Modernism in fictions
Modernism: a phase in the history of European art and literature from the last decades of the 19th century to the years before WWII
it is an umbrella term: covers a wide range of movements
l’art pour l’art, Symbolism, Cubism, Imagism, Expressionism, Futurism
British literary Modernism
Early Modernism
High Modernism (from end of WWI to early 30s)
W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf
Late Modernism
Philosophical underpinnings of literary Modernism
Idealism (aesthetic and historical)
anti-utilitarian ethos
primacy of sensory experience
conviction that knowledge is subjectiv and relative —→ dustrust of the personal and preference of the objective
epistemological sceptism
experiementing (the pursuit of the perfect form)
elitism: the cult of the great man —→ most often personified by the figure of the poet
Literary Modernism
reaction against Victorian values
Britain
industrial-mercantile society dominated by utilitariansim
scientific discoveries
decline of religion
rise of realism in art
a reaction to the developments of the era, a rejection of the 19th century traditions
the cult of beautiful: Walter Pater & Aesthetic Movement
the artist is the creator of beautiful things
~ Romantic literature —→ some critics regard Modernism as a phase of Romanticism
Literary market in the UK
high rates of literacy - approximately 80% of population
large market for literary products
newspaper culture: many writers worked as journalists
Literary market in the USA
1909 | Copyright Act - secured the rights and revenues of authors and controlled the market and distribution
the modern novel
the dominant form in Modernism because it’s adaptable, popular, capable of gratifying a variety of tastes and interests
grows out of 19th century fiction
adoption of complex and difficult new forms
Thematic variation
horror/ Gothic fiction (Henry James)
travel writing (Joseph Conrad)
realist fiction (John Galsworthy)
social chronicles (E. M. Forster)
psychological novels (D.H Lawrence, Virgina Woolf)
Technical characteristics
predominantly cosmopolitan —→ expressing a sense of urban cultural dislocation
awareness of new psychological theories
juxtaposition and multiple point of view —→ challenges the reader to establish a coherence in meaning from fragmentary forms
broad-endedness, open-endedness —→ life is a series of crises
spatial form, distancing —→ impersonality, authorial neutrality
impersonality
Henry James: “the novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life, experience is and immense sensibility“
plot based on private perception of the significant in human affairs —→ novel taken out of the public arena, emphasis on individual, private sphere and personality
realism: gves the impression of recording or “reflecting“ faithfully an actual way of life
modern criticism: realism is not a direct or simple reproduction of reality, but a system of conventions producing a lifelike illusion of some real world outside the text by processes of selection, exclusion, description and manners of addressing the reader
experiencing with new forms
stream of consciousness: the literary method of representinf the continuous flow of sense-perceptions, thoughts, feelings and memories in the human mind —→ form: interior monologue + impressions + violating the norms of grammar or punctuation
coined by William James
free indirect discourse: third person narration is combined with first person direct speech
symbolic structures: primary way to achieve unity in the text is by heavy use of imagery
critique of self-reliance
homodiegetic/ heterodigetic and extradiegtic/ intradigetic narrators (e.g.: Marlow in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness)
sensibility: the artist is isolated, truth is no longer given —→ the aim of art seizes to be seeking perfection
utopia: a fiction written about an imagined form of ideal or superior human society —→ is usually the basis of satire of the contemporary life
dystopia: the inverted equivalent of a utopia, applied to any unpleasant imaginary world, usually of the projected future
allegory: a story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning, can be used as a method of satire
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Modernism in fictions
Modernism: a phase in the history of European art and literature from the last decades of the 19th century to the years before WWII
it is an umbrella term: covers a wide range of movements
l’art pour l’art, Symbolism, Cubism, Imagism, Expressionism, Futurism
British literary Modernism
Early Modernism
High Modernism (from end of WWI to early 30s)
W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf
Late Modernism
Philosophical underpinnings of literary Modernism
Idealism (aesthetic and historical)
anti-utilitarian ethos
primacy of sensory experience
conviction that knowledge is subjectiv and relative —→ dustrust of the personal and preference of the objective
epistemological sceptism
experiementing (the pursuit of the perfect form)
elitism: the cult of the great man —→ most often personified by the figure of the poet
Literary Modernism
reaction against Victorian values
Britain
industrial-mercantile society dominated by utilitariansim
scientific discoveries
decline of religion
rise of realism in art
a reaction to the developments of the era, a rejection of the 19th century traditions
the cult of beautiful: Walter Pater & Aesthetic Movement
the artist is the creator of beautiful things
~ Romantic literature —→ some critics regard Modernism as a phase of Romanticism
Literary market in the UK
high rates of literacy - approximately 80% of population
large market for literary products
newspaper culture: many writers worked as journalists
Literary market in the USA
1909 | Copyright Act - secured the rights and revenues of authors and controlled the market and distribution
the modern novel
the dominant form in Modernism because it’s adaptable, popular, capable of gratifying a variety of tastes and interests
grows out of 19th century fiction
adoption of complex and difficult new forms
Thematic variation
horror/ Gothic fiction (Henry James)
travel writing (Joseph Conrad)
realist fiction (John Galsworthy)
social chronicles (E. M. Forster)
psychological novels (D.H Lawrence, Virgina Woolf)
Technical characteristics
predominantly cosmopolitan —→ expressing a sense of urban cultural dislocation
awareness of new psychological theories
juxtaposition and multiple point of view —→ challenges the reader to establish a coherence in meaning from fragmentary forms
broad-endedness, open-endedness —→ life is a series of crises
spatial form, distancing —→ impersonality, authorial neutrality
impersonality
Henry James: “the novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life, experience is and immense sensibility“
plot based on private perception of the significant in human affairs —→ novel taken out of the public arena, emphasis on individual, private sphere and personality
realism: gves the impression of recording or “reflecting“ faithfully an actual way of life
modern criticism: realism is not a direct or simple reproduction of reality, but a system of conventions producing a lifelike illusion of some real world outside the text by processes of selection, exclusion, description and manners of addressing the reader
experiencing with new forms
stream of consciousness: the literary method of representinf the continuous flow of sense-perceptions, thoughts, feelings and memories in the human mind —→ form: interior monologue + impressions + violating the norms of grammar or punctuation
coined by William James
free indirect discourse: third person narration is combined with first person direct speech
symbolic structures: primary way to achieve unity in the text is by heavy use of imagery
critique of self-reliance
homodiegetic/ heterodigetic and extradiegtic/ intradigetic narrators (e.g.: Marlow in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness)
sensibility: the artist is isolated, truth is no longer given —→ the aim of art seizes to be seeking perfection
utopia: a fiction written about an imagined form of ideal or superior human society —→ is usually the basis of satire of the contemporary life
dystopia: the inverted equivalent of a utopia, applied to any unpleasant imaginary world, usually of the projected future
allegory: a story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning, can be used as a method of satire
Joseph Conrad
Polish background —→ his mother tongue was Polish but he chose to write in English (he also spoke French)
1890 | went to Congo
psychological consequences of emigration can be found in his fiction
his heros: outcasts lured away from home by inexplicable impulses and longings —→ they are trapped, have little or no hope to return, and their lives end tragically
they find themselves in situations where normal public codes do not exist, do not work or are irrelevant
The Congo portrays the “Congo of the mind“
they either find strenght and recovery from self-knowledge and loneliness or go down to destruction
argues that society, politics and economy will eventually corrupt the individual
tragic view on life: material interest corrupts human relations and yet the attempt to escape into solitude results in ultimate distruction
deeply pessimistic view of man and human society
his message: Idealism corrupts, and loneliness can force a man into horrified awareness of his identity with his own moral opposite
Conrad & Romanticism: clinging to “noble“ ideals —→ learn that reality, nature, society, and the individual cannot be adjusted to them —→ tragedy follows
nostalgia for exotic and unusual settings
no real attempt to understand the East or Africa —→ merely absorbing their mood of strangeness and communicating this mood to the reader
experiments in chronology:
flashbacks - story told in reverse, plot revealed through bits and snatches (put together in the reader’s mind)
rearrangement of chronology, mixed-up order of events
detective story construction
mood
weather, objects, nature are depicted
animates material objects
the mood of action is experienced by the people participating in it
characters
real, vivid characters, but sometimes their motivation is weak
heroes are psychologically accurate in general, we sometimes perceive their inner thoughts
grotesque - vulgar, twisted, disgusting oucast of the tropics
fascination with the primitive character
elemental wisdom in the savage that is lacking in civilized men
not a conventional plot
no coherent plot, lack of interest in the conventional love-plot
most typical works involve no women at all
Heart of Darkness (1899)
human nature is capable of being both good and evil
Historical background
exploring Congo
slavery, slave trade
depopulation
King Leopold - constitutional monarch of Belgium —→ wanted colonies
Stanely (acting as the King’s agent) gets Congo chiefs sign treaties
monopoly of ivory trade
rebellions against oppression
Setting
frame story: the center of all (human) time and all (human) space
The Congo: Marlow’s mission to find Kurtz
the frame narrative explains and motivates the embedded narrative
the frame narrative is usually removed in time and space from the embedded narrative
the narrator’s values and assumptions are challenges by Marlow’s story
2 points of view = 2 diferent understandings of man’s relationship to the natural world and the people in it
Narration
2 narrators
a man aboard the Nellie, who listens to Marlow’s story - anonymous
uses the first-person plural, on behalf of 3 other passengers
Marlow himself
first-person singular - subjective
begins a tale by saying: “and England also, has been one of the dark places on the Earth”
he says that he went to Africa
working for a European ivory extraction operation
simply known as “the company”
his task was to pick up one of its agents in Africa (a man named Kurtz) to relieve him of his duty
extra/ intradiegetic narration - concerns the level at which the narrator is located as narrator of the story
extradiegetic narration: the narrator exists outside the story world and is not a character within it
intradiegetic narration: the narrator exists inside the story world as a character (either a main or secondary figure)
homo/ heterodiegetic narration - whether or not the narrator participates in his own story
homodiegetic narration: the narrator is a participant in the story (a character within it)
heterodiegetic narration: the narrator is not a character in the story and tells it from an external perspective
Marlow is uable to fully articulate the exact meaning of what he saw in the Congo (the Congo’s name is not mentioned in the book)
Themes
Kurtz’s idealism (spreading the light of civilization)
Marlow has read Kurtz's report
Gods like whites can bring civilization to Africa
Marlow thinks Kurtz has gone mad
approach to Kurtz’s station —→ an introduction to failure
Marlow observes fence posts with several human heads on it
Kurtz is very ill
Marlow wants to protects his papers and his reputation
Kurtz dies on the trip down river
synchronicity of the non-synchronous —→ space becoming time - “Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world.”
Kurtz’s failure is applicable to Marlow and to civilized humanity (Marlow: “The most you can hope from life is some knowledge of yourself”)
The meaning of Kurtz’s cry: “The horror, the horror.”: illusions preserved at the cost of a lie: Marlow back in the “sepulchral city”, Brussels
meeting the “Other” - Africa
Chinua Achebe: “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’” (1975)
“Conrad dehumanizes and depersonalizes “a portion of the human race” in order to make it a prop to the disintegration of one petty European mind”
Conrad reduces and degrades Africans to “limbs,” “angles,” “glistening white eyeballs,”
Despite their European names and mannerisms, Conrad’s narrators are not average unreflecting witnesses of European imperialism
Marlow and Kurtz are also creatures of their time and cannot take the next step, which would be to recognize that what they saw, as a non-European ‘darkness’ was in fact a non-European world resisting imperialism so as one day to regain sovereignty and independence, and not, as Conrad reductively says, to reestablish the darkness
darkness: symbolises literal darkness in the jungle and the waters of the river
metaphoric darkness in the hearts of the company’s agents
ivory: greed and corruption of the Europeans
consuming their every passion and desire in luring them into Africa
hypocrisy and indifference: they are recalling Kurtz because they find Kurtz’s methods to be excessively brutal
yet company officials overlooked their own brutality in pursuit of ivory