MODERNIST NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES
o Modernist writers rejected romanticism and realism in order to create work
that demonstrated, in their opinion, a genuine reaction to the turbulent events
of the world.
Modernist writers acknowledged the destruction happening right in
front of them and wanted somehow to make sense of it.
They experimented with form, syntax, and structure, and challenged
conventional ways of life as well as conventional ways of writing. They no
longer felt the traditional ways were sufficient to reflect the drastically
altered state of the world.
o Their efforts to reflect the world resulted in works that are non-liner in plot-
line and non-traditional in discourse, narration, and overall structure.
Modernist literature focuses on psychological realism, which explores
the inner workings of characters’ minds to tell stories, instead of the realism
popular during the Victorian Period, which focuses on external
descriptions.
Psychological realism includes free indirect discourse and stream of
consciousness.
Psychological Realism:
TIPES OF DISCOURSE
o DIRECT DISCOURSE (DD)
Speaker is directly quoted
Quotation marks
It is clear who the speaker is.
Martine thought, “Fran will get angry if I borrow her shoes.”
o INDIRECT DISCOURSE (ID)
Speaker is identified, but not directly quoted
No quotation marks
It is clear who the speaker is.
Martine thought that Fran would get angry if she borrowed her shoes.
o FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE (FID)
Speaker is not directly quoted or identified
No quotation marks
It is not clear who the speaker is.
Fran would get angry if she borrowed her shoes.
Here the third person narration combines with first person narration. The
combination includes shifts that change without signal. It is often unclear if the
thoughts of the narrator or the thoughts of a character are being expressed,
allowing a flexible and sometimes ironic interaction of internal and external
perspectives. Even if the speaker or thinker is not named, it is often possible to
infer his or her identity by examining the statements and using clues of
characterization.
Stream of Consciousness:
Stream-of-consciousness is a literary technique which seeks to describe an
individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's
thought processes. Stream-of-consciousness writing is strongly associated with
the modernist movement (for example James Joyce's Ulysses, in particular,
