| This study explores the difficulties particular to the literature of Modernism by examining the works of Djuna Barnes and Franz Kafka. Various "experimental" techniques of rhetoric, semantics, and syntax defamiliarize language and make our reading difficult. With this kind of Spatial Form literature, redefined from Joseph Frank's essay and in light of George Steiner's "On Difficulty," the quantity of defamiliarization has increased exponentially and metamorphoses into a different quality. This difficulty, engendered by paradox, is defined specifically by the fact that it is unresolvable: modernist difficulty always remains difficult. This work addresses how we read difficulty.;Paradox in modernist literature is interpreted through spatial or non-linear thinking which parallels abstract problem solving. Language wrenched from its primary use results in readers' having to work with language against linearity, against tradition, and against communication. During the reading process, readers assemble and construct meaning with an intensity far greater than occurs with traditional literature; thus, a change in degree effects a change in kind. Reader engagement is necessary for any kind of meaningful reading experience to occur. This "making sense" resembles the non-linear reading and thinking which occurs in perceiving a painting. Working with paradox is also compared in this study to understanding koans.;A close analysis of oxymoron in Barnes' Nightwood and the contradiction between content and form in Kafka's Die Verwandlung/The Metamorphosis illustrates the effects of paradox in modernist literature on readers' meaning-making process. |
