Major critical arguments 2
Pop Art: the Anti-Feminist Take on Modernism
In “Roy Lichtenstein’s Tears: Art vs. Pop in American Culture,” Bart Beaty argues that both Roy Lichtenstein’s artwork and his audience were gendered in an anti-feminist manner. Lichtenstein’s pop art emphasized gender polarity between males and females in a very distinct, sexist Victorian matter, seemingly in opposition to/in the reverse direction of the movement within the rest of modernistic art. Though Lichtenstein’s pop art was based on the modernist style of pointillism, for the most part his art could be put into two categories: associating the masculine with war, or the feminine with the home (261). His masculine paintings depict men in triumph in wars, as compared to very feminine-associated women (makeup, hair done, red outfit showing skin, etc) experiencing psychological weakness or failure, seemingly repressed or implied at the will of a male figure, doing house-related chores or there for romance (262). To complicate things for Lichtenstein, his audience, the American population attentive to art, had the popular opinion that “high culture, whether traditional or modern, clearly remains the privileged realm of male activities” and that Lichtenstein “threatened to feminize the realm of artistic production” (260), calling his paintings not real art because he put his focus on the feminine. His art was criticized and critiqued excessively because the subject matter, being women, was not serious enough; Beaty refers to the “core problem” of his art for the consumers at the time was the subject matter, because it was associated with feminine traits, which were not seen as important enough to be considered high art (256). However, only the feminine category of his artwork was critiqued harshly in this way, though done in the same mannerism and pop style as his masculine war paintings, which shows the interesting, anti-feminist approach of the population still emerging into a new era and not being fully able to accept yet femininity being a serious aspect of high art.
Beaty, Bart. “Roy Lichtenstein’s Tears: Art vs. Pop in American Culture.” Canadian Review of American Studies 34.3 (2004): 250-268. Print.
Beaty, Bart. “Roy Lichtenstein’s Tears: Art vs. Pop in American Culture.” Canadian Review of American Studies 34.3 (2004): 250-268. Print.
In “Reflections on a gift: Richard Brown Baker and Roy Lichtenstein,” Jennifer Farrell argues that Roy Lichtenstein’s artwork was viewed as a gender bias of two extremes. The modernists of the era, despite often using similar techniques to Lichtenstein, did not appreciate his artwork; they scoffed at the idea that Lichtenstein was trying to turn his commercial, unreal art—’comic strip laughing material’--into fine art to be sold, an interpretation that could not be taken seriously by many (48-49). Thus, the idea of the romanticized women Lichtenstein painted were considered in the category of ordinary objects that were supposedly silly and pointless. This specific association of the ‘unimportance for real art’ being linked with femininity is shown by comparing two of Lichtenstein’s artworks, both of which are the same style with one general, simple focus. The first, “Blam,” depicts an over-simplified war airplane with the large, comic-style word “BLAM” and an explosion of the plane mid-action; a male victory with a sense of strength and impact. The other is a romanticized painting using modernist-inspired benday dots of a girl with voluminous hair, luscious eyelashes, defined eyebrows and lips, appearing weak, sad, and desperately dreaming for a man in a business suit; titled “Thinking of Him”—originally “Brad,” even though the male is a smaller portion of the focus, but distinguishing an emphasis on the female being reliant on the male (male dominance). The difference between these two gender-polarized works was that the one associated with masculine power was one that people were excited about, praised, considered valuable and worthy of fame, and sold for $500 more than Lichtenstein’s women-associated artworks, whereas the painting associated with the sexualized female was criticized as making “the comic images [look] more like the comics than the comics were themselves” (50). This critique, as an association with the frowned-upon comic industry for lack of serious content and artistic ability, makes the different connotations clear between the roles and views of men vs. women in artwork at the time: paintings dealing with war and other male-dominant fields were taken more seriously and viewed as having more value than similar artwork containing female-associated content.
Farrell, Jennifer. “Reflections on a gift: Richard Brown Baker and Roy Lichtenstein.” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2008): 46-63. Print.
Farrell, Jennifer. “Reflections on a gift: Richard Brown Baker and Roy Lichtenstein.” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2008): 46-63. Print.
Heart of darkness: knowledge as a source of light
Mary Morzinski’s “Heart of Darkness and Plato’s Myth of the Cave,” uses the mythological undertones of Conrad’s novel as the basis for her rereading. Specifically, Morzinski argues that Plato’s cave, which is an extended analogy of the absence of direct light as the absence of truth or knowledge, is present throughout Conrad’s novel. Although Morzinski references various scenes that display Plato’s concepts, the essay is reduced to the comparison between Kurtz’s death and Marlow’s continuance. Just as the men in Plato’s narrative have been forced to only know the shadows casted on the cave wall, Kurtz has tricked himself into believing in an illusion of reality. As a result, “Kurtz’s persistent avoidance of the sun [is what] made his final encounter with the truth so blindingly horrible” (Morzinski, 229). In contrast, Marlow became “accustomed to the light gradually...[and] suffered from the disturbing realization of the truth more frequently but not as drastically as Kurtz” (Morzinski, 233). Marlow is able to keep his sanity and not completely sink into the “heart of darkness” due to his ability to “accept new realities incrementally” (Morzinski, 233). However, what makes this comparison so substantial is the known personification of European society through Marlow and Kurtz. By suggesting the contrast between the two characters and their fates, the author is also making a statement on Europe and the act of imperialism.
Morzinski, Mary. “Heart of Darkness and Plato’s Myth of the Cave.” Conradiana 34.3 (2002):
227. Print. April 2015.
Morzinski, Mary. “Heart of Darkness and Plato’s Myth of the Cave.” Conradiana 34.3 (2002):
227. Print. April 2015.
In “Cultural Psychosis on the Frontier: The Work of the Darkness in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” Tony Brown explores the way in which darkness works throughout Condrad’s novel, and argues that darkness is the cause of the horror in the story and results in a “cultural psychosis.” To understand what Brown means by “cultural psychosis” he offers Slavoj Zizek’s definition of psychosis: “the massive presence of some real that fills out and blocks the perspective openness which is constitutive of ‘reality’.” In other words, psychosis is a mental disorder in which a person loses contact with reality; therefore, Brown is asserting that imperial Europe also lost touch with reality. The author uses this definition as the foundation for his essay in which he touches upon “Marlow’s perversion of the West’s image of itself as the place of light and civilization” (Brown, 15). Although Marlow is able to reach this new outlook, he is only able to do so “after his up-river journey into the heart of darkness” (Brown, 15), but the remainder of Europe is still left under the “’veil of the colonial fantasm’” (Brown, 15).
Brown, Tony. “Cultural Psychosis on the Frontier: The Work of the Darkness in Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Studies in the Novel 32.1 (2000): 14. Print. April 2015.
Brown, Tony. “Cultural Psychosis on the Frontier: The Work of the Darkness in Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Studies in the Novel 32.1 (2000): 14. Print. April 2015.
For There She Was: Virginia Woolf's Queer modernist Literature
In “Queering Mrs. Dalloway,” Thomas Peele argues that by viewing homosexual desire in Mrs. Dalloway as either irrelevant or symbolic of a character’s withdrawal/ exile from society as a whole, critics ignore homosexuality as a factor in this alienation and perpetuate the cultural pressure to treat homosexuality as a shameful secret. Peele begins by arguing that homosexual desire often contradicts societal ideals and is accompanied by a sense of alienation and isolation within the individual, due to the societal convention which punishes not homosexual desire or activity in itself, but the introduction of these activities into the public knowledge. Because it is not the desire or the act that triggers punishment but the public knowledge of these acts, Western society is built in a way that consciously creates the pressure either to ignore and deny homosexual desire, or to keep it secret (Peele 2-3). Peele goes on to describe Clarissa and Septimus’ homosexual desires as a factor in (though, clearly, not the sole reason for) their alienation from society. He cites Clarissa’s relationship with Sally Seton, which Clarissa herself describes as “love” (pg # Woolf), and Septimus’s desires for his commanding officer Evans, stating that their relationship is described in the same terms used to describe lovers and that it is Evans’s death that triggers Septimus’s loss of feeling, and his marriage to Rezia is a last-ditch attempt to avoid self-awareness and to bury both his homosexual desires and his horrific experiences in war, neither of which are socially sanctioned topics of conversation (Peele 4-5). Peele closes by discussing the lack of critical conversation surrounding homosexual desire inMrs. Dalloway and criticises the tendencies to view this desire as either symbolic of a greater outcasting from society or as generally unimportant, when in fact it should be viewed as one of the (many) reasons that both Septimus and Clarissa are outcast from their society.
Peele, Thomas. "Queering Mrs. Dalloway." Literature and Homosexuality. Ed. Michael J. Meyer. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 205-221.
Peele, Thomas. "Queering Mrs. Dalloway." Literature and Homosexuality. Ed. Michael J. Meyer. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 205-221.
In her essay on the short fictions if Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein, Corinne Blackmer discusses how both Woolf and Stein use short fiction to create “lesbian modernist literature” in very distinct ways. She begins by stating that Woolf’s short fiction is generally not looked at closely by critics because most of her major works are novels, while Stein’s short stories are looked at more closely as her works (purposefully) cover a broader range of mediums. Blackmer discusses the lack of comparison between Woolf and Stein and argues that this comparison creates “an excellent pretext” for “examining the larger implications of their distinctive approaches to creating lesbian modernist literature” (Blackmer 2). Blackmer first examines Woolf’s work, stating that she uses encoded language that only points to homosexual desire for those of a “shared minority,” and uses the critique of earlier lesbian author’s “self-ignorance and self-repressiveness” to show acknowledgement of lesbian/ homosexual identity as the “ethical truth” (Blackmer 6). She went on to dissect several of her shorter fictions, notably “The Mysterious Case of Miss V.” and “Memoirs of a Novelist” to explore her own fears about acknowledging lesbian identity and to critique “self-righteous” Victorian lesbian authors such as Marie Corelli. Blackmer also discusses The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a contemporary exploration of male homosexuality and comparable to Miss V, where Woolf creates a “lesbian ghost story” wherein the apparition of a woman who represents repressed homosexual desire haunts the main character. Woolf’s short fictions transform lesbianism from a “repressed cultural phantasm” to a modern form of sexual subjectivity by reinterpreting the past through encoded language. In identifying with this new lesbian position, Woolf fosters awareness of historical oppression and creates a space which directly opposes the “sexual un-self-consciousness” and complicity that arise in patriarchal domination.
Blackmer, Corinne E. "Lesbian Modernism in the Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein." Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings. Ed. Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. New York: New York University Press, 1997. 78-94.
Blackmer, Corinne E. "Lesbian Modernism in the Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein." Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings. Ed. Eileen Barrett and Patricia Cramer. New York: New York University Press, 1997. 78-94.
Sacrificing the church: Van Gogh's abandonment of traditional religious art in search of faith
Lauren Soth argues in her essay “Van Gogh’s Agony” that the artist’s famous painting Starry Night was his way of expressing his religious beliefs after feeling unable to through traditional imagery, and that it is particularly connected to the biblical scene the Agony in the Garden, which held special importance to Van Gogh. Soth collects information on the views surrounding Van Gogh’s hospital and applies them to Starry Night. As it turns out, the painting is in fact not a single view, but a collection of them. These were views that Van Gogh drew frequently; Soth surmises that “the still haunted him when he painted Starry Night, since they ended up together on the canvas” (304). Van Gogh did not simply represent and recreate these views either, he changed and exaggerated them, adding and removing elements from his memory to create a fantastical landscape that cannot actually be seen anywhere in reality. The religious element comes into play when Soth looks at Van Gogh’s own interpretation of the work. In a letter describing Starry Night, Van Gogh remarks that he is going “’the way of Delacroix’” (306). Soth says this comment is important because of Van Gogh’s admiration of Delacroix as an artist, and because of the parallels of coloration in Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Delacroix’s Christ on the Lake of Gennesaret. Soth theorizes that Van Gogh subconsciously used the same colors in his Starry Night to evoke biblical associations, to create a feeling of heavenly serenity in the painting. This was after Van Gogh had tried and failed to paint a traditional religious picture, Soth saying that he felt he could not adequately express his feelings through the traditional template. Soth argues that instead of painting figures, Van Gogh expressed his deep religious feelings within Starry Night, that “the blue for Christ and citron-yellow for the angel became the sky, and the stars and moon” (312), that he took all his unexpressed religious fervor that could not be represented through traditional imagery, and put it into a vision of nature both melancholy and comforting.
Soth, Lauren. "Van Gogh's Agony." The Art Bulletin 68.2 (1986): 301-13. Print.
Soth, Lauren. "Van Gogh's Agony." The Art Bulletin 68.2 (1986): 301-13. Print.
In her essay “The Sower and the Sheaf: Biblical Metaphor in the Art of Vincent Van Gogh”, Judy Sund argues that Van Gogh found artistic inspiration throughout his life from the work of Jean-François Millet, more specifically from his painting The Sower, which to Van Gogh represented how religious art should be: grounded in reality as opposed to being completely ethereal so as not to alienate the viewer, to allow them to feel the religious message of the work, and that he used this combined with bright and unearthly color schemes to express his strong religious feelings. Van Gogh was particularly drawn to Millet’s The Sower, because he saw it as a literal interpretation of a bible parable, and a non-traditional religious artwork. Van Gogh copied Millet’s work as well as creating his own, painting three copies of Millet’s The Sower, and making countless sketches and drawings of it. What Van Gogh was trying to capture was the religious essence in everyday life, the sereneness of heaven without the perfection of figure or scene. Sund notes that while Van Gogh was inspired by his Millet’s rural ideology in painting, he also expressed his evangelism through a more traditionally religious color scheme. Most notable among his color choices were his constant use of bright yellow and deep blue, colors very often used in traditional Christian imagery, in the glows of halos, highlights on skin, rich and deep shadows and fabrics. While Van Gogh used traditional colors, he pushed their hues to the limits, creating much more intense scenes. Van Gogh’s combination of intense coloration and rural scenery allowed him to paint “reality in a way that affirmed the supernatural” (671), instead of vice versa. The religious power of Van Gogh’s paintings became even more pronounced near the end of his life. His colors grew stronger and contrasted more, which Sund says “forecasts the artist's escape from earthly darkness into astral light” (673). Van Gogh was anticipating his ascent to heaven, and reflected it in his paintings, most notably in Starry Night. His technique, because it was grounded in reality, represented his religious ideals extremely effectively, allowing the viewer to be able to connect and identify with the painting.
Sund, Judy. "The Sower and the Sheaf: Biblical Metaphor in the Art of Vincent Van Gogh." The Art Bulletin 70.4 (1988): 660-76. Print.
Sund, Judy. "The Sower and the Sheaf: Biblical Metaphor in the Art of Vincent Van Gogh." The Art Bulletin 70.4 (1988): 660-76. Print.
In his essay "Van Gogh, or the Insufficiency of Sacifice.", Eric Michaud argues that while Georges Bataille and others made out Vincent Van Gogh’s sacrifices to be godlike, his entire life was instead a misguided struggle to find a balance between dedicating his life to himself and others so as not to be indebted to anyone, but that this manifested in a lifelong series of self-mutilations and sacrifices in mental, physical, and emotional forms that eventually drove him to suicide. Michaud says that Bataille viewed Van Gogh’s constant sacrifices in his life as actions that made him into a Promethean-like figure, a god in his field. Michaud disagrees with this, instead saying that Van Gogh’s tendency towards automutilation was the manifestation of his “desired balance between a self neither devoured nor devouring” (31), that he wanted to live a life of both giving and receiving, but that he usually fell towards the giving side. Van Gogh was entirely dependent upon his brother Theo, who, worn down, asked Van Gogh not “to ‘bother’ them, neither him nor his father” (34). The rejection of his letters, and thus his time, effort, and gratitude upset Van Gogh greatly, and he reevaluated his relationship with his brother, comparing it to a warlike tension at one point (34). When Van Gogh severed his ear years later, Bataille saw it as an act of great love and the sacrifice of his godly self, as he sent it to a prostitute whose services he had frequented. Michaud, however, claims that the act was one of comfort, “an unreturnable gift of himself” (35), a more intense version of the self-mutilation he had been committing since he began painting: sacrificing himself and his happiness in the attempt to bring light to the life of others. Van Gogh committed suicide in “a last, insufficient sacrifice to liquidate his debt” (36). Michaud fights Bataille’s picture of Van Gogh as “half man, half god” (37), instead coloring him as a sad and desperate man forever indebted to his family, who chose to destroy himself in the hopes that sacrificing his life might somehow wipe away the debt, when instead it only increased the turmoil surrounding him.
Michaud, Eric. "Van Gogh, or the Insufficiency of Sacifice." October 49 (1989): 25-39. Print.
Michaud, Eric. "Van Gogh, or the Insufficiency of Sacifice." October 49 (1989): 25-39. Print.
Lenses of Viewership: Conrad's multiplicity of meaning
In his essay, “The Novel as Scientific Discourse: The Example of Conrad”, George Levine argues that all academic disciplines are interrelated in terms of discourse, but scientific argument requires different authorization then political of literature discourse. He states “science is obviously not simply a ‘fiction’” and science has a certain “authority within the culture” that other forms of discourse have attempted to achieve but have failed. It is successful on the basis of the natural drive for knowledge, it is accepted as true and “it proposes to be a means to understand the workings of the world”. Levine argues that while scientific discourse includes the most fundamental cultural values, a novel surrounding the topic has the potential to explore the implications of these values, and show them in a light that reveals implications and consciousness. Levine acknowledges the debate on the practicality of transferring scientific ideas to other spectrums of the realm of discourse, but also notes that the move is easily made with the use of metaphor. By using metaphor, the nineteenth century novel guided ideals of normality and implied “ethical imperative to behave ‘naturally’”. Joseph Conrad demonstrates this in his “narratives filled with pains of living in a world governed by the assumptions of scientific enterprise”, in other words, Conrad writes about his questioning about living in a place where science is assumed to be true. To combat this view, Levine argues Conrad departs from the realm of literary criticism and enters the literary world as a scientist, and instantly “he stops being a foe of reality”.
Levine, George. "The Novel as Scientific Discourse: The Example of Conrad."Journal of English Association (n.d.): 220-26. Web.
Lindley, A. D. "Cities of Dreadful Naught: Privative Evil in Heart of Darkness."English 59.225 (2010): 177-93. Web.In “Cities of Dreadful Naught: Privative Evil in Heart of Darkness”, Lindley argues that Conrad’s purposeful exclusion of any aspect of religion in his writing, despite Conrad’s catholic upbringing, helps highlight the contrast between religion and Darwinism. Lindley states, “Its apparently absent God is, in fact, pervasively present” (Lindley 177). Lindley implies that through the omission of God, Conrad consciously or unconsciously has created a text in which religion is still present in the form of privative evil. “Satan is everywhere, God is nowhere” argues Lindley. Conrad’s interior struggle between Catholic roots and Darwinian beliefs manifests itself in Conrad’s characters, for example Marlow, in Heart of Darkness, “sees as a Darwinian, but interprets as a Augustinian”, clearly demonstrating Conrad’s own struggle in reconciling the impact Augustinian writings such as Faust and Darwinian teachings like natural selection, to form a clear opinion about the world. It is this struggle that has separated scholars for years on the topic of Conrad, between the “political” and “metaphysical” understandings of Conrad’s work. Lindley claims the gap can be bridged if the “surviving presence of Augustine’s theology of evil” is recognized in Conrad’s writing. In light of this, Lindley argues that the privative evil in Heart of Darkness is a failure in Conrad’s decisive attempt to keep religion out of his book, and this privative evil creates a backdrop for which the social and ethical issues of Conrad’s Darwinistic views to be debated.
Lindley, A. D. "Cities of Dreadful Naught: Privative Evil in Heart of Darkness."English 59.225 (2010): 177-93. Web.
Levine, George. "The Novel as Scientific Discourse: The Example of Conrad."Journal of English Association (n.d.): 220-26. Web.
Lindley, A. D. "Cities of Dreadful Naught: Privative Evil in Heart of Darkness."English 59.225 (2010): 177-93. Web.In “Cities of Dreadful Naught: Privative Evil in Heart of Darkness”, Lindley argues that Conrad’s purposeful exclusion of any aspect of religion in his writing, despite Conrad’s catholic upbringing, helps highlight the contrast between religion and Darwinism. Lindley states, “Its apparently absent God is, in fact, pervasively present” (Lindley 177). Lindley implies that through the omission of God, Conrad consciously or unconsciously has created a text in which religion is still present in the form of privative evil. “Satan is everywhere, God is nowhere” argues Lindley. Conrad’s interior struggle between Catholic roots and Darwinian beliefs manifests itself in Conrad’s characters, for example Marlow, in Heart of Darkness, “sees as a Darwinian, but interprets as a Augustinian”, clearly demonstrating Conrad’s own struggle in reconciling the impact Augustinian writings such as Faust and Darwinian teachings like natural selection, to form a clear opinion about the world. It is this struggle that has separated scholars for years on the topic of Conrad, between the “political” and “metaphysical” understandings of Conrad’s work. Lindley claims the gap can be bridged if the “surviving presence of Augustine’s theology of evil” is recognized in Conrad’s writing. In light of this, Lindley argues that the privative evil in Heart of Darkness is a failure in Conrad’s decisive attempt to keep religion out of his book, and this privative evil creates a backdrop for which the social and ethical issues of Conrad’s Darwinistic views to be debated.
Lindley, A. D. "Cities of Dreadful Naught: Privative Evil in Heart of Darkness."English 59.225 (2010): 177-93. Web.
The Man Who Laughs: Kafka and Metaphysicality of Laughter
Danta argues in “Sarah’s Laughter: Kafka’s Abraham” that laughter signifies the metaphysical briefly becoming physical. Danta asserts that “The Kafkan precludes tragic catharsis by continuing to associate the victim-protagonist in death with a type of metaphysical shame… Kafkan death represents an ultimate or pure form of humiliation” (346). Danta illustrates the centrality of humiliation and metaphysical shame in the discussion of Kafka by drawing on examples from Kafka’s novel, The Trial. In the story, the protagonist, Josef K., is arrested for no obvious reason and put through a humiliating trial and ultimately executed. Danta argues that The Trial draws from two of Kafka’s own personal experience. The arrest of Josef K. represents the engagement of Kafka to Felice Bauer, while his execution parallels the tribunal Kafka was involved in when Felice discovered love letters written by Kafka to another woman, thus leading to the breaking of their engagement. Moments that Kafka had wanted to keep private had been displayed openly to the public, thus humiliating him. Kafka by writing about this experience is exploring his own self-humiliation. His laughter during the reading of the first chapter of The Trial viewed from this perspective seems perplexing. Why would he laugh so profusely at a vulnerable moment such as this? Danta asserts that Kafka laughs because, “Underlying [his] laughter…is the skepticism of the body” (356). Danta argues that laughter “whether expressing a feeling of superiority over the butt of a joke or “a perception of the incongruous,” laughter proceeds by first divesting, the unknown of its metaphysicality” (349). Laughter is usually directed at notions that are imaginable but at the same time unconceivable thus allowing us to laugh at the thought of such circumstances.
Danta, Chris. "Sarah's Laughter: Kafka's Abraham." Modernism/modernity 15.2 (2008): 343-59. Print.
Danta, Chris. "Sarah's Laughter: Kafka's Abraham." Modernism/modernity 15.2 (2008): 343-59. Print.
This is explored by Bennett in “Kafka, Genealogy, and the Spiritualization of Politics”, in which she argues that Kafka’s stories track the genealogy of ideals. She argues that “genealogical stories highlight the contingent elements of an ideal, or its falsifications, or the arbitrary devaluations and exclusions that accompany it, or the incompatible elements within it” (653). To illustrate what this means she discusses Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony.” Bennett argues that the short story “provides a genealogical critique of the dream of perfect justice without repudiating the desire for fairness contained within it” (659). What Kafka does in the story is that he takes the ideal of Justice and hyperbolizes it in order for the readers to see all of its elements. Kafka especially intensifies the element of closure within justice. This is shown by the legal system in the colony which involves only a single judge who seeks absolute retribution for crime by never doubting the guilt of the accused criminal. The idea of impartiality within Justice, which is embodied by the execution apparatus. The machine represents the danger impartiality, as it is self-regulating killing machine, representing the impersonal or unbiased point of view that Justice tries to achieve in trials. Bennett argues that the main element of Justice that this story brings into question is the wish of the criminal during the legal process to locate a source outside of ourselves to blame for the crime. Bennett goes on to argue that laughter is one of the four components of the Kafkaesque. She argues that the four effects of the Kafkaesque are a sense of anxiety, the “ambiguous moral status of an ideal pursued by the protagonist”, the inability of the protagonist to function without some of the ambiguous ideal, and the laughter at the situation that these characteristics create for the protagonist. You “laugh at the intensity of your quest to access the inaccessible ideal, but your laughter includes the knowledge that you’ll do it again” (665). Bennett argues that Kafka critiques the fact that ideals are “essential to the formation of precise, rigorous distinctions,” or in other words, dogmas (665). In this way, Kafka’s works are not only political in setting, but political in meaning.
Bennett, Jane. "Kafka, Genealogy, and the Spiritualization of Politics." The Journal of Politics 56.03 (1994): 650. Print.
Bennett, Jane. "Kafka, Genealogy, and the Spiritualization of Politics." The Journal of Politics 56.03 (1994): 650. Print.
Perceptions of Cézanne’s
Self-Portraits: Tradition vs. Innovation
In this article, Richard Shiff examines Paul Cézanne’s private sketchbooks in order to find insight about the unique formal compositions that are seen in his paintings. Shiff argues that it is most likely that Cézanne simply drew connections between objects due to their interesting aesthetic properties because it offered an amusing distraction for him, instead of using a private code or hidden factor, as some researchers suggest. For example, Shiff highlights two consecutive pages of this journal that play off of each other particularly well and whose effects can be seen in his larger works. On the left, the artist has sketched an interpretation of Aphrodite and the much smaller Eros, which results in a longer vertical image juxtaposed with a shorter vertical image. This is mirrored on the opposite page with Cézanne’s drawing of a male bather and a dog who appears to be turned 90 degrees from its logical positioning—the long-vertical, short-vertical motif repeats itself. Shiff argues that patterns such as this were created due to the distraction that they provided for Cézanne as a creative outlet away from his paintings. Yet this vertical patterning can be seen in many of his paintings as well, for instance, in an image of many bathers he tends to alternate between tall and short figures. Furthermore, Shiff argues that because of this sense of distraction, the purpose of these paintings is to elicit an emotional response, rather than one of clear meaning or symbolism.
Shiff, Richard. “Distractions: Cézanne in a Sketchbook.” Master Drawings 47.4 (2009):
447-51. JSTOR. Web. 9 Apr. 2015
Shiff, Richard. “Distractions: Cézanne in a Sketchbook.” Master Drawings 47.4 (2009):
447-51. JSTOR. Web. 9 Apr. 2015
In “Cézanne paints: ‘whole body’ practices and the genre of self portrayal,” Joyce Brodsky argues that Cézanne’s self-portraits embodied traditional western art traits, fully utilized the idea of “primacy of perception,” and demonstrated the fact that art, especially self-representation, is a performance in itself, rather than simply just an image. In his early self-portraits, Brodsky argues that there is an overwhelming sense of primacy when viewing the images, due to the fact that Cézanne seems to be both viewing the observer as well as being viewed itself. He also was primarily concerned at this time with confronting the viewer with a close representation of his image, with little emphasis on the background or landscapes behind him. In contrast, during a later part of his career, Cézanne directed more focus towards the background, as he had a heightened fascination with nature at this time. There was also a reduction in the number of colors used when compared to his earlier portraits, in order to provide a real sense of presence and intensity in these works. Both Cézanne’s earlier and later self-portraits have common factors, primarily ones rooted in Western conventions. In fact, Brodsky argues that Cézanne’s “uniqueness as a painter lies in his ability to seamlessly mix learned conventions with those later associated with modernism.” It is in heightening these traditional self-portrait elements (such as a three-quarters viewpoint and distinct differences between eyes) in order to suggest the strength of his response and ultimately his relative departure from the genre conventions.
Brodsky, Joyce. "Cézanne Paints: ‘Whole Body’ Practices And The Genre Of Self‐Portrayal." Visual Studies 20.1 (2005): 37-55. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 April 2015.
Brodsky, Joyce. "Cézanne Paints: ‘Whole Body’ Practices And The Genre Of Self‐Portrayal." Visual Studies 20.1 (2005): 37-55. Academic Search Premier. Web. 15 April 2015.
James Joyce and Identity
In “The Catholic Revival and ‘The Dead,’” Willard Potts argues that James Joyce uses the character Gabriel to discuss the changes in Irish Catholic identity and answer a question that Joyce himself struggled with: what does it mean to be Irish. Ireland has a long history of clashing identities and during Joyce’s life and education it was a significant topic of discussion. Through the character Gabriel, Joyce shows that the negative unsophisticated stereotype of Irish Catholics is no longer representative of that community. Joyce uses Gabriel’s own epiphany about his wife and the other people at the party to show the inaccuracies in this stereotype. Gabriel represents a desire for higher cultured Irish tradition (comparable to Joyce himself in this way) and Greta represents traditional Western Irish Catholics. Gabriel tries to distance himself from traditional Ireland but through his relationships with the other characters and especially with his wife Greta he comes to the realization that Ireland and the other characters in the story have more to them than the stereotypes they have been viewed with. This realization comes in the last scene of the novel when Gabriel tries to press himself on Greta seeing her only with physical desire. Potts argues that this is similar to England’s desire to master Ireland and ‘higher culture’ to overcome traditional Irish culture represented by Greta. Gabriel, who stops this conquering desire, does so after traditional Irish stereotypes are shattered by Greta’s story of Michael Furey. Through this story Gabriel realizes that Michael Furey was capable of a self-sacrificing love that Gabriel does not think himself capable of. This realization brings a new positive light towards Gabriel’s view of his own country. Potts argues that through this Joyce’s revels what it means to him to be Irish. He establishes that the essence of being Irish has little to do with being Protestant or Catholic but instead with the hospitality and love Gabriel finds in traditional Irish characters.
Potts, Willard. “The Catholic Revival and ‘The Dead.’” Joyce Studies Annual 1991. Ed. Thomas F. Stanley. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, Austin, 1991. 3-26. Print.
Potts, Willard. “The Catholic Revival and ‘The Dead.’” Joyce Studies Annual 1991. Ed. Thomas F. Stanley. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, Austin, 1991. 3-26. Print.
In “Exhibition and Inhibition: The Body Scene in Dubliners” Sheila Conboy argues that the gaze of male characters on women in the stories reveals physical desires, constructs feminine and masculine identity, and ultimately leaves uncertainty in these traditional views. The objectifying view of men is seen throughout Joyce’s Dubliners and it is used to define social roles. Men objectifying what they see and women “internalized their sense of themselves as ‘scene’” (410). Here Conboy’s use of the word “scene” identifies what she argues the gaze of Joyce’s characters does. Conboy argues that it creates a women as a scene, an object, to be viewed, an idea that is then internalize by these characters as they know themselves as seen. The gaze of men defining woman character’s views of themselves appears throughout Dubliners, but this idea changes in the last section, “The Dead.” Gabriel first objectifies his wife, Greta, much like other characters from earlier passages of the story, but then Greta’s own thoughts stop Gabriel’s sexual desires. This change in the relationship of Gabriel and Greta gives voice to the women previously objectified in Dubliners. Through the expression of Greta’s own desires Conboy argues that Joyce reveals a more traditionally masculine idea of self-identification in Greta. The combination of both Gabriel’s gaze and Greta’s own desire leave the reader at the end of Dubliners with an ambiguous understanding of sexual roles in the modern character that allows the reader to establish their own ideas of each character.
Conboy, Shela. “Exhibition and Inhibition: The Body Scene in Dubliners.” Twentith Century Literature, Vol. 37. No 4. Hofstra University, 1991. 405-419. Print.
Conboy, Shela. “Exhibition and Inhibition: The Body Scene in Dubliners.” Twentith Century Literature, Vol. 37. No 4. Hofstra University, 1991. 405-419. Print.
confronting the patriarchy: female voice and identity in ulysses
In “Joyce’s Female Voices in ‘Ulysses’,” Heather Callow argues that while Joyce was far from being a feminist writer, his fascination with alterity and the subversion of socially-received ideas manifested in Ulysses with his use of female voices to overturn a false unanimity held by the men of the novel, ultimately questioning the system of patriarchal authority. However, this insinuation of authority residing in the female voice has been historically overlooked, a fact which Callow claims can be “directly attributed to Joyce’s narrative technique and the reader experience he has designed for us” (152). In Ulysses, Joyce manipulates voice and point of view such that Bloom’s character is represented throughout most of the novel solely by the disdain and degrading indifference that his male peers demonstrate towards him and his desire to be accepted by them. This works to illustrate Bloom’s character as a meek and impotent outsider of his society, an image substantiated convincingly by the authority of the male consensus. The erroneous nature of this portrayal of Bloom, then, is only revealed in the end of the novel. However, Joyce employs writing styles which mute the very voices that serve to portray Bloom’s true character, a romanticized rhetoric of female voices, whose social authority pales in comparison to the voice of the patriarchy. Still, Joyce’s challenging of the patriarchy cannot be considered feminist in intention. Rather, Callow contends that Joyce “trusted” we would align with the Dublin male perception of Bloom, playing on “fictional and real life prejudices and expectations” (160). Joyce’s trust of this was founded on his narrative structuring of the novel in tandem with an awareness of these prejudices. By strategically establishing the false “lesser Bloom” throughout most of the novel as distinctively in line with male opinion and the actual “greater Bloom” through muted female voices only at the end, Joyce intended us to maintain the male-affiliated view, despite proof of its fallacy. Ulysses is far from being a feminist work and Joyce is far from being a feminist; yet, the system of patriarchal authority provided the modernist writer with an interesting and socially-significant set of received ideas to be explored and questioned in his literature. Paradoxically, he succeeds in revealing just how powerfully we have internalized and perpetuated these patriarchal ideas while simultaneously attempting to subvert them.
Callow, Heather C. "Joyce's Female Voices in 'Ulysses'." The Journal of Narrative Technique 22.3 (1992): 151-163. JSTOR. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
In “The Molly Blooms of ‘Penelope’: Reading Joyce Archivally,” Alyssa O’Brien explores the mobility and fluidity of Joyce’s ever-evolving writing style in Ulysses, specifically in “Penelope,” the final episode of the novel, and she rejects the idea that the chapter is simply an interior monologue of Molly Bloom. Rather, O’Brien claims that “Penelope” is comprised of numerous extensions of the linguistic styles that Joyce explores earlier in the novel, creating not a single, complex Molly Bloom, but many different characters and personalities, embodying the multiplicity of feminine identity. O’Brien reveals how the female consciousness in "Penelope" possesses contradictory desires and attitudes towards things such as sexuality and emotion at different points in the chapter, and how these various desires and sentiments are characterized through different linguistic styles, sometimes with romantic, poetic language and imagery, at points through human connection and material objects, and other times employing the realism of natural imagery and sensory details. These discrepancies, O’Brien indicates, create a “complicated collection of expressions” which “forecloses the feasibility that one representation could be capable of containing all convictions” (19). In other words, the contradictions of character that Joyce creates through the many writing styles he employs in “Penelope” are too great to belong to a single individual, proving the existence of many Molly Blooms in the episode and the multiplicity of feminine identities that her character represents. Furthermore, Joyce calls the reader’s attention to the constructed nature of the text by playing with words, fragmenting them and adding cross-outs (19), and concluded “Penelope” with a self-referential signature to leave the reader thinking about Joyce himself and his intentions with the linguistic constructions and their significance (21). By representing the identity in “Penelope” as a woman, O'Brien notes, Joyce irrevocably confronts ideas about femininity in society. However, his treatment of the feminine identity is unique because of his ability to represent it with “ontological mutability” (8). More simply put, Molly Bloom’s feminine identity is made fluid and changeable. The significance of this is that it “undermines the conceptualization of gender as a fixed attribute that determines social identity” (23). By creating a fluid identity, Joyce was able to navigate and explore femininity far beyond the constraints of socially-constructed ideas about gender and identity, revealing the infinite possibilities of feminine identity and providing an escape from socially constructed subjectivity.
O'Brien, Alyssa J. "The Molly Blooms of 'Penelope': Reading Joyce Archivally." Journal of Modern Literature 24.1 (2000): 7-18. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
Callow, Heather C. "Joyce's Female Voices in 'Ulysses'." The Journal of Narrative Technique 22.3 (1992): 151-163. JSTOR. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
In “The Molly Blooms of ‘Penelope’: Reading Joyce Archivally,” Alyssa O’Brien explores the mobility and fluidity of Joyce’s ever-evolving writing style in Ulysses, specifically in “Penelope,” the final episode of the novel, and she rejects the idea that the chapter is simply an interior monologue of Molly Bloom. Rather, O’Brien claims that “Penelope” is comprised of numerous extensions of the linguistic styles that Joyce explores earlier in the novel, creating not a single, complex Molly Bloom, but many different characters and personalities, embodying the multiplicity of feminine identity. O’Brien reveals how the female consciousness in "Penelope" possesses contradictory desires and attitudes towards things such as sexuality and emotion at different points in the chapter, and how these various desires and sentiments are characterized through different linguistic styles, sometimes with romantic, poetic language and imagery, at points through human connection and material objects, and other times employing the realism of natural imagery and sensory details. These discrepancies, O’Brien indicates, create a “complicated collection of expressions” which “forecloses the feasibility that one representation could be capable of containing all convictions” (19). In other words, the contradictions of character that Joyce creates through the many writing styles he employs in “Penelope” are too great to belong to a single individual, proving the existence of many Molly Blooms in the episode and the multiplicity of feminine identities that her character represents. Furthermore, Joyce calls the reader’s attention to the constructed nature of the text by playing with words, fragmenting them and adding cross-outs (19), and concluded “Penelope” with a self-referential signature to leave the reader thinking about Joyce himself and his intentions with the linguistic constructions and their significance (21). By representing the identity in “Penelope” as a woman, O'Brien notes, Joyce irrevocably confronts ideas about femininity in society. However, his treatment of the feminine identity is unique because of his ability to represent it with “ontological mutability” (8). More simply put, Molly Bloom’s feminine identity is made fluid and changeable. The significance of this is that it “undermines the conceptualization of gender as a fixed attribute that determines social identity” (23). By creating a fluid identity, Joyce was able to navigate and explore femininity far beyond the constraints of socially-constructed ideas about gender and identity, revealing the infinite possibilities of feminine identity and providing an escape from socially constructed subjectivity.
O'Brien, Alyssa J. "The Molly Blooms of 'Penelope': Reading Joyce Archivally." Journal of Modern Literature 24.1 (2000): 7-18. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.
MATisse: Influence and Identity in Modernist Art
In David Carrier’s essay “The Beauty of Henri Matisse” he looks at what comprises Matisse’s art and what it is about that makes it so serenely beautiful. He comes to the ultimate conclusion that over the course of his time as an artist Matisse refined a way of depicting beauty by directly distancing himself from his work and diverge from the modernist though of social critique. Matisse instead sought to make things pleasing to the eye. A remark by Elaine Scarry showcases “Matisse never hoped to save lives. But he repeatedly said that he wanted to make paintings so serenely beautiful that when one came upon them, suddenly all problems would subside.” was Matisse’s main focus in his work and Carrier details this in most of his earlier pieces. In Matisse’s art there was a focus on what the view should find attractive. Carrier describes how Matisse distanced himself emotionally from his art but told the viewer what to appreciate through various stylings. An example of this given by Carrier was in a series of paintings where in paintings of models in his studio his painted his own pieces of artwork on the wall. Carrier argues that this is Matisse controlling the studio even when he is not present. A more refined sense of this is Matisse depicting himself painting a model in a painting; by painting himself into the picture the visual pleasure that the viewer gets is from the male viewer’s pleasure of looking at a pretty women. Through intimately revealing his creative process, Carrier notes, Matisse is able to keep his models at a distance and place himself between the model and the viewer and through that defining beauty.
The Beauty of Henri Matisse, David Carrier, Journal of Aesthetic Education Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 80-87.
The argument that is being made in Craig Raine’s in his article of the observation of Henri Matisse’s later work is that Matisse was able to create ascetically pleasing art by allowing himself to draw from the subconscious, distancing himself as far as possible from his work. Matisse used many methods to make this done with the innovative idea of decoupage. Despite distancing himself through the process of his work, he maintained a carefully composed persona. Matisse had enough clout in the modernist/fauvist community to sink the reputations of others; The example of Picasso’s dealer was given “he sank the reputation of Ambroise Vollard...with a series of lethal conversational strikes.” There was a stark contrast between Matisse’s life and his art, Raine describes it as “It’s(Matisse’s artwork) calm remains unruffled”. His carefully constructed persona is reflected, when Matisse was asked about his drawing technique giving the example of how while sending a telegraph he drew a picture of his mother without looking at the page; it was a drawing from the subconscious. The term that he gave to this phenomenon was is hand took him for a ride, "Je suis conduit, je ne conduit pas”, his hand took him for a ride. There is intense juxtaposition between his very ascetically pleasing style that is meant to be from the subconscious and the styling/manner which has been very carefully crafted along with his public appearance. The conclusion that Raine was able to obtain from the observation of Matisse’s later artwork was that “the afterlife of art, what survives of the artist even if his life was short.”
Raine, Craig. "The hand that takes you for a ride: when he started 'drawing with scissors', Matisse found a whole new way to overthrow the habitual." New Statesman [1996] 18 Apr. 2014: 82+. Business Insights: Essentials. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.
The Beauty of Henri Matisse, David Carrier, Journal of Aesthetic Education Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 80-87.
The argument that is being made in Craig Raine’s in his article of the observation of Henri Matisse’s later work is that Matisse was able to create ascetically pleasing art by allowing himself to draw from the subconscious, distancing himself as far as possible from his work. Matisse used many methods to make this done with the innovative idea of decoupage. Despite distancing himself through the process of his work, he maintained a carefully composed persona. Matisse had enough clout in the modernist/fauvist community to sink the reputations of others; The example of Picasso’s dealer was given “he sank the reputation of Ambroise Vollard...with a series of lethal conversational strikes.” There was a stark contrast between Matisse’s life and his art, Raine describes it as “It’s(Matisse’s artwork) calm remains unruffled”. His carefully constructed persona is reflected, when Matisse was asked about his drawing technique giving the example of how while sending a telegraph he drew a picture of his mother without looking at the page; it was a drawing from the subconscious. The term that he gave to this phenomenon was is hand took him for a ride, "Je suis conduit, je ne conduit pas”, his hand took him for a ride. There is intense juxtaposition between his very ascetically pleasing style that is meant to be from the subconscious and the styling/manner which has been very carefully crafted along with his public appearance. The conclusion that Raine was able to obtain from the observation of Matisse’s later artwork was that “the afterlife of art, what survives of the artist even if his life was short.”
Raine, Craig. "The hand that takes you for a ride: when he started 'drawing with scissors', Matisse found a whole new way to overthrow the habitual." New Statesman [1996] 18 Apr. 2014: 82+. Business Insights: Essentials. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.
Toward an ideology of modernism: Nietzsche's rejection and exploration
In “Toward an Anti-Humanism of Life: The Modernism of Nietzsche, Hulme and Yeats” Kuhn argues that the ideas of anti-humanism presented by Nietzsche are co-emergent with modernism. She shows how modernist writers used Nietzsche’s anti-humanist approach in their writing, which contributed to the evolution of a style that desires otherness and transformation. Nietzsche’s views on “slave morality” and “ressentiment” are presented in his first essay, “On the Genealogy of Morals” in which he explains slave morality as a negative reaction to all that is different from itself. Hulme’s essay “Humanism and the Religious Attitude” uses the concept of anti-humanism to exceed his objections to classicism and romanticism, both of which he believe blur human relations and confuse human and the divine. Yeats uses Nietzsche in his work as well, as he sympathizes with Nietzsche’s desire for a “superior race,” one that has nothing to do with color, class, or any other typical segregating measure, but has to do with the difference in morality, that being slave or master. Yeats identifies with Nietzsche’s ideas of consciousness and rationality and uses them to create his own theories in his essay “Swedenborg, Mediums, and the Desolate Places.” Nietzsche’s ideas of transformation of the human, exploration and acceptance of the other should not only be considered an influence of modernists, but a preemptive beginning to modernism itself.
Kuhn, Elizabeth. “Toward an Anti-Humanism of Life: The Modernism of
Nietzsche, Hulme and Yeats.” Journal of Modern Literature (2011): 1-21. Indiana University Press, 1 July 2011. Web.
Kuhn, Elizabeth. “Toward an Anti-Humanism of Life: The Modernism of
Nietzsche, Hulme and Yeats.” Journal of Modern Literature (2011): 1-21. Indiana University Press, 1 July 2011. Web.
In “Unamuno, Nietzsche, and Religious Modernism: Affinities and Complexities Concerning the View of Faith” Gomez argues that Nietzsche’s rejection of dogmatism and absolute faith was the tendency known as modernism. He explains that modernism rejects the idea of the singular and absolute, but is also able to hold conflicting ideals together, the key of this tendency being uncertainty. “Religious Modernism” stresses the idea of method over creed, and values the experience of each individual over a dogmatic authority. Nietzsche stressed in several of his works the importance of questioning everything relentlessly and embracing uncertainty, which seemingly match the ideals of modernism. He spoke out against faith for several reasons, one being his opposition of the use of faith as a tool used to control and assimilate individuals with no regard to the self. Nietzsche explains the concept of relative truth with the terms good and evil by stating there is no such thing, but only “my good and evil,” in other words, that judgment of what is good and evil and corresponding values are only a personal truth. His rejection of the absolute and universal within the context of religion strongly aligns with the ideas of modernism, which encourages the individual to question things and not just accept with blind faith. Nietzsche encouraged the individual to set up his own ideal, and defined the “free spirit” as one who liberates one’s self from tradition by finding a personal or relative truth. Gomez presents Nietzsche’s ideas as a part of modernist thinking, and stresses the idea that modernists are unified by their approach, not their conclusion, which further proves Nietzsche as somewhat of a pioneer towards modernism, in that people’s personal truths need not have the same conclusion or result, but have the same means in achieving it through constant questioning.
Gómez, Michael A. "Unamuno, Nietzsche and Religious Modernism:
Affinities and Complexities Concerning the View of Faith." Anales De La Literatura Española Contemporánea 35.1, Spanish Modernism (2010): 223-56. JSTOR. Web.
Gómez, Michael A. "Unamuno, Nietzsche and Religious Modernism:
Affinities and Complexities Concerning the View of Faith." Anales De La Literatura Española Contemporánea 35.1, Spanish Modernism (2010): 223-56. JSTOR. Web.
Identity Crisis: the deleterious effects of a fractured sense of identity
In Emily Smith-Riser’s essay “Kate Chopin as a Modernist: a Reading of “Lilacs” and “Two Portraits,”" Smith-Riser argues that in her short story “Lilacs,” Chopin plays with the discord between the religious and the secular. The story focuses on an actress who was raised in convent by nuns who returns yearly to the convent, only to be turned away each time because of her apparent immorality, as she is an actively sexual person, is no longer a virgin, and is living a worldly life of sin. This divide between women’s sexuality and the expectation to adhere to the “Virgin Mary myth,” in order to be considered spiritually pure enough to work within the clerical ministry causes a rift in women’s secular and religious identities, thus complicating women’s abilities to be in harmony with their identity as they are “divided internally into spiritual and physical selves” (Smith-Riser). Unfortunately, as one would imagine, this then leads to an unhappy and unsatisfying life without the necessary reconciliation between two identities calling to be one.
Smith-Riser, Emily. “Kate Chopin as a Modernist: a Reading of “Lilacs” and “Two Portraits."" 1998. Web.
In “Unbearable Realism: Freedom, Ethics and Identity in The Awakening” Peter Ramos argues that though identity is a fictitious social construct that more often serves to hinder marginalized people than help them, by attempting to cast off identity completely Edna sets herself down a path destined for destruction, as existence without some sort of defining form of identification is impossible and unsustainable. In The Awakening, Edna believes that she is freeing herself and giving herself an unprecedented agency when she begins to reject such social identities such as mother, artist and wife. However, Ramos claims that the only realistic way to be free is to dedicate oneself to a predetermined identity or role, and then work to modify them, over time redefining what that identity or role is perceived as. He calls upon the history of America, where he says that marginalized people have fought for their civil rights by “owning, and taking responsibility for, what social roles were available, and then by modifying, over time and in great numbers, their boundaries” (Ramos, 148). By this he means that by taking control of what little identity is offered to people expected to be in certain roles, they are able to determine the meaning of that identity. He then asserts that since Edna gave up this ability to redefine her identity into something better suited to her by first adhering to the roles laid out for her and then picking away at the boundaries, as other women in the novel successfully did, Edna is cast into a state of chaos and is eventually driven to her ruin. Life without identity, even a marginalized and oppressed one, is life without meaning and functionality and is catered toward devastation.
Ramos, Peter. “Unbearable Realism: Freedom, Ethics and Identity in The Awakening.” 2010. Web.
Smith-Riser, Emily. “Kate Chopin as a Modernist: a Reading of “Lilacs” and “Two Portraits."" 1998. Web.
In “Unbearable Realism: Freedom, Ethics and Identity in The Awakening” Peter Ramos argues that though identity is a fictitious social construct that more often serves to hinder marginalized people than help them, by attempting to cast off identity completely Edna sets herself down a path destined for destruction, as existence without some sort of defining form of identification is impossible and unsustainable. In The Awakening, Edna believes that she is freeing herself and giving herself an unprecedented agency when she begins to reject such social identities such as mother, artist and wife. However, Ramos claims that the only realistic way to be free is to dedicate oneself to a predetermined identity or role, and then work to modify them, over time redefining what that identity or role is perceived as. He calls upon the history of America, where he says that marginalized people have fought for their civil rights by “owning, and taking responsibility for, what social roles were available, and then by modifying, over time and in great numbers, their boundaries” (Ramos, 148). By this he means that by taking control of what little identity is offered to people expected to be in certain roles, they are able to determine the meaning of that identity. He then asserts that since Edna gave up this ability to redefine her identity into something better suited to her by first adhering to the roles laid out for her and then picking away at the boundaries, as other women in the novel successfully did, Edna is cast into a state of chaos and is eventually driven to her ruin. Life without identity, even a marginalized and oppressed one, is life without meaning and functionality and is catered toward devastation.
Ramos, Peter. “Unbearable Realism: Freedom, Ethics and Identity in The Awakening.” 2010. Web.
Kafka and strangers
Franz Kafka and James Joyce exemplify paranoid writers, inherently influenced by their fears; however the two writers greatly differ in whether they harness the ability to escape confinements of barriers built by their fears. In Paranoid Modernism in Joyce and Kafka, David Anton Spurr illustrates how Kafka experienced radical anxieties pertaining to his writing and yet the concerns provided him with a pathway into understanding his own mind. Spurr explores Kafka’s anxiety, which brings to light his ultimate arguments regarding Kafka’s character. Through the words of Spurr, “Kafka was not mad, he was also not sane in the normal way . . . Kafka himself seems to have stood at the threshold between sanity and a kind of illuminated non-sanity and to have drawn his artistic material from this marginal position” (Spurr 186). This position, explained by Spurr, identifies Kafka as an individual in solitude, dissociated with the rest of the world. While this solitude represents the source of Kafka’s suffering, it is also what fuels him and drives his existence as a writer. As he continued to write, Kafka only sunk deeper into his own darkness. Kafka’s writing stems from the inner most struggles of an individual; the darkness that lies within him defines his beautiful literary creations. In contrast with Kafka, Joyce was an artist who inherently harnessed the ability to solve his own paranoid concerns through writing. His writing provided him with an escape, claiming that sensibly there is no distinction between inside and outside; the barrier ultimately does not exist. Through the comparison of Kafka and Joyce as paranoid writers, Spurr argues that unlike Joyce, Kafka was not able to employ writing as a device that would facilitate an escape from the confines of his own fears (Spurr 189).
Spurr, David Anton. "Paranoid Modernism in Joyce and Kafka." Journal of Modern Literature 34 (2011): 178-91. Print.
Spurr, David Anton. "Paranoid Modernism in Joyce and Kafka." Journal of Modern Literature 34 (2011): 178-91. Print.
Society denotes a negative connotation to the term stranger, when realistically everyone is a stranger and through a greater understanding of the stranger one develops a deeper understanding of himself or herself. In “Caring About Strangers: A Lingisian Reading of Kafka’s Metamorphosis”, Ruyu Hung employs Gregor’s transformation in The Metamorphosis as a model for exploring the relationship between society and the stranger. Hung describes societies inherent act of casting out those who do not structurally fit the mold of society. Members of society, the insiders, interact and communicate in a predictable manner that confirms their membership and identity (437). Strangers, on the other hand, are unpredictable, which drives the desire of insiders to exclude them from their community. Considering Gregor’s transformation, Hung poses the question “Is it because Gregor becomes a monstrous insect, a stranger or an alien that his family abandon him? (438). Furthermore, if this is true, can we as society accept those who are deemed different or strange? With The Metamorphosis as testimony, Hung assumes that Kafka would answer “no” to this question. Hung argues that strangeness is a natural element of life, that Gregor still deserved acceptance and support from his family. In order to grasp the significance of the strange within our world, Hung suggests that considerable attention should be drawn to the contrast between surface-sensitivity and depth-perception originally proposed by American philosopher, writer and translator, Alphonso Lingis. Surface-sensitivity refers to those not considered “sensible, emotional and acting subjects as ‘we’” (442). With this frame of mind one simply acknowledges the stranger as not representing a human being. In contrast, depth-perception bestows human characteristics upon the stranger, constituting them as a living person. Hung signifies the importance of acknowledging that within our lives, we are all destined to become a stranger at one point. And furthermore, that we must assume a superior mentality, described as depth-perception, in order to gain a profound understanding of strangers, which inherently results in an enhanced conception of ourselves.
Hung, Ruyu. "Caring About Strangers: A Lingisian Reading of Kafka’s Metamorphosis." Educational Philosophy and Theory 45.4 (2013): 436-47. Web.
Hung, Ruyu. "Caring About Strangers: A Lingisian Reading of Kafka’s Metamorphosis." Educational Philosophy and Theory 45.4 (2013): 436-47. Web.
Transforming the literary landscape: the relationship of sound to written workIn “Listening for ‘Found Sound’ Samples in the Novels of Virginia Woolf”, Angela Frattarola argues that Virginia Woolf used “found sound”, or the presentation of sounds from the real world, in order to manipulate how her audience conceived notions of community and isolation within her novels. Woolf reinforces the idea of community through shared aural experience with the use of everyday noises such as cars, clock towers, and distant chatter. This idea of community is recognized when the individual realizes that the sounds they hear are not a singular experience, but one that is shared by anyone within range of the noise. This solidifies an idea of unity, in that instead of a single human hearing a single noise, it is in fact many individuals hearing the same noise. However, this idea of community is thus disrupted by the realization that each experience is personal and distinct, creating a feeling of isolation within the sense of community, for no one encounter is the same. In utilizing “found sound”, which can also be referred to as onomatopoeia, within her works, Woolf reinforces her understanding of the world and how people relate to one another. Frattarola writes, “an artist can jolt a listener out of her absent-minded reception, causing that listener to become apperceptively aware of how she hears sounds” (Frattarola 1). This jolt was increasingly important to Woolf because of WWII and the Industrial Age, as she struggled with feelings of fear in relationship to string of life itself. This fear developed throughout her life, as Woolf wrote, “Not a sound this evening to bring in the human tears. I remember the sudden profuse shower one night just before war [which] made me think of all men & women weeping” in her diary (Frattarola 8). This entry indicates how Woolf listened for the war, anxiously waiting for sounds that represented human loss. This fear is what motivated Woolf’s use of “found sound”, in that in its use, she was able to represent and manipulate the sounds that so frightened her into a unifying force within her writings.
Frattarola, Angela. "Listening for "Found Sound" Samples in the Novels of Virginia Woolf." Woolf Studies Annual 11 (2005): n. pag. Pace University Press. Web. 4 Apr. 2015. In “Transforming Musical Sounds into Words: Narrative Method in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves”, Elicia Clements argues that Woolf parallels the way that Beethoven experimented with form and texture through the writing of her characters in The Waves, revolutionizing the idea of character conception and use. Clements argues that Woolf does this by modeling each of her characters after a movement in either Beethoven’s Opus 130 or 133. The Waves, known as one of Woolf’s most experimental novels, consists of 7 characters, 6 of whom share their stories through soliloquy. The novel follows each of the character’s individual stories, allowing them to explore community, self, and individualism through their soliloquys. Clements writes, “her use of music as a concept and later as a methodological principle is highly innovative by comparison to her contemporaries because it does presuppose a dichotomy between form and content” (Clements 1). This belief in the contrast between form and content allowed Woolf to write life “to its minutest essence”, blurring form in the way that music weaves distinct themes together into a whole piece (Clements 1). Clements argues that Woolf uses musical sound and narrative in order to experiment with the presupposed notions of subject and form, manufacturing a product that transcends life. This ties into the idea of “found sound”, in that part of its use is to jolt the reader into a state of awareness of life’s fragmentation and fragility. This experimentation with form and its affect on the reader is one that can be seen in many Modernist works, including that of Picasso, Joyce, and Eliot. The notion is that with this experimentation, a new way of representing life and its multiple facets can emerge, bringing a newfound awareness or understanding.
Clements, Elicia. "Transforming Musical Sounds Into Words: Narrative Method in Virginia Woolf's The Waves." Narrative (2005): n. pag. Ohio State University Press. Web. 4 Apr. 2015. Dada: HOch and Duchamp Challenging Gender
In “Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Tonsure’: Towards an Alternate Masculinity,” Giovanna Zapperi examines Duchamp’s iconic photo “Tonsure” and it’s questioning of the definition of masculinity and traditional gender roles. According to Zapperi, “Tonsure” is both a critique on the way masculinity was defined in the post WWI era as well as in the Catholic Church. In the Catholic Church, the tonsure is “an exclusively masculine prerogative” and can only be given to man becoming a priest who has been “deemed worthy of priest hood” (296). Zapperi sees Duchamp shaving the tonsure into his head as a symbolic castration, which he sees as a contradiction to the Freudian theory, that musicality is partially derived from physical genitalia. This symbolic castration also contradicts the masculine rhetoric or the time that “constantly invoked the image of a young, manly, and healthy combatant in opposition to a society represented by the decadent and effeminate” (294). It is this questioning of the WWI male virility that Zapperi’ argues Duchamp both deconstructs and then reconstructs them through “Tonsure.”
Zapperi, Giovanna. “Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Tonsure’: Towards an Alternate Masculinity.” Oxford Art Journal. 30.1 (2007) : 291 – 303. Print. In Maud Lavin’s article, “Androgyny, Spectatorship, and the Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Hoch,” she seeks to examine the photomontages of Hannah Hoch for its contributions to questioning the hierarchical and static representations of gender. Lavin argues that by presenting the myth of the New Woman in her art, Hoch distinguished herself among others Berlin Dada artists.Through out the article, Lavin pinpoints specific artworks Hoch created that displayed androgynous tendencies in order deconstruct gender roles. Lavin also suggests that Hoch’s own sexual ambiguity can be seen in her own work, specifically in reference to her nine year relationship with female, Dutch writer, Til Brugman. Lavin argues that Hoch’s decision not to officially label her sexuality as bisexual or lesbian as she switched between male and female partner can be seen in her photomontages that make the gender identity of the subject indistinguishable. Lavin, Maud. “Androgyny, Spectatorship, and the Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Hoch.” New German Critique. 51 (1990): 62-86. Print. Motherhood: Cassat and Scheper-HughesScheper-Hughes creates a nontraditional ethnographic work that details the relationship between mother and child in a remote village tucked away in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. She documents four field expeditions recording the lives of the mothers and their children over a seven year period and chronicles the sufferings of almost one hundred women through family and reproductive histories and gives anecdotal analyses and commentaries. It, as ethnographic works tend to do, incorporates the study of documents, interviews, observations, and literature reviews. Scheper-Hughes uses her personal experience and anecdotal narrative to give voice to a community of people often overlooked, misunderstood, or misjudged. The title “Death Without Weeping” comes from Scheper-Hughes first experience in the village, where a young child died and the women, including the mother, seemed to express little to no sorrow or emotions of loss. This shocked Scheper-Hughes as she had been conditioned all her life to view the death of an infant as a terrible tragedy. Through her investigation she explains that these women are not heartless mothers, as most Western onlookers has presumed, but simply have different functions and expectations for their roles of Motherhood, as the infant mortality rate in the community was so high. From this Scheper-Hughes creates a work departed from ethnocentric judgements and a narrative that highlights the social structures and influences that surround and dictate what it means to be a Mother. Looking at those social elements furthers the argument of Motherhood as a social construct.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes. "Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil." Contemporary Sociology 22.3 (1993): 351. Broude looks at Cassatt's life and the elements of what is referred to now as an “alternative lifestyle for women”. She looks at Cassatt's own writing to her friends, where she introduces the “French idea” that “women should be someone and not something”, and argues that the ways for Cassatt to gain success in the art world were to cater towards societal shifts. Looking at the influence of Cassatt's gender in her life lends itself to social commentary on the construct of gender, but further comments on the confines within which she as a woman was able to find success. The title, "Cult of True Womanhood" alludes to the source of Cassatt's initial fame: upper class women in late 1880's France. Cassatt rode a wave of cultural shift to success and critical acclaim. Many late-18th century painters portray the rewards of family life, motherhood in particular, as part of a wider “moral edification and reform that encouraged women to assume the joys of maternal responsibility” at a time when such behavior had in fact “not been the cultural norm”. Cassatt, Broude argues, was well received as a “similar kind of social problem existed in France” and “visual representation was once again being called upon to play an important role in helping redefine and reshape the social order”. In examining the influences independence and gender has on Cassatt's life, Broude creates a rhetoric about the significance of social attention to Motherhood in the artist's success but how little significance this construct had within her personal life. Cassatt was able to capitalize of the changing ideals of motherhood and the desires of upper-class families to praise certain images for their representations of society as they wished to see them. In Cassatt's mother saying that her “alternative lifestyle” was due to her “intent on fame and money” there is commentary that social desires are changing. Success shifts from creating a happy family to creating your own wealth and power. These things are socially constructed. This shift is one of social change and it's influence on public feelings toward Motherhood effects the pursuit and social construct of Motherhood. Broude, Norma. "Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman or the Cult of True Womanhood?" Woman's Art Journal 21.2 (2000): 36-43. JSTOR. T.S. Eliot, Cubism And The Ultimate ConclusionIn “Modern Art Techniques in the Wasteland,” Jacob Korg argues that if the eccentricity of T.S. Eliot’s poetic method are considered more than mere product of the Zeitgeist but rather an intentional approach to his writing of The Wasteland, than the source of inspiration of these techniques can be found within the Cubist movements of his era. In the essay, Korg hunts for identical intention between Eliot’s literary techniques and several art movements. Of these movements, Korg’s examination of Cubism is the most interesting and convincing. Within Korg’s explanation of Cubist methods, Korg emphasizes fragmentation. He identifies the shattered pieces of a Cubist work as fragments that “do not merely add up to to the original; instead, they combine in a new way to form the design of the picture, just as the fragmentary scenes, figures and allusions of The Waste Land send echoes among themselves that relate to the central meaning of the poem.” (Korg 2). These “echoes” represent the subtle shift in mood across The Waste Land that characterizes the poem. In essence Cubists and Eliot did the same thing: fracturing and decomposing to then pick up the pieces and create something entirely new. Korg then explains the process and purpose of the analytical and synthetic cubist methods, using the Cubist paintings of Picasso as an example. Korg first summarizes the three defining Cubist techniques: compression of depth, obscuration of form and juxtaposition of multiple perspectives.The end product of these techniques is clearly expressed in Picasso’s 1910 painting titled Portrait of Ambroise Vollard. In this painting, one can observe Korg’s description of analytical cubist techniques in action. Picasso himself considered the painting to be his best Cubist portrait. The cubist techniques in Portrait of Ambroise were performed by none other than a man who painted direct reality with Cubist techniques. T.S. Eliot is also one of these men, a man whom with specific literary techniques set out to achieve a most direct expression of reality in a Promethean fashion.
Korg, Jacob. "Modern Art Techniques in the Waste Land." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 18.4 (1960): 456-463. JSTOR. Wiley. Web. 10 Apr. 2015. In Eliot and The Cubists, Thomlinson seeks for the reliable time and location that Cubist ideals first made their impression on Eliot. Thomlinson believes this must have occurred during Eliot’s brief stay in Paris during 1911; after all, the year Eliot spent as a student at the Sorbonne was the birth of cubism. Eliot couldn’t escape Cubism if he tried, as the art movement’s controversial techniques stirred argument in papers and art-journals world-wide. As Thomlinson aptly observes, Eliot was inadvertently related to the Cubist conversation despite the fact that Eliot knew hardly anyone (Thomlinson, 71). Of the few people that Eliot did know was fellow Bergson-enthusiast Alain-Fournier. Eliot visited Alain-Fournier frequently for conversation practice. Interestingly enough, Alain-Fournier was actually the brother-in-law of literary and art critic Jacques Riviére. Riviére wrote two brief reviews of cubists in the Nouvelle Revue Francaise contained in the issues of May, 1912 and June, 1913. Thomlinson believes that Eliot, having subscribed to the Nouvelle Revue Francaise on his return to Harvard, must have read these articles. Therein lies the strongest potential link between Eliot and Cubism during his Parisian years. Thomlinson himself admits that the possibility of Eliot hearing some ideas through “embryo” (Riviére’s ideas through Alain-Fournier) is far-fetched (Thomlinson, 72). To truly validate the claim that The Waste Land is a Cubist poem, one must find reasonable evidence of Cubist ideals within Eliot’s scholarly writing. One such source of evidence is Eliot’s essay titled Tradition and the Individual Talent. Eliot, Thomas Stearns. The Sacred Wood. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921; Bartleby.com, 1996. www.bartleby.com/200/ 6 April 2015 tristan tzara and transcendent identity in a time of warSzalay argues that different Modernist writers have conflicting views regarding textual identity and its relationship to human identity. He primarily compares Hemingway’s opinions to Tzara’s. Hemingway believed that every specific word and its placement was essential to a text’s identity, and that any “alteration of a word can throw an entire story out of key” (Szalay 461). In other words, any change--no matter how small--entirely changes a literary work. He explains Hemingway’s belief about the vulnerability of textual identity compared to that of human identity. Hemingway believed that human identity was vulnerable to “mutilation” and damage because it continues to exist in a mutilated state after the physical wounding of the human body. Textual identity, however, is not vulnerable in this way because any alteration or mutilation immediately changes that identity, and therefore a mutilated textual identity cannot exist. For this reason, Hemingway saw writing as the creation of an alternative form that is “superior” to human identity. Tzara, on the other hand, did not believe that word choice had any significance in terms of a work’s identity because art’s identity is “transcendent” and exists beyond the work itself, and therefore was already immune to mutilation. He also valued the fact that dada, as performance art, was invulnerable because it left behind no physical form to be mutilated. Because of their contradicting beliefs and Hemingway’s opinion of dada as an art form, Hemingway did not like Tristan Tzara.
Szalay, M. "Inviolate Modernism: Hemingway, Stein, Tzara." Modern Language Quarterly 56.4 (1995): 457-85. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 Apr. 2015. Stanton B. Garner, Jr. analyzes Tristan Tzara’s play The Gas Heart and its representation of the human body. He puts the work in its historical context: World War I. He argues that the play is both a response to and representation of the idea of the “shattered” human form that was present in soldiers literally and figuratively disfigured from war. Dada was, for Tzara, a way of criticizing and opposing the war through the chaos it created on stage. This chaos resulted from “disfiguration” of the human body and its representation. In The Gas Heart specifically, the human form was represented as fragmented by its use of each actor as a representation of a different facial feature (nose, mouth, etc.). Through this fragmentation, the play “reflects – and transforms – a cultural anxiety over the destruction of the human form and the claims of identity, normality, and corporeal integrity to which it has been historically subordinated” (512-13). In other words, Stanton claims that Tzara’s purpose for the play was to redefine the relationship between physical form and human identity. Garner, Stanton B., Jr. “The Gas Heart: Disfigurement and the Dada Body.”Modern Drama 50.4 (Winter 2007): 500-16. Project MUSE. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. The Magic Word: Ideas on Language as a form of expression in Modernist Poetry and Philosophy
In his article,"Sentimentalism in the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams." Myers argues that although William’s poetry presents simple imagery, that many other modernist poets deemed as unrefined, it captures the human need to continue to live for life’s sake as an opposition to the certainty of death. Myers then goes on to explain how although Williams’ poems were written in an avant-garde structure, they spoke to the common man. He demonstrates the ways in which William’s provokes feeling in the reader through imagery that is straight forward and, “which sees everything as new, full of a puzzling, unpredictable clarity,”(461). It is this unpredictability that Myers argues is what makes William’s poems so thought provoking. Williams is able to capture the absurd and dynamic nature of human life through his unpredictable prose. Myers points to examples of Williams’ poetry such as “To Waken an Old Lady” in which Williams asserts questions into almost maudlin imagery. This is a technique Williams uses to contrast sentimental elegant prose with lines that sound as if they were inserted from common language. Myers goes on to explain that through this technique Williams is able to convey, “something chaotic eagerly organized, the graceless made graceful, the difficult made ‘joyful,’”(462). It this kind of tension between opposing forces, Myers argues where the essential theme of Williams’ work lies. Williams’ poetry was mainly concerned with portraying the force of life, chaotic and unpredictable. Williams knew that to portray this fully he must examine the other side to this vitality: destruction and the ultimate certainty of death. Myers explains how through his poetry, Williams was able to capture both of these opposing forces.
Myers, Neil. "Sentimentalism in the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams." American Literature 37.4 (1966): 458-70. Duke University Press. Web. 06 Apr. 2015. In his article, "The Differing Impulses of William Carlos Williams," Cushman argues that Williams was a complicated individual torn between his artistic impulses and societal pressure of prestige and money. In order to deal with this conflict Cushman argues, Williams adopted the strategy of double-consciousness. Much of Cushman’s article is framed by a postal correspondence between Williams and his publisher James Laughlin. Laughlin and Williams had a strange and poetic relationship. Laughlin encouraged Williams to not “sellout” the larger corporate publishers who would edit his poetry away from the avant-garde in order to make it palatable to a large audience and therefore lucrative. Cushman argues that much of Williams’ career was defined by, “the perpetual competition of social, economic, and emotional demands,”(614). As an artist, the driving force behind Williams’ work was the pleasure of the creation and expression of his everyday life. However, being a small town doctor and family man, Williams’ felt the economic strain of the great depression as many Americans at the time did. Laughlin, being a publisher from a privileged background, was less sympathetic to Williams’ economic struggles. Cushman lays out these struggles as, “Middle-class man versus rich man; avant-garde versus establishment; artistic integrity versus commercial success,”(316). At the heart of Williams’ struggle is the basic American struggle, the need to find a balance within a capitalist system that disagreed with art. This internal struggle Cushman refers to as Williams’ “double-consciousness” the way in which the opposing forces manifest themselves in his soul creating separate facets of his character. This double-consciousness is embodied in Williams’ writing, creating a kind of tension. As Cushman explains it, “Although his experiences as a doctor and a family man richly informs much of his writing, Williams’s own impulses show little or no disposition to reconcile themselves,”(621). That is, much of Williams’ writing shows Williams’ everyday life in contrast with his wild artistic impulses. While Cushman contests that this double consciousness was alienating for Williams’ and a struggle, he also acknowledges its necessity for his survival.
Cushman, Stephen. "The Differing Impulses of William Carlos Williams." American Literary History 3.3 (1991): 614-22. JSTOR. Oxford University Press. 7 Apr. 2015. Uniqueness through usurpation: Frank lloyd wright and Appropriation in american modernism
In this article, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., son of the commissioner of Fallingwater, explores Wright’s Modernist influences during the twenties and thirties. Kaufmann argues that this period was the most ambitiously Modernist of Wright’s life, and was characterized more by models and blueprints than by actual constructions. Kaufmann attributes this to Wright’s financial hardships during these years, as well as the impossibilities of many of his ideas at this time. Kaufmann cites several of Wright’s plans from this period as evidence for Wright’s Modernism. Kaufman’s most compelling argument towards Wright’s relationship with Modernism features around his accommodation of automobiles in his designs. Wright not only tolerated the new technology of cars, but embraced them heartily, using them in his personal life and incorporating accoutrements such as garages and driveways into his designs, most notably in the motorway for which the Sugarloaf Mountain planetarium design is best known. Kaufmann, an architect himself, is well able to analyze the intricacies of Wright’s design and thus cite this period as Modernist, and despite occasional leaps of logic forms an intriguing argument regarding Wright’s artistic orientation.
Kaufmann, Edgar Jr. "Frank Lloyd Wright's Years of Modernism, 1925-1935." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 24.1 (1965): 31-33. JSTOR. Web. 5 Apr. 2015._ In this article, Wojtowicz examines Wright’s House on the Mesa project as an example of Modernist architecture. Wojtowicz focuses mainly on the creativity and innovation which this design features, and views the plan as an ambitious attempt at Modernism. Wojtowicz emphasizes the efforts taken by Wright in designing this house to accommodate modern lifestyles, including a four-car garage and a wall blocking the busy highway which Wright envisioned as running by the house. The house was to be set into the landscape of the desert of Colorado, featuring a swimming pool and a panoramic view of the Rockies. According to Wojtowicz, this, combined with the balance between integration and incongruity with the landscape, are hallmarks of Wright’s take on Modernism. Wright, like all Modernists, was heavily influenced by the traditions which came before him, but adapted those ways to suit both modern life and his own creativity. Wojtowicz, Robert. "A Model House and a House's Model: Reexamining Frank Lloyd Wright's House on the Mesa Project." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 64.4 (2005): 522-51. JSTOR. Web. 5 Apr. 2015. |
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Breaking Image: Perceptions of Kafka's Metamorphosis
In “Kafka's Ruins in Popular Culture: A Story of Metamorphosis” authors Idan Yaron and Omri Herzog argue that the ideas and concepts in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis still to this day influences popular culture, but now the novella no longer holds the same representation within society and artistic community. Yaron and Herzog argue that society has turned from being from being iconoclastic to iconodulic, thus changing the way society views a story like Kafka’s. Yaron and Herzog claim that, “when such texts as Kafka's The Metamorphosis are expropriated by the cultural means of the digital era, their “iconoclastic” tendencies most naturally turn “iconodulic”.”(Yaron and Herzog 2) The shift of image to being digital in todays world has made society more reliant on images for understanding. This is interesting when talking about Kafka because The Metamorphosis was written to break image. We never know if Gregor is really a bug or not forcing us to try to understand Gregor through his actions. Yaron and Herzog writes, “The Metamorphosis is therefore an “iconoclastic” (image-breaking) text: it rejects an iconic representation of the “bug” or of the “metamorphosis” as such. The iconic, monumental ornaments are deliberately denied in it.”(Yaron and Herzog 2) The authors are claiming that The Metamorphosis was written as a backlash against society at this time. The bug represents image and Kafka meaningfully doesn't give the reader an image. This lack of image allows the reader for as Yaron and Herzog say, ”The interpretative spectrum of the “bug” is endless, converging at a zero point—the “ground zero” of meaning, or endless meanings"(Yaron and Herzog 3). This is what originally made the novella famous, and now because of the digital age the interpretations of the novella have become uninspired by the actual text and viewed almost soley through the image on the bug. Ultimately, Yaron and Herzog argue that because society and popular culture became more iconodulic based, the way Kafka’s Metamorphosis is viewed has changed and the symbol of the bug is looked at differently than Kafka originally intended.
Yaron, Dan, Herzog, Omri. “Kafka's Ruins in Popular Culture: A Story of Metamorphosis. Journal of Popular Culture Oct2013, Vol. 46 Issue 5, p1092 14p. In ”A Consideration of Kafka's Metamorphosis As A Metaphor For Existential Anxiety About Aging” Cierra O’Connor argues that Kafka’s The Metamorphosis serves as a dichotomy between the perceptions of growing old and aging. O’Connor submits that the theme’s of alienation and rejection that she connects with aging is actually more likely to have been inspired by the fact he was a Jew. Nonetheless O’Connor is able to find parallels between the story and aging through the character Gregor Samsa. O’Connor asserts three points of correlation between Gregor and aging, “First he has undergone a physical change that has left his mind and thoughts largely unchanged. Secondly, he lives in his own annex where he is supported by his family, while not being able to economically contribute. Thirdly, the story concludes with the striking image of the daughter, Gregor’s sister, stretching ‘her nubile, young body’.”(O’Connor 58). O’Connor points out that at this time aging had a negative connotation especially with men after going through the war. Aging often meant internal torment from the visions of war leaving men feeling alienated within their own society. This negative connotation actually stems as O’Connor states,” it is not so much the age itself, but other’s view of age”(O’Connor 60). This can be clearly seen in The Metamorphasis because the novella is written in the perspective of the family being the problem and not Gregor. O’Connor testifies that The Metamorphosis is allegorical towards aging and the novella serves as a reassurance that ones view of themselves aging is that of alienation and estrangement. O'Connor, Ciaran.”A Consideration of Kafka's Metamorphosis As A Metaphor For Existential.” Anxiety About Ageing” Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis. Jan2012, Vol. 23 Issue 1, p56-66. 11p. beauty in the eye of the beholder: Challenges of Post impressionism art and literatureDuring the transition intro the Post-Impressionism era, art and literature were constantly be challenged and pushed by emerging artists who displayed rebellious perspectives on what art should really look like. In his article, “Why Was There So Much Ugly Art in the Twentieth Century?”. David E.W. Fenner researches the post-impressionism era and argues his opinion against the movement. Though Fenner disagrees with the movement, it was more about the way the artist went about the art that made it seem questionable. Fenner points out the differences of this new movement compared, to past artistic movement. Post-impressionism’s lack of formal characteristics and listed criteria to be in all pieces of art, make the pieces confusing and misleading to the viewers. During this time period, artists took on a new perspective of all art being beautiful in the eye of the beholder. This common Post Impressionism ideal is challenged by critics Hume and Kant in the article, while they focus on what make a good judge for this beautiful art in the eye of the beholder. According the Fenner, “ The claim that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so all judgments are equally good", is this connection which, although it is misguided, suggests is the basis of the movement in modern art away from beauty-production” (1). Fenner believed that this idea that all art was good art, steadily decreases the value of beauty and beautiful art production. But what can really define “good” art? As stated in Fenner’s article, the basics of good and beautiful art production dates all the way back to the time of Aristotle. Fenner claims that Aristotle said, ”An object is aesthetically good — or, actually, beautiful — if it is ordered, symmetrical, and definite, and if it demonstrates each of these virtues to a high degree” (1). Many, or most, of the artists of the Post-Impressionism and Modernism era have purposely forgotten these formal characteristics to be able to express art in a form that they see fit. In addition, the idea that all art was beautiful brought on a positive take by letting artists portray a common social injustice, gender roles. Women were starting to be painted as everyday women, who we educated and real. This idea of art is a great example in how artists all just used different approaches to beautiful art, with all achieving the same goal of emotional responses. Art has moved more to this idea of subjectivity, instead of formalism, therefore taking away from it’s realist objectives and formalist qualities unto which supposedly make art “beautiful”.
Fenner, David E.W. “Why Was There So Much Ugly Art in the Twentieth Century?” The Journal of Aesthetic Education 39.2 (2005): 13-26. The Post-Impressionism era brought sparked major controversy about whether or not the art that was being produced was “acceptable” or “beautiful” just because it was visually so opposite of what past art had looked like. But Post Impressionism all worked with the same of goal of eliciting emotional responses through subjective ideas, it was just the way all the artists went about this goal that separated them as individuals. Many artists of this Modernism movement challenged the formal qualities that were supposedly supposed to be included in every piece of artwork that was produced; some disregarded these traits altogether. By moving away from this formalist idea, abstract pieces of art and literature were pushed beyond their bounds and intrigued, or repulsed, many viewers. Ann Banfield comments on this newfound movement and points out it’s many positive qualities in her article, “Time Passes: Virginia Woolf, Post-Impressionism, and Cambridge Time”. As many negative critics have stated, art of the Post-Impressionism time was instable and had no purpose or direction, therefore, was a waste of time. Banfield agrees that the art and literature were instable, but this instability was very much done on purpose and brought design and vision to pieces. Banfield argues that Post-Impressionism art is supposed to be looked at in a series. It is process work, instead of just one thing laid out on a canvas or novel. Banfield quotes Virginia Woolf as she is describing how literature needs to be challenged, "The mere expression of things adequately and sensitively, is not enough," Woolf quotes Mansfield….by turning any artists “vision” into design, is truly was impressionism and post impressionism are” Then Banfield goes on to add, “Just as Woolf turned story into novel” (471). Interestingly enough, many Modernism authors, such as Virginia Woolf, found inspiration in Realism authors and artists. Post-Impressionism, was not necessarily to take over the formalist ideals of post Modernism, but rather to push the boundaries. Producing art and literature that can be seen as beautiful from multiple perspectives gives life and direction to the questioned Post-Impressionism movement. In addition, Banfield challenges the idea of gender by using subjective ideas and approaches to bring empowerment to women. Historically, women have been displayed as insignificant and Woolf brings new light to this controversial topic with her use of colors, specifically. Banfield, Ann. “Time Passes: Virginia Woolf, Post-Impressionism, and Cambridge Time” Poetics Today 24.3 (2003): 471-516. Sigmund Freud’s Medical Theories and Their Implications for SocietyIn “Understanding Psychoanalysis,” Chapter 7, “Freud as philosopher? Civilization, art, and religion,” Matthew Sharpe and Joanne Faulkner argue a negative interpretation of Freud, and that between Eros (the life instinct), and Thanatos (the death instinct), Freud considered Thanatos the stronger of the two. Sharpe and Faulkner explain that Freud believed there are three types of suffering that plague humans: the human body’s frailty and ultimate mortality, the overwhelming might of nature, and the suffering that comes from living with others in society. Society, or civilization, was what Freud considered to be all of the devices that humans have created to lessen their sufferings. Freud wrote a book on this topic in 1930 entitled “Civilization and its Discontents,” which poses a question that remains prominent in today’s social theory: why do so many people remain unhappy despite all of the comforts of modern society? In evaluating this text, Sharpe and Faulkner explain that Freud agreed with Philosopher Thomas Hobbes that justice and law is necessary for civilization to exist, but Freud also suggested that these things are a source of modern unhappiness because they force people to repress their untamed aggressive and libidinal drives. This aggressive drive, Thanatos, is what they argue Freud believed to be the biggest impediment to civilization. Continuing to repress these drives for the advance of civilization leads to consequences – Freud stated, “the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt” (Sharpe, Faulkner 153). For every bit of innate aggression that humans give up, that power is acquired by the superego. This explains why the most virtuous people are often racked with the most guilt: their superego has taken power away from their id (instinctual drives). Though they appear to be content and well-behaved, their mind is a battlefield of intrapsychic conflict. To deal with intrapsychic conflict, people engage in a variety of different coping mechanisms, which Freud also defined. The most constructive of these is sublimation, in which people express their inner conflicts through art and culture. Freud believed religion to be the most powerful and universal tool of sublimation. Sharpe and Faulkner argue, however, that Freud was never satisfied with his conclusions on religion. Freud agrees with ancient philosophers that religion comes from humans’ powerlessness before nature, and in “The Future of an Illusion” (1927) Freud argues that the belief in anthropomorphic Gods is an infantile behavior, similar to the powerlessness of a child in the first years of life. Like a child turns to his father to try and make sense of the world around him that is out of his control and understanding, so society turns to God and religion. Sharpe and Faulkner argue that Freud’s theories about humanity’s relationship with civilization, art, and religion stem from Freud’s somewhat negative belief that humans were made to suffer, and all of the compensatory measures that have been taken to relieve this suffering only suppress instinctual drives, further harming humanity.
"Freud as Philosopher? Civilization, Art, and Religion." Understanding Psychoanalysis. By Matthew Sharpe and Faulkner, Joanne. Acumen, 2008. 149-70. ProQuest. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. In “Was Freud a Medical Scientist or a Social Theorist? The Mysterious ‘Development of the Hero’,” Howard L. Kaye argues that Freud was primarily a social theorist and not a medical scientist, but disguised under the name of psychoanalysis, Freud’s ideas about society and civilization were able to gain validity. Kaye believes that defining Freud as a medical scientist encourages a superficial reading of his work, which cuts out the main part of his work, his civilizational analysis. Kaye explains that in 1885, Freud destroyed all of his notes from the past 14 years to give the “coup de grace” to all of his thoughts and feelings. With this act, he obscured the sources for his work and early beliefs, making it unclear what his early intentions truly were. Kaye argues that Freud eventually achieved his dream of social reformation through the development of psychoanalysis, which drastically altered society. Kaye points out that if Freud’s text “‘Civilized’ Sexual Mortality” is read as if Freud is a medical scientist, it is contradictory. The logical medical solution to a needed release of sexual frustration would be masturbation, but Freud was highly against this – he believed that indulgence “teaches people to achieve important aims [in fantasy] without taking trouble” (Kaye 382). Freud criticized other scientists’ ideas about the connection between increasing neuroses and modern civilized life – “the increased pace, competition, and strain of modern urban, industrialized life that exhausts the nerves, because they are coupled with an increasing demand for and availability of all the “highly-spiced pleasures” found in the modern city” (Kaye 382) – not because he thought they were wrong, but because he believed them to be incomplete. Freud did not encourage total free sexual expression, however. He stated, “We endeavor to uncover sexuality; but once sexuality is demonstrated, we demand that the entire repression of sexuality become conscious and that the individual learn to subordinate it to cultural requirements. We replace [failed] repression by healthy suppression” (Kaye 383). Freud rejected polygamous relations because he believed they would prove destructive to social life through “the dissolution of family life” (Kaye 384). Later in his career, Freud clarified that the increase in neuroses was connected not only with sexual frustration, but also a decrease in religiosity. The unanswered questions about the comparison between neuroses and social institutions (such as religion) introduced in Freud’s text Totem and Taboo (1912-1913) came to define Freud’s work for remainder of his life. He moved from libido theory to the study of the ego and of its development, and he placed these later modifications and innovations in psychoanalytic theory under “group psychology”. Group, or social psychology, is related to social theory, Freud’s ultimate aim. Because of his renown in the medical field, Freud’s social theories could be disregarded less easily, whereas as a young advocate for social reform they likely would have been readily ignored. Disguising Freud as a scientist and physician gave him and his supporters a “scientific duty” to spread his ideas and gave them more respectability and authoritative weight. As a prominent medical scientist, Freud was able to widely publicize his theories about modern society, which was the ultimate aim of his work.
Kaye, H. L. (2003) ‘Was Freud a Medical Scientist or a Social Theorist? The Mysterious ‘‘Development of the Hero’’’, Sociological Theory 21: 375–97. |
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The Medium is Malleable: Duchamp and Stein as Creators of Meaning
In her article “Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Tonsure’: Towards an Alternate Masculinity’”, Giovanna Zapperi argues that Duchamp’s Tonsure and his alter ego Rrose Sélavy represent his reconstruction of his masculinity. Tonsure is a photograph of the back of Duchamp’s head in which a five-point star is shaved into his hair. Zapperi states “the repudiation of a conventionally ‘masculine’ artistic (or sexual) identity is not necessarily identical to the abdication of masculine authority” (293). She is arguing that Tonsure is not opposing the masculine values of society, but rather a complicated look at the gendered roles in society. The photograph questions the masculine role of the artist himself, in the time where gender roles were reshaping. Zapperi outlines how Tonsure shows Duchamp’s transformation into the transvestite Rrose Sélavy, pointing to a link between Tonsure and another photograph of a hairless Duchamp. Tonsure is effectively a step in Duchamp’s transformation, as the tonsure itself symbolizes a transition into Catholic priesthood in which sexuality is renounced. This symbolic renunciation of sexuality is part of Duchamp’s reconstruction of his masculinity.
Zapperi, Giovanna. "Marcel Duchamp's "Tonsure": Towards an Alternate Masculinity." Oxford Art Journal 30.2: 291-303. JSTOR. Web.
In his article “Mapplethorpe, Duchamp, and the Ends of Photography”, Gary Banham compares Alfred Steiglitz’s photograph of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain to Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph The Slave, arguing that the composition of the photograph is what makes the piece a work of art as opposed to the work photographed, thus giving ownership of the work to the photographer and not the original artist. The original Fountain is a urinal on which Duchamp signed his name, but the original was lost. The only remaining evidence is the photograph by Steiglitz, which places the urinal in front of a painting and adds the effect of lighting. Similarly, Mapplethorpe photographed two pages of a book of Michaelangelo paintings, but added a frame with his name on it, thus creating a unique photographic composition. However, Banham also notes the difference between the two photographs. He states, “Whilst Fountain is the reproduction of one art form by another, which later becomes the mode of transmission of the former, The Slave involves a frank claim of one art form over another” (126). He is noting that Steiglitz’s photograph of Fountain was not intended to be a unique piece of art, unlike The Slave. Therefore, Banham is arguing that Duchamp’s work is enhanced by Steiglitz, and the significance of the work is altered.
Banham, Gary. "Mapplethorpe, Duchamp, and the Ends of Photography." Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 7.1 (2002): 119-28. Web.
Zapperi, Giovanna. "Marcel Duchamp's "Tonsure": Towards an Alternate Masculinity." Oxford Art Journal 30.2: 291-303. JSTOR. Web.
In his article “Mapplethorpe, Duchamp, and the Ends of Photography”, Gary Banham compares Alfred Steiglitz’s photograph of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain to Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph The Slave, arguing that the composition of the photograph is what makes the piece a work of art as opposed to the work photographed, thus giving ownership of the work to the photographer and not the original artist. The original Fountain is a urinal on which Duchamp signed his name, but the original was lost. The only remaining evidence is the photograph by Steiglitz, which places the urinal in front of a painting and adds the effect of lighting. Similarly, Mapplethorpe photographed two pages of a book of Michaelangelo paintings, but added a frame with his name on it, thus creating a unique photographic composition. However, Banham also notes the difference between the two photographs. He states, “Whilst Fountain is the reproduction of one art form by another, which later becomes the mode of transmission of the former, The Slave involves a frank claim of one art form over another” (126). He is noting that Steiglitz’s photograph of Fountain was not intended to be a unique piece of art, unlike The Slave. Therefore, Banham is arguing that Duchamp’s work is enhanced by Steiglitz, and the significance of the work is altered.
Banham, Gary. "Mapplethorpe, Duchamp, and the Ends of Photography." Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 7.1 (2002): 119-28. Web.
Medium, Meaning, and modernism: the art of langston hughes
In “Modernism in the Black Diaspora: Langston Hughes and the Broken Cubes of Picasso,” critic Seth Moglen challenges what he perceives as a practice of “anti-formalism,” or the wrongful ignoring of the formal experimentations of disenfranchised artists by contemporary scholars of modernism, by examining Hughes’s poem “Cubes.” First, Moglen reviews the history of scholarly criticism of the literature of modernism, pointing out that the work of disenfranchised and politically left minorities was initially viewed as outside of the movement. The field evolved over the twentieth century, and with the emergence of “new modernism studies” came an increase in scholarly criticism of those previously unappreciated minority writers, especially Langston Hughes (4). However, Moglen argues that this new vein of study has fatal flaws. It mistakenly identifies modernism in terms of a time period, a practice which, while inclusive of a wide variety of literature, ignores the importance of form in what makes a work modernism. Experimentation with form- so as to create an atypical or unique artistic vehicle for the writer’s expression- was a crucial element of modernism; however, criticism of minority writers fails to take into account their work with form. This “anti-formalism” comes from the idea that marginalized groups were less concerned with formal arrangements. In fact, Moglen argues, it was actually these writers’ unique formal experiments which allowed them to express their harsh realities in a manner cohesive with the ideals of modernism. With this in mind, he examines “Cubes.” The opening line recalls “the days of the broken cubes of Picasso”, a reference to the modernism which prompts Moglen to analyze the rest of the poem’s formal arrangement as a sort of “broken” literary cubism. Hughes employs a frantic juxtaposition of images and frequent repetition of short phrases, Moglen argues, “the way a cubist painter employs geometric repetition”, to create fragmentation (7). This technique allows Hughes to discuss the equally fragmented relationship between oppressors and the oppressed, and the role played by modernism in that relationship, from a distinctively African American viewpoint. This demonstrates Moglen’s argument, that disenfranchised minority writers not only experimented with form, but that this experimentation became vital to their self-expression within the context of modernism.
Modernism in the Black Diaspora: Langston Hughes and the Broken Cubes of Picasso by Seth Moglen
In his article “Movies, Modernity, and All That Jazz: “Langston Hughes’s Montage of a Dream Deferred”, Bartholomew Brinkman argues that Hughes’s break from cultural, musically themed work during the 1930’s, in favor of politically radical poetry, directly influenced his subsequent return to those themes. Recent popular criticisms of Hughes focus predominantly on his work in the 1920’s and then the 1940’s, and reduce his politically radical writings from the 1930’s to “a kind of hiccup- an abrupt disruption” that was quickly corrected when his focus returned to African-American culture and art. However, Brinkman argues that Hughes’s foray into political writings forever changed the tone of his work, so when his work returned to musical subjects, “his handling of them is still very much caught up in the… anticapitalist critique that had marked his radical poetry”(1). Brinkman points out a strong link in Hughes’s work between jazz, a fundamentally African-American art form, and the predominantly white mode through which it was most often heard by the public at the time, movies. Brinkman argues that Hughes’s Montage “fully embodies [the] phenomena” of jazz and film; in practice, the sequence is poetry about music that reads like a film, “a musical montage, in which hearing is made equivalent to seeing” (8). Hughes’s juxtaposition of film and jazz creates an unresolved dichotomy that mirrors that of white and black, oppressor and oppressed. This technique allows Hughes to express both his opposition to white popular media as well as his endorsement of black potential. Also, Brinkman argues that throughout Montage, Hughes uses the form of jazz to illustrate his arguments on race and racial self-image. In “Dream Boogie”, Hughes describes “the rumble/of a dream deferred”, a rumble which buckles and breaks down as the meter and rhythm of the poem cut and dance in a manner reminiscent of jazz. Like the rhythm, the dream- the American Dream- breaks down; the “Dream Boogie” which holds the truth of the African-American’s plight is not a simple tune, but rather the tempestuous turbulence of jazz. This illustrates Brinkman’s point, that Hughes’s return to musical themes was merely a formal change, while his true subject matter continued to descend from his previous political material.
“Movies, Modernity, and All That Jazz: “Langston Hughes’s Montage of a Dream Deferred”, Bartholomew Brinkman
Modernism in the Black Diaspora: Langston Hughes and the Broken Cubes of Picasso by Seth Moglen
In his article “Movies, Modernity, and All That Jazz: “Langston Hughes’s Montage of a Dream Deferred”, Bartholomew Brinkman argues that Hughes’s break from cultural, musically themed work during the 1930’s, in favor of politically radical poetry, directly influenced his subsequent return to those themes. Recent popular criticisms of Hughes focus predominantly on his work in the 1920’s and then the 1940’s, and reduce his politically radical writings from the 1930’s to “a kind of hiccup- an abrupt disruption” that was quickly corrected when his focus returned to African-American culture and art. However, Brinkman argues that Hughes’s foray into political writings forever changed the tone of his work, so when his work returned to musical subjects, “his handling of them is still very much caught up in the… anticapitalist critique that had marked his radical poetry”(1). Brinkman points out a strong link in Hughes’s work between jazz, a fundamentally African-American art form, and the predominantly white mode through which it was most often heard by the public at the time, movies. Brinkman argues that Hughes’s Montage “fully embodies [the] phenomena” of jazz and film; in practice, the sequence is poetry about music that reads like a film, “a musical montage, in which hearing is made equivalent to seeing” (8). Hughes’s juxtaposition of film and jazz creates an unresolved dichotomy that mirrors that of white and black, oppressor and oppressed. This technique allows Hughes to express both his opposition to white popular media as well as his endorsement of black potential. Also, Brinkman argues that throughout Montage, Hughes uses the form of jazz to illustrate his arguments on race and racial self-image. In “Dream Boogie”, Hughes describes “the rumble/of a dream deferred”, a rumble which buckles and breaks down as the meter and rhythm of the poem cut and dance in a manner reminiscent of jazz. Like the rhythm, the dream- the American Dream- breaks down; the “Dream Boogie” which holds the truth of the African-American’s plight is not a simple tune, but rather the tempestuous turbulence of jazz. This illustrates Brinkman’s point, that Hughes’s return to musical themes was merely a formal change, while his true subject matter continued to descend from his previous political material.
“Movies, Modernity, and All That Jazz: “Langston Hughes’s Montage of a Dream Deferred”, Bartholomew Brinkman
Identity vs. success: black works during the Harlem renaissance
In “’Taking Myself in Hand: Jean Toomer and Physical Culture’” Mark Whalan explores modernist Jean Toomer’s attempt to disrupt a physiological function that all humans possess called racial encoding. The exact purpose of racial encoding is unknown but the function allows people to detect and make assumptions of the race of other individuals. Toomer, possibly in an attempt to pull away from his African-American identity, was determined to get individuals to view others not by race but by “type”. Whalan argues that within the chapter “Bona and Paul” in Toomer’s novel Cane, Toomer is demonstrating the racial as well as gender-related ambiguity he hopes society will eventually achieve. In the aforementioned section of Cane, Bona is an adolescent Caucasian girl and Paul is an African-American boy of her same age. Bona and Paul have a deep unexplainable attraction for each other but their racial differences cause apprehension when the time comes to express their feelings for each other. Within the text, when speaking from the perspective of either character they describe the other in metaphor as opposed to giving blatant details of the other, for example their skin color. For example, Bona’s description of Paul is, “He is a candle that dances in a grove swung with pale balloons. He is a harvest moon. He is an autumn leaf. He is a nigger” (Toomer). It isn’t until the very last moment that Toomer allows Bona to note Paul’s race but instead he is described with beautiful imagery and metaphor before the reality of race sets in. Whalan argues that Toomer usage of these particular writing devices is a way of representing the racial ambiguity he seeks to introduce to American society but Toomer also acknowledges that the role of racial encoding is always present so the only way to change how people think is for them to willingly and internally disrupt this process.
Mark Whalan. ""Taking Myself in Hand": Jean Toomer and Physical Culture." Modernism/modernity 10.4 (2003): 597-615. Project MUSE. Web. 9 May. 2015.
Toomer, Jean. "Bona and Paul." Cane. New York: Liveright, 1975. Print.
In ”‘Jazz at Night and the Classics in the Morning’: musical double-consciousness in short fiction by Langston Hughes” author Felicia M. Miyakawa argues that during the Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes attempted to display the gap between high and low African-American art with his short stories ‘Home and ‘The Blues I’m Playing’ from his 1934 collection The Ways of White Folks. Hughes’s method for accentuating the gap was the use of the high art leader W.E.B. DuBois’s concept of double-consciousness. Double-consciousness can be described as the state in which each African-American hovers, somewhere between being African and being American. In this state the individual, in the words of DuBois, “would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa [but] he would not bleach Negro soul in a flood of White Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world” (DuBois 6). By challenging this constant liminal state of being African-American, Hughes is able to bridge not only the gap between black America and white America using his music and writing, but also between “high black America” and “low black America”. Miyakawa explores how in the selection ‘Home’, Hughes utilizes illness in an African-American trained as classical violinist overseas to symbolize the deadly consequences of trying to overstep one’s place in America as a black individual. The classical violin training represents high art and white American culture but the African-American identity of the violinist creates tension within his inner being, exactly in reference to double-consciousness, and he becomes increasingly ill as he tries to reemerge himself in American life after being in a racially accepting location overseas. The purpose of Hughes’s ‘Home’ is to bring attention to the internal difficulties that double-consciousness creates by manifesting it into a physical symptom. Hughes has thus successfully implanted white American and black American ideals into a single individual and shown the detrimental effects of being forced by society to have a double identity.
B., Du Bois W. E., Henry Louis Gates, and Terri Hume. Oliver. "I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings."
The Souls of Black Folk: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. 6. Print.
Miyakawa, Felicia M. "”‘Jazz at Night and the Classics in the Morning’: Musical Double- consciousness in Short Fiction by Langston Hughes." Popular Music 24.2 (2005): 273-75. JSTOR. Cambridge University Press, May 2005. Web. May 2015
Mark Whalan. ""Taking Myself in Hand": Jean Toomer and Physical Culture." Modernism/modernity 10.4 (2003): 597-615. Project MUSE. Web. 9 May. 2015.
Toomer, Jean. "Bona and Paul." Cane. New York: Liveright, 1975. Print.
In ”‘Jazz at Night and the Classics in the Morning’: musical double-consciousness in short fiction by Langston Hughes” author Felicia M. Miyakawa argues that during the Harlem Renaissance Langston Hughes attempted to display the gap between high and low African-American art with his short stories ‘Home and ‘The Blues I’m Playing’ from his 1934 collection The Ways of White Folks. Hughes’s method for accentuating the gap was the use of the high art leader W.E.B. DuBois’s concept of double-consciousness. Double-consciousness can be described as the state in which each African-American hovers, somewhere between being African and being American. In this state the individual, in the words of DuBois, “would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa [but] he would not bleach Negro soul in a flood of White Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world” (DuBois 6). By challenging this constant liminal state of being African-American, Hughes is able to bridge not only the gap between black America and white America using his music and writing, but also between “high black America” and “low black America”. Miyakawa explores how in the selection ‘Home’, Hughes utilizes illness in an African-American trained as classical violinist overseas to symbolize the deadly consequences of trying to overstep one’s place in America as a black individual. The classical violin training represents high art and white American culture but the African-American identity of the violinist creates tension within his inner being, exactly in reference to double-consciousness, and he becomes increasingly ill as he tries to reemerge himself in American life after being in a racially accepting location overseas. The purpose of Hughes’s ‘Home’ is to bring attention to the internal difficulties that double-consciousness creates by manifesting it into a physical symptom. Hughes has thus successfully implanted white American and black American ideals into a single individual and shown the detrimental effects of being forced by society to have a double identity.
B., Du Bois W. E., Henry Louis Gates, and Terri Hume. Oliver. "I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings."
The Souls of Black Folk: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. 6. Print.
Miyakawa, Felicia M. "”‘Jazz at Night and the Classics in the Morning’: Musical Double- consciousness in Short Fiction by Langston Hughes." Popular Music 24.2 (2005): 273-75. JSTOR. Cambridge University Press, May 2005. Web. May 2015