'Modern Fiction'' by Virginia Woolf

‘’Modern fiction’’ by
Virginia Woolf
Mentor: Prof. Dr Mirjana Lončar Vujnović
Students: Bojana Prlinčević, Smiljana Jovanović
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
•British novelist and critic.
•She and her sister became the early nucleus of the Bloomsbury group
(group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers, and artists
in the first half of the 20th century).
•Married Leonard Woolf in 1912.
•Major figure of literary modernism.
•Experimental Novels, portraying the inner lives of characters.
•Critical studies heralding and explaining the new aesthetics brought by
Modernism.
•Her health and mental stability were delicate throughout her life; in a
recurrence of mental illness, she drowned herself.
Modern fiction (1925)
•Essay published in The Times Literary Supplement on April 10,
1919, as ‘’Modern Novels’’.
•Revised and published as ‘’Modern Fiction’’ in the Common
Readers (1925).
•A Brief Discussion on the main trend in the modern novel or
fiction.
•A criticism of writers and literature from the previous
generation and Realism.
•Acts as a guide for writers of modern fiction to write what
they feel, not what society or publishers want them to write.
•Prepared to go to discredit earlier writers- Edwardians and
promote a new style of writing, which she calls ‘Georgian’ or
‘Modernist’.
Art should always
innovate
•According to her art should always
innovate and this modern practice of art
or modern fiction should be an
improvement over the old.
•Earlier writers tried to do well with
their primitive tools.
•Fielding did well and Jane Austen even
better.
•New Experiences demand new writing.
Attack on traditionalists in literature
•Mentioning the traditionalist like H. G. Wells, Arnold

Bennett, and Galsworthy.
•They propound new ideas and open out new vistas to the
human mind.
•Still follow the Victorian tradition as far as the technique
of the novel is concerned.
•Arnold and Galsworthy- socialist viewpoint.
•H.G Wells- scientific romance.
•Differences in their theme but believed environment
defined the individual.
•Woolf marks these three as ‘materialists’.
The materialist
•Wells, Arnold, and Galsworthy as well as their writing is stuffed
with unimportant things.
•They spend immense skill and dexterity in making the trivial and
transitory true to the environment.
•The worth of the literary piece is minimal.
•Woolf while criticizing the three makes a pivotal point of criticism
on the traditional method of novel writing of ‘Fielding’ types.
‘Fielding’ types or traditional types
•The types are devoid of life or spirit, truth or reality.
•Reality of life is missing.
•Superficial characterization, artificial framework.
•‘The writer seems constrained, not by his own free will
but some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant.’
•Tyrant- restriction or the catalog of types- such a plot,
comedy, tragedy, treatment of love, etc.
•All these restrictions kill the freedom of the writer and in
the end, what we receive is the death of life or spirit or
spontaneity or flow of conscience.
What shall be the objective of writer?
•To look within and life as a whole in one’s own creation.
•traditionalism or materialism does not capture that moment that a
writer must actually capture.
•Writers must be free to choose what they write and how is written.
•Should not be conventional.
•The reality lies not in the outer actions- but in the inner working of the
human mind.
Understanding life and
writer
•For her, life was not only the concrete, the visible,
the audible, and the credible; it was both inner and
the outer objective and the subjective, the
conscious and the unconscious, fact and vision,
experience and what lay beyond the experience.
•Conscious is a constant flow, not jointed, not
chopped in bits.
•Purpose of the writer should be the delineation of
deeper ad deeper into the human consciousness.
James Joyce as
‘spiritualist’
‘’In contrast with those whom we have
called materialists, Mr. Joyce is spiritual;
he is concerned at all costs to reveal the
flickerings of that innermost flame that
flashes its messages through the brain,
and in order to preserve it he disregards
with complete courage whatever seems to
him adventitious, whether it be a
probability, or coherence, or any other of
these signposts which for generations
have served to support the imagination of
a reader when called upon to imagine
what he can neither touch nor see.’’
New novel on consciousness
•Purely psychological.
•Under the influence of new psychological theories.
•We understand that life is not regarded as mere tales, but as a series of
moments.
•Functioning of the mind is a stream of consciousness.
•Technique or method by which it is possible to capture them is a truly new
type.
•Joyce and the types who are to explore the dark places of psychology ignored
them to date.
Russian literature as
example
• In this essay she discusses Chekhov. She
emphasizes the inconclusiveness of his stories
and the fact that the problems in these stories
are not resolved: ‘’nothing is rightly held
together’’.
• In her opinion, Chekhov and other Russian
writers are primarily interested in the human
mind and soul, and she states that ‘’as we read
these little stories about noting it all, the
horizon widens; the soul gains an astonishing
sense of freedom.’’
• Chekhov’s stories prompt more questions than
answers and Woolf praises their ‘’economy of
writing’’ and ‘’inconclusive’’ quality.
Conclusion
•Woolf’s “Modern Fiction” essay focuses on how writers should
write or what she hopes for them to write. She does not suggest
a specific way to write. Instead, she wants writers to simply write
what interests them in any way that they choose to write. She
suggests “Any method is right, every method is right, that
expresses what we wish to express if we are writers, that brings
us closer to the novelists‟ intension if we are readers.”
•She wanted writers to express themselves in such a way that it
showed life. She set out to inspire writers of modern fiction by
calling for originality, criticizing those who focused on
unimportant things, and comparing the differences between
cultural authors, all for the sake of fiction and literature.
Questions?
Thank you for your
attention!

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‘’Modern fiction’’ by

•Mentioning the traditionalist like H. G. Wells, Arnold

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