ࡱ> 130] bjbjzpzp . b b ***8bv *2$Bd777'''7'7'''tYO'{0'\ev\''\;@^'dLL7777\B : Name: Prof. Alex Davis Affiliation: School of English, University College Cork Paper Title: Learning to be Brutal: Synge, Linguistics, Decadence Writing in 1911, Ezra Pound argued that the generation of Ernest Dowson had reached a poetic impasse: while Dowson epitomized a decade and holds a very interesting position, strategically, in the development of the art, his work is the Vale of a number of spent force[s]. Yet, as Pounds early collections vividly demonstrate, modernisms valediction to Aestheticism was to be a long goodbye. A decade earlier, in his Etude Morbide, J. M. Synge can be seen confronting the literary cul-de-sac which Pound had to circumnavigate: the sense that the written literary tradition had, by the end of the nineteenth century, devolved: stories in verse are [pointless] now, sincere drama has the weight [of] earthly passion, description is vain, and lyrical poetry is but a substitute for the singing voice or violin. Literature is not alive. I will be silent. Synges extraordinary development at the turn of the century, from the stalling of both the Etude and the related Vita Vecchia to the achievement of Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen, may owe something to his contact with developments in linguistics on the continent, especially a course on phonetics he took with Paul Passy at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. Synges exposure to Passy seems to have reinforced, as Declan Kiberd suggests, a developing belief in the potential of dialect. While Synges rejection of poetic diction in the very first sentence of the Preface to Poems and Translations would appear to align his later poems the dialect of his plays, it nevertheless remains the case that the idiom of Synges most achieved poetry, as in his drama, is as artificial as any other form of poetic diction, a fact Donald Davie long ago observed. Furthermore, the unvarnished immediacy, the linguistic brutality, Synge advocates in the place of poetic diction in the Preface to Poems and Translations is, as Davie notes, vivid testimony to Synges position in the modern movement. Though we often think of the visuality of a modernist textthat which Jerome J. M cGann memorably describes as the visible language of modernismMark Morrison has noted the importance of orality to the modern movement as a whole, that is, to both modernist and Georgian writers alike. A preoccupation with the purity of English diction (in the United States as well as Great Britain) stemmed from the anxiety that the English language was in a state of terminal decline. In this context, Synges extraordinary late ballads can be read as in the vanguard of the outbreak in poetic realism in Anglophone poetry of the early years of the twentieth century; one which, as Chris Baldick comments, seemed at the time to be a bold rejection of Victorian inhibition, and a promising reconnection of poetry with the vitality of popular speech. On the one hand, Synges ballads are very much in the vein of Pounds contemporaneous Villonauds (Villonaud for this Yule, A Villonaud. Ballad of the Gibbet) in A Lume Spento (1908), works which prefigure the more robust early modernist monologues, Piere Vidal Old and Ballad of the Goodly Frere in Exultations (1909). On the other, however, Synges late poems should be read alongside the nascent poetic realism of the Georgians, including that of his friend and admirer, John Masefield, whose Salt-Water Ballads (1902) and Ballads (1903) signalled a significant breach with the poetry of the 1890s in their vigorous use of colloquialisms, dialect and wilful vulgarity. Synges poetry, from the abortive Vita Vecchia to the minor triumph of the final ballads, participates in the crucial transition from the poetics of the fin de sicle to that of the new century, illustrating in its small compass the rapid shift from the poetics of Decadence and Aestheticism to the restless innovations of the early modern movement.     $O\r? L M N T R W h t . 6 Lbn&BPU[ĸݬݬݬݬݝ~o~hh0OJQJmH sH hh|kP6OJQJmH sH hhy6OJQJmH sH hh|kPOJQJmH sH hh|kP6OJQJhhy6OJQJ]hh|kP6OJQJ]hhy6OJQJhh|kPOJQJhhOJQJhh5OJQJ+Ogdy6[\]lBO'8Viu<Eûh-+7jh-+7UhhuOJQJmH sH hh|kP6OJQJmH sH hh|kPOJQJmH sH hhy6OJQJmH sH ",1h/ =!"#$% s2&6FVfv2(&6FVfv&6FVfv&6FVfv&6FVfv&6FVfv&6FVfv8XV~ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@ 0@_HmH nH sH tH @`@ |kPNormalCJ_HaJmH sH tH DA D Default Paragraph FontRiR  Table Normal4 l4a (k (No List <+< |kP Endnote TextCJaJ>*> |kPEndnote ReferenceH*PK![Content_Types].xmlN0EH-J@%ǎǢ|ș$زULTB l,3;rØJB+$G]7O٭Vc:E3v@P~Ds |w<  [  z@mz@mz@mz@mz@mz@mz@mz@mz@m$.7BJJ *5AINN 8*urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttagsCityB*urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttagscountry-region9*urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttagsplace= *urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags PlaceType=*urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags PlaceName   ELmtMRS[`fkt    % D H I O nu \]]&h  N ?L2y6-+7|kP0u"@@UnknownG*Ax Times New Roman5Symbol3. *Cx Arial9GaramondACambria Math"1hKg'Kg'UQ UQ  hh43HP?|kP0!xx  Name: Profadavis Linda.MoloneyOh+'0d   , 8DLT\ Name: ProfadavisNormalLinda.Moloney2Microsoft Office Word@@~2@~2UQ ՜.+,0 hp  University College Cork  Name: Prof Title !"#$%&')*+,-./2Root Entry F0]41Table\WordDocument.SummaryInformation( DocumentSummaryInformation8(CompObjr  F Microsoft Word 97-2003 Document MSWordDocWord.Document.89q