Modern British and American Literature

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Modern British and American Literature

• England and America are two countries separated
  by a common language.
• George Bernard Shaw

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Historical Context

• Dynamic exists between event and human response.
• World affects artisthe/she feels compelled to
  create in order to respond
  
• art Guernica
• music
• literature

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EventArt form--Movement

• Vietnam War-
• 60s music

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Hippie Generation
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Modern History

• Change from the set ways of Victorian/Edwardian
  Ages
• everything was based on rules
• all aspects of life were governed
• relationships
• meals
• dress
• Created a FACADE

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Change

• Inventions
• as life became easier with time-saving
• devices, people had more time for
• THINKING
• which
• leads to
• QUESTIONS

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• On or about December 1910, human character
  changed. All human relationships shiftedthose
  between master and servant, husband and wife,
  parent and children. And when human relations
  shift, there is at the same time a change in
  religion, conduct, politics and literature.
  Virginia Woolf

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War!

• World War I- most pivotal event of 20th C
• New innovations in weapons
• mustard gas
• machine guns
• First time that destruction on such a major scale
  was possible
• blood- dimmed tide--Yeats

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The Great War and Petty Peace---H.G. Wells

• U.S. enters the war 1917
• Armistice- Nov. 11, 1918
• Treaty of Versailles 1919
• Foch-This is not a peace. This is an armistice
• for twenty years

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The Irish Rebellion

• Unrest over British rule
• religious differences
• Irish Catholics/Protestant
• Anglicans
• Easter 1916-Dublin-rebellion squashed by British
  became martyrs

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Irish Nationalism

• Surged after Easter uprising
• guerilla warfare
• 1921 Britain granted independence to Irish Free
  Stateall of Ireland except six Protestant
  counties in the province of Ulster in the North

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Make it New-Ezra Pound

• After the impact of World War I- backlash in art
  world
• The World no longer followed the rules, so why
  should Art?
• Artistic movements respond to trauma with
  creativity

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Change in Art
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The World Around
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Characteristics of Modern Literature

• Experimental
• Presents human experience in fragments
• Reader needs to piece it together
• Art becomes participatory

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Characteristics (cont)

• Uses techniques of Naturalism/Realism
• Realismdetails of everyday life
• Naturalismexamines the social and
• economic problems of
  the
• working class

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Characteristics

• Use of Psychological Insights
• Psychological Realism
• Freudsubconscious / sexual motivation
• Jung race memories/collective subconscious
• William Jamesstream of consciousnes

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Stream of Consciousness

• Human mind does not work in chronological order
• Jumps from the present-past-future
• Reality to an individual is not linear