Modernism

Question 1

Which ideals change?

Answer 1

Writers, intellectuals and artists found it difficult to believe in anything, religion, philosophy, art..

Question 2

Which scientific improvements were there?

Answer 2

• Albert Einstein in 1905 published his Theory of Relativity
• Oppenheimer lead an international team of scientists to the production of new war technologies, including the atomic bomb

Question 3

Which philosophical improvements were there?

Answer 3

German philosopher Nietzsche stated that existing values (good,true..) were decadent. These theories were later linked with Fascism and Nazism.

Question 4

Impact of psychoanalysis?

Answer 4

Sigmund Freud showed that the human mind has many layers, some of which are unknown. He began to explore new areas of sensibility, which came to be known as the unconscious.

Question 5

What does Modernism mean?

Answer 5

Modernism indicates the 20th century literature and art which expressed the reaction against the 19th century values in new forms

Question 6

Modernism characteristics?

Answer 6

• breakdown of traditional literary genres
• fragmentation of time and place
• collapse of traditional plot with a story that has a beginning and an end
• use of complex language
• psychological truth of the characters
• use of myth
• use of the free verse

Question 7

First generation Modernists?

Answer 7

1922-1925:
-Eliot's The Waste Land
-Joyce's Ulysse
-Woolf's Mrs Dalloway
They all deal with the unconscious in daily life and many writers used the stream-of-consciousness, through which they reproduce the flow of human thought.

Question 8

Who were them inspired by?

Answer 8

Modernist writers were inspired by Cubism,Futurism,Dadaism and Surrealism. They were trying to create their own interpretation of reality, making up their own myths or using ancient ones.

Question 9

Second generation modernists?

Answer 9

From the 1920’s artists began to take sides in the philosophical and political fight, this lead many second generation modernists like Orwell to turn to the political left. Some of them even took part in the Spanish Civil War.

Question 10

What’s the stream of consciousness?

Answer 10

It’s made up of distant or incongruous ideas presented with no rational order. This definition was coined by William James.

Question 11

Who are the transitional novelists?

Answer 11

Transition novels appeared between 1880-1920, novelists began to experiment with new narrative structures and techniques such as flashbacks, time-shifts and a new way of portraying the human mind.

Question 12

Who’s Joseph Conrad?

Answer 12

Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness, a short novel set in Congo, an adventure novel with an exotic setting. Conrad shows how when man cannot rely on institutions show their dark side. It’s also a criticism of European colonialism in Africa.

Question 13

Who’s D.H. Lawrence?

Answer 13

D.H. Lawrence was the first novelist to show the impact of new sciences and psychoanalysis. He wrote Sons and Lovers, a psychological description of an oedipal complex and a realistic portrait of live in provincial northern England

Question 14

What’s the modernist revolution about?

Answer 14

• lack of faith in traditional values, progress, science and technology
• trauma of WW1
• use of classical myths to criticise modern society
• past,present and future co-exist
• stream of consciousness

Question 15

Who are the first generation modernists?

Answer 15

James Joyce and Virginia Woolf

Question 16

Who’s James Joyce?

Answer 16

James Joyce wrote Dubliners, a collection of short stories about people living in Dublin. The central theme is ‘paralysis’, an inability to overcome mental frustration. He also wrote Ulysses in which he describes the events of an ordinary day in the life of an ordinary man. He criticizes the lack of heroism, ideals, love and trust in the modern world.

Question 17

Who’s Virginia Woolf?

Answer 17

Virginia Woolf was born in London in an upper-class family. In Modern Fiction she stated that human perception depends not on measurable time(time of the clock) but on the way the mind is affected by it(time of the mind). Mrs Dalloway describes a day in the life of mrs dalloway.

Question 18

Who’s E.M. Foster?

Answer 18

E.M. Foster didn’t accept traditional values and attacked British imperialism in A passage to India, which explores the difficult relationship between the British and the Indians. Though his style and language are far from the modernist style.

Question 19

Who are the anti-utopian novel?

Answer 19

During the 30s and 40s writers were concerned with the growing influence of social media and the creation of new war machines. so most of them turned to the political left. The most famous anti-utopian novel is 1984 by George Orwell, which describes a future where everything is controlled by the dictator Big Borther, which controls man’s actions through cameras and microphones. This novel became symbol of modern man’s addiction to mass media.

Question 20

James Joyce’s life?

Answer 20

James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 into a middle-class Catholic family. He attended Jesuit schools. Life in Ireland was too provincial for his development so he moved to Paris, Pola and Trieste. In Trieste Joyce finished Dubliners and A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Because of WW1 he moved to Paris where he published Ulysses. His last work was Finnegans Wake. in 1941 he moved to zurich where he died.

Question 21

What was Joyce’s relationship with Ireland?

Answer 21

Joyce rejected life in Ireland because it was provincial and seen as an obstacle for his development, though all of his works are about Ireland, reproducing early 20th century Dublin with precise details. His self-imposed exile was necessary to give him the intellectual detachment to write about Ireland.

Question 22

What’s Dubliners?

Answer 22

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen stories about the paralysis of life in Dublin. The story had been written in 1905, though publishers refused to publish it because it was considered immoral so it was published in 1920.

Question 23

What’s the paralysis?

Answer 23

The paralysis of will as the inability to go beyond the social context they live in. The sense of stagnation is presented in four stages: childhood, youth, maturity and public life.

Question 24

Realism and symbolism in Dubliners?

Answer 24

On one level Joyce gives a realistic description of the characters, places, streets of Dublin whereas on a symbolic level Joyce introduces the epiphany.

Question 25

What’s the epiphany?

Answer 25

The epiphany is a moment of sudden realization, when a character realizes his/her condition(which is usually sad).

Question 26

What’s The Dead?

Answer 26

The Dead is the climax to all the other stories because of its lyrical intensity in describing the people of Dublin. The central character of the dead is Gabriel who represents what Joyce would have become if he had stayed in Ireland .

Question 27

What’s The Dead’s plot?

Answer 27

The Dead begins with a party on Epiphany day. They discuss about different topics, such as the need of independence for Ireland. The central character is Gabriel Conroy, a successful journalist who would like to travel to Europe (like Joyce) and write whatever he wants, though he doesn’t want to expose himself. After the party Gabriel and his wife Gretta go back to their hotel room. Gretta seems distant and when Gabriel asks why she’s lost in though, her answer shocks him. He realizes how little he knows about his wife.

Question 28

Describe ‘‘I think he died for me’’

Answer 28

The party is over, Gabriel and Gretta go back to their hotel room. Gretta starts kissing him, though a song heard at the party suddenly brings up half-forgotten memories(epiphany). Gretta begins to cry and questioned by Gabriel she reveals that she’s crying for a boy(Micheal Fury) she used to date when she was a teen, whom, she thinks, had died for her. It was a huge shock for Gabriel , once she falls asleep he realizes how little he knows about his wife and feels jealous towards Micheal. Though his jealousy disappears and feels piety towards his wife. Then he thinks about all the dead people and elevates to the region of spirit. The union between the two words is symbolized by the snow.

Question 29

What are the circumstances of publication?(Ulysses)

Answer 29

Serialization begun in the American Little Review but it was stopped because it was considered obscene. It was also turned down by the Hogarth Press which was owned by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. It was thanks to Sylvia Beach that it was published in Paris in 1922.

Question 30

Which method does Joyce use in Ulysses?

Answer 30

Joyce uses Homer’s epic patter to make a parallel to the events in the life of common men and women in modern society. Joyce follows the journey of two ordinary people Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus during a whole day. The events are seen from the inside of the character’s mind through the stream of consciousness technique.

Question 31

What does Joyce criticizes in Ulysses?

Answer 31

He criticizes the lack of faith, heroism, trust and love in the modern world

Question 32

What’s Ulysses’ plot?

Answer 32

The main character of this novel is Leopold Bloom, he’s the ulysses of the title and he wanders through the streets of Dublin just like Ulysses wanders through the mediterrean sea. His journey though is pretty simple: he attends a funeral, goes to a pub, watches the sunset and meets Stephen Dedalus. Stephen is frustrated by Irish provincial life and sees in Leopold the father figure he’s been seeking for a long time. He corresponds to telemachus. Molly Bloom, Leopold’s wife corresponds to Penelope though unlike her, she’s unfaithful.

Question 33

Which technique does Joyce use in Ulysses?

Answer 33

To convey the life of an individual in a single day he adopts the stream of consciousness technique in which he tries to reproduce the chaotic flow of the human mind.
Joyce’s stream of consciousness is uninterrupted, unpunctuated, it follows the flow of thoughts thus it’s not organized logically or syntactically.

Question 34

Virginia Woolf’s life?

Answer 34

Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, her father was a philosopher and she was brought up in a household full of people devoted to an intellectual life. Unlike her brothers she was educated at home especially thanks to her father. After her mother’s death she started struggling with mental health, she even attempted suicide with drugs after her father’s death. After her father’s death she moved to Bloomsbury where she found the Bloomsbury group, a group of anti-victorian intellectuals. Because of WW2 her mental health got worse and worse, she drowned herself in a river in 1941.

Question 35

Which was Woolf’s first modernist novel?

Answer 35

Jacob’s room which describes the life of a young man during WW1, which was written using the stream of consciousness technique and an impressionistic flow. She also wrote Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and To the lighthouse making her the leading modernist writer

Question 36

What’s Woolf’s use of time?

Answer 36

Like Joyce, Woolf prefers short meaningful time units, for example Mrs Dalloway is set in one day. These short time units relate to external events and are expanded through the characters’ minds which cover past, present and future. In her essay Modern Fiction she states the difference between time of the clock and time of the mind.

Question 37

Was Woolf a feminist?

Answer 37

Woolf was a suffragete and wrote many essays on the subject of women’s emancipation. She wrote novels on the topic such as A room of one’s own and three guineas. She also wrote essays such as A Writer’s Diary.

Question 38

What’s ‘‘A Room of One’s Own’’?

Answer 38

A Room of One’s Own is a series of lectures held by V.W. at a women’s college about women and literature. They were later published in book form.

Question 39

What’s ‘‘A Room of One’s Own’’ about?

Answer 39

In this passage Virginia ironically states how women (of all races) have never built an empire, have never made a scientific discovery, never written a Shakespeare’s play. That’s because women were too busy giving birth, educating their children… Though without women no historical enterprise would have been possible. She stresses the importance for women to gain their political and economical independence. Then she states that if Shakespeare’s sister was equally gifted as her brother she wouldn’t have been as successful because of social conventions. Though thanks to feminism she will be able to be born again.

Question 40

George Orwell’s life?

Answer 40

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. Orwell was born in 1903 in Bengal,India and was sent to school in England. He had to study very hard to win a scholarship and was admitted to Eton, thought he didn’t enjoy studying there because he was mistreated by his class mates. After Eton he enrolled in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, though he left because he could not stand imposing violence on other men. He returned to Europe with a sense of guilt towards the working classes, he worked as a waiter in London and Paris(Down and Out in Paris and London). Like many left-wing writers he took part in the Spanish Civil War where he witnessed the manipulation of socialists, he was also wounded in the throat. Throughout his life he remained a left-wing political writer, thought he criticized Communism in his political fable ‘‘Animal farm’’ when he realized it had turned into a dictatorship.

Question 41

What’s 1984 about?

Answer 41

1984 is an anti-utopian novel, it describes a society where men’s actions are controlled by an all-powerful party lead by the dictator Big Brother. Big Brother monitors everyone through cameras and microphones, and has become the symbol of modern man’s addiction to social media.

Question 42

1984’s plot?

Answer 42

In 1984 the world is divided into three great powers at war with each other. Britain is ruled by a dictator, Big Brother, who monitors everyone through microphones and video cameras, there’s no privacy. Society is divided between the members of the Party(who control everything) and the proles (the proletarians). The Party manipulates people’s minds through the Ministry of Truth.The main character Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth, one day he starts writing a diary in order to understand what’s real and what’s been created by the Party. He also meet Julia, a Young girl, with whom he starts an illicit relationship. When their relationship is discovered they’re subject to a programme of mental and physical torture. At the end they’re cured but their bodies and souls are destroyed.

Question 43

what’s Animal Farm?

Answer 43

Animal Farm is a political fable describing how animals on a farm rebel against their cruel master. The animals are a metaphor for the workers in modern society, who are exploited no matter what happens. The conclusion is that revolutions are doomed to fail and end up in new forms of oppression.

Question 44

Animal Farm’s plot?

Answer 44

The animals of an old British Farm are tired of being exploited by the farmer, Mr Jones. One of the animals, a pig called Old Major, convinces the other to rebel and create and independent community: Animal Farm. The revolution is led by two pigs called Napoleon and Snowball. They establish a socialist community where everybody is considered equal and asked to contribute to the common wealth. However Napoleon gradually turns into a dictator and even creates a police force. The pigs have taken the place of men. They even start drinking together, the other animals look at the scene and the faces of the pigs and the faces of men look alike.