modernity / tradition

124, 187, 203; 143 [revolutionary religion]; 144 not my father; 145 all sons of God; 147 [new religion answers Nwoye's questions]--cf 62; 148 [Nwoye] already beginning to learn some of the simple stories they told; 152 school = read & write; forsakes parents = blessed; 207-8)

Moment of novel

novel as narrator + dialogue

narrator as central, controlling, authoritative voice (though this can be undercut, esp. with first-person narrator of "unreliable" variety)

characters' dialogue: variety of viewpoint, expression, dialect

dialogue 

Bakhtin on novel: "a genre that structures itself in a zone of direct contact with developing reality."

How does the novel maintain control or stabilize all the new material that enters through the many voices of its characters?

Novels are extremely variable and adaptable in form, but a pattern observable in some early national novelists and historical novelists; e. g.,

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Waverly novels of early 1800s, Rob Roy, Ivanhoe

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), Leatherstocking Tales, incl. The Last of the Mohicans

maybe Tolstoy in War and Peace, Faulkner in The Hamlet

narrator: neutral-sounding, official, schooled or bureaucratic voice; even tone (plus or minus "omniscience"); gives context, explains situation

characters: language is colorful, extravagant; figurative speech (contrast with bureaucratic grayness and lack of figuration; also context or lack of context--characters' speech wouldn't make sense out of context provided by narrator)

example: Things Fall Apart, 112-113

conclusion or outcome:

the different voices of the narrator (narrative) and characters (dialogue) may be differently distanced

compare in Heart of Darkness the scene where Marlow overhears the conversation between the station manager and his uncle--intimacy or internality of moment collapses distance between narrator and characters' dialogue

the narrator may represent "modern culture": literate, universal, everything in larger context

the characters may represent "traditional culture": localized, eccentric, colorful but limited

What learned about changes brought by Colonialism?

religion: animism, polytheism > monotheism

individual rights (tradition > modernity)

spoken culture > writing

capitalism, technology?

Beyond ideas, what quality to the novel? How account for its classic prestige or quality?

178 lunatic religion + trading store $

--consequences not individual

69 law of land must be obeyed

Ob: "don't know how we got that law"

125 offense against the land and not just on the offender

133 elder = knowledge

--symmetry of plot

--lack of precedent

124 nothing like this had ever happened

158 x-precedent > story

187 such a thing had never happened before.

203 Our fathers never dreamed of such a thing . . . .  But a white man never came to them.

--flexibility in traditional society

66-7 Obierika provides middle position

--"Things Fall Apart" > revolutionary religion/culture

62 something had given way inside him

138 oracle on white man

143 [revolutionary religion]

144 not my father; 145 all sons of God

147 [new religion answers Nwoye's questions]--cf 62

148 [Nwoye] already beginning to learn some of the simple stories they told

152 school = read & write

forsakes parents = blessed

155 religion + government

admitting outcasts

157 royal python = "Our Father"

166-7 young > older

kinship, speak with one voice

man can now leave father and brothers

tradition and modernity in Things Fall Apart

66-7 Obierika provides middle position

69 law of land must be obeyed

Ob: "don't know how we got that law"

124 nothing like this had ever happened

133 elder = knowledge

143 [revolutionary religion]

144 not my father; 145 all sons of God

152 school = read & write

forsakes parents = blessed

Next class: look for passages where the white men's entry is associated with upending of tradition, introduction of events without precedent

------------------------------------------

174 church, government, court, prison

religion trade government

176 custom = language

178 lunatic religion + trading store $

181 knowledge/power cf Colonel in Kim

182 Nwoye > Isaac

185 stories by Devil

194 administer justice just as it is done in my own country

207 administrator, student of native customs; cf 181

208 book he planned to write

notes on women from Things Fall Apart

13 fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father

father agbala, not only another name for a woman . . a man who had taken no title

23 women's crops, man's crop

28 To show affection was a sign of weakness

29 Week of Peace, year Okonkwo broke the peace

punished, as was the custom, by Ezeani, the priest of the earth goddess

Nwoye's mother lies to minimize Ojiugo's thoughtlessness

beat her very heavily

37 women’s art

43 desire to conquer and subdue cf desire for woman

44 "boy's job"  Okonkwo specially fond of Ezinma

45 working, solvent man like a god

53 mother’s stories

64 "She should have been a boy."

68 strong man + woman (O doubts)

75 as silly as all women's stories--cf53 masculine stories

87 the ceremony was for men

89-9 villages, 9 sons of 1st father [cf founding fathers]

109 [woman's viewpoint]

110 woman's ceremony + male-identified women

113, 11-12 medicine = old woman

117  good wife = 9 sons

153 a woman for a son

women in Heart of Darkness

12 I tried the women

16 excellent woman got carried off her feet; how out of touch with truth

21 one of the native women + work

26 wilderness . . . bosom

27 woman draped and blindfolded carrying a lighted torch

31 boat as her (cf 17)

38 dog on hind legs (cf Johnson on woman preaching)

49 Girl! . . . out of it.

help them stay in that beautiful world of theirs

60 African woman + fecund life + like the wilderness itself (cf continent, p. 16)

[objective on environment]

64 knitting old woman . . . at other end of the affair

67 cf 75 stretch arms

narrator: neutral-sounding, official, schooled or bureaucratic voice; even tone (plus or minus "omniscience"); gives context, explains situation

characters: language is colorful, extravagant; figurative speech (contrast with bureaucratic grayness and lack of figuration; also context or lack of context--characters' speech wouldn't make sense out of context provided by narrator)

example: Things Fall Apart, 112-113

conclusion or outcome:

the different voices of the narrator (narrative) and characters (dialogue) may be differently distanced

compare in Heart of Darkness the scene where Marlow overhears the conversation between the station manager and his uncle--intimacy or internality of moment collapses distance between narrator and characters' dialogue

the narrator may represent "modern culture": literate, universal, everything in larger context

the characters may represent "traditional culture": localized, eccentric, colorful but limited