Modernist Studies by Marjorie Perloff

    The term modernist according to Marjorie Perloff is a very controversial term. Generally, it refers to the mew style and trends in the arts; but now by early 1970s, we have come to notice that modernism has been narrowed down by some established writers with the charges against modernism as a retrograde and elitist movement.

    Beside these charges, Cary Nelson in his work Repression and Recovery argued that modernism only included canonical writers like Robert Frost, T.S Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams etc. but it neglected the marginalized writers black writers, women writers , Proletarian writers who have contributed so much for the movement. Therefore, the boundary has to be redrawn by bringing those marginalized writers in to the canon, and perloff agrees with it because then only the modernist studies can be complete.To explain modernism to be a retrograde and elitist movement, Perloff has mentioned the writers of that period, who criticized canonical writers, were looked down up on and even their works were banned. For example D.H Lowrence’s Rainbow James Joyce’s Ulysses was put under the novel of obscenity charges. Similarly, the works of William Carlos Williams and Gertude Stein also went through the rejection by those so called canonical writers. And the main reason to reject the works of these writers was that those works did not represent the culmination of Romanticism. This means that, the modernism was nothing new; it was only a highly developed Romantic form. Therefore, modernism is being taken as the culmination of Romanticism. By the mid-1960s, a group of critics found that modernism is not so radical and wonderful; it is a kind of tradition or convention. The writers who tried to establish link between Romanticism and Modernism said that, modernism is not the radical break from the past rather it is the continuation of Romanticism.In The Romantic Survival, John Bayley argues that poetry of Yeast, Auden and Daylan Thomas carry on the romantic values. In Poetry of Experience, Robert Langbaum has traced that the origin of modern dramatic monologue is the early Romantic meditative lyric.Therefore, modernism of surface level aims to break the tradition of Romanticism but at the deeper level, they unconsciously tend to follow the Romantic ideas.

HAROLD BLOOM’S IMPACT ON MODERNIST STUDIES

    Harold Bloom claims that modernism is the related version of Romanticism. Bloom dismisses the position of W.B Yeats as he is merely a follower of Blake and Shelly and nothing more. Similarly Bloom also deletes T.S. Eliot from his position saying that he is no more than Cowley.After criticizing these writers, Bloom put forward his own theory of the anxiety of influence. In this theory, Bloom claims that the poetic strength can be achieved only when the contemporary poets, instead of following their ancestors wrestle with the great dead poets. That means, the contemporary should misinterpret the earlier dead poets they should not blindly follow the ancestors rather they should read creatively and try to create new interpretations. So for Bloom without misreading the father poets, establishment of young cannon is impossible.Thus, Bloom’s radical remarks to associate modernism with romanticism have left a great impact on the redrawing of the boundary of modernist studies.

LINK BETWEEN MODERNISM AND FASCISM / REDRAW THE BOUNDARY OF MODERNISM FROM MARXIST APPROACH

    In the 1980s, cultural critique primarily Marxist came in to prominence and domination the academy for a long time. According to Marxist writers like Kermode in Sense of an Ending which is considered to be more critical evaluating than others earlier works, claim that modernism is linked with authoritative (dictatorial) politics (i.e. fashion) Because in the works of the so-called canonical modern writers like Pound, Yeats, Eliot etc, we notice a strong point that they are turning their backs on reality of everyday life and they are focusing in a system of aesthetics. This negligence of modernist writers towards the reality of everyday life shows the correlation between early modernist literature and authoritative politics. And above all, Eliot worshipping tradition and longing for closed immobile hierarchical societies shows the correspondence between fascist tendency and modernist literature.Through Kermode does not claim directly that modernism was necessarily authoritarian or proto- fascist, the Marxist criticism that developed from George Lukacs and the following critics, argues that modernist is directly parallel to fascist tendencies no matter if the modernist writers express their personal affiliation towards any political group. Thus Marxist studies reads that all the modernist texts are marked by Jameson’s political unconscious, that is, the modernist writers- whether they realize it or not can not escape from the contemporary fascist politics.

RELATION BETWEEN MODERNISM AND ROMANTICISM

    It seems to paradoxical to draw a relation between Romanticism and modernism. Modernism stands in antithesis to Romanticism for the most part. Through the relation between Romanticism and modernism is the relationship of antithesis, modernism seems to have inherited Romantic legacy. That means in many modernist poetry we can identity Romantic heritage, Romantic spirit and heritage of Romanticism.At one level modernism is defined as a break with tradition. At another level it is defined as the best developed of Romantic tradition. John Bayley wrote a book The Romantic Survival in this book John Bayley said that many modernist poets like W.B. Yeats, Auden and Dylan Thomas carried on the Romantic tradition. Through they are modernist poets; they are not free from the temptation Wordsworthian spirit and insight.