THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY. Pag.

126
The novel is set in London at the end of the i9th century.
The protagonist is Dorian Gray whose beauty fascinates the painter Basil
Hallward who decides to paint his portrait. Dorian throwes, himself into a life of
pleasure, When the painter sees the corrupted image of the portrait, Doriat,
kills him, Dorian wants to get rid of the portrait and stabs hit but kills himself, at
that moment the, image returns to its original purity and Doran's face becomes
withered, wrinkled and repulsive;
CHARACTER - Dorian Gray represents the ideal of youth, beauty and
innocence influenced by Lord Henry, an intellectual and a brilliant talker. Basil
Hallward Is' an intellectual who falls in love with Dorian's beauty and
innocence he was killed by Dorian.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST. Pag. 136

The work is based on a series of misunderstandings, identity exchanges;,
witty dialogues. The title itself is a play on words in fact it evokes the adjective
"serious or sincere".
CHARACTERS- The Importance of Being Earnest features an aristocratic
society whose members are typical Victorian snobs; they are often arrogant,
formal and worried about money. Wilde mocks the institution of marriage,
which he saw as a practice surrounded by hypocrisy.

FROM THE EDWARDIAN AGE OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR.

Edward became king as Edward VII, he signed an agreement with France in
1904, the Entente In 1903 Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst founded "The
Suffragettes' that wanted women to have the vote, they held large protest
marches in London. women over 30 would gain the vote in 1918, the suffrage
would be grated to women over 21 in 1928. In 1914 Archduke Ferdinand was
assassinated with his wife in Sarajevo, this event triggered a reaction and
Britain entered the war.

BRITAIN AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR. Pag.158

England needed volunteers so many people volunteered from Canada,
Australia and New Zealand. In April there was a rebellion in Dublin, the so-
called Easter Rising, due to the fact that Home Rule, voted by the Commons
in 1914, had been suspended until the end of the war. In May 1915 a German
submarine attacked the British ship Lusitania and more than a thousand
people died, including 128 Americans. Life in the trenches was very stressful,
"Shell shock" was the term used by doctors to indicate the psychological effect
of explosions of bullets, accused of frequent cases of psychological
disturbances among soldiers. The peace treaty was signed at Versailles in
1919 by the Allied powers, President Woodrow Wilson proposed "Fourteen
steps to work out the peace treaty and prevent future wars and presented a
plan to set up the League of Nations.

THE AGE OF ANXIETY. Pag.161

Due to the First World War and Freud's influence Britain was in a disillusioned
and cynical state of mind, nothing seemed right or certain scientists and
philosophers destroyed the new visions of man. Carl Gustav Jung continued
Freud's studies and added the concept of 'collective unconscious', that is,
some figures or objects of the everyday world had great symbolic power and
people responded to them unconsciously. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity
discarded the concepts of time and space. The idea of time was also
questioned by the American philosopher William James and Henri Bergson.
Bergson made a distinction between historical time and psychological time.
Historical time is external and linear, psychological time is internal and
subjective. The crisis of certainties also influenced the vision of man because
Freud, Marx, Nice had created a confusion and it was difficult to give a clear
definition of man.

MODERNISM. Pag.176
The term 'Modernism' refers to an international movement that has involved
Western literature, music, the arts and cinema; it is associated with the period
after World War 1. Modernism looked for creative forms of experimentation.
The main features of modernism where: the radical disruption of the linear
flow of narrative oF conventional verse and the emphasis on subjectivity.

MODERN POETRY. Pag.178

War Poets wrote remarkable poetry whose value lies in the unconventional,
anti-rhetorical way they dealt with the horrors of modern warfare. Modern
poetry began with Imagism between 1912 and 1917. The name 'Imagiste' was
invented by the American poet Ezra Pound, the main principles of Imagism
are free choice of any subject matter and use of hard, clear and precise
images. Symbolism had started in France with Charles Baudelaire, the
characteristics are: the use of language and images to evoke rather than to
state, the use of quotations from other literatures revealing cosmopolitan
interests and the use of free verse. TS. Eliot expounded the new poet's theory
and practice. The poets of the 1930s produced a kind of committed poetry. In
the 1940s new romantics used individual themes such as love, birth, death
and even sex. Their greatest representative was Dylan Thomas.