Lecture notes on the novel in the 20th c.

1. The Modern Period
♦ In Brief
♦ Late 19th
c. and early 20th
c. - natural and
social sciences saw enormous advances.
♦ This increase in the physical sciences 
gain in material wealth.
♦ capitalism heightened contradictions
between production and private
ownership  economic depression and
mass unemployment.
♦ Wide gap between wealth and lower
classes.

2. Modernism
♦ Originated from the growing delusion with rise of and the negative
effects of capitalism.
The First World War and the Second World War greatly influenced
English literary production.
♦ Second World War marked final breakdown of the British Empire.
Heavy losses in the war; the economy suffered; former colonies
gained self representation.
♦ Ideological – Irrational philosophy and new social sciences
encouraged new forms of expression  exploration into human
nature and the complexities of individual relationships.

3. Literary – Artistic Expression
New Trends
♦symbolism, expressionism, surrealism,
cubism, futurism, Dadaism, imagism
and stream of consciousness.
♦English poetry:
opposition to the conventional ideas
and forms of Victorian poetry.
♦English prose:
early 20th
c.  powerful Modernist prose fiction.
♦Gradual shift in dramatic perspective  20th
c. drama:
Oscar Wilde - George Bernard Shaw 
first innovators of modern drama through style and form,
staging techniques  leading to the new theatrical
productions still on stage today.

4. Complex world wide movement in all creative arts  proved to be
great renewal of the 20th
c
Modernism in literature
new existential philosophy and psycho-analysis as theoretical base.
English Modernism 
♦dehumanization of art – removal of content in preference to form –
perception must be re-educated. José Ortega y Gasset – Essay 1925
♦themes of the modernist literature are the difficult, alienating and
complex, relationships between man and nature, man and society, man
and man – man with himself.
Modernism

5. Key Voices of the Period
George Bernard Shaw (1856- 1950)
Mrs. Warren's Profession
John Galsworthy (1867- 1933)
The Man of Property
William Butter Yeats (1865- 1939)
The Land of Heart’s Desire
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888- 1965)
Murder in the Cathedral
David Herbert Lawrence (1885- 1930)
Sons and Lovers
James Joyce (1882- 1941)
Ulysses

6. D. H. Lawrence
♦ Themes such as the conflict between the coarse simple people and the
refined, strong-willed “member of society” are presented
Most autobiographical novel: Sons and Lovers (1913);
The Rainbow – Women in Love – Lady Chatterley's Lover
♦ Writings expressed a strong reaction against the mechanical evolution of
progress.
♦ Believed the wealthy, upper classes, fed by industrialization, survived
a. at the cost of ravishing the land,
b. started the catastrophic uprooting of man from nature
c. caused the corruption of modern individual  dominance of a sterile
intellect over the authentic inward passions of man.
d. concern about the dehumanizing effect of mechanical civilization on the
innate/inherent/inborn sensitivity of human nature

7. James Joyce
♦ 1882 – Joyce was a Catholic from Dublin  passed from involved religious
enthusiasm to the rejection of the inflexible bigotry of Dublin society.
♦ Joyce was not a prolific writer  novels and short stories have
a. the same setting: Ireland, especially Dublin,
b. the same subject: the Irish people and their lives
c. Universality of his works and the people he characterizes appeal to the
inherent sensitivity of the modern reader
Key works _
Dubliners; A Portrait of Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses
♦ Refined a new prose style  show the chaos and of consciousness – human
thought processes in written form
- Stream Of ConsciousnessStream Of Consciousness achieved great success as a genre of modern
literature.
Finnegan’s Wake, pursuit of newness above normalness  associable to “As I
Lay Dying” – William Faulkner (US – 1897)

8. His Master Work – Ulysses
account of man's life during an 18 hour day (16 June, 1904) in Dublin. Three
main characters :
•Leopold Bloom, an Irish Jew,
•Marion Tweedy Bloom, his wife
•Stephen Daedalus, also the protagonist in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man.
•novel divided into 18 episodes in correspondence with the 18 hours of the
normal laborer's waking day.
Significance  Ulysses - regarded as the most "revolutionary" literary effort
of 20th
c.  "stream of consciousness" technique.
LEITMOTIF  create a modern hero – returned to classical myth and
deconstruct the figure of the great and wise Greek warrior into a parody of the
"Wandering Jew"
•Joyce singles out a key figure – the anti-hero: a flawed but lovable human
being.
•Considerable prose space given especially to banal and taboo human
weakness: gluttony, defecation, urination, dementia, masturbation, voyeurism,
alcoholism, and other “unmentionables”
•most of these involved the hero/un-hero – Leopold Bloom.

9. Characters
Leopold Bloom – protagonist (mock-epic hero from Fielding, Thorpe, Dickens, etc.)
in contrast to the Homeric Ulysses, our "modern" hero must struggle throughout the novel
Joyce emphasizes how Bloom, an ad-canvasser, is an outsider – isolated by his very nature
of being a simple creature
Molly Bloom : The wife has a sexual affair with fellow singer, Blazes Boylan
Stephen Dedalus : covers a series of symbolic positions taken, as contrast, from various
works of literature – Hamlet, Icarus, Telemachus in search of his father, etc.
Structure
Ulysses has become a prime example of MODERNISM in literature.
•uncommon novel – essential qualities of the traditional novel are totally absent
•no real story; no chronological plot, very little action,
•characterization obtained through the characters own thought processes
•The triviality of every day activities, insignificant
HOWEVER – beneath the surface 
a.the seemingly natural flow of mental reflection
b.the shifting moods and impulses in the characters' inner world
c.Unexpected candid language use  deeply moving focus on the “inner” individual
Reader must re-invent a new set of rules for reading or it would be completely impenetrable
perception must be re-educated. José Ortega y Gasset – Essay 1925

10. Characters
Leopold Bloom – protagonist (mock-epic hero from Fielding, Thorpe, Dickens, etc.)
in contrast to the Homeric Ulysses, our "modern" hero must struggle throughout the novel
Joyce emphasizes how Bloom, an ad-canvasser, is an outsider – isolated by his very nature
of being a simple creature
Molly Bloom : The wife has a sexual affair with fellow singer, Blazes Boylan
Stephen Dedalus : covers a series of symbolic positions taken, as contrast, from various
works of literature – Hamlet, Icarus, Telemachus in search of his father, etc.
Structure
Ulysses has become a prime example of MODERNISM in literature.
•uncommon novel – essential qualities of the traditional novel are totally absent
•no real story; no chronological plot, very little action,
•characterization obtained through the characters own thought processes
•The triviality of every day activities, insignificant
HOWEVER – beneath the surface 
a.the seemingly natural flow of mental reflection
b.the shifting moods and impulses in the characters' inner world
c.Unexpected candid language use  deeply moving focus on the “inner” individual
Reader must re-invent a new set of rules for reading or it would be completely impenetrable
perception must be re-educated. José Ortega y Gasset – Essay 1925