The Twentieth Century

1901 - 2000
History of the Time
Edward VII
◦ Frienship with several major European
countries – Edward the Peacemaker.
◦ With his death, peace, power, privilege.

World War I
◦ King George V, Edward´s son, took nation
through war. War of mud, blood, new
tanks, machine guns, flamethrowers and
poison gas.
History of the Time
 World War II
◦ Large parts of London destroyed in 1941.
60,000 civilians killed.
◦ Churchill joined forces with U.S. president
Roosevelt.
◦ In 1944 British and American forces landed in
Normandy, France. Germany surrendered
within a year.
 Modern Day
◦ British Empire disolved into federation of
independent nations: Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan,
Nigeria, Sierra Leone, West Indies.
Life of the Time
People are talking about….
◦ Women´s Rights – women over 21 granted the
right to vote in 1928. Laws designed to protect
women: Equal Pay Act in 1970. 1st woman prime
minister.

◦ Technology: Age of Technology – advent of radio.

1st practical television system in the 1940´s.
Microprocessor developed in the 1970´s.

◦ Immigration from West Indies mostly, followed by

Asians, Africans and Middle Easterners.
Life of the Time
 Food, fashion, arts and entertainment
• Skirts and hair scandalously short after WWI. The
sixties added miniskirts, punk and hip-hop styles
followed.
• In restaurants Britons enjoyed Indian, Chinese and
other foreign cuisine. People welcomed fast food.
• More than 800 supermarkets opened between 1956
and 1961.
• By 1945 more than 4,500 cinemas.
• Rock innovations of The Beatles, the Who and
Rolling Stones.
• Shopping – form of entertaiment.
• Football grew more popular. Won World Cup in
1966.
Literature of the Time
 People are reading and writing….
◦ War Poems. Brooke expressed patriotic
fervor. Rosenberg, Sasson and Owen recorded
savageness of war.
◦ Tabloids developed as supplement to Sunday
newspaper . Sensationalized stories about
public figures.
◦ The Web for information and entertainment
◦ Letters – transformation in purpose and
manner in which sent.
Literary Trends
 New approach – modernism. Covers variety
of movements united by desire to break with
past, change structure and content of arts.
 New ways of perceiving and describing
world anthropology, psychology and
philosophy.
 Ezra Pound exuberant & optimistic before
WW I. “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot
disillusionment & alienation.
 Poets experiment with free verse.
 Prose writers: James Joyce & Virginia
Woolf incorporated ideas of psychology.
Focus on
 Short story – roots in Chaucer but flourished in 20 th
century.

 Many short stories published: own unique style,

technique & subject matter.

 Novelists Forster and Joyce also wrote short stories.

 Katherine Mansfield and Nadine Gordimer

established literary reputations with short stories.

 Able to capture and express soul of changing world.

Contemporary Period of
Literature
Historical Context
◦ A world growing smaller due to ease of
communications between societies.
◦ A world launching a new beginning of a
century and a millennium.
◦ Media culture interprets values and events
for individuals.
Genres/Styles
 All genres represented
◦ Fictional confessional/diaries - 50% of
contemporary fiction is written in the first
person.
◦ Narratives: both fiction and nonfiction.
◦ Emotion-provoking.
◦ Humorous irony.
◦ Autobiographical essays.
◦ Mixing of fantasy with nonfiction.
◦ Seamus Heaney, Doris Lessing, Kazuo
Ishiguro, Tom Stoppard, Salman Rushdie.
John Le Carre, Ken Follett.