There is a long-standing tradition in art literature in which text has symbolic meaning. By referring to or describing art, the author is able to convey, and often consolidate, the ideas of the artist being referred to. This may involve reinforcing a thematic point (as in WH Auden's Museum of Fine Arts), establishing parallels between texts and thus creating new narrative structures (as in James Joyce's Ulysses), or consolidate the ideas of multiple artists from multiple genres into a single idiosyncratic text (as in TS Eliot’s “The Waste Land”). But what is most interesting about the metafictional use of art in literature is the point it makes about the finite nature of art, its limitations in producing new and original thought. When art is referenced in literature, a process of recycling of thought is ensured and an awareness that there is no such thing as original artistic thought is reconfirmed. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essay “Museum of Fine Arts” is a poem about painting, referring to specific works of art, a common theme crossing both the poem and the paintings: the constancy of human suffering. Of this theme, Auden writes: "About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood its human position."[1] He then explores three paintings by the Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel the Younger and his father Pieter Brueghel. the Elder. In these paintings, the artists highlight moments of tragedy and cruelty, while the world continues to exist and function as if nothing had happened. These paintings represent suffering as ordinary, not necessarily essential to human existence but as an undeniable aspect of it. Suffering exists alongside the monotony of daily life, which in turn views suffering with what can best be described as ambivalence: "[suffering] takes place / While someone else is eating, opening a window, or just walking around boringly.” [Auden, lines 3-4]Auden does very little in this poem after these first three lines, beyond simply providing a summary of the scene in each painting; he makes no original remarks, no insights into the nature of suffering beyond what any individual can discern by studying the original works of art. What he does in the poem, instead, is provide a literary interpretation of the paintings, copying a visual image into a written literary work of art. In doing so, Auden indirectly highlights one of the unavoidable pitfalls that await the artist; everything has already been done. As Auden emphasizes in the first three lines of the poem, the “Ancient Masters” perfectly understood suffering, in its totality, its complexity and its constancy. It is impossible for Auden to articulate the nature of suffering more clearly than did the “Old Masters” before him; he therefore reiterates their point of view in a form of artistic recycling, changing the form but not the idea. Everything that has been said about suffering has already been said hundreds of times, Auden simply shows that the ways of representing suffering can be original. The Museum of Fine Arts shows how the originality of artistic thought can now only exist in form and not in content. One of the most obvious references to a work of art in a distinct literary text is James Joyce's novel Ulysses, whosetitle alone is a direct reference. reference to Homer's epic poem, the Odyssey. Much like Auden, Joyce could be seen to have recycled the theme by changing form, to examine a text that serves as a cornerstone of the Western canon and recreate it for his times. As Michael Palencia-Roth writes: “A myth from a modern point of view: if Ulysses could be reduced to a formula, which it cannot, this would be it. »[2] Once again, ideas and stories from the past are reused and presented. again talking about artists of the present. But, as Palencia-Roth writes, Ulysses is too vast and all-encompassing a text to be reducible to a formula, to a single interpretation; it's just too big to be anything more than a rehash of a mythical poem. If he is not content to simply reinterpret the same thematic points as Homer, then why does Joyce refer to the Odyssey so dependently? Just as Auden did with Brueghel's paintings, Joyce puts a spin on Homer's work by introducing contemporary methods, most notably the stream-of-consciousness style championed by Joyce and his modernist contemporaries. Joyce concretizes the Odyssey as a psychological drama, while simultaneously consolidating the action of the poem ten years into twenty-four hours. As an example of how Joyce fleshed out the action of Homer's work, Odysseus' interaction with the Phaeacians and Princess Nausicaa is Book 5 of Homer's text, while in Joyce's, this is chapter 13.[3] Joyce expands Ulysses' journey to the experience of an ordinary man on an ordinary day, but keeping similar themes through intense tracking of internal thought. The Nausicaa section of Ulysses' Journey deals with themes of fidelity, love, and commitment, while chapter 13 of Ulysses gives an ironic reproduction of these themes. The chapter sees Leopold Bloom, Joyce's stand-in for Ulysses, masturbating on a public beach and lusting after a young woman, despite his married status. If Ulysses' devotion to his wife, Penelope, is undeniable and animates much of the story of the Odyssey, Joyce's commitment is complicated, his sexuality is entirely modern: "His hands and his face were working and a tremor ran through her. She leaned back to look at where the fireworks were and she grabbed her knee in her hands so she wouldn't fall back as she looked up and there was no one to see only him and her when she revealed all her graceful and beautifully shaped legs like that, soft and delicately rounded tender, and she seemed to hear the panting of her heart, the breathing of her horse, for she knew the passion of men like that, hot-blooded. [Joyce, p. 355] There is no commitment between Bloom and the girl he lusts after and masturbates for, Gerty MacDowell, rather it is pure passion and sex. Although passion and sex are not exactly central themes of the Odyssey, Joyce presents them as ironic twists on the original thematic focal points of Homer's text. Joyce subverts the overt thematic points to make a comment on love and commitment, Bloom's love and commitment to his wife, Molly, existing in much the same way as between Odysseus and Penelope, but it is simply complicated by the problems and realities of the 20th century. The life of a century. Just as in the Museum of Fine Arts, the theme and artistic thought between the modern work (Joyce) and the referenced work (Homer) are the same, but it is the presentation of this thought which differs, which is renewed . Equally important contemporaries of Joyce were the poet TS Eliot, whose poem "The Waste Land" is. 452