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20TH CENTURY HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The 20th Century in Britain began bath the death of Queen Victoria in
1901, she was succeeded by her son Edward VII (1901-1910) and this
marked the beginning of the Edwardian Period of peace and
prosperity; however, this was not too last for long, Edward died in
1910 and his successor George V (1910-1936) saw the outbreak of
the first World War in history which lasted 1914 to 1918 and which
cost Britain a great deal, consequently the 1920's were a period of
general depression, both social and economical which culminated in
the Wall Street Crash in the USA in 1929 and let to world wide
economic chaos.
The 1930's were not only a period of economic tension, but also vast
political changes, Stalin came to power in Russia and Germany saw
the development of Nazism ant the Hitler. These two factors were
also in part responsible for the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). This war
influenced many English intellectuals who came to Spain to fight for
the republicans and to demonstrate their opposition to the Fascism.
Almost as soon as the war in Spain has ended with Franco's victory,
Britain, on the 3rd of September in 1939 was forced to go to war with
Germany after she invaded Poland. This war, the Second World War
lasted almost 6 years and saw various changes in Britain. The
principal being the resignation of prime minister Chamberlain to make
way for Winston Churchill in 1940, he was responsible for leading
Britain and the allies to victory in 1945, however, despite this succeed
Britain was almost economically ruined, and her people voted for a
labour government headed by Attle, who proceeded to carry our the
party program for a better world. By the time, Elizabeth the Second
came to the throne in 1952, British life had already improved
considerably and continue to do so until the end of the 1960's.
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Victorian laws of Christian faith, became more problematic, as did the
different versions of Socialism, and these two factors were a great
influence upon literature, many intellectuals were concerned with
finding something to believe in and out of this grew a movement
called Vortex.
This was founded by T.E. Hulme (artist) Ezra Pound and Whyndham
Lewis (writers) and had some of the aims of Futurism, a movement
launched in 1909 by Marinetti, an Italian intellectual who called for
recognition of modern technology, speed and noise in the art and an
abolition of syntax in poetry. Futurism let to “Dada” in 1916 a
movement that denied amongst other things progress, the past and
all that was not the immediate product of spontaneity; this was
naturally a tremendous influence upon all art and literature.
The coming of the first World War in 1914 also produced and expertly
good poetry, there were some who saw the war in a romantic and
sentimental light, like Rupert Brooke and others who reflected the
harsh reality, brutality and furtivity of war; Wilfred Owen and Siegfried
Sasson are excellent example of this.
There was not direct link between politics and literature but the
leaders of the modernism movement were biased towards the Right,
although in different ways. W.B.Yeats' politics focus on Ireland,
Lawrence referred to the need for aristocracy and the threat of the
Jews; TS Eliot was an Anglo-catholic Tory and Ezra Pound identified
with Italian Fascism. For the first time there seemed to be a unity
between all modernist novels and poetry.
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to the depression and the rights of Fascism and was heightened by
the Spanish Civil War which, for the first time, demonstrated the
confrontation between Left and Right. Many intellectual, the most
famous been George Orwell and American Ernest Hemingway as well
as ordinary people came to fight in Spain, the majority for the
Republicans.
Novelist such as Orwell Greene and Beckett who could not be unified
and defined as a specific movement dominated the end of the 1930's.
The Second World War was not particularly prolific in the literary
sense, apart from which paper was in short supply and therefore
limited the amount of books that could be printed. Nevertheless
Elliot's Little Gidding was written in 1941 and the Welsh poet
DylanThomas began to obtain more recognition for his work. The best
novel of the world period is considered to be Woolf's Between two
acts (1941), which was her reaction against the crisis and after which
se killed herself. After the Second World War, it maybe observed that
there was no specific movement, although novelist and playwriters
Reith Waterhouse, John Osborne, Allan Sillitoc, Kingsley Amis,
reflected the middleclass revelation and the discontent against the
society's hypocrisy of the British establishment.
THOMAS HARDY(1840-1928)
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This last novel Jude the Obscure received such a hostile reception for
its pessimism that Hardy turned from the novel to verse and this
coincided with the beginning of the 20th century. Much of his verse,
like his novels, expresses the irony of life and the need for resignation
in the face of hostile fate. But he also began to express lighter moods,
and produced enchanting nature, poems and even love lyrics. His skill
at showing nature, and his eye for close detail, which is apparent in
his novels, is even better exploited in his verse.
Many of Hardy's poems were written during, and about The First
World War: Channel Firing, In time of the Breaking of Nations, and
reiterate the pessimism of his novels. His ability to produce a verse-
composition of epic length is shown in The Dynasts, a vast un-actable
drama meant to be presented on the stage of the reader's own
imagination. It deals with the Napoleonic Wars as seen from the
viewpoint not only of men but also of the Immortal Fates, who watch,
direct, and comment. That is to say the gods who control Man's
destiny.
He was born an American, but spent most of his life in Europe, the
last 20 being in London, because his native country seemed to
immature for the production of great literature, and he preferred the
“old world” which was richer in tradition and culture.
His three phases as a writer begin with the idea of the impact of
Europe on the American abroad and the conflict between the old
world and the new, particularly between Europe's tolerant (and often
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corrupt) sophisticated civilization, and America's rigid Puritanism and
fervent idealism. The Portrait of a Lady (1881) is his best novel in this
period.
In the novels of his second phase, James turned away from the
international thing and concentrated mainly on English characters
and the English scene, in for example, The princess Casamassirna
(1886) for The Awkward Age (1899). However, it is James' third and
final phase, which is considered to be his greatest. Here, he resumed
the thing of his first phase, the international scene, but with greater
maturity vision and style. His style is very personal but also
occasionally too complicated, this believed was that the holy reason
for the existence of the novel is that if should attempt to represent
life.
He was a great observer both of social scene and of the inner life of
man. His masterpieces of this period were The wings of the Dove
(1902); The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1905). James
is also famous as a writer of short stories and as a critic. His favorite
method was the dramatic method, the direct presentation of events
and the minds of the characters without comment explanation.
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honorable death. Lord Jim was followed by Conrad's great trio of
political novel Nostromo (1904) The secret agent (1907) and Hunder
western eyes (1911)in which he describes the gloomy world of
revolutionaries. He turned again to stories of the sea in novels such
as Chance (1914), Victory (1915), The shadow line (1917) and the last
novels The arrow of gold (1919), The rescue (1920) and The Rover
(1929).
• The second group were comic novels such as Ripps (1905) and
The history of Mr. Polly (1905). This also attained success and
popularity, and continued to do so.
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• The final group failed to achieve the success of the other two,
and its novels such as The New Machiavelle (1911), Mr. Brithing
sees it through (1916), The world of William Chissold (1926)
contained ideas which haven't the topical value that the have
when they first appear at the beginning of the 20th century.
On the whole hand, Wells is probably the most famous and respected
for his first group of novels which explored the effects of Modern
Science an Technology on men's lives and thoughts, although his
humorous and often satirical novels of realistic contemporary life are
also widely acclaimed.
INTRODUCTION
At the beginning of the First World War, most people thought that
English youths would demonstrate their heroism and fight for what
was good and right. However, as the war progressed and reports
began to come back of the horrendous among of deaths and
casualties of the terrible conditions in the trenches and of the
stupidity of general which lead to flew victories and tremendous loss,
many became more pessimistic.
Sassoon's poems show the physical details and horror of war, and his
feelings of uselessness of violence and death.
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He regrets that he cannot return to the past, laments for lost friends
and displace contempt for those who have not seen the terribleness
of combat and who speak of heroism.
His most famous reactions to the war are a series of bitter satires
against such people.
Sassoon's work was original in its content but had nothing to offer in
its style of form. Sassoon wrote angry poems about the war, Connter
Attack, War Poems and Vigils are among his work.
Today, his poems are not very well-known although on his own time
he was the first poet of his kind. However, he's important because he
had already had a lot of works published and it was he who
encouraged Wilfred Owen to write poetry.
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Man's separation from nature
His work is dramatic and forceful and no one could read it without
feeling something of his terrible experiences in the trenches.
He was killed a week before the end of the war at the age of 25, and
it is ironic that the greatest poet of this period should only have had
four poems published during his short life. Had he lived he would
certainly have been capable of greater themes.
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of personal relationship, the necessity that men connect personally
with each other and the conviction that the tragedy of modern man is
essential loneliness and these things can be seen in novels like A
room with views (1918) and Howard's End (1910).
In 1924 Foster published A Passage to India which deals with the East
and West duality and if the two can really meet. After a long analysis
of the differences he comes to the conclusion that they cannot- At
least not then.
Two facts seem to be responsible for this, the total disruption after 1st
World War of social, moral and intellectual values and new
development in psychology, particularly Freud.
Virginia Woolf was one of the people to state most fiercely the aims of
the new writers, a stream of consciousness which shows the
continuous flow of mind with its free play of images and associations.
The reader is taken inside the mind of the character and follows these
thoughts often not logical or lineal as they happened.
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refinement, although she had an extremely fragile nervous system,
and therefore never received a regular education.
Her first novels The Voyage Out (1915) and Night and Day (1919)
were firmly traditional, but two years later she was beginning to
experiment with the stream of consciousness technique, with she
develop to produce her best novels, including Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
and To the lighthouse (1927). Woolf is not only known as a novelist
but also as a critic deeply concerned with the problems of the writer
what mattered to her was not external reality but the life of the mind,
therefore she rejected the traditional form of the novel and we can
see in her work that plot and external description are of little
importance to her. Her prose is often more similar to poetry in its
form.
Her final work was Between the Acts (1941) which reflected the crisis
of the 2nd World War and after which she committed suicide.
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and Women in Love (1920). Both novels deal with the central
characters of two sisters Ursula and Gudrun, but it is in the second
that Lawrence displays his talent as a novelist.
ALDOWS HUXLEY
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poetry, and by 1921 his first novel Crome Yellow was published. This
was the beginning of his use of the novel as a vehicle for his ideas,
which he presented in a humorous and satirical way. He was against
moral, recklessness and intellectual sophistication as can also be seen
in the Antic Hay (1923) and Those Barren leaves (1925) which have
little plot but a great deal of brilliant dialogue and show a world
without aim o direction, artist, rich people, etc. and a seemingly
meaningless existence. Point Counter Point (1928) specially seems to
show that man is a creature to mixed and to divide by passion and
reason to find much happiness.
JAMES JOYCE
James Joyce was born an educated Dublin, but like his contemporary
and countryman poet WB Yeats he found that he had to escape from
Ireland in order that his imagination might be able to cope with it.
Anxious to free himself, of what he regarded as the inhibiting ties of
family, country and religion he moved to the Continent, where he
lived mostly in Paris and Zurich until his death in 1941.
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center of paralysis” (Paralysis is the incapacity to move although here
Joyce used the term to refer to people who are incapable of doing
something), although there is nothing truly revolutionary either in the
style or treatment in this stories, the best, specially the last one, The
dead already shows his characteristic unification of the naturalistic
and symbolistic traditions, which was developed to its full potential in
Ulysses (1922)
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world probably marks the limits of experiment in language; his art
was great because through it he came to terms with the problems of
Ireland and humanity, he is probably the greatest novelist of the 20th
century.
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