ETI 309Introduction to Contemporary Western Literature

Contemporary Fiction

Modernism• Massive changes in everyday life of people in cities took place in

the early part of the 20th century.

• The invention of the automobile, airplane, and telephone minimized distances around the world; life became faster-paced.

• Freud’s theory of the unconscious and infantile sexuality radically changed the popular understanding of the mind and identity.

• Traditional notions of truth, certainty, and morality were undermined by thinkers such as Marx and Nietzche.

• Theoretical science shifted from Newtonian models to Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

Modernism• This acceleration of life and thought led to aggresively

experimental movements, collectively termed modernist, with an emphasis on radical innovation.

• “Modernism” describes an era, not a unitary literary movement.

• A shared desire to break with established forms, traditions, and rules is what connects modernist writers, who reject realistic representation and traditional formal expectations.

• Stream of consciousness and interior monologue were used to explore the Freudian depths of characters’ psyches.

Modernism• Modernist literature typically features pessimism; a

common motif is that of an alienated individual.

• It reveals fresh ways of looking at man’s position and fuction in the universe and many experiments in form and style.

• It is particularly concerned with language and how to use it and with writing itself.

• It reveals a clear sense of urgency and a deep questioning of all philosophical or religious solutions to human problems.

Characteristics of Modernist Literature

• Stream of consciousness• Open form• Free verse• Metanarrative• Disjointed timelines (discontinuous narrative)• Intertextuality• Fragmentation• Multiple narrative points of view• Unconventional use of metaphor

Themes of Modernism• alienation or estrangement• doubt (disbelief in religion, in happiness, a lack of

purpose, doubt in the value of human life)• a search for the truth (the alienated character asks

why and seeks answers regarding human subjectivity)

• breakdown of social norms• dislocation of meaning and sense from its context• disillusionment• overwhelming technological changes • urbanization

Some Notable Modernist Authors• Virginia Woolf (1882 –1941) was an English novelist, essayist,

publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. (Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One's Own)

• Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965), was a poet, playwright, and literary critic; he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, Murder in the Cathedral)

• Ezra Pound (1885 –1972) was an American expatriate poet, critic and intellectual; a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century; had a profound influence on the Irish writers W. B. Yeats and James Joyce.

Some Notable Modernist Authors• William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist

and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature; he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

• James Joyce (1882 –1941) was an Irish expatriate author, playwright and poet of the 20th century; he is known for his landmark novels Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), the short story collection Dubliners. (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

• Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 –1926) is considered one of the German language's greatest 20th-century poets. In his poetry, he focuses on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety.

Some Notable Modernist Authors

• Franz Kafka (1883 –1924) was one of the major fiction writers who is considered to be among the most influential in Western literature of the 20th century; he was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague; much of his oeuvre is incomplete and was published posthumously; his stories include The Metamorphosis (1912) and In the Penal Colony (1914), while his novels are The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).

• Joseph Conrad (1857 –1924) was a Polish-born British novelist, who became a British subject in 1886; he is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in English (although he did not speak it fluently until he was in his twenties); his most well-known works include Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, The Secret Agent.

Some Notable Modernist Authors• Samuel Barclay Beckett (1906 –1989) was an Irish writer,

dramatist and poet. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalist; he is considered one of the last modernists/the first postmodernists; he is also considered one of the key writers in “Theatre of the Absurd” and is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century; Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969.

• William Faulkner (1897 –1962) was a Nobel Prize-winning (1949) American author; his reputation is based on his novels, novellas and short stories. He was also a published poet and an occasional screenwriter; some of his well-known works include The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!

Some Notable Modernist Authors• Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899 –1961) was an American writer

and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as “the Lost Generation”; he received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954; Hemingway's distinctive writing style is characterized by economy and understatement, and had a significant influence on the development of twentieth-century fiction writing.

• Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896 –1940) was an American author of novels and short stories; he is regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the “Lost Generation” of the Twenties; his works include This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night and his most famous, The Great Gatsby

Some Notable Modernist Authors

• Robert Lee Frost (1874 –1963) was an American poet who is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his use of colloquial speech. He uses settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century to examine complex social and philosophical themes. Frost is a popular and often-quoted poet, and received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry

Postmodernism• Postmodernism can be described as a set of critical,

strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyper reality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.

• A reaction to modernism, it is a general term used to refer to changes, developments, and tendencies which have taken place in literature, art, music, architecture, philosophy, etc. since the 1940’s or 1950’s

Postmodernism• Some of the unifying features of postmodern

literature are metanarrative, free play, ans simulacra:

• Metanarrative (or grand narrative): a narrative about a narrative(s); any story told to justify another story

• Ex: Many Christians believe that human nature, since the Fall (Genesis 3), is characteristically sinful, but has the possibility of redemption and experiencing eternal life in heaven--thus representing a belief in a universal rule and a telos (purpose) for humankind.

• Ex: The Marxist Leninists believe that in order to be ‐emancipated, society must undergo a revolution.

Postmodernism• “Free Play”: a literary concept from Jacques Derrida's

1966 essay, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences."

• In his essay, Derrida speaks of a philosophical “event” that has occurred to the historic foundation of structure.

• Before the “event,” man was the center of all things; therefore, everything was compared to the ideas and images of man.

• After the “event,” however, man could no longer be judged the center of the universe. Without this centralized reference, all that is left is “free play.”

Postmodernism• Baudrilliard’s “simulacra”:• The word simulacrum (pl. simulacra), which means “likeness,

similarity”, was first recorded in English in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god.

• By the late 19th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original.

• Philosopher Fredric Jameson offers photorealism as an example of artistic simulacrum, where a painting is sometimes created by copying a photograph that is itself a copy of the real.

• Other art forms that play with simulacra include trompe l'oeil, pop art, Italian neorealism, and French New Wave.

Escaping Criticism by Pere Borrell del Caso, 1874

Postmodernism

• Modernism’s quest for meaning is replaced by the playful avoidance of meaning in postmodernism.

• The employment of pastiche* attacks the distinction between high and low culture.

*A work of visual art, literature, or music that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche celebrates, rather than mocks, the work it imitates.

Characteristics of Postmodernism• Nouveau roman: a type of 1950s French novel that

diverged from classical literary genres; certain writers experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new style each time

• Concrete poetry: poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme etc.

Characteristics of Postmodernism

• Theater of the Absurd: a term coined by theater critic Martin Esslin to describe set of particular plays written in the mid 20th century, as well as later plays that were written in the same tradition.

• Esslin pointed to these plays as illustrative of a philosophy by Albert Camus which says that life has no inherent meaning.

• Plays associated with Theater of the Absurd generally share several characteristics, including nonsense dialogue, repetitive or meaningless action and non-realistic or impossible plots.

Characteristics of Postmodernism• Magic realism: an artistic genre in which magical

elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even "normal" setting

• Metafiction: a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion– a literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously

and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually, irony and self-reflection

– metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work

Characteristics of Postmodernism• Technoculture: a neologism which refers to the

interactions between, and politics of, technology and culture

• Hyperreality: in semiotics and postmodern philosophy, the term characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures; – it is a means to characterize the way consciousness defines

what is actually "real" in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter the original event or experience being depicted.

Characteristics of Postmodernism• Paranoia (the belief that there's no ordering system

behind the chaos of the world, so a search for order is fruitless and absurd)

• Parody, black humor, collage, pastiche of genres, temporal distortion

• The burgeoning of Marxist, feminist, and psychoanalytical approaches to literary theory since the 1970’s is another aspect of postmodernism.

Some notable postmodern authors• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922 –2007) was an American novelist known for

works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction including Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973)

• William Seward Burroughs II (1914–1997) was an American novelist, essayist, social critic, painter, a primary member of the Beat Generation; much of his work is semi-autobiographical, based on his experiences as an opiate addict.

• Jack Kerouac (1922 –1969) was an American author, poet and painter. Alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, he is considered a pioneer of the Beat Generation.

• Irwin Allen Ginsberg (1926 –1997) was an American poet. Ginsberg is best known for the poem "Howl" (1956), in which he celebrates fellow members of the Beat Generation and critiques what he saw as the destructive forces of materialism and conformity in the United States.

Some notable postmodern authors• John Simmons Barth (1930) is an American novelist and short-

story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work. The Floating Opera, Lost in the Funhouse, Chimera

• Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. (1938 –1988) was an American short story writer and poet. Carver is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s.

• Ishmael Scott Reed (1938) is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. Reed is among the very best known African-American writers of his generation; his work consistently satirizes the American political culture, highlighting domestic, political and cultural oppression.

• Kathy Acker (1947 –1997) was an American experimental novelist, prose stylist, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer.

Some notable postmodern authors• Jorge Luis Borges (1899 –1986) was an Argentine writer and

poet born in Buenos Aires; Borges began publishing his poems and essays in Surrealist literary journals in 1921; he was fluent in several languages; he was a target of political persecution during the Peron regime.

• Julio Cortázar (1914 –1984) was an Argentine author of novels and short stories; he influenced an entire generation of Latin American writers from Mexico to Argentina

• Gabriel García Márquez (1927) is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist; in 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is best-known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have popularized magical realism.

Some notable postmodern authors• Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (1947) is a British Indian novelist

and essayist. He became famous with his second novel, Midnight's Children (1981). His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical fiction, and a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was met with protests from Muslims in several countries.

• Joseph Heller (1923 –1999) was an American satirical novelist, short story writer and playwright. He wrote the influential novel Catch-22 about American servicemen during World War II. The title of this work entered the English lexicon to refer to absurd, no-win choices, particularly in situations in which the desired outcome of the choice is impossibility, and regardless of choice, the same negative outcome is a certainty.

Some notable postmodern authors

• Umberto Eco (1932) is an Italian medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary critic and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa, 1980)

• Paul Benjamin Auster (1947) is an American author known for works blending absurdism and crime fiction, such as The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989) and The Brooklyn Follies (2005).

Some notable postmodern authors• Oğuz Atay (1934-1977) was a pioneer of the modern novel in

Turkey. His first novel, Tutunamayanlar (The Good for Nothing), has been described as probably the most eminent novel of twentieth-century Turkish literature

• Ferit Orhan Pamuk (1952) is a Turkish novelist and the recipient of numerous literary awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature 2006

• Latife Tekin (1957) is one of the most influential Turkish female authors; her famous novel Sevgili Arsız Ölüm (Dear Shameless Death) deals with magic realism drawn from the Anatolian folklore and traditions

• Hasan Ali Toptaş (1958) is a prominent Turkish novelist and short story writer; His Bin Hüzünlü Haz is a postmodern novella in terms of pluralism, metafiction and intertextuality and contains such Kafkaesque elements as an absurd, surreal and paradoxically mundane reality.