Unseen prose

context of travel and leisure

• the interwar period is a time of relative peace and previously unknown idleness and leisure which leads to more travel - eg. expansions of parks, playgrounds, public facilities

• golden age of railway travel - grand tour destinations, both domestic and international travel

• five day working week 1934 - mass consumerism, increased leisure time

• rising living standards

• mass entertainment - incl popular fiction

• new forms of advertising (skywriting)

• golden age of detective genre - realistic, conservative - reflective of the conventions, morals, attitudes etc. of interwar England

context of women

• suffrage (limited) 1918 + proper suffrage 1928

• Women’s freedoms evolved hugely during this period but literature of the interwar period written by female authors represents the struggle of female identities for voice, agency, power, and relief from social oppression.

Context of totalitarianism, urban life, technology

• creeping fascism and far right ideologies (esp late 1930s)

• satire

• dystopia/utopia

• rise of science fiction - new technology, uneasy, questions where change will lead to - tension between modern and traditional

• conflict between the interests of the individual and society, focusing on self-realisation witn the context of social responsibility

impact of film on modernism

• golden age of film

• cinematic perspectives - zooms in and out

• montage

• paradoxes of solitary viewing within the collective sphere of the cinema + sensory experience

Roots of modernism:

• rapidly changing technology - film (cinematic perspective); psychoanalysis; war and destruction

A02 - concepts novelists use to create meaning

• tone/register

• setting

• symbols/motifs

• title

• imagery patterns

• narrative viewpoint

• structure

• authorial intervention

• tense

• repetition

• characterisation

• parallels and juxtaposition

• syntax

Darwin and modernism

• science over religion

• rise of secularism

• idea of ‘natural selection’ - evolution of thought

• evidinced that the bible might not literally be true

Marx and modernism

• class struggles

• materialism

• history as a class war and power imbalance

• social class was created, not inherent

Nietsche and modernism

• existentialism

• perspectivism: knowledge is always subjective; even the most deeply-held ethical principles were merely constructions

• power lies in creativity

• rejected rigid, objective ideas of Christian morality

Freud and the unconscious + sublimation

• unconscious: place in our mind where all our deepest desires and drives are stored, created by our early childhood experiences

• repression of one’s true desires means they must come out in some way

• sublimation: defence mechanism in which socially unacceptable impulses or idealisations are transformed into socially acceptable actions of behaviour, possible resulting in a long-term conversion of the initial impulse (think drinking as a form of escapism etc.)

Freud and projection + transference

• Projection: attributing one’s own characteristics or feelings to another person

• Transference: one’s past feelings toward someone else are felt toward a diff person in the present

Freud and dreams

• dreams are a byproduct of the dreamer’s physical and mental state during sleep

• represented a disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish

Freud and the 3 elements of personality

• ID - basic and primal - drives our needs, unconscious demands, and desires

• EGO - moderates the id and makes you act in a socially acceptable way, part of the personality that allows the id’s desires to be expressed in a realistic and acceptable way, modified by the influence of the real world

• SUPEREGO - strives for moral behaviour, made up of all the internalised beliefs, values, morals - learned from parents and society - responsible for decision making and judgements

  • Made up of two components:

  • CONSCIENCE - concerned with things considered bad, inappropriate, immoral, leads to guilt if you ignore it

  • EGO IDEAL - idealised self that an individual aspires to

Freud and the uncanny

• revelation of what is private and concealed, not only hidden from others, but also from the self

Freud’s influence on modernism

Sigmund Freud's theories on the unconscious mind and psychoanalysis shaped modernist literature and art, emphasising subjective experiences and exploring the complexities of human psychology.

heaver focus on the internal and the psyche

internal thoughts and desires and memories became as real as objective, external facts

explorations of the effect of repressed memories and desires and how they manifest

Exploration of the psychological effect of experiences such as war etc. on the mind rather than merely the physical effectd

Art and modernism

cubism - disjointed, individual pieces but make up a whole image

Expressionism - mirrored chaos of reality

confrontation with the public

the modernist novel and time

• non-chronological

  • experiments in the representation of time

  • sudden jumps

  • temporal juxtapositions

  • Joeseph Frank: ‘spatialisation of time’ - where many diff moments of time are presented with an effect of simultaneity

the modernist novel and narrative structure

interior duplication

emphasis on…

oriented about…

• rather than upholding the realist illusion, the Modernists break narrative frames or move from one level of narration to another without warning

  • interior duplication - placing one story inside another

  • reflective about their own writing - turning it back on itself

• Instead of plot events, there is an emphasis on characters’ consciousness, unconscious, memory, and perception ( inspired by philosopher Henri Bergson and Freud)

• Oriented around a centre/s of consciousness, characterised by the use of FIS and SoC

Free indirect style

• a way of narrating the characters’ thoughts or utterances

• combines some of the features of third-person report with some features of first-person direct speech

• allows for a flexible and sometimes ironic overlapping of internal/external perspectives

Stream of consciousness

• narrative technique that expresses the continuity of impressions and thoughts in the human mind through unpunctuated, fragmentary forms of interior monologue

How does Woolf present modernity?

• fragmentary

• unstable

• a society and culture in flux

• chaotic

Woolf’s argument in Mr Bennet and Mrs Brown

• new forms are to be explored if the writers are to capture the rapidly changing modern world

• The modern writer has turned to an impressionistic, fragmented technique that more accurately reflects modern existence

What are modernist narrators like

• limited third person

• unreliable first-person

• multiple, shifting narrators

• rather than using closer, and fulfilling reader expectations/following genre conventions, Modernists often work towards open endings/unique forms

  • value ambiguity and complexity

  • enigma

  • ellipsis

  • narrative gap

Henry James and Modernism

• ‘late style’

• Late 1890s

• convoluted sentences filled with parenthetical statements, self interruptions, indirection; creating nuance and subtlety

Conrad and Modernism

• experimented with abrupt temporal and spacial shifts in the presentation of narrative info

• long gaps in exposition

• digression

• dense, nervous, shifting prose style

• ambiguity and repetition through the use of multiple narrators and narrative frames

• engaged with anxieties at the time: corruption of imperialism/colonialism, urban chaos, political extremism, racism, surveillance, racism, inability to discover the truth of events

Structure of unseen prose exam

• 3m first read - no annotations, just to understand meaning

• 5m second read - annotate techniques, patterns, setting, narrative style, themes etc

• 5m third read - more annotations, begin sorting annotations into 3 themes, where to place criticism

• 15m plan - 3 paragraphs, non chronological, identify patterns, add context and criticism, clear topic sentences

• 45m write - lots of evidence, embed the criticism and context into the analysis, provide alternative interpretations

  • topic sentence

  • example

  • technique analysis

  • context

  • criticism

  • interpretation/effect

  • more evidence to show how this continues/changes throughout the extract

  • concluding sentence that links back to point with a wider idea - maybe a contextual/general one

AO1

• 15 marks

• engaged, perceptive, creative and relevant response to extract

• application of literary concepts and terminology to extract

• technical accuracy (ie. analytical response and clarity)

• adopts a clear academic style and register

• informed response - ie. based off the extract and inferences made by textual analysis

AO2

• 15 marks

• analyse the way meanings are shaped in literary texts

• sophisticated, perceptive analysis and evaluation of the writer’s use of language and prose techniques to create meaning - remember not only to look at individual techniques, but patterns and overall narrative structure

• textual support

• discussion of implicit meaning (ie. this implies/evokes/suggest/alludes to)

AO3

• 10 marks

• demonstrate the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are written and received (ie. look at both how context influences the text itself and the way readers understand it)

• use the supporting extracts creatively and to support your inferences

• discuss the significance and influence of context

• analyse the connection between the extract and context

AO5

• 10 marks

• relevant and perceptive use of supporting extracts

• confident discussion of other relevant interpretations (ie. offer multiple readings and give reasons for them)

• autonomous, independent reader (individual response, offer your own inferences and interpretations as well - don’t only make interpretations based off context)

things to look for in an unseen prose

• genre

  • why is the form relevant to the context

• Structure

  • how are the paragraphs structured and how do they contribute to the meaning

  • How does the structure affect the narrative

  • how does the syntax contribute to the meaning

• Language

  • what images are used? what do they represent?

  • what techniques are employed? why?

  • What is the tone?

  • What is the style/register of the language? what does this convey? how does this link to literary context? How does this influence the extract?

• Voice/characterisation

  • speech/dialogue and how it is used

  • presentation and development of characters? why are they presented in that way?

  • Narration style

• Context

  • link it to other things in the extract

  • how does the extract relate to historical context?

• Setting

  • why has the author chosen this setting? What could it represent? How does the setting contribute to atmosphere? What is the relationship between the characters and setting? How is the setting presented? Why is it presented in a certain way?

• Time frame

  • link it to modernism

• Meaning

  • obvious meaning

  • implicit meaning

  • the effect of shifts and changes on meaning

Modernism as a reaction

• aesthetic and cultural reaction to the historical period known as ‘modernity’

• on the one hand Modernists rejected the homogenisation required by mass systems

• on the other they celebrated the new conditions of production, circulation, and consumption created by technological change (think skywriting scene)

General characteristics of modernism

• focus on the city

• championing and a fear of technology (skywriting!!)

• suspicion of language

• hatred of Victorians

What is ‘Modernity’

Historical and social background of Modernity

• way of life that has arisen as a result of changes such as industrialisation, urbanisation, secularisation

• Characteristics are disintegration, reformation, fragmentation, rapid change, ephemerality, insecurity

• new understandings of time and space - speed, communication, travel, chaos, cultural revolution (skywriting again)

• frenzy of economic, cultural, social change

• Historical and social background:

  • emergence of the New Woman (1923 ‘aRoOO’)

  • empire falling

  • rise of the Labour Party

  • mass factory production

  • war

  • technological change

  • rise of capitalism and state regulation

  • capitalist obsession with productivity led to mass industry, institutionalisation, administration, surveillance

Impact of WW1 on Modern society and Modernist lit

• destabilised class system, beliefs in King and Country

• patriotism and duty betrayed by carnage of war

• patriarchy was challenged by suffrage movement and women working during war

• because of the mass scale of devastation, it it became absurd to celebrate noble ideas like dignity in art, linear and teleological understandings of history and human progress

• bye bye rationalism

Technological change and modernism

• allowed for breakdown of class rigidity, more socialisation and interaction, new culture

• but also created anxiety, homogenisation, surveillance, control

• motor power, fuel, transport, communication, synthetic materials

• Einstein, Theory of relativity 1915 - accepted picture of the physical universe was fundamentally altered

• Changes created a Modern life which was now about distance, speed, consumption, communication, mechanisation