English Literature / Unit 16 ENL 1545 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Identifying a Modernist From a Passage
The idea
Use voice, subject and method. A London hostess's day and a shell-shocked veteran in flowing consciousness suggests Woolf. Dublin, epiphany, Catholic guilt or Homeric parallels suggest Joyce. A frame narrator on the Thames and an African river suggest Conrad. Miners, mothers and the body suggest Lawrence. "Only connect" or India under the Raj suggests Forster. Fragments, allusion and a ruined city suggest Eliot's Waste Land; an anxious, ageing speaker, Prufrock. Gyres, swans, Byzantium or Irish rebellion suggest Yeats. Gas, trenches and bitter irony suggest Owen or Sassoon. A short New Zealand-born story of delicate feeling suggests Mansfield. Then check the date.
In practice
Clue, then author.
Where people slip
Woolf and Joyce both use stream of consciousness. Decide by setting and subject: London and Clarissa, or Dublin and Bloom.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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