” (Berger, 1998, p. 40).
Even worse, there is no more human experience to portray on stage, for the tramps and clowns are caricatures of humanity that has gone insane. They have nothing to do, nothing to communicate, and their words and pathetic attempts at action are sheer nonsense. In the first act, Vladomir and Estrogon “try to kill time by engaging in senseless theological speculations, doing silly exercises, calling each other names, and wondering whether they shouldn’t commit suicide and how best to do it” (Berger, p. 40). Of course, they cannot even make a decision to die or leave the stage, and if Godot is some kind of God it is quite clear that he will not be making an appearance in this play. In the second act, Pozzo and Lucky are equally clownish and demented, with Pozzo whipping Lucky for no apparent reason, and Vladamir and Estragon beating him up when he gives an insane speech about philosophy and theology. In Godot, “life is not a divine drama, it is just a course of meaningless accidents” and while it goes on and on “it isn’t going anywhere” (Berger, p. 41). These comic book characters might as well be cartoons, but it is difficult to feel sympathy for them or any kind of emotion since they no longer seem human at all. They have no hope or purpose in their existence and are unable to take any action to change the world, while even their words are pointless. If they did commit suicide or get gassed or blown up in a nuclear war, no one would even notice or care, least of all themselves, because they are already like the living dead in any case.
REFERENCES
Berger, A.A. (1998). The Postmodern Presence. Sage Publications.
Johnston, K.A. (1993). “The Politics of ‘Tintern Abbey’ in G.W. Ruoff and K. Krober (eds). Romantic Poetry: Recent Revisionary Criticism. Rutgers University Press, pp. 123-38.
Perkins, D. (1987). A History of Modernist Poetry: Modernism and After. Harvard University Press.
