Modernist Poetry and Themes and Figurative Language
More Modernist Poetry and Themes and Figurative Language
Literary Eras "Before," "During" and "After"
"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold
Miscellaneous
100
This Harlem Renaissance Era poem use the imagery of the crystal stair as a symbol of wealth, privilege, and "ease" not know to the Black American; in it, mama warns him not to rest to "keep climbin.'"
What is "Mother to Son?"
100 pt. *Toss Up* When Hughes uses the word "bare," it is the shortest line in the poem, and when the African American is at his/her lowest, most bare point. The poem literally "hinges" at this line with lines becoming longer and more filled with more prosperity. Thus, this line uses this "double 's'" figurative device, I do declare!
100
Much of "Dulce et Decorum Est" is written in *these* incomplete word groups, suggesting the Modernist theme of "brokenness" and isolation.
What are fragments?
100
Before the Victorian Era in both Europe and the US.
What is the Romantic Era?
100
"Nor certitude nor peace nor help for pain" uses these "dark" and negative imagery common to *this era, despite the fact that Arnold finished it nearly forty years prior, by some start dates for the era.
What is Modernism?
100
Like its later homage in "The Father," "for sale, baby shoes, never worn" is a m____________ story known for its ambiguity and brevity.
What is minimalism?
200
Of these first four lines of Owen's other Modernist Era poem, the one that uses alliteration.
a) What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
b) ---Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
c) Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
d) Can patter out their hasty orisons.
What is "C?"
200
The decade that saw the longest stretch of the Harlem Renaissance
What was the 1920's?
200
In American, "The" Romantic Era. Trust in God and self to help you answer this one?
What is Transcendentalism?
200
Recurring nature motifs, such as the ocean waves and "tranquil bay" remind us that Arnold started this poem in the late 1840's, or during *this* era
What is the Romantic Era (also acceptable, Victorian Era and Transcendentalism)
200
Of these themes, the ones we should LEAST expect in an upcoming Modernist novel?
a) alienation and isolation
b) Fragmentation and "brokenness"
c) Despair
d) The beauty of imagery as found in an omnipotent God
e) The pull between a longing for the past and "roaring ebb" of and pull of a changing future
What is "D"
*100 point Toss Up" Name one of the two subgenres of Modernist art seen here, or name both.
300
Of these three lines, the one that uses both allusion and personification:
a) "Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling"
b) Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. / Shovel them under and let me work— / I am the grass; I cover all.
c) "His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;"
What is "B?"
300
It is ironic that Ezra Pound uses this type of noun in the poem, being that his movement emphasized the concrete.
“In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough.
What is an abstract noun?
*100 pt. Toss Up* What is the poem's abstract noun?
*200 pt. Toss Up* Name Pound's era, a sub-era of Modernism known for brevity and "no ideas but in (concrete) things?
300
Many, many years after the Classical Roman and Greek Era, it is dominated by the poetry and theater of Marlowe and Shakespeare
What are the Elizabethan and Renaissance Eras?
300
"Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight" continues the poem's use of ____ as a motif.
What is war imagery (or similar answers)?
300
Not terribly surprisingly, in the title two-word title of this 1893 painting by Edvard Munch, one analysis notes its Modernist themes of "humanity's imposition on nature" and "personalized morbidity" and yet "man being at one with nature," harkening back to the earlier Romantics.
What is The Scream?
400
Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" may use the colon in line one to suggest the people in the metro are _____ on a wet, ______ _____.
What are petals; black bough?
50 Point *Toss Up*: Pound spent many of his last years incarcerated in a mental institution after spending most of his life before (and after) praising *him* and his anti-Semitic horrors
400
In this line from "Mother to Son," the name of the punctuation mark, perhaps ironically used being that the speaker tells her son NOT to rest.
"And places with no carpet on the floor—"
What is an em-dash?
400
Before the Enlightenment and the Augustuan Era
What is the Metaphysical Era?
400
One analysis says Arnold's poem "expresses a crisis of f______, with the speaker acknowledging the diminished standing of C___________, which the speaker sees as being unable to withstand the rising tide of s_________ d___________.
400 pts. per right answer:
What are faith, Christianity, and scientific discovery
*Toss Up* The same analysis notes the Arnold and his lover are l________ the inevitability of c________.
400
Paintings such as Woman II in the Modernist Era favored a_________ a___________.
What is abstract art?
500
Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" translates to "It is ____________ and _______ to die for one's country, though there's nothing pleasant about the poem's Modernist imagery.
What is "sweet" and "fitting?"
50 pts. *Toss Up* Owen fought in this war, then known as the "war to end all wars" or the "Great War."
500
Of these four lines from "Dulce et Decorum Est," the one that uses tactile imagery
a) If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood b) Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, c) Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud d) Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
What is "B?"
*200 pt. Toss Up* What is tactile imagery?
500
In Post-Modernism, the era before the Beat Generation?
What is the Confessional Era?
500
Mentioned explicitly by Siulmarie in class, this Greek playwright of Oedipus Rex and Antigone, like his play's central characters, see family murder. Arnold's inclusion of him reminds us of Modernism's reverence for the past.
Who was Sophocles?
*100 Point Toss Up* Oedipus Rex translates to "Oedipus the ______."
500
Slide 51 shows that Modernism pertains to literature, art, and a_____________.
What is architecture?