WSPÓŁCZESNA PROZA BRYTYJSKA
TILL THE 30s - MODERNISM:
• Darwin, Freud (unconscious, subconscious), Jung, Bergson, Einstein (space and time concept, 1905) – researches
• new ideas in art, philosophy, architecture, technology
• political changes
• racial revolution
• rejection of traditional conventions, parody of old arts
• completely new arts
• reality vs. mimetic fiction (is fiction set in the present day, tries to imitate reality in prose), experimental fiction, derived from novel in the 19th century
• rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking and the ideology of realism
• new concept of reality - problem of epistemology (recognition)
• how language works? how do we perceive the world? -> language changes our perception of the world
• relativity
• place of human being stopped being in the centre (he’s one of the animals)
• rationalism (rational thinking based on brain), however, we’re governed by instincts (like sexuality – it’s beyond rational control)
• different ways of experiencing time (circularity / lack of chronology <discontinuous>) - changes in narrative structure
• development of stream of consciousness – how human consciousness works? (Ulysses, Mrs Dalloway) how our brain works?
• self-conscious, self-reflexive, self-reference works
POST-MODERNISM:
• an attitude of scepticism or distrust toward grand narratives, ideologies, and various tenets of Enlightenment rationality, including the existence of objective reality and absolute truth, as well as notions of rationality, human nature, and progress
• knowledge and truth are the product of unique systems of social, historical, and political discourse and interpretation, and are therefore contextual and constructed
• new tendencies to epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, self-referentiality, and focus on subjectivity
• further development of certain patterns
1940s:
• literary tendencies recognised in the 70s, some connected with modernism
• especially American literature, in British tendencies more balanced
• British novels not shockingly experimental, moral values <humanistic aspect> more important
• Beckett <the last of modernists>: Waiting for Godot, Nabokov, Eco, Kosiński, Auster
• critical works: modernism <epistemology> vs. post-modernism <ontology: what is it? how does it exist?>
• the world is incomplete
• everything is fluid, changing, nothing stable, we can’t know what is sure, no permanent solutions
• notion of relativism spread to all areas (not only space and time)
• no single truth, no one right way of thinking
• all knowledge is relational
• reinterpretation/remodelling/deconstruction <(completely different interpretation) of philosophy>, post-structuralism
• constant playing with established things
• humorous (irony, amusement)
• blurs distinctions between text and context (in modernism – focus on the text)
• reality is not what is seems to be
• influences from French literature – mimetic ones
• college fiction – authors who produce theoretical books (hard for readers to follow)
• more education – novels (greater awareness of criticism)
• Christian traditions – Apocalypse
• emphasis on construction, illusion of the reality (nihilism)
• not identifying with characters
• violent changes of characters
• reader involved in conclusion
• ambiguity
• multiplicity
• anticipation
Foucault – Archaeology of Knowledge, historical research, meanings in culture defined by those in power
Rija – we live in different world/realities, no experience, but watching TV, passivity, lack of understanding, only colourful data
Scholes – The Fabulators, novel doesn’t have to reflect reality, plots are fiction
The Sense of An Ending – drive towards the end, theology, linear concept of time =/= circular, stress on the ending (=/= open endings in modernism, post-modernism – multiplicity of completeness endings)
Hardy – The Appropriate Form, writers should produce the world they want (not radical)
Bergonzi – The Situation of the Novel, writers only repeat what was before
Spark – not religious fiction, but includes metaphysical prospects in her books, juggling of different ontological possibilities
Comforters – anti-novel, character discovers that she’s within the plot, rebellious (like against God), problem of freedom and destiny
Memento Mori – calling old people to remind them about death
D. Lessing – The Golden Notebook (experimental narration), reintegration, fragmentation of the society, Memoirs of The Survival – missing genres
J. Fowles – Mantissa, unconventional, neovictorian, historical, metafiction, original narrative voice, writing techniques (essays), gender, feminist novel
D. Mitchell – moving narratives
metafiction - a literary device used self-consciously and systematically to draw attention to a work's status as an artefact, poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection
1950s:
• reforms of the labour government
• realism
• satirical, social novels
• Huxley – Brave New World, Island
• Orwell – Animal Farm, 1984
• Greene – The Power and the Glory
• poverty
• educational reform (new universities, Red Brick universities – modern, lower class)
• loss of British imperial power
• rejection of modernist experiments
• development of social themes
• return to Edwardian and Victorian writers (Dickens, Wells, Eliot)
• social problems (protagonists from lower classes)
• academic novels (Wilson – Anglo-Saxon attitudes, Snow – The Masters)
• Angry Young Man movement (Osborne – Look Back in Anger, Cooper – Series from Provincial Life, Amis – Lucky Jim)
• Sillitoe – The Loneliness of a Long Distance Rumour
• David Lodge – Small World
fiction of the 50s:
• Murdoch – Under the Net, The Unicorn; philosophical approach, questions concerning love, friendship etc., more ambitional, ethical truth and choices, no metaphysical, gothic motives, high intertextuality (basing on other works)
• Lessing – 2007 (Nobel Prize), The Fifth Child, from Africa, science-fiction (speculative fiction dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes and extraterrestrial life), dystopian, psychological
• Golding – 1983 (Nobel Prize), Lord of Flies, The Scorpion God, mimetic fiction, moral questions concerning humanism and evil
• not concentrated on social problems
1980s:
• Thatcherism
• post-modernism experimental technique
• autothematism
• doubting about the possibilities of communication
• extreme genre mixture
• historical interest
• Ishiguro (Pale View of Hills), Graham (Waterland, thrillers, psychological, ghost, nostalgic histories, crimes), Barnes (England, England, historical), Conan-Doyle (experimental fiction, mimetic fiction, essays), Ackroyd (The Great Fire of London, biographies, history, fiction, gothic plots, for children also, crimes, investigations, sociology, historical characters)
1990s:
• fiction on social and political issues (the 3rd World War)
• philosophy and literacy – theoretical problems of literature as world construction
• metafiction
• gender
• sexuality
KAZUO ISHIGURO – REMAINS OF THE DAY:
• born in 1954 in Japan
• a British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer
• to England in 1960
• Man Booker Prize - 1989
• Never Let Me Go, The Buried Giant, An Artist of the Floating World
REMAINS OF THE DAY:
The Remains of the Day is told in the first-person narration of an English butler named Stevens. In July 1956, Stevens decides to take a six- day road trip to the West Country of England—a region to the west of Darlington Hall, the house in which Stevens resides and has worked as a butler for thirty-four years. Though the house was previously owned by the now-deceased Lord Darlington, by 1956, it has come under the ownership of Mr. Farraday, an American gentleman. Stevens likes Mr. Farraday, but fails to interact well with him socially: Stevens is a circumspect, serious person and is not comfortable joking around in the manner Mr. Farraday prefers. Stevens terms this skill of casual conversation "bantering"; several times throughout the novel Stevens proclaims his desire to improve his bantering skill so that he can better please his current employer.
The purpose of Stevens's road trip is to visit Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper of Darlington Hall who left twenty years earlier to get married. Stevens has received a letter from Miss Kenton, and believes that her letter hints that her marriage is failing and that she might like to return to her post as housekeeper. Ever since World War II has ended, it has been difficult to find enough people to staff large manor houses such as Darlington Hall.
Much of the narrative is comprised of Stevens's memories of his work as a butler during and just after World War II. He describes the large, elaborate dinner parties and elegant, prominent personages who come to dine and stay at Darlington Hall in those times. It is gradually revealed—largely through other characters' interactions with Stevens, rather than his own admissions—that Lord Darlington, due to his mistaken impression of the German agenda prior to World War II, sympathized with the Nazis. Darlington even arranged and hosted dinner parties between the German and British heads of state to help both sides come to a peaceful understanding. Stevens always maintains that Lord Darlington was a perfect gentleman, and that it is a shame his reputation has been soiled simply because he misunderstood the Nazis' true aims.
During the trip Stevens also recounts stories of his contemporaries—butlers in other houses with whom he struck up friendships. Stevens's most notable relationship by far, however, is his long-term working relationship with Miss Kenton. Though Stevens never says so outright, it appears that he harbors repressed romantic feelings for Miss Kenton. Despite the fact that the two frequently disagree over various household affairs when they work together, the disagreements are childish in nature and mainly serve to illustrate the fact that the two care for each other. At the end of the novel, Miss Kenton admits to Stevens that her life may have turned out better if she had married him. After hearing these words, Stevens is extremely upset. However, he does not tell Miss Kenton—whose married name is Mrs. Benn—how he feels. Stevens and Miss Kenton part, and Stevens returns to Darlington Hall, his only new resolve being to perfect the art of bantering to please his new employer.
important scene – on the pier (meets an old butler, cries)
/
Stevens, the head butler at Darlington Hall in England, discusses the journey upon which he is about to embark—a journey that his employer, Mr. Farraday, has suggested Stevens take. Mr. Farraday is going back to the United States for five weeks, and he tells Stevens that he should take the opportunity to get out and see a bit of the country.
Stevens does not initially take Mr. Farraday's suggestion seriously. However, upon receiving a letter from Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper at Darlington Hall, Stevens decides to go. Stevens feels that Miss Kenton's letter contains "distinct hints" of her desire to return to Darlington Hall as an employee. In the past few months, Stevens has been a little slipshod in his work. He attributes his errors to the fact that the house is understaffed, so he plans to ask Miss Kenton if she would like to return to work at Darlington Hall again. Currently, only four people staff the entire manor house: Stevens, Mrs. Clements, and two hired girls, Rosemary and Agnes. Mr. Farraday does not wish to keep on a larger staff, because he does not entertain guests nearly as frequently as the house's previous owner, Lord Darlington, did.
Stevens begins choosing the proper attire for the journey. He consults a road atlas and several volumes of a series of travel books titled The Wonder of England. The last time Stevens looked over these volumes was twenty years ago, when he wished to obtain an idea of the region where Mrs. Kenton was moving when she left Darlington Hall to get married.
Once Stevens has decided to take the trip, he broaches the idea again with Mr. Farraday when he brings his employer his afternoon tea. Stevens tells Farraday that the former housekeeper of Darlington Hall resides in the West Country, but he then pauses, realizing he has not discussed with Mr. Farraday the idea of bringing on another staff member. Mr. Farraday teases Stevens for having a "lady-friend," which makes the extremely proper butler feel very awkward. Mr. Farraday of course gives his consent for Stevens to go on the trip, and reiterates his offer to "foot the bill for the gas."
Stevens then muses about the joking around that is so characteristic of Mr. Farraday's conversational style. Stevens thinks that the American form of "bantering" is somewhat vulgar, but that he must endeavour to participate in it, or his employer will see it as a form of negligence on Stevens's part. Stevens goes on to say that the matter of bantering is more difficult because he cannot discuss it with his cohorts anymore—in past times, other butlers would accompany their employers to Darlington Hall, and Stevens would have the opportunity to discuss various work dilemmas with them. Now, however, there are fewer great butlers, and Stevens rarely sees those that remain, as Farraday does not frequently entertain guests fro Stevens spends the first night of his trip in a guesthouse in Salisbury. He looks back over the day. He describes the excitement he felt during the moment that morning, after the first twenty minutes of driving, when the landscape was no longer familiar to him. At that moment, Stevens stops the car to stretch his legs. A man relaxing at the bottom of a hill suggests that Stevens walk up a trail to the top of the hill to see the view, which the stranger claims is unparalleled in all of England. The view at the top is indeed beautiful, and Stevens feels "a heady flush of anticipation" for the adventures he is sure await him.
In the afternoon, Stevens arrives at the guesthouse in Salisbury. At around four o'clock, he takes a walk in the streets of the town for a few hours. He visits a beautiful cathedral and, though he is generally impressed with the city, the view that remains with him is the view of the English countryside that he saw that morning. ...
carrie77