Catherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Bishop and William Carlos Williams were poets and writers of short fiction that belonged to the Modernist movement. The movement itself was triggered mostly by the industrial revolution and the horrors of World War I. It was an inter-continental movement and spread into all spheres and disciplines, such as art, philosophy, literature, architecture, music, culture and so on. During the movement of modernism, the individual moved into the spotlight, and it the human subjectivity and self-consciousness was themes around which most of the art and literary worked evolved. Modernist writers adopted the stream of consciousness; a literary technique used to describe the workings of the mind, and the ways in which thoughts and feelings combined to create a subjective reality. The brother of William James coined the term, and the technique was improved by Katherine Mansfield, but brought to perfection by Joyce. The most dominant Modernist movement in poetry was imagism and found new inspiration in the writings of Sappho, Catullus and Villon. Everything that was not written in that manner was intolerable. The imagists insisted on direct treatment of the subject and omitted every word that was unnecessary decorum. These three authors are representatives of the Modernist movement because their work contains all the elements of modernist writing: imagism, interior monologue, the need to explore the human condition and life in general.
Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” and “This is Just to Say” are both imagist poems, which have an underlying Christian theme. In Christian religion, the fish is considered a symbol of Jesus Christ and in “This is Just to Say” reminds of the story of Eve eating the forbidden fruit. ...
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...a naughty twist to it. “The Fish” has a healing effect on the seemingly lost speaker, whereas the sneaky plum thief celebrates his little devilish deed. Even “The Garden Party” has a Christian theme, since it follows the love-thy-neighbor scheme. However, all three works are purely modernist works, whose major concern is the exploration of the human condition and self-consciousness.
Works Cited
Bishop, Elizabeth. “The Fish”. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Gen. ed. Julia Reidhead. 5th
ed. New York: Norton, 2005. 1516-17. Print.
Mansfield, Catherine. “The Garden Party”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Gen.
ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. F. New York: Norton, 2012. 2346-56. Print.
Williams, Carlos William. “This is Just to Say”. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Gen. ed.
Julia Reidhead. 5th ed. New York: Norton, 2005. 1274. Print.
Wetherell, W.D. "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant." Responding to Literature: Stories, Poems, Plays, and Essays. Fourth Edition. Ed. Judith A. Stanford. Boston: McGrawHill, 2003. 191-196.
Tennessee Williams. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978. 1. See Section 167. Heilman, Robert.
Thomas." The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. 101-10. Print.
Easterlin, Nancy. “Hans Christian Andersen’s Fish out of Water." Philosophy and Literature 25 (2001): 251-77. 6 Oct. 2006.
... to understand one another. Furthermore, while both poets encase aspects of the fish into their poems, Bishop’s interpretation of the fish places it at a distance because her block of text loaded with descriptions is how she sees the fish, which gives the image that she just feels pity for the fish but doesn’t really feel the need to delve deeper in understanding the essence of the fish. By contrast, Oliver’s interpretation of the fish embodies its’ essence because she does not rely on its appearance to understand it but rather when she consumes the fish, its’ spiritual aura merges within herself. Oliver captures the soul of the fish within her poetic writing as evidenced by the constant alliteration with “f” letter words including, “first fish”, “flailed” , “flesh”, “fall”, “feed”, and “feverish”, which give the image that the poem is alive and is the fish.
Rainbow Fish then seeks wisdom from an octopus. (As the story states) “This is my advice. Give a glittering scale to each of the other fish. You will no longer be the most beautiful fish in the sea, but you will discover how to be happy” (Pfister 15). The author uses an octopus, which is a minor ch...
Bishop next relates to the fish on a personal basis: "I looked into his eyes.
This book helped me put some of the situations and feelings that I have experienced in my life into perspective and with more meaning. I could relate to many of the subjects that this book covered and could understand where the author’s ideas originated. Not only can I see his ideas appearing in my own actions, but I also see them in males in their mid-forties to fifties. This observation supports the idea of us going from innocence to doubt and back to innocence. The first idea that stuck with me is the interpretation of the salmon and how it represented Christ.
“The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop is an excellent poem that goes beyond its straightforward subject. She vividly describes the act of catching a fish while also utilizing the thematic elements of figurative language, imagery and tone to bring many more ideas into the picture. Overall “The Fish” is a poem that champions the beauty of nature while also putting forth a negative connotation on all things artificial through a simple topic.
The Modernist Fiction period took place during the 1920’s and revolutionized the American way of life in literature, economically, and socially. There was a national vision of upward mobility during this time that represented the American Dream. The upward mobility was seen through the consumerism and materialism that dominated this decade economically. Popular novels of this time reflected the mass consumerism in the lives of those wrote them. During the American Modernist Fiction period, Americans became increasingly materialistic throughout the roaring twenties; therefore, the American Dream was to obtain upper class status through the possession of material goods, which was reflected in many of this period’s works.
In the modernism there was no focus on the plot events, instead the writers focused on characters' consciousness. Ambiguity and complexity were valued at that time. Modernists often work towards open endings and used the narrative gaps. In the early modernism the technique of Stream of Consciousness was widely used to know more about the human sense. Modernism was influenced by naturalism and realism. Its social content is characteristically avant-grade (Drabble 682). Moreover, the 20th century is one of the most important periods in English drama. New ideas, terms and styles have been introduced as a result of the atmosphere. Writers on that time expressed their anger and scorn as a result of the wars and the revolutions. There were many social changes at that time and the playwrights started to tackle that in their plays (Innes
Allison, Barrows, Blake, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology Of Poetry . 3rd Shorter ed. New York: Norton, 1983. 211.
The title of the poem itself dictates the simplicity Bishop wishes to convey regarding the narrator's view of his catch. A fish is a creature that has preceded the creation of man on this planet. Therefore, Bishop supplies the reader with a subject that is essentially constant and eternal, like life itself. In further examination of this idea the narrator is, in relation to the fish, very young, which helps introduce the theme of deceptive appearances in conjunction with age by building off the notion that youth is ignorant and quick to judge.
The narrator speaks about the fish in terms of commercial, where every part of the fish can be sale for different purposes, but as the speaker look in the fish eyes, starts to compare the human life through the existence of the fish. What the speaker found beautiful about the fish is that as the speaker looks into the fish eyes and start looking in a different way to the creature, she starts to identify a living creature instead of a creature that will die imminently. The speaker starts seeing the beauty of the fish when she start to compare the fish to a soldier, when she sees through the eyes of the fish the victories over death that this creature has won, and I believe that the speaker compares her own battles and victories to the one of this creature in order to survive. I believe that the “ personality” of the fish is humble, brave and that this fish have been battling for a long time for his life, that he has been involved in some sort of violence many times in order to exist. I also feel that this fish is tired of fighting and that he is venerable to the speaker
Williams, William Carlos. The American Idiom: A Correspondence: William Carlos Williams & Harold Norse 1951-1961. Ed. John J. Wilson. Bright Tyger. San Francisco 1990.