Modern American Literature The Language We Use

Warner

The three principal genre of literature -- the basic definitions and distinctions:

poetry; drama; narrative [prose]

Modes of narrative

Empirical (historical & mimetic)

Fictional (romantic & didactic)

Eye where? Where reader? Truth vs. beauty or goodness/ideal.

Lyric poetry

Vignettes of character

meditations (meditative poetry)

pastoral poetry

regionalism

irony as sole/principal mode (Edgar Lee Masters) or occasional mode (Robinson)

Rhyme and repetition

The importance of the speaker/persona of the poem

"process" poetry

refresh the mundane

dense, compact, and original

the effect (on reader) of dialogue

cerebral poetry

to contemplate the objects of our own imaginative/intellectual construction

Modernism!

ambiguity

accessibility

What does the poem/narrative require us to bring to it, to know beforehand?

The search for order: do we find it in nature, in familiar objects, in our imaginations or reasoning powers, in the past, in canonical literature, among the ancients, in myths, etc.?

Meaning in poetry is like the burglar's meat for the housedog.

The Objective Correlative -- "emotion!" cf. "imagisme"-- "an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time."

Masks

Objective reality -- objectivism; imagisme

states of consciousness

Melapoeia, Phanopoeia, Logopoeia

the significance of the title!

aesthetic properties -- what about the piece might be called "beautiful"? (see MPL, above) Aubrey Beardsley said "beauty is difficult." Philip Sydney said "all art aspires to the condition of music." What do you say?

Which poet and/or poems do you prefer? How does your selections compare to(and clarify) your favorite narratives/novelists? What properties do you prefer, including those not embodied by your selected authors/examples?

What terms and insights can you add to this list?