British Literature

1. The Phenomenon of Aestheticism, Decadence, Realism and Naturalism in British Literature.

Aestheticism
- Art that celebrated realistic ideas was found unsuitable
- Art is self-sufficient and doesn’t have to serve any purpose
- It is the study of beautiful things, regarded beauty as an end in itself; ideal of beauty as the highest
in life
- Art is a substitute for life (decadence)
- Rejected commercially oriented society
- Was idealistic in nature
- Was a reaction against the bourgeois values of practical efficiency and morality
- Attempted to preserve art from any moral or didactic functions
Decadence:
- Feeling of existential anxiety
- Decline compared with the excellence of former ages
- The prevailing feeling of uncertainty about the future
- People were living according to the principle ‘Carpe Diem’
Naturalism:
- Human life is strictly subjected to natural laws
- Medical and evolutionary theories of the XIX century; science can help interpret human character
and social interactions
- Novels frequently depict the struggle of an individual to adapt to his/her environment
- The life of an individual is thus genetically as well as historically determined
Realism:
- Real Victorian life
- Documentary of life, detailed description,
- Influence of the environment on the character
- Writers like observers
- Vivid language, written from 1st and 3rd person narrator
- Variety of characters from different social classes
- Humor and caricatures

2. Late Victorian and Edwardian writers and their works

- Lewis Carroll- English writer, mathematician, logician. Known from his facility at word play, logic
and fantasy: Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
- Samuel Butler- English writer, known from examining Christian orthodoxy, studies of works of
literary history and criticism: The Way to All Flesh
- Algernon Charles Swinburne- English poet, playwright, novelist and critic. Was obsessed with
Middle Ages. Wrote about many taboo topics: Poems and Ballads, Songs before Sunrise
- Oscar Wilde- Irish playwright, novelist, essayist and poet: The Critic of Artist, The happy Prince and
Other Tales, The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Thomas Hardy- English novelist and poet. Focused on a declining of rural society, Passionate writer,
Speaks about people’s ambitions, passion, jealousy, Shows life from the scientific point of view,(he
was an architect and combined his work with writing; double-consciousness of Victorian society;
institution of marriage is artificial) , Judge the Obscure, Wessex Poem, Greenwood Tree
- Henry James- Considered to be both American and British writer at the same time; experimental
book because he used different narrative techniques: The Turn of the Screw, Daisy Miller
- George Gissing- wrote about 20 novels and hundreds of poems; mostly wrote about low-class
people; pessimistic mood, worked as a teacher: Workers in the Dawn, The Unclassed
 - George Bernard Shaw- : Anglo-Irish playwright, critic, influenced Western culture, won a Nobel
Prize in literature : Man and Superman, Pygmalion.
- Herbert Wells- English writer. Wrote science fiction novel, known as a father of science fiction: The
Time Machine
- John Galsworthy- English novelist and playwright, won a Nobel Prize in Literature: The Forsyte Saga
- William Somerset Maugham- British novelist, playwright and short story writer of Lambeth; of
Human Boudage
- Joseph Conrad- Polish-British writer: The Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim
- Arthur Conan Doyle- British writer and physician, wrote fictional detective stories: Sherlock Holmes
- Gilbert Chesterton- English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist and journalist. He is known as a
Prince of Paradox: The Common Man, The Autobiography, The Man Who Was Thursday

3. Modernist philosophy and writing manner. Old conventions not accepted by Modernists, the experiments and
new principles they introduced.
 Modernist philosophy:
- Each individual was isolated in its perception of reality, and such perception was always unique
(reality from subjective point of view)
- Objectivity was substituted with subjectivity
- Representation of the world filtered through individual consciousness
- Importance of the unconscious, irrational, intuitive, primitive
- Influenced by the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the psychology of Sigmund Freud and Carl
Jung (human behavior is drove by former experiences)
 Writing manner:
- Fragmentation (parts are taken from different sources, our psychology is in fragments, sometimes
they aren’t logically linked)
- Discontinuity (our comprehension of the world is different)
- Allusiveness (a lot of allusions of former life or legends)
- Irony (humorous writing, you have to read between lines)
- Rejection of descriptive and rational exposition (no rising action, climax, etc.)
- Replacement of traditional narrative technique with the so called stream-of-consciousness
technique or internal monologue
- Creation of avant-garde art (something new)
- Omnipresent and omniscient narrator (it still exists but in the position of the character)
- No chronology of narration
- Language not different from the everyday usage, of simple information; devoid of ambiguities,
implication, allusions and suggestions (not poetic language)
 Modernist writing:
- Literature and art expressed the necessity of changes
- Artists felt alienated from the society, focusing on oneself
- Distaste for the individual civilization and its effect on the quality of the individual life and human
relationship
- Disappointment with the Victorian belief in ‘progress’
- Lack of faith in western civilization and traditional culture
 New principles:
- Present moment is a mixture of past remembrances, present stimuli and plans for future; time isn’t
homogeneous
- Presentation of reality should be governed by the laws ruling human consciousness
- Primary law of it was the law of free association
- Narrator, still often omnipresent, became more restricted by the position of a character
- Language began to pretend that it followed the subconscious flow of associations in the minds of
the characters
  Experiments in fiction were connected with:
- Modification of the ways in which the world was perceived
- Different perception of the time and space parameters of the universe
- Individual’s possibilities of cognition (a novel is a book of life)
- Stream-of-consciousness novel (James Joyce and Virginia Wolf)

4. Major modernist writers and their works

- Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own
- David Herbert Lawrence: The White Pea-cock, Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love
- Aldous Huxley : Crome Yellow, Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves, Point Counter Point
- James Joyce

5. Poetry of the early XX century (Symbolism, poetry about the First World War).
Symbolism
- Main idea: not the number but the quality; not the poet’s personality but the language; through
language the person can understand reality
- Writers: Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Butler Yeats
World War Poetry:
 Main idea:
- poetry was very important because it showed what world was
- the real picture of the world- death
 Thomas Stearns Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land
 William Butler Yeats: Seven Rooms and a Fragment, The Tower, The Winding Star

6. Post-war literature: late 1940s and the early 1950s in prose and poetry (The New Apocalypse Movement)
 Prose:
- Grim and colorless time
- Atmosphere of fear and terror
- Focus on aesthetic and social rather than political problems
- Disillusionment
- Increased attachment to religion
- Realistic (social) fiction- criticism of the contemporary system, moral dilemmas of a personal,
religious or political nature
- Non-realistic novel (fantasy)- John Tolkien
 Poetry:
- Stopped being highly intellectual or sophisticated
- Everyday speech
- Common people
- Personal response- the central viewpoint is ‘I’
- Writers: Edwin Muir, Steve Smith, Dylan Thomas, John Betjeman
 The New Apocalyptics were a poetry grouping in the UK in the 1940s, taking their name from the anthology
The New Apocalypse

7. Drama of the 40-50s (well-made plays, kitchen sink drama, theatre of absurd)
Theatre of Absurd
 Main issues:
- They usually depict ordinary people
- Everyday conversation, naturalistic language
- Alienation of people, silence
- Humor
- Philosophy of existence
- Human life for private purpose
- People who lost their purpose in life
 - Meaningless situations
- Minimalism in plays
- No elaborated language, characters belong to lower class, many interruptions
 Writers:
- Samuel Barclay Beckett Waiting for Godot, Happy Days, Endgame, Breath
- Harold Pinter The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming
Kitchen sink drama
 Main issues:
- Depicted domestic situations of the working class
- Snobbism of British upper class
 Writers: John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Nell Dunn

8. The prose of Angry Young Men and the working class novel, philosophical novel.
Angry Young Men Movement
 Main issues:
- Angry young men want to conquer all world
- They want to marry a wealthy women
- Intelligent, high education
- Ordinary people in small town
- Condemnation of the higher authority and previous generation
- The working class novels
 Writers:
- John Wain Hurry on Down, Living in the Present
- Kinsley Amis Lucky Jim
- Keith Waterhouse
- John Braine
Philosophical novel
- Iris Murdoch
- William Golding Lord of the Flies
- Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

9. The Postmodernist novel: rules of writing and major writers.

 Postmodern rules of writing:
- Verbal games
- Contradiction (mixtures)
- Discontinuity (not chronological)
- Randomness (no logical connection)
- Formal experiment
- Complexity
- Blending of literary genres and styles
 Postmodernist novel (anti-novel)
- Abundance of details
- Gap between art and reality is demonstrated by language
- Difficult to decode with extraordinary metaphors and comparisons
- Employs new narrative techniques
- Plays with various levels of intertextuality
- Writers: John Fowles The Collector, Woman, Ian McEwan, Angela Carter
American Literature

1. American Realism and Naturalism: common and different features.

 American Realism
- Realistic writers set their stories in specific American regions, rushing to capture the ‘local color’
- Drew upon grim realities of everyday life, showing the breakdown of traditional values and the growing
plight of the new urban poor
- A literary technique practiced by many schools of writing
- A subject matter the representation of middle-class life
- A reaction against romanticism, an interest in scientific method, the systematizing of the study of
documentary history, and the influence of rational philosophy
 American Naturalism
- Apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings
- A philosophical position: human beings are ‘human beasts’
- Characters can be studied through their relationship to their surroundings

2. Major writers and key features of American Realism.

- Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- Henry James: Daisy Miller, The Wings of the Dove
- William Dean Howells
- Rebecca Harding Davis

3. Major writers and key features of American Naturalism.

- Stephen Crane Maggie: A girl of the Street
- Frank Norris The Octopus
- Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie
4. Philosophy and writing manner of American Modernists.
- Subjectivity (from the point of view of “I”)
- No clear border between literary genres
- Emphasis on discontinuous narratives
- Fragmentation
- Reflexivity
- Self- consciousness (focused on a conflict which happens inside a man’s soul)
5. Writers of the “Lost Generation” and their works (Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, Francis Scott Fitzgerald,
Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Doss Passos, John Steinbeck).
 Lost Generation” (the generation that came of age during World War I)
 Writers:

- Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio (complex, psychological study of individual in small town-short
stories; human psyche)
- Francis Scott Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, The Beauty and the Damned (uses many
kinds of narrative techniques; narration from character’s point of view; based his books on his own
experience; regarded as a pessimist)
- Ernest Hemingway Three Stories and Ten Poems, Men Without Women, Winners Take Nothing, For
Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea (reflective writer; experienced the war, became famous
after publication The Sun also Rises; most of his works were best sellers)
- William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury, Intruder in the Dust, As I Lay Dying (uses interior monologue)
- John Dos Passos The Three Soldiers, The Big Money
- John Steinbeck Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath
 6. Modernist Poetry (Imagism).
 Main issues:
- Rebelled against Romantic poetic diction
- Principles in their poetry: a direct treatment of the subject; omission of any word that was not
essential to the presentation and maintaining the musicality of phrase; not strict regularity of poetic
rhythm
 American Imagist poets
- Thomas Stearns Eliot: book of poetry Prufrock and Other Observations; edited literary magazines
‘The Egoist’ and ‘The Criterion’; literature should be free from emotions; essay Tradition and the
Individual Talent, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock problem of collapse of western civilization; The
Waste Land, The Hollow Men problem of alienation, separation; dramas Murder in the Cathedral,
The Cocktail Party
- Ezra Pound: translated many works on Italian and Greece; wrote for magazines ‘Poetry’ and ‘The
Little Review’; The Cantos, Persone
- Robert Frost: wrote about new England; two volumes of poetry A Boy’s Will and North of Boston
- Hart Crane: The Bridge

7. American poetry since World War II (Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara).

8. American fiction since World War II (The Beat Generation and Postmodernism).