James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds and Modernist Writing

It seems every few decades the literary ground shifts. Romanticism and Realism dominated the latter 18th century well into the 19th century. Next came Modernism, arising in the 1900s. Soon after, postmodernism took stage in the 1950s. Now into the 2000s, authors have performed remarkable feats of literary creativity and diversity. Authors are evoking occurrences from the turn of the millennium—events and conflicts that are specific to the twenty-first century. The new forms, tropes and theoretical strategies in current literature have got literary critics asking: is there such thing as twenty-first-century fiction—a new type of novel that separates itself from the modernist and postmodernist novel in terms of themes, styles, and characteristics? This paper reviews ten scholarly sources that argue for and show examples of the emergence of the new literary movement of this century. This literature review can be used by scholars interested in the next step in literature theory and how it is being defined and debated among philosophers and critics.

Joyce's modernistic view of Dublin society permeates all of his writings. The Irish experiences account for a large portion of Joyce's writings. Stephen Dedalus is sometimes Joyce's pseudonym and represents Joyce and his life in Joyce's works. Joyce plays a crucial role in the modernist movement in literature. Some of the well known innovative techniques used by Joyce are symbolism, realism and stream-of consciousness. James Joyce's writings contain autobiographical matter and display his view of life in Dublin, Ireland with the use of symbolism, realism, and stream-of consciousness.

Realism, Naturalism, and Regionalism are just a few examples of the many styles of writing that exist. Each style of writing deals with a specific time period. Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat”, Henry James’s “Daisy Miller”, and Mary E Wilkins Freeman’s “The Revolt of Mother” are just a few examples of the literary works that represent these time periods. These literary works are perfect examples of the specific time periods each writing style was popular among certain authors. These stories allow readers to compare the modern times that we live in currently to the period these authors were in. They also allow the reader to branch out and be different.

Marianne Moore’s nature and artistic background contribute to her modernist style and is prominent in her poem “The Fish.” Marianne Moore wrote in the 1930’s, a decade of change. Moore is characterized as a writer who uses overall nature, art, life, modesty, and humor. Her writing is recognized by its descriptions, and observations of people, places, animals, and art. Her poems reflect the relationship between common and uncommon (“Marianne Moore” Poetry Foundation).

Famous writers involved in this movement included Ernest Hemingway, author of The Sun Also Rises, which described the life of expatriates, F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, E.E Cummings, and T.S Eliot, author of The Waste Land. The “lost generation” literary movement changed writing styles from stiff and regulated to artistic and “loose,” with no rules, producing novels that are considered classics

“Modernism is a catchall term for any kind of literary production in the interwar period that deals with the modern world” (Baym, Levine, and Franklin 663). Literary work that was created during this timeframe was established during the late nineteenth century. Most modernism authors wrote about “material culture, journalism, magazines, race, gender, nationalism, the body, emotion, popular and commercial culture” (Currell 232). Some key aspects of modernism works include fragments of information, perceptions, or experiences. Oftentimes, “a typical modernist work may seem to begin arbitrarily, to advance without explanation, and to end without resolution, consisting of vivid segments juxtaposed without cushioning or integrating transitions” (Baym, Levine, and Franklin 663-664). Influenced by the modernism literacy movement, “Babylon Revisited” and “A Rose for Emily” portray the impact that love has on one’s life; the former text portrays how a change in one’s life circumstances can be used to help try and bring a family back together; whereas the latter

around the globe blessed with the rare ability to write and ride with equal gusto.

The Norton Anthology of American Literature defines and explains American Modernism through a historical lens and further emphasizes the significant social changes of the era. The American Modernist era is situated between two world wars and a devastating economic depression. The anthology describes these impactful events as a catalyst for social, political, technological, and philosophical change. America lost a sense of identity and entered into a quest to find meaning in all aspects of life.

The early 1900’s (between 1914 and 1945) were an interesting time in both American history and literature. Considering that events such as WWI, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and WWII had formidable impacts on many people who lived during those parts of the early 20th century; it would be apropos to assume that many writers of that time had major influences in their writing styles out of the various events that occurred during those times. One popular literary movement during this time, however, was modernism; best depicted as a rejection of prior literary trends (mostly realism) that tried to identify the truths that lie within the fractured world that writers lived in; as well as a rejection of past ideals in literary design (Byam 1847). As a result, many writers and poets held different interpretations towards their works, which led to various impacts on the modernist movement. One such writer that helped define the American modernist era was E.E Cummings; with his own personal background, the topics of his poems, and the techniques he ; he was one of the most notable modernist poets and an influential figure of the modernist era.

It is beneficial to study certain subjects because of their relationship with Modernist theories. Young-Adult and Children's literature are transcendent because the narrative is interchangeable among an extended spectrum of readers. Both classes of literature deconstruct into its basic elements and define the essence of youth. I have arrived at such thoughts through the studying of modern short stories, which focus on the literary works that followed the great war. Modernist techniques have become the influence of all literary works that have followed. Studying modern short stories has formed an urge to review literature in the view of

Realism and Modernism are broad categories that cannot be taken explicitly; whereas Realism is concerned with the realistic portrayal of the characters, the universal morality of the story and the strict adherence to literary form, Modernism is an attempt to break free from Realist literature and not be bound by the same rules and traditions. It is intended to shock the reader, as T.S. Elliot says, “to startle and disturb the public” (Companion 3). Modern authors were living in a time of crisis during revolutions and wars where there was no stability; the institutions and Christian faith they were raised in did not provide answers so they searched for meaning elsewhere, like James Joyce, or questioned if there was any meaning at all, like Samuel Beckett. These crises are reflected in the Modern novel through various methods which attempt to present a realistic picture of a chaotic world. Some authors employed elements of Realism, like Hemingway, but in modernist writing there is always more perspicacity beneath the surface, as Michael Bell asserts, “Several of the greatest works of modernist literature are characterized by such a double awareness. They use realist representation, indeed they often use it consummately, yet within an X-ray awareness of its constructed, or purely human character” (Companion 10). Applying Bell’s X-ray awareness to the Modern novel reveals that one of the most important facets of traditional literature is upended; the protagonist is not a

Modernism, in literature, can be seen as a shift in focus to the unassociated introspective reflection of characters in such texts as Go Tell It On The Mountain, by James Baldwin, Miss Lonelyhearts, by Nathanael West and The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. This is a revision from the previous focal point of exterior events and places in correlation with the character’s reflections. Emphasis is placed on review upon feelings and thoughts, and even conversations with oneself, as opposed to the more directly event-driven reflections in texts of the pre-modernist era.

Because the world had utterly changed, writing could not go as before; due to the war and to new social relations… old plots could not include the new experiences modernity offered up, the old styles of description could not get at the feelings and landscapes modernity created… New questions, new subjects, new perceptions had to remake fiction, and new forms were needed to make the changes possible… It had to modernize, and find ways to say what the modern eye now saw to interpret modern experience, and perhaps even to help shape its chaos into better forms of life. (Matz 23)

The distinction between modernism and postmodernism has never been a clear-cut dichotomy, and it probably never will be, and thus can best be interpreted as a continuum (Childs 2008: Malpas 2005). For brevity’s sake, I will not (and cannot) fully explore the complex intellectual debates that function as the foundations of modernism and postmodernism, as it is not this paper’s goal to fully explore the nuanced difference between modernism and postmodernism, but instead I will provide the basic concepts and features of each period, since these two genres are crux to understand McHale’s theory of dominants, but also to understand modernist and postmodernist fiction (cf. Herman 1991 for a more in-depth analysis of modernism versus postmodernism). The following paragraphs will largely be based on three works: Peter Childs’s Modernism (2008), Malpas’s Postmodernism (2005) and McHale’s contribution in the Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon (2013).

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an excellent novel, written by James Joyce, about the life of Stephen Dedalus and how he overcame the barriers of his family and his religion to pursue his life as a writer. Drawing on details based on his own early life, Joyce provides us “with insight into how his own imagination worked” (Gose, 267). Extensive use of stream of consciousness, which represent the character’s inner thoughts and perceptions, and like human thoughts jumping from one thought to the next, oftentimes make Portrait a hard reading. This is however intentional as Joyce wants his readers to be “obliged to re-create his own space in the inner universe of the text, to participate in a sort of intransitive discourse, one that bears no fixed meaning in relation to external reality which tends, in fact, to destroy referentiality and with it, the readers’ sense of balance” (Sabatini, 95). Joyce wants his readers to experience Stephen’s inner thoughts starting from a young age, and to see the world from his perspective.