2. Spelling Error #1
Using “accidently” instead of
“accidentally.”
There are quite a few words
with -ally suffixes
(“incidentally”), and these
should not be confused with
words having -ly suffixes
(“independently”). Accidently
makes it into some dictionaries
but it’s regarded as a variant. It’s
wise to avoid variants if you
can, because some people will
become more concerned about
your spelling than what you’re
selling.
3. Spelling Error 2
• : Don’t Misspell “bated breath.”
o If you write baited breath, everyone will suspect
fishing is your favorite hobby. The word should
be spelled bated, which comes from abated,
meaning held.
4. AGENDA
• Teams
• Introduction to the “Modernist
Manifestos”
• Discussion:
• Modernist Manifestos
• Marinetti Loy
• Pound Cather
• Williams Hughes
• Author Introduction: F. Scott
Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby
5. 2. The teams will change on or near exam
dates.
3. You must change at least 50% of your team
after each project is completed.
4. You may never be on a team with the same
person more than twice.
5. You may never have a new team composed of
more than 50% of any prior team.
1. We will often use teams
to earn participation
points. Your teams can
be made up of 4 or 5
people.
6. • Points will be earned
for correct answers to
questions,
meaningful
contributions to the
discussion, and the
willingness to share
your work. Each team
will track their own
points, but cheating
leads to death (or loss
of 25 participation
points).
• Answers,
comments, and
questions must be
posed in a manner
that promotes
learning. Those who
speak out of turn or
with maliciousness
will not receive
points for their
teams.
7. At the end of each class,
you will turn in a point
sheet with the names of
everyone in your group
and your accumulated
points for the day.
It is your responsibility to
make the sheet, track the
points, and turn it in.
Sit near your team
members in class to
facilitate ease of group
discussions
8. Your First
Group!
• Get into groups of
four. (1-2 minutes)
• If you can’t find a
group, please raise
your hand.
• Once your groups
is established,
choose one person
to be the keeper of
the points.
o Write down members’
names
o Turn in your sheet at
the end of the class
period.
9. Take 10 minutes to
discuss the following:
• Modernism
• The modernist
manifestos and
their authors
• Your QHQs
10. Literary and Artistic
Modernism
• “Modernism” refers to artistic works that do
some or all of the following:
o represent the transformation of traditional society
under the pressures of modernity
o break down traditional literary forms
o depict the modern world not as a triumph of
human civilization but as an experience of loss
o call into question the religious, political, social,
and artistic conventions of the past
o interpret the world as disparate fragments rather
than an integrated whole
11. What is a Modernist Manifesto?
What is a Modernist Manifesto?
12. “The modernist manifesto is a public
declaration of artistic convictions,
relatively brief, often highly stylized
or epigrammatic in the mode of other
forms of modernist writing, and
almost always an aggressively self-
conscious declaration of artistic
independence” (NAAL 335).
Modernist Manifestos
13. F. T.
Marinetti Marinetti was a relatively
obscure Italian poet before
publishing “The Founding and
Manifesto of Futurism,” which
“attracted an international
circle of artists and writers into
Marinetti’s orbit, including
painters, architects, poets,
sculptors, playwrights, and
film directors. Across all the
arts, futurism scorned
traditional standards of artistic
beauty, celebrated modern
technologies of speed, and
aimed to shock audiences”
(NAAL 336).
14. QHQ Marinetti
1. Q: Based on Marinetti’s “Manifesto of Futurism”, what does
futurism mean and what are some characteristics of futurism
that are evident in the manifesto?
2. Q: Did all(or most) people who took part in the Futurism
movement have the same or similar ideals that Marinetti’s
Manifesto depicts? Or were there some futurists that had
completely different perspectives on the movement that
could possibly completely contradict Marinetti’s vision of
what the new world and its new beauty would be?
1. Why does Marinetti’s manifesto seems extremely confused
and humorously exaggerated?
15. We stand on the last
promontory of the
centuries! . . . Why should
we look back, when what
we want is to break down
the mysterious doors of
the Impossible? Time and
Space died yesterday. We
already live in the
absolute, because we
have created eternal,
omnipresent speed.
—
from Manifesto of Futurism
F. T. Marinetti
While many modernist
writers depicted the modern
world as an experience of
loss, Marinetti
wholeheartedly embraced
the idea that modern
technology has ushered in a
secular millennium.
1. Why does Marinetti choose
speed and cars to represent
the “new beauty” that he
believes the world’s
magnificence has been
enriched with?
16. We will glorify war—the
world’s only hygiene—
militarism, patriotism, the
destructive gesture of
freedom-bringers, beautiful
ideas worth dying for, and
scorn for woman.
We will destroy the
museums, libraries,
academies of every kind,
will fight moralism,
feminism, every
opportunistic or utilitarian
cowardice.
—
from Manifesto of Futurism
These two points from the
Manifesto of Futurism represent
potentially troubling aspects of
Marinetti’s worldview: his
celebration of war and his
denigration of women (he glorifies
“scorn for woman” and promises
to “destroy . . .feminism”).
In From Manifesto of Futurism,
Marinetti argues that war is “the
world’s only hygiene” (337).
What does he mean by this and
why does he think this?
17. Mina Loy Mina Loy was a self-described
feminist poet and writer, and,
oddly enough, the sexual
partner of the apparently
antifeminist F. T. Marinetti. She
wrote (but did not publish) her
“Feminist Manifesto” during her
association with Marinetti.
1. Does Loy’s manifesto read as
a response to Marinetti’s? As
a criticism of it? Are the two
manifestos written in a
similar form, or are there
formal differences as well as
differences in content?
18. Women . . . you are on the
eve of a devastating
psychological upheaval—all
your pet illusions must be
unmasked—the lies of
centuries have got to go—are
you prepared for the
Wrench—? There is no
half-measure—NO scratching
on the surface of the rubbish
heap of tradition, will bring
about Reform, the only
method is Absolute
Demolition.
—from Feminist
Manifesto
1. One of most
immediately noticeable
features of Loy’s
manifesto is its
typography: She
increases the font size at
strategic moments,
underlines text, puts
letters in boldface, and
employs irregular
capitalization. What is
the effect of this?
19. Loy QHQ
1. What is Mina Loy trying to say about women’s lives?
2. What does Mina Loy feel would happen if women “destroy in
themselves, the desire to be loved?”
3. Why does Loy reject the idea of men and women being equal?
4. How exactly are women going to change their lives?
5. Q: Is Mina Loy telling women to empower themselves
independent of men? Are the traditional norms and
expectations of women and men overthrown, or are they still
in need of change?
6. Q: Is Mina Loy’s Feminist Manifesto simply a warning to
women or a call to action?
20. 1. Why does Loy have such an abrasive tone in her
manifesto? Do such heated contentions actually
work in favor of the revolution they seek to incite?
2. I cannot help but wonder if some women from this
era used the proclamation of feminism as an
excuse, not for the equality of women, but for the
defamation of men and if there are other texts that
may support this notion?
3. Why is there such fear within a patriarchal society
of women who show they have an understanding
of themselves as complex individuals? Where does
the fear stem from?
Loy QHQ
21. Ezra
Pound
Pound was an American
expatriate living in Europe. He
was hugely influential in the
circle of other expatriate writers
and artists not only for his own
work as a poet but also for the
advice that he offered to other
writers. “A Retrospect” is
Pound’s manifesto on Imagism,
a school of poetry that argued
for the central—if not defining—
place of the image in modern
poetry.
22. • An “Image” is that which
presents an intellectual and
emotional complex in an
instant of time.
• It is better to present one
Image in a lifetime than to
produce voluminous works.
• Use no superfluous word,
no adjective which does not
reveal something.
—
from “A Retrospect”
Q: What does Ezra Pound’s
actually mean when he says
you should “use absolutely no
word that does not contribute
to the presentation?”
Q: Is Ezra Pound’s aggressive
manifesto presented in his “A
Retrospect”, which dictates
the most effective way to
write poetry, a rather overly
critical and unsubstantiated
claim to the correct structure
of written art forms?
23. Willa Cather Willa Cather was born in the
Midwest but spent most of her
career as a novelist in
cosmopolitan cities such as
London and New York. In
“The Novel Démeublé,”
Cather implicitly asks what
nineteenth-century novelists
can teach twentieth-century
writers. In so doing, she rejects
realist novels as mere
“amusement” and looks to
“American romances” such as
Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
for inspiration.
24. There are hopeful signs that
some of the younger writers
are trying to break away from
mere verisimilitude, and,
following the development of
modern painting, to interpret
imaginatively the material
and social investiture of their
characters; to present their
scene by suggestion rather
than by enumeration.
—from
“The Novel Démeublé”
1. What does it mean “to
interpret imaginatively” and
“to present . . . by suggestion
rather than by enumeration”?
1. In Willa Cather’s “The Novel
Démeublé”, she mentions how
when discussing a novel it is
important to clarify whether
the discussion about a novel is
interpreted as a form of
amusement or as a form of art.
Why is it important to clarify
between the two, and in what
way does it serve a purpose?
25.
26. QHQ: Cather
1. Willa Sibert Cather writes in The Novel Demeuble that
“One does not wish the egg one eats for breakfast, or the
morning paper, to be made of the stuff of immortality.
The novel manufactured to entertain great multitudes of
people must be considered exactly like a cheap soap or a
cheap perfume, or cheap furniture.” In order for me to
understand the full text of Cather’s passage, I must
breakdown this sentence in further detail. What does
Cather mean and what is he/she referring to?
2. Q: Can art be defined? If it can be defined personally, can
it be defined generally and used as a category?
27. William Carlos
Williams So far, all of the manifestos
that we have read are
serious invectives. Yet,
here we encounter the
playfulness in Williams’s
Spring and All. Given the
playful, ironic, and
humorous tone of
Williams’s manifesto, it
may be difficult to tell how
deadly serious he is about
his vision for modern
poetry.
28. It is spring! but miracle of
miracles a miraculous
miracle has gradually
taken place during these
seemingly wasted eons.
Through the orderly
sequences of
unmentionable time
EVOLUTION HAS
REPEATED ITSELF
FROM THE BEGINNING.
—from Spring and All
1. How is William Carlos Williams’
manifesto Spring and All a crisis of
modernity in terms of literary
convention that is reflective of the
period (c.1914-1945), if at all? If he is
arguing that ‘originality’ exists when
ideas are ‘new’ (i.e., restarting the
process all over again) only to lose
their novelty through ‘evolution’,
then is it humanly possible to every
truly overcome this dilemma?
1. Q: Why does William Carlos
Williams say, “Only the imagination
is undeceived.” What is he arguing
about humans and the way we act?
29. Langston
Hughes
Many modernist writers
supported the idea that artists
and writers should be fiercely
committed to their personal
vision regardless of what the
market, critics, or other writers
said. In “The Negro Artist and the
Racial Mountain,” Langston
Hughes argues that an artist’s
racial identity complicates this
commitment to personal vision in
ways that white writers had not
fully appreciated.
30. I am ashamed for the black
poet who says, “I want to
be a poet, not a Negro
poet,” as though his own
racial world were not as
interesting as any other
world . . . An artist must be
free to choose what he
does, certainly, but he must
also never be afraid to do
what he might choose.
—
from “The Negro Artist and
the Racial
Mountain”
1. Q: What does Hughes mean
when he says, “An artist must
be free to choose what he does,
certainly, but he must also
never be afraid too what he
might choose”? What does
society lose when it represses
art and culture, such as that of
African American Artists?
2. What role does the concept of
double consciousness play in
Langston Hughes’s “The Negro
Artist and the Racial
Mountain”?
31. QHQ: Hughes
1. In Langston Hughes’ manifesto “The Negro Artist and
the Racial Mountain” Hughes describes a community
without an ethnicity and a racial divide which hinders
their culture. Why is it difficult for African Americans
Artist to accept their culture? Why must they be white-
washed?
2. How can African-Americans recover from internalized
racism when mainstream culture is focused on white
standards?
3. Why does Hughes change his font size throughout his
manifesto?
33. Fitzgerald came from two widely different families. He
had early on developed an inferiority complex in a
family where the “black Irish half … had the money and
looked down on the Maryland side of the family who
had, and really had … ‘breeding,’” (Scott Donaldson:
Dictionary of Literary Biography.) Out of this
divergence of classes in his family background arose
what critics called F. Scott's “double vision.” He had the
ability to experience the lifestyle of the wealthy from an
insider's perspective, yet never felt a part of this clique
and always felt the outsider.
34. • Read: The Great Gatsby: ALL
• Post #2: Choose One
• Write a character sketch of Daisy or Tom or Jordan,
focusing on the recurring “tag” used to describe
them. Daisy leans forward and talks in a low voice;
Tom is restless and hulking; Jordan balances
something on her chin almost in an athletic stance.
What is Fitzgerald’s purpose in thus describing
them?
• OR Discuss how the reunion of Daisy and Gatsby
signals both the beginning and the end of Gatsby’s
dream and of his success.
• OR Trace the recurring image of eyes, and
ascertain the purposes of those images. Consider
blindness on any level as well as sight.
• OR Your own QHQ
HOMEWORK
