Modern Era

Introduction

In "The Second Coming," one of the most quoted poems of the modern era, the Irish writer William Butler Yeats wrote: "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold . . . ." These words might be a motto for the era, which coincides roughly with the twentieth century. For many centuries, the people of Western civilization had been trying to maintain some stability through political and cultural institutions. Gradually--some might say inevitably--these institutions have lost their unity, stability, and influence as they have had to cope with divisions and challenges. The Reformation of the sixteenth century, for example, divided Christians. The French Revolution of 1789 overturned the French aristocracy, and Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection led many to challenge Christian doctrine. By the twentieth century, many people were feeling that there was little left to provide stability. Compounding this deterioration of institutions was a series of catastrophes that threatened even greater destruction. Between 1914 and 1918, for example, more 13 million people died fighting in World War I. Even more devastating was World War II, in which some 40 to 60 million people died; some 6 million of these people were Jews who had been starved, tortured, or otherwise persecuted in German concentration camps. On top of these two disasters, humans of the modern era have had to cope with the Great Depression, the Vietnam and Korean conflicts, assassinations, riots, terrorism, and even the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Responding to this chaotic environment while also continuing the artistic rebellion begun by the Romantics, the modern artists have created some of the most abstruse and abstract work the world has seen. Musicians Igor Stravinsky and Philip Glass have challenged musical conventions, for instance, and cubist Pablo Picasso and surrealist Salvador Dali have created daring paintings. Following the lead of nineteenth-century authors such as Henry James, Walt Whitman, and Henrik Ibsen, writers such as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Eugene O'Neill revolutionized literature by working with stream of consciousness, free verse, and expressionistic dramatic devices. In another important development of the modern era, literature has become much less dominated by white men than it once was as Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Allen Ginsberg, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Amy Tan have emerged and drawn attention to other perspectives. 

Selected Poems

You can find each of the poems below by clicking on the title.  Before reading them, review Understanding and Explicating Poetry.  Then read each poem at least two or three times, paying attention not only to the content, but also the form.  Use the questions accompanying each poem to guide your reading and interpretation.

"To the Garden the World," by Walt Whitman

  • What allusion is at the center of this poem? What does it contribute to the poem's meaning? (Dawn Wallace)
  • This poem, like nearly all of Walt Whitman's poems, is an example of free verse. Define "free verse" and illustrate your definition by referring to "To the Garden the World."
  • Explication by Dawn Cox
  • Explication by Tracy Newkirk

"He fumbles at your spirit," by Emily Dickinson

  • Who is "He"?  Defend your answer. (Jessica Locklear)
  • How does the poem's conceit function?
  • Explication by Jessica Guy
  • Explication by Koji Sado

"God's Grandeur," by Gerard Manley Hopkins

  • Identify the form of this poem and explain how this form gives shape to the poem's message.
  • Analyze the poem's tone. Refer to specific images, words, and passages.
  • Explication by Niakeya Jones
  • Explication by Suzie Schleig

"Carrion Comfort," by Gerard Manley Hopkins

  • Compare the tone of this poem and that of "God's Grandeur."
  • Analyze Hopkins' use of sound in this poem and "God's Grandeur." In particular, note examples of alliteration.
  • Explication by Alvin Martin
  • Explication by Josephine Sutton

"Yet Do I Marvel," by Countee Cullen

  • Explication by Jerron McDowell
  • Explication by Rhonda Thompson

"Dulce et Decorum Est," by Wilfred Owen

  • What can you say about the poem's persona? Whom is he addressing? Why?
  • Analyze the poem's imagery.
  • The final lines come from the Roman poet Horace's Odes and mean: "It is sweet and appropriate to die for one's country." How do these words function in this poem? Why do you suppose Owen quoted them and kept them in the original Latin?
  • Explication by Patricia Miller
  • Explication by Rich Timko
  • Explication by Dawn Wallace

Faces in the Moon

  1. Betty Bell has chosen an unusual way of telling her story.  Describe the style of her narration.  Why do you think she chose this style? (Erika Howland)
  2. This novel has a lot to say about "Indianness."  What makes a person an Indian--or, for that matter, an African-American, a Anglo-American, a man, a woman?  Referring to some particular passages, argue that the narrator feels she is an Indian, a "white" American, or something in-between.
  3. How does the suggested presence of ghosts shape the meaning of the novel?

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Updated November 26, 2000 | University of North Carolina at Pembroke
© Mark Canada, 2000 | mark.canada@uncp.edu