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Modernism in the Twenty-First Century a Comparison of Virginia Woolf’S Mrs Dalloway and Zadie Smith’S NW

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Modernism in the Twenty-First Century a Comparison of Virginia Woolf’S Mrs Dalloway and Zadie Smith’S NW Modernism in the Twenty-First Century A Comparison of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and Zadie Smith’s NW Aantal woorden: 23.964 SASKIA DE CEUSTER Studentennummer: 01508283 Promotor: Prof. dr. Birgit Van Puymbroeck Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad master in de Vergelijkende moderne letterkunde. Academiejaar: 2018 – 2019 De Ceuster 1 De Ceuster 2 Voorwoord Met deze masterproef sluit ik mijn opleiding vergelijkende moderne letterkunde af. Het schrijven van deze thesis was een boeiend proces, dat soms al eens wat vlotter of wat minder vlot verliep, en ik wil dan ook in het bijzonder mijn promotor Prof. dr. Van Puymbroeck bedanken voor de constante beschikbaarheid en de uitgebreide feedback doorheen het denk- en schrijfproces. De Ceuster 3 De Ceuster 4 Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................5 0. Introduction .....................................................................................................................8 1. Historical Frameworks .................................................................................................. 12 1.1 Characterizing the Modern, the Postmodern, and their Continuation into the Twenty- First Century ..................................................................................................................... 12 1.2 Virginia Woolf and Zadie Smith ............................................................................. 20 2. Thematic Comparison of Mrs Dalloway and NW ........................................................... 26 2.1 Class ...................................................................................................................... 26 2.2 Gender ................................................................................................................... 38 2.3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 46 3. Modes of Narration in Mrs Dalloway and NW ............................................................... 48 3.1 Virginia Woolf’s Stream of Consciousness in Mrs Dalloway .................................. 48 3.2 Zadie Smith’s Fragmented Narration in NW ........................................................... 52 3.3 The Influence of Postmodernism ............................................................................ 56 4. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 60 Works Cited ......................................................................................................................... 62 23.964 words De Ceuster 5 Abstract This dissertation analyses Zadie Smith’s 2012 novel NW, which uses an experimentalist narrative mode reminiscent of modernism, in comparison to Virginia Woolf’s modernist text Mrs Dalloway, a novel that functions as an intertext in NW. It compares the novels’ approaches to the themes of class and gender, and discusses the ways in which these themes are connected to postcolonial issues in NW. It also compares the modes of narration used in both novels. The results of this comparison add to the discussion of the ways in which literary movements of the past, most notably modernism, are continued into the twenty-first century, as well as the ways in which the characteristics of modernism are adapted to suit the preoccupations of the twenty- first century. This dissertation gives concrete examples of differences between experimentalist fiction of the 1920’s and of the 2010’s. It links these differences to societal changes and literary developments over the course of the past century. Furthermore, it investigates the effects of referring back to a modernist style in the twenty-first century, namely the ways in which the context of modernism adds to the meaning of contemporary texts and the ways in which contemporary texts are able to implicitly criticize modernism. Deze masterproef analyseert Zadie Smith’s roman NW uit 2012, een roman die gebruik maakt van een experimentele vertelling die verwijst naar het modernisme, in vergelijking met Virginia Woolf’s modernistisch werk Mrs Dalloway, een roman die functioneert als intertekst in NW. Beide romans’ benadering van de thema’s klasse en gender worden vergeleken, en ook de manier waarop deze thema’s gelinkt zijn aan postkoloniale kwesties in NW wordt besproken. Verder worden ook de vormen van vertelling in beide teksten vergeleken. De resultaten van deze vergelijking dragen bij tot de bespreking van de manieren waarop literaire bewegingen uit het verleden, in het bijzonder het modernisme, verdergezet worden in de eenentwintigste eeuw, maar ook de manieren waarop modernistische stijlen aangepast worden om beter aan te sluiten bij de belangstellingen van de eenentwintigste eeuw. Deze masterproef geeft concrete voorbeelden van verschillen die er bestaan tussen hedendaagse experimentele fictie en het modernisme van de jaren twintig. Deze verschillen breng ik in verband met veranderingen in de maatschappij en met literaire ontwikkelingen uit de voorbije eeuw. Daarbovenop onderzoekt deze masterproef de effecten van het verwijzen naar een modernistische stijl in de eenentwintigste eeuw, met name de manier waarop de context van het modernisme betekenis bijdraagt aan de hedendaagse tekst en de manier waarop hedendaagse teksten kritiek kunnen leveren op het modernisme. De Ceuster 6 Keywords: Metamodernism, modernism, postmodernism, experimental, British De Ceuster 7 De Ceuster 8 Modernism in the Twenty-First Century: A Comparison of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and Zadie Smith’s NW 0. Introduction In recent years, a number of books and articles have come out that focus specifically on the literature of the twenty-first century, such as Peter Boxall’s Twenty-First Century Fiction, Gąsiorek and James’ Contemporary Literature, and Rudrum and Stavris’ Supplanting the Postmodern: An Anthology of Writings on the Arts and Culture of the Early 21st Century. Many of these works characterize contemporary developments in relation to literary movements of the past, such as early-twentieth-century modernism. In this dissertation, I analyse Zadie Smith’s 2012 novel NW in relation to the modernist novel Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, first published in 1925. This comparison can be fruitful not only because Smith refers back to a modernist aesthetic in NW, a text which has been described as “a highly experimental, revisionary late modernist novel” (Knepper 112), but also because the novel clearly invokes Mrs Dalloway as an intertext. However, Smith does not merely imitate the style of modernism or of Woolf specifically. On the contrary, she “develops modes and strategies partly indebted to realist, modernist and postmodernist practices” (Guignery 1) and creates a style that is distinctly postmillennial. What I study in this dissertation are the ways in which she transforms the styles and themes of Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, and of modernism in general, in the new context of the twenty-first century. By reading NW in dialogue with Mrs Dalloway, this investigation contextualizes certain tendencies in contemporary fiction. It sheds new light on the ways in which literary modes of the past (especially modernism, but also postmodernism will be investigated) continue to affect twenty-first century literature, as well as the ways in which literature has adapted to the changes in society over the past century. This analysis can function not only as an illustration to the claims that Vermeulen and van den Akker have made about contemporary literature in their “Notes on Metamodernism”, but also delves deeper than their essay does into the concrete ways in which contemporary fiction that can be classified as “metamodernist” transforms the mode of modernism. This dissertation investigates what the effects of referring to modernism in the twenty-first century are, which specific differences arise between twentieth- and twenty-first-century experimentalist novels, and reflects upon why modernism specifically appeals to contemporary fiction writers. De Ceuster 9 When drawing a parallel between the modernist movement of the early twentieth century and experimental fiction written today, Virginia Woolf and Zadie Smith are appropriate case-studies, as both authors can be considered emblematic for the periods in which they were/are literarily active. Woolf is regarded as one of the key figures within high modernism, whose fictional and theoretical texts have helped shape the ways in which we think about and characterize modernism. Zadie Smith is one of the most critically acclaimed British novelists of the moment and her novels are often used as examples of contemporary literary developments, for instance by Gąsiorek and James in their introduction to twenty-first century fiction. James and Seshagiri also use Smith’s NW as an example of a specific kind of contemporary novel, namely one that styles its “twenty-first century literary innovations as explicit engagements with the innovations of early-twentieth-century writing” (87), a style that is referred to as metamodernism, to which I will return later on. To sum up, Woolf and Smith can be considered representative examples of the experimental writing of their times. Although not all characteristics discussed with regard to these authors apply to all of their contemporaries, Woolf and Smith are key figures in their respective literary movements. In other
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