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DIacumin - Modernist Fiction: V. Woolf and J. Joyce - Notes
by - (2012-01-31)
Up to 5 A - Modernist Fiction: V. Woolf and J. Joyce
V.WOOLF: MOMENT OF BEING – JOYCE: PARALYSIS/EPIPHANY
Since she was a modernist she wants to experiment. She rejected the canons of the novelists she considered materialists like A. Bennett and J. Galsworthy because she wanted to focus the attention on a subjectivity of the characters, on their consciousness. She thought that only the subjectivity and consciousness could convey the truth of human experience: the truth of life. In order to reach her aim she tried hard to create novels that rendered the flow of the consciousness, its stream that explains for the rhythm of her prose and the use of language reminding the language of poetry. Flashbacks and flash-forwards are the means through which she conveys the inner life of her character because this is the way the mind works.
She adopted and was a skilled exponent of the stream of consciousness technique given through free indirect style, the eclipse of the narrator and the shift of the point of view and the interior monologue. Her idea of life is well-expressed in THE COMMON READER (1925) where she invites the reader to look within and to look at life. Here she wants the reader to examine what happens in a mind, an ordinary mind, on an ordinary day (the life of Monday or Tuesday). She explains that the mind receives impressions of a different nature (trivial or banal but also very important). Such impressions are incessant and they create the shape of a day. Since it is such impressions that make up people’s ordinary life it is such impressions that the writer has to convey to the reader. It follows that “there would be no plot, or catastrophe”. According to Virginia Woolf’s thought therefore life cannot be returned to the reader in a series of “gig-lamps symmetrical arranged”. Virginia Woolf concludes the essay highlighting the concept that the novelists task is to convey the unknown spirit of one’s consciousness.
MOMENT OF BEING
Virginia Woolf is recognized as one of the great innovators of modern fiction. Her experiments with point of view have influenced many writers that followed her. But one particularly interesting technique that does not seem to receive much attention is her use of “moments of being”.
To wonder why some moments are so powerful and memorable-even if the events themselves are unimportant-that they can be vividly recalled while others are easily forgotten. She concludes that there are two kinds of experiences:
A- moments of being
B- moments of non-being
Moments of non-being appeared to be moments that the individual is not consciously aware of even as he/she experiences them.
Virginia Woolf notes that people perform routine tasks such as walking and shopping without thinking about that. This part of the life is “not lived consciously”, but instead is embedded in “a kind of non-descript cotton-wool”.
It is not the nature of the actions that separates moments of being from moments of non-being. One activity is not intrinsically more mundane or more extraordinary than the other. Instead, it is the intensity of feeling, one's consciousness of the experience, that separates the two moments.
Since she was a modernist she wants to experiment. She rejected the canons of the novelists she considered materialists like A. Bennett and J. Galsworthy because she wanted to focus the attention on a subjectivity of the characters, on their consciousness. She thought that only the subjectivity and consciousness could convey the truth of human experience: the truth of life. In order to reach her aim she tried hard to create novels that rendered the flow of the consciousness, its stream that explains for the rhythm of her prose and the use of language reminding the language of poetry. Flashbacks and flash-forwards are the means through which she conveys the inner life of her character because this is the way the mind works.
She adopted and was a skilled exponent of the stream of consciousness technique given through free indirect style, the eclipse of the narrator and the shift of the point of view and the interior monologue. Her idea of life is well-expressed in THE COMMON READER (1925) where she invites the reader to look within and to look at life. Here she wants the reader to examine what happens in a mind, an ordinary mind, on an ordinary day (the life of Monday or Tuesday). She explains that the mind receives impressions of a different nature (trivial or banal but also very important). Such impressions are incessant and they create the shape of a day. Since it is such impressions that make up people’s ordinary life it is such impressions that the writer has to convey to the reader. It follows that “there would be no plot, or catastrophe”. According to Virginia Woolf’s thought therefore life cannot be returned to the reader in a series of “gig-lamps symmetrical arranged”. Virginia Woolf concludes the essay highlighting the concept that the novelists task is to convey the unknown spirit of one’s consciousness.
MOMENT OF BEING
Virginia Woolf is recognized as one of the great innovators of modern fiction. Her experiments with point of view have influenced many writers that followed her. But one particularly interesting technique that does not seem to receive much attention is her use of “moments of being”.
To wonder why some moments are so powerful and memorable-even if the events themselves are unimportant-that they can be vividly recalled while others are easily forgotten. She concludes that there are two kinds of experiences:
A- moments of being
B- moments of non-being
Moments of non-being appeared to be moments that the individual is not consciously aware of even as he/she experiences them.
Virginia Woolf notes that people perform routine tasks such as walking and shopping without thinking about that. This part of the life is “not lived consciously”, but instead is embedded in “a kind of non-descript cotton-wool”.
It is not the nature of the actions that separates moments of being from moments of non-being. One activity is not intrinsically more mundane or more extraordinary than the other. Instead, it is the intensity of feeling, one's consciousness of the experience, that separates the two moments.