![]() They created discontinuous texts, collages and mosaics, fragmentary epics such as Ezra Pound’s The Cantos (1915–1969), Louis Zukofsky’s “A” (1927–1978), and T. The modernist poets reinvented the fragment as an acutely self-conscious mode of writing that breaks the flow of time, leaving gaps and tears, lacunae. Anne Janowitz characterizes the romantic fragment as “a partial whole-either a remnant of something once complete and now broken or decayed, or the beginning of something that remains unaccomplished.” It becomes a radiant moment out of time, which can never be completed because it aspires to the infinite. A Fragment of a Turkish Tale” (1813) all were presented as lyrics with a purposeful partiality. One of Friedrich Schlegel’s fragments defines the genre: “A Fragment must as a miniature work of art be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and perfect in itself, like a hedgehog.” Coleridge’s “ Kubla Khan: or a Vision in a Dream. ![]() The passion for ruins as well as the taste for poetic relics and antiquities contributed to the acceptance of the romantic fragment, which we now recognize as a genre in its own right and a prototype of romantic poetry in general. Readers had become so accustomed to reading unfinished texts by the early nineteenth century that it became acceptable and even fashionable to publish poems that were intentionally fragmentary. ![]() In the medieval and Renaissance eras, fragments were often allegorical, suggesting something broken off from a divine whole. Even though we know that Greek lyric is mere fragments, indeed, because we know that Greek lyric is mere fragments, we act, speak, and write as if the unthinkable had not happened, as if pious bishops, careless monks, and hungry mice had not consigned Sappho and her lyrical colleagues to irremediable oblivion. No experience in reading, perhaps, is more depressing and more frustrating than to open a volume of Sappho’s fragments and to recognize, yet again-one always hopes that somehow this time it will be different-that this poetry is all but lost to us. . . . Johnson puts it in The Idea of Lyric (1982): Much of the work of the ancients comes down to us in fragments and tatters, cut pieces. The following definition of the term fragment is reprinted from A Poet's Glossary by Edward Hirsch.Ī part broken off, something cut or detached from the whole, something imperfect. Not ever.A fragment is a part of a larger work or a poem made to appear discontinuous or incomplete. They can be useful-indeed, powerful-but in such writing they are effective only if used sparingly, in order to achieve a deliberate special effect: We will not give up fighting for this cause. And as a rule, sentence fragments are frowned upon in formal or expository writing. But they are not sentences in a strict grammatical sense. They would generally be regarded as sentences simply because they begin with a capital letter and end with a suitable punctuation mark. For example, we might answer a question like “Where did you go?” with “To the store,” or “Why can’t I stay out till midnight?” with “Because I say so,” or “What are you doing?” with “Trying to fix this toaster,” instead of “I went to the store,” “You can't stay out that late because I say so,” or “I am trying to fix this toaster.” In written dialogue sentence fragments are perfectly acceptable. In the case of commands, the subject need not be written because “you” is understood: Go home! means You go home! And exclamations clearly express excitement, alarm, anger, or the like with no need for either a subject or a verb: Wow! Gadzooks! Ouch! In everyday speech we routinely use phrases or clauses that would not make a complete sentence-so-called sentence fragments -because the conversation or the circumstances make the meaning clear. Even though it has a subject and a verb, it needs to be connected to something in order to complete the assertion: After he kicked the ball, he fell down or He fell down after he kicked the ball. ![]() After he kicked the ball is not a sentence instead it is a dependent clause ( see subordinate clause ). In general, assertions and questions-the overwhelming majority of sentences-require a subject and a verb, put together in a way that can stand alone, resulting in what is called an independent clause ( see main clause ): He kicked the ball is a sentence. It communicates a complete thought-an assertion, question, command, or exclamation. A sentence is the largest grammatical unit in language.
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