OVERVIEW
Now that the twentieth century
is in some sense behind us, we can view the period
with an eye to both its integrity and its diversity.
The term "modernism" is not likely to
stick, and the extent to which twentieth century
literature falls into handy historically demarcated
periods (such as "classic modernism,"
"late modernism," and "postmodernism")
is a matter in need of further scrutiny. Just as
the catastrophic World Wars (including, to some
extent, the Cold War) can be seen to have both shared
and not shared certain causes and effects, so the
evolving social, theoretical, and psychological
conflicts of modernism might be considered from
a broader viewpoint. The term "conflict"
suggests that oversimplified and determinist definitions
can only impede our understanding. The "moderns"
never were of one camp. They were of mutually dependent
but contrary camps, and even individual figures
such as T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden operated from
different perspectives at different points in their
careers. Moreover, modernism was not so radical
a departure as its proponents tended to claim. It
was the child of Romanticism, of work that was not
attentively or effectively read until the 20th century.
(By this token, even postmodern criticism can be
seen as an effort to "catch up" with insights
that were well ahead of their own time.) This orals
proposal takes 20th-century poetry as whole, a body
of work that, from our contemporary sociopolitical
and theoretical perspective, attains clarity in
its arc, much as, say, the whole of the 18th century
or the whole of what we now call the Renaissance
does.
By the end of his career, Yeats had become a Romantic,
an idealist and a realist at once. Eliot began his
career as both a rebel and a reactionary. He then
reacted to and rebelled against himself. Despite
critical efforts to flatten the positions of canonical
modern poets, they are often best understood in
terms of their divided world-views. The early impact
and mythifications of figures such as Conrad, James,
Lawrence, Yeats, Eliot and Joyce nevertheless tended
to pre-empt the achievements and importance of such
figures as Virginia Woolf and W. H. Auden. Woolf,
like Auden, was both an innovator and a traditionalist.
She has provided us with a painfully honest outsider's
perspective on fundamental concerns of modernism
(including outsiderhood itself). Contrary to a critical
consensus that endured for decades, Woolf can now
be viewed as a quintessential 20th-century figure,
one who speaks directly to the political and social
climate that defines our latter-day world. As a
door to our perception, her works both synthesize
modern concerns and help us to see ways in which
the generic line between poetry and fiction breaks
down in the twentieth century.
By this token, this orals proposal also includes
the key late 20th-century poets, Derek Walcott and
Seamus Heany. These poets, after all, do not turn
from the legacy of Yeats, Joyce, Auden, and Woolf.
Rather, they develop and round out the conflicting
concerns that had been central to the moderns from
the outset. Walcott and Heaney cannot possibly be
understood without in-depth references to Yeats,
Joyce, Woolf, and Auden, as well as—as this
proposal has insisted from the outset—Romanticism
as a "prelude" to the whole of modernism.
Just as it has proved a mistake to view Woolf as
a minor, subsidiary "woman poet," it would
be a mistake to cast Walcott and Heaney as peripheral
"regionalists." They are not only "post-colonial
figures": they define the synthesis of traditions
that had always been displaced and "international"
at the core.
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