1 LIDIA VIANU: PREI.

CONVENTION

pre-Modernism/ Modernism/after-Modernism
MODERNISM (1922) STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Consciousness, then, does not appear to
itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. [William James, The Stream of Consciousness, 1892]

AFTER- (1950-2010) THE AfterMode

Common narrative convention: CLEAR LANGUAGE 19century tradition VERBALITY (community, common convention)

previous convention Defied: Language ENCODED (poetic): The confusion of conventionlessness: epiphany James Joyce; objective correlative T.S. Eliot; luminous The FAILED VERBALITY: unreliable clarity halo Virginia Woolf Conversational style + the significant detail PRE-VERBALITY: the thought before and during the birth of the right word: Breaking the rules of language/ communication - A mind in progress = in chronological disorder - In the back of the mind: 19 centuries of order, plot, love, closure - The pre-verbal paradox: expressing the inexpressible(the birth of a thought: the psychology of the word) by verbal means REWRITING TRADITION (still known and worshipped) SUBCONSCIOUS DISORDER understanding discovered by Memory in the Past: the UNFINISHED PAST. Defiance of the fairy tale FAILED VERBALITY:Verbally unreliable: the verbal failure. Clarity again?

Tradition as a common bond (sense of community) Perception of the outside as CONSCIOUS ORDER understanding promised in the FUTURE: The Fairy-Tale tradition The READER is humoured

Tradition forgotten and SALVAGED subjectively DYSTOPIC: ORDER DENIED Understanding denied because the PRESENT is denied both hope-the future, and support, explanation enough-the past: hopeless, disabused, inert. Death of the fairy tale The reader is blindfolded

The reader is challenged

II. CHRONOLOGICAL CAUSALITY: Past->Present->Future Fairy tale the told

the unfinished Past

Present: Not yet! future

the telling (Stream of Consciousness) (Freud inner life is the only reality; Einstein relative perceptions of the real; William James) Future dies. The unifinished PAST (memory) organized as incomplete chronological causality. INTENSITY Artful narration of the unfinished Past: how?

The Bestseller The writing dream Focus on getting through to the reader no matter what. Past unreliable. Future: Not yet! PRESENT, as the only choice: the only order is no order; fear, dystopia, solitude. DYSTOPIA Unreliable narration of the present: not yet! mnemotechnical reading/rereading (remembering every little detail) The surprise hero LOST LOVE: The advent of sex The author: it is not politically correct to impose any meaning.

Readers expectations are in the FUTURE hope (time organized as chronological causality) UTOPIA SUSPENSE Narration of the future: and then what? The explained HERO Social plot LOVE INTEREST The AUTHORS PLAN The author has the key and makes sure the reader gets it.

The unexplainable hero Private plot PAST LOVE: the emotional close-up The author has one plan with many keys, which he only suggests. The reader must INTERPRET (lyrical): the authors elaborate plan.