Darie Bianca Georgina

Engleza-Spaniola, Anul III

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE MODERNIST NOVEL

Throughout time the concept of beauty has fluctuated and changed in many ways, each century
having a different idea of what defines beauty in art, music, architecture and literature. Wars,
revolutions, rises and falls of empires and kings and astonishing discoveries sculpted the image
of human kind, its way of thinking and behaving. Nevertheless, there does appear to be certain
classical concepts of beauty that are not inconsistent with many of the modern views.

And who is most appropriate to criticize a literary work - “that spongy tract, those fictions in
prose of a certain extent which extend so indeterminately?” No “elaborate apparatus. Principles
and systems may suit other forms of art”, but they cannot be applied to literature. Only a human
being can appreciate its value. “Criticism is an inevitable is breathing.” (T. S. Eliot, Essays, pg
3). Through his nature, man has a sharp critic spirit, more or less conscious. He feels with his
heart closeness to the novel, appreciation, admiration, or maybe, on the other side, he may not
like it and be in opposition with the author’s style and views. “The novel is sogged with
humanity.” (Foster, Aspects, pg 42, 43)

It is obvious that writers cannot stay apart from this realm of criticism. Virginia Woolf, at the
recommendation of T.S. Eliot read James Joice’s “Ulysses”. It is considered to be……. (sth
about it from the lectures). But her impression over the book was ….. “Oh what a bore about
Joyce! Just as I was devoting myself to Proust—Now I must put aside Proust—and what I
suspect is that Joyce is one of those undelivered geniuses, whom one can’t neglect, or silence
their groans, but must help them out, at considerable pains to oneself.

Heffernan chronicles Woolf’s reading of Ulysses, which she documented in her diary in a
“withering assessment” as the work of “a self-taught working man… egotistic, insistent, raw,
striking, & ultimately nauseating.” “When one can have cooked flesh,” she writes, “why have the
raw?”

Over a period of two hundred years, from the 19th century Victorian novel to the Modernist novel
of the 20th century the reflection of the author in his creations has changed.

The novels of the Bronte sisters, Charlotte, Anne and Emily, of Thomas Hardy or of George
Eliot are in a great measure based on the spirit of tradition. The patriarchal God-like author,
omniscient and omnipotent, controlled the course of life of his characters, which were like
puppets in his hands. He was “the voice in which the story is written that is outside the story and
that knows everything about the characters and events in the story.” (Cambridge Dictionary)
Darie Bianca Georgina
Engleza-Spaniola, Anul III

In opposition to this stands Charles Dickens who is at the edge of tradition and innovation. He
makes the first step to modernism by useing the first person narrative, meaning that the narrator
sees reality through his own eyes, it is subjective and controlled by his own emotions and
sensitivity. What makes him one of the outstanding writers from the Victorian period is his
particular interest in human nature. One of his outstanding novels, Great Expectations,

As Booth points out, the “majority of attacks on the author’s voice have been made in the name
of making the book seem ‘real’” (40), the emphasis being on “realistic ‘rendering’ rather than
“mere ‘telling’” (40). (The Rethorical fiction, pg 4)

Booth quotes two critics writing in 1935: “If, then, it is dramatic vividness that the novelist wants, the
best thing he can do is to find a way of eliminating the narrator entirely and exposing the scene directly
to the reader. . . . The frankly omniscient story-teller has well nigh disappeared from modern fiction”
(40-41).

-throughout time authors perceived reality dif. Objectivity vs subjectivity

Booth turns his attention here to the views of Jean-Paul Sartre who, in Booth’s view, is of the opinion
that the author should “avoid omniscient commentary altogether” (50) for the simple reason that if “we
suspect for a moment that he is behind the scenes, controlling the lives of his characters, they will not
seem to be free” (50). Booth argues that this

From lectures : the common prof writer and the artist

Booth points out that the general consensus is that a “novel should seem real” (53). The question is,
however, what is the reality which is to be depicted? Virginia Woolf, for example, “saw the novelist as
trying to express the elusive reality of character” (53). Others like Dorothy Richardson used so-called
‘stream of consciousness’ as a “route to reality” (54), while James Joyce contended that the artist has no
truck with “making his work religious, moral, beautiful or ideal; he wants only to make it truthful to
fundamental laws” (54). Booth cites in this regard Robert Humphrey in Stream of Consciousness in the
Modern Novel who identifies the

Note :

Virginia Woolf about Joice’s “Ulysses”- Two of Joyce’s contemporaries, however, had such a
grasp of literature and language: T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf. And the two had quite a lot
to say about the book, much of it to each other. Eliot recommended Joyce’s novel to Woolf,
and very soon after its 1922 publication, she purchased her own copy. At the time, Woolf
was hard at work on her story “Mrs. Dalloway on Bond Street,” which would eventually
grow into her next novel, Mrs. Dalloway. She was also immersed in Proust’s
epic Remembrance of Things Past, just beginning the second volume. According to
Dartmouth’s James Heffernan, Woolf “chafes at the thought of Ulysses,” writing haughtily:
Darie Bianca Georgina
Engleza-Spaniola, Anul III

Oh what a bore about Joyce! Just as I was devoting myself to Proust—Now I must put aside
Proust—and what I suspect is that Joyce is one of those undelivered geniuses, whom one
can’t neglect, or silence their groans, but must help them out, at considerable pains to
oneself.

Heffernan chronicles Woolf’s reading of Ulysses, which she documented in her diary in a
“withering assessment” as the work of “a self-taught working man… egotistic, insistent, raw,
striking, & ultimately nauseating.” “When one can have cooked flesh,” she writes, “why have
the raw?”

This private critical opinion Woolf recorded after reading only 200 pages of the novel.
Heffernan makes the case that she read no more thereafter. Though she claimed to have
“finished Ulysses,” he takes her to mean she had finished with the book, putting it aside like
those bewildered, bored, or exasperated Goodreads members. Nevertheless, Woolf could
not shake Joyce. She continued to write about him, to Eliot and herself. “Never did any book
so bore me,” she would write, and many more very disparaging remarks about her brilliant
contemporary. (http://www.openculture.com/2013/09/virginia-woolf-writes-about-joyces-
ulysses-never-did-any-book-so-bore-me-and-quits-at-page-200.html)

Note :

A very well known quote says that history repeats itself. The same kinds of events repeat over
and over again. It is the same with literature. From the ancient times of the Greek empire, the
same basic themes, motives and myths are put in a different light, being reinvented and
reinterpreted. Examples form literature, comparison. During centuries writers from all over the
world gravitate around these basic elements, reinventing them. It is all about intertextuality.

“Tradition” seems to have a complex meaning in the realm of literature. The Cambridge
Dictionary defines it as “a belief, principle, or way of acting that people in a particular
society or group have continued to follow for a long time.” But, as T. S. Elliot describes in his
“Essays”, it is not only about “following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a
blind or timid adherence to its success.”