ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH MODERNIST ... - DRUM

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world presented to the reader in Section Three is ontologically unstable, but that the philosophy of character and consciousness implied by the narrative makes the sort of questions about consciousness and point of view typically posed by modernism impossible to even consider. Section Three includes various characters in various roles, but because they do not embody individual consciousnesses, they do not have individual points of view. Even the Pat of Section One is now suspect—are her thoughts in fact thoughts, or is this simply the way verbally-adept modernist psychodrama plays out? The novel’s first half includes its own clues as to why, at the middle of this novel, modernism fails in its attempt to render Pat as a single consciousness facing (and posing) primarily epistemological problems. Pat’s increasing disappearance into a series of stock roles and genres (even if they always maintain a hint of playfulness, as Brophy highlights the patriarchal as well as the subversive implications of various genres and gender tropes) can be read as a direct result of the failure of the modernist stream-of-consciousness anti-narrative to solve the problems of the middle. Early in the novel, Pat poses the Transit Lounge itself as a sort of challenge—to inhabit the present as a narrative tense ungoverned by beginnings and endings: Relaxed but not to the extent of sleep or anaesthesia, whetted enough to enjoy but not cut yourself on your own ambition or anxiety, not so intent on the future as to be tensed-up, you could inhabit this tense. Your fingers could sink into the very nap and texture of now. It was obvious to me that it was myself whom I had, in my euphoric, light-and-airy boldness, already cast in the rôle of this 301
pioneer who should for ever (or at least for some hours) remain in the Transit Lounge and thus perpetually or for a simulacrum of perpetuity remain in the present moment, in at least semi-sempiternal transit between departure from the past and arrival at the future. Yet even as I hectored the public-address system to that effect, the corner of my eye, from its perch on my floor-adhesive stalk before the bar, was casting up the amenities within stroll and including among them the bookstall whence cometh my anaesthesia, in the form of those vertical take-off flights directly out of the present into the nevernever tense: fictions. (24) By staying in the Transit Lounge, Pat is attempting to manipulate reality, to create an eternal present where origin (beginning) and destination (ending) are not only unknown, but actively disavowed. From this early point, however, Pat seems to identify this very narrative austerity with a vulnerability to fiction. In the Transit Lounge, this means the rather limited fictions available from an airport bookshop, magazine rack, and public-address system. That is, the attempt to construct a pure middle, which is also, for the novel, an attempt to construct a somehow pure, ungendered narrative consciousness, is far from an effective bulwark against the threats of Aristotelian narrative, calcified gender roles, and hackneyed fictions. Quite the opposite: without a well-defined traditional narrative (that is, a movement from beginning to ending) of Pat’s own life, the character is left to inhabit pre-defined roles. The longer Pat remains in the transit lounge, the more these roles take over, until they snuff out Pat’s own identity entirely. Pat, by taking a pause in the narrative 302
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ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH
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BRITISH MODERNIST NARRATIVE MIDDLES
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Dedication To my wife Pat, my disse
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Table of Contents Dedication ......
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necessarily after anything else, an
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eginning. That is, a modernist midd
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and Mario Ortiz-Robles have brought
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Princess Casamassima. The former is
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choice of McHale’s definition is
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In examining modernist middles, I w
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“is to overlook the other fundame
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evolution of capitalism strikes me
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spatial and temporal confines. On t
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narratives in Beckett’s Molloy, c
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Johnson mark an end to Britain’s
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period somewhat peripheral, a parti
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is oriented around endings (Jim’s
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eal world, yet the novel explores i
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Ulysses, the second half of In Tran
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Modernist texts may also contain mi
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chapters), and the end as Marlow’
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potentially be used to highlight ep
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middle) of the veracity of the Time
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Jim’s actions within a causal nar
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to Patusan midway through the novel
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violation of the unity of action, b
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which mass culture will be articula
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Jameson shows how the difference be
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genres, connected by multiple middl
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it does in Jameson’s reading. How
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text, since only a vast rupture req
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actually see Jim make the deal with
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for interpreting his own life and t
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garners an enthusiastic response fr
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circular encasement, which has the
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text’s initial questions are begi
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Chapter 2: Modernist Points of View
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it seems that the marriage plot is
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centering his novels within his pro
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singular, centered focalization—a
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inn. The lovers will return to Char
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consciousness itself seems to contr
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created, in part, by the use of mul
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epistemological problem: how do the
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observation leads immediately and i
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ineffectiveness” (Kafalenos 125).
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shall have everything’” (266).
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can to the sheer unspeakable narrat
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induce me” (277). Fanny, then, re
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and the objective world. Instead, M
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‘Sure. Nothing will. Good-night,
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It was not till many days had passe
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which a story unfolds, and perhaps
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When Amerigo arrives, Maggie’s co
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accomplish, who she will meet, what
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Chapter 3: “Time Passes”: The M
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narrative force towards modernist m
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Even as “Time Passes” serves an
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technique of modernist narrative, b
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ground of any rival solutions to Li
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summary and scene” (Genette, Narr
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Window,” and the ending section,
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presentation in “Time Passes.”
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where things happen. Events are mad
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has promised James that they will g
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For Lucio Ruotolo, however, this na
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eginning, middle, and end together
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integral to the musical and dramati
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spring from the narrative problem o
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who creates a mind for inanimate ob
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own thoughts nor that of any charac
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language, and thus subject to the c
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Lighthouse,” and narrations of th
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in so far as her presence helps the
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anthropomorphizing narrative—but
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In the initial description of summe
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they find “something out of harmo
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upper rooms of the empty house only
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like to be up here at dusk alone ne
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armistice, but it follows so immedi
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y the narrator, allow a world unpop
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Furthermore, passages like this fun
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(“narrated monologue”) as “a
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Mrs. McNab and Mrs. Bast are arguab
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unclear whether time flows forward,
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conventions of modernist and tradit
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middle by making itself markedly di
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Lighthouse’s primary narrative pa
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served to marginalize experimental
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the author’s other novels. Alick
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himself. In an episode that resembl
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unity between time story time and n
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accept the lying perspective as par
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cause and which effect. Any attempt
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died on October, 1938” (7). Frobi
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middle of fundamental change; the u
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However, like the stories Macmann a
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which takes Saturnine to the edge o
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Aspic, to thank him for his kindnes
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Whereas Genette’s discussion of h
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problems of the self, but instead p
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sees in the faces. But here we can
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narration. Frobisher has entered a
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Frobisher is reassured both by the
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strode on. He said, with his eyes n
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analyze mental states from outside
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journey up. But meaning emanates fr
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death vision, in which life is self
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Thus, after a tile falls from the r
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objection to realism: yes, an objec
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esulted in a doubling—or repetiti
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The ending Frobisher comes to with
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though the novel’s return to epis
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andom order. However, each memory r
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middle therefore randomizes the nov
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created by a formal device that rep
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final section resolves the scenario
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that each of the novel’s sections
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inadequate to me for such a narrati
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narratives. This fundamental differ
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turned into a thing. In fact, as Jo
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unburden the author’s memory. How
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Instead, the middle of The Unfortun
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By contrast, the second type of sec
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at both. This particular failure is
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as knowing it, as he did not know o
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had been so full-fleshed, the whole
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had talked, Tony” (“That was th
Page 258 and 259: epudiation of its own central moder
Page 260 and 261: narrator/rememberer. Johnson mainta
Page 262 and 263: etrospective, an attempt to think i
Page 264 and 265: it, welcome it) the ball spun lazil
Page 266 and 267: worn” 9-10). The image finds the
Page 268 and 269: like a miracle, though he still cou
Page 270 and 271: By contrast, when the narrator firs
Page 272 and 273: memory: a mixture of the ordered an
Page 274 and 275: Chapter 6: Indivisible Form, Divide
Page 276 and 277: ecause postmodernism concerns the n
Page 278 and 279: in the diegetic reality of the nove
Page 280 and 281: section one LINGUISTIC LEPROSY Alle
Page 282 and 283: In Transit’s musical subtitles al
Page 284 and 285: they are perched between or represe
Page 286 and 287: performative in a Butlerian sense,
Page 288 and 289: the chorus describe themselves as a
Page 290 and 291: lamentable incident which I am now
Page 292 and 293: social component of thought only th
Page 294 and 295: identity, which remains unitary and
Page 296 and 297: not an effort to give the narrator
Page 298 and 299: Novelist 33). That is, Pat-the-narr
Page 300 and 301: primarily with classifying Pat’s
Page 302 and 303: now irrelevant, replaced by the pur
Page 304 and 305: etween reader and author. When Pat
Page 306 and 307: consequences for the entire world o
Page 310 and 311: of Pat’s own life, and by forgett
Page 312 and 313: evolutionaries find that another gr
Page 314 and 315: However, Brophy is not entirely don
Page 316 and 317: masculinity. Its manifestations are
Page 318 and 319: to violate. In Transit’s postmode
Page 320 and 321: ontological—shifts to consider de
Page 322 and 323: However, I would argue that we read
Page 324 and 325: Conclusion Modernism and narrative
Page 326 and 327: approximately half of the narrative
Page 328 and 329: little attention in the past, littl
Page 330 and 331: Brophy, Brigid. Don’t Never Forge
Page 332 and 333: 1989. 162-185. ---. “Periodizing
Page 334 and 335: Johnson, B. S. The Unfortunates. Ed
Page 336 and 337: Political in the Novels of Virginia
Page 338 and 339: Said, Edward. Beginnings: Intention
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