The HyperTexts
Modernism Timeline and Chronology
This is brief history of Modernism in timeline form. We are of the opinion
that Modernism was a continuation of Romanticism. Thus we may be able to draw a
"line of succession" from Edmund Spenser to John Milton to William Blake to
Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, then on to early Modernists like William
Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf.
Related pages: Free Verse Timeline
A Brief History of English Poetry, Leading up to Modernism (the main periods are underlined;
the major poets' names are bolded)
5600 BC Rising seas separate England from the European mainland; consequently
the natives' language begins to evolve separately from those of its continental peers.
3000 BC The first smaller henges are dug out at Stonehenge but the native
Britons remain prehistoric, lacking any writing.
55 BC Julius Caesar invades England; the Anglo-Roman Period (55 BC-410 AD) makes Latin the
language of rulers, clergy and scholars. Native poetry remains oral.
122 The Roman Emperor Hadrian visits England; construction of Hadrian's
Wall begins. Elites study Latin, the language of church, state and commerce.
410 Rome is sacked by Visigoths; the Roman legions depart England. Germanic tribes soon invade. Thus begins the Anglo-Saxon or Old English Period (410-1066).
658 Caedmon's Hymn, the oldest authenticated English poem, marks the beginning of English poetry (although it was Anglo-Saxon and thus heavily Germanic).
680 Possible date for the composition of the epic poem Beowulf, a
masterpiece of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) poetry.
871 King Alfred the Great unites the Anglo-Saxons, defeats
the Danes and becomes the first king of a united England. He was also a scholar, writer and translator.
950 The Exeter Book has poems likely written by women, Wulf and Eadwacer and The Wife's Lament, the first rhymed poem and
Anglo-Saxon riddles/kennings.
1066 William the Conqueror wins the Battle of Hastings; this Norman Conquest begins the Anglo-Norman or Middle English Period (1066-1340). French and Latin
rule.
1260 Early rhyming poems include
Sumer is icumen in,
Fowles in the Frith,
Ich
am of Irlaunde,
Now Goeth Sun Under Wood,
Pity Mary, and Alison.
1340 Birth of Geoffrey Chaucer, the first major vernacular English poet;
thus begins the Late Middle English Period (1340-1503); also John Skelton
and William Dunbar.
1455 The Guttenberg Bible is the first book printed with moveable
type. Printed books would lead to an explosion of knowledge and education
around the world.
1503 Birth of Thomas Wyatt; he and Henry Howard introduce the sonnet, iambic pentameter and blank verse
to England, beginning the
English Renaissance (1503-1558).
1517 Martin Luther, a professor of moral theology at Wittenberg, publishes his 95 theses against the Roman Catholic Church,
kick-starting the Protestant Reformation.
1532 The English Reformation Period (1532-1649)
was more religious/political than poetic.
1534 Around this time, Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard introduce the English
sonnet, modeled after Italy's Petrarchan sonnet.
1552 Births of Sir Walter Ralegh and Edmund Spenser; the
latter created the modern English style of poetry: "fluid," "limpid," "translucent" and "graceful."
1558 The Elizabethan Period (1558-1603) was fertile with major works by Spenser, Ralegh, Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare.
1572 Birth of John Donne, the major poet of the
Metaphysical Period (1572-1695); others were
George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Richard Crashaw and Henry Vaughn.
1579 Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calender has been called "the first
work of the English literary Renaissance."
1591 Birth of Robert Herrick, first poet of the
Cavalier Period (1591-1674); others included Richard
Lovelace, Sir John Suckling and Thomas Carew.
1603 The Jacobean/Caroline/Interregnum/Restoration Period (1603-1690) sees the
King James Bible, Shakespeare's later plays, and major works by John Milton.
1608 John Milton is born; John Donne writes his Holy Sonnets;
Shakespeare completes his sonnets and his plays are being performed: Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, etc.
1611 The King James Bible is published in still-readable English. It
contains some of the earliest English free verse, such
as the poetic Song of Solomon.
1649 King Charles I is found guilty of treason then executed. Oliver Cromwell
becomes England's Lord Protector and Regent in 1653. Milton lauds
Cromwell.
1690 The Augustan Period (1690-1756) is marked by the sophisticated work of Alexander Pope, John Dryden
and Samuel Johnson. (But it seems like a dry spell today.)
1750 Edward Young's melancholic Night-Thoughts, illustrated by William Blake in 1797, would become a major influence on Romantics
such as Blake and Goethe.
1742 Thomas Gray begins writing his masterpiece, Elegy Written in
a Country Churchyard. It may have been the first major work of English
Romanticism.
1752 Birth of Thomas Chatterton,
called the "marvellous boy" by
William Wordsworth. Although he died at age 17, Chatterton has been called the first Romantic poet.
1757 Birth of William Blake, a major poet of the English Romantic Period (1757-1837); others
were
Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.
1759 Birth of the Romantic poet
Robert Burns,
generally considered to be the greatest Scottish poet. Like Blake,
he would be a stern critic of kings, state and church.
1776 Americans declare independence with words written in
ringing iambic pentameter by Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin: "We hold these
truths to be self-evident ..."
1789 The French Revolution influences the great Romantics:
Blake, Burns, Wordsworth,
Byron, Shelley and
Keats.
1798 Lyrical Ballads, written by Wordsworth with a
few poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, becomes the foundational text of the
English Romantic Movement.
1819 Keats publishes Ode to a Grecian Urn and Ode
to a Nightingale. Byron publishes Don Juan. Birth of
the American Romantic poet Walt Whitman.
1830 Alfred Tennyson publishes his Poems, Chiefly Lyrical.
Emily Dickinson, generally considered to be the greatest female
American poet, is born.
1836 Ralph Waldo Emerson is a founder of the Transcendental Club, which includes Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott.
1837 The Victorian Period (1837-1901) is led by Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Clare, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
1855 Walt Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass, a landmark work of
Early Modernism (1855-1901) that rocks the Victorians to their whalebone corsets!
1867 Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach has been called a masterpiece of Early Modernism.
1871 Birth of Stephen Crane. He would write poems and prose in a minimalist or
"spare" style that would influence modernist writers like Ernest Hemingway and
Carl Sandburg.
1881 Oscar Wilde's poems are published; he and Whitman were among the first
gay poets to "come out of the closet" publicly.
Henry James's novel A Portrait of a Lady.
1885 Ezra Pound, an American poet and critic, is born. William Butler Yeats's
first poems are published in the Dublin University Review.
1888 T. S. Eliot, a major Modernist poet
and critic, is born. Columbia Records, the first major
American record label, is founded. The first classical
music recording by Handel.
1889 William Butler Yeats publishes The Wanderings of Oisin and Other
Poems. Yeats meets and falls in love with the
lovely Irish nationalist and revolutionary Maude Gonne.
1890 Emily Dickinson's poems are published posthumously. William James
publishes Principles of Psychology, a book that would influence the
Modernists.
1892 Walt Whitman prepares the final edition of Leaves of Grass,
known as the "Deathbed Edition."
1893 The birth of the great English war poet Wilfred Owen
(1893-1918). William Butler Yeats publishes The Rose and The Celtic Twilight.
1895 Scott Joplin publishes ragtime. Buddy Bolden creates the countermelody of jazz. The
world will soon be awash in poems set to music: pop, rock, country,
blues, etc.
1896 Thomas Hardy's last novel, Jude the
Obscure, is considered "shocking" and he turns to poetry for the last 30
years of his life. H. G. Wells writes The Island of Dr. Moreau.
1897 H. G.
Wells writes the early science fiction novel The Invisible Man.
1898 Thomas Hardy's Wessex Poems. Oscar Wilde's long poem The Ballad of
Reading Gaol. H. G. Wells writes The War of the Worlds.
1899 Ernest Dowson's Decorations: in Verse and Prose. Dowson would be
a major influence on T. S. Eliot, and thus on modernism. Joseph
Conrad writes Heart of Darkness.
1900 Queen Victoria dies, marking the
end of the Victorian Era. Sigmund Freud publishes Interpretation of Dreams,
which became an important influence on the Modernists.
1901 The Edwardian/Georgian Period (1901-1936) is brief but fecund with Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, Wilfred Owen,
Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas.
Our top ten poets of Early Modernism: James Joyce, William Carlos Williams,
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg, Ernest Dowson, Ezra
Pound, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, William Butler Yeats
Early Modernism and the Edwardian Period (1901-1910)
1901 Approximate beginning time for American country music and jazz.
Sears, Roebuck and Co. is selling record players to the public, setting the
stage for the coming explosion of record sales. Charles Booth's performance
of J. Bodewalt Lange's "Creole Blues" is recorded for the new Victor label. This is
the first acoustic recording of ragtime to be made commercially available. Laura Riding is born. King Edward VII assumes the British throne,
beginning the Edwardian Period.
1902 Thomas Hardy publishes Poems of the Past and Present. Alfred
Noyes publishes The Loom of Years. Hilda Doolittle, aka H.D., meets and
befriends Ezra Pound. Ogden Nash is born, synchronistically, in the same year as
the earliest-published American limerick, which appeared in 1902 in the
Princeton Tiger: This is the popular limerick that starts "There once was a
man from Nantucket." Victor Records issues the first known recording of
black music, "Camp Meeting Shouts." Pianist Jelly Roll Morton claims
to have invented jazz this year. Buddy Bolden is another candidate, as he
creates a fusion of blues and ragtime. Henry James publishes The
Wings of the Dove.
1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright fly the first airplane at Kitty Hawk. William Butler Yeats
publishes In the Seven Woods. Countee Cullen, an American poet, is
born. W. C. Handy sees a bluesman playing a guitar with a knife (the first
"pick"?). A plaque bearing the sonnet "The New Colossus" by Manhattan
socialite Emma Lazarus is mounted inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty,
greeting newcomers with the lines, "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your
huddled masses yearning to breathe free." George Bernard Shaw's play
Man and Superman. Henry James publishes
The Ambassadors. Samuel Butler's posthumous novel
The Way of All Flesh "attacked all the major doctrines of his day."
1904 Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts. Christina Rossetti's Poetical
Works. Algernon Charles Swinburne's A Channel Passage and Other Poems.
Carl Sandburg's In Restless Ecstasy. Pablo Neruda, the great Chilean
poet, is born. Henry James publishes The Golden Bowl.
1905 Albert Einstein presents his Special Theory of Relativity. Time
and space were no longer infinite or absolute; everything was suddenly relative. Vachel Lindsay
peddles his poems on the street, makes 13 cents, and is ecstatic. Ernest
Dowson's The Poems of Ernest Dowson. Oscar Wilde's De Profundis
(posthumous). Paul Laurence Dunbar's Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow.
George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara.
1906 Alfred Noyes's "The Highwayman." Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts II.
1907 James Joyce's Chamber Music. Sara Teasdale's Sonnets to Duse
and Other Poems. Rudyard Kipling, an English poet and novelist, wins the
Nobel Prize for Literature. W. H. Auden, an English poet, is born. Buddy Bolden
is committed to a mental institution without having ever recorded any music. The
first wireless broadcast of classical music is produced in New York. Rudyard
Kipling becomes the first English language writer to win a Nobel Prize for
Literature, and the youngest at age 42. Ezra Pound is forced to leave a teaching
position at Wabash College after offering a stranded chorus girl tea and his
bed.
1908 Ezra Pound leaves America
for London. Pound's A Lume Spento, a collection of poems he later
called "stale cream puffs." Pound, a transplanted American, is considered by
many to be the father of English modernism. William Butler Yeats publishes The Collected Works in Verse and
Prose. Yeats and Maude Gonne finally consummate their
relationship in Paris, but the relationship does not last. Thomas Hardy publishes The Dynasts III. Theodore Roethke,
an American poet, is born. Alcohol is banned in North Carolina and Georgia,
presaging Prohibition.
1909 Two poems published by T. E Hulme are considered to be the beginning of
the early modernist movement called Imagism. Hulme forms the Secession Club with
F. S. Flint and other poets. Ezra Pound soon joins the club. The poets discuss
free verse and employing the methods of Oriental verse forms such as haiku and
tanka. Pound publishes Personae and Exultations. Pound meets William
Butler Yeats; Pound becomes Yeats's secretary. William Carlos
Williams publishes Poems. Joseph Conrad completes The Secret Sharer. Robert Peary reaches the North Pole.
1910 Rudyard Kipling writes his most famous poem, "If." Ford Madox Ford publishes Poems from
London. Charles Olson, an American poet, is born. The NAACP is founded.
Mark Twain dies. E. M. Forster's novel Howard's End. Marie Curie isolates radium. King George V assumes the British
throne, beginning the Georgian Period. Virginia Woolf writes
that "in or about December 1910, human character changed." The change became
known as "modernism" (one aspect of modernism is that the
"complexity of modern urban life must be reflected in literary form.")
Our top ten Modernist poets: E. E. Cummings, Edna St. Vincent Millay, D. H.
Lawrence, Louise Bogan, Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Hart Crane, Wilfred Owen, Wallace Stevens
(#1)
The Georgian Period (1910-1936), World War I and the Modernists
1911 Georgian poets include Rupert Brooke, W. H. Davies, Robert Graves, D. H.
Lawrence, Walter de la Mare, John Masefield, Harold Monro, Wilfred Owen,
Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas, Vita Sackville-West. Wilhelm Apollinaris de
Kostrowitzky, who writes under the pen name "Guillaume Apollinaire," is
suspected in the theft of the Mona Lisa from The Louvre museum in Paris and is
imprisoned for six days. Ezra Pound's Canzoni is published in London.
Irving Berlin completes his first hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band." The birth of the American playwright Tennessee Williams.
1912 Harriet Munroe founds the literary journal Poetry, influenced by
Ezra Pound as a foreign editor. Pound, H.D. and Richard Aldington work out the
principles of Imagist poetry. The first Imagist poems and essays
appear in Poetry. Ironically "modernism" involved
retreats to the past: Pound looked back to Confucius; T. S. Eliot to Dante; James
Joyce to Homer; Lawrence to primitive tribes. The Titanic sinks, inspiring Thomas Hardy's "The Convergence of
the Twain." Rudyard Kipling publishes his Collected Poems. Walter de la
Mare publishes The Listeners and Other Poems. Robinson Jeffers
publishes Flagons and Apples. Edna St. Vincent Millay publishes
Renascence. Elinor Wylie publishes Incidental Numbers. Northrop
Frye is born. The "father of the blues," pianist W. C. Handy, publishes songs titled
"Memphis Blues" and helps inaugurate a new style based on rural black
folk music.
1913 D. H. Lawrence's Love Poems. Ezra Pound's manifesto and
anthology Des Imagistes. Notable imagist poets include Pound, Hulme, F. S. Flint, H. D.,
Aldington and Amy Lowell. Harold
Monro founds the Poetry Bookshop in London, where Ezra Pound and Robert Frost
will eventually meet. Wallace Stevens and his wife, Elsie, rent a New York City
apartment from sculptor Adolph Weinman, who makes a bust of Elsie; her image
later is used on the artist's 1916-1945 Mercury dime design. Rabindranath Tagore
is awarded the Nobel prize in literature. D. H. Lawrence publishes Love
Poems and Others. The word "jazz" first appears in print. Igor
Stravinsky's avant-garde musical composition and ballet The Rite of Spring
nearly causes a riot! Robert
Bridges is appointed British Poet Laureate.
1914 Great Britain enters World War I by declaring war on Germany. Famous war
poets would include Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Edmund
Blunden and Wilfred Owen. The Panama
Canal opens to commercial traffic. Ezra Pound marries English artist Dorothy Shakespear at St Mary Abbots
church, Kensington, London. T. S. Eliot meets Pound for the first time, in
London. Pound is particularly taken with Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock" and writes that Eliot "actually trained and modernized himself
on his own." Pound and Eliot would become leading voices of English modernism. Edward Thomas makes the English railway journey which inspires his poem
"Adlestrop" en route to meet Robert Frost. BLAST, a short-lived literary magazine of
the Vorticist movement, is founded with the publication of the first of its
total of two editions, edited by Wyndham Lewis in collaboration with Pound. J. R. R. Tolkien writes a poem
about Eδrendil, the first appearance of his mythopoeic Middle-earth legendarium
that will, in time, spawn the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Robert Frost publishes North of Boston. Wallace Stevens has
his first major publication, "Phases" in Poetry at age 35. Carl
Sandburg publishes "Chicago" in Poetry. William Butler Yeats
publishes Responsibilities. James Joyce publishes Dubliners, a
collection of short stories. Dylan Thomas, Randall Jarrell
and John Berryman are born. W.C. Handy writes St. Louis Blues.
1915 The last issue of Blast includes the first poems of T. S. Eliot
to be published in England. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is published with the
help of Ezra Pound by Poetry. Pound completes
the first section of his Cantos. Virginia Woolf publishes her first novel,
The Voyage Out. Herbert Read publishes Songs of Chaos.
John McCrea publishes "In Flanders Fields." Edgar Lee Masters publishes
Spoon River Anthology. Billie Holliday, an African-American singer, is
born. Franz Kafka publishes his surrealist short novel Metamorphosis. Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.
1916 Thomas Hardy's Selected Poems. D. H. Lawrence's Amores.
Edward Thomas's first published poetry collection, Six Poems, under the
pseudonym Edward Eastway. William Butler Yeats's "Easter, 1916." Yeats
also writes one of his loveliest poems, "The Wild Swans at Coole" at the Coole
Park estate of his patron Lady Gregory. Robert Frost's
Mountain Interval, includes his famous poem "The Road Not Taken,"
written about Edward Thomas. Carl Sandburg publishes Chicago Poems,
including his best-known poem, "Chicago." James Joyce publishes his
autobiographical modernist novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. W. H. Davies publishes Selected
Poems. John Ciardi, an American poet, is born. The Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia will have worldwide repercussions. George Bernard Shaw's popular play
Pygmalion.
1917 The U.S. enters World War I and begins to dominate international affairs.
More than 200,000 black men will serve in the U.S. armed forces in segregated
units; they can fight and die for their country, but are not equal citizens.
When William Butler Yeats proposes to Maude Gonne and is rejected yet again, he
then proposes to her daughter Iseult Gonne, and is also rejected!
1918 Wilfred Owen writes his graphic anti-war poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est." He
dies just one week before the armistice that ends WWI. Tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins
tours with blues singer Mamie Smith and begins to develop a unique style of
playing. The black singer, actor, and civil rights activist Paul Robeson
graduates first in his class from Rutgers University. Robert Bridges publishes
the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins posthumously.
1919 George Gershwin's first and biggest hit is "Swanee." It is introduced by
the singer Al Jolson, famous for performing in blackface. Physicist Ernest
Rutherford, known as the father of nuclear physics, discovers a way to split atoms. The
Original Dixieland Jass Band performs in London.
1920 Edna St. Vincent Millay's "First
Fig." Jazz is made popular by musicians like Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll
Morton. The first
blues record is recorded on Valentine's Day (February 14, 1920) when Mamie
Smith, a black vaudeville performer, cuts "Crazy Blues." The records sells
"phenomenally" well and record companies are soon "beating the bushes for any
black woman who can sing." Women's suffrage is adopted in the U.S.
1921 Adolf Hitler is elected leader of the Nazi Party in Germany.
1922 T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" (perhaps the major poem of English modernism).
James Joyce publishes Ulysses (perhaps the major novel of English modernism). Edward Arlington Robinson wins the first Pulitzer
Prize for Poetry. The jazz pianist William "Count" Basie makes his first
recordings. The first commercial recordings of what was considered country music
were "Arkansas Traveler" and "Turkey in the Straw" by fiddlers Henry Gilliland &
A.C. (Eck) Robertson on June 30, 1922 at the office of Victor Records in New
York. They were Confederate veterans playing "hillbilly music."
William Butler Yeats becomes a senator of the Irish Free State.
1923 Wallace Stevens's Harmonium. William Carlos Williams's "The Red
Wheelbarrow." William Butler Yeats is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Edna St. Vincent Millay wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Bessie Smith and Ma
Rainey, the defining performers of classic blues, make their recording debuts.
Ralph Peer of Okeh records the hillbilly music of Fiddlin' John Carson in an empty loft in
Atlanta. Hiram King "Hank" Williams is born in
Olive, Alabama. He will become country music's greatest icon and most
imitated performer.
1924 The birth of the American writer and social critic James Baldwin
(1924-1987). Robert Frost wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Robinson Jeffers'
poem "Shine, Perishing Republic." E. M. Forster writes his best-known
novel, A Passage to India.
1925 Amy Lowell wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. E. E. Cummings receives
the Dial Award. In Nashville the Grand Ole Opry begins radio broadcasts,
bringing country and western music to the masses. Blind Lemon Jefferson is first
recorded; he will become the dominant blues figure of the late 1920s and the
first star of folk blues. Virginia Woolf publishes her novel Mrs.
Dalloway. Franz Kafka publishes The Trial. William Butler Yeats
publishes A Vision.
1926 The birth of the American poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), the author of
"Howl" and perhaps the
greatest and most influential of the Beat poets. Langston Hughes' The Weary Blues.
1927 Show Boat becomes the first hugely popular American musical
comedy. Jimmie Rogers, the "father of country music," appears on a radio station
for the first time, in Ashville, North Carolina. Rogers then records "Blue
Yodel," better known as "T for Texas" and is catapulted to stardom. The Carter
family, another country music group, also makes its first recordings. They would
employ a black man to find black tunes for them to use. It would be the
convergence of black music and country music that would eventually "fuse" into
rock and roll in the hands of artists like Elvis Presley. Virginia Woolf
publishes her novel To the Lighthouse. Wyndham Lewis's play
The Wild Body.
1928 Edward Arlington Robinson wins his third Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Virginia Woolf publishes her gender-bending novel Orlando. D. H.
Lawrence publishes Lady Chatterly's Lover in Italy; the racy book is
called obscene. Thomas Hardy dies and is buried at the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. Or
rather, his ashes are buried there and his heart is buried at Stinsford with his
wife Emma. (Shades of David Livingston!)
1929 The Great Depression cripples the American economy, hurting the sales of
books, phonographs and records. Virginia Woolf publishes her
book-length essay A Room of One's Own. William Faulkner publishes
The Sound and the Fury. Ernest Hemingway publishes A Farewell to Arms.
1930 Hart Crane's The Bridge. Conrad Aiken wins the Pulitzer Prize
for Poetry. The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas writes his first poem, around age 15.
Many of his most famous poems were written as a teenager. Years later, Bob Dylan
would take his assumed last name from Thomas's first. T. S. Eliot publishes
Ash Wednesday.
1931 E. E. Cummings writes the great modernist anti-war poem "i sing of Olaf
glad and big."
1933 Archibald MacLeish wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
1934 Adolf Hitler becomes dictator of Germany.
1936 Debut of the electric guitar; the dawn of the rock 'n' roll age.
Legendary Delta bluesman Robert Johnson begins his short recording career.
King George V dies, ending the Georgian Period.
World War II, the Cold War, Modernism and Postmodernism (1937-Present)
1939 Great Britain enters World War II. During the war, pocket-sized
collections of poems by writers including Percy Bysshe Shelley, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are distributed to soldiers for comfort
and inspiration. (Wilfred Owen was presumably not included.) William Butler
Yeats dies at age 73. W. H. Auden
writes his
famous elegy "In
Memory of W. B. Yeats." Eddie Durham records the first music featuring the
electric guitar; it will influence the development of the blues, which will in
turn influence rock'n'roll.
1941 T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets." The debut of FM radio stations.
Alan Lomax records McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters, at
Stovall's Farm in Mississippi.
1942 Wallace Stevens's Of Modern Poetry. The first award of a gold
record for a million-selling hit went to Glenn Miller for "Chatanooga
Choo-Choo."
1944 Tennessee
Williams has a hit play with The Glass Menagerie.
1945 The end of World War II.
Allen Ginsberg joins the Merchant Marine in order to pay his tuition at pricey
Columbia University. At Columbia, Ginsberg meets other writers who will
eventually become known as the Beats, including Lucien Carr, Neal Cassady, Jack
Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.
1948 T. S. Eliot wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. W. H. Auden wins the
Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Leonie Adams is appointed Poet Laureate to the
Library of Congress. Columbia Records introduces the LP ("long playing") vinyl
record, or "album." Allen Ginsberg has his "auditory vision" of William Blake;
Ginsberg would become the foremost Beat poet.
1949
Hank Williams Sr. makes his debut on the Grand Ole Opry. Jerry Wexler, an editor
at Billboard magazine, coins the term "rhythm and blues" as a substitute for the
older term "race records."
1950 Nat King Cole hits the charts with "Mona Lisa." Little Richard is an
electric star.
1951 Carl Sandburg wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Cleveland disc jockey
Alan Freed uses the term "rock 'n' roll" to promote rhythm and blues to white
audiences. Muddy Waters is the king of the blues singers.
1952 William Carlos Williams is appointed Poet Laureate to the
Library of Congress. Sam Phillips founds Sun Records.
1954 Bill Haley and the Comets have the first rock smash with "Rock Around the
Clock." Elvis Presley records his first commercial record, a cover of the
Arthur Crudup song "That's
All Right, Mama," at Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee.
1955 Black artists. sometimes employing racy lyrics, begin to hit the pop
charts: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, Sam
Cooke, the Platters. Chuck Berry's "Maybellene." Buddy Holley watches Elvis
perform in Lubbock, Texas, and begins to perform in a similar rockabilly style.
Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is a precursor
of rap and modern performance poetry.
Tennessee Williams has a hit play with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,
which becomes a major motion picture starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor.
1957 San Francisco book publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti is arrested for
publishing Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl." The landmark obscenity trial (and
not-guilty verdict) essentially leads to the end of U.S. government censorship. Elvis is "All Shook
Up" and doing the "Jailhouse Rock." Rockabilly star Buddy Holly and the
Crickets hit the charts with "That'll Be the Day."
1958 Robert Penn Warren wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Robert Frost is
appointed Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress. Rock hits a high gear with
up-tempo classics like "Tequila," "Get a Job" and "At the Hop." Buddy Holly
appears on the Ed Sullivan show. Boris Pasternak, a Russian poet, wins the Nobel
Prize for Literature. Ezra Pound's indictment for treason is dismissed. The
Bollingen Prize is awarded to e. e. cummings. Billboard magazine introduces its Hot 100 chart. Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool" is the first No. 1 record.
1959 Berry Gordy Jr. founds the
Motown record label; its future stars will include the
Miracles, Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. Tennessee Williams has a hit
play with Sweet Bird of Youth.
1962 Bob Zimmerman changes his name to Bob Dylan, taking his new last name
from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's first. James Brown records "Live At The
Apollo." Browns drummer Clayton Fillyau introduces a sound now known as the
break beat, which would later inspire the b-boy movement, and rap.
1963 William Carlos Williams wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Bob Dylan becomes
famous for protest songs like "Blowin' in the Wind."
1964 The Beatles top the American charts for the first time with "I Want To Hold Your
Hand" and Beatlemania has begun. The Beatles appear on the Ed
Sullivan show with an estimated audience of 73 million. The British invasion also includes the Animals
with "House of the Rising Sun" and the Kinks with "You Really Got Me." Other
popular British invasion groups include the Rolling Stones, the Who and Herman's
Hermits. Ironically, the "invasion" largely consists of white English rockers
importing American blues classics and emulations!
1965 Stephen Spender is appointed Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress.
Jim Morrison and The Doors begin to perform, taking their name from poet William
Blake's "Doors of Perception." The bad boys of rock'n'roll, the Rolling Stones,
score with "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." Bob Dylan has a major hit with "Like
a Rolling Stone" and goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival (receiving
boos from the audience and producers). Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay) recites one of his first
rhymes before defeating Sonny Liston for the heavyweight boxing title. James Brown is the "godfather of soul."
1969 Woodstock features folk and rock poets Arlo Guthrie; Joan Baez; John
Fogerty; Sly Stone; Janis Joplin; Jimi Hendrix; and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
Hendrix steals the show by playing a hard rock version of "The Star Spangled
Banner" on his electric Fender Stratocaster. (But
the Archies maintain the number one position on the charts with the
pop hit "Sugar, Sugar.") Johnny Cash, who had problems with the
law himself, performs for the inmates of San Quentin.
1970
The Moody Blues, ELO and Pink Floyd invent "art rock."
1971
Ex-Beatle John Lennon releases his Imagine album with its utopian title song.
Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet, wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. Andrew Lloyd
Webber's musical Jesus Christ, Superstar.
1972 The earliest "rap" musical events are held in the Bronx.
Related Pages in Chronological Order:
Song of Amergin,
Caedmon's Hymn,
Bede's Death Song,
Deor's Lament,
Wulf and Eadwacer,
The Wife's Lament,
Anglo-Saxon Riddles and Kennings,
How Long the Night,
Ballads,
Sumer is Icumen in,
Fowles in the Frith,
Ich am of Irlaunde,
Tom O'Bedlam's Song,
Now Goeth Sun Under Wood,
Pity Mary,
Sweet Rose of Virtue,
Lament for the Makaris
The HyperTexts