Colour Coding The Waste Land – A Multitude of Voices
Emeritus Professor Steve Giles
University of... more Colour Coding The Waste Land – A Multitude of Voices Emeritus Professor Steve Giles University of Nottingham Why colour-code The Waste Land? The idea came to me when I was rethinking how one might characterise The Waste Land in relation to a new model of modernism, which I had devised in a lengthy article entitled Recalibrating Modernism, Rethinking Art (published in Academia.edu). I suggested that Eliot’s poem is a classic example of ‘radical modernism’, in the sense that it rejects the autotelic and expressive modes of modernism that had been dominant prior to the emergence of Dada. Crucially, The Waste Land lacks any overarching normative authorial presence, and instead consists of multiple voices, none of which have precedence over each other. This characteristic of the poem is not immediately visible on first reading, or even first listening of one of the many recitations of the poem available on the internet. I therefore decided to ‘make visible’ the range and complexity of the poem’s voices, and ‘make strange’ its fundamental features. If it was not an exemplar of expressive modernism, who speaks in The Waste Land? Could the answer be provided by Michel Foucault’s notorious dictum ‘Who speaks? The text speaks’? What is the relationship between the speaker(s) in the poem and the presumed audience? To what extent – if at all – does it project a fundamental critique of contemporary modernity? In order to address these various questions I decided to identify the multiplicity of voices in the poem from beginning to end, to see if there were any particular patterns or underlying structures. I then colour-coded each ‘new’ voice, or shift in voice, and in so doing identified at least 95 voices, including the numerous quotations. I had transmuted Eliot’s poem into a performance text, to be played by six actors, with Steve Reich style music paralleling the colours as the actors declaimed their lines... (such as Music for 18 Musicians). In the Introduction that precedes the colour-coded version I outline a theoretical and textual framework which considers The Waste Land in relation to my new model of modernism, and enables us to rethink the poem’s themes and techniques.
The unprecedented proliferation of artistic movements and theories of Art from the late Nineteen... more The unprecedented proliferation of artistic movements and theories of Art from the late Nineteenth Century to the present day – where the term Art is being used as a short-hand for all modes of artistic endeavour, whether verbal, visual, musical or theatrical – has left contemporary readers and audiences, academic and non-academic, in the uncomfortable position of hardly knowing what the term Art means any more. Bombarded by the modernist theories, practices and procedures of Aestheticism, Symbolism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Imagism, Expressionism, Futurism, Vorticism, Dada and Surrealism, and bemused by the conceptual and minimalist excrescences of post-modernism from Pop-art to Brit-art, we inhabit an anomic cultural universe where the proliferation of seemingly incommensurable concepts of Art makes it almost impossible to compare or choose between them on any sort of rational basis. My initial aim in this article is to develop a conceptual framework that can be used to categorise such theories, together with the explicit or implicit assumptions they make about the nature of Art – or art. My overarching aim is to propose a fundamental rethink of how we might characterise the various modes of modernist Art by presenting a new theoretical approach, which rejects the long-standing autonomous/avant-garde model of modernism and replaces it with a tri-partite model with three main variants: autotelic, expressive, and radical. Crucially, radical modernism – initially in the guise of Dada - rejects both autotelic and expressive Art, the post-Romantic variants of modernism that had held sway since 1870.
The unprecedented proliferation of artistic movements and theories of Art from the late Nineteent... more The unprecedented proliferation of artistic movements and theories of Art from the late Nineteenth Century to the present day – where the term Art is being used as a short-hand for all modes of artistic endeavour, whether verbal, visual, musical or theatrical – has left contemporary readers and audiences, academic and non-academic, in the uncomfortable position of hardly knowing what the term Art means any more. Bombarded by the modernist theories, practices and procedures of Aestheticism, Symbolism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Imagism, Expressionism, Futurism, Vorticism, Dada and Surrealism, and bemused by the conceptual and minimalist excrescences of post-modernism from Pop-art to Brit-art, we inhabit an anomic cultural universe where the proliferation of seemingly incommensurable concepts of Art makes it almost impossible to compare or choose between them on any sort of rational basis. My initial aim in this article is to develop a conceptual framework that can be used to categorise such theories, together with the explicit or implicit assumptions they make about the nature of Art – or art. My overarching aim is to propose a fundamental rethink of how we might characterise the various modes of modernist Art by presenting a new theoretical approach, which rejects the long-standing autonomous/avant-garde model of modernism and replaces it with a tri-partite model with three main variants: autotelic, expressive, and radical. Crucially, radical modernism – initially in the guise of Dada - rejects both autotelic and expressive Art, the post-Romantic variants of modernism that had held sway since 1870.
The Canadian veterinary journal. La revue vétérinaire canadienne, 2006
A domestic ferret was presented for episodic regurgitation. Cytologic examination and culture of ... more A domestic ferret was presented for episodic regurgitation. Cytologic examination and culture of an enlarged submandibular lymph node revealed Cryptococcus neoformans variety grubii (serotype A). The ferret was successfully treated with itraconazole. This is the first documented case of Cryptococcus neoformans variety grubii in a ferret in the United States.
This special issue of German Life and Letters presents six of the papers delivered at the confere... more This special issue of German Life and Letters presents six of the papers delivered at the conference, supplemented by a paper by Jurgen Hillesheim, the Director of the Brecht‐Forschungsstelle in Augsburg.
At a time when postmodernism seems to have achieved a dominant position in cultural and critical ... more At a time when postmodernism seems to have achieved a dominant position in cultural and critical theory, the contributors to this volume present a much needed corrective to the misleading images of modernism which have dominated recent debate. Theorizing Modernisms includes an account of European modernism, and analysis of the work of Apollinaire and Aberti, Wyndham Lewis and Mike Johnson, and Kert Schwitters. Steve Giles provides a much needed overview of the relationship between modernism and the avant-garde, postmodernism and modernity.
Colour Coding The Waste Land – A Multitude of Voices
Emeritus Professor Steve Giles
University of... more Colour Coding The Waste Land – A Multitude of Voices Emeritus Professor Steve Giles University of Nottingham Why colour-code The Waste Land? The idea came to me when I was rethinking how one might characterise The Waste Land in relation to a new model of modernism, which I had devised in a lengthy article entitled Recalibrating Modernism, Rethinking Art (published in Academia.edu). I suggested that Eliot’s poem is a classic example of ‘radical modernism’, in the sense that it rejects the autotelic and expressive modes of modernism that had been dominant prior to the emergence of Dada. Crucially, The Waste Land lacks any overarching normative authorial presence, and instead consists of multiple voices, none of which have precedence over each other. This characteristic of the poem is not immediately visible on first reading, or even first listening of one of the many recitations of the poem available on the internet. I therefore decided to ‘make visible’ the range and complexity of the poem’s voices, and ‘make strange’ its fundamental features. If it was not an exemplar of expressive modernism, who speaks in The Waste Land? Could the answer be provided by Michel Foucault’s notorious dictum ‘Who speaks? The text speaks’? What is the relationship between the speaker(s) in the poem and the presumed audience? To what extent – if at all – does it project a fundamental critique of contemporary modernity? In order to address these various questions I decided to identify the multiplicity of voices in the poem from beginning to end, to see if there were any particular patterns or underlying structures. I then colour-coded each ‘new’ voice, or shift in voice, and in so doing identified at least 95 voices, including the numerous quotations. I had transmuted Eliot’s poem into a performance text, to be played by six actors, with Steve Reich style music paralleling the colours as the actors declaimed their lines... (such as Music for 18 Musicians). In the Introduction that precedes the colour-coded version I outline a theoretical and textual framework which considers The Waste Land in relation to my new model of modernism, and enables us to rethink the poem’s themes and techniques.
The unprecedented proliferation of artistic movements and theories of Art from the late Nineteen... more The unprecedented proliferation of artistic movements and theories of Art from the late Nineteenth Century to the present day – where the term Art is being used as a short-hand for all modes of artistic endeavour, whether verbal, visual, musical or theatrical – has left contemporary readers and audiences, academic and non-academic, in the uncomfortable position of hardly knowing what the term Art means any more. Bombarded by the modernist theories, practices and procedures of Aestheticism, Symbolism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Imagism, Expressionism, Futurism, Vorticism, Dada and Surrealism, and bemused by the conceptual and minimalist excrescences of post-modernism from Pop-art to Brit-art, we inhabit an anomic cultural universe where the proliferation of seemingly incommensurable concepts of Art makes it almost impossible to compare or choose between them on any sort of rational basis. My initial aim in this article is to develop a conceptual framework that can be used to categorise such theories, together with the explicit or implicit assumptions they make about the nature of Art – or art. My overarching aim is to propose a fundamental rethink of how we might characterise the various modes of modernist Art by presenting a new theoretical approach, which rejects the long-standing autonomous/avant-garde model of modernism and replaces it with a tri-partite model with three main variants: autotelic, expressive, and radical. Crucially, radical modernism – initially in the guise of Dada - rejects both autotelic and expressive Art, the post-Romantic variants of modernism that had held sway since 1870.
The unprecedented proliferation of artistic movements and theories of Art from the late Nineteent... more The unprecedented proliferation of artistic movements and theories of Art from the late Nineteenth Century to the present day – where the term Art is being used as a short-hand for all modes of artistic endeavour, whether verbal, visual, musical or theatrical – has left contemporary readers and audiences, academic and non-academic, in the uncomfortable position of hardly knowing what the term Art means any more. Bombarded by the modernist theories, practices and procedures of Aestheticism, Symbolism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Imagism, Expressionism, Futurism, Vorticism, Dada and Surrealism, and bemused by the conceptual and minimalist excrescences of post-modernism from Pop-art to Brit-art, we inhabit an anomic cultural universe where the proliferation of seemingly incommensurable concepts of Art makes it almost impossible to compare or choose between them on any sort of rational basis. My initial aim in this article is to develop a conceptual framework that can be used to categorise such theories, together with the explicit or implicit assumptions they make about the nature of Art – or art. My overarching aim is to propose a fundamental rethink of how we might characterise the various modes of modernist Art by presenting a new theoretical approach, which rejects the long-standing autonomous/avant-garde model of modernism and replaces it with a tri-partite model with three main variants: autotelic, expressive, and radical. Crucially, radical modernism – initially in the guise of Dada - rejects both autotelic and expressive Art, the post-Romantic variants of modernism that had held sway since 1870.
The Canadian veterinary journal. La revue vétérinaire canadienne, 2006
A domestic ferret was presented for episodic regurgitation. Cytologic examination and culture of ... more A domestic ferret was presented for episodic regurgitation. Cytologic examination and culture of an enlarged submandibular lymph node revealed Cryptococcus neoformans variety grubii (serotype A). The ferret was successfully treated with itraconazole. This is the first documented case of Cryptococcus neoformans variety grubii in a ferret in the United States.
This special issue of German Life and Letters presents six of the papers delivered at the confere... more This special issue of German Life and Letters presents six of the papers delivered at the conference, supplemented by a paper by Jurgen Hillesheim, the Director of the Brecht‐Forschungsstelle in Augsburg.
At a time when postmodernism seems to have achieved a dominant position in cultural and critical ... more At a time when postmodernism seems to have achieved a dominant position in cultural and critical theory, the contributors to this volume present a much needed corrective to the misleading images of modernism which have dominated recent debate. Theorizing Modernisms includes an account of European modernism, and analysis of the work of Apollinaire and Aberti, Wyndham Lewis and Mike Johnson, and Kert Schwitters. Steve Giles provides a much needed overview of the relationship between modernism and the avant-garde, postmodernism and modernity.
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Emeritus Professor Steve Giles
University of Nottingham
Why colour-code The Waste Land? The idea came to me when I was rethinking how one might characterise The Waste Land in relation to a new model of modernism, which I had devised in a lengthy article entitled Recalibrating Modernism, Rethinking Art (published in Academia.edu). I suggested that Eliot’s poem is a classic example of ‘radical modernism’, in the sense that it rejects the autotelic and expressive modes of modernism that had been dominant prior to the emergence of Dada. Crucially, The Waste Land lacks any overarching normative authorial presence, and instead consists of multiple voices, none of which have precedence over each other. This characteristic of the poem is not immediately visible on first reading, or even first listening of one of the many recitations of the poem available on the internet. I therefore decided to ‘make visible’ the range and complexity of the poem’s voices, and ‘make strange’ its fundamental features. If it was not an exemplar of expressive modernism, who speaks in The Waste Land? Could the answer be provided by Michel Foucault’s notorious dictum ‘Who speaks? The text speaks’? What is the relationship between the speaker(s) in the poem and the presumed audience? To what extent – if at all – does it project a fundamental critique of contemporary modernity? In order to address these various questions I decided to identify the multiplicity of voices in the poem from beginning to end, to see if there were any particular patterns or underlying structures. I then colour-coded each ‘new’ voice, or shift in voice, and in so doing identified at least 95 voices, including the numerous quotations. I had transmuted Eliot’s poem into a performance text, to be played by six actors, with Steve Reich style music paralleling the colours as the actors declaimed their lines... (such as Music for 18 Musicians). In the Introduction that precedes the colour-coded version I outline a theoretical and textual framework which considers The Waste Land in relation to my new model of modernism, and enables us to rethink the poem’s themes and techniques.
Emeritus Professor Steve Giles
University of Nottingham
Why colour-code The Waste Land? The idea came to me when I was rethinking how one might characterise The Waste Land in relation to a new model of modernism, which I had devised in a lengthy article entitled Recalibrating Modernism, Rethinking Art (published in Academia.edu). I suggested that Eliot’s poem is a classic example of ‘radical modernism’, in the sense that it rejects the autotelic and expressive modes of modernism that had been dominant prior to the emergence of Dada. Crucially, The Waste Land lacks any overarching normative authorial presence, and instead consists of multiple voices, none of which have precedence over each other. This characteristic of the poem is not immediately visible on first reading, or even first listening of one of the many recitations of the poem available on the internet. I therefore decided to ‘make visible’ the range and complexity of the poem’s voices, and ‘make strange’ its fundamental features. If it was not an exemplar of expressive modernism, who speaks in The Waste Land? Could the answer be provided by Michel Foucault’s notorious dictum ‘Who speaks? The text speaks’? What is the relationship between the speaker(s) in the poem and the presumed audience? To what extent – if at all – does it project a fundamental critique of contemporary modernity? In order to address these various questions I decided to identify the multiplicity of voices in the poem from beginning to end, to see if there were any particular patterns or underlying structures. I then colour-coded each ‘new’ voice, or shift in voice, and in so doing identified at least 95 voices, including the numerous quotations. I had transmuted Eliot’s poem into a performance text, to be played by six actors, with Steve Reich style music paralleling the colours as the actors declaimed their lines... (such as Music for 18 Musicians). In the Introduction that precedes the colour-coded version I outline a theoretical and textual framework which considers The Waste Land in relation to my new model of modernism, and enables us to rethink the poem’s themes and techniques.