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20th Century American Ligterature

MODERNISM AND THE SOUTHERN RENAISSANCE:

I. The Southern Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s (Faulkner’s first novel
Soldier’s Pay-28; His best years: S&F—29; Light in August—32; Absalom—36;
The Unvanquished—38.
- uniformity in the cultural situation portrayed :
• a traditional society;
• the importance of family ties ( rigidity of caste , sex , class) ;
• the sense of the weight of history- the past is still alive , not mere
history;
• the concreteness of personal relationships;
- Mississippi - quintessence of the old South ;
- The old South - had no cities
- volatile mixture of extremes - a manorial society ; many black
slaves ; white folk culture is still independent.
Major figures:
- Erskine Caldwell, Caroline Gordon , Katherine Ann Porter
- Carson McCullers , Eudora Welty , T Williams , Zora Neal Hurston

Characteristics of Southern Fiction : ( M. Thomas Inge )

1. PLACE - a definite location and environment are used which are identifiably
Southern.
2. LANGUAGE - speech and dialect are often self- consciously given a regional flavor
or reproduced according to a linguistic scheme.
3. FOLKWAYS - oral traditions , folklore , and folk music often influence the style and
content or provide background.
4. FAMILY - kinship and local tries are emphasized with alienation being the price
paid for rejecting them until a return or reconciliation takes place.
5. PAST - the writer is concerned with history , the past and lost causes. The past is a
part of the present.
6. ROMANTIC GESTURE - symbolic acts and gestures are exaggerated and
romanticized. The Southern gentleman.
7. INNOVATION - there is experimentation with language , style , and form to meet
the demands of all these forces and concerns.
8. VIOLENCE
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WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962)

- died of heart attack 1 year and 3 days after Hemingway)

FAULKNER: not widely read; 1949 Nobel;

1. Biographical details: born in New Albany Miss. Lived in Oxford, Miss. (Jefferson in
his work). Great grand-father Colonel W. Falkner (wrote a pop. Southern romance);
high-school only 2 years then 1918 enlisted in the Canadian Royal Flying Corps;
Univ. of Miss. For 2 years; 1924—went to New Orleans (friend with Sherwood
Anderson) then to France and Italy by working on a ship (Pound in 1907 as a deck
hand on a cattle ship). (same trajectory as the Lost Generation, but not part of the
group); Various jobs: 1925 back to Oxford = carpenter and farmer, other jobs:
postmaster, bookstore clerk, Hollywood script writer (see Fitzgerald); 1949=Nobel
Prize; 1955: National book Award , Pulitzer.; 1957 - writer-in-residence - the
University of Virginia
2. General Remarks about his literary career: High productivity (like Melville)
- the cultural pattern of isolation , revolt and denial , the heritage of the American 20s
forming the novelist of the 30s reached an extreme
- 2 main elements of the pattern : 1. The solitary , desperate individual of
Hemingway's work + 2. The critique of contemporary society specific to Dos
Passos
-Purpose of his work: a. “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself” (inner
drama of the human being under stress forced to make a choice; b) an encyclopedia of
manners, morals and customs of the post-Civil War South (to evoke the past always
present with us, unlike Hemingway: no past, only the present). He deals with a traditional
society where history and the past are alive.
- With F. the cultural pattern of isolation, revolt and denial, the heritage of the
American 20s forming the novelist of the 30s reached an extreme. So far we
studied 2 main elements of the pattern: 1. The solitary, desperate individual of
Hemingway’s work; 2. The despairing critique of contemporary society in
Dos Passos. Faulkner extends the problems of the individual to the whole
South and to history. His novels = novels of consciousness (Fisher) and of
identity (Benn Michaels)
-The Southern Society in his work:
A. * " the old clans ( portrayed with pride and scorn ) : the Sartorises , the
Compsons , the Sutpens , the De Spains;
- once aristocratic planters - their present descendants reduced to genteel
poverty , alcoholism , insanity , despair. Weak - suffer deeply from the sin of
slavery;
• The Snopeses - upstarts who abuse their newly -won title
- the comic epic : "The Hamlet", "The Town ", "The Mansion "
• the small-town businessmen , lawyers , doctors , the white yeomen ,
garage mechanics
• degenerated poor whites- "As I Lay Dying"
B. The Negroes , the Indians - treated with sympathy : Light in August ,
Absalom , Absalom! , The Unvanquished
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C. Although very Southern , in its mythic and symbolic qualities , his work
goes far beyond localism: it is concerned with the destinies of a race and a
civilization.
3. Themes: violence, perversion, sex, murder, racial hatred, the sins of the past, the guilt
of the present
All his work=one book The pattern introduced in Sartoris (Yoknmapatawpha, a
microcosm of the South + a mythical domain; a legend from before the Civil War to the
1930s)
4. Experimental devices of style and form—
-Style: two contrasting modes of his prose: a. realistic, richly humorous prose,
employing dialect and speech tones; b. poetic, rhetorical—complex syntax and
sentences running on several pages in length
-Symbolism and aestheticism blended with realism and naturalism in a new
compound form
- the use of the interior monologue ( The Sound and the Fury - the story told in
succession by 3 brothers : Benjy , Quentin, Jason )
- Surrealistic techniques : use of dreams , revery
- Thematic symbols , biblical parallels , a certain obscurity.
NARRATIVE STRATEGIES
Constructed narrative not sequential. Compositional structure , manipulation of work by
the writer; fragments, anecdotes, flash-backs; no frame given (instead, symbolic
structures vezi p.A fisher)
Rendering of consciousness (not possible in film)—inner voices, uniqueness of
individual experience (cele patru perspective); interior monologue centered on
constitutive symbols (ex. P.48 Shadow in Quentin’s monologue)
Plot replaced by anecdote
Time- p A Fisher verso si fata
Rendering of Epistemological insecurity –difficult circular reading

TIME IN FAULKNER
- Time - psychological time , flashbacks , montage ( The Bear )
- Frederick Hoffman
- Time = a continuum , is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the
momentary avatars of individual people.
- The Faulknerian time is a continuum : time flowing from past into present and
from present into past……… Reality is not so much objective existence , but
what past and present have made of an object or event within a given set of
psychological conditions.
a. Edenic past = mythic
b. Actual past = beginning of human history - 1699-1860
c. Major event = Civil War - 1861-1865
d. Recent past = was
e. Present = 1920 -
- a. = slow , gradual reconstruction of the past by a narrator existing in the
present or existed in the recent past
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- b. = the pattern of movement past - present-past or within points in the past

( the Sound and the Fury)

-Modernism: the stream of consciousness novel (unlike Virginia Woolf he renders a

collective consciousness –the burden of the past)-Vezi note p.A Fisher si 14 Harvard-
trasaturile modernismului). Eu le aplic pe The S&F
The great modernist works of the 1920s: Ulysses, The Waste Land, V.Woolf, Proust:
Remembrance of Things Past;

THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS NOVEL

1. The gradual shift from the external reality to the internal subjectivity
- started with :
a. James - dramatization of the central consciousness
b. Conrad - man's knowledge of himself / moralist rather than
psychologist
c. Lawrence - emotional relationship- psychoanalysis
- attempts to find new forms to express it - the dramatization of fiction
a. James - central consciousness - reflectors
b. Conrad - Marlow - multiple point of view
c. Lawrence - the constitutive symbol
2. The Stream of Consciousness Novel - English equivalent of psychological or
analytical novel
- V. Woolf - Modern Fiction - materialists ( Galsworthy)
= Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown
= the Russian novelists
- the origin of term :
a. William James - " Principles of Psychology" ( 1890)
1. consciousness is a continuous flow river / stream river
2. man is not a self , but a flux of identities - the problem
of identity
b. Henry Bergson - by intuition he discovered the reality in
the individual flux called duration
= the continuous present
- used in 1918 in a review of Dorothy Richardson - "Pilgrimage" ( 12 novels
between 1915 - 1935 - Miriam Henderson ; W. Allen - fisa p. 2)

STRUCTURE - compositional rather than sequential - weakening of plot, story,

anecdote , flash-backs
- fragments , integrity of small units
- Spatial form = design , manipulation of the work by the artist
- Frame replaced by symbolic structures
a. Eliot - WL - fertility - sterility
b. Faulkner - S&F - Good Friday to Easter time scheme
c. Woolf - To the L- journey to the L. Completes a painting
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d. Joyce- Ulysses- depart from home - return

e. Hemingway - symbolic frame - wet , cold
- Subject - consciousness , moments of experience , interior reality
- Time = static , circular , continuum rather than progressive linear
= real time - concern with the moment , hours , seconds of experience
= memory , the past ( traumatic) - loss ( elegy)
= repetition favored over one event - Hoffman, Sartre ( the present - tied
with the clock ; the past = accretion)
- Reading - Epistemological insecurity - obscurity , difficulty
= texts require active puzzle - reading
= repetitive , circular reading replaces linear single reading
= overlap and blending of times , persons , names , experiences
- Point -of-view = multiple voices - replaces the #rd person narrative
- A new compound form = Symbolism &aestheticism blended with realism &
naturalism
- Aestheticism - emphasis on beauty cultivation of the arts
= the principles of beauty are essential to others and especially
moral principles
- Method - to render consciousness as it flows from moment to moment //
unlike psychological or analytical : ex. Lawrence's subjective technique
= used before : Richardson ( Pamela ) , Smollet , Dickens , Sterne ,
Russians : Turghenev , Chekhov , Dostoievsky ( identity Ruscolnikov -
Svindigailov), Edourd Dujardin " Les lauriers sont coupes"
- What happens to the structure ?
- What are the principles of selection ? ( no hierarchy of values )
= Joyce - can't employ only this method
= Woolf - imposes a patternof significance on the flux
1. Setting - time = objective and subjective ( Bergson) : the invisible progress
of the past which grows into the future
= as experienced by the mind - importance of individual
perceptions , not social life
- space = closed in areas : Mrs. Dalloway's London ; To the
Lighthouse - Island ; Ulysses- Dublin

2. Plot - no plot , voyages through consciousness

- suggestive titles : Proust - A la Recherche ; D. Richardson- Pilgirmage ;
Woolf - Voyage Out , To the Lighthouse ; Joyce - Ulysses
- writer - no longer communicates a message
= emphasis on the isolation of the individual
= consciousness is passive , receiver of impressions
3. Character - no hero , but anti-hero
= completely dramatized
= their memory - more important than acts
4. Point of view - the author disappears : interior monologue
= creation of language - ex. Ulysses - connotative value of
words
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Contribution
- shifted the point of interest of the realistic novel from social relationshipsto
the intercourse of human feelings
- he broke such 19th century taboos as free discussion about love and sex
- stream of consciousness : interest in the individual's mind and feelings
( Lawrence)
- form - deep sense of tradition -combines the novel of social relations with the
symbolist novel or romance
- a writer of vivid sensuous intimacy
- experiments with 3 elements composition
a. theme - intercourse of feelings and wholeness of being
b. subject-matter : working -class , sex
c. character - the unconscious mind explored too
- the use of the constitutive symbol ( Walter Allen - The English Novel - Jung's
definition of symbol -conspect p.2)
- women : Gerald Crich- Gudrum ; Birkin - Ursula

The great modernist works of the 1920s: Ulysses, The Waste Land, V.Woolf,
Proust: Remembrance of Things Past;

THE SOUND AND THE FURY= the single greatest work of Modernism in
American literature (Comparatie in Fisher p.14: -each experiments with time and
self-consciousness about time.
-Each involves the central matter of subjectivity, stream of cons., interior
experience and memory.
-Each involved technical experimentation that produced difficult problems
of reading and response
-In each we feel the solitude of persons trapped within “the Wall of
personality” (Eliot), the prison of individuality and private experience. (vezi fence in on
p.1 in S&F).
1. A novel of consciousness:
F. imitated Joyce in constructing his novel out of the inner worlds and inner voices—
the consciousness—of an Idiot, Benjy, confused and wailing, an intellectual, Quentin;
a businessman, Jason; a family servant, Dilsey (the woman who is the central figure
preserving family life). Four worlds, four windows onto a family past. Difference
between them = all consciousness is radically different (recognition of difference
forced on us by first section: Benjy. Eu: postmodern-stress on difference)

-The Compsons (p.VIII/1 bis verso)- Faulkner composed a Compson Appendix

(1699-1945) for Cowley’s “The Portable Faulkner” for Viking Press
2. -An April Novel: (p.A Fisher verso)—
-See Eliot (cruelest month)-meaninglessness reinforced by the elegiac essence
-An Elegy (losses) the title quotes Macbeth’s soliloquy after the death of his wife:
[Life] is a tale/told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ signifying nothing.
(meaninglessness) + echoes of lit. of the past
-About absences Benjy=non-existence of Caddy
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THE SOUND AND THE FURY

- The disintegration of the family that clings to outworn aristocratic conventions
- The aim of the novel : to convey meaninglessness
- the Compsons - once lords of a great plantation near Jefferson and now they
lead a degenerated , perverted life.
- Father - pretence of practicing law ; he drinks now.
- Mother - hypochondriac and proud.
- Children : a. Quentin = introverted , shy , romantic , over-fond of Candace,
= intellectual , student at Harvard
= shamed by her seduction , he commits suicide
b. Candance = Caddy - has an illegitimate daughter who steals
money from Jason and runs away with a tent-show performer
c. Benjy = 33 years old , but his mental age = 3
= feeble-minded , incapable of speech , committed to an
insane asylum
d. Jason = businessman , mean , hard , hard , practical ,ruthless
= rejects his ancestors' idea of dignity and honour
- Negroes - Dilsey = black woman = the central figure preserving family life,
counterpoints the whites
= her grandson , Luster, who tends Benjy
- Narrative Technique = the story told in succession = 4 parts - stream of
consciousness : Benjy , Quentin , Jason , the 4th is an objective account
- Macbeth's soliloquy after death of his wife : " Life is a tale /told by an idiot
full of sound and fury , /signifying nothing".
= a novel with little sound and not much fury except death of Quentin - Why ?
1. echoes the literature of the past : Shakespeare
2. a great classic modernist account of elegiac experience of
mourning and celebration
- elegy = celebration of life under the condition of the loss of a central person
= song or poem - sorrow or lamentation for a loss or smb.'s death
- the novel in the powerful traditional form of elegy - about losses = the loss of
one's virginity , loss of the central person of one's life
= a sequence of losses - grandmother's death , Quentin's suicide ,
loss of Caddy , loss of Benjy = activated by the anecdote
= opening monologue - Benjy - non-existence of Caddy
= Caddy - one that assists a golfer especially by carrying his clubs
= absences
- Constructed narrative = a mosaic of tones and voices : tape recorder of
voice = the tone and rhythm of smb's speech
a. 1st section = 20 voices
b. 2nd section = 19 voices
c. 3rd section = 10 sections

- Time is broken and rearranged - the day named is only a base line : flash-
backs rather then memories
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a. Benjy 's section = 7 April , 1928 - three days before Easter

b. Quentin's section = 2 June , 1910
c. Jason's section = 6 April , 1928
d. Objective account = 8 April , 1928
e.
P. A. FISHER
- Modernist works : Ulysses , The Waste Land , Woolf , Proust , the 1920s =
involve experiments with self-consciousness about time
- The only reality = the consciousness - the stream of consciousness - interior
experience and memory
- Consciousness = the unique feature of literature
- Interior monologue - inner voices , uniqueness of individual experience : an
idiot (Benjy) , an intellectual ( Quentin) , a woman servant ( Dilsey), a
businessman ( Jason)
= a constitutive symbol ( ex. Shadows in Quentin's
monologue)
- Plot - replaced by anecdote and memory
- Time = circular/ no longer linear , a continuum , subjective
- Place = limitation in space - freedom in time
= place leads to events in the past
- Point of view = no 3rd person narrative