UNIT 3: Victorian literature 1830-1901 Unit 4: British Mofernism 1901- 1945 first part of the 20th c

The term Victorian is an “umbrella term” that encompasses many A new way of thinking
varying manifestations, sometimes in confrontation/tension. Freud 1856- 1939
(Dickens, Tennyson, Stevenson, etc.) A period id great changes and unrest
Wars and revolutions: proletarian one
Marx 1818- 1883 Advancing technology
Darwin 1809- 1882 Rise of cities
Nietzche Changes in social structure

CUTURAL PERIOD REFERENCES: A paradoxical period

A permanent experimentation with temporal flow
Period of crises: from traditional society to a modern one. There is a
sense of instability Gaugaun and his art

Fragmented approach
Expansion and consolidation of the British empire

Advancements: from the candle to the electricity, expansion in

communication, the train

Scientific discoveries (development in science): changes in production

(consolidation of capitalism)

Demographic: rise of population. Migrations due to war (external and

internal). Displacements: large number of Irish people moving to North
America.

Strong beliefs: but questioning those beliefs

Hard and strict morality: roles to be performed (being a respectable

man, being a good wife and mother) strict culturall norms, the way
people act and interact

Strong morality: Double moral standards (different kind of life below the
respectability)Doing what society expects from you but having a
different kind of life Forbidden instincts for a certain class (Doctor)

From handmade to factory-made and all the consequences this had e.g.
changes in the domestic life that is men and women working outside
the house, leaving the house

Photography: it keeps records (a physical record). The object and how it

appears in the photo and realism the photo copies mirror like what u
have in front of you. Influence on art

THE CITY/THE POSSIBILITIES AND THE VICES: The city as a paradise

where everything’s possible. The city as an object of desire (a better job,
a better life etc.) vices: novella de initiation and the consequences of
the initiation reflects about vices.

During the 19th c. the city emerges as a paradoxical object of desire.

Although the Industrial revolution allowed the development of the city
in terms of advancements, it also widened the feeling of
dehumanization. The city becomes a paradox. On the one hand, it
allows the possibility of a better life, a better job etc, but on the other
hand, it dehumanizes and isolates citizens.

The city is the product of industrial revolution with the benefits and
problems it brings this is why is paradoxical. Isolation

Political changes: voting and the citizenship. Newspapers and the

creation of public opinion
Slavery is abolished in the 19 c. there is a change in the interest of the
empire it is not America as in the beginning now it is Asia (China), India,
and Australia.

POETICS ASSOCIATED TO THE 19 th c (there are different poetics and we

can group them in 2)

REALISM art imitating life NATURALISM

Conceives a representation as There’s a philosophical concept related to

mimetic that is the writer or the faith (Determinism)
painter, the artist in his work
represents something as much as Life determined by forces of hereditary and
possible the environment. Less strict in england

A mimetic representation: A detailed The character is doomed or determined to

description to have a mirrow-like
representation of the object or the
person; the novel imitates reality,
revealing the truth of contemporary
life ( objective reality)
Aim: art for moral and didactic
purpose ( the purpose of literature is
teaching and shaping people’s
opinions. A concept of literature that
is mimetic
Adress to
Contemporary settings
Current social issues
Particular social ills
Represents:
something and they can’t do anything to
change it ( stories are concentrated in social
lower classes)
A mimetic representation of reality as well
because is a continuity of R
Aim: same as in Realism
Claim for even greater accuracy and
scientific objectivity
Truth, morality and accuracy.
More detailed in phisical description, the
body and the natural functions ( influenced
by Darwin’s ideas)

The speech patterns of particular Accuracy and scientific objectivity

regions and social groups
Anti realist elements:combine realism
with gothic or melodramatic elements
Narration. Omnicient 3rd person
narration

PRB 1848 AESTHETICISM

Art for art’s sake Art for art’s sake

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William The 2 last decades of the c

Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais Influenced by the PRB

Interested in poetry and literature as We place Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

much as visual art
Emphasis on the flux of experience
Restore meaning to art they painted
subjects drawn from literature and the Art as a form of purified ecstasy
Bible ( also social middle class issues)
Need to remove the roughness of the actual
Radical art
Sacred subjects
Quest for unadulterated beauty
Modern urban life : The Awakening
Concience by Willian Hunt
Alternative to the Academy dogma
from the 16th c. From the Royal
Academy ( Rapahel paintings)
Raphaelites Vs PRB ( audacious,
shocking)
Fin-de-siecle, decadentism
Aim: subordinated to any other purpose but
aesthetic pleasure.
the notion that art and morality are quite
divorced

They wanted to return to the The rejection of a mimetic concept of

immaculate purity of the Pre- literature an the adherence that Beauty is
Renaissance, to the style and spirit of the ultimate aim. The point is not reflecting
early Italian masters about art

Aim: Microscopic experimentation of
the world. Detailed vision of it. A new
realism of artnot in the sense of a
mimetic representation but in the
sense of imagination
Experimentation: they went to real
landscapes with they canvas (new
tecnique) this was revolutionary at the
time
There’s a critic to the money value that art
make it.
In the 19 c art becomes a comodity and
Aestheticism is againt Capitalism in art. All
artist needs money to live but valuing a
piece of art according to the market
( to clearly establish the different aims
between realism and Aestheticism)

Fidelity to nature
Importance to nature and human
imagination
Moral seriousness
Abundant detail, intense color
Medieval topics: Ophelia (Gertrude,
Shakespiare) medieval fantasy world

2 kind of women depicted: vulnerable,

doomed ones (prostitude and
worshipped woman); in the 19 th c. a
woman was supposed to be ethereal:
a mother and a wife so she would be
neutralised from the outside world,
from temptation (moral standard of
the 19th c) the characters who
transgress the moral standard do not
end well

VICTORIAN POETRY

MY LAST DUCHESS THE LADY OF SHALLOT IN AN ARTIST’S STUDIO

Author Robert Browning Author Tennyson Christina Rossetti 1830-1894

1812-1889 1809-1892
Influenced by
Romaticism, it explores
Genre sonnet
Nature
Genre Dramatic
Reaction to the
monologue
Enlightment poetry of
the 17th & 18th c
The form is influenced by
drama (the theather, the
term dramatic)
Genre
Ballad:
The lyrical I, the imagined
speaker, addresses a silent
listener, who is not the
reader. The reader,
nevertheless, is implicitly
addressed, as in any other
poem, but the speaker in
the poem addresses
directly a silent figure
within the poem.
Location, a big house at
the end of a staircase
A messenger is stopped by
the duke
A count is waiting
downstairs
Narrator: an Italian duke;
The duke is a lunatic
maniac, arrogant,
contrilling, we know this
because of his words
Literary tecnique ; unanymous, speaker
foreshadowing i.e
showing not telling
He doesn’t care about the
death of her
“Justification” for having
done so
Representation of
the Aristocracy and a
critic to the
detachment to the
real world at
victorian times
Analisys:
The look on the face of
the duchess
Sexy smile on her face
She is too much beautiful
to reproduce her beauty
It wasn’t just my presence
which made her smile
She likes to smile; lots of
things made her happy;
the duke gave us a list
about all she liked her
To become her a dutchess
make her a member to
aristocracy
It is beneath me to explain
myself to my wife and I
chose not to do it
She should only smile to
him
I ordered my wife’s death
form communicates a
story through songs.
Musical pattern. Based
on a novel, on a
legend.
The Romantic interest
in the Middle Ages is
shown in the choice of
the literary form: the
ballad. Also, the
chivalric theme takes
us back to medieval
times.
A song that tells a story
and originally a musical
accompaniment to
dance. A dialogue
between 2 speakers: a
knight, an unnamed,
The lyrical I addresses
the reader, but there
are other figures,
within the narrative of
the ballad, who listen
to the speaker and
who also speak in the
poem;
Analysis;
The lady is isolated
from the outside world
(in contrast to
Camelot)
The lady’s role is very
domestic, an
archetypal housewife
She is presented as the
angel in the house ‘a
mystycal and surreal
woman ( unrealistic
expectations put on
women at the time)
The curse is the
definition of a
woman’s role which is
defined by male
domination
‘she weaves by day’
Themes:
The role of women in
society
The challenges and
changes to this role
The inforced passivity
of women
How women are
treated different from
men
 The Picture of Dorian Gray The decay of lying: Life imitating art

First published in Lippincott's Essay written in 1891: A critic to realism and

Magazine in 1890 the value of Art
A 20-chapter version of the novel as a
single-volume book, complete with a The element of the industrial city
new ‘Preface’ by Wilde, arguing for represents mechanized, conventional art.
the separation of artistic and moral (the ugliness of the 19th c.)
judgements was published in 1891.
The novel’s Preface presents a series
Main idea: the artist is the creator of true
of attitudinizing aphorisms about art
art because he does not try to imitate
and literature which end with the bald
reality.
statement: ‘All art is quite useless.’

Realism : Literature tries to imitate life as a

A Faustian novel. The novel tells the
reflection of life VERSUS
story of young Dorian’s descent into
Art for arts sake: the artist as the creator of
criminal excesses which distort the
fiction doesn’t want to imitate but to lie
portrait his friend Basil Hallward has
painted of him, but leave his
distinctively beautiful body unmarked. The preface and the novel

No moral books

OSCAR WILDE His works and PAGLIA: studies 2 decadent

view of art in the last decades principles
of the 19th century:
The transformation of person into object
The contrived style of much of his d’art: the self-division produces the fustian
prose, the excessive elaboration of his compact contract/agreement giving his
poetry, and the aphoristic and soul: he sees his portrayal from the new
paradoxical wit of his plays, are all distance enabling him to see himself.
subversive. They do more than reject
mid-Victorian values in life and art in The artist’s submission to a personality is a
the name of aestheticism; they relationship of decadent sadomasochistic
defiantly provoke a response to enslavement
difference.
2 Dorian: person and painting (object of
Wilde’s central arguments are derived art)
from an awareness that art is far more
than a mere imitation of nature. In
The Decay of Lying there is also a
recurrent pleasure in insisting that
‘the telling of beautiful untrue things,
is the proper aim of Art’
 A Little cloud
Dubliners (1914)
James Joyce (1882-1941) ‘Art is
true to itself when it deals
with truth’ (‘Drama and Life’)
The experimentation is not so
radical as in VW 3rd person
narrator
Structured in 3 parts : En route,
Corless, Home
The adjetives portrays as
fragile, small, quiet physical
descrption Chandler being little
he is compared as a little cloud,
Stream of conciousness
narrative method:
some writers convey the
thoughts and feelings in their
characters, without resorting to
objective description or
conventional dialogue.
does not follow a logical
sequence
attempts to reflect the works of
the mind
organised by means of
associations
loosely defined as the free
association of thought,
feelings, impressions and
emotions
the authors provide us with a
completely, or a relatively
unmediated access into the
character's mind by means of
different techniques, such as
direct interior monologue,
indirect interior monologue,
soliloquy, etc
The change in the narrative
voice
Epiphany
To the Lighthouse
A self-reflexive, feminist
Kunstlerroman
Conceived in part as an elegy on her
dead parents, and is in some
respects autobiographical
Involves the reader remaining open
to both the autobiographical and
the fictional at the same time.
has no omniscient narrator who
spells things out for readers
Part One : the domestic, sexual,
political,
philosophical and aesthetic tensions
in the lives of Mr and Mrs Ramsay, a
philosopher and his wife of
renowned beauty, and their
numerous children and guests, as
they take their holiday one summer
around 1910. It culminates in a
banquet to celebrate the
engagement of two guests, Paul
and Minta.
Part Three returns to the house
during a summer after the Great
War, when the certainties and
pleasures of the prewar world have
crumbled (along with Paul and
Minta’s marriage).
Lily Briscoe, hemmed in by
patriarchal contempt for women’s
artistic abilities, and by Mrs
Ramsay’s forceful marital ideology,
attempts a painting, which serves as
self-reflexive reference point for the
novel itself.
it closes with an account of her final
visionary brushstroke in an elegiac
moment of lyric consolation. Lily’s
rejection of Mr Ramsay’s amorous
approaches, combined with his
children’s defiance, suggests an
unsettling, if not an overcoming, of
(his) patriarchy.
The middle section, ‘Time Passes’,
covers the intervening years,
focusing on the object world of the
Joyce adapted the term to
describe a moment of
revelation, a moment in which
“the soul of the commonest
object seems to us radiant”. In
Dubliners we find moments of
epiphanic revelation in each of
the stories. These moments of
insight and understanding can
be perceived as a revelation
either by the character who
experiences it, or by the reader
(or both).
Paralisis
As a living death or anaesthesia
of the senses, paralysis seems a
crucial existential condition
of Dubliners. In a letter to a
publisher, Joyce explained “my
intention was to write a
chapter of the moral
corruption of my country and I
chose Dublin for the scene
because that city seemed to
me the centre of paralysis.”
What does Dublin (Ireland),
then, represent? Sometimes,
the term might get associated
with a socioeconomic cause, as
when in Stephen Hero we read
that the brown brick tenement
of houses in Dublin seemed to
Stephen “the very incarnation
of Irish paralysis” (Kanter,
2004: 388). Or the term may be
associated with the city itself
“that hemiplegia or paralysis
which many consider a city”
(Letters 55 in Lazar). But Joyce
mainly uses the term to
“denote a condition of spiritual
torpor caused by what he
perceived to be the oppressive
religiosity of Catholic culture in
Ireland” (Kanter, 2004: 382).
Joyce makes between paralysis
and an Irish society and culture
permeated by Catholicism
(Kanter, 2004: 381)
The characters in the stories
house, and its environs, in decline
and under repair, as a metaphor for
the losses and changes in personal
terms for the individuals in the
novel as well as in wider social, and
political terms. free-indirect
discourse to the limits in
describing the forces at work in an
empty house
This highly experimental piece of
writing, published separately to
begin with, has been understood to
reflect on the social and political
upheavals occurring during the war
period through the lens of further
turbulence in the 1920s
3rd person narrative voice
The idea of TIME : the concept of
time in terms of british modernism
means that the present and the
past are not different:
The past is not just remember but
re lived
Every time a memories (past)
appears it occupies the present
time
References of the past occupies the
present time through associations
THE SEA : The image of the waves
as distraction is associated with the
passing of time
THE TIME
THE PAINTING not aiming at any
mimetic representation
Rejection of realism
Lily represents avant garde
are paralysed by diverse
causes, such as fear,
prejudices, narrow-
mindedness, etc. They desire
something or have some
expectation, and even though
they may attempt at getting it,
search for the object and face
obstacles on the way, there
comes a moment when they
stop trying, a moment when
they get “paralysed” and
reverse into their routines.

Modern Poetry

Leda and the Swam Easter 1916

Sonnet 1923
1921
William Buttler Years 1865–
1939
Novel Prize

The poem is based on the

Greek mythological story of
beautiful Leda, who gave birth
to Helen and Clytemnestra
after she was raped by Zeus in
the form of a swan.

The poem details the rape of

Leda with graphic imagery. At
the climax of their sexual
union, Yeats tersely outlines
the fate of their lineage:

By alluding to Helen’s
involvement with the Trojan
War and Clytemnestra’s
murder of her husband,
Agamemnon, Yeats suggests
that this initial act of violence
engendered the later
cataclysms.
 Jack B Yeats brother of William Butler Yeats

the first and greatest interpreter of modern Irish life and landscapes.

Historical paintings are regarded as the highest form of art in classic

academic theory. They usually tell a story with a moral or idealistic
purpose. Yeats has understood this purpose in these three paintings.
As an Irish artist, he shows a sympathy and sense of identity with the
ordinary people of Ireland and has left a legacy that maintains a rare
record of the three events.

Apart from photographs, there are very few paintings of the 1916 Easter
Rising period. While these three paintings are not depicting events that
happened during the Rising, nevertheless they show an incident before,
which was influential, and two incidents afterwards, which occurred
because of the Easter Rising. By painting ordinary people, in ordinary
surroundings and carrying out ordinary activities, Yeats has also added
to the self-worth of the country.

POSTMODERNISM

POSTMODERNITY POSTMODERNISM

Refers to an specific HISTORICAL Refers to the ART

PERIOD and the intelectual background
of the period, a style of thought
Different from Postmodernism!
HISTORICAL EVENTS to understand
postmodernity
The 2 WW (migrations and shifts of
borders)
The closure of the British Empire (e.g
the independence of India)
The Cold War and the fall of the Wall
The “space age” The US and the Soviet
Union
The struggle for civil rights racial,
ethnics, religious conflicts ( the 2nd
wave of feminism)
Refers to a form of contemporary culture, a
style of culture, a particular Aesthetics
A style of culture which reflects the
epochal change in a decentered,
playful, self-reflexive,playful,
decorative,ecletic and pluralistic
ART which blurs the boundaries
btw
- high and popular culture
( science fiction, comics,
internet, tv etc)
- art and everyday
experience ( an everyday
object becoming a piece of
art)
De-totilizing history

A shift to a new form of capitalism - Questioning of grand narraive

(consumerism, shift from manufacturing
and production to service economies,
increasing internationalization of
capital, sophisticated financial system,
autonomous from real production,
globalization)
Compression of time and space: the
ubiquity of mass media (globalization)
center, ordered wholes which
express the voice of the victors
- In favour of a plurality of small,
descentered narratives giving
voice to those previously silenced
- Importance of
- Black and feminist theories
- Historiographic turn
and later the digital era, de- and re-
reconfiguration of working skills
Ephemerality makes it difficult to attain
a sense of continuity
Features of POSTMODERNISM
Intertextuality: a subtext underlying
another text HOW
Artificiality and constructedness
(homage)
Metafiction
Yuxtaposicion of images
Reformulation
Resignification
Parody
Artistic freedom
Questioning:
Grand narrative : dominant voice / De
totalization / unheard voices
Objective truth : Ideology filtered by
discourse
Representation
Fact vs fiction
Linda Hutcheon: Deals with the
most important issues of this
poetics.
CHAT SESSION
The doublesness of postmodernism
lies in the sense that oarody
functions as a tool that allow us to
rethink out culture and by doing so
to challenge it this why is self-
reflexive
The relationship about parody/art
and history
the tension btw art and history is
caused by the use of parody
Barnes resorts to different
historical events and questions
their truth
history of the world is an example
of historiographic metafiction
She says that Postmodernism is
self-consciously parodic. Does it
mean that parody function as a way
of rethinking the own culture and
from this point being able to
challenge it? We can see parody in
different artistic manifestations
What does Postmodernism question?
Authorship / WHO & WHAT
Originality / WHO & WHAT
Parody : not in the sense of mocking but as
a kind of homage of the subtext
(Velazquez’ example taen from Bacon
1953) HOW
Resignification
Self reflexifity HOW
After watching the videos, read the
first chapter of the book written by
Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of
Postmodernism, called “Representing
the Postmodern”. As you read,
highlight the most important
information and use the following
questions as a guide.
questioning the grand narrative, the
Bible
1) Is it possible to define
Postmodernism? If so, how?
2) Which would you say is the main
postmodern concern?
3) What is the connection between
ideology and representation? What is
the role of parody?
4) What is implied by “(...) what we
call ‘culture’ is seen as the effect of
representations, not their source” (7)?
5) What is the implication of the
“supposed transparency of
representation” (7), according to
Hutcheon?
6) If “every critic ‘constructs’
postmodernism in his or her own way
from different perspectives (11), which
postmodernism Hutcheon subscribes
to?
7) What does the concept
‘decentring’ of the individual refer to?
8) What is historiographic
The tension between art and
history is caused by the use of
parody
Postmodern texts resort to parody
and express that tension. They
expose that there is not such an
opposition between for example
fiction and history
Theses paradoxically worldly texts
are those which are self-reflexive
and lay claim to the historical past
at the same time
Metafiction is a general term which
implies writing fiction and exposing
the fact that the text is ficitional in
order to be instances of
historiographic metafiction, which
are typically postmodern, texts,
apart from being self-reflexive, lay
claim to the historical past these
texts take a historical event and re
write it in a fictional work. A history
of the world is an example of
historiographic metafiction
The insertion of a character into an
historical event
The concept of historiographic
metafiction is relevant for our
analysis of Barnes's novel. An
historical event becomes the
element that allows the artist
(writer/ painter) to create a work
of art.
metafiction?
9) What are the contributions of
feminist perspectives on the level of
representation?
LINDA H.
postmodernism is a phenomenon
whose mode is resolutely
contradictory as well as unavoidably
political.
Postmodernism’s distinctive character
lies in this kind of wholesale ‘nudging’
commitment to doubleness, or
duplicity
initial concern is to de-naturalize some
of the dominant features of our way of
life; to point out that those entities
that we unthinkingly experience as
‘natural’ (they might even include
capitalism, patriarchy, liberal
humanism) are in fact ‘cultural’; made
by us, not given to us.
The definition juxtaposes and gives
equal value to the self-reflexive and
the historically grounded: to that
which is inward-directed and belongs
to the world of art (such as parody)
and that which is outward-directed
and belongs to ‘real life’ (such as
history). The tension between these
apparent opposites finally defines the
paradoxically worldly texts of
postmodernism
Postmodern art cannot but be
political, at least in the sense that its
representations – its images and
stories – are anything but neutral,
however ‘aestheticized’ they may
appear to be in their parodic self-
reflexivity.
chosen to concentrate here on two art
forms which most
self-consciously foreground precisely
this awareness of the discursive
and signifying nature of cultural
knowledge and they do so by raising
the question of the supposed
transparency of representation. These
are
fiction and photography, the two
forms whose histories are firmly
rooted in realist representation but
which, since their reinterpretation
in modernist formalist terms, are now
 in a position to confront both
their documentary and formal
impulses. This is the confrontation
that I shall be calling postmodernist:
where documentary historical
actuality meets formalist self-
reflexivity and parody. At this
conjuncture, a study of representation
becomes, not a study of mimetic
mirroring or subjective projecting, but
an exploration of the way in which
narratives and images structure how
we see ourselves and how we
construct our notions of self, in the
present and in the past.

culture deals with both its social

concerns and its aesthetic needs – and
the two are not unrelated.

FINNEY BENTLEY
A crucial period english history
btw 1935 & 1940
An upper class household in
prewar southerd england to
the retreat of the british army
to Dunkirk and to a wartime
london hospital endding with a
coda