Q & A Responses for Literary Works

Q: Discuss two WWI poets and their attitudes toward war.

James Joyce appeared to have an ambivalent attitude toward war; at least, his work was apparently not significantly influenced by World War I. This might have been because his life was not impacted greatly by the war, except for his moving to Switzerland with his wife, Nora. His attitude may have been influenced more by the Irish Civil War, as Joyce was from Ireland and concerned with Irish politics and its struggle for independence. If so, it is reflected more in political statements and themes related to British governance of Ireland than pro- or anti-war themes in his writing.

Much like Joyce, T.S. Eliot’s life was not affected greatly by the war, but he seemed to be moved by it, nonetheless. The Waste Land illustrates that he was certainly against war, and particularly The Great War. The negative, pessimistic tone of the poem as it refers to current events and situations surrounding The Great War (as when the narrator of the first stanzas denies she is Russian and says she is German) demonstrates this. Also, his comparison of the war with the Punic Wars, which were catastrophically destructive with nothing significant gained by either side, reflects his negative attitude on the subject.

Q: Explain how advances in technology shaped the content of 20th-century literature.

Likely the most impactful effect technology had on literature in the 20th century was the rise of Modernism. A race forward in science and technology, including the inventions and widespread use of the telephone, the airplane and the automobile, resulting in a faster, more frenetic pace of life. As a result of this and two world wars, Modernist writers began to question the future of mankind.

Also, they began to reject traditional ways of writing, especially in fiction, as evidenced by the use of non-traditional methods of writing. As one example, stream-of-consciousness writing, especially by James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf, was a Modernist movement method that was drastically different from traditional Victorian methods which preceded it.

T. S. Eliot demonstrated another Modernist method that departed from traditional writing styles in the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” which used irregular line lengths, non-rhyming lines and single lines that conveyed one image.

Post-Modernism, typified by writers as varied as Samuel Beckett and Salman Rushdie, similarly rebelled against Victorian themes and styles, but it was also a reaction to Modernism, and so was perhaps a more indirect result of the advances in technology in the century. Post-Modernism is typified by a range of ideas, which may vary depending on who is doing the analysis, but generally include playfulness, the dismissal of the concept of a single source of truth, and the use of language as building blocks or structure, rather than only to express meaning.

Q: How is the deterioration of Victorian religious and social values represented in 20th Century literature?

The most striking representation of the deterioration of Victorian religious and social values in 20th Century literature may be D. H. Lawrence and his recurring theme that sexuality is a core component of our conduct as people, in works like The Rainbow and the infamous Lady Chatterley’s Lover. These novels reflected the evolution of attitudes about sexuality and the relaxing of rigid conventions regarding gender roles. During the Victorian period, sexual restraint was the order of the day, which was reflected in the literature of the time.

Similarly, the trend in Modernism toward the use of fewer conventions of rhyme, meter, form, and structure in literature was antithetical to the Victorian tendency to use tightly organized, conventional formats that most readers would comfortably recognize for poetry and prose. This change in literature reflected the movement away from the strict Victorian societal rules in the 20th Century.

Also, Victorian society was strongly based on faith. Religion was a key component of the ideal Victorian life. Modernism rejected that idea and put forth the attitude that the views of greater society were not terribly important, which led to more atheistic themes in literature.

Q: In the poem “Aubade” by Philip Larkin, what is the importance of the title itself in relation to the poem as a whole?

In the most obvious sense, “aubade,” which means “morning music” (the opposite of “nocturne”), suits the poem because the poem describes the narrator’s thoughts “at four in the soundless dark,” just before “the curtain edges…grow light” (Larkin 2-3). More importantly, though, the poem describes the dawning of reality that the narrator faces each day as he wakes to see “what’s really always there: / Unresting death, a whole day nearer now” (4-5). The poem is the “song” in response to this dawning. The dawn metaphor – and the dread the dawning brings – is related again in the final stanza, as “Slowly light strengthens and the room takes shape. / It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, / Have always known, knows that we can’t escape, / Yet can’t accept” (41-44). In the same way, someone might greet the day excitedly with song, the narrator is greeting the day and taking stock of the dread the dawn brings.

The title is important because it starts the reader off from the beginning with the image of dawn and a song, and it makes the repeated uses of the metaphor more powerful.