2. MODERNIST WRITERS
The passage from Victorian to modern novel
Was caused by a slow transformation of the British society
This led to the urgency of new forms of expression
The novelist had a new task: to mediate the change of
values from the past to the present
3. MODERNIST WRITERS
Main technical features
There was a general tendency to reject the omniscient narrator
The viewpoint shifted from the external world to the character ‘s mind
The theories about the existence of different degrees of consciousness influenced the
develop of characters together with the past experiences
4. MODERNIST WRITERS
The concept of time
Time was subjective
For the human psyche the distinction from
past and present was meaningless
The modern writers experimented the
absence of a well determined
chronological structure
5. MODERNIST WRITERS
The stream of consciousness
”The continuous flow of thoughts and sensations
that characterize the human mind”
-James Joyce
The interior monologue was the verbal expression of this
7. VIRGINIAWOOLF’S LIFE
Virginia Woolf was born in 1882, she grew up in a literary
and intellectual atmosphere. Her education consisted,
above all, access to her father’s library, where she read
whatever she liked.
She spent her summers at St Ives, Cornwall, and
the sea remained central to her art as a symbol.
For Virginia water represented two things:
It represented what
is harmonious and
feminine
It stood for the
possibility of the
resolution of intolerable
conflicts in death
8. VIRGINIAWOOLF’S LIFE
The death of her mother in 1895 affected her deeply and
brought about her first nervous breackdown
She began to revolt against her father’s tyrannical
character and his idealisation of the domesticated
woman
It was only with her father’s death in 1904 that Virginia
began her own literary life and career
9. VIRGINIAWOOLF’S LIFE
She decided to move to Bloomsbury with her sister and she became a
member of the Bloomsbury Group, which inlcuded the avant-garde of
early 20°-century London
In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, and in 1915 she published her
first novel, “The Voyage Out”, which still followed a traditional pattern
In 1925 the novel “Mrs Dalloway” finally appeared, in which Virginia
succesfully experimented with new narrative techniques
The Second World War increase her anxiety and fears. She became
haunted by the terror of losing her mind. Finally she could stand it no
longer and drowned herself in the River Ouse. She was fifty-nine.
10. A MODERNIST NOVELIST
1
2
3
Virgina was interested in giving voice to the complex inner
world of feeling and memory and conceived the human
personality as a continuous shift of impressions and emotions
The omniscient narrator disappeared and the point of view
shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks,
associations of ideas ecc…
The events that traditionally made up a story were no longer
important for her; what mattered was the impression they
made on the characters who experienced them
11. WOOLF vs JOYCE
THE “STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS”
The most important
differences:
Woolf never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control
She mantains logical and grammatical organisation
She gives the impression of simultaneous connections between the inner and
the outer world, the past and the present, speech and silence
Her technique is based on the fusion of streams of thought into a third-
person, past tense narrative
12. MRS DALLOWAY (1925)
THE SETTING
Mrs Dolloway takes place on a single ordinary day in June on 1923, and it follows
the protagonist through a very small area of London, from the morning to the
evening of the day on which she gaves a large formal party.
Unlike Joyce, Woolf does not elevate her characters to the level of myth, but
shoews their humanity behind their social mask.
Trough what she defined as a “tunnelling technique”, she allows the reader to
experience the characters recollection of thei past. Clarissa Dolloway's party is a
climax of the novel.
13. MRS DALLOWAY (1925)
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CLARISSA AND SEPTIMUS
Clarissa is a London society lady of fifty-one, the wife of a conservative MP who has
extremely conventional views on politics and women's rights.
CLARISSA
She is characterised by opposing feelings: her need for freedom and indipendence
and her class consciousness. Her life appears to be an effort towards order and
peace, and attempt to overcome her sense of failure. She need to make her home
perfect to become an ideal human being, but the imposes severe restrictions on
her spontaneous feelings.
14. MRS DALLOWAY (1925)
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CLARISSA AND SEPTIMUS
Septium is an extremely sensitive man who can suddenly fall prey to panic and fear
or feelings of guilt.
SEPTIUM
The plot does not connect Clarissa and Septium apart from the news of his death
at her party. Howewer, they are similar in many respects: their response to
experience is always given in physical terms, and they depend upon their partner
for stability.
There is a fundamental different, which has given rise to the theory that Septimus
is Clarissa's double.
16. THE DYSTOPIAN NOVEL
For most of the 19 century writers and thinkers utopia was a thing of
the future, prepared by democracy, science and socialism. By renewal
of utopia stimulated its counter-force, dystopia
UTOPIA DYSTOPIA
Concentrated on the positive Painted the most negative
17. UTOPIA DYSTOPIA
•Lent the persuasive
techniques of literary
imagination to the cause of
modern ideas
•The utopian order was perfect
in the moral sense
•Utopian societies were ideal,
in the sense of 'the best
possible'
•Lent the same techniques to
the revolt against modernity
•The dystopian order was
merely perfect in social sense
•Distopian society
represented the victory or
tyranny of the idea
The 1905 was proclaimed 'the end of ideology'; in the new utopian
conception, science and technology played a major role to which fears
about nuclear war were the persistent dystopian undercurrent
