"MODERN" LITERATURE?
"IVe got to lecture aboufc modern literature. The rcal difficulty is that there is no such thing as modern literature. Modern is a word that has been tortured to sbreik out a meaning that it does not possess. This minute that you are wasting listening to me is the only modern thing that is, in the sense of that meaning, and when you get np and go out this minute won't be modern any more. Ifc will belong- to the past. That is what I mean when I say that this thesis is idiotic. It is a purely arbitrary term that can be stretched to include every writing sinCe the beginning of Christendom, or contracted to exclude even yesterday's publications. Literature isn't a thing that you can cut up and shove into separate compartments by arbitrary divisions of time like that. It is tbe thought of humanity given permanent 'objeetive expression, and you can't divorce literature from humanity because the one springs from the othor, and in essentials humanity is what it was in 1066, or 50 B.C. — From "Our Miss Flojver," by Joan A, Cpwdroy.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/HBHETR19370924.2.15.4
Bibliographic details
Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 1, 24 September 1937, Page 4
Word Count
188"MODERN" LITERATURE? Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 1, 24 September 1937, Page 4
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