THE AGE OF ANXIETY Flashcards
the outstanding characteristic of early twentieth-century
the critical spirit
an example of postwar book that captured the hesitation between war trauma and release
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway which seems poised between :
- exhilaration, with an upper class lady getting ready to host a party
- and distress with a WW1 veteran on the verge of a suicidal nervous breakdown.
Quotation about Modernism
«Modernism turned it back on the traditional idea of art as imitation and substituted the idea of art as an autonomous activity»
David Lodge put in Working with Structuralism
changes in narration
reliable and omniscient Victorian narrator gave way to more unstable focalizers
What can be the influence of Freud discoveries in narration ?
Freud discovery = about the intricate working of the human mind
→ the focus of narration gradually revolve around a study of inner life and perceptions
What is a stream of consciousness ?
A technique meant to render the haphazard flow of myriad images that impress themselves upon the consciousness of an individual
ex of use of the stream of consciousness
Joyce’s Ulysse and Finnegans Wake
ex of people in the Bloomsbury group
Virginia Woolf
E.M. Forster
discussions on the Bloomsbury group
Discussions commonly revolved around :
- definitions of the beautiful
- the good and the modern attitudes towards feminism;
- pacifism
- and sexuality
What is a dystopia ?
- A world plagued by evil and sometimes nerve-racking sense of absurdity.
- A dystopia may be seen as merely a utopia from another point of view.
- it is frightening right from the start
- it expose the hazardous potentialities of our society
an example of dystopia
Aldnous Huxley Brave New World (1932)
- he depicted a World State dedicated to the happiness of the mass
- literature, art and religion have been forbidden because it engage the mind too deeply
+ title link to Shakespear, The Tempest where Miranda express misguided optimism
“Age of Anxiety” ?
a title of a poem of W.H Auden
The poem mainly deals with man’s utmost difficulty in finding true meaning in his life
a sentence the manifesto about Vortex
name of the manifesto Long live the Vortex
WE ONLY WANT THE WORLD TO LIVE and to feel its crude energy flowing through us.
