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1、Chapter-10-The-Chapter-10-The-Twentieth-Century-Twentieth-Century-LiteratureLiterature1. The natural and social science development led to great gains in material wealth.2. Frequent economic depressions and mass unemployment sharpened the contradictions between the rich and poor.3. The catastrophic
2、two world wars tremendously weakened the British Empire and brought about great sufferings to its people as well.The appalling shock of the First World War severely destroyed peoples faith in the Victorian values;The postwar economic disorder and spiritual disillusion produced a profound impact upon
3、 the British people, who came to see the prevalent wretchedness in capitalism.The Second World War marked the last stage of the disintegration of the British Empire.Britain suffered heavy losses in the war: thousands of people were killed; the economy was ruined; almost all its former colonies were
4、lost people were in economic, cultural, and belief crisisesIdeologically, the rise of the irrational philosophy and new science greatly incited modern writers to make new explorations on human natures and human relationships. 1. The theory of scientific socialism put forward by Karl Marx and Friedri
5、ch Engels not only provided a guiding principle for the working people, but also inspired them to make countless fights for their own liberation. 2. Darwins theory of evolution exerted a strong influence upon the people, causing many to lose their religious faith. The Socila Darwinism under the cove
6、r of “survival of the fittest”, vehemently advocated colonialism. 3. Freuds analytical psychology drastically altered our conception of human nature. 4. Einsteins theory of relativityRealism was declined by the rapid rise of modernism in the 1920s.In the 1930s, novelists began to turn their attentio
7、n to the urgent social problems. They also enriched the traditional ways of creation by adopting some of the modernist techniques. However, the realistic novels of this period were more or less touched by a pessimistic mood, preoccupied with the theme of mans loneliness.Having been merged and interp
8、enetrated with modernism in the past several decades, the realistic novel of the 1960s and 1970s appeared in a new face with a richer, more vigorous and ore diversified style.1. The Poetry in England in the 20th Century In some sense, the poetry in the 20th century is a revolution against the conven
9、tional ideas and forms of the Victorian poetry. The modernist poets fought against the romantic fuzziness and self-indulged emotionalism, advocating new ideas in poetry-writing. They advocate to use the language of common speech, to created new rhythms as the expression of a new mood, to allow absol
10、ute freedom in choosing subjects, and to use hard, clear and precise images in poems.2. The Modernistic Novel in England in the 20th Century The modernist writers got great influence by the theory of the Freudian psycho-analysis and formed the new technical innovations of novel creation. The believe
11、d that multiple levels of consciousness existed simultaneous in the human mind, that ones present was the sum of his past, present and future, and that the whole truth about human beings existed in the unique, isolated, and private world of each individual.3. The Modernistic Drama in England in the
12、20th Century The modern dramatist expressed their satire towards the upper-class people by revealing their corruption, their snobbery, and their hypocrisy. The English dramatic revolution developed in two directions: the working-class drams and the Theater of Absurd1. A reaction against realism.2. M
13、odernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base.3. The major themes of the modernist literature are the distorted, alienated and ill relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and man, and man and himself.The modernist writers concen
14、trated more on the private than on the public, more on the subjective than on the objective. They are mainly concerned with the inner being of an individual. In their writings, the past, the present and the future are mingled together and exist at the same time in the consciousness of an individual.
15、1. Complexity and obscurity2. The use of symbols3. Allusion4. IronySee Page 232 in A New Anthology of English Literature: volume IIA group of young novelists and playwrights with lower-middle-class or working-class background in the mid-1950s and early 1960s.They demonstrated a particular disillusio
16、n over the depressing situation in Britain and launched a bitter protest against the outmoded social and political values in their society.Kingsley Amis was the first to start the attack on middle-class privileges and power in his novel Lucky Jim (1954). The term “The Angry Young Man” came to be wid
17、ely.See Page 259 in A New Anthology of English Literature: volume IIThe Theatre of the Absurd is a term applied to a group of dramatist who were active in the 50s.“Absurd” originally means “out of harmony” or “inharmonious” in a musical context. Here it means “out of harmony with reason or propriety
18、”.See Page 270 in A New Anthology of English Literature: volume IICamus first used “absurd” in his Myth of Sisphyus. He tries to diagnose the human situation in the world shattered belief, as he said: “A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe
19、 that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. He is an irremediable exile, because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he lacks the hope of promised land to come. This divorce between man and life, the actor and his setting , truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.”The absurdity of human conditions is the main theme of the plays of the school of the theatre of the absurd.In the plays the dramatists express that life has no pattern of meaning or ultimate signicant and that no activity is more or less valuable than another.结束结束
