Document Type
Sophomore Award Winner
Award Date
Spring 2014
Course Name
Literary Explorations II
Teacher
Dr. Adam Kotlarczyk
Abstract
A person’s mind is nothing more than a bank of memories. Everything that he thinks, imagines, and writes is an improvised rehash of past experiences. Therefore, those with similar backgrounds will inherently produce similar works. Given the plethora of people that have lived on the Earth, it is difficult to find an individual with truly unique recollections. Modernists are no exception. The defining characteristic of modernism is its utter disregard for tradition and regulation. Over a millennium earlier, poets from the late Tang Dynasty had the same philosophy. Thus when modernist poets such as Ezra Pound state that they want to ‘make it new’, they are only dreaming. The writing styles of these two types of bards are strikingly similar. In fact, one could justify that every ‘groundbreaking’ technique utilized by a modernist has already been employed by a Tang poet. This is even the case for William Carlos Williams, one of the most famous poets from the Modernist Era.
Recommended Citation
Xu, David '16, "The Modernist Era: Tang Dynasty 2.0" (2014). 2014 Spring Semester. 1.
https://digitalcommons.imsa.edu/spring2014/1