David Lodge
MODERNISM,
ANTIMODERNISM
AND
POSTMODERNISM

D.H.LAWRENCE
• At the beginning of his article he quotes
D.H.Lawrence
and mentions Lawrence’s view of criticism. He says it is too personal to be a science.
• Lead by emotion, not reason.
• Lodge decides to show that Lawrence’s conclusion that critical view of style and form is only impertinence (irrelevance) and dull jargon, is wrong.

• David Herbert Lawrence (11 Sep 1885 -
2 Mar 1930 ) was an important and controversial English writer of the 20th century , who wrote novels , short stories , poems , plays , essays , travel books ,etc.
• His collected works reflect the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation .
He’s considered to be a significant representative of modernism in
English literature

THE CLASSIFYING AND ANALYSING OF
BOOKS
In order for a critical account to become reasoned it has to involve the classifying and analysing of books and a certain amount of jargon.

CONCEPTS AND METHODS
Lodge suggests some ways in which the modern English literature can be ordered and classified by using concepts and methods of analysis drawn from the European Structuralist tradition in Linguistics and
Poetics

The European Structuralist tradition in
Linguistics and Poetics
The description of nature expresses culture’s superiority in relation to nature.
Post-structuralism provide the researcher with great freedom to deconstruct and revalue these descriptions.

THE STRUCTURALIST TRADITION
The followers of the structuralist tradition, who rely on the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss, regard the opposition between culture and nature as the basis of culture’s self-consciousness.

THE PRAGUE SCHOOL
The Prague linguistic circle or " Prague school “ was an influential group of literary critics and linguists in Prague .
Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis during the years
1928 –1939.
It has had significant continuing influence on linguistics and semiotics .
After World War II , the circle was disbanded but the Prague School continued as a major force in linguistic functionalism

Lodge uses the jargon of the
Prague School :
‘What is foregrounded by one generation of writers becomes background for the next!
’

POSTMODERNISM
• Postmodernism is neither modernism nor antimodernism.
• It can be traced back as far as the time of Dada movement in Zurich in 1916.
• It continues with the modernist critiques of traditional realism, but it tries to go in all directions- beyond, beneath or underneath modernism.
• Postmodernist writing is full of uncertainty
• Lodge also calls postmodernist novels labyrinths without exits.

PERMUTATION (REORDERING)
Both metaphor and metonymy involve selection but postmodernist writers sometimes defy this law by permutating alternative narrative lines in the same text.
Permutation subverts the continuity of texts, a quality we naturally expect from writing.

POSTMODERNISM, A RULE-BREAKING
ACTIVITY?

CONTRADICTION,
PERMUTATION,
DISCONTINUITY,
RANDOMNESS, EXCESS AND
THE SHORT CIRCUIT

Postmodernism likes discontinuity, randomness, detachment from the narrative, changing the narrative, adding additional narrative lines, etc. and never return to their original context