Transcript ENGL 252 Aspects of the Novel

Short Story:
Modernism
(Hemingway, Faulkner,
etc.)
• MODERNISM
– offbranch of Realism and Naturalism, with similar foci
– further reflects sense of loss, disillusionment, despair;
sense of historical discontinuity
– Sees world as not only indifferent, but fractured
– “absurd” view of life: life inherently meaningless but we
cannot not seek/impose meaning
– Moves beyond scientific determinism to subjectivity of
experience:
• Freud & Jung: influence of the subconscious, dreams,
myths
– Jung’s “collective unconscious”: archetypes & themes
shared by many cultures across globe
– Influences Surrealism (sur-real = what lies under the “real”
conscious world; the illogical and contradictory beneath
the logical; language & logic reach their limit but can still
create [unconventional] meaning)
• (ambivalent) Influences on Modernism
– TECHNOLOGY
• fast travel (automobiles, airplanes) shrinks world
• 1WW & 2WW mass technologies of death/destruction (What
value/meaning human life if thousands can be killed in
moments? What sense of “honor”? How “God” possible?)
– CONSUMERISM
• massive factory production & large-scale duplication (what
value “art” if can be reproduced and robbed of singular
specialness?); fascination w/ new “industrial landscape”
• influence of advertisement (reduces human talent & art to
sales-pitch; reduces humans to consumers of goods)
• 1929 U.S. Stock Market Crash revealed danger of speculation
(thousands of people robbed of investments by few’s actions)
– MASS ENTERTAINMENT
• immediacy of film, newsreels, radio vs. their dumbing-down of
the world audience
– PHILOSOPHY & PSYCHOANALYSIS (q.v.)
• Modernist angst (not just for teens any more!)
– Sense of loss, disillusionment, despair
• world morally bankrupt after 1WW, moreso after
2WW
• Old morals & ideals empty in light of large-scale
human death & destruction
• Loss of “innocence” = loss of order: universe
increasingly random, humans increasingly pawns
• Sees previous art forms & philosophies as tools of
powerful socio-political class & ruling groups (who
eventually dragged world into war—twice!)
• Modernist angst (not just for teens any more!)
– “History” discontinuous
• Any sense of continuity an illusion: continuity itself illusion that
ruling classes impose on population to legitimate themselves
• “History” an illusion/construct
• (In lit: history as fluid, mercurial, moved by massive multiple
forces)
– Time broken, fragmented, experienced subjectively
• Influence of Einstein (General Theory of Relativity 1915/16)
• (In lit: “reading time” reflects experience of “story time”)
• (In lit: plot chronology often fractured, associational)
– World broken/fragmented
• If experience is itself fractured, then so is not only our
knowledge of “the world” but also the world itself
– “broken” in both literal and figurative senses (“wounded,” etc.)
– “healing” / “repairing” nigh impossible, but we must try
Which all leads to . . .
• Modernist angst (not just for teens any more!)
– Absurdity
• Futile search for meaning in a universe where meaning comes
only from humans themselves—but searching for meaning
makes us human
• Any meaning created by humans is already flawed, and can be
contradicted with a law, bullet, bomb, social organization, etc:
– ALL HUMAN MEANING INDIVIDUAL & SUBJECTIVE
– No universal “meaning” or “morality” possible (after Stock
Market Crash, 1WW battlefields, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, etc.)
• Absurd irony of human life: we know search for meaning futile,
but we cannot not search for it
– Love, hate, pleasure, suffering, indifference, caring = all effects of
humanity’s desperate, grasping search for meaning
• Responsibility & fault for human pleasure or suffering rests
totally with humans themselves; ULTIMATE MORAL
RESPONSIBILITY LIES WITH US (can’t blame “God”;
pointless to blame universe, nature, weather; blaming other
humans = self-blame; most luck is shitty)
• Modernist angst (not just for teens any more!)
– Humans experience alienation
• Individual human experience so subjective that
cannot adequately be communicated
– humans cannot actually “know” or “relate to” each other
(everyone is an Other to everyone else)
• Individuals/characters alienated from each other
– narrators distant from plot events they describe
– multiple narrators/POVs
• Individuals/characters alienated from selves
– modern life fragments us and makes us unknowable to
ourselves (“Why do I do this??”)
• “sensationalism”: scenes of meaningless
sex/drinking/conversation, unfulfilling relationships,
petty cruelty & victimization,
– small, redemptive moments of human caring possible, but
few
• Modernism writes in different styles:
– Emphasis on experimental/new styles, often
counterlogical and rejecting traditional style & form
– heavily subjective (since objectivity impossible)
• emphasizes the specificity of this character in this situation in
this place/situation at this time under these circumstances
– echoes & reworks myths, mythic themes & imagery
• Since modern world hopeless & corrupt, seeks older/originary
myths & reworks their material
– if Naturalism portrays experience as we experience it
(through Impressionism), Modernism represents how
we intellectually respond to and think about what we
experience
• reflects subjective working of human mind on page, shows life
as result of alienated humans bumbling through random world
• Minimalism (ex. Hemingway, etc.)
– Sharp outlines, concentrated diction (almost telegrammatic)
– Records what eye sees, tells that events happen, but leaves
interpretation to reader while recording only characters’
reactions to what they see and experience, without always
explaining all the emotional steps (minimal exposition)
– Few expositional details: readers dumped into situations
without explanation or context, expected to catch up & work
it out from observing characters’ speech & actions
• “Stream-of-consciousness” (ex. Faulkner, Stein, Barnes, etc.)
– Portrays subjective & associative “logic” of human mind
• Ideas link not by cause-effect but by emotional relation to each
other
– No formal “artificial” divisions/organization to human
thought, so none on page
– “interior monologue” : humans “speak” to selves in heads in
constant stream of chatter, so do characters & narrators