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?





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


Students--in response to Summary Questions


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)