Modernism

in Literature

The Novel
Victorian values: the sanctity of home life, the authority of a
patriarchal father-figure, the permanence and solidity of social,
religious and cultural institutions, and of the British Empire got
disintegrated, almost pulverized in the first half of the 20th century.

A new rebellious mood affected the artistic life which was directed
now by new mental attitudes, new moral ideals and spiritual values
diametrically opposed to those of the Victorians. Nothing was
considered as certain; everything was questioned.
→ modern writers could no longer write in the old manner. Even if
they treated the same themes as their nineteenth century fellow
writers, they had to do it in a different manner
 The stream of consciousness technique
(interior monologue)
• a mode of narration that attempts to give the written equivalent of the
character’s thought process, his/her stream of thought, the mental
process of a character in which sense perception (visual, auditory,
olfactive) mingles with consciousness and half-formed thoughts,
memories, feelings, and impressions, fantasies and may create random
associations.
• the technique of communicating the unbroken flow of thoughts and
perceptions as they come into a character’s mind and make up his/her
thinking process.
• the narrative is broken, fragmented, apparently incoherent. Most of the
times it involves illogical order and violates grammatical norms and
punctuation standards.
Example: the Irish writer James Joyce expanded the technique of
interior monologue to a true stream of consciousness. Recognizing
that thoughts in our minds jump at random from one idea to another
with extraordinary speed, he attempted faithfully to reproduce the
inner consciousness (and sometimes the unconscious side) of his
characters’ minds; in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake he writes a pure
stream of thoughts as they seemingly go leaping or drifting from one
idea to another with no logical connection
→ a very random jumble of perceptions and imaginings
→ a pouring of thoughts and emotions as if unprocessed by any
authorial intervention
 James Joyce - Ulysses
• “Prrprr. Must be the bur. Fff. Oo. Rrpr. Nations of all the earth. No-one
behind. She’s passed. Then and not till then. Tram. Kran, kran, kran.
Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I’m sure it’s the burgud. Yes.
One, two. Let my epitaph be. Karaaaaaaaa. Written. I have.
Pprrpffrrppfff. Done.” (James Joyce - Ulysses)
• Pprprr. Trebuie să fie bur. Pff. U. Rrpr. Naţiunile lumii. Nimeni în spate.
Ea a trecut. Atunci şi nu pînă atunci. Tramvai. Kran, kran, kran. Bună
ocaz. Krandlkrankran. Sînt sigur că e Burgundul. Da. Unu, doi. Fie
epitaful meu. Karaaaa. Scris. Eu am.: \ Pprrpffrrppfff. înfăptuit.
(James Joyce – Ulise; traducere Mircea Ivănescu)
• In the above text, Joyce gives us the contents of Bloom’s
consciousness in a moment of agitation, a chaotic state of mind.
For Joyce, such a state is a perfect opportunity to push stream-of-
consciousness narration to an extreme, by making the various
contents of Stephan’s mind tumble together into nearly
incomprehensible confusion. His thoughts and sensations dissolve
into a pool of undifferentiated sensations.
- The “unreliable” narrator supplanted the omniscient,
trustworthy narrator of preceding centuries
- The narrative is no longer plot-oriented; instead of building a
clean, linear, chronologically-ordered (cause and effect) plot, the
modern novel creates a jumbled composition to reflect the
complex interiority of character
- There is no such thing as a construction of a neat plot in
modern fiction which leads to a clear denouement, a final
clarification or resolution of action, as there is no clear sequence
of events. Plot has become a minor element.
- The modern novel has become less eventful and dramatic (in
the sense of presenting a series of exciting, dramatic events) and
more interiorized, psychological.
 How is character constructed?
• “Characters in modern novels are not heroes: they are rarely singled
out for their superior traits, and they rarely achieve much. If anything,
they are worse than normal – less beautiful, less accomplished, less
intelligent, and less likely than the average person to overcome
adversity.” (Matz, Jesse – The Modern Novel; a short introduction)
→ Modern writers started to see heroism in ordinary thoughts and
actions, the ordinary man who survives an ordinary day schedule and
the chores of common uneventful life as the true hero.
Example: Leopold Bloom – the fictional protagonist of James Joyce’s
Ulysses; the novel is about the anti-heroic pursuits, peregrinations and
encounters on the protagonist seen during one single day in Dublin
“In, for example, the ordinary thoughts and actions of Leopold Bloom,
Joyce gives us the modern version of the epic heroism of Ulysses. Bloom
is a kind of everyman: he is no better or worse than anyone else. He
submits unimpressively to the fact that his wife is cheating on him; he
takes embarrassing pleasure in the base physical activities of eating and
excreting; he shies away from tough situations and seems well disliked by
many of his fellow Dubliners. But all this makes him a modern kind of
hero; modern writers began to find much to like in just such passivity,
weakness, and failure. These traits came to seem more truly heroical, in
a way, than classic heroical ones, because they showed people
shouldering the stranger burden of modern futility.” (Jesse Metz – The
Modern Novel; a short introduction)
• Characters have become more isolated, alienated and detached.
Alienation, a sense of disconnection from reality, may give way to
insanity. Madness is a prominent feature of the modern novel, and it
is perceived as the most painful and, at the same time, the most
revelatory experience.
Example: Septimus Warren Smith (a budding/promising poet before
FWW broke out) – one of the characters in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs.
Dalloway. SWS = the shell-shocked anti-hero whose madness
(ironically) makes him a kind of visionary. The world’s beauty literally
explodes all around him; his thoughts run to pure poetry; his
estrangement enables him to see through things, and to see the
realities behind appearances, so that he seems to understand things
other people cannot.
• “He lay very high, on the back of the world. The earth thrilled
beneath him. Red flowers grew through his flesh; their still leaves
rustled by his head.”; (…) “It’s time, said Rezia. The word time split its
husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like
shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white,
imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in
an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time.” (Virginia Woolf – Mrs.
Dalloway)

This is a psychotic break from reality – but, at the same time it is also
an exceptionally brilliant way for a modern novelist like Woolf to
associate madness with creativity.
 What is reality?
• Reality has become a matter of specific individual, subjective
perspective and circumstance. The truth of reality has become
elusive, relative, a matter of how you see it.
• Modern novelists tend, first of all, to concern themselves with the
difference between appearance (illusion) and reality. Secondly, they
tend to wonder about the difference between subjective and
objective perception. And finally modern novelists begin to become
self-conscious about the way fiction works as a form for the
mediation or interpretation of reality.
“Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and
shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time.”
And finally he opens his eyes, wondering, “has all vanished since?,” but
finding it is “there all the time without you: and ever shall be, world
without end.” (fragments from James Joyce - Ulysses)
• There is a reality beyond appearances, and yet appearances are our
reality. How can both things be true?
• This relativity of truth and reality allows the modern novel to work
backwards. It does not proceed from some given starting point into a
story and continues to develop it; rather, it works back from the
starting point to see how we got there, to see what has led to the
“reality” from which our stories depart.
 CONCLUSIONS
• The modern novel abandons the realism of the 19th century and though
still attempting to present a frank image of the world, it manages to do
so by employing new (experimental) narrative techniques and a new
language of expression; the modern novel has become more subjective,
presenting the world from the perspective of the individual character/s
(multiple narrative points of view). Focus is laid on characters’
experiences and insights rather than plot. Under the influence of
Freud’s theories and his findings in psychology, the modern novel tends
to reveal the inner motives behind people’s actions. Ordinary life
becomes extraordinary in its own way and it never ceases to reveal
how apparently insignificant things disclose greater truth and finer
beauty than those deemed of high importance and value.