British Lit after 1789 Final

Auburn University Prof. Schneider

Author of “Araby”

James Joyce

Author of “Eveline”

James Joyce

Author of “The Dead”

James Joyce

Author of “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street”

Virginia Woolf

Author of Gaslight

Patrick Hamilton

Author of “The Demon Lover”

Elizabeth Bowen

Author of Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

Author of “A Village After Dark”

Kazuo Ishiguro

Summary of “Araby” by James Joyce

Escapism | Boy uses older girl as an escape but realizes it is pointless

Summary of “Eveline” by James Joyce

Paralysis | Girl longs for escape but won’t take it

James Joyce

Wife’s first love died young of tuberculosis | Irish | Daughter institutionalized | Erotic letters | Stream of conciousness and interior monolouges | modernist | holiday after him

Virginia Woolf

Learned from parents library | Suffragist | Severe Mental Health Issues | Member of Bloomsburry Group - Intellectual Group | Started Hogarth Press with Husband | Realism and Stream of Conscioussness

Patrick Hamilton

Disfigured in car accident | whole family alcoholic authors | Novelist but known as playwright | Psychological thrillers

Elizabeth Bowen

Irish | Worked for British Ministry of Info during WW2 | Gothic, psychological, occasionally modern | Wartime London

Gothic Fiction

Magic, mystery, super natural, uncanny | impending doom | remote setting | darkness | curses / bad omens

Date Range of Modernism

1914-1945

Modernism

Reaction to realism | WW1 & WW2 reaction | questioned society that seemed restrictive | progress and technology were questioned

Themes of Modernism

Alienation or loss of meaning and hope, tragic/ celebrated | Question/reject traditional values | Individualism | Psychology and unconscious | Subjective reality | Search for meaning in secular world | art can heal the world

Style and Form of Modernism

Use of symbols and allusions | Stream of Consciousness | Interior Monologue | Open Endings | Blurred Genres | Impressionism- the process of knowing and and perception is demonstrated | fragmentation to show scattered mind

Modernist Philosophy

Existentialism - No purpose | Universe is random and chaotic | Emphasizes Individual existence and choices and freedom | Angst | People must make their own purpose and take accountability | Bad Faith - people acting as though they don’t have freedom to make choices because they fear the consequences of their choices, choose to be passive instead

Intellectual Influences on Modernism

Albert Einstein - Theory of Relativity (1915) - subjectivity of everything | rethinking of narrative structure

Friedrich Nietzsche - No objective morality (1886-87) - Moral values are interpretations not truth

Sigmund Freud - The Unconscious (1915) | Overall scientific/ darker side to humanity

Postmodernism

Began after WW2 spiked in the 60s | people are more skeptical of big narratives/ explanations of the world | embrace alienation | style over substance | layers of reality are mixed | fragmentation is for aesthetics | Everything is art and it is fun