Modernist and Postmodernist conventions PDF

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Modernist and postmodernist conventions in the novel "The French Lieutenant's Woman"...

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Modernist and in

postmodernist conventions

Lord Jim and The French Lieutenant's Woman

Lord Jim and The French Lieutenant's Woman epitomize the characteristics of fictional representation of the twentieth century. In order to understand the meaning of the phrase 'fictional representation' we have to go back in time to the nineteenth century, when the traditionally realist novelist upheld the idea that the novel was a mirror of the world, therefore an exact, objective piece of reality. However, modernists and postmodernists came to realize that, in fact, this was an illusion, that the mirror held up was actually a distorted one. Thus, the phrase may allude to the realization that anything put on paper is fictional in a sense that it cannot fully represent reality in its essence. Apart from this aspect, in this paper we shall discuss through the spectrum of these novels how postmodernism is at the same time the continuation and the rejection of modernism. To highlight an element which constitutes an important part of both modernist and postmodernist fiction is the fact that neither believed anymore in universal truth, hinting at the fact that ''truth and meaning vary with point of view''1. That is why the narrators present to us a variety of perspectives through which we have to construct our own meaning. In France, novelists wrote about same experience, for instance Gide in his Counterfeiters: I begin to see what I will call the subject of my book. It will undoubtedly represent the rivality between the real world and the representation that we create of it. The manner in which the own

world of appearances imposes upon us and about which we try to impose our

interpretation

upon

the

outer

world

creates

the

drama

of

our

life. 2

This observation which was not reduced only to Britain – due to other factors as well, such as advancements in all fields – developed into a general sense of doubt which permeated the period: Do you think that there might be anything in this world that could not be doubted? . . . I

1 David Bradshaw, Kevin J.H. Dettmar, A Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture, Blackwell, 2006. 219 2 My own translation. Original text: ”C'est, ce sera sans doute la rivalité du monde réel et de la représentation que nous nous en faisons. La maniere dont le monde des apparences s'impose a nous et dont nous tentons d'imposer au monde extérieur notre interprétation particuliere, fait le drame de notre vie.” André Gide, Les faux-monnayeurs . Paris : Gallimard, 1989. 255

can

question the reality of everything, but not the reality of my doubt. 3

The above mentioned ideas are very well represented in the the novels

that we are

analysing. As Jesse Matz notes, the characters ''are subject to misapprehensions and mistakes and they often find it impossible to get at the truth or connect with one another'' 4. Jim and Sarah are equally misunderstood or never understood at all. Jim is thought to be at first a coward, a deserter, unworthy of respect, while later his image transforms into the embodiment of bravery and manliness. However, Marlow simply describes him as ''one of us'', repeating this phrase obsessively through the novel.

The true nature of the protagonist seems to remain under a question mark, but

each reader can form his own interpretation regarding Jim's actions. The case of Sarah is similar, for we are constantly familiarized with different points of view. Also, the several possible endings of Fowles' novel suggest that there can be no concrete definition of her character. The question of not understading brings us to another topic which is a further development of the question of ''truth''. Novelists realised that there exists such ''truth'' that is inconceivable, unpresentable. Nevertheless, what differs in their apprehension, according to Lyotard, is that modernists chose to represent it by the aid of language, whereas postmodernists tried to include this inconceivability in their mode of writing:

I shall call modern the art which devotes its "little technical expertise" (son 'petit technique"), as Diderot used to say, to present the fact that the unpresentable exists. To make visible that there is something which can be conceived and which can neither be seen nor

made visible . . . The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward

the

unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms,

the

consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia

for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order

to

impart

a

stronger

sense

of

the

unpresentable. 5

That is to say, in Lord Jim we are presented with the Inconceivable through Jim’s actions, while Fowles as a postmodern searched for new forms to represent it. Steven Connor understood the essence of Lyotard's theories, saying that modernists reduce the experience of the sublime to a recognizable form, while postmodernist know that the text cannot

3 My own translation. Original text: ”Pensez-vous qu'il y ait rien, sur cette terre, qui ne puisse etre mis en doute?. . . Je puis douter la realité du tout, mais pas la realité de mon doute.” Ibid. 243 4 David Bradshaw, 218 5 Jean-Francois Lyotard, "What is Postmodernism?" (c) University of Minnesota Press, 1984. 4-6

match up to what goes beyond comprehension.

6

In Lord Jim, Conrad puts the protagonist in a

position where he has to face the sublime, which fills him with fear, therefore ''effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning''7. He finds himself at a loss when he tries to explain why he jumped, in his mind that traumatizing event is blurry, formless, consequently difficult to be expressed. Nor can Marlow grasp his meaning and this instills in him the same feeling. After all, his intuition leads him to a certain conclusion, that he was just one of us, and that we should not judge Jim because we might have proceeded just the same in his position. This realization might suggest that we should not label anyone according to his/her actions, because that would mean constructing an objective reality, a universal truth which – as it was declared by the theorists – is inexistent. What is esentially different between modernist and postmodernist fiction is that

the latter

is heavily dependent on irony:

Irony is also the dominant mode of postmodern literature. The most characteristic practice in postmodern fiction is metafiction, by which a text highlights its own status as a fictional construct. Self-reference is the literary equivalent of the postmodern ironic attitude, indicating that we cannot accept the reality we are presented with in a novel at face value.8

Due to the fact that, as John Barth affirms, literary forms have been exhausted 9, the only way to be unique is to write about writing itself, at the same time ironizing the conventions of earlier times in literature: ''Pastiche, then, arises from the frustration that everything has been done before.'' 10

. Chapter 13 in The French Lieutenant's Woman is a remarkable example of tackling such a

theme. In his lengthy digression, Fowles reinterprets the definition of God, and by this maneuver he gently mocks his predecessors. Before the 20 th century, we thought of writers as gods who manipulate the actions, and that the readers are mere spectators who cannot do anything in order to change the outcome, they just have to face what is given. The postmodern God, however, approaches itself more to the actual idea of divinity, for in Christian theology as well, God lets us make a choice, we are familiarezed with the options we have, it is signalled from the beginning which paths lead to a certain 'destination'. The Fowlesian God takes into consideration each 6 Steven Connor, The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2004. 67 7 Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful. Vol. XXIV, Part 2. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909; Bartleby.com, 2001. www.bartleby.com/24/2/. 8 Steven Connor, The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 568 9 John Barth, ''The Literature Of Exhaustion''. The Friday Book: Essays and Other Non-Fiction. The John Hopkins University. Press, 1984. 3 10 Sim Stuart, The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. London: Routledge, 2001. 125

London:

perspective, each reader, giving them the freedom to believe in what ending they choose. He lets his characters wander to the direction they want. When he created these characters, he constructed a living personality and he is aware of the fact that many outcomes are possible depending on their choices. After all, as he admits in chapter 13, ''there is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.'' Furthermore, as he lived in the age of Barthes, he promotes the theorist's idea that ''to give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing'' 11, thus again evidentiating the role of the Reader in choosing a suitable ending or forming judgments. In conclusion, we have demonstrated that in these to novels can be found the major characteristics of modernist and postmodernist literature. The rejection of universal and objective truth is a recurrent theme in both of the novels, but the fact that Fowles made constant use of irony in his work transcends modernism, and raised the novel to another level, along with his different treatment of the Inconceivable.

Works cited 11 Roland Barthes, ''The Death of the Author.'' Image/Music/Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Noonday, 1977. 152

Primary sources

Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim : [novel]. London : Penguin Books, 1994.

Gide, André. Les faux-monnayeurs. Paris : Gallimard, 1989.

Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant's Woman. London : Traid : Panther, 1985.

Secondary sources Barth, John. ''The Literature Of Exhaustion''. The Friday Book: Essays and Other Non-Fiction. London: The John Hopkins University. Press, 1984.

Barthes, Roland. ''The Death of the Author.'' Image/Music/Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Noonday, 1977.

Bradshaw, David, and Kevin J.H. Dettmar. A Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture, Blackwell, 2006.

Burke, Edmund. New

On the Sublime and Beautiful.

Vol. XXIV, Part 2. The Harvard Classics.

York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001.

www.bartleby.com/24/2/.

Connor, Steven. The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. "What is Postmodernism?". (c) University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Sim, Stuart.

The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism . London: Routledge, 2001....