Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Mannheim, language: English, abstract: Modernist poetry, which emerged in the first two decades of the 20th century had the main aim to eliminate rigid structures of romantic poetry. The images and objects put into words as well as the visual appearance of the poem itself were to express their true nature and to be freed from metaphors they were connected with before. William Carlos Williams is one of the most important poets of the American modernism. He understands perfectly well to combine visual experience with words and the link from some of his poems to works of visual arts and vice versa is more than apparent. This paper focuses on the correlation between those diverse pieces of art. After a short introduction to the life of and influence on Williams in Chapter 2 Chapter 3 draws parallels between the work of Alfred Stieglitz and that of William Carlos Williams. This does not only hold for similarities in the objects and image depicted as in “Spring Showers” and “Young Sycamore”, which have been discussed in literature before. It also applies to the mere force of expression that is analogical in the photograph “Apples and Gable” and the poem “The Red Wheelbarrow”. The constellation of a poem by Williams serving as an inspiring source for a piece of visual arts is focused on in Chapter 4. Williams’ poem “The Great Figure” is analysed and paralleled with the painting “I Saw the Figure Five in Gold” by Charles Demuth. As an example for the indirect inspirational character of Williams’ poem one work by Robert Indiana is introduced directly pointing to Demuth’s painting. Although Indiana is an important representative of American pop art, which evolved out of criticism concerning some aspects of modernist art, similarities in both concepts as well as in all three pieces of art can be identified.

This book is a major step toward a fuller exploration of the connection between the visual arts and Williams' concept of the Modernist poem and of his achievement in transcending an art-for-art's-sake formalism to create poems that both reflect their own nature as a work of art and vividly evoke the world of which they are a part.

To explore the depth of the literary connection between William Carlos Williams and Frank O'Hara, particularly in relation to their American roots, this book examines their distinct responses to Abstract Expressionism, or the New York School artists. Although an outsider to this movement, Williams paid attention to its increasing popularity and ultimately valued its importance in the progression of American art. As an insider, O'Hara functioned as a vital critic and promoter of this group. Foremost among the artists discussed here are Jackson Pollock, Robert Mother-well, and David Smith. Examining Williams's and O'Hare's verse in light of these artists provides readers with a unique vantage point for understanding their appeal to these avant-garde poets, as well as for appreciating this moment in American art history. It reveals a unique amalgamation of ideas about art and poetry that redefined creativity in mid-twentieth-century America.

In this stimulating study, the author explores how Conrad, T.S.Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, Hemingway, Huxley and others responded to the immediate challenges of their time, to the implications of Freudian psychology, molecular theory, relativist theory, and the general weakening of religious faith. Assuming that artists and writers, in coping with those problems, would develop techniques in many ways comparable, even where there was no direct contact, he positions Modernist literature within the context of contemporary painting, architecture and sculpture, thereby providing some fascinating insights into the nature of the literary works themselves.

This collection of essays by scholars and artists of different disciplines and from different countries is designed to navigate the labyrinth of contemporary aesthetic ideologies with the aim of reassessing how we read - both the way in which texts touch us, and we them. Theory has transformed texts into mute interlocutors exposed to infinite indeterminacy. While the response to this sense of silence that undermines meaning is often informed by a nostalgia for older notions of close reading, the essays in this volume work towards a re-evaluation of key subjects such as reader, writer and text. The contributors engage with topics such as digital books, popular culture, alternative ways of book-making, visual-verbal collaborations and thematic explorations of the hand in literature.

A comprehensive writers' guide to the terminology used across the creative writing industries and in the major literary movements. Packed with practical tips for honing writing skills and identifying opportunities for publication and production, it also explains the workings of publishing houses, literary agencies and producing theatres.

This is the first major study on Azorin to appear in two decades. The first part explores parallels between the cultural milieus in France and Spain when both countries lost their colonies in the second half of the nineteenth century. The second part studies the fiction and essays of Jose Martinez Ruiz (Azorin). Illustrated.

Sound and taste conjugate a special relationship, and they are often presented and represented together. The linkage between music and food has been a traditional field for artists to suggest, among various emotions, love and sexual desire, happiness, fear, and rebellion, as well as environmental, urban, ethnic, and class values. This multi-author book explores the interconnectedness of music and food and their meaningful relations. With a multicultural approach, chapters focus on various historical periods and world cultures. Music and food links are explored within the framework of different disciplines, such as musicology, literature, anthropology, and history. General lines for a theoretical base are developed by specialists from diverse fields.

The Companion to Magical Realism provides an assessment of the world-wide impact of a movement which was incubated in Germany, flourished in Latin America and then spread to the rest of the world. It provides a set of up-to-date assessments of the work of writers traditionally associated with magical realism such as Gabriel Garc a M rquez in particular his recently published memoirs], Alejo Carpentier, Miguel ngel Asturias, Juan Rulfo, Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel and Salman Rushdie, as well as bringing into the fold new authors such as W.B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Jos Saramago, Dorit Rabinyan, Ovid, Mar a Luisa Bombal, Ibrahim al-Kawni, Mayra Montero, Nakagami Kenji, Jos Eustasio Rivera and Elias Khoury, discussed for the first time in the context of magical realism. Written in a jargon-free style, and with all quotations translated into English, this book offers a refreshing new interdisciplinary slant on magical realism as an international literary phenomenon emerging from the trauma of colonial dispossession. The companion also has a Guide to Further Reading. Stephen Hart is Professor of Hispanic Studies, University College London and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru. Wen-chin Ouyang lectures in Arabic Literature and Comparative Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. CONTRIBUTORS: Jonathan Allison, Michael Berkowitz, John D. Erickson, Robin Fiddian, Evelyn Fishburn, Stephen M. Hart, David Henn, Stephanie Jones, Julia King, Efra n Kristal, Mark Morris, Humberto N ez-Faraco, Wen-Chin Ouyang, Lois Parkinson Zamora, Helene Price, Tsila A. Ratner, Kenneth Reeds, Alejandra Rengifo, Lorna Robinson, Sarah Sceats, Donald L. Shaw, Stefan Sperl, Philip Swanson, Jason Wilson.

The study of culture in the American academy is not confined to a single field, but is a broad-based set of interests located within and across disciplines. This book investigates the relationship among three major ideas in the American academy—interdisciplinarity, humanities, and culture—and traces the convergence of these ideas from the colonial college to new scholarly developments in the latter half of the twentieth century. Its aim is twofold: to define the changing relationship of these three ideas and, in the course of doing so, to extend present thinking about the concept of "American cultural studies." The book includes two sets of case studies—the first on the implications of interdisciplinarity for literary studies, art history, and music; the second on the shifting trajectories of American studies, African American studies, and women's studies—and concludes by asking what impact new scholarly practices have had on humanities education, particularly on the undergraduate curriculum.