Tous les articles sur la thématique "vision"

Structure and Narration in "The Great Gatsby" photo

The ordering of events in The Great Gatsby

by · Lecture: 13 minutes
  1. Introduction to The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald: from the Lost Prairies to the Realist Jungle
  2. The Great Gatsby: characters and characterization
  3. The Great Gatsby: the Romantic Quest
  4. Structure and Narration in The Great Gatsby
  5. The ordering of events in The Great Gatsby
  6. The Great Gatsby: an American novel

Introduction

In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald condensed the story’s events. It appears that two important changes were introduced:

1. Fitzgerald suppressed a long episode of Gatsby’s childhood to heighten the sense of mystery surrounding his protagonist’s youth. This fragment was then turned into a short story Absolution that was published in a review by Mercury.

2. The second important change concerned the order of the events and the fact that in the original version, it was Gatsby who spoke.

In the final version, all the action unfolds during one summer – from mid-June to early September – and the geographical location is confined to New York, Long Island: East Egg and West Egg. The tragic dimension is also increased due to the fact that all the events have occurred before the curtain rises.

I. Scrambled chronology

The story’s events have been scrambled, but it is a sign of artistic order. Besides we get to know Gatsby much in the same way as in real life we become acquainted with a friend, namely progressively by fitting together fragments that are picked up as we read the novel.

First Gatsby appears to Nick as a pictorial vision, an emblematic figure that is almost unreal in the night: “Fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion…regarding the silver pepper of the stars” (p27). Then through Nick’s narrative, we move forward and backward over Gatsby’s past.

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Structure and Narration in "The Great Gatsby" photo

Structure and Narration in The Great Gatsby

by · Lecture: 10 minutes
  1. Introduction to The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald: from the Lost Prairies to the Realist Jungle
  2. The Great Gatsby: characters and characterization
  3. The Great Gatsby: the Romantic Quest
  4. Structure and Narration in The Great Gatsby
  5. The ordering of events in The Great Gatsby
  6. The Great Gatsby: an American novel

The Great Gatsby is the third novel of Fitzgerald, published in 1925 after This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and the Damned (1922).

Introduction

It was a turning point in Fitzgerald’s literary career because it was to improve on his previous works: he tested new techniques and insisted on the novelty of his enterprise: ‘I want to write something new, something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and ‘intricately patterned’ (letter to Perkins, agent at Scribner’s).

Indeed, Fitzgerald devoted a lot of care and attention to pruning unnecessary passages and tried to introduce editing methods (just like a filmmaker) to re-arrange his story in movie sequences.

In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s main innovation was to introduce a first-person narrator and protagonist whose consciousness filters the story’s events.

This device was not a total invention since a character through whose eyes and mind the central protagonist is discovered is to be found in two of Conrad’s books: Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim.

As usual with this device, the main protagonist remains strange and shady. This technique reinforces the mystery of the characters.

The second advantage is that the mediation of a character-witness permits a play between the real and the imaginary.

This indirect approach is inherited from Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hence, it is difficult to distinguish between true representation and fantasizing. For Emerson, the vision was more important than the real world.

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Puritanism : a New World Vision photo

Puritanism : a New World Vision

by · Lecture: 4 minutes
  1. Puritanism : a New World Vision
  2. An authentically American Literature
  3. American Literature: a Declaration of Literary Independence
  4. The American Renaissance
  5. American Modernism in literature

The Puritan New World vision in the longer schemes of things

English Puritans can be divided into several groups. Most of the Puritans remained in England. They accepted the principle of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth, with the Separatists (no affiliation with authority and the English Protestant Church). They were persecuted and many of them had to run away and come to the New World.

To many Puritans, Christopher Columbus’s passage into America was one of the most important historical events as the sign of a bigger historical destiny, as well as Gutenberg’s printing press (1456) and the Protestant Reformation: 3 events, at the same time geographical, textual and religious, marking the beginning of a New World.

Gutenberg’s invention was particularly important for the New England Protestants for their frequent use of texts (a major means of communication). The Puritan society was a unique form of society in the sense that they defined their identity essentially through texts.

Throughout the 17th century, colonial identity was the product of two things:

  • Literature or texts
  • And concrete movement in social and geographical space.

This particular form of identity can be seen through different aspects of literary expression: the Puritans used these aspects as sermons, declarations, covenants, controversies and statements of purpose.

Therefore, the lasting effect of the printing press on colonial America is to be found in its contribution to the emergence of a national identity based first and foremost on language and writing.

It was first through publication that America declared to the world its identity as a nation and through an effect of discourse she defined proclaimed and projected its past, its present, and its future.

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Shift happens : la vision de demain photo

Shift happens : la vision de demain

by · Lecture: 1 minute

Je vous présente deux petites vidéos : la première est une étude statistique sur le progrès technique et technologique de ces dernières années ainsi que des projections en termes démographiques, sociaux et technologiques pour les quelques dizaines d’années à venir.

Cette seconde vidéo est issue des laboratoires Microsoft et vise à nous donner un petit aperçu de la manière dont nous pourrons gérer nos applications dans quelques années. Cela a l’air bien alléchant !

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