This course identifies in modernist poetry of the first half of the 20th Century responses to momentous changes in the social, economic, religious and political establishments that had dominated 19th century Europe and North America. Europe, the States and much of the world beyond had for the previous century rapidly become technologically “modern” without having fully embraced or processed the challenges--including political, scientific, social and cultural revolutions—that modernization posed to long settled systems of belief, social privilege and political power. The poets we will study came of age between WW I and WW II, but were born before and in some cases served in the Great War--all had first-hand experience of the continuity of pre-modern traditions and their violent disruption. They began their lives in religious institutions, schools and households that still reproduced an older order. As poets they began with working conceptions of the poem and the importance of poetry that were rooted in Romantic, Victorian and Classical conceptions of poetry. In both cases they were creatures of an earlier order engaging a historical moment shaped by violent transformation.

Major Texts: English 338 Course Anthology, including poetry and essays by Arnold, Eliot, Moore, Pound, Stein, Stevens Williams Yeats and others.