19 pages • 38 minutes read
Musée des Beaux Arts
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Background
Literary Context
Modernist poet T. S. Eliot became a major influence on Auden while he was studying at Oxford. Though Auden’s work, especially in later years, veered away from the more distanced aesthetics of high Modernism, much of it is still situated within the movement. “Musée des Beaux Arts” was first published in a Modernist magazine, New Writing in 1939.
Modernism was a response to a rapidly changing world affected by industrialization and urbanization. It is rooted in the late 19th century and flowered in the years after World War I: “The enormity of the war had undermined humankind’s faith in the foundations of Western society and culture, and postwar Modernist literature reflected a sense of disillusionment and fragmentation” (Kuiper, Kathleen. “Modernism.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2021).
Literary Modernism is characterized by its search for new modes of expression that often manifested in artistic experimentation like the use of fragmented images and voices, stream of consciousness, and allusions, “requiring the reader to take an active role in interpreting the text” (Kuiper). It is inspired by developments in psychology, philosophy, social sciences, and physics as well as the arts.
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