 Today I shall take up a unit from the course English Social and Cultural History Block 4 Literature Romantic to Modern. The unit is titled Unit 15 The Modern Age Till World War II Modern Poetry and Novel. So this is the second video of the unit. Starting with a table of contents. First I shall begin with the learning objectives followed by a highlight on modern poetry and questions to check your progress and the reference. Coming to learning objectives. After going through this unit you will be able to discuss one of the major literary forms of the modern age that is poetry. And also you will be able to highlight the important trends of modern poetry. Modern Poetry. Modern poetry displays an experience of experiments that were introduced following the changes in the first decades of the 20th century. We may begin with a reference to the war poets whose compositions reflected the experience of war and their responses to it. In most of their compositions they employed their first hand experiences of the war to depict a reality that very well created a sense of meaninglessness associated with the entire experience of war. These poets brought to light the futility associated with conflict and war and the tragic destiny of mankind compelled to suffer within the given context. Moreover the experience of the World War I was so overwhelming within the creative community that it initiated new trends in the world of poetry through the works of W.P. Yitz and T.S. Eliot. I am sure you must have heard the names. To provide you with a brief highlight poetry from 1890 to 1918 The Decadence. Now The Decadence they adapted the motto of Arts for Art's sake propounded by Walter Peter. Ernest Dawson and Lionel Johnson with a number of other poets formed the Rhymer's Club of which W.P. Yitz was also a member. This group did not have much to say but they introduced a new and racy vigor into English poetry. The Georgians. By 1900 the search for a more natural type of verse had already begun. It resulted in the poetry of the Georgian school much of which appeared in the five volumes of Georgian poetry. In addition to the works of Rupert Brooke, Edmund Blunders, W.H. Davis, Walter de la Mer and Lachela's Abercombe these collections included works of poets like Gordon Bottomley, John Drinkwater, James Ellry Flecker and so on. Do remember the names. These poets were famous for their rejection of the ideas of the decadence, their quest for simplicity and reality, their love of natural beauty especially as found in the English landscape, their adherence to the forms and techniques of the main traditions of English poetry. Then coming to the imagists. Then emerged the imagist poetry in reaction to the Georgians. Before the first volume of Georgian poetry appeared the seeds of revolt against its ideals were being sown in the lectures of T.E. Holm who exercised a profound influence on English poetry. Holm insisted that poetry should restrict itself to the world perceived by the senses, present its themes in a succession of concise, clearly visualized and concrete images which are accurate in detail and precise in significance. Holm's ideas were quickly taken up particularly by the American poets Hilda Doolittle and Ezra Pound who coined the term imagism for this movement, the war poets. World War I brought to public notice many poets particularly among the young men in the armed forces while it provided a new source of inspiration for writers of established reputation. Many of the war poets were either killed or died in the struggle. A representative selection of the works of poets of this war is to be found in the anthology of war poetry edited by Robert Nichols in 1943. Poets like Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen are some of the most renowned war poets. Poetry from 1918 to 1939. A brave new world torn apart by the disillusionment and despair of the World War found their supreme expression in T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, written in 1922 and the Holloman, written in 1925. The modern tension so different from the complacency of the mid-Victorian period or of the Georgians clearly demanded a new poetic technique. The new poets now turn to free words. Already in the 1920s, the new interest in psychological research had turned poets to a deeper investigation of the hidden impulses of man. It was in fact in psychology and politics that the poets of the 1930s led by W.H. Auden sought a solution to the world problems. Some of the poets who left a mark were W.H. Auden, W.H. T.S. Eliot, J.M. Hopkins, Dylan Thomas, Spender, among others. The picture of the interwar years is then one of continued uncertainty and experiment in an age well described in the title of Auden's collection, The Age of Anxiety, which is not however published until 1948. In such an age, it is natural to find a great proportion of didactic verse. However, even the work of these poets who devoted themselves most wholeheartedly to finding a solution to the problems of a perplexed generation, we find lyric poetry of great intrinsic value. This brings us to the questions to check your progress, starting with question number one. What did modern poetry present or highlight in terms of thematic content? Question number two. Who were the decadents? Question number three. What did the Georgian poets introduce in their poetry? Name some of the Georgian poets. Question number four. Who had coined the term imagism for the imagist movement in modern poetry? And question number five. Name some of the major poets of the modern age. Here are the references you are requested to go through the MA English SLM or the self-learning material of English social and cultural history semester one. So this we come to the end of this video. Thank you, dear learners.