LITERATURE IN THE 20th
CENTURY AND THE CRISIS
OF VALUES
The stream of consciousness and the «new
subjectvity»
REASON FOR CHOOSING THE PATH
• To better understand the role of narrative strategies in
literature
• To better understand literature in the 20th century
• To understand why studies of linguistics became more
intense and important in the 20th century
• To improve my linguistic and logical skills making
comparisons between writers, texts, and narrative
techniques
PROBLEM POSED OR
OBJECTIVE OF THE PATH
• What were the narrative strategies used in
literature?
• What does these strategies imply?
• Why are these strategies used?
TEXTS CHOICE
• James Joyce, Ulysses (1922), Molly’s monologue
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)
NARRATIVE STRATEGIES
- The stream of conscoiusness, rendered through:
• The free indirect style
• The shift of the point of view
• An eclipsed third person narrator
• The interior monologue
External reality have to be replaced by the private
room of consciousness.
James Joyce
• The Full stream of consciousness: abolishment of
every linguistic connector;
• Plot is reduced to the minimal;
• Use of free indirect speech;
• The interior monologue.
Narrative strategies in order to express the “chaos of
the individual” and the utmost moments of existence
to bring the reader to epiphany
EPIPHANY
• Epiphany brings the individual to a moment of
revelation
• Epiphany designates the moment in a
narrative when events, images, ideas, or any
combination of these have reached critical
mass and produce for the reader an explosive
recognition of meaning: It is the short
moment in which a character becomes aware
of himself and of his life
Molly Bloom’s monologue
what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails
for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their
sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office the alarmclock next door at cockshout
clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can dose off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are
those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he
gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp […]
[…] and O that awful deep down torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the
glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and
pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and
cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in
my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the
Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask
again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my
arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and
his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
James Joyce, Ulysses
Virginia Woolf
•
•
•
•
•
Stream of consciousness rendered through:
The use of interior monologue;
The free indirect style;
the shift of the point of view;
an eclipsed third person narrator;
Narrative strategies in order to make her readers able to feel
close to the characters’ mind: the “stream of consciousness”
expresses the moment when the individual lives with full
consciousness: a moment of being.
MOMENT OF BEING
• Every moment can be considered as a
moment of being
• The moment of being can be considered as
the moment that makes the individual aware
of the pattern of the woolly curtain of
existence.
The psychological level becomes as important as
the description of the setting
Mrs. Dalloway
[…] “That is all,” she said, looking at the fishmonger’s. “That
is all,” she repeated, pausing for a moment at the window of
a glove shop where, before the War, you could buy almost
perfect gloves. And her old Uncle William used to say a lady is
known by her shoes and her gloves. He had turned on his bed
one morning in the middle of the War. He had said, “I have
had enough.” Gloves and shoes; she had a passion for gloves;
but her own daughter, her Elizabeth, cared not a straw for
either of them.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
James Joyce Vs. Virginia Woolf
• Virginia Woolf’s moment of being is different from James
Joyce’s “epiphany” because it brings the individual to a
moment of revelation, while for Virginia Woolf it brings an
opportunity of “true life”
• A “moment of being” it’ s always a moment of “exact
feeling”, and this is why Virginia Woolf didn’t abolish language
connectors
 While James Joyce adopted a “full stream of consciousness”
in which he abolished every linguistic connector, V. Woolf
adopted a precise and evocative language.
WHAT DOES THESE NARRATIVE
STRATEGIES IMPLY?
• A simultaneous concept of time which allows distinguishing
the subjectivity time from the external one.
• The psychological level becomes as important as the
description of the setting
• External reality is replaced by the private room of
consciousness
• A new role for the reader: he is asked to make sense of what
he/she is reading, but he/she is never guided, there is no
punctuation to guide the beginning or the end of the
sentence.
WHY ARE THESE NARRATIVE
STRATEGIES USED?
• Joyce wanted to make the reader reflect about
him/herself, in order to give his/her own
epiphany to allow subjectivity to come into
surface.
• Virginia Woolf express her characters’
psychological realism to make her readers able
to “feel” characters’ mind
A CRISIS OF VALUES
These narrative strategies represent a reaction
to the crisis of values in Europe:
• The human being had no more confidence to
progress because of Darwinism, the catholic
religion and the economic depression
• Art proposes a solution: The Aesthetic
movement, in literature and in paintings
THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT
• Anti – Victorian reaction against the selfsatisfying morality and rigid orthodox rules
Art for art’s sake: time flows incessantly like a
river towards death. In the face of the tragic
brevity of existence and the uncertainty of
time, art is the only way of stopping time
through the ecstatic moment:
- Impressionism in paintings, the epiphany and
the moment of being in literature
WORK BY
Riccardo Zanutta