英语短篇小说教程本科课件Unit11

Modernism, a Technical Revolution:
In order to represent the internal reality, Modernists searched for new ways of expression that were radically different from the long established literary tradition. Accordingly, they launched a technical revolution in expressive methods, resulting in a sort of new fiction characterized by being highly innovative and richly experimental.
英语短篇小说教程
Short Stories in English: A Reading Course
Unit Eleven
Modernistic Fiction
Reading: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James
Thurber
Literary Modernism:
The three psychic zones: id, ego and superego
The superego functions primarily to protect society. Largely unconscious, the superego is the moral censoring agency, the repository of conscience and pride. Acting either directly or through the ego, the superego serves to repress the drives of the id, to block off and thrust back into the unconscious those impulses toward pleasure that society regards as unacceptable. An overactive superego creates an unconscious sense of guilt.
In other words:
The id is dominated by the pleasure principle. (Makes us devils.)
The ego is dominated by reality principle. (Makes us human beings.)
Modernism, a Technical Revolution:
One of the most effective and most frequently employed methods is a mode called “stream of consciousness” writing. That is, writers endeavor to explore the interior lives of their characters by way of revealing the “flow” in the minds of the individuals, and by means of associating ideas with impressions in a natural yet non-logical way.
Influenced by Sigmund Freud’s new understanding of human psychology and Carl Jung’s idea of the "collective unconscious," Modernists attempted to find new ways of perceiving and representing reality.
Rather than presenting life from the outside, through people’s words and deeds, Modernist fiction began to concern itself more and more with different levels of psychological and subjective reality, giving prominence to fantasies, dreams and other mental activitiess so as to reveal the veiled part of the internal existence of the characters.
that most of the individual’s mental processes are unconscious;
that all human behavior is motivated ultimately by what we would call sexuality (that is, the prime psychic force is libido, or sexual energy);
The search for new ways of expression:
a violent disruption from the literary tradition
interest in the unexplored area of subconscious
the technical revolution in literature:
The rise of modernism:
the rapid social change and the arrival of the “modern age”
Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalysis: id, ego and superego
The three premises as the structure of human psyche that Sigmund Freud has established:
The mental processes of three psychic zones: the id, the ego and the superego
The id is, in short, the source of all our aggressions and desires. It is lawless, asocial and amoral. Its function is to gratify our instincts for pleasure without regard for social conventions, legal ethics, or moral restraint. Unchecked, it would do anything to satisfy its impulses for pleasure. Its concern is purely for instinctual gratification regardless of consequences.
The three psychic zones: id, ego and superego
The ego is regulating agencies, which protect the individual. It regulates the instinctual drives of the id so that they may be released in nondestructive patterns. “In popular language, we may say that the ego stands for reason and circumspection, while the id stands for the untamed passions” (S. Freud). Consequently, the ego serves as intermediary, and maintains a balance between the opposing forces of id and superego.
Literary Modernism, as a movement, flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. It is seen, in large part, as a reaction to the dominance of city life as a central force in society. Life is often viewed as incoherent, empty, fragmented and meaningless in a world of machinery and commercialism.
Literary Modernism:
Modernist fiction is typically marked by the absence of a central, heBaidu Nhomakorabeaoic figure, and in fact, its common protagonist is an alienated individual trying in vain to make sense of a predominantly urban world.
The superego is dominated by the morality principle. (Makes us angels.)
Id, Ego and Superego
Freud described the human personality as being basically a battlefield. Here is a dark-cellar in which “a well-bred spinster lady (the Superego) and a sexcrazed monkey (the Id) are forever engaged in mortal combat, the struggle being refereed by a rather nervous bank clerk (the Ego). Thus an individual’s feelings, thoughts, and behavious are the result of the interaction of the Id, the Superego, and the Ego. This creates conflict, which creates anxiety.”
that because of the powerful social taboos attached to certain sexual impulses, many of our desire and memories are repressed (that is, actively excluded from conscious awareness)
(1) stream of consciousness (interior monologue) (2) autonomous association (3) juxtaposition of fragment (4) time and space dislocation
Literary Modernism vs Other Isms: