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Block Two - Competing modernisms
Introduction
I also found block two challenging and enjoyable. Block two explores the idea of contending modernisms. I continued to plod through the course trying to make sense of some often difficult texts and concepts. Rather than a single all-encompassing term, modernism seems to refer to a selection of competing and sometimes contradictory ideas based on the influences and contexts of the artists who created them. These contentions often involved various degrees of aestheticism or instrumentalism controlled by the social, political, religious, gender, or ideological influences of the artist; making modernism a very plural term, hence 'modernisms' is more appropriate.
When I first came across T.S. Eliot, and read about him as a person, I found him so elitist that I wanted to dislike him and his work. But as I read Prufrock and Other Observations I really enjoyed Eliot's poetry; his clever use of language seems so effortless and yet effective. The work on Eliot has been my favourite on this part of the course - second only to Katherine Mansfield's short stories in block one.
Brecht was OK, but I'm struggling with plays, although I found his life and political motivation interesting.
Virginia Woolf's Orlando seemed like an interesting story at the start, with plenty of scope to discuss the idea of identity, but for me the book turned out to be really heavy going. It was the only set text that I didn't complete, and I changed my plans for the extended TMA - choosing Sunset Song and Poetry of the Thirties instead. I didn't do any of the work on Okigbo's poetry either. The structure of the course continues to be a slight problem, with assignment questions not following on in sequence from course work.
A300 is certainly an interesting, but challenging course - particularly as a first arts course.
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Block 4 | ECA | My Personal Site |
Written by bill "at" larnach "dot" info
URL of this page: http://www.larnach.info/A300/two.htm
Block two
Prufrock (Gutenberg)
Prufrock (Blackmask)
Prufrock hypertext resource
Prufrock Sparknotes
Prufrock ClassicNotes
Prufrock notes
Prufrock notes
Prufrock notes
Orlando (eBook)
Orlando Sparknotes
Galileo essay
Bertold Brecht
Brecht ClassicNotes
Brecht biography
International Brecht Society
IBS links
T.S. Eliot
Modern American Poetry
What the Thunder Said
Academy of American Poets
London Review of Books
Christopher Okigbo
Pegasus Okigbo biography
Answers.com Okigbo biography
Post Colonial Web Okigbo page
African Data baseOkigbo page
LitEncyc Okigbo profile
Alex Irvine Okigbo page (.pdf)
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf BBC interview (audio)1937
DVDs
Orlando