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

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evolutionaries find that another group of revolutionaries has already seized the control tower. By abdicating a leadership role in the drama, Pat abdicates a central place in the narrative. Nevertheless, the narrative, increasingly driven by action-oriented genre conventions, with the stakes externalized to the fate of an entire airport at least, continues. Pat initially seems to have been wiped entirely from the narrative. No longer can we see Burleigh and Bunny playing out the operas and detective fictions running through Pat’s head, pursuing her concerns about the “missing member” in an otherwise apparently uneventful Transit Lounge. At the beginning of Section Four, and periodically throughout, a detached third-person voice, no longer connected to any consciousness, gives a pseudo-scholarly account of the Revolution of Perpetual War. Other lines of narrative include parodic accounts of God Almighty, the “mannerist angel” (and the attempts of Baroco, a black member of the lesbian revolutionaries, to set off an explosion). Eventually, however, Pat begins to re-emerge as something other than the abdicated author of the proceedings. Pat appears somewhat obliquely in two pairs of dialogues: Och, the protagonist in the pornographic novel Pat had been reading, discusses language and philosophy with a professor emeritus; they are later joined by O’Rooley, pondering language by the bookstand. Meanwhile, a Father Itis discusses Ireland and religion with a “son” who turns out to be named Pat. What may remain of Pat’s consciousness has been spread thin, as possible versions of the novel’s main character discuss the interests of the Pat of Section One with authority figures. Meanwhile, the fate of the revolution, often punningly and cryptically communicated 305
not through the intimate voice of the public-address system, but instead through captions on a monitor, takes center stage. The revolutionaries increasingly bicker, and the Transit Lounge descends into chaos. The novel has taken on the clear narrative of a disaster film, lending a certain level of stability to the proceedings. On the one hand, this seems to mark a move away from postmodernism since, despite the high level of absurdity, the reader can now follow a fairly conventional narrative. Within this narrative, there are clearly defined stakes. With Och and the professor killed off, O’Rooley eventually emerges as the protagonist of a disaster story, making it up to the control tower amidst increasing chaos in time to witness a terrible plane crash, as a mad “commietsar” in the control tower arranges for two planes to crash into each other. Once again, genre conventions are re-affirmed: in the wake of the crash, “The official demolition squads and refrigeration units screamed off first, wailing into the drizzle and swerving down the storm-greased track as in a B-feature movie” (230). However, the very invocation of the B-feature movie indicates that Section Four has taken the postmodernist ontological experiment to its logical conclusion. With constantly shifting genres and characters, an authorial consciousness is still visible. But with the dominance of a single genre, the ontological transformation is complete: the modernist novel has not simply been undermined and destabilized by ontological concerns: it, like its characters, has been overwritten by a conventional genre. And within the now more stable, and hence more immersive, narrative world of the story, we see that reality itself has become like a generic tale. 306
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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
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epudiation of its own central moder
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narrator/rememberer. Johnson mainta
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Page 264 and 265: it, welcome it) the ball spun lazil
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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 308 and 309: world presented to the reader in Se
Page 310 and 311: of Pat’s own life, and by forgett
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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