Alison, you seem to have caricatured my main points. I agreed with Tim on the importance of non-Anglo-American influences, extending my argument only to allow for the dissemination of these influences afforded by Eliot’s (and others’) prominence in the US and in Europe. If you wish to re-write history then be my guest, but please don’t just say it’s “deliberately old fashioned” to point these things out.
I also agreed with Tim regarding what you call the “amazing stuff that happened post WW2”; though, I have to admit, I can’t see it as any more remarkable than the shock wave produced by High Modernism. I think in a more reflective moment you would agree with me.
Original Message:
I'm with Tim here. "Jump cuts"? What about what Swift was doing in The
Tale of A Tub in the early 1700s? What about all the amazing stuff
that happened post WW2?
It's nonsense - and desperately old-fashioned - to reduce vital and
fascinating and continuing influences and eruptions to two easily
remembered names. What about South American post colonial poetry, or
Arabic poetry, or, as Tim points out, European poetry, which is rather
more than a prelude to the spotlight falling on Mr Eliot and Mr Joyce
doing the storm scene in Act III, with everyone else just being the
denouement before civilisation fades away into the footlights and the
maids come on to clean up the stage. Or, perhaps, Mr Side comes in to
show everyone where they've gone wrong.
Anyway, as Tim also said, hardly worth arguing. Just got mildly
irritated there. As you were.
xA
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