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

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Modernist texts may also contain middles that serve a transitional function for plot and character; however, a truly modernist middle reflects the epistemological dominant of modernism by changing how the story is interpreted or how the reader acquires knowledge of the story. In most cases, this means a significant change in the relationship between fabula and syuzhet, or in other aspects of the narrative discourse. However, identifying a modernist middle is not always a simple matter. Not all modernist texts necessarily contain a modernist middle as I have defined it. Even texts that contain a modernist middle will not necessarily offer the reader a clear guide to this middle’s location. Structural markers, such as volumes, chapters, or books, may identify and obvious middle, as may obvious differences in the narrator’s point of view, such as a change in focalization. However, the absence of such markers does not necessarily mean the absence of a modernist middle. Moreover, few texts isolate transitions in epistemological poetics from transitions of plot or character. Lord Jim represents a challenge on both of these fronts. Its chapters are not divided into parts or books, and Marlow narrates the tale from near the novel’s beginning to near its end. Despite the absence of clear textual markers, critics (most famously Frederic Jameson) have consistently divided the novel into two distinct parts, suggesting the presence of a narrative middle as I have defined it. However, this middle is in large part plot-driven: there is a significant change in Jim’s circumstances, as he ends his wanderings in favor of a more permanent post in Patusan. Nevertheless, I will argue that this middle is as much a transition in meaning, a re-interpretation of Jim and his story, as it is a change in the story itself. This change in meaning is largely effected by a change in literary genre, a system that 33
combines both plot and epistemology. I will argue that the transition at the plot level of Lord Jim is effected by a transition in epistemology, both through an active reinterpretation of Jim and his story in the novel’s middle, and through a shift in the systems of meaning that accompanies a shift in genre. In Lord Jim, plot and epistemological questions are deeply embedded with each other, marking this novel as a transitional text between Victorian and modernist middles. Critics have found different middles for Lord Jim, corresponding to different ways of dividing the text and different ways of interpreting that division. For Guerard, “The major break comes not with the introduction of the Patusan material (Chapters 21, 22) but with the end of Marlow’s oral narrative (Chapter 35). The important question is whether the novel and its reader are violated in a serious way” (167-8). Lothe, too, focuses on “the tripartite division of the novel’s narrative: with an omniscient narrator (chapters 1-4), with Marlow speaking (chapters 5-35), and with Marlow writing (chapters 36-45)” (138). For Watt, meanwhile, the “central section” begins with Marlow’s story and ends with Stein (265). Wendy Perkins, on the other hand, provides a more segmented approach in which small “chapter group[s]” provide irreconcilable interpretations of Jim and his story (28). Perkins opposes Conrad’s method to the strict causal chains of the traditional Victorian novel: “The classic realist text has trained us to expect to find a problem revealed in the beginning of the novel; solutions posed and avoided (along with possible detours) in the middle; and a denouement in the final pages that will end equivocations, resolve the problem, and— in Roland Barthes’ phrase--bring the ‘vast hermeneutic sentence’ to its close” (10- 11). If we define the beginning as the omniscient narrator’s section (the first four 34
Page 1 and 2: ABSTRACT Title of Document: BRITISH
Page 3 and 4: BRITISH MODERNIST NARRATIVE MIDDLES
Page 5 and 6: Dedication To my wife Pat, my disse
Page 7 and 8: Table of Contents Dedication ......
Page 9 and 10: necessarily after anything else, an
Page 11 and 12: eginning. That is, a modernist midd
Page 13 and 14: and Mario Ortiz-Robles have brought
Page 15 and 16: Princess Casamassima. The former is
Page 17 and 18: choice of McHale’s definition is
Page 19 and 20: In examining modernist middles, I w
Page 21 and 22: “is to overlook the other fundame
Page 23 and 24: evolution of capitalism strikes me
Page 25 and 26: spatial and temporal confines. On t
Page 27 and 28: narratives in Beckett’s Molloy, c
Page 29 and 30: Johnson mark an end to Britain’s
Page 31 and 32: period somewhat peripheral, a parti
Page 33 and 34: is oriented around endings (Jim’s
Page 35 and 36: eal world, yet the novel explores i
Page 37: Ulysses, the second half of In Tran
Page 42 and 43: chapters), and the end as Marlow’
Page 44 and 45: potentially be used to highlight ep
Page 46 and 47: middle) of the veracity of the Time
Page 48 and 49: Jim’s actions within a causal nar
Page 50 and 51: to Patusan midway through the novel
Page 52 and 53: violation of the unity of action, b
Page 54 and 55: which mass culture will be articula
Page 56 and 57: Jameson shows how the difference be
Page 58 and 59: genres, connected by multiple middl
Page 60 and 61: it does in Jameson’s reading. How
Page 62 and 63: text, since only a vast rupture req
Page 64 and 65: actually see Jim make the deal with
Page 66 and 67: for interpreting his own life and t
Page 68 and 69: garners an enthusiastic response fr
Page 70 and 71: circular encasement, which has the
Page 72 and 73: text’s initial questions are begi
Page 74 and 75: Chapter 2: Modernist Points of View
Page 76 and 77: it seems that the marriage plot is
Page 78 and 79: centering his novels within his pro
Page 80 and 81: singular, centered focalization—a
Page 82 and 83: inn. The lovers will return to Char
Page 84 and 85: consciousness itself seems to contr
Page 86 and 87: created, in part, by the use of mul
Page 88 and 89: epistemological problem: how do the
Page 90 and 91:
observation leads immediately and i
Page 92 and 93:
ineffectiveness” (Kafalenos 125).
Page 94 and 95:
shall have everything’” (266).
Page 96 and 97:
can to the sheer unspeakable narrat
Page 98 and 99:
induce me” (277). Fanny, then, re
Page 100 and 101:
and the objective world. Instead, M
Page 102 and 103:
‘Sure. Nothing will. Good-night,
Page 104 and 105:
It was not till many days had passe
Page 106 and 107:
which a story unfolds, and perhaps
Page 108 and 109:
When Amerigo arrives, Maggie’s co
Page 110 and 111:
accomplish, who she will meet, what
Page 112 and 113:
Chapter 3: “Time Passes”: The M
Page 114 and 115:
narrative force towards modernist m
Page 116 and 117:
Even as “Time Passes” serves an
Page 118 and 119:
technique of modernist narrative, b
Page 120 and 121:
ground of any rival solutions to Li
Page 122 and 123:
summary and scene” (Genette, Narr
Page 124 and 125:
Window,” and the ending section,
Page 126 and 127:
presentation in “Time Passes.”
Page 128 and 129:
where things happen. Events are mad
Page 130 and 131:
has promised James that they will g
Page 132 and 133:
For Lucio Ruotolo, however, this na
Page 134 and 135:
eginning, middle, and end together
Page 136 and 137:
integral to the musical and dramati
Page 138 and 139:
spring from the narrative problem o
Page 140 and 141:
who creates a mind for inanimate ob
Page 142 and 143:
own thoughts nor that of any charac
Page 144 and 145:
language, and thus subject to the c
Page 146 and 147:
Lighthouse,” and narrations of th
Page 148 and 149:
in so far as her presence helps the
Page 150 and 151:
anthropomorphizing narrative—but
Page 152 and 153:
In the initial description of summe
Page 154 and 155:
they find “something out of harmo
Page 156 and 157:
upper rooms of the empty house only
Page 158 and 159:
like to be up here at dusk alone ne
Page 160 and 161:
armistice, but it follows so immedi
Page 162 and 163:
y the narrator, allow a world unpop
Page 164 and 165:
Furthermore, passages like this fun
Page 166 and 167:
(“narrated monologue”) as “a
Page 168 and 169:
Mrs. McNab and Mrs. Bast are arguab
Page 170 and 171:
unclear whether time flows forward,
Page 172 and 173:
conventions of modernist and tradit
Page 174 and 175:
middle by making itself markedly di
Page 176 and 177:
Lighthouse’s primary narrative pa
Page 178 and 179:
served to marginalize experimental
Page 180 and 181:
the author’s other novels. Alick
Page 182 and 183:
himself. In an episode that resembl
Page 184 and 185:
unity between time story time and n
Page 186 and 187:
accept the lying perspective as par
Page 188 and 189:
cause and which effect. Any attempt
Page 190 and 191:
died on October, 1938” (7). Frobi
Page 192 and 193:
middle of fundamental change; the u
Page 194 and 195:
However, like the stories Macmann a
Page 196 and 197:
which takes Saturnine to the edge o
Page 198 and 199:
Aspic, to thank him for his kindnes
Page 200 and 201:
Whereas Genette’s discussion of h
Page 202 and 203:
problems of the self, but instead p
Page 204 and 205:
sees in the faces. But here we can
Page 206 and 207:
narration. Frobisher has entered a
Page 208 and 209:
Frobisher is reassured both by the
Page 210 and 211:
strode on. He said, with his eyes n
Page 212 and 213:
analyze mental states from outside
Page 214 and 215:
journey up. But meaning emanates fr
Page 216 and 217:
death vision, in which life is self
Page 218 and 219:
Thus, after a tile falls from the r
Page 220 and 221:
objection to realism: yes, an objec
Page 222 and 223:
esulted in a doubling—or repetiti
Page 224 and 225:
The ending Frobisher comes to with
Page 226 and 227:
though the novel’s return to epis
Page 228 and 229:
andom order. However, each memory r
Page 230 and 231:
middle therefore randomizes the nov
Page 232 and 233:
created by a formal device that rep
Page 234 and 235:
final section resolves the scenario
Page 236 and 237:
that each of the novel’s sections
Page 238 and 239:
inadequate to me for such a narrati
Page 240 and 241:
narratives. This fundamental differ
Page 242 and 243:
turned into a thing. In fact, as Jo
Page 244 and 245:
unburden the author’s memory. How
Page 246 and 247:
Instead, the middle of The Unfortun
Page 248 and 249:
By contrast, the second type of sec
Page 250 and 251:
at both. This particular failure is
Page 252 and 253:
as knowing it, as he did not know o
Page 254 and 255:
had been so full-fleshed, the whole
Page 256 and 257:
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 308 and 309:
world presented to the reader in Se
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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