LITERATURA INGLESA IV: EL GIRO A LA POSTMODERNIDAD

UNIT 1:THE POSTMODERN TURN: Introduction and brief account of the

postulates of Postmodernism.

* Postmodernism stands for cultural condition rooted in modernity while going beyond it. We live in a 1
postmodern culture.
*Our present cultural stage is referred to as “late modernity”

FREDERICK JAMESON: American marxist. Wrote an essay that expanded to a book.

 Sees Postmodernism as “cultural dominant” characterized by:
- The results of late capitalist dissolution of bourgeois’ hegemony
- The development of mass culture
FRANÇOISE LYOTARD: French Philosopher. “Postmodern Condition” 1979
 Defining feature of Postmodernism: Incredulity towards metanarratives
The various stories about emancipation and progress (Such as the Enlightment/Marxism) that
once served to ground knowledge and legitimate certain politics, are no longer credible.
Metanarratives/Grand narratives: denote those doctrines  they are self-legitimating (don´t
need legitimation)
 They explain a certain domain of knowledge and legitimate the power and social relations
that derive from it.
LINDA HUTCHEON:
They unify and order any contradictions in order to make them fit.
 For Lyotard  these large narratives are substituted by multiple smaller narratives.
Aim of Postmodernism:
* To deconstruct these large metanarratives in order to exposes their contradictions.
* Master narratives are universal (they aspire to objectivity and scientific knowledge).
* Discourses claim “the will to truth” (borrowed from Michael Foucault). The possibility of accesing to
an objective reality and represent it transparently.
* Emphasis on the nature of realityIts access and representation are mediated through language
and ideology.
 Hutcheon argues: “Language is a social contract”  everything presented and received through
language is loaded with meaning inherent in the conceptual patterns of the speaker’s culture.
All cultural practices have and ideological subtext which determine the conditions of their
production of meanings.
Knowledge
* Key issues  at the heart of postmodernism: the crisis of Bath:
Representation
 * Hutcheon describes postmodern “contradictory phenomenon” uses/abuses challenges music,
installs/subverts literature, culture,
painting...
Postmodern techniques:
* Seek to subvert the assumptions that realism and its related ideology (liberal/materialist) have encourage
us to think of as “natural”, “normal” and “neutral”.
* Realism: accused of ideological control, trying to determine what is “natural”, “normal” and “neutral”.
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ALISON LEE
* Postmodern novels try to question terms and concepts such as: common sense, transparency of
language, subjectivity, truth, meaning, value.
* Discusses Magritte’s painting: “The human condition” (1934)  the painting within a painting.
 Continuation of the view and it appears that there are 2 levels: 1. The real view
2.The painted copy
* The real view is frame within a painting  the painter wants us to see/realise:
The artificiality of art far for mirroring reality, recreates it imaginatively.
It constructs a reality on its own.
* Postmodern novels question: - Subjectivity
- Truth Incredulity towards metanarratives,
typical of postmodern cultural condition
- Meaning
- Value
scope is local and historical
contingent and provisional  “The Real”

Meaning ambiguous, plural  The reader of a given of cultural community

Deconstruction  Concept that aims to show that every text will ultimately subvert its rhetorical
strategies. To deconstruct a text/discourse is to show how it undermines the philosophy it asserts or
the hierarchical oppositions on which it relies, by identifying in the text the rhetorical operations that
produce the supposed grounds of argument, the key concept or premise.
* We can see in a number of literary works how the author undertakes the task of deconstructing the
traditional discourses of realist representation.
- Reading the text against itself  closer to analysis, not destruction
* As Magritte incorporated the assumptions of transparency and referentiality in to his painting,
postmodern fiction addresses the problematic relation of “story” and “history” writing to reality and
truth by means of narrative strategies or openly commenting on their difficulties.
Metafictional  novels  that involve a significant degree of self-consciousness about their
fictional nature.
They are fictions about fiction itself
Literature  Beliefs, concerns, anxieties of the time/world make up the substance of literature.
Many postmodern features were already present in Modernism.
Virginia Woolf  felt the novel had to undertake changes if it wanted to portray reality in a
convincing way.
  She took the task of breaking away with the old conventions of realism:
-Traditional role of the plot
- Linear time to depict reality

 Postmodernism shows striking differences:

Modernism
* Emphasis on fragmentary/discontinuity  a sign of loss of faith in the humanist assumption of a
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unified autonomous self.
* Challenge traditional notions of perspective refusal the omniscient of 3rd person.
Postmodernism
* More radical shifting perspectives narrative voices, split between 1st/3rd person, provisional
viewpoints to be suddenly contradicted.
* Multiple narrators different perspectives of the same event
difficulty to locate
*There are no natural hierarchies Marginal characters are given centrality  NO fixed
Eccentric categories or values
* Cultures (marginal)  challenge traditionally hegemonic Western culture.
 Self-serving interests under their enterprises.
* Emphasis in plurality/differences of every kind: gender, race, class, sexual preference.

Transition: Modernism to Postmodernism (England)

* Ideological/moral chaos  WWII
* Literature focused on political commitment  realist representation to reflect concern about the
danger of totalitarian ideologies.
* Difficult to ignore the collapse of markets  economic depression  growing menace of facism
* Literature turn from: Aesthetics
To a reflection of public issues.
Formalism
* Virginia Wolf essay “The Leaning Tower” (1940) identified factors that accounted for literary
change.

Literature: 30´s  Politically committed

40´s  Frustrated decade  Cyal Connolly  5 years of war + 5 years of exhaustion.
40´s and 50´s  depression  prevailed social/literary mood nostalgia for a better past.
Social Realism
Upheld values to compensate past horrors/consumerism/mass culture
Liberal Humanism
F.R. Leawis exerted influence from 40´s to 60´s
 upheld literature as a means of moral/ humane education, call for a return to best writers of
English tradition.Those that expressed with intensity the value of an essence termed as
Englishness.
  advocated and included D.H. Lawrence.
End of 50´s  Fast changing world  “caught in a great whirlwind of change”
(Doris Lessing) Despite key role in WWII, Britain was no longer an Empire.
 International decline  swift process of decolonization  confusion about imperial identity and
world power.
 Growth of British Universities  open educational/job opportunities for young people, women.
60’s  Pessimistic mood of decline: - national enervation 1
- fast-rising crime rate
- F. Hooliganism
- Industrial unrest
- Race riot
- Political scandals
- Crisis in the pound

* counter  cultural movement of 60´s  student´s protests: mark the end of universal culture
“consensually validated High Art”.

Patricia Waugh

60´s  provided less opportunity to social unity than the chance to pursue individual paths to
liberation from it.
 consumer liberation from post-war austerity. *Celebration of making:
 cultural liberation from leisure-class values. - New Technology
- Design Fashion
 sexual liberation from Victorian mores.

LIBERATION!!

New literary modes that developed

* Absurdism  Gothic/ Grotesque/ Extremism/ The theatre of cruelty.

* Poetry of diminished expectation  Apocalyptic fantasy – self reflexivity
* Breakdown of cultural consensus  Symptom of cultural relativism

English Literature  difficult to identity  distinguished from “literatures in English”

 UK—Complex historical composite of different nations and people. (Patricia Waugh,pg.11)
 1948  Symbolic beginning of Black British History  Nationality Act  encourage immigration
from British colonies (West Indias)
 Racialised white national community against “black” as unified front.
 Black  Culturally constructed label, not always biological quality.
 literatures/writers of different ethnics/ geographical origins = Indians, Africans, West-
Indians.
 Other social/cultural minorities (gay/lesbians) have made use of postmodern ways of writing to
express otherness to disrupt notions of identity.
* Postmodern British Fiction  is not as overt as American fiction in terms of deconstructing strategies.
* Texts install realism to destroy it later. 1
* Presence of the past, important: always as a critical reworking critical eye!
never a nostalgic “return”

JEAN FRANÇOISE LYOTARD: “Answering the question: What is Postmodernism?”

* It’s a part of the modern  everything received must be suspected.
* It´s no modernism as its end but the nascent state which is contrast.
* Modernity: withdraws the real
relation between the presentable and conceivable
this relation distinguishes 2 modes:
1. the emphasis on the powerlessness of presentation
2. the emphasis on the power of the family to conceive  on is “inhumanity

(Invention of new rules of the game)

* The postmodern put forward the unrepresentable in presentation.
* Searches for new representation in order to import a stronger sense of the unrepresentable.
* Artist/writer is in a position of philosopher: what work of art itself is looking for. They work without rules -
away from conventions.
* Postmodern would have to be understood according to the paradox: of the future (post) anterior (mode).

FREDERICK JAMESON: “Postmodernism or the cultural logic of late Capitalism”

* 2 different uses of conceptualizing the phenomenon:
1. Moral judgements  whether if they are positive or negative.
2. Attempt to think  our present time in history.
* A work produced without rules (“anxiety of influence/ authorship”).
* Denial of influence from previous movements (Modernism). Postmodernism goes further beyond.
Questions History and other voices, previously marginal voices such as colonised people, feminists, gays
and lesbians to the foreground in order to make their voices heard.
* Modernism breaks with the past leading to a forgetting.
* Postmodernism  uses the past in order to challenge it, to analyse it with critical eye (in order to learn
from our mistakes) and break free from it.
LINDA HUTCHEON: “The Postmodern Problematizing of History”
* History is analysed as a cultural issue and a problematic one.
* A new desire to think historically, but today it is to think: - Critically and
- Contextually
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* Problematizing return to History appears as a response to the hermetic formalism and aesthetic
characteristics of the modernist period.
 If the past was evoked, was to deploy its “presentness”, trying to search a value system (myth,
religion, psychology…). A reaction against tradition.
* Modernism’s “nightmare of history”  is what it has chosen to address. The reader does not ignore
lessons of the past and the implication for historical present.
* Postmodernism is both oppositional and to Modernism
faithful
* Nature of historical knowledge  does not mean to deny historical status of historical “fact” and distract of
the objectivity of recounting.
* Postmodern writing reveals that both History and Fiction are discourses, systems by which we can make
sense of the past. Meanings are the systems, not in the events.
* The postmodern reinstalls historical context. There is not a single concept of “genuine historicity” The
evocation of a particular period (Ragtime) representation for all classes and historical personages also
appear in the fiction - Mixing and tampering with the facts.
 No conflict between historical reconstruction/construction and politics in the novel.
 Nostalgia is ironically turned against itself
 Challenges narrative singularity and unity  multiplicity. Fragment the traditional unified
identity or subjectivity of character.
Teleology
Novel and History have had affinity in other periods. Common denominators: casuality
continuity

* The past cannot be destroyed  It must be revisited.

Semiotic awareness that all signs change meaning with time.

New historicism
 Little in common with the old. The language and form are different
 It is not an attempt to preserve and transmit a cannon of tradition and thought.
 Deals with the relation to History and literary criticism

* History cannot be written without analysis including the analysis of the act of writing itself.
* Historians refuse to hide behind the 3rd person voice of objectivity.
* Attempt to narrate past events as if the events narrate themselves.
* Paradox of the postmodern: 1st install and then confront critically both of them. Writing of history and
literature.
Historical method  Reconstruction of the past by analysing records. This process is call historiography
 the narrative of past events that we consider historical facts.
* Postmodern historical sense is outside associations of Enlightment/ Progress or development.
* Postmodern confronts the problematic nature of the past as an elemental of knowledge for us in the
present.
 The questions is: How can we know that today? and
What can we know of it?
Postmodern Fiction  It is called “historiographic metafiction”
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 It refuses the idea that only History has a truth-claim
*The past did indeed exist prior to its “entextualitation” either into fiction or history.
 The “real” referent is only accessible to us through documents/archives  TEXTS
 The past is acknowledged as textualized.
 Postmodern return to history is NOT nostalgic. To elevate “private experience to public
consciousness”
 The problem is: How to get back? And  not the expansion of the subjective
What form of history?
These are the
 The way one writes about: The past “real” problematizations of history
by postmodern art today
What constitute “the known facts”
* History has been seen as radically separated from literature  The way it is written
 Way to “truth”  autonomous status
NOW  20th century history calls for deconstruction, to question the function of writing of history
itself.
* concept of time  problematic.
* dominant view if historians today  write history in the form of narrative representations of the past.
* Past encoded in discourse and ready to interpret it  Derrida.
“Trace”  Challenge the notion of linear historical temporality.
* Retrospective narrative  discontinuities/gaps/ruptures.
* For Focault irregularities define the discourse.
challenges all forms of totalizing thought.
Historiography  brings under questions the notion of the universal.
The particular, local  replaces  the general/universal/eternal.
“You can explain the past only by what is more powerful in the present”
There’s no practice without theory.
 Question is  NOT “what are the facts?” but how they are described.
 Difficult to separate history/criticism from philosophy/ literary theory
Paradox  of Postmodernism be it in theory, history
or artistic practice
* Problematic nature of historical documents  text supplement or rework “reality”.
* Historiographic metafiction  “The name of the Rose”
* Art and Historiography always brought together in Postmodern fiction with destabilizing results.
“Incredulity toward Metanarrative: Negotiation Postmodernism and Feminisms” by Linda
Hutcheon
*Jean Françoise Lyotard  defined postmodern condition as a state of incredulity toward metanarratives.

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* Postmodernity characterised by smaller and multiple narratives  no grand master narrative do not
seek legitimation
* Metanarratives have played a role in our discourses of knowledge and the main concern is patriarchy.
* Feminisms have overlapped in concern with post-structuralist theories and post-modern art, which has
given equal value to inward-directed world of art and outward-directed world of history and experience. The
“worldly texts” of Postmodernism define the tension between this two opposites.
IRONY  is a strategic discourse device that inscribes and subverts its target.
 It is inevitably compromised politics/ stance.
Cultural dominants: patriarchy/ capitalism/ humanism…
 Feminisms want to resist the incorporation into the postmodern camp: art forms
cannot change unless social practices do. However, they share a view of art as a
social sign Feminisms want to go beyond, not simply “de-doxify”
 Postmodernism rejection of a privileged position  ideological stand.
 Feminisms  may use postmodern strategies of deconstruction but never suffer
from confusion  they have a position and a “truth”  This is their metanarrative.

Feminist and Postmodernism helps us understand dominant modes of representation in our society.
Feminism  focuses on female subject of representation  challenges dominant modes in both
mass culture/ high art.
* By accepting fixed representations, we are condoning social system of power. Feminism has had deep
effect on postmodernism due to the feminism re-evaluation of non-canonical forms of narratives discourse.
* Challenge what we consider literature to show meaning of sexual difference. Postmodernism cannot do
that something, it can un-do.
* The notion of “experience” has a different angle.
* It questions who decides that a historical narrative is valid and what constitute a valid historical narrative
- this has led to the re-evaluation of personal or life narratives, journals, biographies, autobiographies…
* The separation bewtween popular and mass culture (high art from culture of everyday life) coincided with
the reconsideration of the context of historical narrative and the politics of representation and self
representation.
* There is a two-way involvement of the postmodern and the feminist  on the one hand feminism urged
postmodernism to reconsider its anti-metanarrative challenges in terms of gender, that have supported the
separation between: - the private and the public
- the personal and the political
 On the other hand, Irony has offered feminist artists a way of challenging dominant patriarchal
metanarrative discourses.
* Feminisms are NOT incredulous towards their own metanarrative because of their necessary notion of
“truth”.
*They resist incorporation into postmodernism due to their revolutionary force as political movements
aiming at social change.
They make ideology explicit and deconstruct it They go beyond  “Tthere’s a need to change
that ideology”
 Transform an art that can transform patriarchal social practices.
* Dominant representations of women were misrepresentations
* Restoration of the past of women. 1
* Acknowledgment of the need to represent differences among women  sexuality, race, age, class,
ethnicity, nationality + political orientations.

LINDA HUTCHEON: “The Post Always Rings Twice” The Postmodern and The Postcolonial:
* Representation critique.
* Postmodern/ Postcolonial face the same gate: grasp of “truth”
* “Authority effect”.
* Acquisition of knowledge through  collecting, ordering, preserving
* Museums seen as themselves cultural “texts”  underlying cultural and ideological assumptions of
that constitutes the authenticity of an object.
* Ethnographic museum  not easily separated from history of imperialism
* Preserving objects  seen as a denial of change over time
 interpreted and contextualized

“New Museology”  role of the spectator in the interpretation of objects, which are open to many
constructions of meaning.
 Museum is evolving in a changing world.
 Attempt to deconstruct the ideology of Empire  Offer critical examination.
 How objects changed meaning over time and in different contexts.
 Deconstruct the attempt to categorise and hierarchise the world with the white-male.

Museum  (problematic part of an exhibition).

 A means by which society represent its relationship to its own history and other cultures
 The experience of colonization has meant different things Canadians/ the way Africans
perceived themselves
 Multiplicity of meanings
 Postcolonial and Feminist have turned to irony (called “counter-discourse” – oppositional
strategy)
 Reflexivity about historical role and context.
 The “metatext”  make visible to the public the ways to read and make sense of a display
as text.
* Wall-size enlargement of an image of a mounted British soldier  representation labelled “encounter with
a Zulu”
* Strategies to set up the humanising experience of imperialism.
Irony  most effective way of dealing with such difficult issues, but it cannot compete with the
power of images.
 Aim of Irony  read between the lines  position the audience as postcolonial and
multicultural and not racist.
 Depends on context and the identity of ironist and audience  need of shared
knowledge.
* Comprehension is individualized and brings about multiplicity of perspectives.
* Exhibition offered only one voice (the view of colonizers)  African represented as passive, smaller, lower
position in pictures.  The view of colonizers.
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* Exhibition should offer a judgement about the effects of colonization.
* Museums try to find other reflexive ways to deal with postcolonial/postmodern/plurality of voices.
* “The other Museum”  bold critique of colonialism/ racial misrepresentation
* Exhibitions involve 3 active terms: - Maker of objects
- Exhibitors
- Viewers

The Past is part of the present  When the post rings, the messages is transitional, but there will be no
returning to its sender.
Summary:
POSTMODERNISM FEMINISM

 Politically ambivalent so cannot DO,  Political  challenge fixed representations, work

only UNDO…looks to expose for socialchange (not just expose), so can DO
 Problems due to history, religion,  Problems due to patriarchy/oppression of women
ideologies, (universal truths…) they (address feminine issues…) this is their
reject the idea of privileged positions. metanarrative.

 Characterized by small multiple  Re-evaluate and reconsider

narratives (they don’t want to
totalize)
 Uses IRONY.  Use parodic strategies of deconstruction.

 Criticise metanarratives (incredulity  Their metanarrative (oppression of women) is

towards them) the truth.

 Both try to understand dominant modes of representation.

UNIT 2: THE NOVEL AS EXPLORATION OF THE ‘GREAT WHIRLWIND OF

CHANGE’
JOHN FOWLES: Metafiction: The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969).

Postmodernism though the practice of deconstruction. By means of irony or critical re-reading.

 Deconstruction of the classical omniscient narrator and the closure that were instrumental in
the process of creating the illusion of truth and of imposing a particular meaning on the
narrative.
 Parody would be a privileged tool destabilize conventions. It is used in postmodernist novels
in order to explore the metafiction, that is to say, the relationship between reality and fiction. The
function of parody is to subvert an accepted convention in order to expose its limitations (the
construction of knowledge and truth). “The Dumb Waiter” could be an example.
Realism was seen outmoded, fantasy serves the interest of the ideology of social class, and
the realistic novel of form was thought to have had its day.
 Narrative representation depicts not life but life as it is represented by ideology. The more realistic the
representations, the more dangerous, the illusion of truth. 1
The comments of the narrator →(addressing the reader and expressing his/her thoughts)
encourage us to trust him/her. The narrator is enhancing the illusion of realism rather than
breaking it.
 Realism suffered from a stereotyped moral vision.
 Fowles offers the reader a set of options, each in accordance with a narrative and ideological logic. In
doing so, he leads the reader into a reflection of arbitrariness of one of the fundamental conventions of
the realistic mode as well as the openness of life which resist our attempts at control and ideological
order.

JULIAN BARNES: Historiographic Metafiction. “A History of the world in ten 1/2 chapters”. (1989)

 Metafictional novels examine the relationships between fictional form and social reality. They unveil
the process of naturalization whereby forms of oppression are constructed in apparently neutral,
seemingly innocent and supposedly realist representation. It is the assumption of the possibility of
objectively representing a given social reality, endorsed by the language and conventions of the classic
realism, such as poetic justice or the god-like omniscient narrator, that metafiction stands against.
 Metafiction doesn’t deny the existence of reality but questions the representation, self-fashioned as
transparent, but we have been given that reality, pointing to their ideologically meditated nature.
 When referring to historical facts, by assuming a value-neutral empirical method, many historians
believe that they can explain the past with a substantial claim to accuracy and truthfulness. Yet,
postmodernist theory questions what history can be, both as real past and as discourse about it.
 Heterodiegetic narrator is the one who doesn’t participle in the action, s/he is not a character of the story
and accounts the facts in third person (appeared to be seeing what s/he tells).
 According to Hayden White → We understand the past through the narratives imposed upon it.
Deconstructive emphasis is upon the procedure from creating historical knowledge when we deal with
the evidence.
 Thus history should be self-reflexive enough to acknowledge its limits. Written history is a
literary artcraft. Historians share the same formal narratives structures used by writers of realist
story literature based on the main categories of figurative language:
The tropes→(irony, methaphore, synecdoque and metonymy)
 On the other hand, events are made into a story by the suppression or subordination of certain
of them, the highlighting of others, by characterization, motif, repetition, variation of tone and point of
view, alternate descriptive strategies and the like, in short, all the techniques that we would normally
expect to find in the emplotment of a novel or a play.
 A History of the world in ten ½ chapters is a fragmentary novel, made up by putting together a series of
stories or anecdotes stitched together by the primal metaphor of sea voyage and survival, starting with
Noah’s Ark and by recurring concerns, motives and strategies.
 At the core of the chapter of the shipwreck lies on of the fundamental questions addressed by
postmodernist historians and novelist alike: How can we represent history (and/or reality) when
our only medium to do so is language and we have lost the certainty of transparency?
 ANTONIA S. BYATT: “Possession” (1989)

 Byatt’s narratives tackle the female conflict between - creativity.

- domesticity.
Possession →a masterful rewriting of Victorian literature told from a postmodern perspective.
 Byatt indicates the depth and complexity of Victorian attitudes and thoughts.
1
 The novel plays with a variety of forms of narrating the past:
 Detective story.  Epistolary novel.
 Biography.  Victorian 3rd person narration.
 Medieval verse romance.  Primitive fairy tale.
 Moderns romantic novel.  Forged manuscript novel.

 Numerous literary allusions in the novel.

 Aim → make readers aware of the fictional essence of literature and enjoy the plot.
Reader →protagonist of literary process → important role in the production of meaning
Book → is an amalgamation of apparent contraries:
- Successful career → domestic life
- Criticism → Fiction writing
- Realist → Romantic.
- Meditative → Passionate narrative.
 It is a postmodernist exercise that weaves many strands (suspense story, romance, academic
conflicts, discoveries)

 Byatt defends the superiority of fiction over criticism, biography, history. Like Lyotard, does not
believe in grand narratives, she gives more importance to literary creativity.
 Hence she parodies the academic world →the novel can be read as a campus novel.
 She rejects the academic tendency to reduce literary works to a convenient label.

 Literary theory becomes an obstacle for the scholars.

 Realism is counterpointed by myth and fantasy →exercise of postmodern metafiction. She

incorporates short stories, poems, scholarly studies, essays, edited works.

 Byatt shows that knowledge – interpretation of scholars is restricted and superficial.

 the novel wants to offer a portray of many critical perspectives: historical, textual, psychological,
structuralist, deconstructive, postcolonial. All these perspectives are deployed in a parodic way.

 Radical contrast between: Biography and fiction.

Postcript 1868 .

 Byatt establishes the limits of the task of the → literary critic

→ biographer

 Underlines the impossibility for the critic to know all the truth about literary authors. Since there are
important details that cannot be apprehended.

 Reader acquires a protagonical role in the literary process.

 Attacks critical works: - Blackadder’s “Ash Factory”  Barren products
- Edition of Ellen Ash’s journals by Beatrice Nest
- Parodies Leonora Stern’s essays Representative of feminist/lesbian criticism

 Impossibility of acquiring a complete understanding of the past.

 The power of love and the meaning that it gives to life.
 Consummation of Roland/Maud’s relationship (in the white bed) represents the chance to integrate
love/professional aspect of life. 1

 Roland → finds his poetic voice.

 Maud → preserves her autonomy: professional/sentimental→reaches the symbolic union that
Ash/Christabel wished for. Maud is independent.

 Solitude/isolation → rejected, man/woman not islands.

Final lesson
 Life is too complex to reduce it to a simplistic set of conventions and archetypes.
 We find joy, suffering, miseries and greatness.
 Clandestine/passionate Victorian love teaches both that love is worth living despite the suffering.
Possession
 The novel is also a romance → development of 2 parallel love stories.
 Victorian literary writers → Randolph Henry Ash/ Christabel La Motte.
 Academics → Roland Mitchell / Maud Bailey.

Plot .

 Cyclical / parallel plot → rejects linear temporal pattern.

 Cyclical nature of the plot → the reader is constantly immersed in 2 fictional worlds, which are
embedded into each other.

The past illuminates the present ↔ the past intrudes into the present.

 Cyclical nature/plot lines converge → protagonist mimic each other.

 Structuring device →Repetition → of scene, action, object, colour, even personae.

Writings

 Serve as clues for Roland/ Maud engaged in a quest as literary detectives.

 Reinforces the attraction between each other (less isolated/ stronger ties). Connection with the Victorian
lovers.
 Their eagerness to know is motivated by narrative curiosity.
 They are ‘possessed’ by Ash/La Motte story in a positive and adventurous way.
 Roland / Maud live vicariously Ash / La Motte’s affair.

Sex
 Essential issue → fear of sex or physical intimacy shared by most female characters, including Ellen
Ash and Christabel La Motte.

Maud Bailey:
 Sexually repressed/described as frosty /afraid of romantic entranglement /craves for solitude.
 White bed → (emblem of celibacy) exist inside a white egg.
 Symbolic power and polysemy of whiteness in the novel.
 Semantic relevance of bathrooms (frostiness).
 Symbols of her self-restraint: - orderliness of her flat
- confinement of her hair in a turban.
 Couple represent: - the reserve nature.
- the reluctance of engage in a sentimental affair of academic professionals.
 Archetypal heroine of Byatt’s novels → divided between feelings and professional aspirations →
looking for FREEDOM.
1

Roland Mitchell:
 Reaches the end of his quest → becomes a poet like Ash himself.
 Passionate / clandestine Victorian love affairs reaches both that love is worth living even
though involves suffering.
 Roland and Maud live vicariously Ash’s and La Motte affairs.
 They admit at the end of the novel their all-consuming love → total possession.
Fairy tales / Allegorical folk → Link with the main plot.
 Imagery and metaphor serve to exploit the analogies between characters.
(The Princess in the Glass Coffin) → Green, white and gold imagery associated with Christabel, Melusine
and Maud.
 Ash → modelled on Robert Browing and Tennyson.
 Christabel →Composite of Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barret Browing, George
Eliot and the Brontës.
 Ellen Ash → parallel in Jane Carlyle whose marriage never consummated.
Intertextual References
 Byatt parodies or ventriloquizes throughout her narrative.
Possession → Continuum of feeling → from physical possession.
→ to academic absorption.

 Excessive possession leads to the objectifying of the other.

 Questions if we can really possess another person or a poem.

POSSESSION → (from Victorian web)

 Both couples Maud / Roland and Ash / La Motte →matched paces, past and present are linked.
 Ends at present moment →crucial moment will change the future forever.
 Events in the past play a part in the future.
Postcript 1868 → meeting Ash / daughter Maia →message to her so called aunt Christabel never
arrived. → scholars never knew she had met her real father.
 Byatt shows that literary analysis → letter stealing cannot disclose the truth.
Metanarrative → Powerfully in the novel →Past →integral part of the present.
 forces present day characters towards uncovering the past.

 Maud / Roland visit the same places, so they walk the same path.
 discovery the brooch once belonged to Christabel → SUSPICION.

 Coherence / closure →presently unfashionable.

 Roland had been ‘trained’ to see his idea of his ‘self’ as an illusion, which is replaced by discontinuous
desires, ideological beliefs, responses.
 Maud varies the style of postmodernists theorist (Jameson).
 Byatt rebels → gives the novel double title →Possession: A Romance
 Lengthy quotation from Hawthorne’s Preface toThe house of the seven Gables which states the
label of romance (as opposed to novel).
 Allows the author to connect the past with the present.
1
Byatt’s time → full of changes → to the individual.
→ thoughts about literary subjectivity.
 Reviews older literary form and incorporates new forms of analysis →The necessity of new
subjectivity
Narration techniques  as a way to portray a woman.
 Female figure from: - Victorian and 20th century perspective.
- Male and female point of view.
- Perspective of people of different educational standings.

The complexity of narration + plot  different narrative techniques.

 Role of 3rd person narrator → limited to give reader impression of chaos.
 INTERTEXTUALITY →The main plot is based on. Each chapter is preceded by a quotation
from a poem related to the events described in it.
 The passages from the poetry are written by the characters form the novel (Ash / LaMotte)
 Chapters appear in the form of fragments of a narrative poem/epistolary novel and presented
as passages from diaries.
 Readers become engaged in the analysis of the plot based on 2 levels: - Victorian reality
- 20th century reality.

 Events from those times are intertwined to show analogy to the differences and similarities between
Victorian / Modern women.

Narrators→ diversity of narrators corresponds with characters themselves: - responsible

- telling the story.
 Primary narrator →3rd singular ‘Heterodiegetic narrator’→ most objective. Introduces
primary
literary scientist Roland Mitchell.
plot
 Roland becomes a narrator himself → follows steps of Randolph Henry Ash and his
unknown work and relationships.
 Maud Bailey travels back to Victorian times.
 Both take the reader to 19th century world → secondary plot → story shown through
correspondence, poetry and diaries.
 Victorian characters are presented through the exploration by 20th c characters who
paint a subjective picture of LaMotte and Ash.
 Breaks with the homogenous way of narrating a story →typical of 19th c.

Subjective narration vs women → Byatt exploits poetry → a way of portraying a female  The
poems by the character named Christabel LaMotte whose works usually begin the chapter.
 Proof that women are skilled at creating complex art →more valuable for contemporaries due to
the role of Victorian women at home.
 NO opportunity to give their opinion → unequal treatment.

 Open spaces→ freedom, visibility, free will and desires.

 Room → enclosed territory limited by walls, moral rules, restrictions of Victorian society.
 Capital letters→ Reflection of human craving / exaggeration of misery.
 Author exploits letters → objective form → female perspective.
 Women had to be careful → Victorian moral code → Ash is married, and Christabel asked him
to send the letter, Ash did not approve of keeping his correspondence secret.
 Dialogues → means to narrate the story: Maud / Roland / Beatrice (other academist)
 Spend hours discussing the relationships Ash / LaMotte.
 Maud / Beatrice discuss women writer from 20th c. female perspective → confirm Victorian
female less important than men.
 Consider work of ·Ellen Ash → valuable piece of writing.

 Sir George Bailey→ Occupies Christabel House →in poor condition  reflects his attitude to view on
Victorian woman  Only man is able to create something valuable, looks down on women.
1
 Roland / Maud wanted to reveal aspects of Christabel and Randolph to the public.
 Christabel→ Great poet  Randolph’s lover  Close relationship with Blanche Glover → assumed on
the basis of the diary entries →a lesbian relationship.
 Blanche→ felt ignored when LaMotte started relationship with Ash.
 Her diary → evidence of difficult period  Subjective kind of narration.
 Maud shows Ash collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems→ feeling of solitude  hide feelings.
 Extended comment on Victorian Age → dark / gloomy / mysterious Roland finds Ash’s volume of
poems, symbolise the perception of 19th c.
 Ash →underestimated, lack of popularity of his works but there’s a quiet to uncover the great mystery.
Way 19th c seen by 20th c. → unattractive, dirty. However, Roland follows his steps.
 Narrative techniques introduce SUBJECTIVITY → proves that narrations are NOT objective.

FEMALE SYMBOLS→ Blanche Glover. A woman hiding true feelings for Christabel. "Glove”
(object covering the hand and protect from cold). Victorian woman had to hide herself.
 House where Christabel spent her life → bleak, dusty carpets.
 Roland / Maud surprised by its look → symbol of what that time is seen by contemporaries.
 Victorian period →forgotten, mysterious, dark, scary →Gothic style.
 Byatt shows how female could not express thoughts openly and how her world is reflected by
means of letters, diaries and poems→ what could not be openly spoken was written down.

REVISTA ALICANTINA DE ESTUDIOS INGLESES

 Defined as ‘Quest Narrative’. Byatt deploys elements taken from

ROMANCE SUBGENRES → Detective stories
→ Gothic fiction.
 Questions raised: - Function of the author
- The process of reading.
SUBTITLE: “A Romance” → structural code of all fiction → considered as a whole descended from
folktale
 It involves 2 literary scholars → Roland Mitchell / Maud Bailey.
 Discovery / Reconstruction of the illicit affair of Victorian poets →a letter found by chance.
 Feeling ‘possessed’ by the need to learn more → Roland keeps drafts.
 ‘Ash Factory’→ secure world Roland decides to enter a wider world (like hero who abandons
the original and comfortable setting)
 Complex novel due to the 2 sets of characters (mirroring technique)
Transgression → Roland sins against the scholar code → Ash/ LaMotte broke Victorian sexual morals.
 Story advance simultaneously.
 The quest proceeds in the typical fashion of Romance →by means of manuscripts.
MAUD / LAMOTTE→concur in physical and psychological features (fair hair). Revealing family
connection.
 Persistent association with the colour green → Maud’s clothes
 → LaMotte’s boots.
 Both women defend their independence from the male characters.
RANDOLPH / ROLAND →They become ‘possessed’ (apparently uneventful lives)
 Roland → dull scholar (Val)
 Ash → reputation for being the model of gentleman and writer of the Victorian Age (Ellen)
 Maintain unsatisfactory relationships.
1
VAL / ELLEN → Twin images of dejection.
 Val→ academic failure. Feels she is no good. Breadwinner.
 Ellen→ cannot stand sexual intercourse. Feels less of a woman a wife (Randolph’s secretary)
LEONORA / BLANCHE → Mirror figures → distrust men. Rely on women friendship → in
Leonora takes the form of lesbianism.
 Both will be betrayed by their friends as they become ‘possessed’.
 Christabel is a love affair / Maul is an academic quest / Blanche ended up in suicide/ Leonora
and Maud bridge differences.

PARALLELISM - between characters and events.

- intertexts.
LaMotte’s Tale →The Glass Coffin. Tailor rewarded with a glass key. Allows him to rescue the
princess.
 Roland’s assistance to Lady Bailey gives him access to Christabel’s room →locked since her death
→Tailor opens the glass coffin where princess lies.
 Black Magician → Mortimer Cooper (American scholar) like the magician is posses with ‘possessing’
dreams (manuscripts) to enrich his collection → wears black.
 Black Magician - Locks the princess in the Glass coffin.
- Turns castle into miniatureCopper’s illegal copies of manuscripts  Villain’s role.
 Ewan MacIntyre → comes across LaMotte’s will / offers legal advice to Roland / Maud / carries Val off
→ Roland free to start a new relationship with Maud.
 Leonora Stern → involuntarily helps Maud → news of a letter she has received (next piece of the puzzle)
 Roland saves Lady Bailey’s life→ rewarded with access to LaMotte’s room.
 Beatrice Nest → warns Maud of Cropper’s plot.
 Geographical quest → track movements of the couple. Lincolnshire / Yorkshire / Brittany.
 Resemblance of 2 scholars→ Randolph early letters show interest in Christabel, and she replied
with polite coldness.

 Maud →absorbed in her task.

 Roland →initiates conversations.
→Yorkshire →Ash / LaMotte consummated their affair → Loss of virginity.
Roland / Maud realised they had things in common → Maud loosens her hair (covered before)
→ Brittany → Christabel found was pregnant. Roland / Maud stay together. Different for Christabel.
 Recurrent theme → recognition.
 Maud → Descendant of Ash / LaMotte → Last letter revealed it.
 Continuous use of pairs of elements through the whole narrative (ventriloquise). Characteristic device of
a Romance → instead of a hero → deploys 2 → Happy ending.
 Gothic → Documents of Ellen Ash had put in husband’s coffin.

MARTIN AMIS: TIME'S ARROW (1991)

 Time's Arrow  narrative strategy that forces us to look at the Holocaust in a radical new way. 1
 It takes us back to Françoise Lyotard's  "incredulity towards metanarratives" (defining
feature of Postmodernism).
 Amis' fiction portrays to perfection the "cultural dominant" inherent to mass culture.
 Amis' novels convey (all rendered in a language with verbal energy):
 Nihilism
 Squalor
 Violence and brutality
 Menace of global destruction
 Imminent collapse of modern civilization

 Themes/style:
 Provocative
 Respond to social/political turmoil of the time
 Introduce the writer as a character

FLOW  Outstanding feature

 Interweaves reflection and commentary  Idiosyncratic prose
- Phrases follow the rhythms of thought
- Range of registers
- Plays with sound
- Startling images -- strong metaphors

NARRATIVE VOICE  Essential role

Use of 1st person narrator, often a writer  occasionally himself as literary
persona.

 Goes backwards in time  awful conjunctions of the deaths of GOD and LOVE
 Reason  instrument of man's creation through death
 Man sets out to exterminate the whole race  give birth to : uncontaminated
unblemished
untouched by original sin
IRONY  the novel is perceived backwards (in rewind), the role is of creation instead to dream a
race, of nihilist destruction.

 Novel SUBVERTS 2 genres: Science Fiction and Bildungsroman

 Point of the arrow  flies back to an apocalypse set in the past
 Extremity upon extremity heaped up to their point of origin
 Impending catastrophy experience heading to an imminent future
 Travel back in space to an alien world
 Gradually rediscover a ghostly döppelganger  a soul killed by (his) its owner
 A nazi doctor who had assisted Dr.Mengele in his sinister medical practices.
 doctor dies and his soul is set free  that instant of clairvoyance  the soul  takes us back all
the way to his (nazi doctor) birth

BILDUNGSROMAN  we would watch the development of a hero from childhood  adulthood but,
we watch him through a deconstruction of time.
 History and story both are undone  we do not learn growth into maturity we learn "the nature of
the offence"
  He is travelling towards his secret  not how BAD it is but the nature of the offence.

THRILLER  in reverse  we are looking for something to happen. Yet it has already happened,
waiting for us to unfold it into being again (it is like a work of origami made with a very important piece of
paper which has to be unfolded to reveal the true story on it)
Ostranenie  Victor Shklowsky/critic  "the act of making the familiar strange"
 art should impact sensations of things as they are perceived and NOT as they are known
 make objects unfamiliar, make forms difficult, increase difficulty
 process of perception must be prolonged
1
TIME'S ARROW  difficult reading (8 chapters - 3 parts)
 Amis uses a technique that defamiliarises the subject matter of the Holocaust
 Familiar with  sinister trains to the camps, separation of families, the ovens, suffering, skeletal
survivors, heaps of corpses.
 Familiarity  numbs our feelings. We know what we are going to face.

NARRATOR  situated from a standpoint of one of the perpetrators (not victims)

 narrative moving in the opposite direction of events  look at Holocaust  a new
 startling metaphors of reanimation
 reconstruction Carry an overtone that gradually reveals their
 rebirth importance

READER  faces a new kind of reading  forced to read slowly and reread
 encouraged to know what's going on
 technique produces fascination on the reader

DAILY ROUTINES  emphasised to increase our awareness  time moving in the opposite direction
 1st chapter  discomfort, household routines  eating process, bowel movement
 gradually  mood  optimistic / illness  age, recede / knees no longer hurt / go to places quicker /
different bearing / sold the stick
 those trivial matters take us to more daunting recesses: Tod is kind/unkind
 takes toys from children

INCREASING IRONY  underlined by intradiegetic narrator  ignorance/innocence makes him (the soul)
misinterprets what he sees
Tod Friendly  protagonist; “Tod” = death (in German) + “Friendly” (America, open forgetful,
friendly)

DIALOGUES  get darker overtones, adding shadowy information

 small details  scattered throughout the narrative
 images of doctors  life's gatekeepers
 bloodstained, rubber bib
 white coat  black boots
 nightmares  glimpses of medical practices, related to babies
 women fit into sinister patterns
 love affairs  sexual impotence

 Protagonist  various identities on his way back from America to his country of origin. Symbolic stages of
this bildungsroman in reverse. Different personalities in different environments in accordance with
environment
John Young  New York
Hamilton de Souza  Portugal
Odilo Unverdorben  Germany (means "pure-upright")
 Metaphorical  nazi aspiration to create a "pure" human race. Ironically  doctor's
humanity.
 Reverse notion of cause and effect: - to make us aware of the crazy dream. Frenzy of action.
- refusing to know (paradox)
 Reversal leads to the ultimate cause  the death of love, parental, sexual, LOVE
 Odilo Unverdorben  he and his soul split apart forever, then we are introduced to the
intimacy of home and heart.
 His violence is rooted in the nature of the patriarchal family.

ENDING  culmination of the inverted Bildungsroman

 narrator proceeds to the dissolution of the self instead of the assertion
 oxymoronic style  characteristic of Amis
 creation implies death -- creating something more interesting that death
 the nazis creation of race meant annihilation on a large scale
1
 for Jews  death means metaphorical rebirth

NARRATOR  Intradiegetic narrator  character involved in the action. Unreliable, cheats everyone,
except the reader.
 Is the protagonist's soul: - lacks access to his thoughts
- usually, gets wrong interpretations  naive observer/innocent
 Readers can see beyond of what the narrator sees and understand more accurately what is
happening
 Killed off in the end  important from ideological stance

closure: the argument is clinched.

 AMIS  criticised on moral grounds  accused of complicity with characters

 using Holocaust for the benefit of experimenting narrative techniques
 narrating Holocaust from perpetrators' side  we are led to think he understands their motives
and exculpates them

AIM  inquire into the causes of collective madness beyond proposition

 Odilo: - liable to do what everybody else does
- dependent on the health of society
 His historical biography of Stalin  2 purposes:
1. Redress what he felt
2. Wanted to ask questions of the British Left  Relevant to equate communism with
fascism
 Amis addresses critically 2 most powerful metanarratives of the West:
1. The belief in reason
2. The collapse of the Holocaust and Stalinism.

CRITIQUE  decline of the West  consequence of late capitalism (Friedrich Jameson)

UNIT 3: FROM CANONICAL ENGLISH TO MULTICULTURAL BRITISH:

REWRITING THE CANNON

Introduction to Postcolonial writing:

 1948  The Empire Windrush  492 Jamaicans into the UK
 UK: social/cultural changes  brought about by steady immigrant movements from former colonies (into
UK)
 After the war Labour shortage  Industry affected by the WWII

JAMAICANS  fought on the British side

 Were offered cheap transport for anyone willing to go and work in UK (looking for better
opportunities)
 Attracted by "mother century" (educated Jamaicans)
 Dissappointment  positions offered  the lowest paid in the labour market
 Engrained Racism  increase immigration
 political unrest due to independence struggles in British colonies
 literature  where conflicting discourses intersect

POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE  Thornier conflicts: indeterminacy of writers' nationality

 natives of South Africa, India, Pakistan do not identify with representations offered by writers who
share nationality, but are white.
 in derogatory sense considered "liberals"  representations found faulty

Black Writers  born in Britain  complain: regarded as foreign 1

claim  recognition on equal terms as white counterparts

FIRST ISSUES  writers from colonial backgrounds address in representations or its absence
 superiority of the West  silence the colonial "other"  secondary/marginal
 Few native characters in novels by well-known writers
 colonies  remote place  remain in the background  Mansfield Park/Jane Eyre/Great
Expectations
 source of income  inheritance (Jane Eyre)  opportunity for education
 Indifference towards the Empire  innate superiority
 When characters are from the colonies  represented as monstruous, wild, irrational.
Bertha Mason  (transported to Australia), animal-like, cannibals
 show they were unfit for self-government -- legitimate land seizure
 characterization of colonized people ->- secondary, weak, feminine, OTHER to Europe (the
standard in British Colonial writing)

Western representation  mastery, control, rationality, cultural superiority, skillfulness.

 reafirm its own identity  find -reverse selves The African, the Oriental, the Thug, the Indian
- dark-mirror images

 Teaching English Language+Literature  naturalize British values

 Immigrants  fight for an identity in a dual process:
1) Deconstruct engraved social/literary stereotypes  marginal position.
2) After achieving the 1st they can become subjects of their own narrative, and engage in narratives
 no longer the victims.

Significant writers and themes.

 Process mirrored in Literature.
 1st Generation of immigrant writers.
 Record experience  different continents/backgrounds.
 Privilege genre  Bildungsroman (novels that follow the development of hero/heroine through a troubled
quest for identity).
 Narratives brimming with energy  arrival in Britain, romantic expectations, shock at dreary reality, under
the lure of better opportunities, disillusionment, gruelling quest for housing, work, social acceptance, anger,
bitterness, pathos, humour, exhilaration at obstacles surmounted.
 Idealized country/inhabitants ≠harsh reality.
 New perspectives:  different angles  offer range of characters  settings
 hybrid society
 critical eye
 Immigrant literature  Urban in quality; big cities received largest amount of immigrants

MONICA ALI: "BRICK LANE" (street in London inhabited by Pakistan immigrants)

 Born in Bangladesh  grew up in England  read politics at Oxford.
 Novel 19 year-old woman arrives in England through arranged marriage to 40 year old ineffectual man.
She has to cope with tensions of loveless marriage, family responsibilities, economic difficulties, life in
community, bullying youngsters. Finds support  group of female friends  help her bring true
independence.
 Difficulty of relationship with women in tightly-knit immigrant community
 colluding with suffocating patriarchal culture  prone to gossip  pry into others' privacy

PARALLEL PLOT  Sister in Bangladesh

 We can visualise  heavy burden assigned to women - Britain
- country of origin
Portrayal of domestic world + contemporary politics (11th September's reaction) pressures of
Muslims.

Realistic  account of immigrant life in London in the 70s. Nazeen, garment worker, courage, 1
humour, strength, open a space for change and individual self-realisation.

 1st Generation of Immigrants  met difficulties difficult to surmount.

 country of origin  still in mind  hope to return after succeeding economically/education
improves quality of their life.

BUCHI EMECHETA: "IN THE DITCH" / "2nd CLASS CITIZEN"

 Novels reflect her own experience as Nigerian immigrant, trying to make her way in London. Juggling her
work, evening classes, 5 children, divorce: husband returns to Nigeria.
 “In the Ditch” (1972) and "Second class citizen" (1972) are the portrait of life in the colonial Nigeria 
grew up, education after her father's death
 Life in Britain "in the ditch"  social marginalisation

CONFLICT OF CULTURES  critically analyses Nigerian cultures in novels:

"The Joy of Motherhood"
Explore issues: poverty/racism "Double Yoke"
 impact on families until they "The Bride Prize"
disintegrate "The Slave Girl"
.
 Narrative  social realism
 The Ghetto: "2nd class citizen". Adah's story.

ANDREA LEVY: "SMALL ISLAND" / "FRUIT OF THE LEMON"

 Descendant of Jamaicans on board of the Windrush

"Small Island"  original novel set in the 1940s.

 Deals with the experience of men of her father's generation
 joined RAF (II WW)
 went to England  Thought English would show gratitude for their help during the conflict

Multiple perspectives  told from white/black perspectives.

 profound change Britain was undergoing
 try to preserve a sense of Englishness while becoming a multicultural society
 claim the right to belong: "we are here because you were there"  slogan/battle for equality.
 revision of the colonial discourse  children of the Empire had been led to believe that it was
their mother country.
 novel pictures war and postwar Britain: - conflicts
- racist attitudes
- lack of understanding
- small personal achievements
 It is historical  deals with world events and social impact
 explores WWII as lived in London
 gives voice to ignored Jamaicans, served in RAF and later arrived as immigrants

 Structure: Polyphonic: 2 protagonist couples tell one chapter each.

Male/Female/Black/White  fully representative.
 Characters - convey a distinctive register/mood
- they show individual prejudices rooted in racial issues
- low English working class affected by the war -- economic depression

 Andrea Levy shows misunderstanding of both and explores the adjustments all sides had to face.
 belong to the Bildungsroman genre  enriched by immigrant experience.

 Complexity  generation born in Britain  illusion of being British citizens to the point of forgetting
ancestors, country or culture of origin  constantly reminded they are not British citizens. 1

Difficult construction of identity 2nd generation

Colour  greatest issue - British/Immigrants

- within colonial/postcolonial communities
 whiteness  value  range of opportunities  self-esteem
 possibility of being thought of as "white", not "black"
 parents live "quietly"  protect children who know little about their past/country of origin

"Fruit of the lemon"

 Different issue  protagonist: independent, self-confident girl enters the job market. When meets her
friends' relatives she experiences the harsh reality of exclusion.
 After xenophobic attack suffered by black shop assistant, she travels to Jamaica to meet her family, rasts
 spiritual journey
 After that she matures and returns to London to tell her own story
 Family story intertwines with the colonial history of her country  Patchwork of stories.

Circular structure  returns to England on Guy Fawkes' night (5th November), relives her parents'
arrival in England.
 parents came on a banana boat
 Faith arrived when fireworks and celebration was a sort of welcome.

SECOND GENERATION OF IMMIGRANTS (born in England)

 Conditions improved  many had risen in the social ladder  self-confidence perceived in novels,
althought they did not sidestepped the racial question.

MEERA SYAL: "ANITA AND ME"

 Choose realist conventions  believe in the power of representation + power of literature to make an
impact on reader  bring about change  her concern
 Diffent version of history  recover stories silenced and excluded from mainstream narrative
 Meera laughs at misunderstandings and shortcomings of India/Pakistani communities and the English in
London  BBC TV comedy "Goodness Gracious Me"
 "Anita and me"  semi-autobigraphical

ZADIE SMITH: "WHITE TEETH"

 Shows multicultural nature of British society  comic satire
 "White Teeth" (2000)  lives of 3 immigrant families
- English married to Jamaican black woman
- A Muslim from Bangladesh
- 3rd generation of German/Polish
 English father/Jamaican mother
 Around what it means to be "English"
 Features of the novel: vitality, energy, comic spirit, peculiar idiolect, display of oddities
 new concept of Englishness
 mocks serious representations conveyed by the canon
 Novel accused of giving idealised version of present day multicultural London, but it allows the reader to
believe that coexistence is possible.

Rewriting the canon

 Immigrant postcolonial writers had to deconstruct (dual process)
 deeply rooted social/literary stereotypes
 aim  unsettle world picture of the colonised  always occupied a marginal position
 Productive fiction with the objective of recreating the canon from the perspective of those in the margins
whose representations served to legitimised Western superiority
 Shakespeare's last play: "The Tempest" has been one canonical text. It has undergone rewriting from 1
different perspectives, mostly feminist/postcolonial, women/natives  shared a history of subjection

MARINA WARNER: "INDIGO" (Italian mother/Caribbean ascendency)

"Indigo"  rewrites 3 narrative characters: Ariel, Caliban and Sycorax.
 Marina takes a different stance  Reversion of stereotypes
 gives Sycorax (Caliban's "monstruous" mother) a full life of her own, independent of her
maternal status. She's a sorcerer too, but her powers are benignant and healing.
 we are aware of the prejudice part of the historical portrait of the witch in Western culture
 Ariel's characterisation as feminine  making her adopted by Sycorax
 Marina deals with - tribe conflict
- the fates of women in precolonial social groups
Ariel  member of farming tribe whose lands were often raided and women were stolen
 during a raid, as a child, is left behind  adopted by Sycorax  calls him Dule
 1st African to arrive in the island, in the womb of a drowned woman thrown overboard.

 Warner offers/exposes:
 Critical revisions of:
Female writers and
Most infamous practices of the slave trade.
 Dule  Caliban (after being imprisoned by English colonizers) savage nature of the Caribs.

Managing Monsters. Six myths of our time  Deals with slave trade practices.
 Discusses on J.M.W Turner (1775-1851) “The Slave Ship” (1840) printed after abolition of
slavery. On learning that captain of slave trade ship  Insurance Firm.
 Discovery  Threw sick men overboard to cash in the policies.
 Slaves / commodities / deprived of humanity  representations.
 We get Sycorax’s story through Prospero  might be untrustworthy  narrative evidences of
cannibalism  intercourse with devil  presented by historians of the time.
 Only references of Sycorax  Made in Ariel / Prospero’s story  none is reliable as both are
experts in impersonation, fabricating evidence and using spells.

Caliban Refracted into many characters  contemporary London.

 Black guard  underground station.
 Arrived in England in the Windrush.
 Black man behind the actor who played Shakespeare’s Caliban.

 Novel’s most daring reversion of the play  the coupling of Miranda with Caliban. A happy ending,
disrupts the original text.

Indigo  breaks in favour of postmodernist experiment.

 Questions canonical discourse by using metafictional devices:
 Polyphony.
 Rupture of linear time.
 Sequence.
CARYL PHILLIPS: “CAMBRIDGE” / “CROSSING THE RIVER” / “THE NATURE OF BLOOD”

 Caring kind of creative experimentation in a similar line of

 Literary
 Historical
 Recession
 Reversions
 Arrived in England 12 years old  lived in Leeds and Birmingham
 First novels  Jamaican issues 1
 Stagnant life
 Enclosed horizons of a small colony
 Lure of the metropolis
 Inability of returned immigrants to adjust in either place

Cambridge  writes the untold tale of plantation conflicts  silent in the background of colonial
18th/19thcentury British literature.
 One has only to remember Mansfield Park / Jane Eyre; wealth comes from the West Indies.

Crossing the River  turning point in his fiction  he breaks with traditional historical narrative  defies
literary and offers.

Juxtaposition of fragments stories of a black slave’s children located in distant spaces and times
 To give the effect of a broken mirror  narrative moves to Liberia, Denver (19 th c.) town in
England (WWII)
 Reflects African diaspora: destruction of
 Memory
 Land
 Kin ties
 Tales connected by family link

The Nature of Blood  Historical novel

 Juxtaposition of the past and present  different sources: historical, literary, fictional, disparate,
places, times.
 Story intertwines threads from distant historical times  social backgrounds, countries
 Camp in Cyprus  British Rule  Jewish refugees wait to enter Palestine after war.
 When it moves on the extermination camp in Germany.
 Back to the 15th century  Venice. Jews / Christians celebrating respective religious
commemorations.
 16th c.  Venice. Republic to the present.

Incessant shuttle  circularity  ever recurring story of human oppression.

 NO sequential  No need for chapters  continuous flow of episodes and voices.
 NO clear cut structure.

Elliptical structure difficult to understand

 It tours through distant cultures and countries  Christian / Jews / Blacks.
 Rule of exclusion on ethic grounds.
 Kaleidoscopic novel  1st, 2nd and 3rd narrative voices.

Intradiegetic / Heterodiegetic narrators  a plurality of centres of consciousness.

 Direct report and free indirect speech.
 Split voice of a featured self.
 Flux of consciousness.

Women  ignored by traditional history  absent from records  rewrite events from their perspective.
 Phillips foregrounds a feminine voice, excluded from centres of decision and power victims of social
organisation.
 Desdemona is a victim  woman’s ambivalent identity as a virgin and as a whore.

 Male assumptions on the nature of woman. Othello believes Yago.

 Othello’s anxiety is underlined in Phillips’ novel.

 A victim too  related to race  He wants integration at all costs: Eager to trust, please, adjust, 1
uses Desdemona as source of information.

 Image constructed through the eyes of others.

 Those who don’t belong to dominant culture move from the margin to the centre.
 Success coincides with defeat  High price to pay.
 The novel The Nature of Blood is a tale of foreboding.

Contribution to postcolonial writing:

 Innovations
 Started in realistic mode soon shifted to a more experimental narrative, more suitable for the tragic
history of his race.
 Equates infamous history of slaves with the Genocide of the Jews.
 Equates predicaments of women and blacks  epitome of the marginal and powerless.
 A distant shore  lonely white teacher  Dorothy, death in life.
 African refugee  Solomon, outsider, murdered by roust gang.

Parallel stories of exclusion/abuse

 Postcolonial immigrant writers have contributed to:

 English fiction
 Encourage a debate about what it means to be English today.

UNIT 4: DRAMA IN THE 60S AND THE 70S: ANGER AND COUNTER-CULTURE
 New breed of intellectuals  criticism of class distinction encouraged by:
 The British establishment
 The Church of England
 Elitist universities of Oxford and Cambridge
 Sense of anger and frustration  attack political institutions
 Theatrical sense dominated (up to that moment) by conservative / middle class dramatists.
 Rage towards established political institutions.
 Rebellious and critical attitude toward society.
 Incorporate the working class and socialist ideology into their works  attack snobbery attitudes
after WWII.

DAVID HARE: PLENTY

 The sparse settings were accompanied by a direct, concise language, void of euphemism. The
dialogues became essential elements of the play.
 His early plays target some aspects of the left, his message says the power of the real world
nullifies all protests which search for utopian alternatives and are in turn ridiculed.
 In almost all his plays, Hare aims to portray the disintegration of the moral values of his characters,
who are usually upper-middle class and pride themselves in their progress views.
  Hare’s Fanshen (1975) was conceived from a political point of view. By rejecting individualism in
favour of group creativity, the participants hoped to inspire audiences to take similar moral stands in
their own lives.
 He started writing his major plays at the end of the 70s.
 In his later plays Hare targets institutions such as the church of England, the British legal system
and Britain’s Labour Party.
 For some critics, he is too pessimist and too predictable. Nevertheless, his consistency, the variety
of his work, his range of form and technique, and his long lasting role as critic of the British
Establishment and the post-war world have made him, to date, the most successful of his 1
generation of political writers.

Plenty Witty characters, incisive dialogue.

 Social and political issues  play is a vehicle to analyze them
* Susan  complex female character  conflict with her past
 Politically committed to her country  undercover agent  courier
 Wife of prestigious diplomat
 Conveys  disillusionment of post-war eras  hypocrisy of class culture

Audience is asked to make up its own mind  the play evokes different responses

* Susan and Brock  married  she’s planning on leaving him. Husband now salesman.
They have to leave their house.

Setting symbolic Easter  opportunity to be reborn, but chances to change  remote.

 The play revolves around how the hope for a different future after WWII turns into
disappointment  (Susan’s own plight).

HAROLD PINTER: THE DUMB WAITER

 Speech “stratagem of nakedness”

 Greatest playwright in G.B.  Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.
 Influenced by Waiting for Godot (1952)  Samuel Becket.
 The plays he wrote were politically inspired.
 Political activist
 Campaigned against the War of Iraq.
 He took every opportunity to make his pronouncements on current affairs.
Denounced U.S politics.

Background  Jewish. Important family influence Mother’s  engaged in criminal activities

Father’s  interested in music, art, literature.
 Opposing points of view  essential feature in his plays
 WWII  evacuation as a child in (to?) a castle in Cornwall  traumatic separation from parents 
many of his characters feel entrapment and claustrophobia  recurrent feeling.

Plays  setting: single, prison like room

 violence: inevitable and always a threat
 Everybody encounters violence in some way or another.
 He encountered it in an extreme form

 It is not clear to what extent the Holocaust affected his playwright but he tried to play down the
repercussion of his ethnicity.
 His plays are about motiveless persecution  reaction to youth experience.

Influences  Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot.

 Echoes of the themes of communication and the inadequacy of language.
  Highlights the roles of  domination and submission manifested by the way characters
communicate with each other.
 Influence of Becket in the poignant representation of the relationship between Gus and Ben in The
Dumb Waiter.
 Language covers vulnerability.
 Use of repetition and pauses.
 The nature of characters emerges from  what they do not say and  what they do.

Silence  Beckett  suggest alienation of characters. Victims of tedium and a meaningless 1

modern life.
 Pinter  ominous and threatening. Foreshadow violent denouement.

Language Unique  coined the Word Pinteresque /Pinterese to refer to the dialogues, which
camouflage a menacing situation.
 He creates a world of silence and repressed violence.

- That´s why his plays are called “comedies of Menace”. “Theatre of non-communication”.

- Plays which can be very funny up to the poit when the absurdity of the characters’
predicament becomes frightening, horrifying, tragic, pathetic.

 Ben and Gus are killers waiting for Wilson to give them instructions regarding their “next job”. Element of
uncertainty introduced at the beginning of the story:

 We ask ourselves : Who they are?

Where they are?
What are they doing there?

 2 protagonists engage in a conversation defined through a series of pauses and repetitions aided
by insignificant propositions

Gus  submissive /insecure

Ben  aura of violence / uses silence as a means of domination/ REPRESSED ANGER

 2 Men try to control each other with words which seem hostile and intimidating.

Dumb waiter Introduced  dialogue shifts away from the 2 men : Now confronted with having to
communicate with the unknown person at the end of the shaft.

 Another feature : Pinter´s ability to present both conscious and unconscious THOUGHTS
He keeps several flows of consciousness in a single conversation

 How Pinter constructs characters through language

the absence of it

 Possible sub-texts that can be extracted.

  How the real concerns of characters can be found through silences and nuances of vocabulary
more than through their actions

 How Pinter creates ambiguity to force readers to reach their own conclusions.

CARYL CHURCHILL: TOP GIRLS

 Highlights her socialist views, specifically Gender central to her theatre

 Committed to left-wing politics. Class issues

Reverses  Conventional roles Owners  deals with “ownership”

Woman  Aggressive property owner

Man  Submissive tennant

 Her works features characters : self-centered woman

(eccentric) blinded by greed and malice

does away with men one way or another

On the surface of amusing folk-comedy lie deep undertones

 Brilliant observations
 Witty lines
 Dickensian Zest
 Wealth of theatrical images

Top Girls  “The play of the century”

 Feminist themes  developed and represented by all-female cast

 women´s liberation movement  examined by contrasting 2

sisters’ lifestyles

Difficult play about working women  challenges they face in business world
society

confronted with many obstacles

40 % of labour force

 Historical Context  Thatcher Era  Dismantled many socialist practices (part of WWII period),
privatized industries (cool meaning), limited the power of the unions (unpopular measures for low and
working classes), 3m.people unemployed, cuts in welfare and social programmes.

Paradox  Marlene - supports political agenda

- becomes emancipated through success endorses the leader who

has done little for Women´s rights, high price she has to pay

 She adopts the values that women have been victim for centuries (have suffered for)

Questions
 Whether women´s progress has been a positive thing  considers the notion of success
 Whether women have to behave like Marlene to be successful
 What society expects of women (never answered)

 Joice  her sister  focuses on survival  trapped in working-class background. Life of drudgery
and menial job
 Angie  Focus on her future  dim, witted, best option finds a menial job and marries soon
 Marlene´s real daughter

 Feminist ideology too judgemental

 Readers  Ask themselves which of the sisters is more emancipated 1

Techniques:

 Non-linear construction
 Overlapping dialogue  points of interruption marked
 Blending of fantasy and reality
 Events linked thematically
 Flashback technique  scenes belong to both past /present
 Several parts played by the same women

UNIT 5: POETRY AFTER WORLD WAR II

 Confessional poets Americans who rendered personal experiences and disregarded social
convention. Speaks to the reader about his/her life. Insanity, suicide, sex, repressed feelings, were
all dealt with explicitly.(Silvia Plath).

 They were sincere and authentic,as well as direct.

TED HUGHES

 Married Sylvia Plath

 Influenced by :
- Mythology, Folklore, Primitivism
- Robert Graves. The White Goddess
- D.H.Lawrence

 Hailed as a significant new voice in English Poetry: Freshness / Directness / Approach towards
nature and animals
 Re-read Shakespeare
 Age of 11 wrote comic verse

 Nature:
- Constant variable, autobiographical essay, The Rock.
- Local dialect : he spoke as a child Influenced his early poems

 Recurrent themes
- Violence, war, animals
- Personal relationships
- The self with respect to nature
  Depicts the brutality of the natural world possessed by beasts and animalistic men, shows greater
economy of style.

“HAWK ROOSTING”
 The most anthologised of all his poems
 The reader is presented with the reflections of a hawk that is surveying the world as it rests on a tree
top.
 Hawk  used as a central metaphor for the arrogance/egotism of man and the implications of this 1
attitude.
 The hawk kills those who challenge his authority and the result is that nothing can or will ever change
 Hughes´ animals poems are always : harsh, violent, grim picture of nature
 The hawk has been interpreted by some as “a fascist symbol” of a horrible totalitarian genocidal
dictator.
 The poem offers a vision of the surface of the world and that which lies beneath
 Hughes wants to show that the man has failed to connect with the natural world. Only communion
between the two will enable him (man) to make sense of his existence.
Hawk Roosting

I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.

Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!

The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.

It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -

I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.

For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.

Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this

Analysis:

 6 four line stanzas

 Harsh and brutal nature
 Nature is relentless and defies change
 Thought process of hawk, metaphor for how men think (arrogant and egoistic ) The hawk kills anyone
who defies his authority ( not because he is hungry ).
 This was written while living in USA

“ Wind “

This house has been far out at sea all night,

The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky 1

The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as

The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,

At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note

That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,

And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons

Analysis:

 6 four line stanza

 A solid house becomes fragile
 Extreme weather threatens man (makes him vulnerable) Godly Strength
 From Icelandic sagas and Norse mythology which celebrate with awe the powers of nature (man is
insignificant)
 Imagery  booming, stampeding, floundering (power), stones cry out (how can something so solid feel
pain?)
 Enjambment  makes the poem more dynamic (slowing and quickening)
 Ocean metaphor ( house = boat at sea)
 Personification of many elements
 Dented / tent (internal rhyme)
 First person perspective (vulnerable)
 Guyrope connects / anchors hills to earth
 In awe of wind´s power
 Some suggested house  his relationship with Sylvia Plath ( that is being destroyed)

“Relic”
 I found this jawbone at the sea's edge: 
There, crabs, dogfish, broken by the breakers or tossed
To flap for half an hour and turn to a crust
Continue the beginning. The deeps are cold: 
In that darkness camaraderie does not hold.

Nothing touches but, clutching, devours. And the jaws, 

Before they are satisfied or their stretched purpose
Slacken, go down jaws; go gnawn bare. Jaws
Eat and are finished and the jawbone comes to the beach:  1
This is the sea's achievement; with shells, 
Verterbrae, claws, carapaces, skulls.

Time in the sea eats its tail, thrives, casts these

Indigestibles, the spars of purposes
That failed far from the surface. None grow rich
In the sea. This curved jawbone did not laugh
But gripped, gripped and is now a cenotaph.

Analysis:

 Critical nature of life

 Relic / fossil has been recycled by the sea. The fish has eaten and been eaten
 Sea is inhospitable / destructive
 Cacophonic sequence of hard sound : CR,BR,K…Show process of destruction
 Spars of purpose  Metaphor for ships that sank with the wills of their crew
 Cenotaph  a monument to someone buried elsewhere, specially one commemorating people who
died in a war

Pike

Pike, three inches long, perfect

Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,

Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-

Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year’s black leaves, watching upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

The jaws’ hooked clamp and fangs

Not to be changed at this date:
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

Three we kept behind glass,

Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: fed fry to them-
Suddenly there were two. Finally one
 With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-

One jammed past its gills down the other’s gullet:

The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.
1
A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them-

Stilled legendary depth:

It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished

With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,

Owls hushing the floating woods

Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night’s darkness had freed,
That rose slowly toward me, watching.

 “Pike” means “Lucio” (tipo de pescado)

 Poem based on his childhood. Memories of the lake he visited as a child.
 How the poet deals with nature.
 Pond  represents Hughes’ conscious mind.
 Deeper area  subconscious
 Precise description of the creature  body, movement, behaviour…
 Obsession with big creatures  warlike descriptives.
 Beginning with capital letters  Ego of the Pike.
 Tone  nostalgic.  Respect for the pike, powerful impact on childhood.
 Sublime nature of Nature.

“Examination at the Womb Door”

Who owns those scrawny little feet?    Death.

Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face?    Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs?    Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles?    Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts?    Death.
Who owns these questionable brains?    Death.
All this messy blood?    Death.
These minimum-efficiency eyes?    Death.
This wicked little tongue?    Death.
This occasional wakefulness?    Death.
 Given, stolen, or held pending trial?
Held.

Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth?    Death.

Who owns all of space?    Death.

Who is stronger than hope?    Death.

Who is stronger than the will?    Death.
Stronger than love?    Death.
Stronger than life?    Death. 1

But who is stronger than Death?

                          Me, evidently.
Pass, Crow.

 From the book Crow from the life and songs of Crow. Crow is described as a quasi- human mythical
creature. (How was he created? By God’s nightmare )
 Crow is a mischievous and disruptive character (Native American myth). He is inconsistent and has
NO morals or values.
 In this fable the Crow represents the rebirth of man. The product of a nightmare, the Crow must
improve humanity (a challenge from God). To be born he must go through tests set by God.
 Title  a direct reference to the examination of the Crow must take before he is born. The womb
door can only be opened once the infant/crow has passed the examination.
 Interrogative tone, perhaps a conversation between God and the Crow, testing him?
 Parallelism  who owns, who is stronger…..
 Repetition of death  death owns all aspects of living body, death is a hunter, death is strong.
 Utility coat  soul more important than the body (eternal)
 Questionable brain  stupidity of humans compared to death. Personification of death.
 Negative adjectives  deficiency of human body.
 Given, stolen  death decides when to act.
 Held pending trail: Crow is waiting like a criminal.
 Whole rainy stony earth  how the earth feels, very bleak.
 Who owns earth/space  death (even stronger than God?).
 Who is stronger than Death?  God asking Crow directly. Crow is stronger than Death because he
is going to be born.
 Crow can be born, he has passed. He now has a name.
 Full stop at the end represents finality.

“Daffodils” 1998(narcisos)

Remember how we picked the daffodils?

Nobody else remembers, but I remember.
Your daughter came with her armfuls, eager and happy,
Helping the harvest. She has forgotten.
She cannot even remember you. And we sold them.
It sounds like sacrilege, but we sold them.
Were we so poor? Old Stoneman, the grocer,
Boss-eyed, his blood-pressure purpling to beetroot
(It was his last chance,
He would die in the same great freeze as you),
He persuaded us. Every Spring
He always bought them, sevenpence a dozen,
‘A custom of the house’.
Besides, we still weren’t sure we wanted to own
Anything. Mainly we were hungry
To convert everything to profit.
Still nomads - still strangers
To our whole possession. The daffodils
Were incidental gilding of the deeds,
Treasure trove. They simply came,
And they kept on coming.
As if not from the sod but falling from heaven.
Our lives were still a raid on our own good luck. 1
We knew we’d live forever. We had not learned
What a fleeting glance of the everlasting
Daffodils are. Never identified
The nuptial flight of the rarest ephemera -
Our own days!

We thought they were a windfall.

Never guessed they were a last blessing.
So we sold them. We worked at selling them
As if employed on somebody else’s
Flower-farm. You bent at it
In the rain of that April - your last April.
We bent there together, among the soft shrieks
Of their jostled stems, the wet shocks shaken
Of their girlish dance-frocks -
Fresh-opened dragonflies, wet and flimsy,
Opened too early.

We piled their frailty lights on a carpenter’s bench,

Distributed leaves among the dozens -
Buckling blade-leaves, limber, groping for air, zinc-silvered -
Propped their raw butts in bucket water,
Their oval, meaty butts,
And sold them, sevenpence a bunch -

Wind-wounds, spasms from the dark earth,

With their odourless metals,
A flamy purification of the deep grave’s stony cold
As if ice had a breath -

We sold them, to wither.

The crop thickened faster than we could thin it.
Finally, we were overwhelmed
And we lost our wedding-present scissors.

Every March since they have lifted again

Out of the same bulbs, the same
Baby-cries from the thaw,
Ballerinas too early for music, shiverers
In the draughty wings of the year.
On that same groundswell of memory, fluttering

They return to forget you stooping there

Behind the rainy curtains of a dark April,
Snipping their stems.
But somewhere your scissors remember. Wherever they are.
Here somewhere, blades wide open,
April by April
Sinking deeper

Through the sod - an anchor, a cross of rust.

1
 The poem is to Sylvia Plath, about cutting and selling flowers in spring with their daughter, who no
longer remembers her mother.
 It is a response to Wordsworth’s daffodils as well, the kind of memories the flower conjure here are
less those of solace than treasured, fragile moments.
 Scissors form a beautiful image of violence and vulnerability.
 Cutting of flowers  end of relationship.
 Flowers and relationships  are beautiful but fleeting.
 Youth/pleasure  go fast, regret and pain over loss last a long time.
 Mournful
 Intertextuality  Robert Herrick’s “Fair daffodils/ We keep to see/ You haste away so soon/ As yet
the early morning sun/ Hath not attain‘d his noon…” and, of course William Wordsworth’s “I
wandered lonely as a cloud”.

SYLVIA PLATH

 Recurring imagery in her poetry.

 Married Ted Hughes  moves to U.S. for two years.

- She typed his poems and sent them to important editors.

- Experienced feelings of self- doubt.
- Lack of time to write caused her anxiety  depression.
- Returned to England  Colossus (First collection of poems).
- Separation, adverse conditions  committed suicide.

 The very same day she wrote “Balloons”  Celebrates mobility of life.
o Have the ability to be themselves.
o Final image  absence

 Mother  her journal reveal animosity towards her.

 Refused to manifest grief  Sylvia felt suppression and denial  “The Disquieting Muses”

 Plath shows signs of disappointment : exhaustion.

 Plath gives voice to women’s anger  expresses her rage in her poems. Victimization.
 Critics read her work as an expression of women’s emotions in a society that discourages and
frustrates their self- fulfilment.
 Her references to death do not focus on her own death.
 She points to  extermination in concentration camps  nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima.
 She explores the family in terms of anger and resentment but writes beautiful poems to her children,
passionate maternal love (a sharp contrast with complex ambiguity of her poems about relationship
with parents and men)

“The Disquieting Muses”

 Seven eight line stanzas.

 Her mother expressed NO grief over her father’s death
 This hurts her (denied period of grieving).

“Balloons”

 Written shortly before her death (one of her last poems).

 About mobility of life and the balloon’s ability to keep themselves.
 Ending  has the pink “shades” taken from his eyes when the red balloon pops, makes him face
reality.
 Seems happy at first, but knows her child will have to face reality. 1
 Fat jug  her adorable fat little boy.

“The Beekeeper’s Daughter”

 Significant poem. Published in The Colossus.

 Bee implicitly linked to her father. Contributes to “confessional” Poetry.
 Image  hibernating bee and powerful figure of the Queen Bee.
 Subjection to her father’s authority.
 Opposing images  stone/ Queen Bee.

- She experiments with form (flexibility) and works within the accepted canons of poetry.
- Following years  transitional. Poems suggest violence/suffering, poems macabre and/ot
hallucinatory.
- Lines shorten
- Pace of the verse: speeds up
- Increasing use of the ellipsis/ enjambment.
- Frequent repetition

“Daddy”

 Hughes moved out. Strong and bitter poem.

 Her poetry had shorter lines and lots of ellipsis and enjambment
 Nursery rhyme rhythm
 Her father depicted as a Nazi  vampire and devil. Mother maybe part Jew.
 Husband and father become one.
 She marries the image of her father who has drunk her blood for seven years.
 Poem spoken by a girl with an Electra complex.
 End  triumphant tone: speaker purges herself of years of pain by driving a stake through the male
figure. (Kills male figure to free herself of pain).

“Lady Lazarus”

 Survivor who has the ability to be reborn but also understands her enemy. She returns to fight back.
 Image of sinister male figure.
 Addresses the hidden theme of suicide.
 The poem lashes out at men, system of male values and male god.
 Speaker  a woman  great and terrible gift of being reborn.
- Problem  she has to die first (like Phoenix).
- Is the Phoenix: libertarian spirit and a good, plain woman.
 In general, her poems are about pain/ anguish, not uplifting.
 The interest lies in her crafted poetry.
 Unique perspective to:
 - Mental disorder
- Women’s victimisation in a patriarchal society.

“Child” → Plath´s most beautiful love poems written to and about her children.

↘ Love → free from bitterness.

1
↘ Focuses on the hope for a new beginning inspired by a child.

↘ Foreboding tone of speaker → unable to release her adult world.

↘ Wants her child to be safe and happy, but the real world is full of problems. But maybe knows she won´t
last (suicide coming).

↘ Beautiful love poem: only pure love → her children (no jealousy or bitterness).

TONY HARRISON

 Poet, dramatist, film-maker, translator → new angle while retaining features of original works.
 Lived in Africa (Nigeria)   Brought into the foreground contradiction between working-class
/middle-class education
 was forced to confront “the internal colonialism of British Education”

 Poet´s sense of identity in relation to marginalization of working-class by dominant middle-class

culture → accounts for his anger in his poetry.

 Teaching past in Prague → Experience living an oppressive regime. 

      “Newcastle is Peru”: → Title from 17th C poet. John Cleveland, political satirist.

 ·Autobiographical poem.
 Octasyllabic Couplets → 21 stanzas

 Celebrates Newcastle → Looks back on his life.

 Mixture of desperation and yearning for his youth.

The Loiners → 1st collection of poems → 5 sections.

 Childhood in Leeds → Expatriate Loiners in Africa → Easter.

People live in Leeds. Europe and return to England

“Allotments” Use of obscenity and sexual imagery.

 Use of mastery of iambic pentameter

 Breaking up sentences

 Exclusive use of rhyme forms to convey experiences.

 Forms used as non-literary devices.

* He borrows tools of classical poetry but he uses of his own dialect, language, theme and characters.

* Exploration of class issues → identified with exploited class

“Heredity” → Epitaph

 Opens the collection

 Sets a general tone for the sonnets  Lack of eloquence in his family and his background
1
 Obsessive return to his grammar school

“Book Ends” → Evening spent with his father upon the death of his mother 

 both men in silence

 Persuading decision between himself the books he read and his parent →
consequence of his middle-class education the books he has written himself
 1

“Long Distance” → describes how Harrison´s father dealt with his loss, lack of communication,
physical/emotional alienation

 Father is embarrassed by his love for her. He acts like she has just gone out shopping. 

“Turns” → self-accusatory poem upon his father´s death.

→ a tone that arises from the ambiguity of his stance

 HAH → are his father´s initials.

 VR → Victoria Regina (old post box, not new). At first he wears the cap with pride (wants to be like
his dad, working class)

 When his father dies, this cap is turned upside down (to beg for money). He is collecting money off
the street (begging) and now he is angry.

 Maybe because the father´s death has forced him to beg and has taken away his working class
dream.

 Busk → means to act on the street

 Turns → turn in front of the mirror, the turns life does (going from working class to beggar)
 1

“National Trust” → Hush, hush → onomatopoeic repetition. ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH

 Harrison was born in Leeds, lived in Nigeria and Prague.

 Polysemic title (trust the country or a "trust”, a fund that protects somebody´s interests).

 Language (ability to speak) connected to politics.

 Bottomless pits/mines → desperation.

 Upper class clichés  law and order, worth wagering on, hush-hush

 Borrowed a convict form his warder (people are object to be borrowed?)/ Class differences.

 Forced him to go down and measure the depth.

 When he came back (terrifying experience) speechless, not even a beating made him speak.

 Lower class voices are silenced.

 Tin mine in Towanroath is now National Trust site! (Protected by the government).

 Go down in history (play on words) as they are lowered into the mine.

 “been brought to book” → to be held accountable for.

 The last line in Cornish → The tongueless man gets his land took → those who can´t protest have
no vote in what happens to them.

 In general, I think Tony Harrison means British People should have a national trust. (Moral
obligation) to remember the hardships of the poor/working class (especially the Cornish). 

 Harrison digs deep down (using mining imagery) to bring realities to the surface. This is painful and
hard for miners and for the poet and the people that read the poem. 
  Both the convict and the Cornish at Towanroath have been kept silent by people with more power
(government)

“Marked with D” → “D” is for death (his father´s)

 Extended metaphor → God compared to a baker. Chilled dough (making of the father) and the
baker´s man later.
  Boy thinks about how his father´s tongue bursts into flame when cremated. He feels sorry for his
dad because he was anxious to get to heaven (hungered for release). And the boy doesn´t believe
in heaven.

 Word play → dull day/dull loaf extending the bread metaphor.

 Pun → flour - flower.

 England never made his father like he had amounted to much. Maybe father felt inferior or maybe 1
the son.

 In the end life is reduced to ashes (to practically nothing). Here ash is compared to flour. 

 Our daily bread → form the Lord´s prayer and the bread his Dad made daily

 rise → to heaven, the bread, to get up early…

 Criticism of Christianity/ religion.

BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH: poems:

 Born in Birmingham (1958). 2nd Generation Poet.

 Focuses on the importance of education and the way educational institutions can be
oppressive/subordinating.

 He is usually referred as a “Dub Poet” (oral poet) → He writes his poetry and can hear the sound of
it Fusion of poetry + Music

 Despite his multi-cultural background he states to be thoroughly British.

 His poems embrace that identity → for him Britishness means many things, days of former
greatness, melting pot.

DUB POETRY  based on orality  spoken Word accompanied by reggae rhythm

- Inspired by the Jamaican music of Bob Marley
- Linton Kwesi Johnson  significant figure that coined “Performance Poetry”
1st. Reggae poet  used Jamaican vernacular speech.

- Speaks of oppression  struggle of blacks living in the UK within framework of

 reggae rhythm
 rastapharian culture
- Jean “Binta” Breeze 1st woman to write and interpret Dub Poetry

Relationship of the poet with audience  essential!!

- City psalms For him the best way to know how his poetry is what the public tells
- Propaganda tells you.  No expert editor will tell you what they think.
- Pen Rhythm  1st collection.

Words intonation
+ create a unique poetic form
Sound volume

- Dub poetry varies depending on the degree of commitment with Jamaica +

 Its vernacular speech

- Zephaniah’s poems are riddled with multi-cultural elements  presence of heritage spent time in Jamaica.
- Dealt with dyslexia found easier to write words as they were pronounced.
- Use of: humor, irony, political compromise
His “aim” mission  popularize poetry art. Believed to belong to middle-class.
 Write about issues that concern working-class
 Publications at low purchase prize.

- Attack British legal system  challenges those who discriminate and exploit the powerless. Refused the 1
position of officer of the order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II  bought and sold.
Themes inevitably: multi-cultural
multi-lingual
sexism (women Dub poets)
Western oppression
white dominance
racism
police brutality
importance of education  poetry for children didactic
political intent.

“DIS POETRY”

- From City Psalms (1992)  his 4th book of poetry

- In de morning / in de night …  syntactic parallelism.
- I chant, I chant  repetition
- Combination of “local language (Jamaican)” to show dissent (non-conformation: my language and way
of expressing myself is as good as yours). How words are HEARD not WRITTEN is important.
Poetry of orality (Dub Poetry with Reggae rhythm). Speaks directly to the reader.

Dub poetry is a form of performance poetry of West Indian origin, which evolved out of dub music
consisting of spoken work over reggae rhythms in Jamaica in the 1970’s

- He claims he wrote poetry because he had trouble speaking in front of others.

- Rhythm of poetry  rain drops (natural)  NO standardized rhythm, but there is rhyme.
- not to put you to sleep, they talk with a big mouth  demanding. Don’t want you to follow because of
political reasons, to follow blindly behind.
- doesn’t like Shakespeare, he likes HIS poetry.
- NO big words, only needs rhythm to reach people.
- dumb (simple) words but affect the body, make you respond.
- Poetry is for everybody (not just smart people)  child/adult, wise/fool.
- Repeats this poetry is WITH ME, a part of him, his culture, his beliefs …

“WHITE COMEDY”

- From Propaganda.
- Inverts the words “white” and “black” points at the derogatory use.
calls our attention
- Through humour he makes cultural/political statement
- For example: white sheep, black house, white economy.

“TERRIBLE WORLD”
- From Propaganda
- Resorts to humour  parodies Louis Armstrong’s “what a wonderful world”
- Deals with serious themes police brutality
gender violence
poverty.
- He wanted to walk the same road and see things from a different point of view.

“THE DEATH OF JAY GARDNER”

- Social injustice
- Tells the story of the arrest of an illegal immigrant who died in front of her son after having been a victim
of police brutality.
- Event told WITHOUT the use of vernacular speech.
1

“INTRODUCTIONARY CHAT”
- Published in School’s out.
- Too black, too strong  rejections on identity  multicultural Great Britain and being black there.
African-Caribbean community still suffering today.
 hope for Britain awakening to face the nightmare they created.
- We are Britain  for and about children.
 despite cultural diversity of children living in the UK (12 poems, each about a child). They share
the same concerns and interests.

JEAN “BINTA” BREEZE

- Born in Jamaica 1956.
- Multi-faceted artist poetry – drama – screenplays (Dub music)
awarded and performed in most continents.

- Demonstrates the triumph of “Otherness”

resistance in a hostile world.

- Woman schizophrenic  make her achievements more valuable.

 poems refer to “madness”. She fights for the rights of people who suffer from
mental illness.
- 3rd World Girl  selected poems  anthropology of her poems.
Themes - deals with problems of immigrants in Britain.
- Gender/Race troubles
- conflicts of schizophrenia/mental illness within a social sphere which wants to maintain a
fantasy of “sanity” and consequently, rejects “Otherness”.

Benjamin and Binta have enjoyed success and critical acceptance as representatives of oral poetry.
However, there is a shortage of critical work on these artists.

POSTCOLONIAL ISSUES

INTRODUCTION  Postcolonial literature refers to writers from cultures by the British Empire. Growing
interest in this literature over the last few decades  Proliferation of writers. Give prominence to the field of
Postcolonial studies triggered by the publication of “Edward Said: Orientalism”.
Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gardiner  well-known exponents of this literary tendency.
“Commonwealth”
“Third world” terms no longer considered appropriate.

DEBATE  the question of what is Postcolonial  difficult to outline.

POSTCOLONIAL CULTURE  one affected by the Imperial process.

 writers either born in colonized territories or 2nd Generation of Immigrants born in Great Britain,
African countries, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, India, Malaysia, Malta, New Zealand, Pakistan,
 Singapore, South Pacific Island Countries and Sri Lanka (maybe Northern Ireland and USA). NOT set
rules for belonging or not to Postcolonial.
 Focus on the discourse aimed at  modifying the traditional discourse subverting it.

ISSUES  examined  NOT only colonialism, but gender/race.

COLONISING CULTURE  distorts and portrays the colonized as inferior people.

FEATURES OF POSTCOLONIALISM  overlap with the basic tenets of Postmodernism.

1 – A de-centering and historicizing of the subject. 1
2 – Employment of textual strategies to subvert the dominant discourses = irony + parody
3 – The presence of deconstructive strategies within the text.
4 – Questioning of historical certainties while criticizing the notion of realism.
5 – A reflection of universals and essentialism.

MAJOR QUESTIONS EXPLORED

- How the experience of colonization affected these who were colonized.

- Forms of resistance against colonial control.
- How colonial education and language influenced the culture/identity of the colonized.
- Forms of postcolonial identity after the departure of the colonizers.
- To what extent decolonization has been possible.
- Should the writer use colonial language to reach a wider audience
return to a native language (more relevant for groups in the postcolony).
- Largest literary production  Africa  Doris Lessing contributed to the universalization of postcolonial
themes through her novels.

- South Asia  Salman Rushie

- Caribbean  John Agard
Grace Nichols CARIBBEAN VERSE  Guiana region ruled by the Dutch,
Fred D’Aguiar English, French up to early 19th c.

- 1815  Awarded to Great Britain and was united with other British colonies to form British Guiana
(1831).
- 1833  slavery abolished
- 1964  Full independence negotiated. Strong ties established with Cuba/Soviet Union.
- 1970  Became a Republic  boundaries with Venezuela  a matter of dispute.
- 1978  Darkest Episode  Jim Jones committed suicide collectively in Jonestown. Infamous
international fame to the country.
LITERATURE FROM THE REGION
 Expression of people’s experience  history of exploitation/prejudice. Important cultural
manifestation.

NATURE OF THE LANGUAGE

 Determining feature of uniqueness.
 18th – 19th c.  oral tradition  sung word that became spoken poetry.
 Use of the vernacular.
 20th c.  incorporates different dialects into the English Literary tradition.
 Juxtaposition of various tones of voice  use of nation language  kind of English spoken by
the people who were brought to the Caribbean, not the official English now the language of
slaves brought in, opposed to “patois” or “creole”. A way of examining these heritage
experience.
 19th c. politics  advocated use of Standard English
 Other forms  deviant, educationally subnormal.
 It excluded people from power, influence.
  That’s the reason Caribbean writers have made language the basis of cultural resistance and
assertion.
Crucial function of language shared Form of being subversive
Tool of empowerment.
Deconstruct the English Literary canon.

 They seize the language of the centre and replace it in a discourse adapted to the colonized
people.
 Submerge - oral tradition 1
Emerging culture, it draws from - different rhythms patterns like calypso and reggae
- the merging of Standard English and creole learned
at school.
 Defence of the use of Creole to empower identity.
 Better to express black experience in ways that Standard English cannot
 Creole: disregard for past/future tenses
 Words from Caribbean islands.
 Different spelling  as they are spoken. John Agard “Listen Mr Oxford Don”.

JOHN AGARD: (Guyana 1949) 

“Listen Mr Oxford Don” 

 Performer poet: Blends Calypso + spoken Word. 

 Moved to England 
 Black British writers with Caribbean heritage have created a new voice in Great Britain. 
 Relation of: -Poetry                              + discourse that articulates new definitions of identity
                        -Historical movement        

RELEVANT ISSUES: 
 Definition of “poetry”. 
 Relation for oral to written literature. 
 The (non)separability of politics and poetry.
 Ownership and identity. 
 Biased anthologists and publishing business. 
 Struggle over “English” language. 
     
Guyana: 1st Caribbean territory to develop a distinct national literature. 
       Continental country  writers looked inland for inspiration: Forests, rivers, indigenous’ life. 

GRACE NICHOLS: (Guyana 1950, Georgetown) 

 Best-known woman from the Caribbean. 
 Stories told from a female slave’s perspective. 
 Highly Comical: “The fat black woman’s poems” aimed at men. 
 Draws on early Guyanese childhood experiences loss of innocence. 

Recurrent themes 
- Celebration of survival
- Inheritance of place. 
- Tongue and tradition. 
- Alienation from metropolitan society and at the same time search for new
identities. 

Grace Nichols/ Fred D’Aguiar differences can be found. 

  The way they interpret their past and present  different perspectives due to variables as
different gender, age, experience in the colonising country  ties to Guyana.
                
 Family background: - Father: School headmaster. 
                                      - Mother: piano teacher 
                                      - Grace: university education (journalist) 

 Moved to Sussex with John Agard (her husband)  wrote children’s books (collaboration). 
 Focuses on chronicles of black women who survived the passage from Africa to the New World.  1
“The fat black woman’s poems” confronts the western beauty canon. 
challenges racist   stereotypes  to be beautiful, a woman does
sexist     not have to be thin and European 
”Lazy thoughts of a Lazy woman and other poems”  addresses the immigrant experience (written
during voluntary exile) Diasporas. 
 Use of humane speaks of love, sex 
                              requires an attentive reader who will identify subversiveness between the lines  
                        
 Experimented other literary genre - novel 
- recurrimg theme of migration  female protagonists. 
                                                               - from rural to urban Guyana. 
- support of female community. 

Children  should have access to books

about themselves and their heritage
 collaboration with Benjamin Zephaniah. 

“My Gran Visits England”  didactic purpose  increase children’s sensitivity and understanding
towards foreign classmates
 she combines Guyana and environmental themes. 
            Language: 
    - The author moves in and out of vernacular/Creole speech. 
    - For some poems she chooses Standard English while for others she uses “Nation Language”  

“Skin teeth” Standard English  Poem addressed to a slave owner, exploiter of human beings. 
 Tone  rebellious  open and direct threat. 
 Anguish, despair, anger  appear throughout the collection. 
 There is a building up of strength.      Language. 
Final “Epilogue”  celebration of:        Heritage.  
                                                                            Identity 

“Thought drifting through the fat black woman’s head while having a full bubble bath” 
 
Best- known poem. 
 Her fat black woman longs to be able to physically comfort her oppressors and the way she uses her
body to do so.  
 Mocks the vocabulary of official discourse (stereotypes  increases humorous tone) of scientists,
anthropologists, historians. 
 Uses the body to repudiate them and break through the Western beauty canon. 
 Woman Enjoys the luxury of a bubble bath moment of reflection and leisure. 
Is in communion with nature  sky, sea, waves. 

 Celebrating poem Choice of  adjectives  Irony. 

 Embraces Otherness. 
“Wherever I hang”  is reminiscent of “My Gran visits England”.
 The end of the poem  reconciliation with England. 
 Expression of feelings experienced over the years. 
                                  - Yearning for the past. 
                                  - Alienation from a foreign urban community. 
                                  - Sadness at leaving “Calypso ways”. 

1
FRED D’AGUIAR: Born in London. 
2nd Generation of Caribbean Immigrants. 
 Younger generation of poets.
 Draws on early Guyanese - childhood experiences. 
                                                 - loss of innocence. 
 Combines - Dialect.  in his poetry. 
                     - Standard English

 He goes beyond the exploration of identity - History plays essential role in his work. 
                                                                                 - Slave trade. 
                                                                                 - Economic/political difficulties of Postcolonial   
                                                                                    Guyana post WWII. 
 
 Innovative Themes      Experience, police, Government policy, Death of Grandmother, Memories
                     Techniques     of Guyana

 Moved to Guyana  grandparents: “Mamma Dot” “Papa T.” (devotion to Alfred Tennyson) 
 Age 12  returned to England  for proper upbringing psychiatric nurse. 
 Instinctive knowledge for breaking the lines. 
Free verse  body of text arranges to clarify a series of linked thoughts and feelings. 
 Wrote fiction and drama, but primarily recognized as a poet. 
 Focus on the legacy of slavery. 
 Corrupt government. 
 Jonestown massacre verse novels or narrative poems. 
 Mamma Dot  collection of poems with humour and irony. 
                    based on his 2 grandmothers  image of a woman as     Mother 
God-like, familiar, practical, mythical, synthesis of Grandmother
his childhood     
                      
“Letter from the Mamma Dot”  She represents Guyana herself.    
Inspired by black writers “The Black Ink”  group who sought to incorporate African-Caribbean
orality into a Black British poetic voice. 
 The way they did it was through the use of percussion instruments. 

“Mamma Dot” Intended to be recited accompanied by drum beats. 

 Following works showed his present as an immigrant (2nd Generation) 
British subjects  more flexible in form. 

“The ballad of the Throwaway people”  voice of protest is not the only one he wants to be heard. 
 England is now his home celebratory tone       at times. 
sentimental 

 Now lives in U.S.  teacher, critic, poet and novelist.