Modernism in fiction

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 511.

William Jones

· Philosopher connected with American pragmatists

· Process of human thinking, how human mind operates

· 1890 à “Principles of Psychology”

o He coins a metaphor which he finds for the description of how human mind works, our mind works in a digressive way, we do not think in well organized grammatical sentences, feelings, thoughts are than put into sentences

o “stream of consciousness” – a set of literary devices how to create an illusion of human thinking, illogical, not ordered, chaotic

· Interior monologue – it gives the idea of the protagonist's talk, J. Joyce “The portrait of an artist as a young man”, “Ulysses”

· Free associations – vague switch from one idea to another, the connection between the two ideas is not visible

· Very often open ending + no clear beginning (the novel should be just a fragment, record of a certain moment in life)

· Modernists fiction is treated as experimental (new techniques)

· But its ambitions is to be realistic and record a moment of character's life (documentary + shows human mind in the process of thinking)

· No 3xO narration

· The plot Is reduced with gaps in chronology, missing parts

· Language – grows up together with the character, in last chapters more sophisticated

· You may have feelings of repetitiveness

· A good novel shouldn't be only a documentary, you should add something (some structure, extra layers)

· “Heart of Darkness” – journey:

o Somehow keeps the story

o But there's also a journey of self-recognition etc, the journey into the darkness of human heart

o It makes the novel universal

· “The Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man” –‘ “Ulysses” – intrusion of the myths

· There's a system, logic but different, hard to trace

1. Shift:

a. Inside – outside

b. External – internal

c. Objective – subjective

2. Symbolic objects, situations (colours – whiteness, blackness, name – Dedalus, setting – Labirynth)

3. Ambition: documentary

WYKŁAD 18