Raffaella Mannori – LINGUA INGLESE –classi 5 ° 2015-2016 

MODERNISM

THE AGE OF ANXIETY

With this term we intend the cultural climate of the early 20 th century , a period which saw( witnessed/ experienced) a profound change in thought and feeling.

WHY? Because an entire system of Victorian rationalistic self-confidence ( the positivistic faith in progress and science; the hypocrisy and double standards of the Victorian morality which on the surface was authoritarian but which refused to see under this golden façade) was disrupted( changed/broken/shattered) by scientific, political and psychological theories which led to a period of experimentation in all forms of artistic expression. Experimentation because artists and writers broke with the previous formal conventions .

THEREFORE MODERNISM –this complex movement- represented a world in which:

a)many certainties had disappeared;

b)reality seems to have lost its solidity and visibility.

A number of common features can be identified:

  1. the intentional distortion of shapes;
  2. the breaking down of limitation in space and time;
  3. the awareness that our perception of reality is necessarily , temporary and subject to change;
  4. the need to reflect the complexities of modern urban life in artistic form;
  5. the importance of the unconscious as well as conscious life ;
  6. the impossibility to give a final or absolute interpretation of reality;
  7. an interest in the primitive and a reconsideration of the “past” without the restrictions imposed by national or continental culture.

In art : painting Picasso; in music Stravinsky (experimented with dissonance and distorted musical effects and rejected the traditional rules of harmony) ; poetry T.S. Eliot ;novel J. Joyce and V. Woolf ;

MODERNIST WRITERS

a)they discarded chronological narrative description and rational exposition;

b)the workings of the unconscious mind acquired primary importance ;

c)a sense of fragmentation of space and time became dominant.

MAJOR INFLUENCES

FREUD-BERGSON-EINSTEIN

S.FREUD greatly influenced the intellectual climate .

  • He investigated into the nature of the human psyche to interpret individual and social behaviour.
  • According to him, dreams are manifestation of suppressed instinctsand desires that the conscious mind rejects as disgusting and criminal.
  • He gave an explanation of the irrational component of the human beings by introducing the concepts of the EGO ( the conscious mind) and the ID ( the unconscious mind) . Freud’s theory also maintained that the super-ego , that is to say the constraints imposed on the individual by society, education and moral laws , can profoundly distort man’s behaviour. These discoveries led writers to investigate more and more deeply into their characters’ mind because modernist writers were aware that there is no objective reality besides the individual and the sum of his personal experiences
  • These ideas followed the concept that REALITY lies beneath the surface of things, in a labyrinthine complexity.

HENRY BERGSONHe attacked the deterministic and rationalistic attitudes of the 19th century introducing a new CONCEPT OF TIME as DURATION.

According to this French philosopher there are two types of time : one is the mathematical time of science and the time of the mind. The former can be exactly calculated in dividing time into minutes while the latter is lived in a personal way and therefore changes from one person to another or from one situation to another . The time of the mind is the time of spiritual experience which cannot be measured exactly and it is conceived as duration , a sort of flow without any definite segments of division.

ALBERT EINSTEIN – German physicist- THEORY OF RELATIVITY which shattered the concept of the existence of objective time and space, which he conceived of as subjective dimensions. As a consequence the world view lost its solidity and the scientific revolution was complemented by the verbal experimentation and the exploration of memory in literature , the rebellion against perspective and against phenomenal representation in art , or the revolution of tone , rhythm and harmony in music.

  • THE COSMOPOLITAN SPIRIT The most evident characteristic of MODERNISM was its cosmopolitan spirit which led many artists to leave their country and gather in great cultural centres like Paris. This was because they wanted to exemplify in their lives the CONCEPT of “ THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD”
  • Another characteristics of this period was the tension between THE AVANT-GARDE and the POPULAR trends.

THE AVANT-GARDE TREND / THE POPULAR TREND
  • It represented a reaction against the popular trend
  • It addressed to a limited , very educated audience with works which voiced their alienation from this changing world.
  • This alienation and isolation was reflected in the formal experimentation which characterised “ this serious” literature
/
  • The popular trend of the Modernist movement was represented by a large production of “popular” literature and the birth of other cultural forms of expression such as the RADIO and the CINEMA .
  • This popular trend was due to the expansion of the reading public as a result of compulsory elementary education simple and unrefined public.

THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The influence of these new concepts of psychology on character analysis and presentation in novel was remarkable .

Modernist writers introduced some innovations which were:

a)The rejection of the traditional novel which presented the story in chronological order , with a well-made plot and with an external characterisation because objective and rational explanation of reality was replaced by the idea that definition of reality is subjective in so far as it depends on the individual that perceives it . Consequently there are as many realities as the number of individuals .

b)The consequences of these ideas on the novel were

  • the disappearance of the omniscient narrator ;
  • the shift in focalisation from exteriority to interiority ( characters’ mind) ;
  • the narration in retrospect

The new technique used in novel to describe characters’ inner mind and consciousness at any given moment and in a very short space of time is called STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

The name STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS was taken from the American psychologist WILLIAM JAMES –Henry James’s brother- who introduced the idea of the endless flux and infinite change of the inner life . so that life cannot be objectively given but is subjectively perceived through consciousness.

In his PRINCIPLES of PSYCHOLOGY (1890)he gave a definition of consciousness as a river or stream that flows ,a stream of thought and consciousness or subjective life.

Consequently the present is no longer important as the only reality is the individual consciousness where past and present constantly flow into each other.Thus the analysis of a character’s consciousness during a definite amount of time provides complete and comprehensive insight because his/her reactionto a new event is conditioned by the sum of his/her emotional experiences.In other words, if the distinction between past and present is meaningless in psychological terms, then there is no use in building a well-structured plot , in leading a character through a well arranged chronological sequence of events.It is not necessarily the passing of time which reveals the truth about characters.It may be unfolded in the course of a single day ( Ulysses by J. Joyce), by observing the character performing a common action or by what Joyce called “epiphany “:the sudden revelation of an interior reality caused by the most trivial events of everyday life.

The characteristic of the STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS is

the creation of a prose style appropriate to convey the complexities and the fragmentation of thought which passes from one idea to another for free-association ( illogical and capricious workings of the mind)The attempt to define characters in terms of characters’ thoughts . to catch the flow of life recording impressions from moment to moment.

The most important representatives of the STREAM OF CONSCIOUNESS NOVEL are Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.

JAMES JOYCE based his experimentation on the assumption that nobody thinks in complete , well-organised sentences the thought forms in the mind without a syntactic shape and we translate it into words and sentences to make it intelligible to others

Joyce wanted to convey the thoughts and feelings as they form in the mind so the syntax will be twisted and disrupted , there will be a sudden and abrupt passages from one topic to another , from first person to third person , there will be uncompleted sentences . With the stream of consciousness writing we enter directly into the flux and muddle of characters’ actual thoughts and we move from the inside to the outside in a constant flow of narration

QUESTIONS :

a)Illustrate the characteristics of MODERNISM , explaining the innovations introduced by modernist writers in writing.

b)The stream of consciousness technique represented a desire to find new developments in novel writing . Explain the influences of S. FREUD , W. JAMES and H. BERGSON in the development of this narrative technique.

1