novel ii lecture 1 historical background: the twentieth century 1

NOVEL IILECTURE 1Historical Background: The Twentieth Century

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SYNOPSIS- Page 12

Teacher’s Introduction

Course Orientation

SYNOPSIS- Page 2Lecture 1

1. The Twentieth Century2. Different from victorian age and

Rise of Pessimism Important Historical Events in the Period Women’s Role in Society Gradually

Change Edwardian and Georgian Periods in 20th

Century England

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SYNOPSIS- Page 3Lecture 13. 20th century England: Later

Historical Developments Art in 20th Century: Modernism Fiction Notions of Value 4. A Modern view of Time View: The Nature of Consciousness -

Stream of Consciousness

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SYNOPSIS- Page 4Lecture 15. Modernism- An Introduction Views and Questions of Modernism Major themes in modern novel

6. Thinkers of the Time Darwin Karl Marx Sigmund Freud

7. Thoughts of the Time Impressionism Symbolism

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SYNOPSIS- Page 5Lecture 18. A Look at the Modernist Literature Stylistic Features of Modernist Literature Formal Characteristics of Modernist

Literature Thematic Characteristics of Modernist

Literature9. Modernism10. Realism11. Conclusion/ Review

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James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist

and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century.

Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected.

Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre also includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.

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Adeline Virginia Woolf

25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals.

Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

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Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was an

English novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. He was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth.

Golding was awarded both CBE and later elevated to a Knight Bachelor.[1][2] In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[3]

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Edward Morgan Forster

(1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist.

He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society.

Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect … ". His 1908 novel, A Room with a View, is his most optimistic work, while A Passage to India (1924) brought him his greatest success.

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BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Historical Background: The Twentieth Century

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The Twentieth Century

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20th centurybegins with the late 19th

century-weakening of traditional stabilities

Events and Moves…13

Different from victorian age and Rise of Pessimism

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1.The aesthetic movement in 20th century: insistence on ‘art for art’s sake.’: it caused the widening of the

gap between the artists and the public. (Alienation of the artist). From France came the tradition of the bohemian life that scorned the limits imposed by conventional ideas of respectability2. rise of pessimism and stoicism

Important Historical Events in the Period

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The Boer War (1899-1902), fought by the British to establish political and economical control over the Boer Republics of South Africa, marked both the high point of and the reaction against British imperialism.

It was a war against which many British intellectuals protested and one which the British in the end were slightly ashamed of having won.

Important Historical Events in the Period

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The Irish question also caused a great deal of excitement from the beginning of the period until well into the 1920s.

A steadily rising Irish nationalism In World War I some Irish nationalists

sought German help in rebelling against Britain.

Women’s Role in Society Gradually Change

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The Married Woman’s Property Act of 1882, which allowed married women to own property in their own right

the admission of women to the universities at different times during the later part of the century

the fight for women’s suffrage, which was not won until 1918 (and not fully won until 1928)

these events marked a change in the attitude to women and in the part they played in the national life as well as in the relation between the sexes

Edwardian and Georgian Periods in 20th Century England

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Edwardian England (1901-10): a period of enjoyment and flashiness and it

was marked by Edward VII’s extrovert and self-indulgent character.

applies to a period in which the social and economic stabilities of the Victorian age remained unimpaired, though on the level of ideas there was a sense of change and liberation.

Refers to the social and economic stability of the Victorian Age and the flourishing of the middle class

Georgian period: the last phase of assurance and stability before the storm of World War I.

20th century England: Later Historical Developments

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1920s: postwar disillusion 1930s: depression and unemployment,

followed by the rise of Hitler and Fascism Second World War: Winning a war, Great

Britain lost an empire. Independence of India (1947)

Although India and Pakistan elected to remain within the British Commonwealth, other former dominions did not. The Irish Republic withdrew from the Commonwealth in 1949, and the republic of South Africa in 1961.

Art in 20th Century: Modernism20

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Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503–06

Willem de Kooning, Woman, 1950

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937

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Modern art: Neo-primitivism

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End of 19th century into 20th

Not a movement per se — a growing interest in African, Oceanic, and Native American art

Imposition of abstract forms on nature

Modern Art: Cubism: Revolt against space

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Popular 1907–1920

Simultaneous perspective (fragmentation into multiple viewpoints)

Pablo Picasso, Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, 1911

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Jean Metzinger, Table by a Window, 1917

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Fiction27

The years 1912 to 1930: the Heroic Age of the modern novel (Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster)

Three major influences on the changes in attitude and technique in the fiction of this period: More personal notions of value rather than public opinion A new view of time: not as a series of chronological

moments but a continuous flow in the consciousness of an individual

A new view of the nature of consciousness, which derived in a general way from the pioneer explorations of the subconscious by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, but were also part of the spirit of the age.

More Personal Notions of Value rather than public opinion28

The novelists’ realization that the general background of belief which united them with their public in a common sense of what was significant in experience had disappeared. The public values of the Victorian novel, in which major crises of plot could be shown through changes in the social or financial or marital status of the chief characters, gave way to more personally conceived notions of value, dependent on the novelists’ own intuitions and sensibilities rather than on public agreement.

A Modern view of Time29

In the modern novel, time was not a series of chronological moments, but as a continuous flow in the consciousness of the individual.

the view of time as a constant flow rather than a series of seperate moments.

View: The Nature of Consciousness

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influenced by the explorations of the subconscious by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Consciousness is multiple; the past is always preesnt in it at some level and is continually coloring one’s present reaction.

Marcel Proust in Remembrance of Things Past (1913-28), had explored the ways in which the past impinges on the present and consciousness is determined by memory. The view that we are our memories inevitably led to a technical revolution in the novel.

By exploring into consciousness and memory, a novelist could write a novel concerned ostensibly with only one day in a hero’s life (Ulysses, Mrs. Dalloway).

novelists preferred to plunge into the consciousness of their characters in order to tell their stories rather than to provide external frameworks of chronological narrative.

Stream of Consciousness31

In this narrative technique, the author tries to render directly the very fabric of a character’s consciousness without reporting it in formal, quoted remarks. Developed in 1920s.

No ‘porch’ was constructed at the front of the novel to put the reader in possession of necessary preliminary information: such information emerged, as the novel progressed, from the consciousness of each character as it responded to the present with echoes of the past.

No conventional signposts were put up to tell readers where they were, for that was felt to interfere with the immediacy of impression.

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Concentration on the ‘stream of consciousness’ and on the association of ideas within the individual consciousness led inevitably to stress on the essential

loneliness of the individual.

MODERNISM & MODERNIST LITERATUREHistorical Background: The Twentieth Century

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Modernism ~ Introduction

A trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment

With the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation

Progressive and optimistic Political, cultural and artistic movements

rooted in the changes in Western society At the end of the 19th and beginning of the

20th century

Modernism ~ Introduction

A series of reforming cultural movements in art and architecture, music, literature and the applied arts emerged in the three decades before 1914

Encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence (e.g. commerce / philosophy)

Goal: finding which was "holding back" progress, + replacing it with new, progressive and better ways of reaching the same end

New realities of the industrial and mechanized age: permanent and imminent

World view: the new = the good, the true and the beautiful

Modernism ~ Introduction

Rebelled against nineteenth century academic and historicist traditions

“Traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life: outdated

Modernism Questioned!37

For all consciousness are unique and isolated, and if this unique, private world is the real world in which we

live…

How is true communication possible in such a world?

Major themes in modern novel:38

THINKERS OF THE TIME

The most disruptive thinkers:

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Darwin41

Undermining

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Karl Marx43

Sigmund Freud44

Thoughts of the Time45

A Look at the Modernist Literature

The literary form of Modernism and especially High modernism at its height from 1900 to 1940

Authors: Poems:

T. S. Eliot The Waste Land

Robert Frost W.B. Yeats Ezra Pound

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Short stories and Novels: James Joyce William Faulkner Ernest Hemingway

The Old Man and the Sea Franz Kafka Joseph Conrad

The Heart of Darkness Virginia Woolf F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby D.H. Lawrence Katherine Mansfield

Modernist Literature ~ Overview Move from the bonds of Realist literature Introduce concepts such as disjointed timelines Distinguished by emancipatory metanarrative

A comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge

An explanation for everything that happens in a society

Move away from Romanticism Venture into subject matter that is traditionally

mundane (Example: ..\Handouts\The Love Song of J_Alfred Prufrock.doc by T.S. Eliot)

Modernist Literature ~ Overview

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Stylistic Features of Modernist Literature

Marked pessimism: a clear rejection of the optimism apparent in Victorian literature

Common motif in Modernist fiction: an alienated individual (a dysfunctional individual) trying in vain to make sense of a predominantly urban and fragmented society

Absence of a central, heroic figure Collapsing narrative and narrator into a

collection of disjointed fragments and overlapping voices

Stylistic Features of Modernist Literature

Concern for larger factors such as social or historical change

Demonstrated in "stream of consciousness" writing

Examples: Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway James Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a

Young Man + Ulysses A reaction to the emergence of city

life as a central force in society

Formal Characteristics of Modernist Literature Open Form Discontinuous narrative Juxtaposition

Two unlike things are put next to one another A quality of being unexpected To compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or

differences Example: A teacup and its saucer are expected

Classical allusions A figure of speech Making a reference to or representation of, a place,

event, literary work, myth, or work of art, Directly or by implication Left to the reader or hearer to make the connection

Formal Characteristics of Modernist Literature

Borrowings from other cultures and languages

Unconventional use of metaphor Fragmentation Multiple narrative points of view

(parallax)

Formal Characteristics of Modernist Literature Free Verse

Vers libre Styles of poetry that are not written using strict

meter or rhyme Still recognizable as 'poetry' by virtue of complex

patterns of one sort or another that readers will peive to be part of a coherent whole

Intertextuality Coined by poststructuralist Julia Kristeva in 1966 Shaping texts' meanings by other texts Author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text Reader’s referencing of one text in reading another

Formal Characteristics of Modernist Literature

Metanarrative Sometimes master- or grand narrative A global or totalizing cultural narrative schema Ordering and explaining knowledge and

experience The prefix “meta” = "beyond" [about] A narrative = a story A story about a story Encompassing and explaining other 'little

stories' within totalizing schemas

Thematic Characteristics of Modernist Literature

Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties

Dislocation of meaning and sense from its normal context

Valorization of the despairing individual in the face of an unmanageable future

Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past, borrowed without chronology

Thematic Characteristics of Modernist Literature Product of the metropolis, of cities and

urbanscapes Overwhelming technological changes of

the 20th Century Disillusionment

A feeling arising from the discovery Something is not what it was anticipated to be More severe and traumatic than common

disappointment Especially when a belief central to one's identity is

shown to be false

Thematic Characteristics of Modernist Literature Stream of consciousness

A literary technique Portraying an individual's point of

view By giving the written equivalent of

the character's thought processes:Either in a loose internal interior monologue

Or in connection to his or her sensory reactions to external ocurrences

Review Lecture 1Page 159

Teacher’s Introduction

Course Orientation

Review Lecture 1- Page 2Lecture 1

1. The Twentieth Century2. Different from victorian age and

Rise of Pessimism Important Historical Events in the Period Women’s Role in Society Gradually

Change Edwardian and Georgian Periods in 20th

Century England

60

Review Lecture 1- Page 3Lecture 13. 20th century England: Later

Historical Developments Art in 20th Century: Modernism Fiction Notions of Value 4. A Modern view of Time View: The Nature of Consciousness -

Stream of Consciousness

61

Review Lecture 1- Page 4Lecture 15. Modernism- An Introduction Views and Questions of Modernism Major themes in modern novel

6. Thinkers of the Time Darwin Karl Marx Sigmund Freud

7. Thoughts of the Time Impressionism Symbolism

62

Review Lecture 1- Page 5Lecture 18. A Look at the Modernist Literature Stylistic Features of Modernist Literature Formal Characteristics of Modernist

Literature Thematic Characteristics of Modernist

Literature9. Modernism10. Realism11. Conclusion/ Review

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