Course / Student Introduction
- Interview in groups of 3-4:
• Name
• (possible) major/concentration
• favorite reading or music
Course goals for the Modern European Novel:
Authoring the Experimental Self
- Genre: Focus on the development
of the novel during the period of European Modernism
- Period: European Modernism (ca.
1910-1930) and its roots in the late nineteenth century (Dostoevsky)
- Philosophical themes: Existentialism, Nihilism, and Surrealism
(“Authoring the Experimental Self”)
- Student Writing: Be able to demonstrate a
sophisticated level of discourse about the emergence of the novel by
articulating its relation to late nineteenth-century and late
twentieth-century issues
- Course thus addresses 2 main
questions:
1) How did the Modernist novel (Hesse, Kafka, and Breton) influence the
contemporary novel (Kundera)?
2) How does the European novel inform notions of
“modern identity” and vice versa?
What is the novel?
-
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, new, from Latin novellus, from diminutive of novus new (adjective); Italian novella (noun)
-
Definition: an invented prose narrative that is usually long
and complex and deals especially with human experience through a
usually connected sequence of events
-
Started as epistolary (Richardson, Clarissa)
-
18th century: the loss (and reclamation of) virtue (Defoe, Moll Flanders);
-
19th century: orphan rediscovers noble heritage / inheritance
(Bronte sisters); the Bildungsroman (literally, novel of education;
journey of protagonist from
imprisonment of childhood toward mature freedom
-
Additional vocabulary: exposition, turning point(s), climax,
and denouement
What is modernity?
- Etymology: Late Latin modernus, from Latin
modo (just
now), from modus (measure)
- Self-conscious break with the past and
a search for
new
forms of expression
not quite the same as Modernism . . .
- Modernism (1910-1930s/before WWII): Literary,
artistic, and intellectual movement associated with many other ones
(Dada, Surrealism, Futurism, etc.)
- IN CLASS WRITING: What is modern about the
early 21st century?
What
cultural objects and practices define modernity now? (10-15 minutes)
1. "Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever
came
earlier, in the hope of reaching at least a point that could be called
a true present, a point of origin that marks a new departure." -- Paul
De Man (1919–1983), Belgian-born U.S. literary critic.
2. “'Modernity' signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent,
the
half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable."
Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), French poet, critic.
3. "By Modernism I mean the positive rejection of the past and the
blind
belief in the process of change, in novelty for its own sake, in the
idea that progress through time equates with cultural progress; in the
cult of individuality, originality and self-expression." -- Dan
Cruickshank (b. 1949), British architectural critic.
Review of L. 1:
What is the modern European novel?
1. Modernism
* not contemporary
* 1910-1930
* related to other artistic movements
(Surrealism, Cubism, Dada, jazz, etc.)
2. European
• Linguistically: German, French, Russian, Czech
• Nationally: before the Great War: France,
England, (greater) Germany, Austro-Hungarian Empire
• the period between the wars: exodus to
Switzerland (Hesse), separation of Central Europe into (new) nation
states
• Bookmarks: Dostoevsky and Kundera
3. Novel
* "new" form of literature
* "trashy," "low" reputation -- ideal for
Modernist expression
• exposition, turning point(s), climax, and
denouement
“Modern” means:
- new
- now
- extension of / reinvention of past
- shock value
- globalization
- includes its own vernacular
- adventurous
- liberal
Modernism vs. Classicism: Relative beauty vs. Absolute Truth and Beauty
Questions we will address:
1) How did the Modernist novel (Hesse, Kafka, and Breton) influence the
contemporary novel (Kundera)?
2) How does the European novel inform notions of
“modern identity” and vice versa?
Producers, not just consumers, of knowledge
Review of L. 2:
→ Are we reading a Modernist novel right now? No:
Realism and the Novel
- French tradition (Zola, Balzac)
- Characters as types (see p. 34: Svidrigaylov)
- Realistic portrait of social inequality,
disease, and human condition
- Related to Socialism (Communist Manifesto:
1848; Russian Revolution 1917)-- Subjects = From contemporary and
modern Russian social life
- Style = unobtrusive, journalistic, vs. ‘fine
writing’
Purpose of reading Crime and Punishment:
- To understand how the Modernist novel (Hesse, Breton, Kafka) differs
from the nineteenth-century novel
- To better comprehend the idea of "split identity" in discussions
about modern identity
Recurring Motif of Women, Property, and Beating:
* Marmeladov's wife Katerina Ivanovna
* horse in Raskolnikov's dream
* the mistreated drunk woman
* Sonya, Marmeladov's daughter
* Dunya, Raskolnikov's sister
* Foreshadowing!
Review of L. 3
Your Questions:
1. How does Raskolnikov justify murdering the old
woman and her sister?
2. How does Raskolnikov punish himself for his
crime (physically, emotionally)?
3. Why does Raskolnikov seek out Razumikhin? How
is he like his ‘reason’?
4. In what ways is Raskolnikov like a horse?
Schisms/Contradictions:
Murdering / compassion and charity
emotion and mania / Reason
Follow-up to some student questions:
a) Many of you noted the prevalence of poverty in the
novel.
>> What do you think about the poverty in the novel?
Does Raskolnikov really need money? Why does he give money away as
soon as he gets it?
Award-winning Discussion Questions:
b) Sam: What compels Raskolnikov to “confess if they
ask him” to lying about where he was?
c) Jessica: What does water symbolize in the novel?
What is the significance of canals? Does water have a religious
connection?
Review of L. 4
Luzhin
- Comically represents the intellectuals of the 1860s
that Dost. feared would corrupt the youth of the day
- According to their idealistic doctrines, the
individual ought to make society’s interests his own and eventually the
world would become a better place. As the novel demonstrates, the
opposite turns out to be the case: they make their self-centered
interest the goal of all.
- With comic irony, Dost uses him to show the
contradictions in the radical ideology of nihilism.
- These characters claim to do things for the good of
society, but at heart they are egotists who believe in nothing but
their own theories and their own pleasures.
- Pretends to be a representative of the ‘young’ p.
125.
- p.127 = “self-congratulatory babbling”
Close Textual Analysis
- First reading: plot, text, narrative
- Second, third, and fourth: symbols, imagery, deeper
meaning, subtext (essays)
Examples:
96-7:
- “. . . not long ago” (Dostoevsky 97)→ R. is haunted
by his past (dead fiancé, murdered women)
- “far below him”: seeks transcendence, sees himself
as far above others
- “as with a knife” (97)—image of pain, subjunctive
mood
- motif of water—R.’s need for cleansing
- position/context of passage: right before his
hallucination
Review of L. 5
1. What’s wrong with Raskolnikov (crazy, sick,
acting)?
2. What is Dunya’s relationship to her brother? In
what ways does Dunya break gender stereotypes? What do
the differences between Dunya and her mother mean? How
is Dunya’s engagement like Raskolnikov’s infatuation
with Sonya?
3. What’s the connection between the murder and
Raskolnikov’s article?
4. In what ways has the murder alienated Raskolnikov?
(194)
5. Redemption / messiah-figures in the novel
Review of L. 6
Sonya:
- Like Raskolnikov: shameful, outcast
- Opposite to Raskolnikov:
• Sense of community, meek, religious, proactive,
friends with Lizaveta
Philosophical reason Raskolnikov commits murder
- One of 2 classes: Napoleon / extraordinary man
- Übermensch
Svidrigaylov/Raskolnikov
- murderers, haunted, disobey, generous and selfish at the same time
Review of L. 12
Who is Harry Haller and what does he want?
- a divorced 48-year leftist old writer
- wants a female companion, to be Steppenwolf, and to
get into the Magic Theater
What possible endings does the “Treatise” predict for him?
- suicide
- to recognize the multiplicity of the self
- to take the “road of the Buddha” (golden path)
Who are the Immortals? Goethe, Mozart
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and Faust (1808)
Faust (medieval scholar who sells his soul to devil
for money, power, and immortality) is Goethe’s most famous work
He claimed to have “two souls:” one spiritual and
the other full of physical lust
Goethe is German literature’s Shakespeare. As a
youth, he was rebellious, but when he got older, he discouraged younger
artists who threatened his legacy.
STUDENT QUESTIONS:
Julie: How does the narrator “presuppose” himself (12)? (to believe or
suppose in advance)
Michael: Why do the words “Bois Charbons” motivate Breton? (27-28)
Michael + Sam: What does the song on p. 38 mean?
Lisa + Gosia + Heather: Why is the analogy of the glass house
important? (18)
Review of L. 17
Point of Breton, Kafka: Deductive Definition of the Modern European
Novel
- non-linear
- solipsistic protagonists
- hallucinations and dreams
- multiple perspectives
Question for final exam question: What elements from the Modern Novel
does Kundera borrow? (NB: final exam might also include some
identification short-essay responses in addition to the above)
Or: Research project that touches on one or more of the last three
novels (Breton, Kafka, Kundera)—e.g., graduate school entrance paper
Review of L. 19
1. WOMEN—Conduit for male role; voice of guidance; low in society in
terms of occupation but more mature than the male protagonist; sexual
beings
Differences: Sonya is pious; Sonya and Hermine motherlike, Nadja is
not;
2. MEN—identity crises (self-perpetuated); looking to be saved from a
woman; go on journeys; try to but fail at proving themselves great;
don’t work
3. NOVEL—Conventional: chronological; defined characters; one central
problem; one form of narration; words and not pictures
Experimental novel: pictures; automatic writing; is it really
fictional?(blurs the lines between fiction and truth); circular
narratives; abstract characters
4. SETTING—urban setting has more people (to hate and feel superior
about); cities have old and new; water plays a central role (rivers and
fountains); neon signs = modernization; bars
5. NARRATIVE STYLE-pastiche is sometimes alienating or could work if
you know references; Crime and Punishment does not have a lot of
references; Nadja and Steppenwolf have more ; memories and knowledge
are part of the whole ‘person’
WCN--Potential Similarities to Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of
Being
I. Emerging Qualities of the Modern European Novel
- Open-ended
- Multiple narrative perspectives, unreliable
narrators
- Experimental use of space and time
- Skeptical about and apt to write ironically
about “sincerity” and “authenticity” in art
- Use of dream, trance, and fantasy to express
the ineffable (limits of language)
- Demands a critical eye/I from the reader (and a
good sense of humor)
- Subject matter: the construction of the self,
suicide, love and infidelity
II. Narrative style: shift between third- and first-person; shifts
in perspective; floating above epic story; consciousness of purpose,
genre (novel), and fictionality; narrative as musical composition
(several voices and modes); self-consciously experimental; the role of
novelist as experimenter
III. Contempt for authoritarian (here: religious and social) attempts
to control individual mores and behaviors; Critique of fascist and
totalitarian dictatorships, philosophies, and attitudes (Kafka)
Critique of Bourgeois (Middle Class, Romantic) Sentimentality (in
Kundera = kitsch)
IV. Plurality of Gender Roles and Definitions
Review of L. 20
In-class Questions:
1. What is Joseph K. arrested for?
2. Why does JK consider suicide and then
disregard it?
3. Why do we only know the last initial? Is he
everyman?
4. Is it ‘normal’ to seize your female neighbor?
Student questions (not addressed in class):
- How is Frau Grubach's nephew important to the story (Heather)?
- Why does K listen to Willem and Franz? Why doesn't he just walk
out of the house? (Brandon)
- What is the financial status of the characters in the book?
(José)
L. 23: Your Questions
1. Why does K. sleep with his lawyer's mistress? This doesn't help his
defense, and he doesn't seem to want to advance his case. (Brandon)
2. Does the painter have any significance with the court? Is he one of
the judges, perhaps examining him in disguise? (Brandon)
3. What is the significance of the flogger saying, "I've been hired to
flog, and flog I will" (83)? (Julie)
4. Why does Leni tell him to confess? (Julie)
5. Why are the courts located in the attics? (Gosia)
6. K. was raised by his uncle. Does the absence of a mother figure have
any importance in K.'s life? (Lisa)
7. Why does K. feel guilty inside but not out of doors? (Heather)
8. In what ways is The Trial anti-government? (Mercedes) In what
ways is it like the Cold War? (Miguel)
>> Is Block symbolic of K.'s future? (Brandon)