novel, unconcerned with the technical innovation of some of Forster’s modernist

contemporaries such as Gertrude Stein or T.S. Eliot. A Passage to India is concerned,

however, with representing the chaos of modern human experience through patterns of
imagery and form. In this regard, Forster’s novel is similar to modernist works of the same
time period, such as James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925).
A Passage to India was the last in a string of Forster’s novels in which his craft improved
markedly with each new work. After the novel’s publication, however, Forster never again
attained the level of craft or the depth of observation that characterized his early work. In
his later life, he contented himself primarily with writing critical essays and lectures, most
notably Aspects of the Novel (1927). In1946, Forster accepted a fellowship at Cambridge,
where he remained until his death in 1970.

Edward Forster “Aspects of the Novel” 1927

This essay is based on a compilation of Forster’s lectures, at Trinity College, University of

Cambridge. At the beginning he points out humanity. Humanity is an essential characteristic of

fiction. Without this the novel would be a failure. Fiction needs to be sagged (natopena) with
humanity. “Aspects” is a deliberately chosen word, since it’s vague and unscientific.

Thus the readers view the novel from different perspectives. Forster talks about seven
aspects: story, people, plot, fantasy and prophecy, pattern and rhythm.
Deal briefly with Forster’s aspect of novel.

Story is the lowest artistic form (story-telling aspect). It’s the commonest factor which occurs
in every novel, it’s the fundamental aspect of the novel. In this essay he appears both as a
traditional and as a modernist theoretician. Firstly, he gives a traditional definition of story:
“it is a narrative of events arranged according to their time sequence”. He pays attention to
the chronological order of events. But he also gives another definition:”Story is like a tape
worm” – the worm does not have a beginning nor an ending, and this implies that the
beginning and the ending of the novel is arbitrary-in this respect he is a modernist. So the
nd st
2 definition appears as a contradiction to the 1 one. Forster implies that the story may
begin in the middle. The story is continued in the minds of the readers. There is only one
quality of the story-if it makes the reader want to know what will happen next, it is
successful-the most important criteria.

-People (characters,authors)- Since the author is human and deals with people, there is an
affinity between him and his subject matter (his characters) because they are all human
beings. He explains the ideas of the importance of life. According to Forster, the novel is
usually about people. The characters in fiction need to parallel real life people. But we
cannot take people and put them in a novel and vice versa, so he means that they should
not coincide but have a parallel life. The novelist has many ingredients that he needs to
combine: the novelist should focus on the relation of the character with other characters,
plot, setting, and atmosphere. But, the characters do not always comply; they are rebellious
to the requirements of the creator. The characters are creations within a creation. They are
rebellious toward the plot and they live their individual lives. The novelist should strike a
balance. He should control the characters but also give them freedom too, so they could
parallel real life people.

-Plot- is the highest and most complicated artistic form (much higher aspect than the story).
Forster compares the plot to a governmental official whose task is to say to the characters where
their place is. The plot has a control over the characters and forces them to comply with
complications, crisis and solution. This process is indispensable for a play, a drama but it is not
indispensable for a novel. If the characters comply 100% it is a play. This is the formula

35
of Aristotle, applicable to play, not to fiction. Forster suggests that the characters should
comply but not 100%. The emphasis of the plot is not on the time sequence but on causality
(prichinsko-posledichna povrzanost). E.g “The Queen died and the King died” – is a story. But
“The Queen died and the King died out of grief”-is a plot. The time sequence is presented,
but the sense of causality overshadows it.

David Herbert Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence was born in 1885 in Nottinghamshire, England where his father was a
miner. His experience growing up in a coal-mining family provided much of the inspiration for
Sons and Lovers. Lawrence had many affairs with women in his life, including a longstanding
relationship with Jessie Chambers (on whom the character of Miriam is based), an engagement
to Louie Burrows, and an eventual elopement to Germany with Frieda Weekly. Sons and Lovers
was written in 1913, and contains many autobiographical details.

Many of Lawrence’s novels were very controversial because of their frank treatment of sex,
and both The Rainbow and Lady Chatterley’s Lover were banned during his lifetime. This
controversial treatment of sex is evident as well in Sons and Lovers; Lawrence’s fear of
negative public opinion may have been one reason for his vague use of language and the
obscure treatment of sex in the novel.

Overall Summary

The first part of the novel focuses on Mrs. Morel and her unhappy marriage to a drinking
miner. She has many arguments with her husband, some of which have painful results: on
separate occasions, she is locked out of the house and hit in the head with a drawer.

Estranged from her husband, Mrs. Morel takes comfort in her four children, especially her
sons. Her oldest son, William, is her favorite, and she is very upset when he takes a job in
London and moves away from the family. When William sickens and dies a few years later,
she is crushed, not even noticing the rest of her children until she almost loses Paul, her
second son, as well. From that point on, Paul becomes the focus of her life, and the two
seem to live for each other.

Paul falls in love with Miriam Leivers, who lives on a farm not too far from the Morel family.
They carry on a very intimate, but purely platonic, relationship for many years. Mrs. Morel
does not approve of Miriam, and this may be the main reason that Paul does not marry her.
He constantly wavers in his feelings toward her. Paul meets Clara Dawes, a suffragette who is
separated from her husband, through Miriam. As he becomes closer with Clara and they
begin to discuss his relationship with Miriam, she tells him that he should consider
consummating their love and he returns to Miriam to see how she feels.

Paul and Miriam sleep together and are briefly happy, but shortly afterward Paul decides
that he does not want to marry Miriam, and so he breaks off with her. She still feels that his
soul belongs to her, and, in part agrees reluctantly. He realizes that he loves his mother
most, however.

After breaking off his relationship with Miriam, Paul begins to spend more time with Clara
and they begin an extremely passionate affair. However, she does not want to divorce her
husband Baxter, and so they can never be married. Paul’s mother falls ill and he devotes
much of his time to caring for her. When she finally dies, he is broken-hearted and, after a
final plea from Miriam, goes off alone at the end of the novel.

D.H. Lawrence- “Why the Novel Matters?” 1936

36
There are two main ideas: 1. Unity of the body and the soul / 2. The whole is greater and
more important than the part

The essay is full of illustrations, metaphors. It is a somewhat blasphemy, it goes against certain
Christian codes and norms. At the beginning he metaphorically talks of the human body as a
bottle of wine, a vessel of clay, a jug. Once the wine is drunk you dispose of the body. The body
is not important, what matters is the soul (Christian doctrine). Lawrence argues against it. The
body is transitory, the soul is eternal. Lawrence argues against it. He says that the body is as
important as the soul. He devices the concept of “me-alive” and illustrates it saying that his hand
is as important as his brain, because it is part of him alive.

“I hold the pen with my hand…” Lawrence differentiates between the concepts of “me-alive”
and the “inanimate universe.” He makes a comparison between the novelist on the one
hand and the person, philosopher and scientist on the other. The priest thinks only the soul
matters and the goal of every man and woman should be to end up in paradise, should strive
towards it. Lawrence says everything that comes after life, like paradise for example, is
unimportant. Only things that are related to life have meaning.

The philosopher argues that only the pure spirit, that knows everything-matters. He talks
about infinity and ultimate knowledge. The thoughts of the philosophers make effect on
people only if they are related to life. If you don’t arrive at a certain knowledge yourself, on
the basis of your body and soul, you won’t be able to grasp knowledge.

The ideas of philosophers, priests to those of the novelist (are inferior)- Lawrence ridicules
the idea that the body is not important. The scientist focuses on the parts of the body. He
dissects human body and focuses only on certain organ (brain, arms, etc). He is not
preoccupied with the wholeness of the human being. The philosopher and the person -
preoccupied with the soul and spirit. Scientist - preoccupied with parts of the body.
According to them, the part is more important than the whole; that is why the novelist is
superior to them. The novelist believes that the whole is more important than the part, but
the part is an essential element of the whole, it is in a harmonious relationship with the
whole. The unity of the body and soul and the idea that wholeness is more important than
the part is conveyed only in fiction. The novelist is the only one who deals with all aspects of
real life.

Lawrence defines the novel as the bright book of life. It means that only life matters.
Lawrence underlines its importance by using a capital letter (L).

Life=truth, reality, in the universal sense of the word. It is as a blasphemy because Lawrence
considers the Bible as the novel and everyone mentioned in the Bible according to him is like
a character in a novel. The Bible is as important as the entire Homer’s work and the entire
Shakespeare’s work.

What is life? Lawrence: Life cannot be defined. If you try to define it, it would mean cutting it
to pattern. Life is different for each individual. As for the right and wrong, they are relative
concepts in reality. What is right in one case is wrong in another. E.g. War – killing people –
heroic or criminal

The novel is the only work which develops an instinct for right and wrong and thus it
develops an instinct for life. It is a supreme form of art because it deals with all aspects of
life, with the ugly as well as with the beautiful sides of life. It represents people realistically;
it doesn’t deal only with the body or soul, but with their unity and the wholeness of a
human being.

James Joyce

37
Joyce, the eldest of 10 children in his family to survive infancy, was sent at age six to
Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school that has been described as “the Eton of
Ireland.” But his father was not the man to stay affluent for long; he drank, neglected his
affairs, and borrowed money from his office, and his family sank deeper and deeper into
poverty, the children becoming accustomed to conditions of increasing sordidness. Joyce did
not return to Clongowes in 1891; instead he stayed at home for the next two years and tried
to educate himself, asking his mother to check his work. In April 1893 he and his brother
Stanislaus were admitted, without fees, to Belvedere College, a Jesuit grammar school in
Dublin. Joyce did well there academically and was twice elected president of the Marian
Society, a position virtually that of head boy. He left, however, under a cloud, as it was
thought (correctly) that he had lost his Roman Catholic faith.X

He entered University College, Dublin, which was then staffed by Jesuit priests. There he
studied languages and reserved his energies for extracurricular activities, reading widely—
particularly in books not recommended by the Jesuits—and taking an active part in the
college’s Literary and Historical Society. This early success confirmed Joyce in his resolution
to become a writer and persuaded his family, friends, and teachers that the resolution was
justified. In October 1901 he published an essay, “The Day of the Rabblement,” attacking
the Irish Literary Theatre (later the Dublin Abbey Theatre) for catering to popular taste. To
support himself while writing, he decided to become a doctor, but, after attending a few
lectures in Dublin, he borrowed what money he could and went to Paris, where he
abandoned the idea of medical studies, wrote some book reviews, and studied in the Sainte-
Geneviève Library. Recalled home in April 1903 because his mother was dying, he tried
various occupations, including teaching, and lived at various addresses, including theX

Martello Tower at Sandycove, now Ireland’s Joyce Museum. He had begun writing a lengthy
naturalistic novel, Stephen Hero, based on the events of his own life, when in 1904 George
Russell offered £1 each for some simple short stories with an Irish background to appear in a
farmers’ magazine, The Irish Homestead. In response Joyce began writing the stories
published as Dubliners (1914). Three stories, “The Sisters,” “Eveline,” and “After the Race,”
had appeared under the pseudonym Stephen Dedalus before the editor decided that
Joyce’s work was not suitable for his readers. Meanwhile Joyce had met a girl named Nora
Barnacle, with whom he fell in love on June 16, the day that he chose as what is known as
“Bloomsday” (the day of his novelUlysses). Eventually he persuaded her to leave Ireland
with him, although he refused, on principle, to go through a ceremony of marriage.X

“A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” – James Joyce 1916

It was published in 1916, when Joyce was considered to be exile. It is an autobiographical novel,
because the place and the college correspond. There are many fictional elements, characters. It
has a specific narrative technique, the stream of consciousness technique-concept of
psychology, the impact of psychoanalysis of fiction. We are following the flux of thoughts. The
character is presented from the inside – the physic context of his character. There is a word-play,
lots of digressions, not chronological order of events. There is a portrait of artistic and spiritual
development of Stephen Dedalus, made by the impressionist.

The mythic element is introduced – the myth about Daedalus and Icarus. Stephen is just like
Dedalus – an artist, craftsman, he transforms the trivial reality into an art; and he frequently
underestimates his father (as Icarus) and overestimated his abilities.
He identifies the fallen angel with Lucifer in the Old Testament, who was envious of God
(underestimates his father and family)
*Religious themes and attitudes (question) – not until the end of the novel did he decide to

38
purify himself and became a catholic because he was a sinner. This was a novel of
maturation coming to way. There is a stream of consciousness. He adopts the term religious
epiphany and develops that in the literal meaning.

Epiphany – a deeper meaning of the character, the moment when the character realizes it is
a revelatory experience. The aesthetic moment, the aesthetic apprehension is Joyce’s
aesthetic theory. There are three elements of beauty: wholeness (integritas), harmony
(consonantia) and radiance (claritas/epiphany).

In order to experience the beauty you should experience the first two elements of beauty.
Epiphany – the term – 1.Greek mythology – manifestation of the divine. 2. Greek drama –
sudden appearance of God on stage. The term is also appropriated by Christianity where it was
used to commemorate the day when the Magi brought presents to Christ the child. 3. For the
first time mentioned in Stephen Hero, the original manuscript on the basis of which

“the portrait..” was written. “Stephen Hero” was published in 1944, posthumously, after Joyce’s
death. In “Stephen Hero” Joyce defines the epiphany as a spiritual manifestation.

Whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself
(it is a spiritual experience).

*Stream of consciousness novel in British fiction: its founders were Joyce and Woolf. It is a
psychological concept, but it is used in literature as a narrative technique. Characterized by
specific techniques, and the readers are following the flux of thoughts of the main
protagonist (Stephen Dedalus). The psychic content of the character’s mind id presented
directly to the reader as if the narrator is located inside the mind of the character. This
technique goes in the inner description; the readers are presented the character’s mind
from a subjective point of view – thoughts, emotions, sensations and perceptions. According
to Robert Humphrey there are 2 levels of consciousness: 1. Speech level of consciousness
and 2. Pre-speech level of consciousness (unuttered thoughts of characters). The stream of
consciousness novel is preoccupied with the pre-speech level of consciousness; the reader
knows the thoughts of the characters before they utter them. According to Humphrey there
are 4 techniques in the stream of consciousness:

st
Direct interior monologue (1 person singular) - the intervention/presence of the narrator is
ineligible. There is no audience assumed, as if there was nobody to follow the monologue.
You feel as if there is no narrator; he is directly in the character’s mind.

rd nd
Indirect interior monologue-3 person singular, sometimes 2 person singular - the
comments of the narrator are frequent (She said..). The narrator intervenes more frequently.
There is audience assumed.

Omniscient narration (all-knowing) – the narrator knows everything, but tells us only what
we need to know. It seems that the omission of the narrator is in the mind of the character,
directly presenting to the reader his/her thoughts.

Soliloquy (monologue, silent soliloquy) - the unspoken thoughts of character, but there is
no narrator. It is the silent soliloquy of the character himself. There is a great coherence as
the ideas and emotions are connected to the plot and the action.
Sometimes the techniques may be combined (e.g. 2+3). Both Joyce and Woolf use cinematic
techniques which are: panorama view, multiple view, fade-out, flashback and close-up.
Sometimes fade-out and flashback are combined.

Panorama view – the overall setting; scenery.

Multiple view – when the same event, scene or character is viewed from different points of
view. It makes narration unreliable. It is used in postmodernism and also in modernism. Fade
out – one scene disappears and another is super imposed on it.

39
Flashback – leap back in time.
st
Close-up – leap back or forth in time, the narration focuses on the 1 person.

Modern Fiction – Virginia Woolf 1925

Woolf begins with a comparison between the classics and modernists. She argues that the
fiction of the modernists shows progress with regard to that of the classics, which is evident in
any anthology. Although the works of the classics (Fielding, J. Austen) are too simple,

Woolf doesn’t state that the modernists are better than the classics. She only argues that
they have the advantage because they had better tools and materials. The classics did well
bearing in mind their tools and materials.

She compares the writing of fiction by the modernists to the process of production of the
machines. There is a progress in terms of quantity. The production in fiction is large in
volume which doesn’t mean quality is better.
Who is better: classics or modernists?

She leaves it to historians of literature. She doesn’t want to take sides. Woolf explains that
her critique is focused not on the classics but a certain category of modernists she calls
materialists. Wales, Bennett, and Galsworthy are the representatives. They are preoccupied
with the body not the spirit. Woolf undervalues the body! (Unlike Lawrence)

Materialists write fiction is large in volume, however, it lacks quality. She criticizes the 3
material authors.

*Wales – is too generous with the characters. He acts like a government official giving them
too much freedom but forgets the courses of human condition, the ugly side of life.
*Bennett – the greatest craftsman, but the worst culprit of the three. He portrays unrealistic
characters. They are all rich, live their luxurious life, spend the money in one class railway
carriages. But real life is not like that. His fiction and characters don’t correspond to life and
reality, life escapes his fiction.

*Galsworthy - preoccupied with humanity and respects integrity. But he is similar to the other
two because he is unable to portray realistic characters. His fiction doesn’t convey life.

All those materialists focus on the trivial and the transitory, shallow aspect of life and make
it appear the true and the enduring. It seems as if there was some kind of a tyrant in their
mind who tells them what to do. They write according to a pattern providing plot, comedy,
love, interest and this pattern is incompatible with life and reality.

Woolf distinguishes between materialist and spiritual writers. She praises the spiritual
writers. The most important thing is the ordinary moment which bombards the ordinary
mind in an ordinary day. The trivial moment is important. The spiritual writers are able to
turn triviality into significance. Woolf doesn’t want to define life but tries to explain life: “Life
is not a series of gig lambs symmetrically arranged. Life is a luminous halo, a semi-
transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning to the end”

You can’t cut out life to patterns; can’t produce virtuous or vicious characters according to
patterns because they aren’t such in reality. Life rejects patterns. The trivial things that happen
every day constitute life. Halo – metaphor for the ordinary moments. Envelope=iceberg. Life has
to do with what goes on in the pre-speech level of consciousness.

Real life is represented through “Stream of consciousness” novel. Woolf praises spiritual writers
and praises Joyce. She mentions his works. She argues that Joyce manages to derive significance
out of triviality. If some criticism can be applied to Joyce, it is the comparative poverty of his
brain, because he focuses on the self and all the other aspects of life that are beyond the self are
not important to him. She withdraws her criticism of Joyce and says that

40
Joyce uses a specific method that is different from the methods of her critics. Any method
can be used in (modern) fiction, there are no restrictions.

Russian writers are spiritual writers that are preoccupied with the soul and the heart. CHEKHOV -
praises him and his short story “Gusev”. The Russian writers have a great knowledge of the
issues of the heart and soul and sympathize to the suffering of the ordinary people. Woolf
compares Russian fiction to British novels and she admits that the

British novel seems very shallow and superficies, they don’t deal with psychological topics
and themes. She ends her criticism by saying that British novelists are preoccupied with
other aspects of life. Comedy, humor and beauty on earth are the optimistic side of life.
There is no recipe whether a novelist should write about pessimism or optimism. Russian
novelists have a different culture. They are used to suffering and understanding. The British
people are used to enjoying and fighting. That’s why they write about different aspects of
life.

Mrs. Dalloway covers one day from morning to night in one woman’s life. Clarissa Dalloway, an
upper-class housewife, walks through her London neighborhood to prepare for the party she will
host that evening. When she returns from flower shopping, an old suitor and friend, Peter
Walsh, drops by her house unexpectedly. The two have always judged each other harshly, and
their meeting in the present intertwines with their thoughts of the past. Years earlier, Clarissa
refused Peter’s marriage proposal, and Peter has never quite gotten over it.

Peter asks Clarissa if she is happy with her husband, Richard, but before she can answer, her
daughter, Elizabeth, enters the room. Peter leaves and goes to Regent’s Park. He thinks
about Clarissa’s refusal, which still obsesses him.

The point of view then shifts to Septimus, a veteran of World War I who was injured in
trench warfare and now suffers from shell shock. Septimus and his Italian wife, Lucrezia, pass
time in Regent’s Park. They are waiting for Septimus’s appointment with Sir William

Bradshaw, a celebrated psychiatrist. Before the war, Septimus was a budding young poet and
lover of Shakespeare; when the war broke out, he enlisted immediately for romantic
patriotic reasons. He became numb to the horrors of war and its aftermath: when his friend
Evans died, he felt little sadness. Now Septimus sees nothing of worth in the England he
fought for, and he has lost the desire to preserve either his society or himself. Suicidal, he
believes his lack of feeling is a crime. Clearly Septimus’s experiences in the war have
permanently scarred him, and he has serious mental problems. However, Sir William does
not listen to what Septimus says and diagnoses “a lack of proportion.” Sir William plans to
separate Septimus from Lucrezia and send him to a mental institution in the country. Richard
Dalloway eats lunch with Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton, members of high society. The
men help Lady Bruton write a letter to the Times, London's largest newspaper. After lunch,
Richard returns home to Clarissa with a large bunch of roses. He intends to tell her that he
loves her but finds that he cannot, because it has been so long since he last said it. Clarissa
considers the void that exists between people, even between husband and wife. Even
though she values the privacy she is able to maintain in her marriage, considering it vital to
the success of the relationship, at the same time she finds slightly disturbing the fact that
Richard doesn’t know everything about her. Clarissa sees off Elizabeth and her history
teacher, Miss Kilman, who are going shopping. The two older women despise one another
passionately, each believing the other to be an oppressive force over Elizabeth. Meanwhile,

Septimus and Lucrezia are in their apartment, enjoying a moment of happiness together before
the men come to take Septimus to the asylum. One of Septimus’s doctors, Dr.

Holmes, arrives, and Septimus fears the doctor will destroy his soul. In order to avoid this

41
fate, he jumps from a window to his death.

Peter hears the ambulance go by to pick up Septimus’s body and marvels ironically at the level of
London’s civilization. He goes to Clarissa’s party, where most of the novel’s major characters are
assembled. Clarissa works hard to make her party a success but feels dissatisfied by her own role
and acutely conscious of Peter’s critical eye. All the partygoers, but especially Peter and Sally
Seton, have, to some degree, failed to accomplish the dreams of their youth. Though the social
order is undoubtedly changing, Elizabeth and the members of her generation will probably
repeat the errors of Clarissa’s generation. Sir William

Bradshaw arrives late, and his wife explains that one of his patients, the young veteran
(Septimus), has committed suicide. Clarissa retreats to the privacy of a small room to consider
Septimus’s death. She understands that he was overwhelmed by life and that men like Sir
William make life intolerable. She identifies with Septimus, admiring him for having taken the
plunge and for not compromising his soul. She feels, with her comfortable position as a society
hostess, responsible for his death. The party nears its close as guests begin to leave. Clarissa
enters the room, and her presence fills Peter with a great excitement.

→What is a novel?

- A novel is a fictional prose in which the characters and the situations are depicted within
the framework. The procedure is a narrative and there is a plot. There are three genres:
-Narrative genre- narrates events (epic poems)

-Narrative romance- narrates stories and incidents (in verse)

-Novel- epic novel related in a large expanse of time. They appeared during the Renais-
sance.

→What is a picaresque novel?

A picaresque novel is a novel that has a sense of chivalry. It was very much developed

th
during the 15 C. The main character is an idealistic one (as Don Quixote) who fights against the
evil. He has such qualities like ambition, resourcefulness; at least at the end he does good deeds.
The characters in these novels are called piccare=rogue. Such are: “Ferdinand”-Munro Leaf,
“Moll Flanders”-Daniel Defoe, and “The Life of John Walton”- Thomas Nash.

→The importance of Tobias Smollett on the development of the English novel.

Smollett made a lot of inventions and presentations of selected comical and burlesque
details as well as presentations of new types of characters. His main contribution is the
variety of characters as well as the fusion of ingenuity/invention and humor, creating
picaresque characters using the everyday colloquial language.
→What is Smollett’s theory of the novel?

A novel is a large diffused picture comprehending the character’s life disposed in different
groups and exhibited in various attitudes for the purpose of a uniform plan to which every
individual figure is subservient.
→The importance of Henry Fielding for the development of the English novel.

Henry Fielding was taking care of the shape, of the form of the novel. He was using
narrations to tell more information for the story. The main contribution was that there is a
link between the meaning and the form of the novel. Many of the best scenes are those
where specific ideas are expressed. According to Henry Fielding a work of art should teach
and fight of certain morality. He gave structure to the novel. He is using didacticism – how to
recognize vices and virtues and how to learn through experience. He also introduced

42
comedy in the novel and spoke about morality of his characters taking the hypocrisy as the
worst of the human vices.

→What are the credits of Walter Scott for the development of the historical novel?
Walter Scott was the one who introduced the historical novel in the English Literature with

“Ivanhoe”. In order to establish a better historic background Scott wrote introductions full of
information and anecdotes. First he writes about the past carefully describing the characters
of men and women surrounded with the objects and attitudes that belonged to that period.
The hero is a fictional character. Namely, these novels are not about historical heroes but
about fictional heroes who came in touch with the historic characters.

→Name the basic distinctions of the writing of Lawrence in addition to Tristram Shandy.

-Lawrence Sterne employed the ideas of John Lock and implemented two very important
concepts/aspect:
1. Association of ideas

2. Concept of time (relative experience of time)

Lawrence doesn’t have chronological order of the events. He told the story by the association of
his ideas. The story starts at the middle- present and then goes backwards and forwards in the
story. He expresses and elaborates the thoughts as they appear in the mind.
→Describe the function of the narrators in the novel “Wuthering Heights”

The story is told through Lockwood and Nelly Dean. Lockwood was a passive narrator, didn’t
participate in the events he accords but is known from the written recollections of what he
has heard from the testaments of others, especially of Nelly Dean (the housekeeper). As a
narrator Nelly is talkative and imaginative and a natural storyteller. Since she was served
both in Wuthering Heights and Thrush Grange she knows both of the families very well. Her
story does much to establish the relationship and the conflicts between them as to reveal
the love story. She is not partial and tells the story from a very realistic aspect.
43
Why the Novel matters?

D.H. Lawrence

Lawrence emphasizes 3 points:

Unity between the body and the soul

Importance of the whole (whole is superior to the part)

Importance of life

The essay is very illustrative because it contains many metaphors. It challenges the Christian doctrine because
according to it we live in our body until our death and then the soul exists in the Paradise or Hell. The body is
something transients and it is inferior to the soul. The soul is important. Lawrence challenges this view and says
that the body is as important as the soul; the body and his fingers. The body is compared to a bottle of wine
and ones the wine is drunk the bottle is dropped away. The concept of me alive is present

He asks why his hand should be less important than his brain when if you cut your finger it will bleed, so it is
alive. To support this he makes a comparison between a writer (novelist) and the priest, philosophers and
scientists. The priest (soul) says that what matters is paradise but according to Lawrence Paradise comes after
life and what comes afterlife is not important. The reality of life is important for Lawrence. The parson has a
limited occupation and he deals with after life.

The philosopher (spirit) cares about infinite spirit and knowledge. Lawrence says that the philosopher is limited
because considers only the spirit and he thinks that knowledge is received through senses. If the spirit reaches
other spirit the message will be conveyed. Only then the spirit will matter. The spirit on itself means nothing.
Life is what matters.

The scientist (body) is preoccupied with the body and is focused on body parts and not on soul (thus one sided)

The novelist is superior to all of them because he is not one sided. He is all inclusive: body, spirit, mind
and soul.

Importance of the whole: whole is greater than the part and the whole matters. He defines the novel: Novel is a
bright book life. Why? Because it encompasses all the aspects. He claims that the Bible is also a book and the
persons in it are characters and not saints. Thus he claims that the bible is a great novel.

He says that the novel is VIP, because it teaches us to be versatile, focuses the attention on different aspects of
life and nothing is absolutely good or bad.

He again challenges the Christian doctrine (the world never changes); according to him the world changes and
cannot be taken for granted. The nature revives every spring, it is a subject of change, but not transient –
permanent.

Every human being is an assembly of incompatible parts. The novel does not pin down the integrity of human
beings but presents human beings as they are.

Life is defined differently with different people. In real life there are no black and white characters. Nothing is
absolutely good or bad in life. What is good in one occasion is bad in other. The novel teaches us to develop an
instinct for life, not what is good or bad. The most important thing is life, me alive, real life characters. Life
can be given a full play only through the novel. The novel is the unity of body and soul and the concept of me-
alive refers to the concept of life.
44
Modern fiction

Virginia Woolf

The essay was published in the collection ``Common reader`` in 1925 and it is entitled Modern Fiction. First
Woolf talks about traditional writers such as Austen and Fielding and makes a comparison between traditional
writers and contemporary ones (modern, of her age).

She claims that the work of modern writers is always an improvement of that of the authors of the previous
generations. But it is very difficult to compare the writing of fiction and the production of machines. She does
not say that modern writers are better (mitigates it) but says that traditional writers had simple tools and modern
writers have better opportunities. Historians of literature and the readership should decide which are better.

She introduces the real subject of her essay: she is not preoccupied with traditional writers but with modern
writers. She makes a distinction between 2 types of modern writers:
Materialists (John Galsworthy, George Wells, Arnold Bennett)

Spiritualists (James Joyce)

Materialists
She argues in favor of the spiritual writers.

The materialists wrote in the later phase of the Victorian era and the beginning of the modern era- 400 pages
novel, black and white characters, materialist- because there is a progress in quantity and not in terms of quality.
She criticizes Wells, Bennett and _________.

Wells- a clock of clay, (“In the case of Mr. Wells it falls notably wide of the mark. And yet even in his case it
indicates to our thinking the fatal alloy in his genius, the great clod of clay that has got itself mixed up with the
purity of his inspiration.”) he is too generous with his characters, virtuous and always provides happy endings;
Woolf criticizes him for that and he acts as if a kind of an officer showing compassion and he is preoccupied
with the beautiful side of life, not the bad side; the characters are not realistic, they are positive or negative;
deficient in terms of human nature because human nature is not black or white.

Bennett- (“But Mr. Bennett is perhaps the worst culprit of the three, inasmuch as he is by far the best workman.
He can make a book so well constructed and solid in its craftsmanship that it is difficult for the most exacting of
critics to see through what chink or crevice decay can creep in. There is not so much as a draught between the
frames of the windows, or a crack in the boards. And yet--if life should refuse to live there? That is a risk which
the creator of "The Old Wives' Tale," George Cannon, Edwin Clayhanger, and hosts of other figures, * may
well claim to have surmounted. His characters live abundantly, even unexpectedly, but it still remains to ask
how do they live, and what do they live for? More and more they seem to us, deserting even the well-built villa
in the Five Towns, to spend their time in some softly padded first-class railway carriage, fitted with bells and
buttons innumerable; and the destiny to which they travel so luxuriously becomes more and more
unquestionably an eternity of bliss spent in the very best hotel in Brighton.”) an excellent craftsman from a
technical point of view but the characters he writes about are not realistic, they live luxurious life; they are
presented as perfection and it is not what life really is X

__________- also preoccupied with life but he is too compassionate, he is not realistic.

She objects that the authors make the transitory things, short lived thins ad permanent things- true value. Life
escapes in their work. Their fiction lacks life and the characters are not realistic.

She sums up: All materialist obey strict rules as in Henry James` essay. Those rules are plot, tragedy, comedy,
specific atmosphere, patterned books as if there is an official that tells them to write in the same patters. Woolf
argues against strict rules in fiction. Writers should write fiction as they like. She restrains from defining life and
focuses on the importance of trivial moments- The materialist focus only on shallow things, happy moments that
are not realistic and they obey strict forms.

What life is?

She restrains from giving a definition but gives a metaphor. Life as she explains should be contained in fiction.
"Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope
surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." She is against any kind of formulas, patters and
that`s why she uses the metaphor of gig lamps which are symmetrical; luminous halo- she emphasizes the
importance of the little moments and trivial things seemingly unimportant.

The luminous halo refers to the unimportant moments that bombard our mind every day.

Semi-transparent envelope- consciousness is presented as an ice-berg and what is seen is the top, so she alludes

45
to the subconsciousness; the stream of consciousness novel should include both consciousness and
subconsciousness. What goes in the mind? Instead of describing the actions the writer enters the mind of the
characters and follows his thoughts- VIP- new technique- stream of consciousness.

The task of the writer

The task of the writer is to seize the moment, only seemingly unimportant- when they become part of fiction they
become permanent. He should describe the characters by entering their mind and not by describing their actions.

Spiritualists

Portrait of an artist as a young man and Ulysses are written with stream of consciousness method. It is very
interesting how Joyce pictures the myriad of atoms and how he shows the importance of the seemingly
unimportant things. The writer using his method of execution shows us the substance of life made by the
seemingly unimportant things. The everyday life and the ordinary moment are very important.

She praises Hardy and Conrad but they are different from Joyce because they ate not stream of consciousness
novelists. To show how important Joyce`s fiction is she compares it to that of Hardy and Conrad. The only
objection addressed to Joyce is that he is too much focused on the minds of the characters. The whole novel is
rendered through the mind of the characters, so thenovel is not so rich as the fiction of Conrad and Hardy where
many other characters and atmospheres are involved

Ouestion on Method: She concludes that the writer should not be limited and should choose his method because
any method is applicable in fiction. (Joyce vs. Hardy: both methods are applicable and acceptable).

Other representatives: Russian writers were also spiritualists and Woolf says that modern writers are interested in the
dark side of psychology. Russian are the best in describing suffering (heart and soul). For example, Chekhov’s short
story Gusev does not follow the pattern of writing a short story, but there is enormous significance.

Russian vs British fiction: When she compares Russian with British fiction she says that British fiction is more
deficient, shallow and superficial. She does not say that Russian is better, but she is talking about two
completely different cultures and says that Russians are excellent for heart but their stories are inconclusive and
there is no answer. It is impossible to compare Russians with British because that are two different cultures and
Russians write about suffering, whereas British are used to fighting and to the beautiful side of life so they
incorporate splendors of the body in their writing and they often write comedies.

There should be no prescription, so if you write about suffering it does not mean that it will be an excellent
piece of writing. You should only grasp the moments and seize the importance of the seemingly unimportant
things in life. Both Russians and British methods are right because anything can be a proper staff for fiction.
Fiction should be developed and liable to arguments and criticism. Fiction should introduce themes compatible
to the age. She argues in favour of some kind of dynamic fiction (подложна на промени).

James Joyce

Aesthetic Theory
The aesthetic theory is divided in 2 parts:

PART 1

1st part contains three element: In his theory points out that every object, including the most ordinary objects can
be subject to perception (a basket); e.g. when Stephen sees the girl on the shore, he perceives her as an aesthetic
object not a sexual object. 1st part it is about beauty in more general sense, it must go through all 3 phases to
achieve epiphany

Wholeness (integritas): the first element of beauty is wholeness; we separate the object from the rest of the
world and we forget about the rest of the world. This step corresponds to the perception of one thing-the
wholeness of that thing- synthesis of perception. The attention is not on the parts but on the whole-that`s why it
is synthesis.
Harmony (consonantia): first we perceive the object as one thing, now the focus is on the parts, the elements,
the relationships of the parts to the whole, are they harmonious to the whole; analysis of ap-prehension. The
object is perceived as a thing.

Radiance (claritas): the 3rd element is the climax. Based on Plato (who mentions idealism) and Aquinas-James Joyce
makes an original meaning of concept of epiphany; the whatness of the thing, several definitions of concept of
epiphany(sto treba da gi naucime) without mentioning it. Refers to Shelley and other romantic poets who believed that
the poet is gifted being the one who receives illumination to get inspiration= which is a moment of epiphany,
metaphorically compares it to a fading coal; luminous silence stasis the cardial- the emphasis is on the silence,
everything happens there. The epiphany can

46
happen only after the object is perceived as a whole and that thing. One needs to understand the whole-ness and
the harmony in order to understand the radiance. You think it happens on a second of time (subjective time) and
you remember it forever.

*** Luigi Galvani- enchantment of the heart compared to the moment of heart attack, moment when time
freezes, heart stops and it is the subjective time which is prolonged

PART 2

The second part focuses on the genres: lyrical, epical and dramatic. the focus is on the senses and mind but not
only on the artist but through readers also; to what extent the genres are the most subjective or objective.

1. Lyrical form: most subjective and personal form, related to emotions and feelings of the poet. Def: the
simplest verbal vesture of an instant of emotion, it is an immediate relation to the person of the artist (Eliot
separates the work from the poet); you turn emotions into words

Definition: the simplest verbal vesture of an instant of emotion, it is an immediate relation to the person of the
artist.

Epical form: neither subjective nor objective (it begins as subjective in the 1st person sing, but then it becomes
more detached and objective), example with ballad, it is somewhere in between lyrical and

dramatic

Definition: the simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literature when the artist prolongs and
broods upon himself as the centre of epical event and this form progresses till the centre of emotional gravity is
equidistant from the artist himself and the others. It is in mediate relation to himself and to others.

Dramatic form: the most objective form, it is set to an immediate relationship to the reader, how he will
understand the work of art, and the work of art becomes separated of its creator, extinction of the personality of
the author, how the reader will interpret it, the work of art will last forever; the artist remains detached and there
is a complete extinction of the personality of the author

Definition: the dramatic form is reached when the vitality which has flowed and eddied round each person fills
every person with such vital force that he or she assumes a proper and intangible esthetic life. The esthetic
image in the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected from the human imagination. It is in immediate
relation to others.
47
Stream of consciousness novel

-Psychoanalysis had an enormous impact on literature; as a result of this a specific technique called stream of
consciousness was developed. Stream of consciousness novel involves narrator who presents the thoughts of the
characters directly from their minds, so the flux of thoughts is given. Characters are not portrayed from the
objective point of view, but from the subjective.

E.g. George Eliot presents inner states of characters from within;

-Sensations, thoughts and feelings are presented without any explanation. We don’t even know how these
sensations and thoughts are connected with each other and sometimes it is very difficult to understand because a
sensation which takes a second in real time is explained in five pages by the author.

-In stream of consciousness novel, there is no chronological order of time, but there are constant flashbacks and
history is penetrating in the present.

- We don’t really have events in the traditional sense of the word; there are only thoughts and feelings. There is
no narration of events and it is hard to follow the narration of the author.

What is consciousness?

-Consciousness is entre area of mental attention, including rational awareness. It has to do with Freud’s
explanations of the two levels of consciousness: speech and pre-speech. Consciousness is like an iceberg, you
can see the top, but you do not know what is under the surface. Novelists focus on the pre-speech, or in other
words, the things that cannot be seen under the top of the iceberg.

Robert Humphrey’s four techniques

Direct interior monologue: there is negligible interference of the author and it is no audience consumed. The
things are presented directly from the minds of the characters and 1st person singular narration is used.

Indirect interior monologue: the presence of the author is more obvious and 3rd or in some cases 2nd person
singular narration is used. There are explanatory comments such as she said, and it is audience assumed. The
presented direct thoughts are directed to the audience.

Omniscient narration: all-knowing narrator and he tells as much as he thinks the audience needs to know. The
difference between the traditional omniscient narration and this one is that in the traditional the narrator is all-
knowing from the external point of view, whereas here he is all-knowing from the point of view within the
characters.

Soliloquy: the difference between direct, indirect and omniscient with the soliloquy is the fact that soliloquy is
the unspoken monologue of the character, but there is no narrator and the emotions and ideas are connected to
the plot and the action. It is audience assumed.

E.g. Joyce uses mostly indirect interior monologue and the same thing goes for Woolf. Cinematic techniques

Cinematic techniques are techniques used by Joyce and Woolf, and the same techniques are also used in films.

Cinematic technique in Mrs. Dalloway: panorama view is used and this is the overall view of the setting. Mrs.
Dalloway goes to the flower shop at the beginning of the novel and the whole environment around her is
described (plane, flowers, traffic, people…).

Multiple view: in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, there is no multiple point of view because we can hear
only Stephen’s view. On the other hand, in Mrs. Dalloway there are more points of view and there are cases
when Mrs. Dalloway is presented by sporadic characters that can be mentioned only ones in the book. When we
see some characteristic of a specific character, we see it through the perceptions and feelings of the other
characters in the novel. In Mrs. Dalloway, it is used in order to show more detailed perceptions. This technique
not only is used in stream of consciousness novel, but it is also used in the post-modernist novel: one action may
be presented through different people and their perceptions of the event. The reliability of the reading is shaken
in the post modernist novel by the usage of this technique.

Flashback: an external object from within provokes a sensation from the past. It is used in A Portrait and in Mrs.
Dalloway. This is a widely used technique which is not only used in the stream of consciousness novel.

Close-up: the narration closes up on a certain character and his feelings.

Fade out: one scene disappears and another takes its place. It can be connected with close up and flashback.

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Epiphany

Epiphany is not a literary concept originally; it is more a religious one. Joyce introduces it into the fiction,
although it is not mentioned anywhere in A Portrait; it was mentioned in the original script that was called
Stephen Hero. History of epiphany:
In Greek mythology: it meant unexpected appearance or manifestation of a divinity.

Appropriated in Greek drama: it meant a sudden appearance of God on the stage.

Appropriated in Christianity: used for liturgical purposes and referred to commemorate the day when the Magi
brought presents to Jesus. It was the first manifestation of divinity to foreign travelers.

In literature: Joyce admits that he borrowed some concepts from religion and Thomas Aquinas.

Definition: By epiphany Joyce meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of
gesture or in the memorable face of the might itself.

The original meaning of epiphany is preserved, but the spiritual manifestation means arrival of the deeper truth:
you become familiar with something that was latently there, but was not accepted by your consciousness. E.g. in
the 4th chapter of A Portrait, when Stephen sees the girl at the shore he becomes aware of the importance of his
own personality and has epiphany.

Epiphany is the revelatory climax of the aesthetic revelation (revelation of deeper truth of human nature). When
something was a part from the subconsciuosness becomes part of the rational awareness. Epiphany is a moment
when triviality blends with significance. In A Portrait, there is aesthetic experience and epiphany is the most
important concept in Joyce’s aesthetic theory. The moment of epiphany is when the mask slips and we see past
convention; we experience epiphany and arrive at a deeper truth, which is usually a personal truth.

Richard Ellmann - revelation of the whatness of a thing: Whatness is important because it appears in the
aesthetic theory and corresponds to the epiphany. The climatic element of beauty is epiphany.

Van Ghent: an image Van sensually apprehended and emotionally. It is a vibrant which communicates
instantaneously the truth about the meaning of the experience.

Watson: epiphany is a fusion of objective fact and subjective consciousness. It is something that happens in the
external world and arrives at a deeper truth. The moment of epiphany is triggered by a thing from the external
world.

James Joyce – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Stephen Dedalus is the fictional Joyce. Joyce’s fiction is addressed to educated men and the whole novel A
Portrait is a kind of an impressionistic recording. One of the key words in the novel is the word portrait and it
stands for the portrait of emotional development of Stephen Dedalus. The impressions are things that are
grasped through the senses, not through the ratio. One of the main epiphanies in the novel is the moment when
he understands that he is not to be a priest, but an artist.

-There are many literary allusions:

Intertextual reference to Dante’s Divine Comedy: there is a female character called Dante and this name is a
reminder of a very important theme throughout the novel – the divine comedy. For example, the third part of the book
is dealing with a religious sermon. After hearing father Arnall’s sermon, Stephen needs to confess in order to purify
himself. Stephen is unique, he is not like the other children and he is attracted to sounds, shapes and forms. From this
point we can see his artistic perception of the world. The story about hell is a dramatic speech of the judgment day and
it leaves great impression on Stephen: he sees the picture of hell with excrements and creatures because of the sins he
has committed. He reprocesses the words of the speech and the view of hell through his artistic imagination.

Intertextual reference to Ovid’s Metamorphosis: this is achieved through the usage of Latin quotes.

Stephen’s journey (or in other words metamorphosis) is from a young, religious boy who starts to commit sins
to a person who realizes that should become an artist.
Intertextual reference to The Count of Monte Christo: Stephen indentifies with the Count of Monte Christo
and his love for Mercedes.

Byron and Shelley: Stephen writes in the style of these two poets.

The language of the novel

49
The language shows the spiritual development of Stephen. The novel opens with a children story and Stephen
identifies himself with one of the characters even then. This shows the importance of art in his life. The
language at the beginning is childish and simplified, but it is very difficult to follow because it is full of
sensations. It is like as if the reader is in the mind of the child and sees the world from the child’s eyes. As pages
proceed, there is gradation of the complexity of language. When Stephen confesses his sins, he becomes devoted
catholic and his language becomes dry. As the novel goes on, the language becomes little more coherent and it is
based on logic. Stephen goes from one extreme to another, from a sinner to a devoted catholic. The language is
most complex in the last part.

Symbols of birds and flights: reference to Dedalus and Icarus.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

The indirect technique is dominant in Woolf’s and Joyce’s novels; the only difference is that Joyce uses the
direct technique in A Portrait. In Mrs. Dalloway, there is more omniscient narration, such as the case when
William Bradshaw is described. There are also some traces of dialogue in Mrs. Dalloway, such as the case when
Peter Walsh and Clarissa talk. The stream of thoughts is triggered by a memory, voice or some object.

Joyce uses omniscient narration in A Portrait; however it is an egocentric novel, focusing on the mind of
Stephen, except for the external dialogues such as Father Arnall’s speech. In Ulysses, which is a continuation of
A Portrait, there are two central characters, while in A Portrait there is only one central character: the novel is
following the thoughts of Stephen.

In Mrs. Dalloway, the point of view shifts to different characters, and a focal character is the character that gives
his/her point of view. For example, Peter Walsh gives his point of view about Clarissa. There are many sporadic
characters and sometimes a character is mentioned only once in order to give his point of view. These sporadic
characters are important because we understand the character of Clarissa through them.

Virginia Woolf

- The sudden death of her mother in 1895, when Virginia was 13, and that of her half-sister Stella two years later, led
to the first of Virginia's several nervous breakdowns. She was, however, able to take courses of study (some at degree
level) in Greek, Latin, German and history at the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London between 1897 and
1901, and this brought her into contact with some of the early reformers of women’s higher education. X

The death of her father in 1904 provoked her most alarming collapse and she was briefly institutionalized. Her
breakdowns and subsequent recurring depressive periods, modern scholars have suggested, were also influenced by
the sexual abuse she and Vanessa were subjected to by their half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth (which
Woolf recalls in her autobiographical essays A Sketch of the Past and 22 Hyde Park Gate). Throughout her life,
Woolf was plagued by periodic mood swings and associated illnesses. Though this instability often affected her social
life, her literary productivity continued with few breaks through her life. (Taken from Wikipedia) X
Historical Aspect

Mrs. Dalloway was published in 1925 and the whole novel happens in one day only. The concept of time in the
novel is more complex than time used in Joyce’s novel.

The 19th century is the peak of the British Empire; the novel centers on the period after WWI when the demise
of the British Empire is evident and this is shown in the book, there is nothing glorious about the Empire. It is in
decline, the colonial positions are questioned and people who were enlisted during WWI became very much
disillusioned because they realized that the values they had fought for were no longer there. Soldiers tried to
defend the values of the British Empire, but the decline of the values disappointed them.

1916 – The Battle of Somme River: great number of casualties. The Victorian system of values that was
imposed on people as a model of propriety was no longer acceptable. E.g. Septimus is an example of the
disappointed soldiers.

1918 – Universal Suffrage Movement: Woolf was one of the first feminists who introduced new concepts and
ways of looking feminism. She presented her views and says: ‘A woman needs a room for her own to work in
privacy’. This is mentioned in the book and she also says that the woman needs to be paid.

Conservatives lose their power and the Labour Party gets more power with their explanation that they will focus
on economy and more realistic things. The country needed to be reconstructed in any point of view after WWI.
Feminism and madness (possible exam question)

Theme of madness (possible essay topic): the total breakdown of Woolf happened around WWII because she
was disappointed by the war and everything that had happened in her life, so she put her overcoat, filled its
pockets with stones and jumped into the River Ouse near her home and drowned.

Mental illness: Septimus, as the shell-shocked war hero, operates as a pointed criticism of the treatment of mental
illness and depression. Woolf lashes out at the medical discourse through Septimus' decline and suicide; his doctors
make snap judgments about his condition, talk to him mainly through his wife and dismiss his urgent confessions
before he can make them. Dr. Holmes remarks that Septimus "was not ill. Dr Holmes said there was nothing the
matter with him". Woolf goes beyond criticizing the treatment of mental illness. Using the characters of Clarissa and
Rezia, she makes the argument that people can only interpret Septimus' shell-shock according to X

50
their cultural norms. Throughout the course of the novel Clarissa does not meet Septimus. Clarissa's reality is
vastly different from that of Septimus; his presence in London is unknown to Clarissa until his death becomes
idle chat at her party. By never having these characters meet, Woolf is suggesting that mental illness can be
contained to the individuals who suffer from it without others who remain unaffected ever having to witness it.
This allows Woolf to weave her criticism of the treatment of the mentally ill with her larger argument, which is
the criticism of society's class structure. Her use of Septimus as the stereotypically traumatized man from the
war is her way to show that there were still reminders of the First World War in 1923 London. These ripples
affect Mrs. Dalloway and readers spanning generations. Shell shock or post traumatic stress disorder is an
important addition to the early 20th century canon of post-war British Literature. There are similarities in
Septimus' condition to Woolf's struggles with bipolar disorder (they both hallucinate that birds sing in Greek
and Woolf once attempted to throw herself out of a window as Septimus does). Woolf eventually committed
suicide by drowning. The validity of psychologists and physicians is questioned in the novel (Woolf was visiting
psychologists during her life and this is why she is critical towards them).X

Water imagery: water imagery is very important and stands for death in the novel. E.g. when Septimus jumps
and kills himself, he sees the water from his window. It is also connected with mortality (“The leaden circles
dissolved in the air”) and passing of time shown by the Big Ben. Audible imagery is mixed with water, and time
passing indicates mortality. Clarissa is very scared of mortality.

Feminism: As a commentary on inter-war society, Clarissa's character highlights the role of women as the pro-
verbial " Angel in the House" and embodies sexual and economic repression and the narcissism of bourgeois
women who have never known the hunger and insecurity of working women. She keeps up with and even em-
braces the social expectations of the wife of a patrician politician but she is still able to express herself and find
distinction in the parties she throws. Her old friend Sally Seton, whom Clarissa admires dearly, is remembered
as a great independent woman: She smoked cigars, once ran down a corridor naked to fetch her sponge-bag and
made bold, unladylike statements to get a reaction from people. When Clarissa meets her in the present day, she
turns out to be a perfect housewife, having married a self-made rich man and given birth to five sons. Feminism
is tackled in Mrs. Dalloway, but we can say that Clarissa is a Victorian woman: she sacrifices her emotions in
order to become a wife of Richard Dalloway and to penetrate into the higher social classes. X

Woolf introduces the concept of androgynous mind and she says that the writer’s mind is not a male or a female
because the gender is not important. She says the woman can writes as well as the man can do it.

Bloomsbury group: a literary group whose name came from the area where they met; the members were literary
critics and artists who merged together and debated, although free debate was not allowed in that time. Woolf was a
bisexual, although she married Leonard Woolf with whom she founded the Hogarth Press where many popular books
were published, such as Woolf’s and T.S.Eliot’s. She had relationships with women, and she mentions a homosexual
kiss between two women in Mrs. Dalloway. The ethos of the Bloomsbury group encouraged a liberal approach to
sexuality, taboo subjects were discussed and many homosexual relations happened.

Homosexuality: Clarissa Dalloway is strongly attracted to Sally at Bourton — 34 years later, she still considers
the kiss they shared to be the happiest moment of her life. She feels about women "as men feel" (from "Mrs
Dalloway"), but she does not recognize these feelings as signs of homosexuality. Similarly, Septimus is haunted
by the image of his dear friend Evans. Evans, his commanding officer, is described as being "undemonstrative in
the company of women". Woolf describes Septimus and Evans behaving together like "two dogs playing on a
hearth-rug" who, inseparable, "had to be together, share with each other, fight with each other, quarrel with each
other..." Jean E. Kennard notes that the word "share" could easily be read in a Forsteran manner, perhaps as in
Forster's Maurice which shows the word's use in this period to describe homosexual relations. Kennard is one
to note Septimus' "increasing revulsion at the idea of heterosexual sex", abstaining from sex with Rezia and
feeling that "the business of copulation was filth to him before the end. X

Search for identity: ‘I am Mr. Richard Dalloway’s wife.’ In the beginning of the novel, she is unhappy, and she is not
even Clarissa, she is Mr. Dalloway’s wife. The epiphany happens when she asserts her identity. During their youth,
Peter Walsh says that she will become a perfect hostess and will marry a Prime Minister. We can see that she did
become the perfect hostess and the wife of a powerful man. On the surface, she exists only in the domestic sphere and
for making parties, walking on the streets and for empty chatter. She does not have a job; she is just the perfect wife of
a governmental official. These descriptions are just in the margins of the novel, because the important things happen
in her mind. She is very complex and revolutionary. As Woolf in Modern fiction says:
‘The mind of the ordinary man is bombarded by myriad of… and life is a luminous halo’. This refers to all
ordinary impressions and the fact that the life cannot be subdued to some strict pattern, because it is a semi
transparent envelope. Trivial moments convert to moments of significance and the domestic life of Clarissa
becomes the sphere where something important happens. (Life consists of trivial moments – a revolutionary
idea in literature, because before this statement other things such as heroes, damsels in distress and courtiers
were the most important things. Woolf gives significance to trivialities.)

51
Peter is also unstable in terms of his identity and masculinity: he is fidgeting his pocket knife- an action that can
stand for his insecurity and indecisiveness. He should love the woman from India who is willing to divorce for
him, but we can see that he still has feelings for Clarissa.

Identity is important when Clarissa sees Richard for the first time – she cannot even remember his name and she
calls him Wickham. Ironically, she is now called Mrs. Richard Dalloway.

Two opposite urges:

Urge for privacy: Clarissa needs privacy and she decides to marry Richard Dalloway. Richard does not really
know who Clarissa really is and this is one of the reasons why she chooses him. She decides not to marry Peter
Walsh with whom she experiences emotional fulfillment. She rejects Peter and throughout the novel she
questions herself what would it be like if she had married Walsh. She rejects Peter because he is too demanding.

Urge for communication: Mrs. Dalloway is a uniting force; there is no real communication between her and
Richard, so she partially fulfills her urge for communication by throwing parties. Beneath the perfect hostess,
she is still searching for her identity.

Concept of epiphany: she opens the window overwhelmed with questions about mortality. At the beginning of
the novel, the chaining of Big Ben stands for the passing of time and she is scared of death. She comes to terms
to her own mortality and she experiences a personal epiphany.

Septimus vs. Mrs. Dalloway: There is connection between Clarissa and Septimus. At the beginning they both see the
same plane; they share the love for Shakespeare and repeat one line of Cymbeline ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun.’
this line stands for death as a comfort that releases the character from the torments of life. When Clarissa buys flowers
she sees a play by Shakespeare and she repeats this line as Septimus does. The boundaries between sanity and insanity
are blurred. She is on the verge of insanity. However, the flux of thoughts of any character is inconsistent and seems
rather insane. When it comes to Clarisse, she is torn apart from the urges, the search of identity and she is on the verge
of insanity as Septimus is. Septimus is not understood by anyone and he sacrifices his body by jumping out the
window. On the contrary, Mrs. Dalloway decides to embrace life, does not jump from the window and goes back to
the party. After realizing the pattern of cotton wool, she decides to go back to the party where Peter’s point of view is
given and he takes us back many years ago when she was young. When she descends the stairs she is like she was in
her 18s and here the cinematic technique is used.

Intertextual reference to Othello: Clarissa identifies herself with Othello who has lost his wife. The lost love of
Clarissa is Sally, not Peter Walsh.

Nature: we get to know some things for the characters by their communion with nature. Both Clarissa and
Septimus love trees because they think that the souls of death people are in the roots of the trees. Flowers are
also important symbol, and the way Clarissa experiences flowers shows her emotionality.

The British Establishment: by marrying Richard, Clarissa becomes part of this establishment and she feels
guilty for Septimus death. She herself is oppressed by the same society as Septimus was.
52
Unit 1 Modernism (09.02.2011)
ism: Conrad, Foster,
Lawrence, Woolf and
Exam Joyce.
questio
n: Post Modernism (after
Circu 1950) 1 author we are
mstanc reading belongs to post
es that modernism Golding
broug
ht One of the greatest
about characteristic is that
the realism is still present but
rise of it is combined with
moder symbolism RE-ALISM +
nism SYMBOLISM
and
moder Historical
n circumstances
fiction
Modernism started in the
The last two decades of the
focus 19th century and thus it is
is on connected with the end of
extrem the Victorian era. During
ely the Victorian Era system
comple of values was formed on
x the basis of the Queen.
philoso This system of values
phical, contained conventions,
ethical, dogmas. For instance the
psycho themes of sex and death
logical were taboo but at the end
and of the Victorian era
logical authors started writing
issues about them (Wuthering
and not heights). Some critics
believe that modernism
on
started in 1887
marital
and (50th Jubilee of Queen
social Victoria) or in 1897 (the
status Golden Jubilee of the
as it Queen)
was in Alienation
the
Victori Specific tendencies
an Era appeared at the beginning
of the modern age. One of
them was the fight
High
between the philistine
Moder reader and the author. The
nism person who first tackled
(1912- this issue was Mathew
1930) Arnold in `Culture and
5 Anarchy`. This issue
authors brought about the rise of
we are theme which was typical
going for modernist poetry but it
to deal also started to be dominant
with in prose and that is
belong ALIENATION. Alienation
to high can be also understood
modern through the separation of
the work of art and the
author. nt event because with it
(OBJE compulsory education was
CTIVI introduced. Everybody
TY was allowed to learn
become (previously women were
s very not allowed) There were
importa people who were literal
nt in but not educated well and
fiction were interested in the
too). yellow pages. Thus there
Authorswas a division of the
who are reading audiences. During
importa the 18th c the tastes of the
nt for audiences were important
the and authors wrote to
theme satisfy these tastes.
of Division of reading
alienati audiences:
on are:
Thoma
s Mann High (specific for the
`Budde expert audiences)
nbrook
` Mid (Robinson Crusoe
(1901) targeted the mid reading
and audiences)
James
Joyce
Low (literature written
`A
for semi-literate)
portrai
t of the
artist Predominant themes
as a
young Pessimism
man`
(1916).
Thomas Hardy
The
(although Victorian he
French
symbolishowed characteristics of
sts also pessimism in his
discuss writings)
ed the
detach Houseman
ment
betwee Stoicism
n
society
and the W.E. Henley, Robert
artist. Louis Stevenson, R.
Kipling`s Jungle Books
Educat
ion N.B. These themes were
Acts - characteristics of both
Reader late Victorian period and
ship early modern era.

The The criticism of the

passing Victorian system of
of the values
Educat
ion It begun early with
Acts Lytton Strachey and his
(1870) work `Eminent
was a Victorians` (1918). In
very addition to him Samuel
importa
Butler ended in 1903) contains
``The the greatest attack of the
way of Victorians and their
all system of values.
flesh``
(started The position of women
writing
in
53
1884,
18TH century position of women: marital status equals social status, underprivileged class because there were
special rules to be followed, special behavior, domesticity, not allowed in universities, educated in special
institutions, refined, governesses.

During the time of modernism there was an improvement in the position of women by the Married women
property`s act (1882) by which women were allowed to inherit their property. However they were still not
allowed to vote (later 1918 but implemented 1928).

The female author we are going to read, Virginia Woolf, is considered to be a feminist. She devised the concept
`androgynous mind` by which she claims that writer is a writer no matter man or woman.

During the modernism still same values of the Victorian era, regarding women, are cherished however there is
also challenging of these values and breaking of the Victorian taboos (eg. Mrs Dalloway: passionate kiss).

Colonialism

The late Victorian period was the peak of British imperialism and colonialism but later it started declining.
Intellectuals started to speak against colonialism. The Boer wars (1899-1902). In the 3rd half of the 20th c
started the downfall of British imperialism and the 1st step to it was the formation of the British
Commonwealth (1926). With this there were states that considered themselves to be independent but allied to
Britain. Later many states proclaimed independence and were no longer members of the Commonwealth.
Independence of India (1947 m of c), Irish Republic (1949), South Africa (1961).

The Irish fight for independence

There are many writings dealing with the Irish struggle for independence. Eg. `A portrait of the artist as a
young man`, T.S. Eliot`s `Easter 1916`. They were members of the `Irish literary revival` and they had
special idea about the Irish fight for independence. They believed that independence will be achieved through
cultural means of fighting i.e. art and they were strongly against violence.

1900 and on

During the 1st decade of the 20th century Edward VII held the throne. The Edwardian time was the last period
when the Victorian values were thought to be alive but it was just an allusion. It was the last pe-riod that shared
something with the Victorian period in terms of flashliness.

1910-1914 George V held the throne and balance was achieved between the Victorian values and the Edwardian
Hedonism

Wars poets during the WW1.

Later, experimentalism of T.S. Eliot (1920s)

1930 emergence of crisis. W.H. Auden – Oxford circle

Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) which was a precursor to WW2

After WW2 the National art Councils were changed to Regional Art Councils. London was no longer in the
center 1960s. Dialogues in regional dialects started to be broadcasted and the dialect became im-portant. Hardy
wrote in his dialect.

Modern fiction

Three tendencies are VIP for modern fiction:

Individuality

Breakdown of the Victorian system of values which were public conventions and norms and people were supposed to
follow them. But with the division between the reader and the author we have something completely opposite of the
Victorian values. Fiction begins focusing on the inner life of the characters. This inner world is portrayed on the basis
of writer`s intuition. The problem was that instead of the

54
Victorian system of values the writers should provide their own individual system of values focusing on the inner life
of the characters. Different authors dealt differently with the inner life of the characters.

Virginia Woolf used poetry to convey her visions (Poetry in fiction)

James Joyce used his talent in technical craftsmenship and used multiple points of view in order to be
completely detached from the writings (similar to Eliot`s objective correlative)

The side effect of individuality was isolation, confinement (Marlow) which are in fact connected to alienation.

Treatment of time

In the Victorian fiction we had chronological order of the events but in modern fiction we have a different
treatment of time. Virginia Woolf had a specific notion of time. She distinguished between objective (time by
clock) and subjective time (as we experience it, for e.g. in 3 seconds the whole life goes or when we are happy
15 days pass as a second which is the subjective time whereas in the objective time they are 15 days). This
treatment of time was influenced by Marcel Proust and his book `Remembrance of things past`. He claims that
we are all memories. Constant flashbacks are used for the past and the future. For example the whole novel Mrs.
Dalloway takes place in 1 day but is full of flashbacks. The past and the present are connected.

Stream of consciousness

This view was influenced by Freud`s discovery of the subconsciousness. A new technique was intro-duced
called a stream of consciousness novel. It is related to the interior monologues of the characters and the author
follows the thoughts of the characters. The author points in the mind of the characters. (stream of consciousness
novel).

The problem to this type of novel and the only criticism was that it was too one man centered. Always one
character is in the center of the attention. Problem: isolation, alienation of the character based on his relationship
with people VIP THEME(Ulysses, Joyce). Virginia Woolf deals with the private self.

Documentary writers

They appeared before the high modernism. They were referred as to materialists because they portrayed perfect
characters. They were not concerned with the inner life of the characters and that`s why are called documentary
writers. The characters were not very realistic and the main theme was virtually transient notions and trivial
things. The main representatives are ___________________________________________________________.

Short fictions

Conrad, Joyce, Susan Hill, Katherine Anne Porter (influenced by Chekhov) wrote short fictions. They used
trivial things to convey deep meanings. What is superficial on the surface is deep inside.

Freud-Psychoanalyses

Anthropology is very important because with it is connected the human life in community. (Reference to Icarus
myth in Portrait of the artist as a young man).

One of the branches of psychology is psychoanalyses and its founder is Freud. He wrote several books such as:
Totem and Taboos, Psychoanalyses of infants etc. He dealt with infant sexuality and he claims that it emerges
immediately after their birth.

He wanted to discover what are the causes for certain problems such as forgetfulness and he came to the
conclusion that in everyman there is subconsciousness which is the cause for problems such as forgetfulness.

He discovered split subjectivity or personality of the people. The discovery of subconsciousness is connected
with the theme search for identity. Modern characters feel as if they lost their identity. (Kurtz).
Freud makes division between:

ID (hidden urges, animalistic features)

Ego (area of consciousness, reality- Marlow)

Super ego (norms of the society that make us differ between what is good and what bad- moralistic role)

Psychology

Alfred Adler- All humans have the necessity to assert those who haven`t ____________. These are probably
split personalities.

55
Jung- He divided the mental illnesses of his patients into animus (female) and anima (male) based on their dreams. He
claimed that there were certain archetypes shared by all people. He found that all legends are based on one and the
same legend. He introduced the term collective consciousness and claimed that all people share it.

Unit 2 Henry James `The art of fiction` (16.02.2011)

Exam question: Give a brief account of the essay on 1 page (James`s positive and negative criticism of
Besant`s pamphlet)

The essay is written on a pretext of a pamphlet published by Walter Besant in 1884. Walter Besant delivered a lecture
named the art of fiction which was later in the same year 1884 published in a pamphlet.

The whole essay of Henry James is criticism and approvement of Besant`s pamphlet (with certain points James
agrees and with others strongly disagrees)

The main criticism is headed towards the strict rules of fiction given by Besant

Most influential essay in which what modern fiction is explained (he is against the term modern but everything
he argues belongs to the modern fiction)

The most obvious point James approves of is the theme of Besant`s pamphlet and that is the theory of fiction
(Besant introduced the subject of theory for the first time because previously it was not debatable) The pamphlet
of Besant was written on the basis of novels written by Dickens, Austen … He explains why theory was that
important. He considered Dickens and Austen as a little bit naïve or unconsciously artless because they were
simple and not that sophisticated and that is why they did not have theoretic grounds.

James discusses the exchange of views as VIP for fiction and he says that when there is no exchange of views
the fiction is boring

So James approves of the ides of Besant concerning the exchange of views by which not only the work of art is
important but also the theory.

James referred to one of the prejudices of the church that fiction is considered to be wicked. When he wrote the
essay this prejudice disappeared but it existed in different form and that was ``fiction should not claim reality``

Besant said that the novelist should claim that the work is not based on reality which James disapproved and he
said ``the only reason for existence of the novel is that it does attempt to present life``. If the novel does not
represent life it is not good. It has to have a sense of reality.

James claimed that `reality is important for modern fiction``.

James comments on Besant`s analogy between painting and fiction. He says that just as the picture is reality the
novel is history. James explains further by giving an analogy between a novelist and a histo-rian. Historians talk
about the past of people in the same way as novelists but the difference is that the novelist`s writings are to be
regarded not only literally.

About the sense of reality: The novelists need to speak with the tone of historian, novelist and philoso-pher.

If fiction corresponds to painting it corresponds to art. Besant says ``fiction is one of the fine arts`` James
approves of this argument but he does not approve of Besant`s explanation of fine arts. The main point of James
is that ``fiction should be based on ____________, no recipes, mathematical formulas``.

56
Other people do not accept the notion of fiction as fine art. For example protestants consider art not to be
connected to morality. Fiction should be didactic and amusing. If fiction is artistic it should not be amusing. The
artistic element in fiction obstructs the rule of having happy endings. Fiction should have virtuous and aspiring
characters.

3rd group of people think that fiction should have movement and dialogue not description.

If fiction contains artistic element it ruins the pleasure.

James makes a comparison between a novelist and a meddlesome doctor.

The artistic elements are not widely accepted by people.

James disagreed that the art of fiction should be defined strictly and he believed in the freedom of exe-cution of
the writer.

James said that anyone can differentiate between a bad and good novel. Good novels cause affections, bad
novels are disregarded by the readers.

James says that the only object that the novelist should adhere to is that the novel should be interesting. But he
does not say why?

Definition of novel by James: The novel is a direct and personal impression of life (and that is something that
constitutes its value). In order to write the novelist should have the freedom of execution. Different novelists
choose different methods of execution and the subject depends on the novelist. Some novelists cannot
implement a successful freedom of execution.

The peak of James`s criticism towards Besant is: There is no recipe how fiction should be written. Besant gave
very strict norms of fiction by the analogy of the novelist and a painter. Besant: The laws of fiction are laid
down with exactness and precision as the laws of harmony and proportion. James disapproves of this
identification and especially of the words exactness and precision. He is strongly against exactness and
precision.

We must remember that James does not criticize Besant 100% and only some rules are criticized whereas other
are approved.

Besant`s 9 rules

Experience is very important when a novelist wants to write something and the novelist must write from his own
experience

Characters need to be real as ones can be met in real life

Class restriction rule: Besant says that a novelist from a lower-middle class should stick to his own class i.e. not
to write about characters of other classes

Connected to the 1st: If the novelist comes from the countryside he should stick to his own surroundings and
should not dare to write about for example the military service (very restrictive)

Novelists should take notes and those should be recorded in a common book and the novel should be based on
these notes

The characters need to be clear in outline; need to be evoked clearly and the illustrations should not be based on
their speech; through description is even worse

The novel must have a conscious purpose

57
It`s very difficult to evaluate the state of the novelist

The story is the most important thing in the novel

James`s positive and negative criticism

Rule about reality: (2nd) James accepts the sense of reality but he explains that it is very difficult to define
reality. For example in Don Quixote we have different reality than in David Copperfield –Dickens. ``Re-ality is
a relative notion``. Reality is different in different novels. So James partly accepts the rule but criticizes the rules
of being not exact or précised.

Rule about experience (1st) James puts the same question. It is very difficult to define experience. He says that
experience is great sensibility and he compares it to a huge spider web. The spider web is full of _______ and
they represent the impressions.

E.g. Thackeray`s daughter lived in the countryside but wrote about the protestant people. She only saw a few
protestant people in Paris and combined the impression with her knowledge which re-sulted in a novel.
``Experience is a collection of impressions``- James `not what is lived through life`. James approves that
experiences are important but he says that the author must write from his own ex-perience.

Rule about countryside: (4th) Mentioned with the example above

Rule connecting notes: (5th) James agrees that the novelist should take notes but criticizes the part on which
notes should be taken

Exactness and precision; James says that the tale of truth is very important – sense of reality. The novelist should
be preoccupied with peculiarities through which he conveys the universal truth

Rule- character clear in outline: (6th) Not too much dialogue or description. James is against clear dis-tinction
between novels of incidents and novels of characters. He says `character is determination of incident` and
`incident is illustration of character`. The novel is an organic whole- dialogue + description is important.

Besant gives importance to selection. James relativizes this argument and he says that selection is im-portant but
should be all inclusive. Novelists should not restrict only to good things (as Besant states) but also to the bad
side. Anything can be the subject matter of a novel.

James draws on the importance of freedom of execution. ``The province of art is every aspect of life`. The
novelist needs to have the freedom of execution or freedom of choice as to the subject matter (same argument as
Virginia Woolf)

According to James the only distinction is between novels that have life and those that don`t have life i.e.
successful and unsuccessful.

Rule (9th): James agrees with Besant`s rule that the most important thing is the story but only to a certain point
because he says that the story is as important as the novel The story is the idea and the novel is the form. James
points out that the novel is as important as the form.

Besant says that the story is successful if it has adventure in it. James disapproves and says that adventure may
but not necessarily must be the subject matter of the novel.

Rule by Besant: (7th) He disagrees completely and says that morality is a completely different matter of fiction.
The novelist is successful he will be able to convey all aspects of life and morality (beauty and truth).

58
James says that the English novel addresses the younger population and that`s why it is shy and does not tackle
any controversial issues. The English novel EXCLUDES morality.

N.B. James gives advice to the novel writers:

Novels should be sincere

Novels should address all the aspects of life (gives examples of different novelist: Austen, Dickens who shared
glory but tackled different matters. Even pessimism should be included: `The Shallow English` - novel


James: No danger of generalization, but of particularization.

Unit 3 Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad (23.02.2011)

Joseph Conrad and his life

We will only mention information from his life that are used as intertextual references because they are
important for the understanding of the fiction and for emerging new meanings.

Conrad`s mother tongue was not English because French was his 1st language. English was not even his 2nd
language. He wrote sophisticated English although he was Polish (this is important for the anthropo-logical
understanding of the novella). He later was a Polish inhabitant in a part of Russia (cultural under-standing). He
was a person of Polish culture. His father was translator and poet. He translated from English and French. He
together with his family were persecuted because he supported the fight for Polish independence. They were
sent to Siberia where they died. Conrad became orphan early and he was adopted by his uncle on mother side
and his uncle educated him well.

Conrad`s real name was Josef Korzeniowski. He was in Russia during the period of Polish fight for
independence of Russia. So he was part of the inferior class compared to the Russians who were the superiors
(Inferiority and superiority in the novella).

Conrad did not like the strict rules of education and took a tutor who did not succeed to change his views. He
decided to be a sailor in the French navy and went in many places which are described in some of his fictions.
He participated in rebellions and attempted to suicide himself and thus proclaimed to be unde-sirable and was
prevented from working in the French navy. He was still addicted to the life at sea and transferred from a French
sailor into an English one. He worked as a British sailor for 16 years during which he learned English and got
British citizenship.

The journey to Congo 1890s fascinated him. He got the position at a steamer by the help of a female relative.
The steamer had to be repaired and Conrad became ill and he did not finish his assignment as a captain of the
steamer.

After the Congo experience he decided to quit sailing and became a writer

He started writing his novella in 1899 and published it in sequences in a magazine. He published the complete
work in 1902 in a book entitled `Youth` in which here were two other stories. When it was published in this
book it was thought to be inferior in comparison with the two others.

At the beginning of the 20th c. the novella was criticized for the dark atmosphere and the ambiguity of meaning
because there were multiple meanings.

So at first, the criticism was negative because people were used to works that celebrated the Victorian system of
values and his work was ambiguous regarding this question. It was considered to be unac-ceptable.

59
Some critics who focused on the excessive use of adjectives said that they were unnecessary. (inexplica-ble etc.)
The critics said that the adjectives should not be there and they do not contribute to the atmos-phere.

In the 2nd half of the 20th c. with the exception of Chinua Achebe` s Image of Africa (1975) the line of criticism
changed and there was a positive criticism. The excessive use of adjectives brought about the development of
the atmosphere. The sinister, ominous atmosphere was produced due to the craftsman-ship of Conrad. The
adjectives and the atmosphere brought about the multidimensional meanings of the objects.

Positive line of criticism

Conrad may seem to praise the things he wants to criticize because he uses the language of the imperialist
ideology. It is very difficult to criticize using the language of the colonizer.

Although Marlow does not do anything to help the natives, his observation is a kind of mental attack of the
colonists

We may think that there is even something misanthropic in the presentation of the natives but we must
remember that he does the same to the white people (e.g. Eldorado expedition- worse than animals)

A deconstructive subversion of conventional symbols: Whiteness- pejorative meaning; whited sepulchre

– Brussels which contains horrors. Imagery of the sepulchre again present at the end of the novella when
Marlow visits Kurtz`s Intended (everything reminds of a sepulchre). The whiteness of the white people is not
white but stands for their evil. The dark complexion of the natives does not stand for evil but for purity and
innocence. Finally heart of darkness refers to the heart of the white people.

Narration

Conrad succeeds in distancing himself from the work of art by using 2 narrators (something similar to Eliot`s
objective correlative). Marlow`s views are not Conrad`s views because Conrad is Polish and Mar-low stands for
English person. There are also other allusions that show that Marlow`s views are different. The first narrator is
the introductory narrator and he introduces Marlow. He narrates what Marlow nar-rates. The second narrator is
Marlow. He renders embedded narrative.

Method of indirection: Frame and embedded narration. Frame narrator- 1st: Sailor, anonymous, speaks in 1st
person plural and introduces Marlow. Begins the story on the steamer Nelly on the Thames River. 2Nd narrator-
embedded, intermediary speaks in 1st person singular and in inverted commas.

Women in Heart of Darkness

Women are thought to be very marginalized in Heart of Darkness. A kind of men`s world is presented in the
novella. Some Feminist critics take Achebe`s argument that Conrad marginalizes natives so that they can
develop their argument that in the same as natives are marginalized, women are too. The presentation of women
is that of an antithesis of men, very unrealistic.

Women stand for the Victorian system of values.

Feminists objected to this novella because women are rarely mentioned; however women are not that
unimportant because they stand for the whole system of Victorian values and they believe in it. E.g. they believe
that people go in wilderness to civilize natives and that they go for noble goals

Ant of Marlow and Kurtz`s Intended stand as a symbol of domesticity and false system of Vic-torian values.
Kurtz`s Intended lives in lies.

60
The two woman at the beginning; Not ignorant women they evoke the sinister and ominous atmosphere; they
may be said to be the guardians of the darkness and they are spinning the destiny of people. The one with
glasses- symbol of wisdom. These two women are exception and are different from the other women in the
novella.

The native woman: Kurtz`s mistress is both wild and earthly creature. She is not talking but howling. She is
annihilated as a human being and is presented as a contrast to the white beautiful Intended.

Deconstruction

Achebe approaches the text from a deconstruction point of view. Jacques Derrida initiated this decon-struction
theory in the 60s & 70s in his ``Speech and Phenomena``.

Deconstruction- radical development that affects philosophy, literature, psychoanalyses.

Deconstruction is when we compare the implicit and explicit place of discourse in order to find radical
incongruities in logic. These incongruities are hidden within the text.

There are 3 steps in the deconstruction:

Establishing binary oppositions and making hierarchy of them E.g. white and black: darkness and whiteness.

The conventional symbolism is subverted. In the conventional symbolism white stands for good and black for
bad and in the subverted hierarchy white stands for bad and dark for good. We have subverting of hierarchy.

_____________________________________________________________________

Inversion or subversion: to put the two elements in equal putting in order to show their differ-ence. Each
element is worthy but different.

Cultural theory

Different view of the noble savage. Conventional view is that the savage is noble but here we have something
different. Savagery is violated. The focus is on the life of the wilderness as rather bad. Pessi-mistic view of
human nature. But we must remember that in the novel savagery refers more to the white men than those which
are referred to as savages i.e. the natives. E.g. Cannibals show restraint but Kurtz does not.

Evil within human nature

Kurtz as an argument stands for the macrocosm- attitude of the entire world. Heart of darkness- heart of the
white colonists.

Natives are excluded from the darkness but Conrad in other stories present black people affected by civilization
but are deployed by European imperialism and work in service of imperialism. They lose their innocence.

Inherent evil of humans

Black evil: When blacks come into contact with the civilization they lose their purity

61
Anthropological or cultural theory: People are potential evil and even civilized people in wilderness become
evil.

Psychoanalyses

Marlow`s journey of self-discovery; search for identity; very complex psychological insight of the character; what
happens to the white people when they go to wilderness. E.g. the doctor takes measures of the brain of Marlow and
says that there will be changes in the mind: people if return alive, go mad.

ID- all white people: Kurtz, Captain (show animalistic features)

EGO- Marlow- because he is between ID an superego: he recognizes the animalistic features and potential evil
but does not succumb to them; he feels compassion towards the black peo-ple

SUPEREGO- It is not easy to establish a character for the superego but here we may say that Marlow`s ant
stands for the superego because she has a kind of moralistic role.

New Historicism

In the deconstructive readings the history was left aside as unimportant.

Restores the importance of the historical context of the work of art. The work of art is not only some-thing that
is part of one period but it can be subject to different interpretations.


Contemporary approach pays attention to the historical background but even history can be relative .

Pays attention to the context but also to the text

Readers response approach

Achebe`s point of view

Criticism of colonialism

Symbols

Regarding the symbolism the novella may be considered as post modernist because of the subversion of
symbolism and the multidimensionality of one symbol

E.g. Darkness

Physical darkness (darkness of jungle)

Black people

White people

Darkness of unknown

River Congo and Thames: Congo: wilderness and Thames: civilization but again there is subverted symbolism:
Marlow says that Thames also stood for darkness having in mind Roman invasion

Universal darkness

The novella begins and ends on Thames. Even there darkness is present. Final words of the novella: Immense
Darkness is falling. Darkness on Thames not on Congo.
62
Unit 4 A passage to India- E.M. Forster (02.03.2011)
1857 almost entire India and Asia
were conquered.

Colonialism- Sepoys- were the Indian natives who

Historical point of worked as soldiers for Britain. The
view decline of EEIC came as a result of
the same Sepoys- 1857- who
organized rebellion which lasted for 6
British imperialism months and EEIC dissolved in 1858.
developed as a
result of the British
trading in North The British Empire acquired another
American colonies institution for exercising power and
or over the world. that was the British Raj. It started in
That was at the end 1858 and the event which are
described in a Passage to India belong
of 16th and to the time when Britain ruled
beginning of 17th c. through the British Raj.
At the peak of its
power, Britain In A Passage to India Britain found
encompassed ¼ of excuse for being there to keep peace
the Planet`s between the Indians and Hindus.-
territories and its which is partly true.
population. The
territories was so
1900- the British Raj succeeded in
vast that the
holding the population. In 1926 the
proverb says `there
Commonwealth was founded- it was
is always sun in
an association of independent states
Britain`.
but allied to the British Crown.
British imperialism
Roots of British colonialism are to be
in Asia and India is
found in the profit- ivory, diamonds,
connected with
exotic vegetables which were to be
English East India
found in abundance in India and that
Company- 1617-
is why India is the most important
started trading right
colony in Asia.
by the Mughal
th
Empire. In the 18
India gained independence but under
c. with the decline
the condition of losing Pakistan.
of the Mughal
Europeans created a Muslim, Islamic
Empire English
state of Pakistan. Hindus remained in
East India
India.
Company started to
show other
tendencies (not
only trading). This Hinduism
marked the
beginning of World`s oldest religion. Mixture of
colonialism. movement over a period of 4000
Everything started years. It is not a monotheistic religion
from trading, then but belief in more than one deity.
invading territories.
The Indian trinity is known as
By 1857 England trimurta. The 3 deities are the
became greatest following:
economic power. Brama- the creator
There was a war
between the EEIC Vishnu- the preserver and maintainer
and the French
counterpart in Shiva- the destroyer
which the EEIC
won. Thus before
But these distinctions should not be
taken for granted
because for The individual soul is known as
example Vishnu in Ahman and it should be fused with
addition to being Brahmal- ultimate reality in which all
maintainer id also a individual souls are fused. Brahmal
destroyer in the stands for unity of all living beings.
sense that he
maintains and In Hinduism the Gods have different
preserves not only number of incarnations. For example
the good but also Vishnu has incarnations and Krishna
bad. Reincarnation- th th
dead is not a final is the 8 incarnation and the 10 yet
end of the cycle; should come (as if second coming of
from one form the Christ).
soul enters another
form- cat, dog; Vishnu has 4 arms which imply the
cycle of life. different number of incarnations .
Krishna is born in a family of
In Hinduism, one ofshepherds (contact with
the main beliefs is Gopis????????? )
that there should be
a balance between Shiva- destroyer, keeps the souls until
good and evil- they are ready to reincarnate.
duality. In Christian Destroyer implies creation and that`s
religion there is why the dance of Shiva stands for the
strict distinction constant forming and dissolving of
between what is the cycle of life.
good ( God) and
evil (Satan). Brahman: cycle of life and death;
change of incarnations from one body
Here the evil is as to other; ones the soulf fuses with
important as the reality – liberation of soul
good.
Concept of unity of all life
Shiva is supposed
to be the destroyer Boom boom- sound that is heard in the
but not only caves; a kind of echo. Boom is a parody
destroyer but also of the Indian word OM which stands for
protector in the oneness. God is love and god is in every
sense that it human being. All human beings and
protects the souls living
from the evil.
63
creatures are part of the Hindu religion because all deserve God`s blessing. Even the little wasp. Moore
subconsciously addresses the wasp with kind words and thus exercises the philosophical idea of Hinduism. In
comparison with Christianity, Hinduism is far more inclusive religion. In Christianity all mammals are
included but not the little wasp and bacteria. Christianity is somehow more exclusive in comparison to
Hinduism.

Unity of all life is the central concept of the novel. How to solve the muddle of India? The solution is
implicitly implied- GOD LOVES EVERYONE.

Forster is atheist, but he shows sympathy toward Hinduism but also sometimes is critical towards it.

Wasp
1st Moore addresses it
2nd the missionaries talk about the wasp

3rd birth of Krishna and Moore

Other side of the story

The problem arises from the fact that good and evil are equal in Hinduism. Thus they do not have values at all.

Negative principle: Behind what we see on the surface, there is an ultimate reality that cannot be grasped and
cannot be defined with attributes. This reality has to do with the concept of NETI NETI- not this, not this-
beyond speech. It is repeated in several points in the novel. For example the Marabar Caves are described with
the words nothing, nothing. Godbole is supposed to describe the experience at the caves and he says I don`t
know.

The problem of oneness is SAMENESS. Nobody should care about thing in life- ALIENATION. The unity of
life contains the danger of alienation. Hinduism is in fact unity of diversities.

Mr. Moore

Moore is part of the Hindu vision- and her physical death is not end for her because her mental presence is
there – ESMISS ESMOORE- a name of a Hindu deity- goddess. The shouting of her name is a turning point
for Adela Quested because she realizes that Azis is innocent. Moore`s indifference- understands that good and
evil are the same- nothing has value. Even in death she was able to preserve the balance; Azis acquitted but
was haunted until the rest of his life.

Cultural clash

India is a mixture of different languages, religions, groups. The clash is not just between the English and the
Indians but also between Muslims and Hindus.

For example: Dr Azis`S friend gossiped Godbole who is Hindu. Ronny discusses the animosity between
Muslims and Hindus. The Muslims at the Moharem celebration take towels and pass through the Hindu camps
and they deliberately take higher towels to ruin the branches of the trees of the Hindus. Dr Azis is not
understood by the Hindus when he says `What I think is right, it turns to be wrong`.

Example of the cultural clash between the English and Muslims is the unsuccessful Bridge party.

The architecture: Indians- lack of architecture, formlessness, shapelessness except for the Mosque and the
Temple. No strict distinction, everything blurs into a muddle. On the other hand English- everything has form,
right angles, architecture of Venice. The muddle of India can have positive meaning- diversity of Indian and
pejorative meaning- disorder, chaos.

Fielding asks from Azis not to ask money from Adela, but Azis thinks that he likes her. Azis is very impulsive
and emotional.
Stereotype of English: herd instinct- all people are around Adela at the court. If Adela is attacked all women
think that they will be attacked.

Mr Fielding criticizes the lack of politeness not only of the Indians but also of the British officials. Colonial
discourse- questionable here

English people want to label everything. Indian defies labeling.

Symbols
Caves- multidimensional meaning
Hollowness of Christian religion
Hinduism

Unity of diversity- possible solution to the problem

Subconsciousness

Mrs Moore encompasses the 3 religions

She is Christian although she criticizes Christianity- Little talkative Christianity

64
Shows understanding of Islam- takes off her shoes in the Mosques- Azis tells her that she is Oriental

Part of Hindu Vision

Dr Azis- changes moods quickly, poet, teacher, overrated politeness, emotional response to things- reason for
disagreement with Fielding, Not very honest- invites the ladies to the caves- later forgets, English people take
everything for granted and want to label things.

Professor Godbole- song connected to the milkmade,

Narrative

All knowing narrator- knows everything but says as much as he thinks the audience should know. Plus addition
of different points of view through the narration of Azis, Moore ets

Unit 5 Sons and Lovers D.H. Lawrence (09.03.2011)

Theoretical aspect

Psychoanalyses applied in the novel; One element of the psychoanalyses of Freud is applied in the novel and
that element is the Oedipus Complex. It has to do with the subconscious, subconsciously repressed ideas, they
do not exist in our consciousness and are related to the notion of having desire to process the parent from the
opposite sex and to eliminate the parent from the same sex.

According to psychologists the ego-development of a child happens when the children is between 3 and 5. Freud
devices this complex from the relation of the son, mother and father, which means that it is more compatible to
sons than daughters. Later the relationship of daughters with fathers is included. Freud was criticized by the
feminists who argued that the concept focuses on boys, not on girls.

VIP moment in the development of the consciousness of a child; in order to have a normal development one
child needs to undergo through the face of Oedipus resolution- moment when the child starts identifying with
the father and somehow rejects his relationship with his mother. Oedipus resolution comes as a result of the

castration anxiety (to girls it comes as a result of penis envy )

This marks the entry into the social and healthy development of the child`s personality and it is important for the
gender and identity of personality.

If a boy fails to identify with his father and stays entrapped in the imagining relationship with his mother the
result is homosexuality, pedophilia etc.

Freud proved that homosexuality is not inherent but a developed characteristic through the childhood. Oedipus
complex- unconscious urges, the people who don`t go through the process of Oedipus resolution are mother
fixated.

Oedipus complex- Greek story (if you want read it)

Relation to the novel

The novel is not a classical example of Oedipus complex not even a comparison. Why? Because Paul hates his
father from the moment he is born and he even wishes his father was dead. The novel ends with a completely
different end. The son kills his mother out of euthanasia.

Publications of the novel

When the novel was first released for publication it was not published and was highly censored. The novel
underwent 3 versions:
1st written before the death of Lawrence`s mother
2nd after the death he changes the novel

3rd gave it to a publisher, but the publisher was disgusted and didn’t want to publish it because there was too
much sex and violence.

Lawrence was too emotion to rewrite the novel and the 4th edition was published but again censored by Edward
Garnett – he cut off one tenth of the novel- the part that contained allusions of sex and passion. It was censored
because of improper style.

The full version was released in 1992 by Cambridge. In the version of 1913 portion of William`s life was cut off
(we read that publication).

An autobiographical novel or not?

According to many critics, it is an autobiographical novel (as A portrait Of The Artist as a Young Man).
Lawrence was also a son of a miner but his mother and father did not belong to the upper-middle class. His
mother was a teacher but belonged to the low class. His father Arthur was a miner. They lived in Eastwood
which in the novel becomes Westwood- mining area, builds settlement for well to do people and for poor people
at the bottoms. (hell row- they live in a row of houses. The Morels have the last house in the row plus

65
an additional yard. Gertrud Morel somehow feels that she is better than the other wives of the mines and looks
down on the neighborhood and mingles with the priest)

The implications of industrialization permeate the novel: factory, sounds of train, The time is not like in the
Victorian era, here we have highly developed industrialized society.

The mining area in Nottingham Shire is represented through the novel. The aim is to emphasize the contrast
between the industrial area and nature which is described as the Garden of Eden. Nature and flowers are very
important in the novel because we get to know about the characters through their communication with nature.

Intertextual references

Miriam was based on a girl called Jessie who was girlfriend to Lawrence for a long time. She was an intellectual and
he shared with her all his opinion and even his draft of the novels. They broke up when she read the novel
 .

Clara is based on __________ similar to Clara. The difference is that he marries this girl.

His relationship with his mother is similar to that described in the novel but she did not come from the upper
classes.

Theme of classes

Social concerns connected with the industrialized society. There were great economic classes and great social
upheavals thus blurring of classes. The upheavals appeared as a result of the mergence of the proletarian class
as Walter Morel- worked in mines since 10 years. The working class tried to fight the bosses from the
companies. The workers were fighting for better conditions.

Economic and social conditions are important for the theme of classes in the novel.

Walter Morel represent the working class, Gertrud Morel represents the upper-middle class. There was a class
difference between them- they were incompatible one for another.

William, Paul and Arthur are examples of social mobility-climbing up on the social level. 1 st William works in
London as a school teacher- part of the industrialized society
2nd Paul works at the Jordans- part of the industrialized society

3rd Arthur works at a company connected to electricity- part of the industrialized society. Their mother wanted their
sons to be well established in the society, not as their father was.

The social movement is also presented by the moving of the house to the hill- they secured better positions in
the society.

Hell row- the dwelling places were constructed for the poor folks. Miriam is a swine girl but wants to learn and
becomes a teacher.

Eternal struggle for sexual power

We can see this struggle in the relationship between Walter and Gertrud Morel. Both want to be dominant and
assert their superiority. Walter ends up being defeated. Why? His sons hate him, even Paul prays his father to
die.
Walter is close to his younger son- Arthur.

Gertrud wins in the struggle because she is the head of the family and because Walter is afraid of her.

Result of the dominant figure of Gertrud is that Walter ends up being alcoholic. Walter is intellectually inferior
and the only way out from the position is to drink.
Mother-son relationship
Freud`s psychoanalyses:

The classical Oedipus cases: Boys like Paul are mother fixated and search for women that are like their mother.
After the first months of the marriage between Gertrud and Walter based on passion she realizes that she was
deceived by him and the house they lived in was a rented house- beginning of their failed marriage. When she
is locked out of the house and pregnant she doesn’t want Paul and she thinks on leaving Walter but then she
decides that she will live for her son.

A mature man should become independent but she becomes very possessful and tries to find a substitute for
the failed loved to her husband and she finds this in her sons. Although they do not have a sexual relationship,
the mental impact is so great that the sons cannot have normal relationships with women.

When Walter is ill, Gertrud does not feel as much compassion as when their sons are ill. She has a special sort
of love for her sons. She wants to posses the souls of William and Paul.

When William goes to London she is so horrified that she feel that the reason why he goes there is for her. He
is having an affair with Louisa and Gertrud dislikes her very much. William is not that into her too. When he
dies Louisa is not that in pain.

Gertrud cannot get over the death of William but when Paul becomes ill she awakens from the nightmare
because he may die too. Thus the whole focus is on Paul.

The novel was first entitled `Paul`s Morel` but later it was changed to `Sons and lovers`.

66
When Paul meets Miriam she immediately dislikes her and says that she will absorb his soul and there will be
nothing left for her. –selfish because she realizes that the relationship between Paul and Miriam is not a sexual
one but a psychological.

Paul tells his mother that he always wants to come home and he dumps Miriam for the sake of his mother
because he thought that whenever Gertrud sees Miriam with him she suffers.

When they go on excursion and Paul sees how the health of his mother is not good he wishes he was the oldest
son and spent more time with his mother. He wished his father would die and thus spend more time with his
mother.

Paul becomes a substitute husband- not physically.

Religion

Exam question: Deal with religious themes and attitudes in two novels
Religion is this novel is presented through the character of Miriam.

Gertrud is also religious- Puritan and fond of exchanging ideas about religion- philosophical.

Miriam is a swine girl but wants to learn and becomes a teacher. (example of social mobility). She has a special
communication with nature and special way of treating people. Paul disliked her attitudes. She understood
nature as the garden of Eden – virginity. Paul even tells her that she is a nun. She does not want to have a sexual
relationship with him but only spiritual. Paul doesn’t accept this because he is not that religious. Sex was a kind
of sacrifice for Miriam. When they make love she is very cold with him.- end of their relationship. The problem
of the character of Miriam is that she really acts as if a nun. She want Paul to share the same religious attitudes
as her.

Symbolism of nature

Not only Miriam has a special connection with nature, but also other characters find themselves in nature.
Nature usually has a soothing effect on the characters and it serves as a contrast to the industrial world. The
pastoral idea is presented through nature.

Nature is different symbol for different characters.

Lilies- when Gertrud is locked outside the house- symbol of death of their marriage

Rose-bush- Miriam touches the white petals- virginity, puritanical attitudes towards sex, Paul is suf-focated with
the rose bush

Different types of flowers- Clara: red flowers- passion, physical aspect of love and sensuality; red color stands
for the drops of blood- she is a married woman but spends time with other man.

Ash-tree- rustling sounds- The leaves stand for Mr. Morel and the hatred that the sons feel for him

Back yard- when there is a tension the characters go in nature and it has a soothing effects- how powerful it is
compare dto the industrial land.

Unit 6 ``Preface to The Nigger of the ``Narcissus```` + ``Aspects of the Novel`` (16.03.2011)

Literary Impressionism
Sorted in several categories:

One of the categories is symbolism and it is applicable to modernist fiction. It originates from the art movement
and is greatly influenced by French symbolist Baudelaire, Mallarme.
Literary impressionism means when the writer focuses on the mental state of the characters, impressions,
feelings rather than on descriptions. Direct representation of the mental states of the characters; Impressionists:
Conrad, Woolf, Joyce

Joseph Conrad: ``Preface to The Nigger of the ``Narcissus```` What the task of the artist is?

It is a Preface to the novel ``Nigger of the Narcissus` written in 1897-1898 published in the book edition of the
novel. The novel in which Conrad shows his craftsmanship. It talks about the task of the artist. Artist means
novelist in the preface.
The subtitle is the `TASK OF THE ARTIST` . The importance is on the reality, life and truth.

Henry James as all other theoreticians underline the meaning of life; fiction should reflect life; opposite of
romantic fiction where heroic age is presented. The sense of reality and life is VIP.

Conrad underlines the importance of truth and defines art.

`` And art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible
universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect``.

When he says art he means fiction. What does single minded attempt means? An attempt of the single writer. To
render justice to the visible universe- refers to the scope of fiction, its subject matter- any part of the visible

67
universe. By bringing to light the truth- Conrad`s truth is the revelation of the substance, color; the VIP idea is to
seize the day, time is transitory. His truth can be compared to the consciousness of reality reality and life. He makes
a comparison between a novelist and a scientist in order to underline the scope of the novelist. He says that the
novelist plunges into ideas whereas the scientist plunges into facts. The ideas of the novelist are different and the
novelist appeal is superior because the novelist looks from within himself and what appeals to the part of the reader
is the gift e.g. sense of mystery; The appeal of the scientists is transitory because acts are substitute with new facts.
Although the appeal of the scientist may seem short it is long and enduring.

The motif justifies the matter; ``Everything can be a subject matter of fiction``, any obscure episode- Woolf
says the same.

In the manifesto of Conrad`s literary impressionism he explains how he appeals to the readers. The appeal of
the writer to the appeal of the reader; He appeals to the reader through impressions which are conveyed
through senses.

Another parallel is made between a writer and a painter (color), musician (sounds), sculptor(hand, materials).
The special vehicle for the writer is the word. The writer can be compared to all these people because the
writer also appeals through impressions. That`s why he is similar.

What is the task of the artist?

The task of the artist is by the power of the written word to make the readers hear, feel and SEE. Conrad takes
the position of impressionist, Senses are underlined. We receive what the writer has done through our senses.
He emphasizes the importance of the moment. Objective time- moment- a transient but Conrad wants to freeze
it, capture the time and reveal the substance of truth.

Woolf also speaks about seizing the moment.

Conrad gives tips for the novelist as James: A good writer (in general) should avoid the temporary formulas of
art and realism, romanticism. What is important is art. Art for the art`s sake. Writer should write fiction for the
fiction`s sake.

Conclusion of the essay:

With an illustrative metaphor he compares the goals of a writer to the goals of a laborer on a field. He says:
What the laborer wants to do? Searching for a definite goal. He draws the parallel to certain extend that the job
of the writer is as difficult as that of the laborer but we cannot define what is the goal of the writer. But the
goal of the laborer can be seen by looking in nature and can be seized. The goals of the writer are obscure and
not definite, where as the goals of the laborer are definite. We should not search for definite goal, the priority
should be given to impressions.

Edward M. Forster: ``Aspects of the Novel``(1927)

This essay is based on a compilation of his lectures. There are 7 aspects but we will discuss the first 3. At the
beginning of the book Forster points out humanity or human aspect as VIP element in fiction.
Importance of life and reality: the sense of reality.

Forster is traditional in some aspects. The narrative technique is based on monition narration (traditional part)
+ different points of view (modernist).

He uses the word `aspects` deliberately to allow freedom regarding how the novelists treat his work of art and
how the readers receive it. He allows freedom of interpretation.

The seven aspects are:

Story

People

Plot
Fantasy

Prophecy
Pattern

Rhythm

Story is the lowest artist form and he underlines the importance of the story. The definition of story he gives is
very traditional ``narrative of events arranged according to their time sequence``. Tradi-tional view of the
narrative different from Woolf and Joyce.

Chronological order of events. He gives another definition: Story is like a tape worm- the worm does not have
a beginning and an end and this implies that the beginning and the ending of the novel is arbitrary. In this sense
he is modernist. The second definition appears as contradiction to the first one.

Story- highest distinctive forms. If the story makes the reader want to know what will happen next it is
successful.

68
People are human beings. There should be an affinity between the writer and his characters because they are all
human beings. He explains the ideas of the importance of life. The characters in the fic-tion need to parallel real
life people; but we cannot take people and put in a novel and vice versa, so he means that they should not
coincide but have a parallel life.

The novelist has many ingrediants that he needs to combine; the novelist should focus on the rela-tion of the
character with other characters, plot, setting, atmosphere. But characters do not always comply. The characters
are rebellious to he require of the creator.

Characters: creations in side creation. The writer should make a balance between the freedom of the characters
and the control of the novelist..

Plot is the highest and most complicated. (story-lowest artistic plot). He compares the plot to a gov-ernment
official (gives orders). The plot has a control over the characters and demands of the char-acters to compy with
complications, crisis, solutions. The characters do not always comply because if they do it would be a play.

Definition of plot: ``Plot is a narrative of events but the emphasis is not on the chronological order but on
posality??``

Example: King dies, queen died- story; king died and queen dies after him of grief- plot

DEAL WITH THE STREAM OF CONSCIUOUSNESS

The stream of consciousness novel is a type of a modernist novel, which according to some
theoreticians of fiction deals with the consciousness and subconsciousness of the characters.
According to Humphry (?) there are two levels of consciousness- the speech level of
consciousness and the pre-speech level of consciousness. To illustrates this, he compares
consciousness to an iceberg- you can see the top, but not what lies beneath. The stream of
consciousness novel is concerned with what lies beneath, with what is hidden in the
consciousness of the characters. With regard to the techniques of the stream of consciousness
novel, there are 4 techniques: direct interior monologue, indirect interior monologue,
omniscient narration, and soliloquy. In the direct interior monologue the first person singular
is used. The interference with the author is negligible and there is no audience assumed. In
rd
the indirect interior monologue the 3 person singular is used most frequently, but sometimes
nd
the 2 is used also. The presence of the author is more frequent and there is an audience
assumed. It is as if an omniscient narrator were presenting directly the content of the
characters’ minds. Omniscient narration is the traditional technique. In this technique the all
knowing narrator is telling us as much as he thinks we need to know. With regard to the forth
technique, it is a kind of a monologue but there is a difference between the interior
monologue and the soliloquy, because the soliloquy is spoken by the characters and there is a
greater coherence because the emotions and ideas are related to the action and the plot.
Moreover, the stream of consciousness novelists use the so called cinematographic technique,
which are the following: multiple view, panorama, fadeout, close-up and flashback. In the
multiple view technique the narration is carried out from multiple points of view; one event,
scene is narrated from different points of view through the mouth of different characters. The
panorama technique provides an overall view of the scene. In the fadeout technique the
narration is about a scene that gradually disappears. In the close-up technique the narration
closes on one scene. The flashback technique is used when there is a leap in time, when the
narration goes back in time.

69
EPIPHANY

The term epiphany was first introduced in literature by James Joyce. Originally it was not a
literary term. It was first used in Greek mythology, standing for the manifestation of a divinity.
Later in Greek dramas it indicated the sudden appearance of a deity on stage. It was appropriated
in Christianity, to be used for liturgical purposes, to commemorate the journey of the Magi who
went to Bathleam (?) to witness the birth of Christ. Joyce took the term from theology of Thomas
Acquinas and adapted it to a different purpose, in the context of a novel.

In James Joyce’s aesthetic theory, the epiphany coincides with the whatness of a thing, with
the third quality of beauty- radiance or claritas. It is “the instance wherein the supreme
quality of beauty, the clear radiance of the aesthetic image is apprehended luminously by the
mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and fascinated by its harmony”. He illustrates
the epiphany in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but the term is never mentioned.
However, it was defined in the first manuscript of the novel entitled Steven Hero (published
later in 1944). The definition is “a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of
speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself.” Moreover, according to
Richard Ellmann, the epiphany for Steven and Joyce is “the sudden revelation of the
whatness of a thing”. According to Van Chent- “an image sensually apprehended and
emotionally vibrant which communicates instantaneously the meaning of experience”;
According to Watson an epiphany represents “a fusion of objective fact and subjective
consciousness”. So, epiphany is a kind of a revelation, but not a religious one; it is an insight
about your nature, your personality, a deeper truth about a character’s true personality. It
could be illustrated in terms that in public life we all wear masks and epiphany is the moment
when the mask sweeps and when we see past convention, past language and what we see is
the fundamental truth about human nature. It is something which is latent in the character. For
instance in A Portrait of the Artists we can see Steven’s artistic perception of the world from
the beginning (he focuses on the sounds, rhythm, colors, shapes), only that he is not aware
that he is meant to be an artist, not a priest. Thus, one of the epiphanies in the novel is the
moment when he becomes aware of his nature, of that which is inborn in him (that his destiny
is to be an artist).

In his essay “Aspects of the Novel”, published in 1927, E. M. Forster presents his theoretical
views on fiction. Before going on to discuss his seven aspects of the novel (namely, the Story,
People, the Plot, Fantasy and Prophesy, Pattern and Rhythm), he points out that humanity is one
of the main qualities of the modern novel. He explains that the novel needs to be soaked with
humanity. He also explains why he had chosen the word “aspect” in the title. He has chosen it
because the word “aspect” is “unscientific and vague” and it allows freedom for the reader to
present his own point of view on the novel, also the novelist itself to present his view. The first
aspect is the story. He says that the story is the fundamental aspect of the novel without which it
could not exist. On one hand the story is the lowest, the simplest artistic form but on the other
hand it is the highest factor common to all the very complicated organisms known as novels. He
says that the story runs like a backbone or a tape-worm because its beginning and end are
arbitrary. It means that the novel does not have to have a strict beginning and it may have an open
ending. So, in this sense he is very modern. However, he is conventional and traditional with his
definition of the story- a narrative of
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events arranged in their time sequence. Moreover, according to Conrad the novel has only one
merit- making the reader want to know what will happen next, and one fault- making the reader
not want to know what will happen next. So, there are only two criticisms as far as the novel is
concerned. The second aspect is people or characters. The subject matters of the novel are the
people, human beings and since the author is also a human being there is an affinity between the
novelist and his subject matter- the characters. Moreover he points out that the characters do not
coincide with the real life, they can only parallel real life because you cannot just take them from
the real life and put them in the novel, nor can they be taken out of the novel and put in the real
life. They need to be adapted to the requirements of their creator, the other characters, the plot,
the story. They need to contribute to the whole novel. Another thing which is very important
about the characters is that they are creations inside a creation and they are often inharmonious
towards the creation; the characters are mutinous towards the novel frequently getting out of
harmony, with the novel. Moreover, the writer needs to strike a balance. The writer must to some
point control the characters but if he keeps them too sternly in check the novel will be ruined; the
characters need to be allowed certain amount of freedom if the novel is to be successful. So,
Conrad emphasizes that there need to be a balance of freedom and control on the part of the
author. The third aspect is the plot. It is also a narrative, like the story only that the emphasis is on
the causality. For instance, to use

Conrad’s example, “the king died and then the queen died of grief” is a plot (whereas, “the
king died and then the queen died” is a story). According to him the plot is one of the most
important qualities, a higher artistic form. He compared the plot to a government official. It
means that the plot is personified and its role is to check the extend of individualism of the
characters in the novel. They need to be given certain amount of freedom and individuality
but on the other hand they must not be let to “brood to long”. In the context of the novel, only
a few characters comply but there is no general response. If the character comply 100% we
will have a play. The characters do not comply all the time, they are shadowy, ¾ under the
water. In this respect there is difference between a ply and a novel-the necessity for the
characters to comply to a certain extend is present but there is not a general comply.

Preface to the Nigger of Narcissus (S)

J. Conrad gives his views on fiction in the preface of his novel “The Nigger of Narcissus”.

He says that the novel aspires to the condition of art. Art is a single minded attempt to render
the highest form of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to life the truth, manifold and
one, underlying its every aspect. (he emphasizes truth in his def. of art, each aspect of truth is
crucial).

Next, Conrad compares the novelist to the thinker and scientist. He says that thinker plunges
into ideas, while the scientist plunges into facts. They both appeal to our common sense,
intelligence, fear, egoism, credulity.

The novelist descends within himself in the lonely region of strife and struggle and appeals to
that part of our being which is not dependant on wisdom or logic, which is a gift and not
acquisition, but capacity of delight, feeling of solidarity. His appeal is less distinct but more
profound, sooner forgotten but enduring, and the effect is eternal. The motive justifies the
matter and anything can be proper stuff of fiction.

Fiction can be called art if it appeals only to temperament. It should be like all other
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arts and appeals to create the moral and emotional atmosphere of place and time. He
defines fiction as the appeal of one temperament to innumerable other

temperaments. This appeal must be conceived through the senses. He compares fiction
to sculpture, painting and music and says that fiction must aspire to the plasticity of
sculpture, colour of painting and the magical suggestiveness of music. In order to obtain
this good fiction, the artist must concern blending substance and form together, and
care for the shape and ring of sentences.

The very beginning of his task is to snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush
of time, a passing phase of life. Even Realism, Romanticism and Naturalism are temporary
formulas, since they reveal only one aspect of the truth. They also, after a short period of
fellowship with the artist, abandon him.

Furthermore in his essay, he gives a figurative illustration. He compares the artist to a

labourer and the reader as someone who observes from a shade. The first thought that passes
our mind is to ask ourselves what the goal of his effort is. It is very difficult to reveal his
objective. However, the important thing is that the fellow had tried even though he might not
have the strength or knowledge to accomplish his task.

It is the same with the workman of art. Art is long and life is short and the success is very far
off. Thus, the aim of art (which is like life, inspiring and difficult) is not in the clear logic of
the triumphant conclusion, it is not in the unveiling of the secrets of Nature, it is not that
great, but it is more difficult.

He ends his essay by emphasizing that the aim is to compel man to glance for a moment at
the surrounding vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; only few can
accomplish the aim of art and when they do, the truth of life is there, a moment of smile, a
vision, a sigh.
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