Professional Documents
Culture Documents
№. 1 (3), 2016
Ştiinţe Umanistice
Liliana COLODEEVA,
doctorand, lector universitar,
Universitatea de Stat „Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu” din Cahul
Abstract: Under focus in the present paper is the novel of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The purpose of the study is to
introduce the context within which the art and literature of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries underwent a series of significant,
even radical changes. Furthermore, the study considers modernism, which
as a literary movement represents fresh, bold approaches and techniques, a
new, panoramic point of view and advanced literary and critical theories. It
departs significantly from the traditions of the Victorian period, rejecting its
realism and conservatism.
The art and literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries underwent a series of significant, even radical changes. It aimed at
escaping the traditional and classical forms specific to the Victorian period
and it embraced the idea of experimentation and avant-garde. The artistic
and literary movement called modernism struggled with the conventions and
realism of the previous period.
The term modernism itself was used for the first time in 1908 by the
British journalist, editor and literary critic Rolfe Arnold Scott-James in his
Modernism and Romance. At the time, this term was used not only to
designate something new and fashionable, but also the new literary trend of
the early twentieth century (Stevenson, 1992: 3)1.
Along with modernism, a range of other movements in literature and
the arts originated that are interrelated and have common ground: they all
involved a different perception of reality and were striving for autonomy
and individualism, while simultaneously rejecting imitation.
Worth retaining, among others, are the following:
- Impressionism (has free and liberated ideas; presupposes an
individual impression of the object, and not the imitation of the object itself;
emphasizes the subjectivity of perception);
English Writers. New York: Library James, Second Printing, New York
3 Lodge, D. (1983) The Modes of Modern Writing, Metaphor, Metonymy, and the Typology of Modern
the puritan code, and the values and vices of a double-standard society. It
expresses a concern, often obsession with the character, and it tends to guide
and instruct the reader. Finally, the emphasis is placed on social aspects. By
comparison, the modernist novel has a broken and deconstructed plot, lacks
chronology and is rich in interior monologue and free indirect discourse
(Praisler, 2005: 15-16)1. Henry James, for example, in the preface to The
Portrait of a Lady is not afraid to announce that he would rather “have too
little architecture (structure) than too much” if that threatens to meddle in
his “measure of the truth” (1995: 5)2.
The English author and academic, Malcolm Bradbury, in The Modern
British Novel, claims that the essential secret of the modern novel is that it
“came, but the Victorian novel did not completely go away” (1994: 5). In
his chapter on ‘The Turn of the Novel 1878-1900’, Bradbury presents a
comprehensive overview on the novel of the end of the nineteenth century
and counts the factors that have influenced the “turn of the novel”: social,
philosophical, psychological and intellectual. It appears that these factors
gave the modernist novel a new kind of novelist, a new kind of subject, a
new kind of reader, and a new kind of writing traditions (1994: 3)3.
The powerful tradition of Victorian fiction – moral, realistic, popular –
began to die, and something different and more complex came to emerge:
the tradition of what we now name the “modern” novel. (…) The novel was
aspiring to become a far more complex, various, open and self-conscious
form, one which, in a new way, sought to be taken seriously as “art”
(Bradbury, 1994: 1-2).
The major form of the Victorian novel is the Bildungsroman – a
German type of novel, or “education novel”, the novel of personal growth
and development. The Bildungsroman is characterized by specific elements.
Firstly, the plot evolves around one major character, whose development
and growth are presented from childhood to adulthood. Secondly, the
narrator of such novels is usually an omniscient one. Besides, the
Bildungsroman is characterized by the “cause and effect” structure of
narration. Lastly, the major character is placed in a certain social milieu that
helps his development and self-education (Golban: 2002)4.
1 Praisler, M. (2005) On Modernism, Postmodernism and the Novel, Bucuresti: Editura Didactica si
Pedagogica
2 James, H. (1995) The Portrait of a Lady, Oxford University Press, New York
3 Bradbury, M. (1994) The Modern British Novel, second edition, London: Penguin Books
4 Golban, P. The Vector of Methodology in Fiction Studies, available from
http://birimler.dpu.edu.tr/app/views/panel/ckfinder/userfiles/17/files/DERG_/7/331-352.pdf
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Buletinul Ştiinţific al Universităţii de Stat „Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu” din Cahul
№. 1 (3), 2016
Ştiinţe Umanistice
1 Mirguet, F. (2009) La représentation du divin dans les récits du Pentateuque, Brill, Leiden, Boston
2 Gunn, G. Thinking Across the American Grain Ideology, Intellect, and the New Pragmatism
3 Balakrishnan, G. (2008) The Genesis of a Genre: Impact of Philosophy and Psychology on Modern
Pedagogica
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