Description

1. Review Yeats’ poem, The Second Coming (your text does not include a full copy). What impressed you as the most significant theme of the early Twentieth Century based on the text and the poem Second Coming from the discussion?

Explore the site: PoemHunter

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-second-coming/

2. In what way do you feel this century is different in defining itself as “a new age”?

3. If we were participating in a class one hundred years in the future, how might we define our own age as “new” (based on the insight of scholars in retrospective understanding)?

Smarthistory Picasso

Explore the link to Smarthistory.org, the Khan Academy, Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

4.How might Picasso’s work be a departure from earlier styles? Why might this be important for other artists of the era?

Visit the site Smarthistory.org.

Futurism Once on the home page, click ‘style’, then select ‘Futurism’. Explore this early century movement through the links within the site; the articles are informative as well. This material coordinates with p.448-450 in your text.

5. Discuss Futurism as an early century style. What in particular about this period prepares the way for Futurism to flourish (albeit temporarily)?

6. Based on the way we understand Futurism, do you feel that our current perspective of society embodies similar ideas or constructs? Why or why not?

7. How have politics and technology made the twentieth century the “killing century?”