Imagism

Alyssa Zhao
Matthew Gonzalez
Discussion 102 (Friday 11-12)
October 28th, 2016

Imagism

     Imagism was a literary movement in the early 20th century dedicated to clarity of expression using precise, visual images. It is thought to be the first organized literary movement of Modernism in the English language, and thus served as a beginning to the Modernist movement and continued to influence later literary movements. Imagism rejected the prior Romantic and Victorian poetic values of sentiment and verbosity, and instead urged poets to return to Classical styles of direct descriptions, efficiency with words, and experimentation with verse. As such, Imagist poems use free verse, so their poems have no consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or rhythm, and so follow the rhythm of natural speech. 

     Imagism began when a poet named Ezra Pound, and his friends Hilda Doolittle and Richard Aldington, began meeting regularly to discuss art. They often examined Japanese poetry and art, and also commonly criticized the ideas of abstraction, over-description, and romanticism. In 1912, the three decided to begin a poetry movement that they called Imagisme. As Pound later wrote in an essay, Imagism would revolve around three principles: "Direct treatment of the 'thing'", using "absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation", and composing like a "musical phrase" and not like a "metronome". The development of these principles was heavily influenced by the Japanese haiku, a form of poetry that has nontraditional verse and removed unnecessary verbiage. Pound later published these three principles in his Ripostes, a collection of 25 Imagist poems, in 1913. This publication marked the first time the word Imagisme was used publicly.

     The quintessential Imagist poem, written by Pound and published in a literary magazine in 1913, is In a Station of the Metro.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

The poem is exactly 14 words, showing both Pound's dedication to conciseness and his fascination with brief Japanese poems like haikus. It lacks a verb, thus focusing the attention on the pure image rather than the setup of the poem. The poem also lacks any verbose expression of sentiment; instead, it leaves it open to the reader to link, and then interpret the significance of the linking, faces and petals. It was likely inspired by this Japanese ukiyo-e print by Suzuki Harunobo. 

     Imagism was considered rather radical at the time, as it so wholeheartedly abandoned the accepted poetic values in favor of a style that critics considered to be disorganized and even rebellious. It was also unconventional in that many female poets rose to prominence during this movement. The most famous of which was Hilda Doolittle, one of the founders, better known by her pen name H.D. Many of her poems dealt with subjects such as psychoanalysis (as she was a good friend of Sigmund Freud), and her bisexuality (which she was open and unapologetic about), further expanding the uniqueness of Imagism as it delved into other simultaneous new movements. 

     This movement by itself was quite short-lived; by 1917, the last official Imagist anthology was published, effectively ending the movement. It is thought that the looming imminence of World War I contributed to this decline. However, Imagism, as one of the major kickstarters into the more broad Modernism movement, had a profound influence on modernist poetry. Famous modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and Williams Carlos Williams were clearly inspired by Imagism, as seen by their use of precise, direct imagery. Additionally, the effects of Imagism are clear in the works of Federico García Lorca's Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude. In that poem, there is a strong emphasis on the precise depiction of visual images, experimentation with nontraditional verse forms, and a lack of heavy-handed expression and analysis of sentiment. It is clear that despite only being an official movement for a few years, Imagism helped to shape modernist poetry. 

Discussion Questions

1. How did the ideals of Imagist poetry translate into the works of the novels we have read, such as Their Eyes were Watching God and Passing?
2. Social issues and literary movements are often linked. (For example, the disillusionment that many experienced after World War I led to the formation of the Lost Generation and contributed to the literary themes that were common to the Lost Generation writers.) What were some potential societal issues that Imagism, as a precursor/beginning to Modernism, hoped to address? 

Works Cited

Barbarese, J. T. "On "In a Station of the Metro"" Www.english.illinois.edu. Modern American Poetry, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

Barbarese, J. T. "On Lowell, Pound, and Imagism." Www.english.illinois.edu. Modern American Poetry, n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2016.

"A Brief Guide to Imagism." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, May 2004. Web. 28 Oct. 2016.

Hughes, Glenn. Imagism & the Imagists; a Study in Modern Poetry. New York: Humanities, 1960. Print.

"Modernist Journals Project." Modjourn.org. Modernist Journals Project, 2009. Web. 28 Oct. 2016.

Surrealist Cinema

Lindsey Pfeiffer
GSI Matthew Gonzales
Discussion Section: Friday (2:00-3:00)
26 October 2016
    The end of the nineteenth through the beginning of the twentieth century brought exciting new ventures within the realm of technology- specifically in relation to cinema. With the invention of the motion picture camera, the effects of the screen were far-reaching, and people were in awe of the new and exciting technology. Amongst all the hype surrounding the screen came about the advent of Surrealism, and naturally, its cinematic representation that began in the 1920s. While its roots were in Paris, the appeal of the Surrealist movement made its way to the United States, Spain, and Mexico. The guiding principles of the Surrealist movement as a whole were to uncover the “creative potential of the unconscious mind” and to do so through the use and juxtaposition of absurd and aberrant images. Within Surrealist cinema, this translated directly to irrational scenes that lacked an apparent or obvious connection. Because Surrealism took prominence alongside the rise of cinema in general, its creators were fascinated by the art of film, even whilst taking it into a different dimension. The idea of spontaneous and shocking images within film came from the man considered to be the founder of Surrealism, André Breton. When Breton would go to see a film, he would disregard any description of the film as well as the start time, only to walk in at random moments with no prior knowledge of the events leading up to that point. This inspired Surrealist filmmakers like Luis Buñuel to make the focus of their films irrational scenes filled with absurd images, scenes that would cut from one to next without transition.

   

=> Buñuel talking about the process of creating Un Chien Andalou with Salvador Dali.

    The three iconic films that came from this venture of Surrealism were Un Chien Andalou, L'Age d'Or, and The Seashell and the Clergyman, they all incorporate some commonalities from the Modernist movement as well. As seen from the above video, Buñuel and Dali wrote the entire script for the film in one week, which highlights the idea of stream of consciousness, one that greatly influenced these Surrealists. These films were supposed to represent the constant flow of the mind’s unconscious and subconscious thought, and as we’ve seen in our class, the Surrealist filmmakers were not the only artists utilizing this free flow of thoughts and ideas. We saw the literary representation of stream of consciousness in Stein’s Melanctha and in Dos Passos’ The 42^nd Parallel, through uninterrupted thoughts that allow what is on the inside to be revealed to the outside. The Surrealist movement was also influenced by the Dada Movement and Freudian psychology, with obvious connections between Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind and Surrealist cinema’s attempt to project these innermost thoughts on the screen. 

     Perhaps the aspect of Surrealist cinema most integral to its definition and goals lies within the struggles and debates surrounding the use of the term “Surrealist cinema” and the attempt to create a genre of the art form. While the standard of cinema as a whole is to categorize films, the direct nature of Surrealism prevents this from happening within its own films. As Dali himself said, “Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what is considers to be shackles limiting our vision.” This, too, corresponds to another guiding principle of the Modernist movement, that of breaking free from the traditional forms of art and modes of expression.

                                Discussion Questions:

1. In what ways did Surrealist cinema shape the landscape of the film industry to the present?

2. To what extent did Surrealist films heighten Modernist principles such as stream of consciousness and nonconformity in ways that literary texts could not?

Works Cited:

Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy. "Surrealist Cinema: Politics, History, and

         the Language of Dreams."American Imago (2004): n. pag.                Johns Hopkins University Press. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.

Graubard, Allan. "Surrealism and Cinema by Michael Richardson. Berg Publishers, New York,

NY, U.S.A., 2006. 240 Pp. Trade, Paper. ISBN: 1-84520-225-2; 1-84520-226-0." Leonardo 40.3 (2007): 303-04. Web. 23 Oct. 2016.

Moine, Raphaelle, and Pierre Taminiaux. "From Surrealist Cinema to Surrealism in Cinema:

Does a Surrealist Genre Exist in Film?" Yale French Studies, No. 109, Surrealism and Its Others (2006), Pp. 98-114 (2006): n. pag. Yale University Press. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.

Ramey, James. "Baroque Buñuel: The Hidden Culteranismo in Un           Chien Andalou." Bulletin of Spanish Studies (2016): n. pag.             Taylor and Francis Group.Web. 26 Sept. 2016. 

Surrealism

Eloise Hendricks

GSI Matthew Gonzales

Discussion Section 102 (Fri. 11-12)

October 25, 2016

Surrealism, a literary and artistic movement that developed during the 1910s and 1920s, drew inspiration from the Dada movement that preceded it. However, whereas Dadaism claimed to be an anti-art movement, surrealism was not a denial of art but rather an exercise in positive expression with more organization than dadaism. In the aftermath of the rationalist thought that crescendoed into the devastation of World War I, surrealists sought a cultural departure from rationalism. Thus, surrealism represented the rejection of restrictions imposed by reason and society. The movement embraced the unity of the conscious and unconscious minds, as conceived by Freud, in order to foster the fusion of the dream world with reality; in the words of surrealist André Breton, this fusion created “an absolute reality, a surreality.” At once cerebral and seemingly nonsensical, surrealism flagrantly disregarded the limitations of tradition, thereby earning its avant-garde title.

The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali 

Founded and centered in Paris, surrealism developed largely under the tenets French poet André Breton proposed in his work, The Surrealist Manifesto. The text championed dreams as the foundation of surrealist art and encouraged surrealists to liberate themselves from the banalities of everyday life. Breton’s work, and the surrealist movement as a whole, drew heavily from the ideas of neurologist Sigmund Freud. Freud’s creation of the field of psychoanalysis, particularly its pertinence to the study and interpretation of dreams and the unconscious, influenced Breton’s conception of art in this manifesto. Dreams and the unconscious realm of the mind, Breton believed, were the fountainhead of the imagination, and accordingly the production of all art. The unconscious offered a raw, unfiltered image of human emotion, sexuality, desire, and violence that surrealists sought to harness. Thus, many surrealists used hypnotism and drugs to access their unconscious minds and translate the dream-like images into their artwork.

The Blank Signature, Rene Magritte

The exact characteristics of surrealist art can be difficult to pinpoint, but there are similar aspects between surrealist pieces. Surrealists like Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and Man Ray repeated some devices in various pieces, including levitation, shifting the scale of certain objects in a work, transparency, recurring motifs, and juxtaposition of unexpected or puzzling objects and images. The surrealists’ use of juxtaposition, often through one object that seemed not to fit logically in the context of the rest of the piece, was a means of conveying meaning and disconcerting the viewer. Surrealist artwork was imaginative and illusionistic, sexually suggestive to the point of being explicit, shocking and defiant of artistic conventions.

The Son of Man, Rene Magritte

Surrealist art bears similarities to Lorca’s poems; both employ unconventional and often jarring or unsettling images and can seem irrational at first glance. Moreover, Lorca’s poems and surrealist paintings are sensorially stimulating and evoke strong emotions in their audiences. Lorca and many surrealists used repetition of certain objects to convey meaning. For instance, in his poem “The King of Harlem”, Lorca seems to use the rose as an embodiment of nature to suggest the decay of nature and the rise of industrialization. Likewise, painter René Magritte repeatedly used the motif of the apple as a manifestation of religious and mythological symbolism. Lorca, surrealism, and modernism as a whole rejected the conventions that preceded them and pushed the boundaries of artistic expression.

Identity of Images by Robert Desnos



I am fighting furiously with animals and bottles
In a short time perhaps ten hours have passed one
   after another
The beautiful swimmer who was afraid of coral wakes
   this morning
Coral crowned with holly knocks on her door
Ah! coal again always coal
I conjure you coal tutelary genius of dreams and my
   solitude let me let me speak again of the beautiful
   swimmer who was afraid of coral
No longer tyrannize this seductive subject of my
   dreams
The beautiful swimmer was reposing in a bed of lace
   and birds
The clothes on a chair at the foot of the bed were
   illuminated by gleams the last gleams of coal
The one that had come from the depths of the sky and 
   earth and sea was proud of its coral beak and great
   wings of crape
All night long it had followed divergent funerals toward
   suburban cemeteries
It had been to embassy balls marked white satin gowns with
   its imprint a fern leaf
It had risen terribly before ships and the ships had not 
   returned
Now crouched in the chimney it was watching for the 
   waking of foam and singing of kettles
Its resounding step had disturbed the silence of nights
   in streets with sonorous pavements
Sonorous coal coal master of dreams coal
Ah tell me where is that beautiful swimmer the swimmer
   who was afraid of coral?
But the swimmer herself has gone back to sleep
And I remain face to face with the fire and shall remain
   through the night interrogating the coal with wings of
   darkness that persists in projecting on my monotonous
   road the shadow of its smoke and the terrible 
   reflections of its embers
Sonorous coal coal pitiless coal

Discussion Questions

1. How does the surrealist concept of fusing dreams with reality manifest itself in the texts we have read?

2. Based on the Lorca poems we have discussed in class, can Lorca's work be classified as surrealist? Why or why not?

Works Cited

"Identity of Images." Poets.org, Academy of American Poets.

<www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/identity-images>. Accessed 25 Oct. 2016. 

"Magritte and the Apple." Itineraries of Taste.

    <itinerariesoftaste.sanpellegrino.com/ca/how-we-were/magritte-apple>. Accessed 24 Oct. 2016.

"Surrealism". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia

Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 23 Oct. 2016. <https://www.britannica.com/art/Surrealism>.

"The Blank Signature." Wiki Art, www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/the-blank-signature-1965.

"The Origins of Surrealism." Art History Archive.

<www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/surrealism/Origins-of-Surrealism.html>. Accessed 24 Oct. 2016.

Voorhies, James. “Surrealism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The

Metropolitan Museum of Art, October, 2004. <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/surr/hd_surr.htm>.

Willette, Jeanne S.M. "Comparison of Dada and Surrealism." Art History Unstuffed, 17 June 2011.

<arthistoryunstuffed.com/comparison-of-dada-and-surrealism/>. Accessed 24 Oct. 2016.

Blackface Minstrelsy

Nicole R. Ascencio

Matthew Gonzalez

Discussion 102 (Friday 11-12)

October 16, 2016

Blackface Minstrelsy

Blackface minstrel shows were a style of entertainment that developed in the mid 19th century and consisted of comedy, dancing and music done by white performers often covered in dark, theatrical makeup or “blackface” for the purpose of playing the role of African Americans.

Blackface minstrel shows evolved from several American traditions, but mostly from the traveling circus and freak shows. As time passed, the plays focused less on opening burlesque acts and centralizes on comic skits. Although the structure of minstrel shows changed over time, the vivid images of blackface and racism unfortunately did not. The stereotypes performed by the white characters of blackface minstrels not only played a significant role in cementing racist attitudes nationwide, but also, in later appropriation of African American culture. Perhaps the most enduring aspect of the blackface minstrel was that the performance shaped America’s introduction of African American culture, no matter how false and racist its view was.

The minstrel show began in the early 1830s and by 1848, blackface minstrel shows spread across the nation and even across the Atlantic to Europe and Great Britain. One group, the Virginia Minstrels, was so popular that imitators rapidly emerged and many other groups came about thus, forming a new branch of American musical theatre. In the United States, the minstrel introduced blackface to the world stage. Using cork or leather shoe polish to blacken their skin and exaggerated their lips and eyes, early white performers donned blackface and wore tattered rags as clothing to pass as black.

Josephine Baker in Blackface

As minstrel shows were fading out of American theatre in the twenties, blackface performers became common acts on vaudeville stages. These entertainers kept the familiar songs, dances, and imitation black dialect as they progressed to vaudeville. Eventually, the performances finally died out in the United States in the 1960s and ended the prominence of blackface makeup in performance in the nation due to a change of attitude about racial stereotypes. Although some performances continued past the sixties in other countries, such as televised sensation, The Black and White Minstrel Show in Great Britain.

The Black and White Minstrel Show

Considering the prevalence of racial appropriation as performance of identity in Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen, Clare and Irene pass themselves as white at times by distancing themselves from black culture. In the novel, Larsen utilizes passing by having characters assume a particular identity at times for personal benefit. Minstrel shows and Larsen’s work raise the question of whether identity can be anything other than a performance. In presenting an image of oneself to the public, there is only the stage. Minstrels and Larsen do just that by bringing out the performativity of race rather than the authenticity of that race. Performance creates a more strict dichotomy between racial categories by presenting blackness or whiteness as racial identities to be assumed by perpetuating the superficial elements of race and the idea that race can be assumed by anyone that can pass for that identity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_swtbIi2F0

Questions to Consider:

1. To what extent does Larsen simplify racial identity and expression in Passing?
2. How does theatre make statements about constructs such as racial differences and how might their statement affect society?

Works Cited

Cotton and Chick Watts Blackface Minstrel Show Comedy. Perf. Cotton and Chick Watts. Cotton and Chick Watts Blackface Minstrel Show Comedy. Kit Parker Films, 9 Jan. 2013. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_swtbIi2F0>.

Huffman, Shea J. "The History And Legacy Of Minstrel Shows." All Day. All Day, 1 Jan. 2013. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <http://allday.com/post/2391-the-history-and-legacy-of-minstrel-shows/>.

Watkins, Mel A. "Black Minstrelsy." PBS. PBS, 1 Jan. 2000. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/foster/sfeature/sf_minstrelsy_5.html>.

Encyclopedia Britannica Online, The Editors of. "Minstrel Show." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, 12 Oct. 2011. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://www.britannica.com/art/minstrel-show>.

CHNM. "The Minstrel Show." The Minstrel Show. CHNM, n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <https://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/jackson/minstrel/minstrel.html>.

Brooks, Ken. "Cotton Watts: The Last Blackface." Cotton Watts: The Last Blackface. Blogspot, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 17 Oct. 2016. <http://cottonwatts.blogspot.com/>.

Digital Images Cited

Entertainer Josephine Baker Performing in Blackface. Digital image. Getty Images. N.p., 1 Jan. 1950. Web. 16 Oct. 2017. <http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/entertainer-josephine-baker-performs-in-blackface-in-imitation-of-picture-id517354528>.

Dawson, Andy. Was The Black & White Minstrel Show the Most Racist TV Programme Ever? Digital image. Mirror.co.uk. Mirror.co.uk, 23 July 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2016. <http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article2077346.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200/The-Black-and-White-Minstrel-Show.png>.