Rhetorical genre theory and literary modernism: A study of T. S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land', George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-four', and Friedrich Nietzsche's 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

Two dominant tendencies surface in the decision-making of modernist writers as they attempt to address and accommodate the shifting social, cultural, and historical aspects of literary modernism. The reactionary author desires resolution to situations, and becomes frustrated and angst-ridden when such an end cannot be attained; the revolutionary author is willing to experiment with styles and forms, and to break formal boundaries in the search for provisional meaning. Considering genre use in light of the contemporary ideas of Rhetorical Genre Theory (RGT) can help us understand how both tendencies manifest themselves. The study discusses a spectrum of modernist writers: by looking at Eliot as a high modernist, Orwell as a late modernist, and Nietzsche as an early modernist, I will compare and evaluate how all three authors exhibit both the reactionary and revolutionary tendencies in their rhetorical use of multiple genres. My contention is that the revolutionary artistic aspirations of Eliot in the "Game of Chess" section of The Waste Land and Orwell in Nineteen Eighty Four are in the service of a conservative, reactionary desire for stability and resolution. When resolution is not forthcoming, they become trapped in a mindset characterized by frustration and cynicism and which results in the strained layering and juxtaposition of genres. By examining an early essay by Nietzsche, in whom the drive to resolution (or complete meaning) is subordinate to his revolutionary drive for artistic experimentation, we can observe a significant rhetorical difference in his mixing of genres as a more comprehensive case of RGT in action.