Modernist Prose

Modernist prose writers produced a wide variety of texts, from the clear, concise prose of Ernest Hemingway to the difficult, experimental work of James Joyce. Below is a selection of prose from some of the best known modernists.

T.S. Eliot

• The Sacred Wood

• • Introduction
  • The Perfect Critic
  • Imperfect Critics
  • Tradition and the Individual Talent
  • The Possibility of a Poetic Drama
  • Euripides and Professor Murray
  • “Rhetoric” and Poetic Drama
  • Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe
  • Hamlet and His Problems
  • Ben Jonson

• Miscellaneous Prose

• • Reflections on Vers Libre, 1917
  • Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry, 1918
  • The Metaphysical Poets, 1921

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald

• The Great Gatsby

• • Chapter One
  • Chapter Two
  • Chapter Three
  • Chapter Four
  • Chapter Five
  • Chapter Six
  • Chapter Seven
  • Chapter Eight
  • Chapter Nine

 

Ford Madox Ford

• The Good Soldier

• • Part One
  • Part Two
  • Part Three
  • Part Four

 

Ernest Hemingway

• The Sun Also Rises

• • Chapter 1
  • Chapter 2
  • Chapter 3
  • Chapter 4
  • Chapter 5
  • Chapter 6
  • Chapter 7
  • Chapter 8
  • Chapter 9
  • Chapter 10
  • Chapter 11
  • Chapter 12
  • Chapter 13
  • Chapter 14
  • Chapter 15
  • Chapter 16
  • Chapter 17
  • Chapter 18
  • Chapter 19

• Miscellaneous Prose

• • Hills Like White Elephants, 1927
  • A Clean, Well Lighted Place, 1933
  • The Old Man and the Sea, 1952

 

James Joyce

• Dubliners

• • The Sisters
  • An Encounter
  • Araby   (annotated)
  • Eveline
  • After the Race

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• • Chapter 1
  • Chapter 2
  • Chapter 3
  • Chapter 4
  • Chapter 5

• Ulysses

• • Telemachus   (annotated)
  • Nestor   (annotation in progress)
  • Proteus
  • Calypso
  • Lotus-Eaters
  • Hades
  • Aeolus
  • Lestrygonians
  • Scylla & Charbydis
  • Wandering Rocks
  • Sirens
  • Cyclops
  • Nausicaa
  • Oxen of the Sun
  • Circe
  • Eumaeus
  • Ithaca
  • Penelope

• Finnegans Wake

• • Episode 1
  • Episode 2

 

Ezra Pound

• Instigations

• • A Study in French Poets
  • Henry James
  • Remy de Gourmont
  • In the Vortex
  • Our Tetrarchal Précieuse

• Miscellaneous Prose

• • A Retrospect, 1918
  • ABC of Economics, 1933
  • Social Credit: An Impact, 1935
  • What is Money For?, 1939
  • America, Roosevelt & the Causes of the Present War, 1944

 

William Butler Yeats

• Miscellaneous Prose

• • Symbolism in Painting, 1898
  • The Symbolism of Poetry, 1900