Postmodernism

"The tenets of our dominant ideology... are what is being contested by postmodernism: from the notion of authorial originality and authority to the separation of the aesthetic from the political. Postmodernism teaches that all cultural practices have an ideological subtext which determines the conditions of the very possibility of their production of meaning."
Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism .

Postmodernism

• Is not simply a literary phenomenon (architecture, art too)
• By necessity, it challenges from within (so both uses and deliberately abuses)
• De-constructs (Focuses on processes, on "master narratives" and on the systems of production and reception of meaning, on signs as signifies)
• Is inclusive: challenges the metaphor of a "center" to which there will be a "margin"; uses high and low (pop) culture, mixes art forms, mixes genres, gives space to those traditionally excluded or marginalized (eg: women, homosexuals, blacks)
• Tools: irony, parody, (intertextuality), revisionism, fragmentation, juxtaposition, experimentation

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead

• No sense of:
• purpose - what are their duties?
• identity - which one is which?
• direction - physical direction
• direction - destination
• Logic
• The bigger picture
• meaning
• Time (there is only the present)
• linguistic intergrity
• outcome
• social protocol (awkward)
• knowing
• self
• Post-modern
• reality is a fictional construct
• Boat=lack of free will
• Even the murder Guildenstern attempts come to nothing
• R&G have lost their scripts
• Themes
• In comprehensibility of the world
• Gives voice to the marginalized

Modernism/Poetry

• Forces
• Science (Darwin, Einstein, etc) & technology
• Psychology (freud)
• History (Marxism 
• Urbanization
• Lit movements of realism and naturalism
• New aesthetics redefining the understanding & representation of physical world
• A sense of the shrinking significance of the individual which imparts a sense of powerlessness & diminishing sense of the value of individual life
• Heisenberg & Dohr - Quantum mechanics, exploration of our unstable world ( can't measure both position & velocity of atom simultaneously) which (in combination with Darwin, Einstein, & Freud) called reality itself in question
• What is true & real?
• This affected the arts very much
• Shift from Victorian, Omniscient narrator (3rd person) to a subjective, individual narrator who doesn't have a full grasp on the world, as historically the narrator in literature had.
• Left with imperfect, human perspective, which is very much reflected in the modernistic Arts
• Modern British Literature
• "Beyond the Pale" breaking down literary conventions
• T.S. Eliot - "making all things new" not making things new
• Probing nervous quality in exploring ultimate questions - Is there a God? Is it possible to connect with others
• Form reflects content
• In Media Res
• Imagism: more in fewer words
• Readers get inside characters brain
• alienation - we can never really get to know someone else
• Technology
• Urban/city - being surrounded by people but not connecting
• Fragmentation
• Making it difficult - opposite Victorian pedagogy
• Multidimensional - different POV's
• Turned inward - self-reverential & cannibalistic (beginnings of meta narrative
• Individual psyche/stream of conscience
• Lack of definitive endings
• Return of the repressed - woman, working class, religious, ethics, and sexual perspectives

Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse

• Set out to write a novel that mapped the psychological unconscious. Instead of detailing the many things characters say and do to one another, she concentrated on the innumerable things that exist below the surface of speech & action - stream-of-consciousness is key to this.
• High modernist
• split in 3 parts
• stream of consciousness, but jumping characters - heads
• Ramsey Mr. Ramsey phiosophy prof made career in youth, trying to recapture that in adulthood. super greedy. Almost like a child. Requires sympathy from family, esp. Mrs. Ramsey
• Main focus is on Lily Briscoe - someone who takes care of family - she's a painter
• Entire story is about them
• Novel set in their summer home
• Nothing happens, no characters involved
• Psychological surreal passage of time, examining how time moves
• Like really intense poetry
• Intro, 10 years pass during that section, including WWI, 2 children die, Mrs. Ramsey dies. Mr. Ramsey grows more needy
• Comes back to summer house after 10 years, decide to go to the lighthouse. James, Cam, Mr. Ramsey
• Cam has realization about her father in this section that she actually admires him, instead of resenting him
• Lily completes her painting of the lighthouse here
• Majority of characters female, but Mr Ramsey so needy of these women, always interrupting them, so doesn't take their needs into consideration.
• p 35. Mr. Ramsey's deep musings about intelligence, fame, and how long it lasts, the bleak reality about the rock outlasting Shakespeare, his "little light"
• p36, right before "VII" unfamiliar, isolation, waste of ages
• p36-37 - James hatred for his father
• pg 36-37 - Mr. Ramsey's requirement of sympathy, needy
• p37 - Mr. Ramsey's want of sympathy - "fatal sterility" wants his barrenness made fertile"
• p37 - Mrs. Ramsey trying to give him symapthy "creating" the rooms in the house where can find ease, metaphor for soothing him - knitting, flushing needles
• p38 - James feels all her strength leaving as she gives him sympathy, "to be drunk & quenced be the break of brass, the arid, scimitar of the male"
• p38 - Mrs. Ramsey only a shell to know herself by
• she's exhausted, feeling "The rapture of successful"
• p39 - her dissatisfaction, her lying to him about his most recent book
• p40 - "inadequacy of human relationships"
• p41 - She needs to be needed, self-satisfaction in helping
• p42 - pettiness of herself and human relations, flawed, and despicables
• p44 - Fate to be alone, desolate, waste away on spit of
• p45 - Deceptive appearance, "It was a disguise"
• p46 - Mr. Ramsey, fows on self "absorption in himself"
• p50 - Deceptiveness of appearnace, half truths
• Gender roles brought into question in novel, predominately pivoting on Lily Briscoe
• Lily rejects gender conventions
• Has no plans to marry - odd at time, questioned by Mrs. Ramsey
• Plagued by artistic self-doubt, a similar self-doubt to Mr. Ramsey, through his is a doubt about his professional work & Intelligence
• Lily's self-doubt is fueled by Transley's idea that women can't (or weren't meant to )paint or write.
• But Mrs. Ramsey (on the otherhand) taken on the conventional role of wife and mother and accepts the plans that go along with that
• but at the same time she realizes how strongly she influences people (matchmaker, supports her husband, Tansley is basically in love with her etc)
• Mr. Ramsey muses that his wife and 8 children are a fine contribution to "the poor little universe" 
• very modernist (bleak, pessimistic) look at the world
• Woolf tried to show with this novel that life's intellectual psychological or emotional shakes can be as high in the dining room/lawn as they are in the bedroom/battlefield
• Goes against subject matter of the Victorian novels with their complex ploys in mostly exotic/important places
• Woolf's novel focuses away from WWI, Mr. Ramsey's philosophy etc, & instead focuses on the character's mind
• At the dinner, heart of the novel, each guest impressions are given and each is remote "rough & isolated & lonely" much like each character in As I Lay Dying.
• At the dinner, the chaos becomes (momentarily) in harmony as Mrs. Ramsey is present, but when she leaves someg uests scatter and the harmony is lost
• P97, when the candles are lit & everyone is sitting there, Mrs. Ramsey uses her uneasieness & things are in order, as opposed to outside which appears rippled, having
• When Mrs. Ramsey leaves, Lily notices the disentigration of the group
• Time passes
• Whereas "the window" a 120 page section, essentially encompasses 1 day "Time passes" encompasses a time span of 10 years, during which time any things happen
• Mrs. Ramsey dies
• WWI takes place, Andrew Ramsey dies in war (France)
• Prve Ramsey (the beautiful one) dies in childbirth
• The house isn't visited by anyone (except a house maid) for 10 years, during which time the house succumbs to the ravages of time (mold, dust, weeds, etc) - but is brought back to life by 2 maids before Lily returns
• Woolf depicts the passage of time here as cruel & relentless - everything sinks into oblivion
• Human beings are secondary concerns here for instance, Mrs. Ramsey's death is barely mentioned and moved on from, whereas Victorian novels would spend ample time on the deathbed scene & human sentiment
• Lily attempts to finish painting, attempts to provide the sympathy for Mr. Ramsey that he desires, can't and therefore feels like a failure. She pities him deeply
• Mr. Ramsey, James, & Cam finally voyage to the lighthouse
• With Mrs. Ramsey dead, Mr. Ramsey turns to Lily and his children to satisfy his need for sympathy
• Mrs. Ramsey lives on through Lily's memory
• Cam grows to respect her father & longs to show him she loves him without betraying James, as they both agreed to travel in silence to spite their father
• Image of the mutilated fish thrown back to sea by the fisherman (boy) is important:
• Very modernist image
• symbol of the paradoxical modern world: very cruel, yet possible to live in 
• Calls back to the deaths of Mrs. Ramsey, prove Andrew
• By the end of the novel, Lily has finished her painting. She doesn't care what its fate is; hung up, in the attic, or destroyed – so long as she had her vision captured 
• James' view that one would need 50 sets of eyes to truly see someone, both represent woolf's technique in writing the novel: only by presenting a collection of varied subjective character views could she capture a true likeness of her characters & their world
• Distance is the key to reconciling competing impressions: James now has a more complete view of the lighthouse & Lily, having had 10 years to think about Mrs. Ramsey, sees her more fully: recognizes her dated ways and her manipulation
• Focuses on the small stuff, mundane
• Mrs. Ramsey is always exhausted from giving
• look for knife scene
• her heart gives out symbolic
• Chaos ensues because Mrs. Ramsey is gone
• Lighthouse - male
• Bay - female

Themes/modernism

• stream of consciousness, fragmentation
• Whole 2nd section very poetic & complex, very modernist
• questions of individuality
• Very long sentences, like Faulkner, lengthened by semicolons
• p5 - atheist translations
• p 7 bleak pessimistic language
• p19, Lily's inadequacy insignificance
• p20 Ramsey's natural air of solitude
• p25 the inner workings of Lily's mind - the gnats & kitchen table
• Some one had blundered - p18, 25, 30, 33
• p30, Mrs. Ramsey understands the meaning of those words (epiphany) but still doesn't know what he was referring to
• p30 stream of consciousness of Mr. Ramsey, on walking in on Lily & Mr. Bankes
• p31. James hates his father, "folly of woman's minds" enrages Mr. Ramsey
• 32 Mrs. Ramsey "nothing but a spouse sopped full of human emotion" - her feelings about her children using her, feeling of insignificance found her husband
• p33, Mr. Ramsey happy about solitude, his "splendid mind" children divinely innocent, defenseless against a doom he perceived
• p33-34 alphabet as representation of scale of human intelligence, most people don't even make it to Q, which is where he's stuck
• p34 "r" out of reach, failure
• p34-35, 2 classes of men
• p35, death wish, but he'll die standing

C 18 - Age of Reason (Age of Englightenment) vs C 19 Romantic Period

Wordsworth

• Roles of author, text, reader
• Theory of poetry from Lyrical ballads
• Poetry originates in a spontaneous overflow of strong feeling. Emotion recollected in tranquility

Tintern Abbey

• Was there 5 years ago
• Beauty of nature
• Nature comes to me when I am in the city and restores me
• It will sustain him in the future
• Nature was everything to me when I was young
• Now he has a more mature view of nature
• He was thoughtless as a youth but now he isn't thoughtless
• His beloved sister is with him
• Nature is his guide to morals

Author - poets are born, not made. Superior imaginations. Great truth tellers, gratify the reader
Text - scenes from common life in common language
Reader - determines the truth of the poem, challenges the reader to become sensitive and skillful enough to fill in gaps

Preface

• The poems were an experiment

Intimations of Immortality

• Life was beautiful and great but now he feels sad.
• Then realizes he shouldn't let his mood destroy nature.
• He goes back and forth between thinking its great and thinking its sad
• Life is a dim shadow of an earlier, purer existence dimly recalled in childhood and then forgotten in the process of growing up.
• The philosophical mind has enabled him to understand nature in deeper terms than when he was a child.
• Pre-existence
• Stanza 1
• The world and nature were beautiful, celestial and fresh. Now he can't see things like he used to
• Stanza 2
• The rainbow and the rose and the moon are beautiful but the narrator knows the glory has passed away from the earth
• The moon is personified
• Stanza 3
• The birds and the lambs were happy but he had grief
• Something was said to him and then he was happy again.
• Everything is happy and he won't let his grief ruin the mood again.
• He wants the child of Joy, the shepherd boy to play with him.
• Stanza 4
• He sees the blessed creatures rejoicing and it would be evil if he was sullen when Earth is adorning.
• Children and babies are happy.
• Yet he can still tell that something is gone
• Stanza 5
• We come from God (pre-existence) and glory trails with us. Heaven is with us as babies. 
• Prison-house begins to close on us as we grow.
• At length man perceives it die away
• Stanza 6
• Earth tries to be a mother and makes us forget about heaven
• Stanza 7
• Children are born and their parents dote on them
• They grow up playing games that are imitations of adults
• He acts lots of different adult parts
• Stanza 8
• Don't be so quick to grow up
• Stanza 9
• Thankful that he still questions
• Joy that he can remember
• Stanza 10
• So be glad shepherds and lambs mentioned in beginning! Nothing can bring back the hour of splender in the graves of glory in the flower but grieve not for now we have the philosophic mind
• Stanza 11
• I love nature even more now that I see it maturely
• Splender of the grass, glory in the flower

Joseph Andrews - Henry Fielding

• Joseph Andrews (1742) - "Fan fiction"
• A response to Pamela by Samuel Richardson (the book brought his name into existence)
• In 1737 Fielding's career as a playwright comes to an end. The Licensing Act shuts down the Theater that was critical of Walpole
• Fielding thinks Pamela is a gold-digging, weasal
• Joseph Andrews is the brother of Pamela
• Pamela helped put women back on the pedestal
• Tragedy order-->disorder
• Comedy disorder-->order
• Laughter≠delight
• (scorn)
• (unseemly)
• Fieldings says that the comic springs from
• The Ridiculous
• Affection (acting like you're something you're not) (Physical irony)
• inconsistency is also a possibility
• Vanity (get approval)
• Hypocrisy (avoid censure)
• Is Adams ridiculous? Not by Fielding's standards
• Fielding puts Adams in juxtaposition of lots of English types. Series of portraits 
• Page 33 - description has echoes of Milton's description of Adam and Eve
• Adams  - the light by which all the others are judged.
• General satire on vice and folly
• Disorder
• Joseph has to get back to Fanny
• From London to Somersetshire
• Adams is porr
• Lady Booby causes disorder
• Identities (Fanny and Joseph)
• Other characters - except the peddler
• Class
• At the beginning the heroes are subject to a cruel world
• By the end, the good people have won out and are not subject to others
• Is there zero character development? Is there an internal engine?
• It is episodic
• Fielding is saying that human traits are constant and universal
• Pope and Fielding would agree that you can't get too far from nature.
• "Nature to advantage dressed"
• Physical reality (Things function like real people)
• Human reality (human nature) (lust/sex, love, power, money/self interest, ethical, practical, Christian, security)
• Thematic truths (showing real truths as opposed to Pamela)
• Themes
• What is the nature of human nature?
• Repercussions of mis-placed power