MODERNISM II
James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Luigi Pirandello
OUTLINE OF THE LECTURE
Authors and texts

Unreliable narration/narrators – Woolf and
Pirandello

Alienation and identity – Joyce and Pirandello
Copyright R.Sibley, University of Warwick
2012
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
1912
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
1915
1916
D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
1922
James Joyce, Ulysses
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
Ezra Pound The Cantos
1923
Italo Svevo, ‘Il mio ozio’
1925
Ernest Hemingway, ‘Cat in the Rain’
1927
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
1938
John Dos Passos, U.S.A
1939
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Copyright R. SIbley, University of Warwick
2013
MODERNISM –
LITERATURE TIMELINE
1892
1899
Virginia Woolf (1882-1942)
Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936)
James Joyce (1882-1942)
‘LA TRAGEDIA...’ (1911) / ‘LA SIGNORA
FROLA...’ (1915)
Both stories use classically modernist techniques to
unsettle the reader.
 ‘La signora Frola...’ undermines any narrative
certainty....
 While ‘La tragedia...’ plays games with the meaning
of fiction and the nature of storytelling.
 Both of these stories were later rewritten as plays:

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2012
‘La tragedia...’ became Sei personaggi in cerca del
autore
 ‘La signora Frola...’ became Così è (se vi pare)

‘THE MARK ON THE WALL’ (1921)
Was first published in Woolf’s collection of short
stories Monday or Tuesday.
 Is characteristically experimental in terms of
narration and form.
 Focuses on several of the central modernist themes
such as isolation, the inability of the individual to
communicate, disorder and alienation.
 Does not try to guide the reader through a
conventional narrative but instead presents a series
of impressions and associations.

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2012
‘THE DEAD’ (1914)
‘The Dead’ is the coda in the collection – it sums
up and condenses the themes/ideas of the other
stories.
 Also extends ideas of other stories – looks at moral
and spiritual paralysis in bourgeois Dublin society.
 Is longest of the 15 stories and has the widest
range of characters – trying to give a complete
sense of the problems within Irish society and
identity.
 Reflects modernist ideas about social upheaval but
here Joyce is in favour of such a move rather than
clinging onto the past.

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2012
UNRELIABLE NARRATION/NARRATORS
One way modernism challenges ‘objectiveness’ of
realism/naturalism.

Removes the reader’s trust in the telling of the
story.

Humanises the narrator – they are imperfect like us.

Does this approach give the reader more control
over the narrative?
Copyright R.Sibley, University of Warwick
2012

UNRELIABLE NARRATION - WOOLF
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2012
Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present that I first
looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it
is necessary to remember what one saw. […] I remember that I
was smoking a cigarette when I looked up and saw the mark on
the wall for the first time. I looked up through the smoke of my
cigarette and my eye lodged for a moment upon the burning
coals, and that old fancy of the crimson flag flapping from the
castle tower came into my mind, and I thought of the cavalcade
of red knights riding up the side of the black rock. Rather to my
relief the sight of the mark interrupted the fancy, for it is an old
fancy, an automatic fancy, made as a child perhaps. The mark
was a small round mark, black upon the white wall, about six or
seven inches above the mantelpiece.
Woolf, “The Mark on the
Wall”
There was nothing at first
however to indicate that they
mightn’t have come for a
portrait. The gentleman, a man
of fifty, very high and very
straight, with a moustache
slightly grizzled and a dark
grey walking-coat admirably
fitted, both of which I noted
professionally – I don’t mean
as a barber or yet a tailor –
would have struck me as a
celebrity if celebrities often
were striking.
And yet that mark on the wall
is not a hole at all. It may even
be caused by some round
black substance, such as a
small rose leaf, left over from
the summer, and I, not being a
very vigilant housekeeper —
look at the dust on the
mantelpiece, for example, the
dust which, so they say, buried
Troy three times over, only
fragments of pots utterly
refusing annihilation, as one
can believe.
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2012
James, “The Real Thing”
UNRELIABLE NARRATION - PIRANDELLO
“La tragedia d’un personaggio”
Copyright R.Sibley, University of Warwick
2012
È mia vecchia abitudine dare udienza, ogni domenica
mattina, ai personaggi delle mie future novelle.
Cinque ore, dalla otto alle tredici.
M’accade quasi sempre di trovarmi in cattiva
compagnia.
Non so perché, di solito accorre a queste mie
udienze la gente più scontenta del mondo, o afflitta
da strani mali, o ingarbugliata in speciosissimi casi,
con la quale è veramente una pena trattare.
UNRELIABLE NARRATION – PIRANDELLO
“Signora Frola e Signor Ponza, suo genero”
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2012
Ma insomma, ve lo figurate? c’è da ammattire sul
serio tutti quanti a non poter sapere chi tra i due sia il
pazzo, se questa signora Frola o questo signor
Ponza, suo genero. Cose che capitano soltanto a
Valdana, città disgraziata, calamita di tutti i forestrieri
eccentrici!
Pazza lei o pazzo lui; non c’è via di mezzo: uno dei
due dev’esser pazzo per forza. Perché si tratta niente
meno che di questo… Ma no, è meglio esporre prima
con ordine.
ISOLATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL
Central theme of modernist literature – one of the
most consistent.

Does Joyce approach this differently to Pirandello?

How does the individual try to relate to a wider
community or group identity?
Copyright R.Sibley, University of Warwick
2012

‘LA TRAGEDIA D’UN PERSONAGGIO’
Copyright R.Sibley, University of Warwick
2012
In somma, di qual suo metodo il dottor Fileno s’era
fatto come un cannocchiale rivoltato. Lo apriva, ma
non per mettersi a guardare verso l’avvenire, dove
sapeva che non avrebbe veduto niente; persuadeva
l’anima a esser contenta di mettersi a guardare dalla
lente più grande, attraverso la piccola, appuntata al
presente, per modo che tutte le cose subito le
apparissero piccole e lontane. E attendeva da varii
anni a comporre un libro, che avrebbe fatto epoca
ertamente: La filosofia del lontano.
‘SIGNORA FROLA E IL SIGNOR PONZA’
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2012
Del resto, non è mica vero ch’ella non la veda, la sua
figliuola. Due o tre volte al giorno la vede: entra nel
cortile della case; suona il campanello e subito la sua
figliuola s’affaccia di lassù.
- Come stai Tildina?
- Benissimo, mamma. Tu?
- Come Dio vuole, figliuola mia. Giù, giù il panierino!
E nel panierino, sempre due parole di lettera, con le
notizie della giornata. Ecco, le basta questo. Dura
ormai da quattr’anni questa vita, e ci s’è già abituata
la signora Frola. Rassegnata, sì. E quasi non ne
soffre più.
JOYCE AND ISOLATION – ‘THE DEAD’
Gabriel writes book reviews for a conservative
newspaper against Irish independence – doesn’t
think he has anything to do with politics.
 Molly calls him a West Briton – leads to him trying
and failing to justify his actions.
 All shows how alienated Gabriel is from his own
country – “Irish is not my language” and “I’m sick of
my own country, sick of it!”.
 Modernist sense of isolation but not just that –
Joyce also commenting on particular case of
Ireland and its political situation.

Copyright R.Sibley, University of Warwick
2012
JOYCE AND INDIVIDUAL ISOLATION
Copyright R.Sibley, University of Warwick
2012
Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the
evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks.
While he had been full of memories of their secret life together,
full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing
him in her mind with another. A shameful consciousness of his
own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure,
acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous well-meaning
sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own
clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a
glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to
the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his
forehead.
“The Dead”
SEMINAR QUESTIONS
How do the different uses of narrative form affect
the discussion of these themes?

How does modernism use unreliable narration to
affect the reader’s reaction?

How important is gender when discussing individual
identity and alienation?
Copyright R.Sibley, University of Warwick
2012
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QUESTIONS FOR NEXT WEEK
How do the postmodern narrative differ from the
modernist ones?

Has the language and tone of the stories changed
from the modernist texts?

What is the relationship between reader and
narrator in these stories?
Copyright R.Sibley, University of Warwick
2012
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