English Literature Modernism (1901-1945)

Which historical events influenced English literature of early XX century?
The South African War (the Boer War:1899–1902)
World War I
The militarization of the world has led militarization of the country => deteriorating living conditions of workers
The strike movement in England
Revolution in Russia in 1917
Crisis of capitalism and the intensification of class contradictions

How these historical events influenced English literature of early XX century?
Writers chose the most complicated problems of the country as themes of their works:
Anti-war sentiments and perceptions
Rising of the revolutionary and national liberation movements
Struggle against fascism
Social inequality
Women emancipation
Great hopes, liberation of the human spirit
Society, Politics
Feelings of a collapse
Imperial civilization in decline

Characteristics of Modernism
Marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition.
Belief that the world is what we say it is
There is no such thing as absolute truth
No connection with history or institutions
Championship of the individual and celebration of inner strength
Life is unordered
Concerned with the sub-conscious

G. Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950)
Shaw's plays, including Misalliance, are filled with problematic parent-child relationships, concerns about poverty and women’s rights The plays implied socialism could help to solve these and other problem (“Man and Superman” (1902), “John Bull’s Other Island” (1904),“Saint John” ‘(1914)
He wrote about social and political issues (“Heartbreak House”, into which he projected his bitterness and despair about British politics and society)
Shaw possesses a deep love of language, high comedy, and social consciousness
He wrote pamphlets on the progressive arts, including The Perfect Wagnerite and The Quintessence of Ibsenism
Shaw’s pamphlets supported equality of income (The True Radical Programme”, ”The Impossibilities of Anarchism”, “Socialism for Millionaires”)

Major Themes (Pygmalion)
Social hierarchy
Gentility and Manners
Marriage and Prostitution
Myths of Creation
Language
Professionalism
Gender Solidarity or Antagonism

Contributions
the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938)
founded the Fabian Society (a socialist political organization)
In the late 1920s, a Shaw festival was established in England (in Malvern town)

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
"a classicist in literature“
His most famous works
The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939), was the inspiration for the hit musical Cats
"The Waste Land" (mysterious, complicated poem that helped to start Modernism)
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915)
He was a publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and "arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century

Thomas Stearns Eliot
His vital contribution is the reaction against romanticism and humanism which brought a classical revival in art and criticism
He rejected the romantic view of the individual's perfectibility, stressed the doctrine of the original sin and exposed the futility of the romantic faith in the "Inner Voice"
Instead of following his 'inner voice', a critic must follow objective standards and must conform to tradition.
A sense of tradition, respect for order and authority is central to Eliot's classicism.
Contributions:
1948 - Eliot won the Nobel Prize for Literature and was awarded the order of Merit by Britain

David Herbert Lawrence
(1885 –1930)
an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter
the first important writer coming from a working class.
Genres: novels, poems, paintings, translations, plays.
His best known works are: «Sons and Lovers» (1913), «The Rainbow» (1917), «Women in Love» (1917), «Lady Chatterley’s Lover» (1928).
his works are full of spontaneity and sincere description

David Herbert Lawrence
Lawrence is concerned with the nature of relationships
His use of sexual activity has its roots in this highly personal way of thinking and being
Lawrence was very interested in human touch behaviour
In his later years Lawrence developed the potentialities of the short novel form in St Mawr, The Virgin and the Gypsy and The Escaped Cock
Lawrence rewrote many of his novels several times to perfect

George Orwell (real name Eric Arthur Blair) (1903 – 1950)
an English novelist and journalist. His work is marked by clarity, intelligence and wit, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and belief in democratic socialism
He is the author of two brilliant satires attacking totalitarianism (Animal Farm (1945), a modern beast-fable attacking Stalinism, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a dystopian novel setting forth his fears of an intrusively bureaucratized state of the future)
Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism

George Orwell
Orwell was best known for his journalism, in essays, reviews, columns in newspapers and magazines and in his books of reportage: Down and Out in Paris and London (describing a period of poverty in these cities), The Road to Wigan Pier (describing the living conditions of the poor in northern England, and the class divide generally) and Homage to Catalonia.
His poems:
Awake! Young Men of England (1914)
Ballade (1929)
A Dressed Man and a Naked Man (1933)
Kitchener (1916)
The Lesser Evil (1924)
A Little Poem (1935)
Our Minds Are Married, but We Are Too Young (1918)
Romance (1925)
Sometimes in the Middle Autumn Days (1933)
Summer-like for an Instant (1933)

James Joyce (1882 –1941)
an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century
Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in (and with) an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent amongst these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected
Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939).
His works also include three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters

Adeline Virginia Woolf
(1882 -1941)
one of the most important modernist writers
Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915
Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language.
In her works she experimented with stream-of-consciousness ('interior monologue‘) and underlying psychological as well as emotional motives of characters.

Adeline Virginia Woolf
published 8 novels and a lot of criticism
In 1907, Virginia Woolf and a few like-minded friends created the creative association "Bloomsbury", which lasted until about 1930
She was very critical of the Victorian writers, of the boredom and shapelessness of their novels and of their concern for the externals of living. She calls all the Victorians amateurs.
The only mature and professional writer to her mind was Henry James.
Her novels are:
«The Voyage Out» (1912);
«Night and Day» (1919),
«Jacob’s Room’ (1922),
«To the Lighthouse» (1927),
«Orlando» (1931),
«Between the Acts» (1941).

Adeline Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure her central strength: Woolf is arguably the major lyrical novelist in the English language
Her novels are highly experimental: a narrative, frequently uneventful and commonplace, is refracted – and sometimes almost dissolved – in the characters‘ receptive consciousness
Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions
The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes banal settings – often wartime environments – of most of her novels (Mrs Dalloway (1925)

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Conrad was regarded as a major innovator in literary modernism. Writing in what to the visual arts was the age of Impressionism, Conrad showed himself in many of his works a prose poet of the highest order

Joseph Conrad
Ford Madox - essay “The Critical Attitude”:
His characters face deep problems, ones with difficult or no answers
Symbol and myth fill his fiction, and much of his story lies beneath the surface narrative
Reading a work by Conrad requires patience, diligence, and concentration
He is much less concerned with spiritual relationships and much more with a sort of material fatalism
Every situation must be rendered inescapable

Joseph Conrad
His most known novels are: «Lord Jim» (1900), «The Heart of Darkness» (1902), «Nostromo» (1904), «The Secret Agent»(1907), «Under Western Eyes» (1911)
His later works are «Victory» (1915), «The Rescue»(1920), «The Rover» (1923).

Joseph Conrad
The singularity of the universe depicted in Conrad's novels, especially compared to those of near-contemporaries like John Galsworthy, is such as to open him to criticism similar to that later applied to Graham Greene.
Often he chose to have his characters play out their destinies in isolated or confined circumstances

Similarities and differences
American modernism
20s-40s of XX century
Influenced by WWI and economical crisis of 30s and european modernism
The theme of race relations
English modernism
1901-1939
Influenced by WWI and crisis of 1899 – 1930
Relations between generations

Similarities and differences
American modernism
Women emancipation
English modernism
tradition of working class novels and theme of women rights