The early- to mid-twentieth century criticism surrounding E. E. Cummings often dismisses his poetry in Eliotic terms. In analyzing Cummings’s critics’ arguments and methodologies, I attempt to reveal the ways in which Cummings has been unfairly labelled, and also the strains in modernist criticism that have continued up through to today. I compare the modernist approaches to the text to the way recent critics talk about Cummings in order to shed light on our critical inheritance from modernism. Finally, I analyse Cummings’s poetry in terms of one of the more recent discussions of modernist texts, that of relationship between commodity and advertising culture and modernist poetry. My project seeks, by using Cummings as a case study, to articulate not only how certain literary values came to be established, but also how certain methods of persuasion in literary criticism can undermine and even silence certain aspects of a text.

The object of the Bachelor Thesis is the modernistic experiments in Gertrude Stein’s and Jon Dos Passos’ creative works. The aim of the present research is to analyze the modernistic experiments in Gertrude Stein’s and John Dos Passos’s creative works. In order to achieve the aim the following objectives have been set: 1) to present and analyze theoretical material concerning modernism; 2) to analyze modernistic experiments in Gertrude Stein’s and John Dos Passos’s creative works; 3) to compare G. Stein’s and J. Dos Passos’s artistic linguistic experiments and creative means. The methodology applied in the present Thesis included: 1) the historical-comparative method was applied in order to review and compare the definitions of literary modernism in different countries; 2) Ihab Hassan’s concept of modernism, which helped describing the phenomenon of modernism and specifying its basic peculiarities, and 3) the theory of comparativistics that allowed determining the correlation of literary modernism and non-linguistic discourses. In the Bachelor Thesis modernistic experiments were treated as the linguistic experiments with language, words and their meaning, grammatical and syntactical forms, way of narration and text composition. For practical analysis G. Stein’s “Tender Buttons” (1914) and J. Dos Passos’s “The 42nd Parallel” (1930) were chosen. In the course of the research the scientific literature concerning the theoretical background of modernism appearance, the variety... [to full text] / Bakalauro darbo objektas – modernistiniai eksperimentai Gertrude’s Stein ir Johno Dos Passoso kūryboje. Darbo tikslas – analizuoti modernistinius eksperimentus Gertrude’s Stein ir Johno Dos Passoso kūryboje. Tikslui pasiekti buvo nustatyti šie uždaviniai: 1) Apžvelgti ir analizuoti mokslinę literatūrą apie modernizmą kaip istorinį kultūros raidos etapą; 2) Nagrinėti modernistinius eksperimentus Gertrude’s Stein ir Johno Dos Passoso kūriniuose; 3) Palyginti Gertrude’s Stein ir Johno Dos Passoso naudojamus kalbinius eksperimentus bei kūrybos būdus. Bakalauro darbo metodologiją sudaro: 1) Istorinis lyginamasis metodas, kuris naudojamas įvairių šalių literatūrinio modernizmo apibrėžčių apžvelgimui ir palyginimui; 2) Ihabo Hassano modernizmo koncepcija, kuri taikoma modernizmo fenomeno aprašymui bei jo pagrindinių ypatumų nustatymui; 3) Komparatyvistikos teorija, leidusi apibrėžti literatūrinio modernizmo ir neliteratūrinių diskursų sąsajas. Šiame darbe modernistiniai eksperimentai traktuojami kaip lingvistiniai eksperimentai su kalba, žodžiais ir jų reikšmėmis, su gramatinėmis bei sintaksinėmis formomis, su pasakojimo būdais ir teksto kompozicija. Praktinei analizei atlikti buvo pasirinktas Gertrude’s Stein kūrinys „Švelnios sagos“ (1914) ir Johnno Dos Passoso romanas „Keturiasdešimt antroji paralelė“ (1930). Tyrimo metu buvo analizuota teorinė literatūra apie modernizmo atsiradimą, jo ideologines nuostatas bei chronologines ribas. Identifikuota šių reiškinių įvairovė... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Cette thèse étudie la réception critique de la poésie de Hugo en France entre 1914 et 1944. Elle se fonde sur une conception large et englobante de la « réception critique ». Ainsi, elle envisage la manière dont l’œuvre poétique hugolienne est reproduite et diffusée (dans des éditions savantes, des éditions populaires bon marché, des livres de luxe, des manuels scolaires, des anthologies…) ou fait l’objet d’adaptations (mises en musique, parodies et pastiches) ainsi que les discours tenus sur la poésie de Hugo, que ceux-ci émanent d’universitaires, d’écrivains et intellectuels, de journalistes, de militants, d’hommes politiques, etc. En mobilisant un corpus riche et varié, en confrontant des démarches critiques provenant de champs très différents, notre travail fait apparaître quelques problématiques récurrentes.Celles-ci sont notamment relatives au statut de Hugo comme auteur patrimonial, à la centralité de la poésie dans son œuvre (et en particulier à la centralité des trois grands recueils de l’exil, Les Châtiments, Les Contemplations, La Légende des siècles), aux lectures et aux appropriations politiques auxquelles cette poésie donne lieu, à la manière de situer Hugo dans l’histoire de la poésie française (selon les cas, aux côtés de Lamartine et Musset ou aux côtés de Baudelaire, Rimbaud et Mallarmé). Au-delà du seul cas Hugo, notre travail jette aussi quelques éclairages sur la place de la poésie dans l’imaginaire du premier XXe siècle et sur la manière dont cette période se définit par rapport à un double héritage poétique, « romantique » et « moderne ». / This dissertation studies the critical reception of the poetry of Victor Hugo in France over the period 1914-1944. Relying on an inclusive conception of “critical reception”, it considers the way in which Hugo’s poetic work was reproduced and circulated (in scholarly editions and cheap popular editions, in luxury books and school textbooks, in poem collections...) or adapted (turned into parody or pastiche and set to music by various composers). It also looks at the many discourses that were held on Hugo’s poetry, whether by academics, professional writers and intellectuals, journalists, political men and activists, etc. Drawing on an extensive corpus and a wide range of sources, confronting methodological approaches borrowed from different study fields, our work helps to throw light on Hugo’s importance as an integral part of French cultural heritage; on the centrality of poetry (especially of the three major collections published while Hugo was in exile, Les Châtiments, Les Contemplations, La Légende des siècles) within his work; on the political readings and the political uses that were made of Hugo’s poetry; on the competing ways of categorising Hugo’s work within French poetry and among French poets, as a Romantic akin to Lamartine and Musset or as a modernist equated with Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mallarmé. Beyond the sole case of Hugo, our dissertation also sheds light on the importance of poetry in the imagination of the early 20th century, and on the way in which the literature of the period sought to define itself in relation to a two-fold poetic legacy, that of romanticism and that of modernism.

Wang Meng, an important figure of modern Chinese literature, is best known as an author experimenting with literary techniques at the turn of the 70s and the 80s. Our paper examines a relatively little-known part of his work inspired by the writer's many-year stay in Xinjiang. Examined proses originate primarily from two collections - In Yili and Hello, Xinjiang. In the analysis of Wang Meng's literary creation we take into account the historical context and we present particular features of the literary image of non-Han culture in the work of a Han writer. We also examine the use of narrative techniques, with particular focus on "stream of consciousness" technique.

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This thesis is a cultural history of the early Fabian Society, focusing on the decades between 1884, the Society’s inaugural year, and 1914. The canonical view is that ‘Fabianism,’ which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as the ‘doctrine and principles of the Fabian Society,’ is synonymous with State socialism and bureaucratic ‘efficiency.’ By bringing the methods of cultural history to bear on the Society’s founding members and decades, this thesis reveals that ‘Fabianism’ was in fact used as a dynamic metonymy, not a fixed doctrine, which signified a range of cultural, and even literary, meanings for British commentators in the 1890s and 1900s (Part 1). Further, by expanding the scope of traditional histories of the Fabian Society, which conventionally operate within political and economic sub-fields and focus on the Society’s ‘official’ literature, to include a close examination of the broader discursive context in which ‘Fabianism’ came into being, this thesis sets out to recover the symbolic aspects of the Fabians’ efforts to negotiate what ‘Fabianism’ meant to the English reading public. The Fabians’ conspicuous leadership in the modern education debates and the liberal fight for a ‘free stage,’ and their solidarity with the international political émigrés living in London at the turn of the twentieth century all contribute to this revised perspective on who the founding Fabians were, what they saw themselves as trying to achieve, and where the Fabian Society belonged—and was perceived to belong—in relation to British politics, culture, and society (Part 2). The original contribution of this thesis is the argument that the Fabians explicitly and implicitly evoked Matthew Arnold as a precursor in their efforts to articulate a kind of Fabian—latterly social-democratic—liberalism and a public vocation that balanced English liberties and the duty of the State to provide the ‘best’ for its citizens in education and in culture, as in politics.

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L’étude de l’oeuvre poétique tardive de l’artiste Jean Hans Arp (1886-1966) révèle que l’opposition entre non-sens et sens, au moyen de laquelle est souvent analysé le passage de sa production dada à sa poésie des années cinquante et soixante, n’a pas lieu d’être. L’introduction d’une cohérence aux plans formel et structurel permet au plan sémantique le maintien de la plurivocité et de la contradiction. L’analyse des formes poétiques arpiennes montre l’existence d’une invention et d’une variété formelles intactes dans la production tardives, entre actualisation de formes anciennes et innovation. Cette tension anime également son activité anthologique et éditoriale, comprise comme élément constituant de sa poétique tardive : le poète déploie des stratégies visant à constituer, entre soixante et quatre-vingts ans, une oeuvre réflexive, intégrant les cinquante années de production antérieure, mais en déjouant constamment les écueils de l’(auto-)monumentalité. Le rapport entretenu avec la réalité extérieure au langage connaît un bouleversement référentiel après 1943-1945. La critique accrue de la rationalité occidentale et l’exigence d’expression subjective conduisent à la mise en place d’un discours poétique sur le monde et sur les capacités du langage, une « cosmogonie de poche » à la fois humble et démiurgique. Elle consiste en une confiance inaltérée dans le pouvoir créateur du langage poétique, capable de créer d’autres mondes. Cette modernité radicale d’Arp, exacerbée car revendiquée, le situe de façon originale dans le contexte du devenir des avant-gardes européennes après 1945 et met en lumière la spécificité de son appartenance à une génération de transition. / A close study of Jean Hans Arp’s late poetry exposes the inadequacy of the traditional opposition between non-sense and sense, which is frequently used to analyse the transition from his Dada production to the poetic works of the 1950s and the 1960s. By introducing a formal and structural coherence, the poet manages to preserve plurivocity and contradiction on a semantic level. Considering the specificities of Arp’s late poetic forms, the study shows that invention and variety are as vivid then as they were during Dada Zurich, based on both innovation and actualisation of former techniques. This tension is inherent to his anthological and editorial activity as well, which is considered here as a key element of his late poetics. In his sixties and up until his eighties, the poet develops strategies aimed at constituting a reflexive work which integrates the earlier production while always avoiding the trap of (self-) monumentalisation. After 1943-1945, the relationship between Arp's poetry and reality outside the language undergoes a profound referential change. His increasing criticism of western rationalism and need for subjective expression, without returning to neo-romanticism, form the basis for a poetic discourse on the world and the possibilities of language, a “pocket cosmogony” that is both humble and demiurgic”. The latter hinges on an unwavering faith in the creative power of the poetic word and its ability to generate other worlds. This radical modernity, consciously asserted, locates Arp’s late work as an original experiment in the context of the avant-gardes post-1945, highlighting his specific itinerary within a transitional generation.