Class Notes 5-2

Class Notes

March 7^th – March 18^th

Topic 1 Modernism (WW1-WW2)

• Disillusionment following WW1—many expatriates

             -Stein “Lost Generation”

             -New narrative techniques

• “Make it new!!!”—comes from the feeling of betrayal

• New forms of narrative

             -unreliable narrators

             -multiple narrators

             -minor characters as 1^st person narrators

             -non-linear narrative

             -stream of consciousness

Topic 2 Post-modernism (In States: End of WW2 / In Britain: Early 20’s)

• Television jump starts post-modernism. “All truth is local.”

• Post-modernism = Modernism – Universal truth + Irony

• Blending of high and low culture

• Self-reference

• The simulacrum

Topic 3 Surrealism

• A movement in the arts(visual, musical, dramatic, and literary) b/t WW1 and WW2

• Uses unexpected juxtapositions in ways intended to activate subconscious associations that highlight truths hidden from us when we are trapped in linear, “logical” patterns of thoughts.

• Uses juxtapositions—of images, works, etc—determined by psychological “thought processes” rather than logical thought processes.

• Attempts to join the words of dreams and fantasy to “reality” to create a larger reality—a “surreality.”

• dreamlike, playful, sometimes eerie or bizarre

• influenced by the work of Freud and Jung