Modernism’s Forgotten Legacy: Studying James Joyce’s Two Self-Portraits

A Synopsis on

Modernism’s Forgotten Legacy:

Studying James Joyce’s Two Self-Portraits

Submitted to P. G. Department of English, Utkal University

Under the guidance of:

Dr. Himansu S. Mohapatra

&

Dr. Kalyani Samantray

Prepared by:

Abhishek Upadhyaya

Biswaranjan Sahoo

Dillip Kumar Sethi

Tyagraj Thakur

 This study intends to take issue with an evolutionary view of literary history as reflected in the privilege accorded to modernism over realism. It tries to reverse this hierarchical relationship, using James Joyce’s literary career as a case study. More specifically, the thesis looks at the relationship between Stephen Hero and A Portrait, showing this to be an open-ended relationship where realism is not superseded but lays claim to being an equal partner with modernism in creating the unique literary art of Joyce.

An evolutionary logic usually dominates literary history. According to this logic, what comes later is considered to be better than what came before. Say for instance Dickens’ Great Expectations leaves less space for the reader to return to his previous work David Copperfield. This logic can be seen to be at work in the relationship that is presumed to exist between realism and modernism. Modernism is supposed to have transcended realism (David Lodge’s distinction between ‘classic realist text’ and modernist text). In the literary history, modernism is believed to have more polished and refined approaches to art which supersedes its preceding realistic approach.  

This has the unfortunate effect of leading literary scholars to ignore works owing allegiance to realism. We see this in the way that James Joyce’s literary career is projected. It is a career which supposedly begins with the less impressive realistic phase and culminates in the hugely significant modernist and symbolic phase. Thus, Dubliners and Stephen Hero belong to the first phase whereas A Portrait, Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake belong to the more cherished later phase.  This kind of taxonomy blinds us to the traffic between realism and modernism in Joyce’s writings as well as in the entire body of literary writing.  

In Joyce, the realistic vein never really got exhausted and therefore never can it be said to be transcended. If Ulysses is on one hand a vast symbolic structure, it is on the other hand a good realist novel about Dublin. And if A Portrait is a kunstlerroman in a modernist mode, then its earlier version, Stephen Hero is a bildungsroman in a realistic mode. A Portrait gives an artistic representation of some specific aspects of Dublin life but the developmental arc is quite evident in Stephen Hero.  Of course modernism provides a lyrical view of Dublin life but at the same time loses the dramatic engagement of characters in as present in the realistic terms. What this might mean is that in the rewriting that Joyce did realism’s loss was modernism’s gain. In the present thesis an attempt will be made to investigate the forgotten legacy of Joycean modernism as exemplified in Stephen Hero.

Chapter one will introduce the case of rereading or an alternative way of looking at the literary history. Here the argument will base on the complementary nature of realism and modernism. Chapter two will unearth the literature review and show the gap in existing knowledge when we move from realism to modernism. It will reverse the realism-modernism trajectory. Chapter three will bring in the loss of a wider view in the passage from Daedalus to Dedalus while dealing with the aspects of kunstlerroman in A Portrait and aspects of bildungsroman in Stephen Hero. Similarly, chapter four while juxtaposing both the texts will look into the two versions of art: the lyrical inclination of an artist in isolation and a pragmatic’s dramatic engagement in the society. It will also examine the different endings in both the texts and show the losses in the later work. This will be followed by a conclusion with substantial revelations that are aimed at the beginning and will also leave a few further riddles unexamined that would meet the requirements of future research.

Bibliography:

Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms.1999, rpt. Singapore: Thomson-Heinle, 2003. Print.

Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. Penguin Popular Classics. 1994. Print

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harpercollins. 2010. Print

Faulkner, Peter. Modernism. Critical Idiom Series. Routledge. 1977. Print

Grant, Damian. Realism. Critical Idiom Series. Methuen. 1970. Print

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Penguin Books, 1976. Print.

Joyce, James. Dubliners. Atlantic. 2009. Print

Joyce, James. Finnegan’s Wake. London: Penguin Books Ltd. 2000. Print

Joyce, James. Stephen Hero. London: Granada Publishing Limited, 1977. Print.

Joyce, James. Ulysses. Rupa & Co. 2006. Print

Joyce, Stanislaus, and Felix Geovaneli . James Joyce: A Memoire. The Hudson Review, Vol. 2, No. 4 Winter, 1950.  pp. 485-514. Print

Lodge, David. The Art of Fiction. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992. Print

Studying Jurgen Habermas’s Essay: “Modernity-An Incomplete Project”

                                                A Term Paper

Submitted for presentation to P.G Dept. of English

Utkal University Bhubaneswar

                                                                 For

                   Partial fulfillment of course work leading to PhD programme.

Submitted By:                                                                                Mentor:

Biswa Ranjan sahoo                                       Prof. Himansu Sekhar Mohapatra

PhD Course work Student     

Utkal University Bhubaneswar

On the eve of getting Theodor W. Adorno prize, in 1980 Jurgen Habermas delivered a lecture and the essay is an outcome of that. The essay highlights how ‘modernity’ as a project fails. He has taken many aspects like; aesthetic modernity, cultural and societal modernization, the project Enlightenment and negating culture, to present them in different sections of the essay. These aspects of his experiment over modernity have been rounded up by a suitable alternative. He attempted to show how modernism as a project grew and ultimately rejected. I will describe the above aspects one by one from my idea of his essay.

To Habermas, with the advent of post-modernity, we are forced to revaluate the modernity. Modernity connotes newness, a transition from the old to the new. One cannot confine it to an age, rather it is an epoch formed from an outright rejection of antiquity or from a renewed relation to the ancient. The most recent modernism, as observed by Habermas, makes an abstract opposition between tradition and present. Modern age is characterized by the advent of a new style. The emphatically modern document no longer borrows this power of being a classic from the authority of a past epoch; instead, a modern work becomes a classic because it has once been authentically modern. Hence modernism has a secret tie with classicism. “Of course whatever can survive time has always been considered classic.”  

The Discipline of Aesthetic Modernity

In Ezra Pound's words aesthetic modernity relies upon the quest to 'make it new'. For Habermas, modernism arises out of 'modernity', the condition of the new which lines the constantly changing path to the future. To quote Habermas, “Aesthetic modernism is characterized by attitudes which find common focus in a changed consciousness of time”, the time consciousness is expressed through metaphors of avant-garde, which is reflected in their venture to unknown landscape. This time consciousness of avant-gardes carry the touch of history but they use past in a very different way by objectifying scholarship of historicism. The creative activities done by the avant-gardes are nothing but posthisoricist attitude of recreating past. So the originality was diminishing. For Octavio Paz, “avant-garde of 1967 repeats the deeds and gestures of those of 1917”. The impulse of modernity is exhausted and yet to die. For Habermas ‘modernism is dominant but dead’. Hence the modernists became neoconservatist.  Daniel Bell's view is that Western societies are experiencing, in the guise of postmodernism, a split between culture and society. So concept of preserving modernism is the religious revival. This preserving is described in the next section.

 Cultural Modernity and Societal Modernization

For cultural modernity and societal modernization, the modernists became neoconservatist whose doctrine blurs the relation between the welcomed processes of societal modernization on the one hand, and the lamented cultural development on the other. But quite contrarily, their ideology gave birth to all aporias- difficulties, logical impasse and doubt. Societal modernization has modernized economy and society with capitalist mode of production, while cultural modernization has created differentiation of cultural value domains-science, morality and art.  Habermas disproves the old conservatives ‘attempt to escape into the nostalgia for premodernity to the neo-conservatives’.  But they attempt to impart religious faith through the awakening of substantive reason and young conservationist attempt to jump into post-modernity, claiming that the solutions to the problems of modernity can be searched within it. Therefore, there is no reason to find an escape from it. Habermas accepts that modernity has its discontents and he also accepts that the division of ‘life-world’ has separated ones ethics, aesthetics and cognition. The communicative rationality can link these faculties which assumes, language has potential for the emancipator charge. Instead of one-sided, instrumental reason; based on domination over others, Habermas’s reason is non-dominating and non-instrumental. Only such type of communicative rationality can limit the doom of the modern world.  For this, aesthetic should be given a new role-a role that can help to heal the division by drawing art near to the everyday praxis. 

The Project of Enlightenment

Modernism, he says, is a goal of Enlightenment, to enrich the ‘life world’ through reason. The Enlightenment is the point at which a new role for art was devised. Increased attention to objective science, universal law and morality and autonomous art would lead the way towards an improved world. Habermas talks of Max Weber’s separation of religion and metaphysics into three independent spheres: Science, morality and art. This division, Habermas says, ultimately gave space to three dimensions of culture, truth, morality and beauty, knowledge, justice and taste. Eventually, the project of Enlightenment aimed to develop these three aspects objective science, universal morality and low and autonomous art. In addition, it hoped to free these domains from their own mysterious and obscure traps, and to utilize this specialized culture for the enrichment of everyday life. But unfortunately, in the twentieth century, this division-science, morality and art have come to debase the autonomy itself and have created the problem. So it has attempted to negate the culture.

The false programs of Negation of Culture

The development of art in the 19th century encountered aestheticism i.e. art for art’s sake. Consequently, instead of colour, lines, sounds and movement the media of expression and techniques of production themselves became the aesthetic object. This process of alienating art and life continued in the 20th century too. The more art is alienated from life the more surrealist explosives forced a reconciliation art and life. But, these attempts to remove the distinction between art and life, artifact and object, appearance and reality, became spontaneous and nonsense experiments. These attempts, though, have brought art closer to life, but unfortunately, have strengthened the structures, which the art is required to dissolve. If art wishes to complete the modernity project it must refrain from increasingly extravagant attempts. For this the art should be a framework that legitimizes by making it obscure to the point where the observer sees nothing to be gained. To quote Terry Eagleton, "Art is at once precious and worthless", and it has a social role that diminishes with increased theoretical complication. For Habermas the modernity project remains unfulfilled because art wrongly assumed its existence. It was central to the life of the masses and its innovation had consequence outside the cultural arena.

Alternatives

Habermas concedes that modernity has thus failed. However he refuses to abandon the project. Rather he insists on learning from the mistakes of those extravagant programs, which tried to negate modernity. So, the project of modernity should be continued to establish a connection between modern culture and everyday life. He says: the project of modernity has not yet to be fulfilled. And the reception of art is only one of at least three of its aspects. The project aims at a differentiated reigning of modern culture with an everyday praxis that still depends on heritages, but would be impoverished through more traditionalism.

Thus, Habermas expects to have established this kind of linkage, but conversely for the near future he does not see very a strong possibility of such connection.

Postmodernism and Pinter: With Special Reference to The Dumb Waiter

                                                A Term Paper

Submitted for presentation to P.G Dept. of English Utkal University Bhubaneswar               

                                                                   For

                   Partial fulfillment of course work leading to PhD programme.

Submitted By:                                                                                Submitted to:

Biswa Ranjan sahoo                                                              Prof. Himanshu Sekhar Mohapatra

Course work for PhD Admission Student     

Utkal University Bhubaneswar

 

At the outset of my paper Postmodernism and Harold Pinter: with special reference to The Dumb Waiter, I would like to discuss, modernism giving attention to how it led up to postmodernism. Then my discussion will focus on postmodernism and its characteristics. Thereafter I would apply postmodernism to the selected text showing the applicability and relevance of the theory.

            Modernism began as a movement in art, culture, music, painting, literature and architecture. It started in Vienna in 1890-1910 in the form of art movements like cubism, Dadaism, surrealism, and futurism, which had a long lasting effect on France, Italy, and Germany and eventually in Britain. In all the arts influenced by modernism, we find a rejection of a large part of the tradition. Melody and harmony were forbidden in music; painting abstained from perspective and direct representation; the traditional forms and materials were rejected by architecture. The realistic convention in literature-chronological plot, continuous narratives relayed by omniscient narrators, closed endings etc. were amended in favour of the experimental forms.

            The chief characteristics of modernism were: emphasis on impressionism and subjectivism i.e., on how we see rather what we see, a preoccupation evident in the use of stream of consciousness; avoidance of the objectivity of omniscient external narration, clear cut moral position in case of novel; blurring of distinction between genres so that the novels became lyrical and poetry became documentary and prosaic; a new liking for fragmented forms so that the works became discontinuous narrative and random seeming collages of disparate materials; a tendency towards change so that the poems, plays, and novels raise their issues concerning their own nature, status and role. This great change made the literary works experimental and innovative.

            After its high point modernism seemed to retreat in 1930s, in 1960s resurgence took place- it can be said to share many features with the foregone modernist movements but it was certainly not a continuation of modernism. This is the movement called to be postmodernism. But it left an impact on postmodernism. Let’s define postmodernism. According to J.A. Cuddon, “postmodernism is characterized by an eclectic approach, [by a liking for] aleatory writing, [and for] parody and pastiche”. (60) So far this definition doesn’t apply exclusively to postmodernism because these methods were vigourously used by modernist writers. Let me little explain my stand how modernists used it. Eclectic suggests the fragmented forms which were best used by Eliot in The Waste Land-a modernist poem. ‘Aleatory forms’ meaning randomness of selection of various elements that was mostly used by Dadaist who made poems taking sentences from newspapers. The use of parody and pastiche clearly ignores the divine presence of omniscient narrator best found in modernist writings.

            Then what is postmodernism? Both modernism and postmodernism gave importance to fragmentation but they held radically divergent views on it. The former lamenting it, the later celebrating it. Ezra Pound in The Cantos, his major work called it a ragbag of modern age but regretted about the fact. In T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land, too, the persona laments the fragments. The lament, desperation, and pessimism are best expressed in fractured forms. For the postmodernists, by contrast, fragmentation is exhilarating, amusing and liberating phenomenon. In short postmodernists enjoyed what the modernists lamented.

Here I would like to discuss the famous trio of postmodernists. Jurgen Habermas, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard. For Jurgen Hagerman the modern period begins with Enlightenment. The project of modernity believed in breaking away from tradition, blind habit and slavish obedience to religious percepts and prohibition which could bring about a solution to the problems of society. Modernists lamented for a lost coherence, a lost system of values but they retained some faith in reason and the possibility of progress. For Habermas the poststructuralist thinkers rejected the kind of Enlightenment modernity. The modernists attacked the ideals of reason, clarity, truth, and progress, as they were thereby detached from the quest of justice Habermas identified them as ‘young conservatives’ and declared the project of modernity incomplete.  

            For Lyotard, Habeamas wished to rely on authoritative explanation of things from Christian, Marxist or mythical point of view. These metanarratives are really illusion fostered for difference, opposition and plurality. They impose a false sense of unity in social existence and discourse and thereby erasing the inherent plurality of social life.So Lyotard discredited metanarratives as being irrelevant to contemporary society where as mininarratives are contingent, temporary which provide basis for action for particular group.

            Baudrillard the third of the postmodernist trio in his book Simulations (1981), states that postmodern world is pervasively influenced by film, TV, and advertising that has led to a loss of distinction between real and imagined, surface and depth, reality and illusion. The result is a culture of ‘hyperreality’ in which the distinctions are blurred. He supposed that the sign which was indication of depth was lost and merely an index of other signs. He says when signs do not represent depth or underlying reality, but merely became of other signs then the whole system became a simulacrum.    

            Taking the above post modernist views I would like to look into my selected text The Dumb Waiter of Harold Pinter, to see whether it exemplifies the above claims of postmodernism or not. The reason for doing this is to rediscover Pinter as a postmodernist or to move the discussion beyond the absurdist or existentialist Pinter. Take language as one of the postmodern characteristics. In Samuel Beckett’s waiting for Godot, the clash of words between two tramps without meaning constitute the social bond. No doubt Estragon and Vladmir, the two tramps, play the language game without understanding its significance. The language is not transcendental and they are actually validating to the purpose of their mundane talks. But in Pinter the two hired assassins Ben and Gus engaged with the mundane discussion before their job. Gus’s questions to Ben are ignored. This shows the class superiority of Ben over Gus. No doubt both of them are lower class criminals; the senior Ben tries to imitate the aristocracy. For Pinter speech, as a strategy, is designed to cover the naked silence with a constant aura of violence and intimidation. Beckettian dialogues, as Lyotard says, atrophy the real where as reality is deliberately subdued by silence and menacing speeches in Pinter.

 Pinter’s stage in The Dumb Waiter is reduced to a small chamber without ventilation, incommunicable and prison like. The play focuses on jealousy, betrayal and class politics, but it is his dialogues-and the lack of dialogue-for which he is known. Pinter’s language, usually lower class vernacular has been described as poetic. His Irish forebear Beckett took silence to a new level. Beckett’s silences hint at alienation, boredom, and slow approach to death whereas Pinter’s are ominous and violent.

            The impact of off stage character is discernable in The Dumb Waiter and The Waiting for Godot. In both cases they are powerful and influence the onstage character. The later Godot presents a neutral God-like character for which the characters wait, but in the former case Wilson is a malevolent god whom the characters wait for in violent silence. The Dumb Waiter carries the Lyotard’s concept of mininarrative-consisting of one act, which is a postmodernist characteristic. It does not have formal plot, character, or action. In The Dumb Waiter the characters read the newspaper and quarrel for the trivial things whenever they forget the responsibility bestowed on them by their superficial Boss. Their silence, mini conversation, attention to command from Wilson and fear for death make their thought fragmented. They quarrel for the phrase ‘light the kettle’. They are engaged to fulfill the orders of sophisticated dishes, made through the dumb waiter- an elevator connected the upper floor for transporting food from the kitchen where the two rogues sheltered, inorder to impress their Boss. Though they remember their last victim, a girl, they do not lament for it. Gus is worried about the order so he asks questions to his senior Ben about when Wilson will come. The answer is most predicted he says, “He might not come. He might just send a message. He doesn’t always come”. At last for them the fragmentation becomes strategic, they welcome and enjoy. The play ends up when Gus goes on to the lavatory to get water, at that time the dumb waiter whistles, Ben listens to it and repeats it loud the order that the man has arrived and they will be commencing their job shortly. Hurriedly Gus comes out from the lavatory stripped off clothes and gun. Ben near dumb waiter poses to kill him and they stare.

            Postmodernism is not an approach to drama criticism as it is an approach to fiction or other semiotic practices but drama can also reveal interesting possibility when viewed in the light of postmodernism and Pinter is a very good case of postmodernist writing.

               

Working Bibliography

Abrams,M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New Delhi: Akash Press, 2007.print.

Barry,Peter. Beginning Theory. Oxford Road: Manchester U P, 2010.print.

Batty,Mark Taylor. Harold Pinter. New Delhi: Atlantic Press, 2010.print.

Pinter,Harold. The Dumb Waiter. New York: Grove Press, 1960.print.