(POST)MODERN PERIOD

STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, BEARING A BOWL OF LATHER ON WHICH A MIRROR
AND A RAZOR LAY CROSSED
MODERNISM 1900-1930 CHARACTERISTICS: (P.
61)

 Radical individualism

 No connection with history or institutions

 Strong, intentional break with tradition (e.g. established religion, political and social views)

 There is no absolute truth, everything is relative. The world is what we say it is.

 Breaking away from the realistic Victorian novel, absurd, chaotic stories (think of the work of Kafka)

 Concerned with the sub-conscious  stream of consciousness

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
OR INTERIOR MONOLOGUE

 Narrative device

 Indicates flow of thoughts and feelings

 Often lack of punctuation (sometimes for several pages)

 Coined by William James in The Principles of Psychology:

“it flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ is the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter,
let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life.”
WRITING TASK – 10 MINUTES

 Write your own stream of consciousness about the upcoming holidays and their festivities.
KEY AUTHOR + WORK: JAMES JOYCE - ULYSSES

 Published as serial episodes

 Joyce’s most experimental work

 Many layers (are those real or perceived? Was Joyce insane or a literary genius?)

 Stream of consciousness is heavily featured

JAMES JOYCE - ULYSSES

 Setting: Dublin on June 16, 1904

 Protagonist: Leopold Bloom

 Adaptation of the Odyssee

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7FobPxu27M
WW1 POETRY: CHARACTERISTICS

 WW1: 1914-1918
 The Great War

 From patriotism to disillusion, the poems reflect the sentiments of the time
MODERNISM <-> POST-MODERNISM
(READER PAGE 62)

Modernism Post-modernism (1930-present day?)

Break from 19th century realism

Character development: subjectivism, focus on inner state of consciousness

Exploration of fragmentariness in narrative- and character construction

Fragmentation/subjectivity as existential crisis, Fragmentation/subjectivity as an insurmountable

problem to be solved. The artist can solve this chaos. The artist cannot solve that problem. Solution
problem  celebrate and play within the chaos
FURTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF POST-MODERN LITERATURE (P.
62)

 Irony, playfulness, black humour

 Intertextuality
 Metafiction/self reference
 Historiographic metafiction
 Temporal distortion
 Questionable narrators
 Technoculture and hyperreality (for example in dystopian fiction)
IN SHORT…

Post-modernist literature is confusing the reader on purpose, making a statement about the reality in which one lives
by celebrating the chaos of that reality, which can lead to utter bewilderment and/or fascination in the reader.
KEY WORK:
DOUGLAS ADAMS – HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) – Douglas Adams

The somewhat chaotic and completely unpredictable adventures of the one human who could hitchhike away from
earth before its destruction

42
ASPECT: FRAGMENTATION

 Microplot” (Arthur) and macroplot (answer to the life, universe and everything) mixed with excerpts of the
Hitchhiker’s Guide

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aboZctrHfK8
ASPECT: PLAYFULNESS/IRONY

 Several plot points that ridicule the world we live in and what we think we know. (e.g. which is the most
intelligent species on earth)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_dUmDBfp6k

 Explanation of the Babel fish and how it led to the end of God https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmpP73-SHPQ
ASPECT: TECHNOCULTURE

 The guide itself [The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if
it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large
buildings to carry it around in.]

 Marvin, the Genuine People Personality Prototype (nihilism as solution to the chaos of life):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5MzPRa47ck

 The infinite improbability drive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIUIO1ImtJo