ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

ROOM OF ONE’S OWN BY VIRGINIA WOOLF


Virginia Woolf, one of the founders of the movement known as Modernism, is one of the most important woman writers in English. Her "stream-of-consciousness" essays and novels provide an invaluable insight into both her own life experiences and those of women at the beginning of the twentieth century. Her most famous works include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando: A Biography (1928), The Waves (1931), and her most recognized work, A Room of One's Own (1929).

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay, based on Woolf's lectures at a women's college at Cambridge University in 1928. In it, Woolf addresses her thoughts on "the question of women and fiction," interpreted by Woolf as many questions. In A Room of One's Own, Woolf ponders the significant question of whether or not a woman could produce art of the high quality of Shakespeare. In doing so, she examines women's historical experience as well as the distinctive struggle of the woman artist.


Questions to Think About:

What is the meaning of the title of this piece?

When asked to speak of women and fiction, Woolf replies with a discussion of why it is important for women writers to have their independence. According to Woolf, what is the relationship or connection between rooms of one's own and "women and fiction"?

Woolf defines the question of women and fiction as being three inextricable questions: women and what they are like; women and the fiction they write; and women and what is written about them. What answers does she provide for each of these questions? What are women like, according to Woolf? What kinds of fiction do (or, as of 1928, did) women write? What is (or, as of 1928, was) written about women?

Why does Woolf say she is disappointed in herself for being unable to come to a conclusion that students can write in their notebooks and take away from them? Why would this be so important as a part of a lecture? Why would it be so important to Woolf to be able to do so?

Woolf writes, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is going to write." What does this mean to Woolf?

Why does it matter so much when Woolf walks on the turf at Cambridge University, and what does she make of this event? Why is a woman barred from admission to the University's library? Why does her exclusion make her so angry that she vows never to ask for "such hospitality" again?

What importance is it that the dinner at the women's college is "not good"? How does this lead to an exloration of the founding of the women's college? What is Woolf's broader conclusion about women and their cultural poverty that this incident leads to?

What does Cambridge University represent for Woolf, a Modernist? How is it a symbol of Victorianism?

Why are men so rich and women so poor, according to Woolf? What are the historical roots for women's poverty? What explains the startling contrast between women's estate in fiction (as "shining beacons" and as symbols of humanity) and in history (as slaves)?

What is the significance of the list of references to women she discovers in the course of her reading? What sorts of arguments about women does Woolf find in English writing prior to 1928?

Why has the woman artist, according to Woolf, led a life of such "disorder" and struggle? How does Woolf argue against the assumption that "no woman can write the plays of Shakespeare"?

What does Woolf mean by the statement, "Who can measure the heat and passion of a poet's heart when it is caught and tangled in a woman's body"?

Why, according to Woolf, have so many women written under assumed--male--names?

What history of women's writing does Woolf identify in A Room of One's Own?

Woolf discusses the ways in which limits of propriety blighted Jane Austen and Emily Brontë's writing, but she also argues that they both wrote "as women write." What does Woolf mean by this? What does her identification of this quality in Austen's and Brontë's writing say about Woolf's view of women's cultures?

What does Woolf mean when she says, "There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of the mind"?

avant-garde

Avant-garde in French means front guard, advance guard, or vanguard. People often use the term in French and English to refer to people or works that are experimental or novel, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.
According to its champions, the avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm within definitions of art/culture/reality.
The vanguard, a small troop of highly skilled soldiers, explores the terrain ahead of a large advancing army and plots a course for the army to follow. This concept is applied to the work done by small bands of intellectuals and artists as they open pathways through new cultural or political terrain for society to follow. Due to implied meanings stemming from the military terminology, some people feel the avant-garde implies elitism, especially when used to describe cultural movements.
Thus avant-garde in music may refer to an extreme form of musical improvisation in which little or no regard is given by soloists to any underlying chord structure or rhythm.
The term may also refer to the promotion of radical social reforms, the aims of its various movements presented in public declarations called manifestos. Over time, avant-garde became associated with movements concerned with art for art's sake, focusing primarily on expanding the frontiers of aesthetic experience, rather than with wider social reform.
The origin of the application of this French term to art can be fixed at May 17, 1863, the opening of the Salon des Refusés in Paris, organised by painters whose work was rejected for the annual Paris Salon of officially sanctioned academic art. Salons des Refusés were held in 1874, 1875, and 1886.
By some assessments, avant-garde art includes street art, for example graffiti and any other movement which pushes forward the accepted boundaries.
For instance, whereas Marcel Duchamp's urinal may have been avant-garde at the time, if someone created it again today it would not be avant-garde because it has already been done. Avant-garde is therefore temporal and relates to the process of art's unfolding in time. Duchamp's work retains its distinction as avant-garde even today, because it marks a historical point in the advancement of the conception of art, relative to the period in which it surfaced. Similarly, "avant-garde" can be applied to the forerunners of any new movements.
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Avantgarde is an indie rock band based in Spain.
Avantgarde came into existence in the year 2003 when Miguel Goñi (born 1976, Spain), Phillippe D´huart (born 1975, Belgium) and Carlos Piris (born 1976, Spain) sought to record their first album. While recording the music in Madrid, they were looking for a singer. While in a short trip to London, Carlos Piris met Aida Galway (born 1979, USA) at a U2 concert and thanks to their incredibly similar tastes in music they instantly became friends. When Carlos returned to Spain, they began a long distance relationship, writing on regular basis. The band would send songs to Galway and he would practise and mould the songs in London. By year's end had, they decided that Aida would join the group in Spain, rather than moving the whole group to London.
An experimental novel is a written work - often a novel or a magazine that places great emphasis on innovations regarding style and technique.
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Early History
The first text generally cited in this category is Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. This extraordinary text "pre-breaks" most of the "rules" that would be subsequently advanced for the writing of fiction.
As a "life story" Tristram Shandy is utterly impractical, spending the first half on trying to have the titular hero be born, and on utterly irrelevant digressions about the narrator's father, his Uncle Toby, and anybody else within range of the narrative. Suddenly the narrative leaps forward by decades, and the narrator is seen near the end of his life, riding a coach at breakneck speed across France, trying to escape Death.
In its postmodern approach to narrative, and its willingness to use such graphic elements as an all-black page (for mourning) and a page of marbled end-paper within the text, Sterne's novel is a foundational text for many post-World War II authors. But alongside the experimental novel, critical attacks on the experimental novel are also to be found at this early period. Samuel Johnson, for instance, is quoted in Boswell as saying "The merely odd does not last. Sterne did not last."
Almost as early is Denis Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist and His Master



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Ergodic literature is literature that requires a "non-trivial effort" to traverse the text. This effort must be extranoematic, that is, it must consist of more than simply reading by moving one's eyes along lines of text, turning pages and mentally interpreting what one reads. The term was coined by Espen Aarseth in his book Cybertext--Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, and is derived from the Greek words ergon, meaning "work" and hodos, meaning "path". The most commonly cited definition of ergodic is from pages 1-2 of Aarseth's book:
In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text. If ergodic literature is to make sense as a concept, there must also be nonergodic literature, where the effort to traverse the text is trivial, with no extranoematic responsibilities placed on the reader except (for example) eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages.
Cybertext is a subcategory of ergodic literature that Aarseth defines as "texts that involve calculation in their production of scriptons." (Cybertext, page 75) Thus, hypertext fiction of the simple node and link variety is ergodic literature but not cybertext. A non-trivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text, as the reader must constantly select which link to follow, but a link, when clicked, will always lead to the same node. A chat bot such as ELIZA is a cybertext because when the reader types in a sentence, the text-machine actually performs calculations on the fly that generate a textual response (ELIZA is categorised as a cybertext on page 75 and in figure 3.2). The I Ching is likewise a cybertext because it contains the rules for its own reading. The reader actually carries out the calculation, but the rules are clearly embedded in the text itself. It has been argued that these distinctions are not entirely clear, and scholars still debate the fine points of the definitions of ergodic literature and cybertext. [1]
One of the major innovations of the concept of ergodic literature is that it is not medium-specific. New media researchers have tended to focus on the medium of the text, stressing that it is for instance paper-based or electronic. Aarseth broke with this basic assumption that the medium was the most important distinction, and argued that the mechanics of texts need not be medium-specific. Ergodic literature is not defined by medium, but by the way in which the text functions. Thus, both paper-based and electronic texts can be ergodic: "The ergodic work of art is one that in a material sense includes the rules for its own use, a work that has certain requirements built in that automatically distinguishes between successful and unsuccessful users." (Cybertext, p 179)
The examples Aarseth gives include a diverse group of texts: wall inscriptions of the temples in ancient Egypt that are connected two-dimensionally (on one wall) or three dimensionally (from wall to wall or room to room); the I Ching; Apollinaire’s “calligrammes” in which the words of the poem “are spread out in several directions to form a picture on the page, with no clear sequence in which to be read”; Ayn Rand’s play Night of January 16th, in which members of the audience form a jury that chooses one of two endings; Marc Saporta’s Composition No. 1, Roman, which is a novel with shuffleable pages; Raymond Queneau’s One Hundred Thousand Million Poems; B. S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates; Milorad Pavic’s Landscape Painted with Tea; Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA; Will Crowther and Don Woods’s Adventure; James Meehan’s Tale-spin; William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter’s Racter; Michael Joyce’s afternoon: a story; Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle’s Multi-User Dungeon (aka MUD1); and James Aspnes’s TinyMUD. With the exception of Tale-spin, where a program generates a linear text, all these examples can be said to require non-trivial effort from the reader, who must participate actively in the construction of the text. It has been argued that the effort required to read Apollinaire's calligrammes is not [2].
The concepts of cybertext and ergodic literature were of seminal importance to new media studies, in particular literary approaches to digital texts and to game studies.

paradise lost

PARADISEL LOST
BOOK IX

OUTLINE STORY OF BOOK I-VIII:
LIKE OTHER EPIC POETS, MILTON TOO PLUNGES AT ONCE ITO MIDDLE OF HIS STORY INSTEAD OF BEGINNING. THUS BOOK I OPEN WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HIS STORY INSTEAD OF BEGINNING FROM THE BEGINNING. THUS BOOK I OPENS WITH AN ACCOUNT OF FALLEN ANGELS – SATAN AND HIS FOLLOWERS – IN HELL, AND THE ACCOUNT OF WAR IN HEAVEN WHICH RESULTED IN FALL IS GIVEN LATER ON THE BOOKS V-VIII, ALONG WITH THE ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. SATAN, THOUGH DEFEATED AND FALLEN, DOESN’T DESPAIR. HE ENCOURAGES HIS FOLLOWERS, A VAST HALL, ‘PANDEMONIUM’, IS BUILT, WHERE THEY TOLD A CONFERENCE TO DECIDE UPON THEIR FUTURE COURSE OF ACTION. AFTER MUCH DISCUSSION IT WAS DECIDED THAT THEY WOULD HAVE THEIR REVENGE UPON GOD BY CURRUPTING THE ‘NEW WORLD’ THROUGH ‘CHAOS’, REACHES THE EARTH AND THE Garden of Eden. IN THE FORM OF A SERPENT, HE TEMPTS EVE TO TASTE THE FRUIT OF FORBIDDEN TREE. HE SUCCEDS IN SEDUCING EVE, AND ADAM, DESPITE THE WARNING OF GOD’S ANGEL ‘RAPHEL’, TASTES THE FRUIT OF ‘THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE’. HE THUS COMMITS ‘THE SIN OF DIOBEDIENCE’. THE RESULT IS DEVINE PUNISHMENT. CONSEQUENTLY, THERE IS THE LOSS OF PARADISE AND THE FALL OF MAN. SUFFERING BECOMES THE LOT OF MAN AS A RESULT OF THIS ORIGINAL SIN.SATAN, TOO, IS PUNISHED, AS HE AND HIS FOLLOWERS ARE TRANSFORMED INTO HISSING SERPENTS.








ABOUT ‘PARADISE LOST’:

PARADIAE LOST IS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. THOUGH IT IS AN EPIC DEALING WITH THE FALL OF MAN AND ORIGINAL SIN, YET IT IS SO INFLUENCED BY THE PERSONALITY OF MILTON, AND BY THE CURRENTS OF RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL STRIFE IN COTEMPORARY ENGLAND, THAT IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE EPIC, IT IS NECESSARY TO KNOW SOMETHING ABOT THE MAN HIMSELF AND CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH HE LIVED. THIS IS SO BECAUSE JOHN MILTON HIMSELF, IS IN EVERY LINE OF PARADISE LOST. IN THE EPIC IT IS MILTON HIMSELF WHOM YOU SEE, SATAN, HIS ADAM, HIS RAPHEL, ALMOST HIS EVE-ARE ALL JOHN MILTON. SAINTBURY SAYS: “WE are likely to misread not a little of the work, if we do not know the life of the poet.”

MILTON’S SATAN IS A SELF-POTRAIT IN MANY WAYS. CRITICS HAVE NOTICED THE FACT THAT SATAN IS GLORIFIED TO AN EXTENT, WHICH MAKES IF MILTON MEANT HIM TO BE THE HERO OF THE EPIC. MILTON HAS UNCOCIOULY ENDOWED SATAN WITH HEROIC PORTIONS, TRANSFERRING HIM HIS OWN LOVE OF LIBERTY AND INDEPENDENCE, AND ALMOST MAKING HIM A VICTIM OF DIVINE TYRANNY, AS HE HIMSELF WAS THAT OF THE STUARTS. IN MANY RESPECTS, SATAN IS AN EXPRESSION OF MILTON’S SPIRIT OF DEFIANCE OF THE NEW ORDER, WHICH WAS ESTABLISHED ON THE COLLAPSE OF THE ‘PURITAN COMMONWEALTH’ AFTER THE DEATH OF CROMWELL. MILTON’S RELIGIOUS ZEAL IS SEEN IN THE VERY THEME OF THE POEM, I.E., TO JUSTIFY THE WAYS OF GOD TO MAN, AND HIS PREJUDICE AGAINST WOMAN KIND IS REFLECTED IN HIS TREATMENT OF EVE AND TIRADE OF ADAM AGAINST MARRIAGE.

CHARACTERS IN PARADISE LOST

GOD AND HIS ANGELS:

MILTON’S HEAVENLY BEINGS ARE ARRANGED IN A HESTERICAL ORDER, GOD AND HIS SON BEING AT THE APEX. GOD, THE FATHER, IS NON-MANIFESTED, AND UNKNOWABLE, THE SON BEING HIS SOLE MANIFESTATION. WE ARE CLEARLY TOLD IN BOOK-III THAT GOD, “whom else no creature can behold” IS MADE VISIBLE IN SON. IN THIS RESPECT MILTON IS QUIE CLOSE TO SOM WHO IS AGENT OF CREATION, AND AS SOON AS THE WORLD HAS BEEN CREATED MILTON SPEAKS OF THE ‘SON’ AND NO LONGER OF ‘GOD’.

GOD IS EVERYWHERE, HE IS EXTENDED INFINITELY BOTH IN SPACE AND TIME. SINCE GOD IS EVERYWHERE, HE HAS NO CONTRACT TO RETIRE HIS INFINITE ESSENCE SO AS TO MAKE ROOM FOR THE NEWLY CREATED WORLD. IN OTHER WORDS, GOD IS OMNIPRESENT. HE WAS PRESENT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING AND CREATED THE WORLD OUT OF HIMSELF. AT TIMES, MILTON SEEMS TO IMPLY THAT THERE IS POWER, CALLED FATE, SUPERIOR TO GOD.

MILTON WAS RIGHT IN KEEPING GOD AMYSTERY; BUT AS RALEIGH POINTS OUT HE OFTEN ERRS IN MAKING HIS GOD TOO HUMAN. “THE GLORY OF GOD”, SAID SOLOMON, “IS TO CONCEAL A THING”/”BUT THE GLORY OF MILTON’G GOD IS TO EXPLAIN ATHING.”THE DIETY IN PARADISE LOST IS TOO GARRULOUS; HE TALKS CONSTANTLY AT LENGTH, AND IN SOME OF HIS SPEECHES THERE IS EVEN A TOUCH OF BOASTFULNESS.

MILTON HAS HUMANISE GOD, THE SON OF GOD AND ANGELS. THE ANGELS ARE HUMAN TYPES, BUT THEY, BUT THEY HAVE ADDITIONAL POWERS WHICH DITINGUISH THEM FROM HUMAN BEINGS. THUS THEY ARE SUFFUSED WITH DIVINE GLORY. THEY HAVE HEAVENLY LUSTURE WHICH SATAN AND HIS FOLLOWERA GRDUALLY LOSE AFTER THEIR FALL. THEY CAN CONTRACT AND EXPAND THEIR SIZE AND CAN CHANGE THEIR SEX AT WILL. BUT LIKE MEN THEY ARE CORPERIAL, i.e., THEY HAVE FORM AND MATTER. LIKE MEN THEY HAVE THEIR SOCIAL CATEGORIES AND RANKS.MACMILLIAN WRITES, “MILTON DESCRIBES THE MIGHT, WISDOM, AND ELLOQUENCE OF THE FALLEN ANGELS WITH SUCH SUBLIME POWER THAT THE DEFIANCE WHICH THEY HURL TOWARDS THE VAULT OF HEAVEN SEEMS FOR THE MOMENT SOMETHING MORE THAN AN EMPTY BOAST…..”



SATAN ( AS THE HERO OF PARADISE LOST):

SATN IS A MUCH MAGNIFICENTLY DRAWN CHARACTER AND SUCH IS THE FACINATION HE HAS EXERCISED ON THE READERS OF PARADISE LOST THAT EVER SINCE DRYDEN SAID THAT SATAN IS ‘MILTON’S HERO’ CRITIC AFTER CRITIC HAS TAKEN HIM TO BE THE HERO OF PARADISE LOST. THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT HE DOMINATES BOOK I AND II OF THE EPIC IN WHICH HE TOWERS HEAD AND SHOLDERS ABOVE HIS FOLLOWERS, BUT AFTER THAT THERE IS PROGRESSIVE DEGRADATION AND SHRINKAGE IN HIS CHARACTER. A CORROSPONDING DETEORATION OF CHARACTER ACCOMPANIES HIS GRADUAL LOSS OF PHYSICAL BRIGHTNESS. HIS GRADUAL LOSS OF PHYSICAL BRIGHTNESS IS ACCOMPANIED BY A CORROSPONDING DETERIORATION OF CHARACTER. SAYS C.S.LEWIS IN THIS CONNECTION, BY HIS OWN WILL HE BECOMES A SERPENT IN BOOK IX: IN BOOK X HE HIMSELF IS VIIDLY AWARE WHETHER HE WILL OR NO. THIS PROGRESSIVE DEGRADATION OF WHICH HE HIMSELF IS VIVIDLY AWARE, IS CAREFULLY MARKED IN THE POEM. HE BEGINS BY FIGHTING FOR ‘LIBERTY’, HOWEVER MISCONCEIVED; BUT ALMOST AT ONCE SINKS TO FIGHTING FOR ‘HONOUR, DOMINION, GLORIE, AND RENOUNE’. DEFEATED IN THIS, HE SINKS TO THAT GREAT DESIGN WHICH MAKES THE MAIN SUBJECT OF THE POEM-THE DESIGN OF RUINING TWO CREATURES WHO HAD NEVER DONE HIM ANY HARM, NO LONGER IN THE SERIOUS HOPE OF VICTORY, BUT ONLY TO ANNOY THE ENEMY WHOM HE CANNOT DIRECTLY ATTACK. THIS BRINGS HIM AS A SPY INTO THE UNIVERSE, AND SOON NOT EVEN A POLITICAL SPY, BUT A MERE PEEPING ‘TOM LEERING AND WRITHING’ IN AS HE OVERLOOKS THE PRIVACY OF THE TWO LOVERS, AND THERE DESCRIBED, ALMOST FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE POEM, NOT AS FALLEN ARCHANGELOR HELL’S DREAD EMPEROR, BUT SIMPLY AS THE ‘DEVIL’. “FROM HERO TO GENERAL TO POLITICIAN, FROM POLITICIAN TO SECRET SERVICE AGENT, AND THENCE TO A THING THAT PEERS IN AT BEDROOM OR BATHROOM WINDOWS, AND THENCE TO A THOAD, AND FINALLY TO A SNAKE-SUCH IS PROGRESSIVE SATAN.”

MILTON INTENDED SATAN-AT LEAST IN THE EARLY BOOKS-TO BE THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE OLD HEROIC VALUES WHICH WERE TO BE SUSPENDED BY ‘THE BETTER FORTITUDE OF PATIENCE AND HEROIC MATRYDOM.

MODERNISM IN BREAK WITH TRADITION

MODERNISM IN BREAK WITH TRADITION




Modernism, as a tendency, emerged in mid-nineteenth century Western

Europe. It is rooted in the idea that the "traditional" forms of art,

literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life had

become outdated; therefore it was essential to sweep them aside. In this

it drew on previous revolutionary movements, including liberalism and

communism. Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of

existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that

which was "holding back" progress, and replacing it with new, and

therefore better, ways of reaching the same end. In essence, the

modernist movement argued that the new realities of the industrial and

mechanized age were permanent and imminent, and that people should adapt

their world view to accept that what was new was also good and pretty.



The first half of the nineteenth century for Europe was marked by a

number of wars and revolutions, which reveal the rise of the ideas and

doctrines now identified as Romanticism: emphasis on individual

subjective experience, the supremacy of "Nature" as a subject for art,

revolutionary or radical extensions of expression, and individual

liberty. By mid-century, however, a synthesis of these ideas with stable

governing forms had emerged, partly in reaction to the failed Romantic

and democratic Revolutions of 1848. It was exemplified by Otto von

Bismarck's realpolitik and by "practical" philosophical ideas such as

positivism. Called by various names - in Great Britain it is designated

the "Victorian era" - this stabilizing synthesis was rooted in the idea

that reality dominates over impressions that are subjective.

Modernism can best be described, in intent, as a reaction to the seemingly harsh tradition of Victorianism,

which saw its own decay at the turn of the Twentieth century. Victorianism espoused the idea that a

singular world view was the source of truth and that ideologies revolved around clearly defined

dichotomies between good and evil, right and wrong, hero and villain. Modernism, in and of itself,

dispelled these notions. It presented antithetical movements to Victorianism (Dada, Surrealism,

Symbolism) that destroyed these previously defined divisions by presenting anti-heroic characters and

unclassifiable persons and objects or, as is common in the Imagist case, no hero at all. Through these

creations and counter-creations, one sees the revolutionary spirits, expropriations, and misappropriations

that have come to characterize Modernism. Revolution and rebellion, in this sense, is not limited to simply

attacks or criticisms of the Victorian way, but as will be seen, is applicable to all previous literary tradition.

Modernism, therefore, argues (once more against the tradition of Victorianism) that all things are relative.

While the Victorians stressed clear views, Modernism not only presents opposite views but also different

ways of interpreting the views presented; no longer did an author or poet necessarily enforce strict

viewpoints or even singular viewpoints ("Modernism - a Working Definition"). With these two major

tenets in mind, it is that this essay proposes that Modernism is simply a revolution against literary tradition.

Goals of Modernism



Many modernists believed that by rejecting tradition they could discover

radically new ways of making art. Arnold Schoenberg believed that by

rejecting traditional tonal harmony, the hierarchical system of

organizing works of music which had guided music making for at least a

century and a half, and perhaps longer, he had discovered a wholly new

way of organizing sound, based in the use of twelve-note rows (See

Twelve-tone technique). This led to what is known as serial music by the

post-war period.








From the 1870s onward, the ideas that history and civilization were

inherently progressive and that progress was always good came under

increasing attack. Writers Wagner and Ibsen had been reviled for their

own critiques of contemporary civilization and for their warnings that

accelerating "progress" would lead to the creation of individuals

detached from social norms and isolated from their fellow men. Arguments

arose that not merely were the values of the artist and those of society

different, but that Society was antithetical to Progress, and could not

move forward in its present form. Philosophers called into question the

previous optimism. The work of Schopenhauer was labelled "pessimistic"

for its idea of the "negation of the will", an idea that would be both

rejected and incorporated by later thinkers such as Nietzsche.

Two of the most disruptive thinkers of the period were, in biology,

Charles Darwin and, in political science, Karl Marx. Darwin's theory of

evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty of the

general public, and the sense of human uniqueness of the intelligentsia.

The notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as "lower

animals" proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an

ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx seemed to present a political version

of the same proposition: that problems with the economic order were not

transient, the result of specific wrong doers or temporary conditions,

but were fundamentally contradictions within the "capitalist" system.

Both thinkers would spawn defenders and schools of thought that would

become decisive in establishing modernism.



Separately, in the arts and letters, two ideas originating in France

would have particular impact. The first was Impressionism, a school of

painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but

outdoors



The second school was Symbolism, marked by a belief that language is

expressly symbolic in its nature and a portrail of patrotism, and that

poetry and writing should follow connections that the sheer sound and

texture of the words create. The poet Stéphane Mallarmé would be of

particular importance to what would occur afterwards.



At the same time social, political, and economic forces were at work that

would become the basis to argue for a radically different kind of art and

thinking. Chief among these was steam-powered industrialization, which

produced buildings that combined art and engineering in new industrial

materials such as cast iron to produce railroad bridges and

glass-and-iron train sheds- or the Eiffel Tower, which broke all previous

limitations on how tall man-made objects could be- and at the same time

offered a radically different environment in urban life. The miseries of industrial urbanism, and the

possibilities created by scientific examination of subjects brought changes that would shake a

European civilization which had, until then, regarded itself as having a

continuous and progressive line of development from the Renaissance. With

the telegraph's harnessing of a new power, offering instantaneity at a

distance, the experience of time itself was altered.
.


William Everdell has argued that Modernism began with Richard

Dedekind's division of the real number line in 1872 and Boltzmann's

statistical thermodynamics in 1874; but Clement Greenberg wrote "What can

be safely called Modernism" emerged in the middle of the last century-

and rather locally, in France, with Baudelaire in literature and Manet in

painting, and perhaps with Flaubert, too, in prose fiction. (It was a

while later, and not so locally, that Modernism appeared in music and

architecture)."[1] The "avant-garde" was what Modernism was called at

first, and the term remained to describe movements which identify

themselves as attempting to overthrow some aspect of tradition or the

status quo.


In the 1890s a strand of thinking began to assert that it was necessary

to push aside previous norms entirely, instead of merely revising past

knowledge in light of current techniques. The growing movement in art

paralleled such developments as the Theory of Relativity in physics; the

increasing integration of the internal combustion engine and

industrialization; and the increased role of the social sciences in

public policy. It was argued that, if the nature of reality itself was in

question, and if restrictions which had been in place around human

activity were falling, then art, too, would have to radically change.

Thus, in the first fifteen years of the twentieth century a series of

writers, thinkers, and artists made the break with traditional means of

organizing literature, painting, and music.


Sigmund Freud offered a view of subjective states involving an

unconscious mind full of primal impulses and counterbalancing

self-imposed restrictions, a view that Carl Jung would combine with a

belief in natural essence to stipulate a collective unconscious that was

full of basic typologies that the conscious mind fought or embraced.


Friedrich Nietzsche championed a philosophy in which forces,

specifically the 'Will to power', were more important than facts or

things. Similarly, the writings of Henri Bergson championed the vital

'life force' over static conceptions of reality. What united all these

writers was a romantic distrust of the Victorian positivism and

certainty. Instead they championed, or, in the case of Freud, attempted

to explain, irrational thought processes through the lens of rationality

and holism. This was connected with the century-long trend to thinking in

terms of holistic ideas, which would include an increased interest in the

occult, and "the vital force".


Out of this collision of ideals derived from Romanticism, and an attempt

to find a way for knowledge to explain that which was as yet unknown,

came the first wave of works, which, while their authors considered them

extensions of existing trends in art, broke the implicit contract that

artists were the interpreters and representatives of bourgeois culture

and ideas. These "modernist" landmarks include Arnold Schoenberg's atonal

ending to his Second String Quartet in 1908, the abstract expressionist

paintings of Wassily Kandinsky starting in 1903 and culminating with the

founding of the Blue Rider group in Munich, and the rise of cubism from

the work of Picasso and Georges Braque in 1908.



The wave of the modern movement broke with the past in the first

decade of the twentieth century, and tried to redefine various artforms

in a radical manner. Leading lights within the literary wing of this

movement (or, rather, these movements) include:

* Rafael Alberti
* Gabriele D'Annunzio
* Guillaume Apollinaire
* Louis Aragon
* Djuna Barnes
* Basil Bunting
* Jean Cocteau
* Joseph Conrad
* Tyler Kiefner
* H.D.
* T. S. Eliot
* Paul Eluard
* William Faulkner
* Sigrid Hjertén
* Max Jacob
* James Joyce
* Franz Kafka
* D. H. Lawrence
* Zack Sasnow
* Wyndham Lewis
* Federico García Lorca
* Marianne Moore
* Robert Musil
* Ezra Pound
* Kevin Blackey
* Marcel Proust
* Pierre Reverdy
* Gertrude Stein
* Wallace Stevens
* Tristan Tzara
* Paul Valery
* Robert Walser
* William Carlos Williams
* Virginia Woolf
* W. B. Yeats



Composers such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and George Antheil represent

modernism in music. Artists such as Gustav Klimt, Picasso, Matisse,

Mondrian, and the movements Les Fauves, Cubism and the Surrealists

represent various strains of Modernism in the visual arts, while

architects and designers such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies

van der Rohe brought modernist ideas into everyday urban life. Several

figures outside of artistic modernism were influenced by artistic ideas;

for example, John Maynard Keynes was friends with Woolf and other writers

of the Bloomsbury group.



The Explosion of Modernism 1910-1930


On the eve of World War I a growing tension and unease with the social

order, seen in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the agitation of

"radical" parties, also manifested itself in artistic works in every

medium which radically simplified or rejected previous practice. In 1913,

famed Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, working for Sergei Diaghilev and

the Ballets Russes, composed Rite of Spring for a ballet, choreographed

by Vaslav Nijinsky that depicted human sacrifice, and young painters such

as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were causing a shock with their

rejection of traditional perspective as the means of structuring

paintings-a step that none of the Impressionists, not even Cézanne, had

taken.



These developments began to give a new meaning to what was termed

'Modernism': It embraced disruption, rejecting or moving beyond simple

Realism in literature and art, and rejecting or dramatically altering

tonality in music. This set modernists apart from 19th century artists,

who had tended to believe in 'progress'. Writers like Dickens and

Tolstoy, painters like Turner, and musicians like Brahms were not

'radicals' or 'Bohemians', but were instead valued members of society who

produced art that added to society, even if it was, at times, critiquing

less desirable aspects of it. Modernism, while it was still "progressive"

increasingly saw traditional forms and traditional social arrangements as

hindering progress, and therefore the artist was recast as a

revolutionary, overthrowing rather than enlightening.



Modernist philosophy and art were still viewed as being part, and only a

part, of the larger social movement. Artists such as Klimt and Cézanne,

and composers such as Mahler and Richard Strauss were "the terrible

moderns"-those farther to the avant-garde were more heard of than heard.

Polemics in favour of geometric or purely abstract painting were largely

confined to 'little magazines' (like The New Age in the UK) with tiny


circulations. Modernist primitivism and pessimism were controversial but

were not seen as representative of the Edwardian mainstream, which was

more inclined towards a Victorian faith in progress and liberal optimism





However, World War I and its subsequent events were the cataclysmic

upheavals that late 19th century artists such as Brahms had worried

about, and avant-gardists had embraced. First, the failure of the

previous status quo seemed self-evident to a generation that had seen

millions die fighting over scraps of earth-prior to the war, it had been

argued that no one would fight such a war, since the cost was too high.

Second, the birth of a machine age changed the conditions of life-machine

warfare became a touchstone of the ultimate reality. Finally, the

immensely traumatic nature of the experience dashed basic assumptions:

Realism seemed to be bankrupt when faced with the fundamentally fantastic

nature of trench warfare, as exemplified by books such as Erich Maria

Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. Moreover, the view that

mankind was making slow and steady moral progress came to seem ridiculous

in the face of the senseless slaughter of the Great War. The First World

War, at once, fused the harshly mechanical geometric rationality of

technology with the nightmarish irrationality of myth.



Thus in the 1920s, modernism, which had been such a minority taste before

the war, came to define the age. Modernism was seen in Europe in such

critical movements as Dada, and then in constructive movements such as

Surrealism, as well as in smaller movements such as the Bloomsbury Group.

Each of these "modernisms", as some observers labelled them at the time,

stressed new methods to produce new results. Again, Impressionism was a

precursor: breaking with the idea of national schools, artists and

writers adopted ideas of international movements. Surrealism, Cubism,

Bauhaus, and Leninism are all examples of movements that rapidly found

adopters far beyond their original geographic base.



Exhibitions, theatre, cinema, books and buildings all served to cement in

the public view the perception that the world was changing. Hostile

reaction often followed, as paintings were spat upon, riots organized at

the opening of works, and political figures denounced modernism as

unwholesome and immoral. At the same time, the 1920s were known as the

"Jazz Age", and the public showed considerable enthusiasm for cars, air

travel, the telephone, and other technological advances.



By 1930, modernism had won a place in the establishment, including the

political and artistic establishment, although by this time modernism

itself had changed. There was a general reaction in the 1920s against the

pre-1918 modernism, which emphasized its continuity with a past while

rebelling against it, and against the aspects of that period which seemed

excessively mannered, irrational, and emotionalistic. The post-World War

period, at first, veered either to systematization or nihilism and had,

as perhaps its most paradigmatic movement, Dada.



While some writers attacked the madness of the new modernism, others

described it as soulless and mechanistic. Among modernists there were

disputes about the importance of the public, the relationship of art to

audience, and the role of art in society.

Modernism comprised a series of sometimes contradictory responses to the situation as it was understood,

and the attempt to wrestle universal principles from it. In the end

science and scientific rationality, often taking models from the 18th

Century Enlightenment, came to be seen as the source of logic and

stability, while the basic primitive sexual and unconscious drives, along

with the seemingly counter-intuitive workings of the new machine age,

were taken as the basic emotional substance. From these two poles, no

matter how seemingly incompatible, modernists began to fashion a complete

worldview that could encompass every aspect of life, and express

"everything from a scream to a chuckle".

THE GREAT GATSBY

GATSBY'S CHARACTER

GATSBY WAS INTRODUCED IN THIS STORY AS A NEW ACQUAINTED OF NICK WHO OFFERED HIM TO COME WITH HIM FOR A RIDE IN HIS HYDROPLANE. GATSBY WANTED TO BE FRIENDLY WITH ALL WHO LIVED AROUND HIM; HENCE A MAN WAS SENT TO INVITE NICK CARRAWAY. GATSBY'S NATURE WAS NOT UNDERSTOOD BY ANYONE.HE WAS AN ELEGANT PERSONALITY A ROUGH YOUNG MAN OF THIRTY-TWO YEARS OF AGE.

NICK HEARD MUCH ABOUT GATSBY FROM THE GUESTS INVITED IN THE PARTY. HE COULD MAKE OUT THAT THIS MAN MUST HAVE HAD A DUBIOUS PAST. THE PEOPLE (ALL HIS FRIENDS) COMMENTED ON HIS PERSONALITY IN A DOUBTFUL MANNER, AS SOME WERE OF THE OPINON THAT GATSBY HAD KILLED SOMEONE IN THE PAST, SOME OTHERS SAID THAT HE WAS A RUNAWAY DACOIT, A FUGITIVE FROM LAW ETC. NEVERTHELESS HE ENTERTAINS EXCELLENT TASTE & HAD A KNACK OF SATISFYING EVERYONE.

AS GATSBY STOOD, WATCHING HIS GUESTS IN HIS PARTY, WEARING WHITE FLANNELS, WITH WELL GROOMED HAIR AND PERSON, ONE COULD NOT MAKE OUT THAT GATSBY WAS A SINISTER PERSON. THE WAY WHE BUTLER ADDRESSED HIM AND CALLED HIM TO ATTEND CALLS FROM OUTSIDE THE U.S.A.,LEAD US TO BEKLIEVE THAT HE WAS A GREAT MAN.

NICK TALKED TO GATSBY ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS AND FOUND THAT HE WAS A PERSON OF UNDEFINED CONSEQUENCES. HE ALSO KNEW ABOUT THE BIZARRE ACCUSATIONS THAT FLAVOURED THE CONVERSATION IN HIS HALLS. HE TOLD NICK THAT HE WAS EDUCATED IN OXFORD. HE BELONGED TO MIDDLE WEST SAN FRANCISSO. HE INHERITED A GOOD DEAL OF MONEY FROM HIS ANCESTRS. HE LIVED LIKE A KING IN MANY PLACES IN EUROPE AND THAT HE BOUGHT HIS CLOTHES FROM ENGLAND.

HUNTING BIG GAME, COLLECTION OF PRECIOUS STONES ESPECIALLY RUBIES WAS HIS PASSION. HE WORKED IN THE WAR AS A MAJOR AND THE ALLIED GOVERNMENT GAVE HIM DECORATION. HIS SPLENDID CAR WAS ALSO A PRESENT GIVEN BECAUSE HE WAS VALIANT SOLDIER.

ACCORDING TO MR. WOLSHIEMM, GATSBY WAS AN INTELLIGENT MAN WHO UNDERSTOOD THE WAYS OF THE WORLD BETTER THEN ANYBODY ELSE.

HE OWED HIS RICHES TO HIS MENTOR DAN CODY.HE RESPECTED HIM EVER AFTER. GATSBY WAS EXTREMELY FOND OF DAISY AND WAS QUIET TROUBLED WHEN HE KNEW THAT SHE WAS MARRIED, BUT WHENEVER A CHANCE CAME HIS WAY, HE AVAILED IT. THEY BECAME VERY CLOSE WITH NICK'S HELP. GATSBY'S MEANINGLESS INFATUATION FOR DAISY MADE HIM MISERABLE. HE LIVED A LIFE OF A WATER BUBBLE, WHICH BECAME BIGGER AND BIGGER ONLY TO BURST IN THE END.

GATSBY LIVED A LIFE A RECKLESSNESS. IN THE SAME MANNER GATSBY DIED AND NOBODY CARED NOR DID ANYONE COME FOR HIS FUNERAL. EVENTHOUGH HIS SO CALLED FRIENDS ENJOYED HIS HOSPITALITY TO THE HEART'S CORE.

GATSBY CAME UP IN HIS LIFE BECAUSE OF CODY AND ENJOYED HIMSELF WITH WHATEVER MONEY COULD BUY. HE ENJOYED THE COMPANIONSHIP OF NOT ONLY DAISY BUT ALSO MANY A SOCIETY WOMAN. HE WAS ALSO WARM-HEARTED HOSPITABLE. HE WOULD HAVE MADE A BETTER HUSBAND TO DAISY THAN TOM BUCHANAN.



A SHORT NOTE ON GATSBY'S HOUSE

GATSBY HAD A PALATIAL HOUSE. A BREWER HAD BUILT IT A DECADE AGO IN THE PERIOD OF CRAZE. HIS GARDEN IS ENCHANTING FILLED WITH SPARKLING ODOUR OF JONQUILS AND THE FROTHY FRAGRANCE OF HAWTHORN, PLUM BLOSSOMS AND THE PALE GOLD ODOUR OF KISS-ME-AT-THE-GATE. THE TREE IN THE YARD NESTLED MANY A BIRD OF FOREIGN ORIGIN. HIS LAWNS ARE VERDANT, WELL MOWED AND PLUSH.

THERE ARE THREE MARIE ANTOINETTE MUSIC ROOMS AND RESTORATION SALOONS. HE HAD AN ENORMOUS MERTON COLLEGE LIBRARY. A WING OF GUEST BEDROOM WAS SWATHED IN ROSE AND LAVENDER SILKS AND VIVD WITH NEW FLOWERS. A SET OF POOLROOMS AND DRESSING ROOMS FOLLOWED.

GATSBY'S OWN BEDROOM, HIS BATH AND AN ADAM'S STUDY ROOM WERE EXQUISITILY FURNISHED. HIS SPECIAL GUESTS WERE ENTERTAINED WITH CHARTREUSE FROM A CUPBOARD. HIS DRESSER WAS EMBEDDED WITH A SET OF PURE DULL GOLD.

GATSBY HAD TWO BULKY PATENT CABINETS, WHICH HELD HIS SUITS AND DRESSING GOWNS AND EXPENSIVE TIES, ALL BOUGHT FROM ENGLAND.

THERE WERE EXTENSIVE SWEEPS OF LAWNS SURROUNDING HIS BUNGALOW, THE SWIMMING POOL AND THE HYDROPLAN AND THE MID-SUMMER FLOWERS.

ULTIMATELY THE SEA FOR THE BAY ITSELF MAKES A NATURAL BEAUTY SPOT AROUND HIS SPRAWLING GREEN LAWNS.


DAN CODY’S CHARACTER




DAN CODY WAS A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD MAN FROM NEVEDA, SILVER FIELDS OF YOUKON. HE KNEW MUCH ABOUT THE METALLIC PRODUCTS. THE TRANSACTIONS IN MONTANA COPPER KNEW MUCH ABOUT THE METALLIC PRODUCTS. THE TRANSACTIONS IN MONTANA COPPER MADE HIM A MAILLIONAIRE, FOUND HIM PHYSICALLY ROBUST BUT SOFT MINDED. MANY WOMEN WERE AFTER HIM FOR HIS MONEY. HE MARRIED ELLA KAYE , A JOURNALIST AND GREW VERY FOND OF HER AND ON HER ADVICE HE TOOK TO THE SEAS ON BUSINESS.

IN ONE OF HIS EXPEDITIONS HE FOUND THE YOUNG GATZ (GATSBY) . HIS GLAMAROUS APPEARANCE TOOK HOLD OF DAN CODY. HEWAS QUICK IN WIT AND EXTRAVAGANTLY AMBITIOUS. HE WAS APPOINTED TO WORK ON COD’S YACHT. HE WAS THE STEWARD, SKIPPER, SECRETARY AND EVEN TAILOR FOR DAN CODY.DAN CODY STARTED TO TRUST YOUNG GATZ. DAN CODY DRANK A LOT AND LEFT ALL HIS RESPONSIBILITIES TO GATSBY. ELLA KAYE HIS WIFE NEVER TOOK CARE OF HIM AND HE DIED SUDDENLY BECAUSE OF HIS DRINKING HABBITS.

GATSBY WAS ACTUALLY JAMES GATZ, CODY’S SECERATERY INHERITED HIS WEALTH AND BECAME RICH. HE HAD ALSO INHERITED CODY’S DRINKING HABITS AND BECAME A DEBAUNCHED BY NATURE. HE INHERITED ABOUT TWENTY-FIVE THOSAND FROM DAN CODY AND THE REST OF HIS MILLIONS WENT TO HIS WIFE ELLA.
DAN CODY’S POTRAIT, A GREY FLOID MAN WITH A HARD EMPTY FACE WAS HUNG IN GATSBY’S ROOM

GATSBY TALKED TO NICK ABOUT HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH DAN CODY IN ORDER TO MAKE THE LATTER UNDERSTAND HOW HE BECAME RICH.