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THE MODERN NOVEL - Coggle Diagram

- - - - EPIPHANY = moment of sudden revelation when a simple object or fact flash out with deeper and more conscious meaning
      - The Dead, the last story is an epilogue that sums up all the other stories. Joyce recreates a moment in the life of Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta. At the annual party hosted by his 2 aging aunts and their niece, Gabriel experiences some uncomfortable confrontations. Finally he sees Gretta enchanted by a song sun.Later, she refuses his sexual attentions and burst into tears: the song had reminded her of a former lover who died for her. Gabriel, at first angry and spoke with irony, now is ashamed of himself and sadly contempaltes his life.
    - - complex novel set in Dublin. It covers one single day 16th June 1904. The novel is about the incidents in the lives of 3 characters: Leopold Bloom a middle aged Jewish advertising agent, his wife Molly and Stephen Dedalus, a young man with literary ambitions. Joyce focuses on trivial details of everyday life and on the characters inner lives. The work is modelled on Homer's Odyssey and it is divided in 3 parts
        
        1st part
        
        revolves around Stephen Dedalus who, like Telemachus, goes in search of a home and of a father, that he finds in Leopold.
        
        2nd part
        
        wanderings of Leopold Bloom, which parallel those of Homer's Ulysses. At midnight, Leopold rescues Stephen from a brothel and takes him home with him.
        
        3rd part
        
        Leopold and Stephen talk about a lot of subjects, while Molly, Ulysses's wife Penelope, is already in bed. Later Stphen leaves and Leopold falls asleep. In the early hours Molly, who unlike Penelope is unfaithful to her husband, meditates on her lover and on Leopold and eventually decides to give her husband another chance
      - Joyce uses epic structure of Homer's Odyssey = but his work is a wonderful example of REWRITING OF MYTH. While in the Odyssey there is a celebration of the mythic, legendary, eroic. Ulysses is a modern epic in which Joyce expresses LACK OF HEROISM
        
        STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS TECHNIQUE allows him to reproduce the chaotic flow of the characters' thoughtsand free association of ideas
        
        but also:
        
        3rd person narration;
        
        dialogue;
        
        imitation of other writers or literary genres;
        
        experimental language (invented words, puns, onomatopoeia,ecc)
        
        first used by WILLIAM JAMES (brother of Henry James) in The Principles of Psychology 1890 it is a narrative technique which tries to provide textual equivalent to the continuous blend and flow of thoughts, feelings and sense perceptions, and memories in the mind of a fictional character. It is possible to find unfinished or missing words or sentences, ungrammatical expressions or lack of punctuation.
        
        often used as a synonym for interior monologue but they are different because interior monologue normally presents the characters' thoughts without the intervention of a narrator but it does not necessarily mix them with impressions or violate the norms of grammar, syntax and logic
- - - - . difficulty of human relationships;
        
        complexity of reality = transience of life and uncertainty of destiny;
        
        time as a major character;
        
        powerful symbolism ighthouse symbolises the lack of attainability, as the sailing excursion is continuously put off. The house = inner lives of the people who inhabit it. The painting= celebration of women's artistic creativity and vision. Art offers a glimpse to a complex reality. Painting = moment of clarity against confusion
- - - - psychological penetration of characters;
        
        vitalism and individualism;
        
        study of human relationships;
        
        contrast between natural instincts and social conventions;
        
        contrast between natural and artificial cultures;
        
        criticism of the mechanized civilisation;
        
        description of man's communion with nature
    - - Morel family who live in a mining town. After marrying, Gertrude and Walter Morel have 4 children; William, Annie, Paul and Arthur. Gertrude clever woman, Walter an uneducated miner. She progressively transfers her affections from her husband to her sons, starting with William. When he moves to London she is devastated. He gets engaged to a superifcial girl and dies. Mrs Morel pours all her love and ambition into her second son Paul,the true protagonist of the novel. He is a sensitive and emotional boy, gets a job in a surgical applicances factory and becomes friend with Miriam, a farm girl. Mrs Morel is jealous. He sleeps with Miriam but the relationship is unsuccessful. Later he starts another relationship with a separated woman, Clara. With her he discovers real passion but Clara eventually returns to her husband. Mrs Morel is weak and dies. Paul feels that their special bond and love is still alive and even thinks about his own death. But in the end he decides to live.
        
        autobiographical elements;
        
        psychological description of Oedipal situation ;
        
        description of life in a mining village;
    - - about a married woman Constance Chatterley, sexually frustrated by her life with her husband, Clifford Chatterley who has returned paralyzed snd impotent from war. She starts an affair with a gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. While COnstance is in Venice Oliver's wife causes a scandal. On her return, Constance admits to CLifford that she is pregnant with Oliver's baby. At the end she still hopes to be reunited with the gamekeeper. Although Clifford has not given her a diverce, Oliver has intiated his divorce proceedings.
        
        seen as a parabole of feminine consciousness Lady Chatterley must choose between the old sterile social order (Clifford) and the new social order (Oliver). Lawrence criticises a life of "all mind" and defends the importance of sexual freedom and sensuality as more authentic experiences.
- - - - ANTI-UTOPIA or DYSTOPIA
        
        the author warns against the advacements of science, especially when they are controlled by an all-powerful state which suppresses individual freedom. Difference with 1984 = in the latter the general atmosphere is depressing, while in Brave New World citizens are conditioned to be happy
- - - - FAILURE OF POLITICAL IDEALSOrwell represents the corruption of revolutionary ideals and the tendency to recreate class stratification and develop class tyranny. CRITIQUE OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION. Snowball = Trotsky, Napoleon= Stalin. All other animals naive
  - - - imaginary future in 1984, not so distant from the time it was written (1948). The world is divided into 3 powers constantly at war with each other. London is ruled by THE PARTY, a small minority that controls the actions and thoughts of all citizens through telescreens and microphones. The leaderand dictator of the Party is BIG BROTHER, whose posters are everywhere to represent the inflexible government which denies every type of freedom. The novel revolves around Winston, an employee of the Ministry of Truth who revises historical records to match THe Party's official version of the past. He hates the Party and keeps a diary in which he expresses his rebellious thoughts. Later he starts a relationship with Julia in a world where sexual love is prohibited. When they are discovered, they are subjected to a process of "re-integration", based on torturing and braiwashing.Eventually, they are both "cured". Winston lives as an automaton who adores Big Brother.
        
        important themes
        
        critique of totalitarism;
        
        critique of mass media as agents of mass oppression;
        
        censorship;
        
        betrayal of responsibility by intellectuals;
        
        sexual repression