LITERATURA INGLESA III.

PENSAMIENTO Y CREACIÓN LITERARIA

INGLESA EN LA PRIMERA MITAD DEL SIGLO XX
CONVOCATORIA FEBRERO 2022

MODEL 1: FEEDBACK

Here follow some guidelines that will help you revise the answers you gave in your exams.
Please, bear in mind that these are only the key ideas and concepts provided by the course
materials to answer the questions. The grading process has taken into account how you
handle them to write a well-developed and informed essay with solid arguments and suitable
references to the literary texts. Answers may vary but they have to show a good command
on the materials studied in the course and the compulsory readings. The more into these
arguments the answers have gone, the better valued in the grading of your exams.

GENERAL GUIDELINES TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT:

Clarity of the argument and correction in the writing of the answers

Accuracy in the answer avoiding unnecessary digressions or the use of common

sense-based knowledge or mere plot telling.

Reference to the literary works, if a quote has been used much better, but in any
case, the literary texts are the core of the questions, and the answers must show
these texts are known and have been read.

Mistakes in the names of theoretical authors and/or ascribing theories to wrong

authors are mistakes that have been penalized. Particularly important if the
mistake shows a lack of knowledge rather than a “distraction”.

1. Explain the relationship between the Aesthetic Movement and the Decadent
“movement” and discuss how these influenced at least one of the authors of the
compulsory reading list of the course.

The question asks to explain two movements, make some connections between
them, and then discuss possible influences in any of the authors whose work has been
read in the course. Within this framework the answers may vary yet the following is
expected:
Explaining the Aesthetic Movement as a reaction to the Victorian pragmatic and
didactic vision of art and literature. The fact that it was inspired by Walter Pater’s book
Studies in the History of Renaissance should be mentioned in that it established the
view that art should be devoid of any practicality, that it should have no purpose but its
 own creation, and hence, totally artificial, and without any other aim but itself which is
summarised in the sentence “art for art’s sake” as the motto of the Aesthetic movement.
Decadence is born in France in the mid 19th century. It brings life the aesthetic
principles by incorporating in the way of living patterns of behaviour that subverted
Victorian morals. The fact that decadence meant to break free from the natural and is
prone to artifice should be mentioned. In England it incorporated into art and literature
a notion of intense refinement; the valuing of artificiality over nature; a position
of ennui or boredom rather than of moral earnestness or the valuing of hard work; an
interest in perversity and paradox, and in transgressive modes of sexuality.
The most immediate author to be mentioned here is Oscar Wilde and its gradual
incorporation of these ideas to his work and life, at least until he is imprisoned. Mention
should be made to the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, as an exploration of Decadent
principles and aesthetic ideals (or the play Salomé).
The Importance of Being Earnest must be explored from this perspective,
mentioning the questioning of the idea of earnestness, the playful and artificial qualities
shown by all characters (Algernon Moncrieff, who epitomizes the pleasure seeking of
the decadent individual, but also most characters by being put in the fringe of Victorian
values vs. aesthetics tenements) but also in the themes, love, for instance, by
depending on a name, is not natural but artificial. Also, the fact that Jack Worthing and
Moncrieff’s alter egos, Burbury and Ernest, live a life led by the pursuing of pleasure
should be mentioned.
Again, some other instances in the play may be mentioned and the approach to
build up the answer may vary but generally speaking, the above mentioned is expected
to be addressed.

2. Read the following quote and write an essay analyzing Joseph Conrad’s technical
narrative device of delaying the deliverance of the story (by adding new stories) and
how this affects the structure of the text:
Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating
Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. “We have lost the first of the ebb,” said the Director
suddenly. I raised my head.

The quote is a starting point giving clues to approach the question, but the
answer must go far beyond the mere comment on this quote.
The most immediate symbol to be addressed is the Buddha position and its
implications in the delaying of the deliverance of the story, for it is the same at the
beginning and at the end, making it impossible to distinguish when we are starting or
finishing and hence, ascribing to the literary text the qualities of story-telling.
 The answer should mention story telling as a technique used to delay
deliverance for the unknown narrator has to wait for Marlow to tell the story, even if
figuratively in his own accounting of the story that he was (or is being) told.
The narratorial perspective should be mentioned too as a device of
postponement in the narrative. There is no omniscient narratorial voice, this implies that
the narratorial voices add to the meaning, but they also provide contradictory, even
antagonistic, perspectives that work in not allowing for a finished, meaningful and
coherent account of facts. The different narrative voices should be mentioned, that of
the unknown narrator and Marlow being the most evident ones, but also the rest of the
characters that talk to Marlow add to the story (mentioning some of them is a plus, of
course). The fact that the reader becomes in a way one of those narrators by
participating in the story through the different narratorial voices must be mentioned as
a device of postponement of deliverance in the narrative.
The deferral of the narrative has to be addressed. This is Marlow’s meeting with
Kurtz and the significance for the narrative of Kurtz as a narrative voice, the
disappointment and despair in his words should be addressed too. The idea of the
journey, its preparation and its happening, may be mentioned as part of the tempo of
the narrative technique of delay and the time allotted for the transformation in Marlow’s,
and the rest of participants’ (us included) expectations.

3. Henry Bergson’s “Time and Freewill” (1881) reconfigures the idea of time by pinpointing
the importance of the time of the mind. Discuss this perception of time and temporality
arguing its importance in the building of the narrative in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.

There are many instances in the novel that can be considered to answer this
question. The important point is to use these instances of the novel to exemplify the
different perceptions of time that we encounter in the narrative and that serves for its
construction rather than just talking about the novel without taking a pause to ponder
on time.
The fact that there is a strong sense of the passing of chronological time must
be mentioned. This is shown by the setting in one day in June so that we attend to
different episodes all related to the preparation of the party that happens at the end of
the day and of the novel. Woolf’s narratorial technique responds to an interest in
portraying “an ordinary mind in an ordinary day” as she states in Mr Bennet and Mrs
Brown. The passing of chronological time is constantly present, the Big Ben striking the
hour, for instance, but also those different moments that interrupt ordinary habits in
London population at a particular time, the aeroplane, the car’s episode, etc.
This time is stressed precisely to allow for the past to be triggered by present
events that evoke that past lived in the present time in the minds of the different
characters intermingling in the narrative constructions those different moments where
reality is built up, as is the narrative, by the time of the mind and the time of the clock.
The fact that in the construction of the narrative emotions and feelings are as
real as the material world that can be observed outside the characters through their
eyes should be mentioned. Hence, the setting of the novel, and the construction of its
characters and actions from a time perspective mingles both the time of the clock and
the time of the mind, none being more important than the other.
Important to consider how the time of the mind irrupts the moment by bringing
past scenes (summer at Burton, the War, India, etc.) that are as much part of the real
as the description of the event in the outside (to any given character’s) world.
Literary techniques to allow for this fragmented reality to be portrayed in the
novel’s narrative must be mentioned and explained: Stream of consciousness, interior
monologue and, desirable, free indirect speech and narrative voice as an epitome of
Chronos and collapsing of past-present-future.
Death, as that future of time, maybe mentioned and its importance at the end of
the novel, in the party, as a symbol of the collapsing of the distinction of chronological
time and the time of the mind.
The different examples may vary, of course, but it is important to closely refer to
the literary text. Most answers to the question have dealt with one or several of the
points here highlighted, the main problem being the reference to the actual text.

We are very happy to be able to say that most exams are good enough and we do
congratulate and thank you all for the work and effort put in the study of the course.