Major Themes of 20th century narrative prose

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Major Themes of 20th century narrative prose

• Formal aspects narrative perspective, innovation
• Thematic aspects difficult relationship of
  marginalized individual to society,
  socio-political engagement of literature,
  engagement with history.
• Quotations related to these themes.

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• Literature is a paradoxical institution because
  to create literature is to write according to
  existing formulas to produce something that
  looks like a sonnet or that follows the
  conventions of the novel but it is also to
  flout those conventions, to go beyond them. J.
  Culler, Literary Theory A very short
  introduction, p. 41.

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Literary Innovation

• Modernist fiction is experimental or
  innovatory in form, displaying marked deviations
  from preexisting modes of discourse, literary and
  non-literary. Modernist fiction is concerned with
  consciousness, and also with the subconscious and
  unconscious workings of the mind To
  compensate for the diminution of narrative
  structure and unity, alternative methods of
  aesthetic ordering become more prominent, such as
  allusion to or imitation of literary models or
  mythical archetypes, and the repetition-with-varia
  tion of motifs, images, symbols . Modernist
  fiction eschews the straight chronological
  ordering of its material and the use of a
  reliable, omniscient and intrusive narrator. It
  employs, instead, either a single, limited point
  of view or a method of multiple points of view
  .
• David Lodge, The Modes of Modern Writing

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• If stories accept class divisions as natural
  and explore how the virtuous serving-girl may
  marry a lord, they work to legitimate contingent
  historical arrangements. Or is literature the
  place where ideology is exposed, revealed as
  something that can be questioned? J. Culler, p.
  39.
• Ideology way of looking at things
• Literature and the representation of social
  reality
• Accepted ideas of heroism, race, religion,
  history.

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• By identifying what happens we are able to
  think of the rest of the verbal material as the
  way of portraying what takes place. Then we can
  ask what type of presentation has been chosen,
  and what difference that makes. J. Culler, p.
  87.

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Narrative presentation

• Traditional omniscient third-person narration
• Focalisation
• Unreliable narrators
• Different levels of narration

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• Literary works offer a range of implicit models
  of how identity is formed. J. Culler, p.112.
• Outsiders insecure identities in the 20th
  century.
• The (de)formed identity of the individual and the
  pressures of social forces.

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Revision strategies

• Make notes on each book. Note what you still
  dont understand about each book bring these
  questions to the revision seminar in January
  (Thursday 13th, 2.30-3.30, A26) which will focus
  on essay strategies.
• Read secondary literature about the books.
• Condense your notes down to key ideas / themes
  you associate with each book.