Writers and Terms

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TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITISH LIT

• Writers and Terms

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Themes of the 20th Century

• Adversity
• Diversity
• Industrialism
• Experimentation
• Pluralism
• Anti-realistic
• Shunned tradition
• Disillusionment from war

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Influences on the 20th Century

• Sigmund Freud
• Psychoanalysis and the power of the subconscious
• Charles Darwin
• Social Darwinism, evolution, competition,
  survival of the fittest
• Karl Marx
• Socialist theories communism influenced events
  of Russia

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Modernism 1900-1940 Post-Modernism After
WWI Only constant has been change. Changes Vot
es and employment for women Social welfare
programs Advances in science and technology Rise
of mass communication Decline in national
fortunes Decline in industry Loss of colonies The
need to import a lot more products Commonwealth
of nations, now European Union
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Literature Trends
Prior to WWI, literary style had been more
Georgian, very romantic
More focus on lower and middle class
life Political and social themes Use of
impressionism More examination of the inner
self Avoided realism and sentimentality Anti-mater
ialistic Mistrust of religion and
philosophy Feeling of crisis Psychological
turmoil
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 April is the cruellest month, breedingLilacs
out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire,
stirringDull roots with spring rain.

• Important Writers
• James Joyce
• DH Lawrence
• George Orwell
• William Butler Yeats
• Virginia Woolf
• Samuel Becket
• T.S. Eliot
• Salman Rushdie

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DH Lawrence 1885-1930

• Brilliant, imaginative, and emotional
• Suffered from censorship and public condemnation
• Portrays characters as victims of a restrictive
  society
• Portrays nature as symbolic of what is vital in
  life
• Wrote Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterleys Lover,
  and Women in Love all dealt with relationships
• Felt the source of all knowledge in life was in
  man and woman
• Felt there was a conflict between instinct, which
  he saw as good, and education, which he saw as bad

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His collected works represent an extended
reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of
modernity and industrialization. In them,
Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional
health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct.

• Lawrence is now valued by many as a visionary
  thinker and significant representative of
  modernism in English literature.
• Money poisons you when you've got it, and
  starves you when you haven't.

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The Rocking Horse Winner

• Deals with conflict between instincts and
  education
• Paul rides his horse to find a winner
• Whispering increases after his mother gets money
• Bassett is his first partner
• He loses on his first bet
• Wins on Malabar, his final pick
• His mothers heart is a little stone
• She thinks about her son her instincts start to
  kick in
• Conflict between materialism and nature

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Traveled with his German wife FriedaLived in New
Mexico, England, Italy, and AustraliaDied of
tuberculosis Influenced by Freudian psychology
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Snake

• Set in Italy
• Speaker goes to water trough and meets a snake
• He becomes intrigued by it and watches it
• The voices of his education tell him to kill it
• His instinct tells him to admire it
• He listens to his education and throws something
  at it
• He says he has something to expiatea pettiness.
• Conflict Instinct vs. Education Nature vs.
  Society

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WWI Trench Poets

• Siegfried Sassoon

• Wilifred Owen

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Trench Poets

• Believed in

• Became Disillusioned by

• The glory and honor of war and serving ones
  country
• Enlisted with pride
• Very romanticized view of war
• Sassoon had a breakdown almost went AWOL
• The two met in a hospital

• The carnage
• The suffering
• The lack of progress
• The lack of support
• The hopelessness
• Owen was killed a few days before the war ended
  died young

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Chinua Achebe 1930-

• From Nigeria

• Social Novelist

• Wrote Things Fall Apart, the most widely read
  African novel
• Wanted to educate everyone about the noble
  qualities of Africa
• Reacted against Josephs Conrads version of the
  black man as a foolish loyal servant in Heart of
  Darkness

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Nnaemeka- The son of Okeke. A man who is engaged
to Nene. He is an Ibo.2. Nene- She is engaged to
Nnaemeka. Grew up in the big city of Lagos, she
follows modern ways she is a good Christian, and
a teacher in a girls' school in Lagos.3. Okeke-
The father of Nnaemeka. An Ibo.4. Madubogwu- A
highly practical man.5. Ugoye Nweke- An Ibo
woman. The woman that Okeke wants to marry his
son.6. The Children- The sons of Nnaemeka and
Nene.
Is marriage a private affair? The clash between
traditional and modern culture is the conflict in
the story. In the end Okeke learns that in order
to survive, he must adapt to change.
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South African Apartheid

• 1976 Riot in Soweto

• Sharpsville Massacre

• Police fired into backs of crowd of people who
  were protesting law that made all blacks carry a
  pass book to travel in and out of the city
  employers could write negative things to prevent
  them from entering.
• Laws stated black could not hold a post higher
  than the lowest white

• Soweto protested policy that required classes to
  be taught in Afrikaans, the language spoken by
  white SAs
• More than 600 blacks were killed.
• This spurred Gordimers interest in apartheid

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Nadine Gordimer 1923-1991 Nobel Prize Winner

• From Johannesburg, South Africa
• Parents were immigrants from Lithuania England
• Grew up in conventional society
• Wrote about effects of apartheid, legal until
  1991
• She understood the black mans burden in her
  country treats SA from a literary perspective
• Activist for AIDS
• Believed short story was literary form of our
  time
• Very sensitive to discrimination of any kind

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George Orwell (Eric Blair) 1903-1950 Born in
India from England

• An English novelist and journalist. His work is
  marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound
  awareness of social injustice, an intense
  opposition to totalitarianism ,a passion for
  clarity in language and a belief in democratic
  socialism.
• Orwell's influence on popular and political
  culture endures, and several of his neologisms
  along with the term Orwellian a byword for
  totalitarian or manipulative social practices
  have entered the vernacular

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First published in the literary magazine New
Writing in the autumn of 1936 and broadcast by
the BBC Home Service on 12 October 1948.

• Orwell, the narrator writes of his experience as
  a police officer in Burma. He shoots an elephant,
  even though he knows he should not, in order to
  avoid being laughed at. He regrets his action.
• The essay is also a condemnation of imperialism
• When the white man turns tyrant it is his own
  freedom that he destroys.
• A narrative essay his first famous piece.

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William Butler Yeats 1865-1939

• Irish poet and playwright revived Irish theatre

• The Lake Isle of Innisfree

• Represents an escape from the stress of reality.
  Portrays the countryside as an idyllic refuge.
• Uses assonance and alliteration.
• Based on his grandparents farm in Ireland

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William Butler Yeats Reading

• http//youtu.be/cy4gFQwDfic
• I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
  And a small cabin build there, of clay and
  wattles made Nine bean rows will I have there,
  a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the
  bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace
  there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping
  from the veils of the morning to where the
  cricket sings There midnight's all a-glimmer,
  and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the
  linnet's wings.
• I will arise and go now, for always night and day
  I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the
  shore While I stand on the roadway, or on the
  pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's
  core.
• 1892

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Katherine Mansfield

• 1888-1923

• From New Zealand

• Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry (14 October
  1888 9 January 1923) was a prominent modernist
  writer of short fiction who was born and brought
  up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the
  pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left
  for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered
  Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and
  Virginia Woolf with whom she became close
  friends. Her stories often focus on moments of
  disruption and frequently open rather abruptly.
  Among her most well-known stories are "The Garden
  Party, "The Daughters of the Late Colonel," and
  "The Fly." During the First War Mansfield
  contracted extra pulmonary tuberculosis, which
  rendered any return or visit to New Zealand
  impossible and led to her death at the age of 34.

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The light is central symbol

• Conflicts
• 1)Class vs Humanity
• 2)Rich vs Poor
• 3) Power
• I seen sic the little lamp.

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James Joyce 1882-1941 Famous novelist and short
story writer Dublin, Ireland Works Dubliners Uly
sses A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man Finnegans Wake Known for his
stream-of-consciousness style. Considered to be
one of the most influential Writers of the
twentieth century Araby is a carnival or
bazaar that the narrator wants to attend in
order to purchase a gift for Mangans sister whom
he barely knows. He has an epiphany at the end
realizes the futility of his mission.
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Araby

• Everyone needs to escape

• The Quest

• The priest his books
• Mangans sister her religious retreats
• His uncle alcohol
• The boy his fantasies
• Coping with the dreariness of reality is a theme.

• The boy goes on a quest.
• His views himself as a gallant knight on a noble
  quest.
• Mangans sister is described with images of light
  and white.

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Frank OConnor 1903-1966

• Born Michael ODonovan

• Famous Short Story Writer

OConnor knew education was way our of his
horrific family life. His dad was an alcoholic
and cruel called him a sissy because he liked
to read.

• Proud of being Irish
• Member of Irish Republican Army
• Prolific short story writer
• Over 70 dealt with Irish family life

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My Oedipus Complex

• Larry unreliable narrator
• Story relies on dramatic irony
• Larry wants to get rid of his dad because he
  competes with him for his mothers attention
• Humorous Tone
• Uses British idiom in a wax
• In resolution Larry and his father unite against
  Sonny, the new baby

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The Modern Short Story

• 1) More concerned with nuances of character than
  with construction of plot
• 2)More apt to imply facts and psychological
  truths than to state them directly
• 3)More apt to move toward a revelation of truth
  than toward an effect

• Very different from 19th century stories
• Often use dramatic irony
• Climax may be an epiphany the character has at
  the end

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Dylan Thomas 1914-1953
From Wales but mostly lived in London. Wrote
first volume of poetry at 20. Gave lectures and
did readings in the U.S. Died in NYC at 39 of
alcoholism. Flamboyant and popular figure. Famous
relationship with his wife Caitlin
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Idioms

• An expression that does not literally mean what
  the words say
• British idiom is different from American idiom
• Round the neighborhood
• In a wax
• Honor Bright

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Do Not go Gentle into That Good Night
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vg2cgcx-GJTQfeature
related http//www.youtube.com/watch?vvNvujNd1gL
wfeaturerelated
A villanelle (a 19-line lyric poem) Written for
his father who was on his Deathbed. Thomas wanted
him to resist death. Builds an argument to
persuade him
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Fern Hill
Poem uses half rhyme, internal rhyme, and end
rhyme Lyric poem Comments on the cruelty of
time Irony is that we are always moving closer
to death even while wonderfully alive. Uses
puns and words in a playful manner Though I sang
in my chains by the sea.
Now as I was young and easy under the apple
boughs About the lilting house and happy as the
grass was green,
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Samuel Beckett

• Waiting for Godot

• 1906-1989
• An avant-garde playwright, novelist, poet, and
  director
• 1969 Nobel Prize
• Irish but lived in Paris
• Work is bleak and offers a tragi-comic outlook on
  human nature
• Associated with black comedy or gallows humor

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Waiting for Godot

• Beckett is considered by many to be most
  important post-modern work
• Modernist writer
• Work is minimalist
• Associated with Theatre of the Absurd uses dark
  elements to create humor
• Very little scenery
• Characters wait for Godot that long-expected
  something that people wait for but which never
  comes

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Virginia Woolf 1882-1941 (English)

• A woman must have money and a room of her own if
  she is to write fiction. ? Virginia Woolf, A
  Room of One's Own

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman. ?
Virginia Woolf
Early feminist founded Hogarth Press and The
Bloomsbury Groups
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Woolf used stream of consciousness style she was
a mentor to other writers and suffered from
manic depression. She wrote To the Lighthouse A
Room of Ones Own, and Mrs. Dalloway. She was
from a distinguished family, grew up wealthy, was
abused y her stepbrothers, had a wonderful
marriage, and dealt with depression most of her
life. Committed suicide by filling her pockets
with stones and walking Into the river. Felt she
was a burden on her husband. Considered a
literary giant, she expanded the genre of
nonfiction and was like James Joyce with her use
of psychoanalysis and stream of consciousness
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