Eng426 20th century english literature

MODULE 3

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ENGLISH POETS
This module will expose you to different modernist poets to demonstrate that the challenge for something new, experimental, and innovative in the wake of a changing world also found its way into poetry. In the spirit of modernism, radical poets like Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen, W.H Auden and D.H Lawrence among others saw the modes of the poetry of earlier periods (for example renaissance and Victorian poetry) inadequate to describe and evoke the feelings and temperament of the modern age. Their poetry, like modernist novels, was complex and experimental most often without metrical patterns or rhymes. A great number of themes that bothered on real life issues i.e. the poet’s experience as well as ordinary men’s life and problems were the interests of these poets. The 20^th century English poetry was poetry of realism mixed with disillusionment and pessimism. The suffering and tragedy that marked the modern life was of great interest to them especially as there was no longer any spiritual essence in the modern life. Modern poets were also interested in nature because this was the beauty and essence they could easily identify with.

Module 3: The Twentieth Century English Poets

Unit 1:T.S Eliot and “The Wasteland”
Unit 2: W.H Auden’s Pessimistic and Political Poetry Unit 3:The Poetry of W.B Yeats
Unit 4: Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth”

UNIT 1- T.S Eliot and “The Wasteland”

Content
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Objectives

0. 
   Main Content
   
1. 
   T.S. Eliot
   
2. 
   T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”
   
3. 
   Themes and Techniques in T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”
   

4.0 Conclusion
5.0 Summary
6.0 Tutor-marked Assignment
7.0 References/ Further Reading

1.0 INTRODUCTION

T.S Eliot’s “The Wasteland” is an experimental poem and it is a departure from Victorian or traditional in several ways. In “The Wasteland”, Eliot shows that there is no sense of vitality or life in the modern society and that the relation between man and his spirituality is lost to modernity and its attendant experiences.

0.