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| Post Graduate Diploma in Translation Studies |
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| UNIT 422-1: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORIES |
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| QUESTIONS |
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| A. |
Answer the following long questions: |
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| 1. |
Why do we find people searching for the roots in the 20th century? |
| 2. |
What is 'textual integrity'? How is it achieved? |
| 3. |
What is the Marxist position in literature? |
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| B. |
Answer the following short questions: |
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| 1. |
Discuss the broad characteristics of 'Uttar-aadhunikataa'. |
| 2. |
How does one relate oneself to other time and space? |
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What is the etymology of the term 'Uttar' in 'Uttar-aadhunikataa', and what is its significance in defining this approach? |
| 4. |
Critically evaluate the concept of 'inter-textuality'. |
| 5. |
Why is 'modernism' being given the epithet 'decaying'? |
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| 422.1.6: SUMMING UP |
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| As a stylistic term then, 'Modernism' postdates what is called 'Naturalism', and was characterized by the anti-positivistic and anti-representational learnings of many 19th century writes and artists. It included the tendencies of (a) SYMBOLISM, IMPRESSIONISM, and DECADENCE around the turn of this century, (b) FAUVISM, CONSTRUCTIVISM, IMAGISM, and VORTICISM in the period up to and over World War I; and (c) EXPRESSIONISM, DADAISM and SURREALISM during and after the war. Leading modernist theoreticians included Alfred Loisy (1887 - 1940), Lucian Laberthonniere (1860 - 1932), and Blondel in France, Romolo Murri (1870 - 1944) and Antonio Fogazzaro (1842 - 1911) in Italy, and Geroge Tyrrell (1861 - 1909) and Frederich von Hugel (1852 - 1925) in Great Britain. Notice that there had been parallel developments in different forms of expression at that time; for instance, 'atonalism' in music, anti-representationalism in painting (cf. 'abstract art'), 'vers libre' in poetry, fragmentation and 'stream of consciousness' presentation in the novel, 'functionalism' in architecture, and in general the use of spetial … or 'collage' as opposed to linear or representational forms, were recurrent features (cf. Spender 1963; Howe 1968). Another common characteristics noted by critics is the presence of an element of 'decreation' (cf. Kemode 1971). |
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| We do not wish to suggest here that modernism has been the only chaos in creation. A close analysis of the recent tragedies of civilization inform us that bourgeois politics and its crisis due to decadence have been proved to be all the more ruinous because earlier wrongs like occultism, bonded labour, subordination of the female-sex, persecution and many others are present in them in different guises. Again, if any theoretical approach to time, like Brandel's division (into geographical, social and individual criterion), rejects this -- we may look upon it only as an information gap caused by the politics of modernism. 'Time makes its appearance with randomness', commented Prigigine and Stengers, 'only when a system behaves in a sufficiently random way, may the difference between past and feature, and therefore, irreversibility, enter its description.' It appears that before landing on the blind law of decadent modernism, astrophysics and thermodynamics have something very important to tell us. They may even make a room for the supreme imaginativeness in human nature - inspired by the fact that time is not only irreversible but also random we can understand the reincarnation of the qualities of decadence -- at the same point man's failure and disappointment in coping with earlier phases of decadence which are accumulated in the group-memory of these chaotic situations in space and time. All this point we may further believe that, with the end of modernism, chaos will be finally absorbed in infinity. Till then man has no God to comfort him, no humanity to save his humanity and no grand language to speak in, after modernism, time is revived to eternity, human being to God and language to the infinite, with no other chaos to follow. |
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| The position we have taken here to introduce 'modernism' is as follows: Chaos is the finite within infinity and an untruth within the truth. Neither infinity nor its truth can decay, it is the chaos that can decay, as it is the chaos that can have definite points of origin, growth and decadence. Even through the chaos there are various ways of the infinite creativity to make and re-make till decadence turns up. Decadence is probably the chaos of the chaos corrupting every order of the disorder. For this, decadent modernists in their citadel colonies can never refrain from their clairvoyant practice on the philosophy of negation or of evil's beauty. Under their gorgeous and fascinating terms, decadent modernists conceal their attempts to disgrace and degrade human character. Instead of 'narrowing', they call it 'specialization', as their 'lust' or 'gree', 'distrust' or 'hatred' are concealed by the terms like 'ambition' and 'competition'. All this decay cannot be destroyed by any volcanic power of Uttar Adunik creative writing. True, creative writing has unlimited power: human language elevated to this height can show a way, but other vistas of creative intelligence - after suffering from various spells of echaos including the decadent modernism as poetry has suffered -- are ready to perceive the problems with modernism. |
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