Modernism: An Introduction

Lecture 22
English 1120 -- War in Literature
Professor Timothy H. Wilson
Department of English, University of Ottawa (Winter 2022)

An introduction to the intellectual roots of "Modernism" in such thinkers as Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Finally, an introduction to some of the aesthetic movements of literary modernism -- in particular how Modernism's exploration of the "fragmentation" of meaning and experience was connected with Cubism in the visual arts.

Time Codes:

0:00 - Introduction
0:43 - Lecture Outline
1:30 - Charles Darwin (1809-82) and Modernism
4:10 - Karl Marx (1818-83) and Modernism
5:50 - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Modernism
8:17 - Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Modernism
12:28 - World War I and Modernism
13:23 - The Aesthetics of Modernism -- "making it new"; example of Imagism and "The Red Wheelbarrow" (1923) by William Carlos Williams
19:51 - Cubism -- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
22:40 - T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" (1922)
28:42 - James Joyce's Ulysses (1922)
31:59 - Conclusion

Related Lectures:

   • Nihilism: An Introduction  

   • Overcoming Nihilism  

Other Links:

Course Web site – War in Literature: https://sites.google.com/site/unterge...

Professor Wilson's Web site -- The Western Canon: https://sites.google.com/site/unterge...

The powerpoint slides for this lecture can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-krD...