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 3 main
questions:
1) How did the Modernist novel (Hesse, Kafka, and Breton) influence the
contemporary novel (Kundera)?
2) How
can
one challenge past traditions and conventions and still retain a sense
of self?
3) Yet what
is
so wrong with modern life that the tyrannies of the past--bourgeois
family, gender inequality, and oppressive laws--still seem to haunt the
present?
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.)
QUOTES:
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.
In-class Writing: What do you like and dislike about modern
life?
Likes
|
Dislikes
|
Convenience of technology
Society more tolerant (AC, AM)
|
Technology distances us (many)
Pressures to succeed (AL)
|
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
Questions we will address:
1) How did the Modernist novel (Hesse, Kafka, and Breton) influence the
contemporary novel (Kundera)?
2) How can one challenge past traditions and conventions and still
retain a sense of self?
3) Yet what is so wrong with modern life that the tyrannies of the
past--bourgeois family, gender inequality, and oppressive laws--still
seem to haunt the present?
Day 2: What does Raskolnikov dislike
about (modern) life? What does he want out of life?
- misanthrope
- disilusioned about debauchery and passivity of lower classes;
uncomfortable with people prostituting/sacrificing themselves
- resents landlady and pawnbroker
- doesn't like to feel weak
Why does
Raskolnikov
kill the pawnbroker and her sister?
- re. p. 55-56 students talking: to kill her, take her
money, and give it to the poor, thus serving "humanity and the common
good" (56)
- re. dream of beaten horse (48-49)--inequality in society
- disillusioned with life
- fatalism
- not money
- re. p. 61: to prove his superiority
Similarities between Raskolnikov and Harry Haller?
- loners
- annoyed by most other people
- self-destructive
- peculiar, dislike surroundings
- lost their former way of life
- reference suicide (N.B. p. 70 laudanum)
- writers
- prostitute figure = savior
Characteristics
of
the
Modern
European
Novel:
- Protagonists who are dissatisfied with the system
- Protagonists realize that there is a system
- Faceless people operate/control system
- Focus on the indvidual
- Women playing a key role in characters'
self-realization
- Women act as guides
- Dichotomy of the self
- Fatalism
- Mental/physical suicide and isolation
- Time / Waiting / Impatience
- How to live in a godless world
- Rebellion is futile in the end
- Dream sequences/motifs
Surrealism and
Dreams
-
Freud:
Try to interpret dreams using rationality
-
Surrealists:
(almost
medieval
view,
ironically):
Dream
is
a different kind (or ‘true’?)
reality; applying rationality to art that stems from the unconscious
destroys
its value
-
Early
20th century: fight between REASON/CONSCIOUSNESS and
FEELING/UNCONSCIOUSNESS
Real
Dream
Consciousness
Unconsciousness
Sanity
Superstition
(ghosts)
Logic/reason
Illogic
Surrealism = combination of these two states
Breton and the Novel
- very few characters
- unclear if characters are "real"
- not much of a plot
- dream sequences confuse what might be the plot
- slightly non-linear / slightly circular
- open end
- untrustworthy narrator
- narrator = author > self-conscious narrator
What do you associate with the terms lightness and weight?
Lightness:
- color
- frivolous
- playful
- bird
- nature
- living w/o anything holding you down
- possibly: narcissism
- living with fear and worry
Weight:
- shading
- serious
- machines
- industry
- obligation
- overwhelmed
- fear
- burden
How do you define the modern European novel?
- minimal plot development
- not many characters
- protagonists dissatisfied with life
- function as social commentaries of the time
- protagonists ask who they are
- protagonists question value of the future
- influenced by existentialist philosophies
- male protagonist emphasize their individuality in
response to mass culture
- experiments with traditional form (narrative style)