Modernism – Page 14 – Interesting Literature

Seven of the Best Modernist Short Stories Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

A number of modernist novels are praised as among the greatest novels of the twentieth century: James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, and Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, to offer just three examples. But modernist fiction had its origins in the short story form, and many of its finest statements about art and the world are to be found in short stories.

Below we introduce seven of the most definitive and must-read modernist short stories. Would you add any authors or stories to this list of the best modernist short stories, or would you substitute any of our choices for a different story?

A Summary and Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Four Quartets was T. S. Eliot’s last great achievement as a poet. After its publication in the early 1940s, Eliot would write occasional minor verses, but much of his creative energy was directed into the theatre, where he wrote a series of attempts to bring about a renaissance in English verse drama (with mixed results).

A Short Analysis of Ezra Pound’s ‘A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Modernist poetry in English never had an official manifesto, but there are several documents which conceivably have a claim to the de facto title: T. E. Hulme’s ‘A Lecture on Modern Poetry’ (1908), for instance, or T. S. Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919).

A Short Analysis of T. E. Hulme’s ‘A Lecture on Modern Poetry’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

There are numerous documents which might be described as ‘manifestos’ for modernist poetry in English – Ezra Pound’s ‘A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste’ springs to mind – but T. E. Hulme’s ‘A Lecture on Modern Poetry’ was almost certainly the earliest. It’s an important announcement of a new poetic style and, in a small way, a revolutionary document in modern poetry. You can read ‘A Lecture on Modern Poetry’ in full here, but in this post we’re going to try to analyse Hulme’s essay and pinpoint why it was so important.

In 1908, there was a widespread feeling – well, it was widespread among a small but significant group of new poets, anyway – that a new way forward needed to be found for English verse. Algernon Charles Swinburne, who would die the year later but who had been a powerful force in English poetry since the 1860s, proved a particular sticking-point.

A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘A Cooking Egg’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Cooking Egg’ first appeared in T. S. Eliot’s second collection, Poems, in 1919. You can read ‘A Cooking Egg’ here; below are some thoughts on this elusive and difficult poem, designed to serve as a brief analysis of the poem’s meaning and features.