ʟɪᴛᴇʀᴀʀʏ ғᴏʀᴇʙᴇᴀʀs: ʀᴇᴀʟɪsᴍ, ᴍᴏᴅᴇʀɴɪsᴍ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴘᴏsᴛ ᴍᴏᴅᴇʀɴɪsᴍ


                  15 - 18

╓═══════☆═══════╖
        The Influence of 
               Realism
╙═══════☆═══════╜

Realism allows for narrative attention to be lavished on
outwardly modest people, such as Gustave Flaubert's
Felicite in A Simple Heart or Leo Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyitch
(has his death foretold in The Death of Ivan Ilyitch)

characters born into middle class or peasantry, rather than
nobility

more direct precursor of Ros and Guil is narrator of Frydor
Dostoevsky's novella Notes from the Underground

Realism allowed for common people to be central
protagonists of great works

as 20th century proceeds, these common heroes develop
into antiheroes, like Yossarian from Joseph Heller's
Catch 22, who has little nobility or ability


╓═══════☆═══════╖
        The Influence of 
             Modernism

╙═══════☆═══════╜

influence of modernism also notable, with characters such as
Kafka's Gregor Samsa (from The Metamorphosis), whose
interior monologue tries to reaffirm his place in his bourgeoise
family, but like Dostoevsky's underground man, is alienated
from his social world

works of T.S. Eliot, a foundational Modernist poet, also presages
central role of a Ros or a Guil

very young T.S. Eliot created middle aged protagonists in "The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" who comes to grip that his
youthful ambitions will never be realized

irony is even Hamlet's character hardly seizes the day, but is named,
has achieved dramatic and literary greatness

the main point for Prufrock, and for modern man in the grip of modern
condition, is that he lacks heroic status. "attendant" "easy fool"

comparison of minor figures in Hamlet is Eliot's narrator's way of
putting himself in the proverbial backseat

tracing Eliot's "attendant lord" from Shakespeare's minor characters
to Stoppard's central protagonists can be aided by understanding of
principles of modernism as a literary era

literary eras established in retrospect, fluidity between writers who 
might be characterized as a realist, modernist, postmodern

dissatisfaction with one mode of literary art is succeeded by another

mistrust of appearances, or surfaces provides a critique of Realism

Realist desires to hold a mirror up and reflect as it is, modernist is
dissatisfied because of what lies beneath the surface

father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, mapped inner world of
human beings that include conscious and subconscious and psychic
structures of id, ego, and superego. superego influences identity,
acts as internal judge of one's actions and enforces civilizing
qualities that repress human's baser instincts

Modernist literature reflects the heavy influence of linguistic attributes
of Freudian thinking: dreams, jokes, slip of the tongue

modernist writer challenges narrative traditions, rather than use a 
sequential flow to tell a story, they instead break up chronology

uses devices such as stream of consciousness, fragments,
experiences of epiphany (sudden realization of a profound 
relevation

quote by modernist writer Virginia Woolf offers one way to understand
modernist rejection of literature that adheres to a chronological
sequencing of events to an identifiable narrative origin

experience not symmetrically arranged but diffused in both space
and time creates possibilities for writers to explore interior consciousness
tin a manner that has kinship with the artistic period of Impressionism

edges not sharply defined, flow from one description to another that
creates mental image

revelation comes not in chronological progression, but in pieces, as
Eliot expressed near the end of poem "The Waste Land" where the poem's
speaker claims as if the ruined civilization of the 20th century might find
salvation in collection of fragments available in the mind of the artist

ambition of modernism comes from another influential thinker, 19th 
century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche

overarching complaint was inherent meekness of humanity in 
current state of Christianity. well known antidote was for humans 
to seize the will to power and realize the creation of the self
as the ubermensch (superman)

superman responds to a crisis in civilization, where humans are led 
by religion to an unproductive and complacent attitude and retreat
to the values of the herd, by striving to create and define new values
forhumanity

in modernist terms, artist is seen as the creative force, task is one
which the world, shapes a new and vital reality for audience

some modernist art is descriptive of what the civilized world
lacks in its vital performance of life, attempts to be proscriptive
of how a new kind of understanding can lead to new ways of being
in the world that creates meaning for human existence

seen in a passage from Jame Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man, when the protagonist, arrogant scholar Stephen
Dedalus is ready to leave his home of Dublin and comforts of
Catholicism with lofty ambitions

what follows further embeds his ambitions in a secular rather 
than sacred origin, as he addressed his own father, whom
he equates to Daedalus in Greek Mythology (famous craftsman,
accomplice in slaying Minotaur, father of Icarus, who flew too
close to the sun and melted his wax wings)

when Joyce closes novel with Stephen's invocation "Oh father, 
old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead"

artificer points to creative capacity of Daedalus

these qualities in modernism represent some major forces and
movements in the era

other artistic movements include dadaism (emphasized illogical
and used nonsensical and chance artistic creations to challlenge
the bourgeois, capitalistic status quo), and surrealism (sought to
express conditions of dream and subconscious in concrete images. 

Comments