This document provides an overview of topics to be covered in an English literature class. It discusses spelling errors, team assignments, and an agenda covering Modernist Manifestos. For team assignments, rules are outlined regarding composition of groups and earning participation points. An introduction is provided on Literary and Artistic Modernism. Key points are summarized from several Modernist Manifestos, including those by Marinetti, Loy, Pound, Cather, Williams and Hughes. Lastly, an introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby is presented, along with discussion questions.

1. ELIT 48 C: Class 2

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
• 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?

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”).
1. How does this prowar,
antiwoman stance relate to
Marinetti’s futurist philosophy?
Does it seem to be an
afterthought? Or are the
glorification of war and the
denigration of women integral
to Marinetti’s thinking?

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?
1. Does Loy’s message of “Absolute
Demolition” (rather than mere
“Reform”) require that she radically
alter the appearance of her text? That is,
does the message of her text determine
the form that it takes?
2. Loy’s militaristic language of demolition
and destruction recall Marinetti’s
glorification of war, but her profeminist
message runs entirely counter to
Marinetti’s. How might we account for
this conflict?

19. Loy QHQ
1. Q: How does Mina Loy believe the role of
women shifts in between the two world wars?
2. Why is woman not the equal of man?
3. Are men and women truly equal or truly
unequal? If there are no stereotypes or gender
roles would it be fair to compare men and
women?

20. 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.

21. • 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”
1. Is Ezra Pound offering
a radical new vision of
poetry, or are his
comments simply
good advice for
writers of any kind?
2. What do you find
radical in Pound’s
approach as laid out in
“A Retrospect”?

22. In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
1. One of Pound’s most famous Imagist poems is “In a
Station of the Metro.” Does he practice what he preaches
in “A Retrospect” in this poem?
2. After reading this poem, are you inclined to think
differently about the advice Pound offers in “A
Retrospect”?
3. After reading an Imagist poem, do you think that “A
Retrospect” is offering something more than just general
advice for writers?

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. The realist literature of an
earlier tradition was
committed to the
“verisimilitude” that
Cather here rejects. What
is Cather offering in the
place of verisimilitude?
2. What does it mean “to
interpret imaginatively”
and “to present . . . by
suggestion rather than by
enumeration”?

26. QHQ: Cather
1. Q: Why does Cather believe physical
descriptions of people and things don’t have
value?
2. If an author succeeds in producing a work of
novelty, is the meaning of the novel more
important or how it subjectively affects the
reader emotionally?

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. The language from
Spring and All invokes
both the creation story in
the book of Genesis and
the theory of evolution.
Why does Williams do
this?
2. And how does he make
both religion and science
serve “the meaning of
‘art’”?

29. QHQ: Williams
1. What implications is Williams trying to convey
about humans?
2. What does Williams repetition of
“imagination” in the excerpt from “Spring and
All” have to do with the manifesto?
3. What is Williams trying to accomplish in this
manifesto?

30. 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.

31. 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”
There’s a tension in the statement between
individual choice (“An artist must be free to
choose what he does”) and a manifesto-like
prescription of what African-American poets
must do (“I am ashamed for the black poet
who says . . .”).
1. Why doesn’t Hughes encourage his
fellow blacks to be themselves, but while
also still being a part of America?
2. What kinds of attitudes does Langston
Hughes want young African-American
artist to adopt towards art?
1. Must an artist only create art based on
their race/culture to be considered
genuine?

32. QHQ: Hughes
1. How does the “self-embracing” of a “Negro” artist differ from
that of a white artist? What are the consequences, both positive
and negative, of African Americans fully embracing their racial
identities?
2. Who does Langston Hughes think is responsible for creating the
“racial mountain”? Is the “racial mountain” still present in
todays society?
3. Would Langston Hughes’ rhetoric apply to the African American
artist today? Is it still necessary to racially identify African
American artists?
4. Is Hughes’ point regarding embracing one’s culture regardless of
social prejudice a helpful and honest tip in order to achieve
literary success, or is it a romanticized ideology that does not
fully take into account the challenges of the time period?
5. How can African-Americans recover from internalized racism
when mainstream culture is focused on white standards?

33. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL05VV040Ls
1896-
1940
F. Scott
Fitzgerald

34. 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.

35. • 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