Scarica The modernism and the novel in English literature e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! MODERNISM AND THE NOVEL Great war>break between the old world and the new. Fiction before followed the style of the victorian period. With the war the dehumanising effects of industrial society reached theri peak>modernist interested in recovering the unique experience of the individual by exploring and recreating the interior world>modernist novelist>shatter the convenction of victorian fiction. Victorian moral universe collapsed to be replaced by a climate of moral ambiguity and emptiness>absence of values>modernist novels>broke with most convenction of victorian fiction>two aspects:omniscient narrator replaced by the direct or indirect presentation of character’s thoughts, feeleings and memories; no linear plot or chronological sequens of events. Turning away from the idea of the novel as a mirror of the society. THE INFLUENCE OF MASS CULTURE Education reforms>increase in general literacy>demand for popular literature. The idea of mass culture was born with the invention of radio and cinema FREUD’S THEORY OF THE UNCONSCIOUSN Freud deeply influenced modernist novel>the interpretation of dreams>theory of human conciousness as a multi-layered. Unconscious>couldn’t be accessed except trough dreams. Behaviour governed by irrational unconscious drives>world is no more rationally ordered. Perception of reality is fundamentally subjectie. The technique of free association forms a part of joyce’s ulysses. THE INFLUENCE OF BERGSON Henri bergson elaborated a philosophical position>time could not be measured according to unist because it’s a duration, not a series of points. We experience the world in a continuous way.>like we hear a melody and not every single disjointed note. We experience a mixture of present, past and future>he contribuited to the challenge that modernist fiction posed to the traditional idea of linear narrative. WILLIAM JAMES AND THE IDEA OF CONCIOUSNESS He’s notion of “stream of consciousness” (discussed in The principles of psycology) deeply influenced the narrative modernist method. Consciousness doens not appear to itself chopped up in bits, but it’s something that flows. STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS FICTION New techniques of writing>joyce and woolf>they use many techniques, but the most important are: direct interior monologue>direct presentation of a character’s stream of consciousnesswithout the presence of a narrator (molly bloom’s molologue in ulysses).indirect interior monologue>indirect presentation of a character’s thoughts filtered through the voice of a third person narrator>it includes more descriptives passages or explanations (woolf’s mrs dalloway, to the lighthouse) WOOLF AND JOYCE:DIVERGING STREAMS Woolf’s fiction is more readable in a traditional sense than joyce’s. He is concerned more with the possibilities and limitations of language, she is more interested in fluidity of identity and in the relations between people and things>in ulysses every character has a different style of consciousness>woolf’s uses a unique stream of consciousness which is the impersonal force of life itself passing through her characters. OTHER MODERNISMS: LAWRENCE AND CONRAD Modernism included many different styles. Lawrence was critical of joyce and of stream of consciousness fiction in general>he felt that the aim of the novel should be
