Modernism

In general the term indicates :
A rejection of the 19th-Century literary tradition (including Realism, Naturalism)
a wide range of experimental and avant-garde trends (all the –isms: dadaism, surrealism, expressionism, futurism, etc.)
A reaction to the modern, urban experience
A rejection of bourgeois values

Compare:

And:
Portrait of Picasso by Juan Gris

Or:
Georges Braque, Girl with a Cross

OR:
Picasso, Blanquita Suárez (1917)

Modernism
Discontinuity and fragmentation
Juxtaposition and multiple points of view
Lack of a unitary self
“Self” is seen as artificial, a social fiction of undetermined status
Individual is stripped of the traditional defining categories of personhood
Weeping Woman (1937)

Modernist fiction
crisis
attempts to represent the underlying, multiplicitous truths of consciousness & psyche
rejection of external, unitary, coherent appearance of realist conventions
lack of causality
insufficiency of language
oppositional relations between the individual and the social, alienation
antibourgeois
first person narrator, often unreliable
A sense of urban dislocation and alienation
works by male writers tend to be misogynistic

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
born Józef Teodor Conrad Korzeniowski in Russian occupied Ukraine
1874 joined French merchant marines, later the British
1886 became British citizen
1890 traveled to Congo

Major works:
The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897)
Lord Jim (1900)
Nostromo (1904)
The Secret Agent (1907)
The Secret Sharer (1909)

Heart of Darkness (1899, 1902)
Central questions:
What is Conrad saying about European imperialism / civilization?
How are we to read this text? Should we read it at all?
“The title I am thinking of is 'The Heart of Darkness' but the narrative is not gloomy. The criminality of inefficiency and pure selfishness when tackling the civilising work in Africa is a justifiable idea. The subject is of our time distinc[t]ly – though not topically treated." (Collected Letters 2: 139-40).

The frame:
first narrator
view of England? (5 vs. 6-7)
conquest (7-8)
set up of Marlow’s narrative
his audience
Marlow

In 4 groups, discuss the following. Find at least 3 significant quotes for each.
Characterization of:
Europe
Europeans
Africa
Africans

Europe
“And this also, […] has been one of the dark places of the earth” (5)
London and gloom
the Continent “not so nasty as it looks” (9)
Brussels? “whited sepulchre” (11)
“a city of the dead” (13)

Europeans
bizarre, absurd behavior (16, 17, 19, 25)
the chief accountant (21)
the general manager (25)
“faithless pilgrims” (27, 29)
fist class agent (28)
backbiting and intriguing (29)
the Eldorado Exploring Expedition (37)

European values?
Marlow “did not represent his class” (5)
efficiency (7)
“backbone” “character” (21)
Marlow and lies (32)
the work (34)
manners (35)

Africa

Africa
“a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over” (9)
first sight: “a God forsaken wilderness” (15)
“gloomy circle of some Inferno” (19)
“silent wilderness […] like evil or truth waiting” (26)
“the wilderness without a sound took him into its bosom again” (28)
primeval mud, primordial forest (31)
“I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that couldn’t talk” (32)

Africans
first sight (16)
“unhappy savages” (18)
“his brother phantom rested its forehead” (20)
“these creatures” (20)
“mysterious niggers” (22), “sulky niggers” (34) “savages”

Achebe’s critique:
Forum
Africa as “the other world”, antithesis of Europe
(lack of) language and Africans (49, 83)
fear of “kinship” with Africans (44)
lack of history (43-44, 50)
Africa as symbolic setting
dehumanization of Africans (“it” 20, fragmented 55, “not inhuman” 44, “it” 81)
racism underlying the colonial enterprise
Kurtz’s madness due to contact with Africa (59, 60, 72, 82)

Kurtz:
a “remarkable man” (22)
painting (29-30)
progress” (30)
“All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz” (61)
The report (61-62)
his “talk” (58)
vs. the helmsman (62)
lacked restraint vs. the cannibals (72)
The posts (71-72)
“the spell […] of the wilderness” (82)
mad soul (83)
His final words (86)

Characterization of women: Forum
the aunt: “out of touch with the truth” (14)
the mistress (75-76, 84)
the Intended (59, 88, 92, 95)