Unit 6 Literary Focus. Collection 11: War Literature Collection 12: Themes of Modern and Contemporary Poetry Collection 13: Irony

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1 Unit 6 Literary Focus Collection 11: War Literature Collection 12: Themes of Modern and Contemporary Poetry Collection 13: Irony

2 War Literature Poems that express. Memoirs that. Short stories that depict. Elegies that mourn,, and. Features of War Literature Speeches that evoke and encourage citizens to.

3 Collection 11: War Literature War from All Perspectives As battles raged during two world wars, writers captured the horror of battle the suffering endured in prisoner-of-war and concentration camps the sacrifice, fear, and losses felt by civilians

4 Collection 11: War Literature War from All Perspectives The poems of World War I soldiers reflect the mood of Britain: During the early years of the war, themes focused on and. As the war progressed, thematic concepts of and were more common. World War I took and left the soldiers who returned.

5 Collection 11: War Literature Survivors Reflect World War II brought further horror. British civilians lost loved ones overseas, and Londoners suffered nightly bombings. Prime Minister Winston Churchill made impassioned radio speeches urging patience and fortitude. The war, which did not distinguish between soldiers and civilians, took more than forty million lives.

6 Collection 11: War Literature Survivors Reflect World War II literature includes the perspectives of soldiers, civilians, and prisoners alike. Writers who had experienced the century s costliest and deadliest conflict crafted to express the loss and grief. Experiences in the prompted the graphic true accounts of writers such as Primo Levi, Victor Frankl, and Elie Weisel.

7 Themes of Modern and Contemporary Poetry Characteristics of Themes in Modern and Contemporary Poetry Depict life as,, and Portray as universal experiences Value as

8 Collection 12: Themes of Modern and Contemporary Poetry The Modern Age The modern age was ushered in by World War I. Poets of this age imbued their poems with a sense of conveyed a feeling rejected and the rules by which these were expressed

9 Collection 12: Themes of Modern and Contemporary Poetry The Modern Age T.S. Eliot s rings a note of despair typical of the early modern era. Eliot, an American expatriate, also wrote one of the most important poems published in England during this period The Wasteland.

10 Collection 12: Themes of Modern and Contemporary Poetry The Modern Age The highly inventive writing of William Butler Yeats is filled with William Butler Yeats Yeats also created his own private mythology, to which he occasionally refers.

11 Collection 12: Themes of Modern and Contemporary Poetry The Modern Age In The Second Coming, Yeats revisits a story from the to examine the threats of modern life. In Sailing to Byzantium, he focuses on the importance of and its redemptive value.

12 Collection 12: Themes of Modern and Contemporary Poetry The Modern Age As World War II approached, W.H. Auden wrote his famous poem Musée des Beaux Arts about human suffering. Auden had this to say about art and poetry: In so far as poetry, or any of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate. In other words, Auden, like many of his peers, believed.

13 Collection 12: Themes of Modern and Contemporary Poetry The Contemporary Age Following World War II, poets Continued moved away from elaborate. began to favor simple structures over complex forms. By the, the had emerged.

14 Collection 12: Themes of Modern and Contemporary Poetry The Contemporary Age Contemporary poetry often embraces universal ideas about hope, fear, and loss in life and love. Philip Larkin shapes an unsentimental yet intensely emotional poem from ordinary experience in The Explosion. In Lot s Wife, Wislawa Szymborska explores a woman s separation from her homeland. Seamus Heaney gives voice to the richness of his rural heritage through his poem Digging.

15 Collection 13: Irony Types of Irony Verbal irony: The narrator or a character says one thing but means something different. Situational irony: The opposite of what is expected happens. Dramatic irony: The reader or audience knows something a character does not.

16 Collection 13: Irony A Response to Modern Life Irony is a discrepancy between expectation and reality: between what is said and what is meant between what is expected and what happens between what appears to be true and what is actually true All types of irony affect how we see characters, ourselves, and the world.

17 Collection 13: Irony A Response to Modern Life Irony is often used to underscore serious and important themes. In much of the literature in this collection, the incongruity between what is desired and what is realized can be heartbreaking.

18 Collection 13: Irony A Response to Modern Life In the first half of the twentieth century, much of what people assumed to be true about the world was called into question: Darwin s theory of evolution challenged ideas about human origins. Charles Darwin

19 Collection 13: Irony A Response to Modern Life In the first half of the twentieth century, much of what people assumed to be true about the world was called into question: Freud s ideas about the subconscious made people re-examine their own identities. Sigmund Freud

20 Collection 13: Irony A Response to Modern Life In the first half of the twentieth century, much of what people assumed to be true about the world was called into question: Two world wars and the Holocaust shook faith in God and human kindness.

21 Collection 13: Irony A Response to Modern Life Many people adopted an ironic perspective: Life was not as they expected or dreamed it to be. That same perspective is reflected in the literature of the period. In D.H. Lawrence s The Rocking-Horse Winner, for example, Paul s desire to win his mother s affection by making her rich is thwarted when she desires even more money. In this instance of situational irony, the opposite of what is expected becomes the reality.

22 Collection 13: Irony Irony in the Atmosphere Today, the influence of irony is widespread in our everyday world. People we hear or interact with every day use verbal irony: They say one thing when they mean another. We seem to go through life always aware that the surface meaning of any given statement might have a very different underlying meaning.

23 Collection 13: Irony Irony in the Atmosphere Sarcasm is a stronger expression of verbal irony. As part of the atmosphere of life in the twenty-first century, sarcasm is used to ridicule and mock other people. Sarcasm often conveys a sense of cynical detachment, sounding cool or hip.

24 Collection 13: Irony Irony in the Atmosphere Dramatic irony can be another way to make an individual look foolish. In dramatic irony, the reader or audience has information the character does not. Rather than a contrast between what is stated and what is meant, the contrast is between what a character says or thinks and the true state of affairs.

25 The End