In 1,500-2,000 words, demonstrate your knowledge of the Modernist theme that you selected in the Research Proposal by using two literary texts and scholarly research to convince readers how and why your chosen theme is representative of Modernism. Your essay must be an argument with significant literary analysis and well-integrated scholarly sources. Your essays will include: An effective introduction about the period and the theme, which ends in a clear thesis that is fully supported by the rest of your paper A brief biographical sketch of the writers and some discussion of how they and their work are Modern Textual evidence from the selected works to explain your analysis Secondary sources to support your analysis A conclusion that neither repeats nor summarizes your essay but, rather, provides commentary on the larger issues you’ve raised and perhaps responds to the postmodern period that reacted against what the Moderns were doing This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the MLA Style Guide These are the two literary texts; The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; 10Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats That is no country for old men. The young In one another arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-fallas, the mackerel-crowded seas, 5Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick unless Soul claps its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God’s holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
