Modernist Magazines and Digital Humanities

When looking through The Owl I came across an interesting page that depicted a man playing pool while surrounded by a small crowd. All the characters depicted seem to be of the working class except the man himself. While those surrounding him seem to be fairly ragged and unrefined the man himself is very polished and vibrant. The text on the very top of the page seems to indicate that the scene is somewhere in Ireland. The top right hand corner reads: “Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, The Metropolitan School of Art, Kildare Street, Dublin” which would lead me to think that this was some sort of an ad for the Metropolitan School of Art. The only two characters not completely grey washed are the pool player and a raggedy man on his right, which almost seems to pose the subliminal question of which character the viewer would rather be. The advertisement itself can be found on pages of an May 1919 edition of The Owl.

This piece was particularly interesting to me because it seemed so distant in time yet so close to modern advertisements. Published in 1919 this advertisement is nearly a hundred years old yet so familiar.  The ad seemed to be screaming if you go to The Metropolitan School of Art you too can be refined and the center of attention much like most modern ads do now. We always see well defined models and hot chick using various products as if the product will somehow make all of us beautiful and blessed. I never before realized that the very basic advertising techniques being used today were so far back reaching (in their exact same form and structure). It was really nifty finding this ad.

Due: Project 1

The typography in advertisements in The New Age is consistent with that used for the magazine's articles.  There are a few exceptions for products like Ruskin Fabrics and Fry Cocoa, where logos appear to disrupt the overall text-heavy look of the magazine itself, but even within these advertisements, the actual substantive (textual) portion of the ad matches the magazine's typeface.  The result is a certain subjugation of the advertisement: by forcing the ads for certain products to conform to the magazine's own aesthetic, the importance of the ad becomes relative to the magazine's content.

On another note, the ads are clearly written to cater to readers of The New Age, by appealing to their assumed "superiority" of intellect/interests.  An ad for Hovis Bread proclaims that the product is "NOT an ordinary bread, but a highly specialized article," and Fry's Cocoa purports to be "real food" which promotes "a clear brain and steady nerves."  An ostensible attempt to lessen the cheapening necessity/effect of advertisements, it's as if the ads in The New Age aren't proper ads so much as they are tasteful suggestions for a discerning reader/consumer.  Ads for other publications like The Daily News appeal outright to the oppositional groups presumed to be reading the magazine: in one ad, a brief blurb against the degenerate sport of horse-racing/betting is titled "A Woman's Question" and takes up nearly 3/4 of the ad itself; the title of the magazine appears almost as an afterthought.  

            In many issues of Poetry Hariet Monroe, the long-standing editor of the magazine, included editorial commentary in the form of an essay at the end of the publication. The purpose of such statements was usually to make clear her oppinion on a social or political issue as it pretained to poetry and the publication of poets. One such publication titled "Hard Times Indeed" which argues for the functionality of the poet in: "a strenuous age, of universal locomotion, war and other bedevilments"(308).The statment is made in response to an annonymous submission in the Atlantic Monthly which asserts: "art is dead under the curse of universal locomotion"(308). The submitee goes on to say that were a "minor poet" try to emerge admist the rubble of the modern world, he would: "...wake up in these days to find himself a child in a world of energetic, serious maturity"(308). What follows in her essay is a re-quoting of her opponent and a rebuttle made with cheer-leader like enthusiasm only equaled by present-day infomercial hosts or--dare I say-- democratic politicains in debade:

                                          Were Coleridge, Keats, Shelley—
                                          many others—struck dumb by the terrible and noble facts
                                          of the Napoleonic wars?—yet these singers of "clouds and
                                          leaves and elfin things" were minor poets to their contemporaries.
                                          Did any one of them hush his "sweet-chiming
                                          words" to "leave more room for the great songs sure to
                                          come?" No, for he knew that the great song, the great
                                          work of art, is merely the highest tree of a forest, rarely an
                                           isolated miracle.(309)

           The show made of these annonymous statements is an example of what Mark Morrisson calls: "...the advertising value of spectacle..."(121) in "Marketing British Modernism." Since Poetry not only touted it's variety of poets, both new and emerging, it also kept its final pages as a kind of discussion forum where ideas about art, poetry and contemporary poets could be written upon by their excitable colleauges. Monroe and Pound were often at the center of the ring, and their excitable literary personalities made the editorials as much of a draw to the magazine as the poetry itself.

    In the December 1911 issue of The Windsor Magazine is an advertisement for a ‘A Real Lever Simulation GOLD WATCH FREE.” The ad copy uses the strategy of appealing to the consumer’s notions about himself, and perhaps about his own lifestyle, rather than promoting the quality of the product itself. Along a similar line of thought, the ad is addressed to “all clever readers” of the magazine. There is a sense of urgency in the advertisement, hinting to the consumer that this offer needs to be acted upon immediately. This sense is given through the use of bold text interspersed with the regular text, more so than in other ads, and the bold text is placed so that the words that appear most prominently convey the idea of receiving a free gold watch--the fact that is imitation gold is not emphasized, of course. The suggestion within the ad that the one stipulation if you generously receive the free gold watch is that you must “promise to show your friends, as we wish to advertise our goods,” is a way of saying “This ad is not an ad,” and assumes that the customer is naïve when it comes to advertising.  However, the company’s name is not at all largely printed. It is only included at the bottom of the advertisement, not set off much from the rest of the print, which cleverly makes it seem as though the ad really is only something like a public service announcement.
    Looking through Windsor Magazine, other ads (of which there are many) make efforts to appeal to the consumer in a similar way--by referring to the buyer as a lady or gentleman, with the implication of refinement, or by hinting that the customer surely is ‘in on’ such an exclusive product. For example, a company can provide you with sheet-music for “almost any piece you care to name,” implying knowledge of music; another ad for a steel cabinet addresses the businessman directly with the word ‘you’ and says that “no businessman can afford to run such a risk” of not having such a cabinet and losing documents in a fire. Other ads leave the consumer out of the ad copy entirely, simply stating the virtues of the product. It appears, though, that most include the potential buyer and his thoughts about himself.
 

I am not someone who has had extensive experience with Excel or spreadsheets or Google Docs in the past, but the whole timeline seemed simple enough when we first saw it. I was not nervous going in, but was unsure about a couple of things once I sat down to do it. A few of the awkward labels for the columns sent me grasping for memories from the class about what they meant. When we were taken to the computer lab the first week the MJP had crashed before I could collect any data to add to the timeline, so I did not get a chance to really try it before I got home. I was not quite sure how many tags I should be including, or how in depth my descriptions should go. I wondered how many extra lines we would need, and how quickly we would fill up all the lines we already had.

I like the timeline. I think that it's a valuable resource. I think that it is simple enough to be navigated by most people, and well organized enough to be searched through with some ease. I suppose we all still have to work on establishing what kind of tags to use and things of that nature, but for the most part I think we are all doing well with it and we all know what we are supposed to be doing. I think visually it is nice and simple, and I like the color coordination. I am happy that it is part of all of our projects, and I look forward to watching it expand.

Working on the timeline has been fairly simple considering that the directions and columns are easily recognizable. I feel that it doesn't take very long to post on the timeline once you have chosen your topic and literary work. I have never worked with this kind of a timeline before and I find it interesting to see what other peope in the class have written, and to also give myself the opportunity of letting others see what I enjoy reading, and how I have responded to the pieces that I choose to write about. Working on the timelines in my collaborative assignment has been successful because I was able to catch a glimse and get some insight as to what my group members were reading and writing about in regards to our topic. I think that the timeline makes our discussions easier and opens up the lines of communication within our groups. Even though we each wrote our timelines individually, we all came together in the end to discuss our pieces and responses to them. I don't mind the timeline because I see it as an effective tool in both individual and collaborative work.

Working on the Timeline has been fairly simple to grasp from the beginning - it's a basic excel spreadsheet, and as an auditor for 2 years I dealt with spreadsheets everyday. Entering the information and tagging certain works of literature and art is a different story. Whenever it comes to tagging a piece of literary or art work, I always wonder the following: am I adding too much information? am I seeing something in this piece of work that others will not see? etc... For instance, I was looking at an ink drawing today titled "Ecstacy" in The Owl and I had my own understandings of the art work. But when I asked my little sister about what she thought of the piece it was completely different. So that makes me wonder whenever I describe a literary work am I describing it by using "Anna's Glasses" or am I giving the unbiased version of the literary work? That brings me to think, do others do the same thing? Did John Doe describe "Poem A" using his own understanding of the poem? Is this what we really want to be doing? I think that if we are laying out the Timeline for future scholars we should give a completely unbiased description of the literary/art work that we find in the magazines. I guess I will have to turn off my analytical skills for the Timelining project.

I'll admit that I'm usually one of those students that hates group work. It can be very nerve wracking for someone who is particular about their school work. Yet, the timeline in this class has been an eye-opening experience for me. The Modern Journals Project has so much information that it would be impossible to give everything its proper attention within a six week summer course. With the timeline I find things that I may have missed or overlooked but that my peers have noted. Most of what is on the timeline is pretty interesting stuff and should be since we are taking the time to post it. I also am amazed by the technology involved to turn the spreadsheet into timeline and seeing each other work on the spreedsheet in real time.

Working on the timeline has been a unique and rewarding experience so far. In particular the timeline seems to be useful when working with a topic that appears in a number of journals. As so much in the study of modernist journals requires cross-referencing not only a number of issues, but a number of publications, the timeline's ability to isolate by theme is very useful. Additionally it is very exciting to feel that our work is will provide a future resource to students and scholars. As the trailblazers on this project we unfortunately cannot rely on any previous work, but there is also satisfaction in laying the groundwork and problem solving.

Use of the timeline as a device for constructing these various blogs has been extremely useful in organizing my own thought process in accordance to the identity of this movement through these magazines. It offers visiual aid in helping process the date and its relation to the subject matter of a piece. It is displayed in a way that makes it interesting to see when these materials we are writing about separately appeared in accordance sequentially to one another. Moving away from the turn of the twentieth century, towards World War I, and beyond, the timeline maps the procession of context within these publications. It is interesting to see what types of articles become more and more prominent, as well as what topics are more frequently covered by various authors over the course of those twenty or so years.

As a group, the timeline did not seen to own any particular effect of our overall product, the final essay we contrived; however, use of the timeline on an individual basis almost acted as an outline would. To put my various pieces on the timeline helps me organize my own thoughts, and internally maps out what it is I want to discuss. It reflects the pieces I choose in context to each other, and works great as reference, considering the MJP website is somewhat tedious and time consuming to navigate. It acts as an interesting tool, but the three of us working together hardly used the timeline collaboratively, once we discussed how we would link our separate pieces.