The 20th century literary background

THE 20TH CENTURY LITERARY BACKGROUND

It is fairly difficult to define 20th century literature, as of course, many writers were already producing work at the end of
the 19th century and continued into the next one. The works of
Thomas Hardy and Galsworthy can be classified as belonging to the 20th century, and many of these were at the beginning of Edwardian Period (1901) hardly reflected the ideal of peace and prosperity, but was certainly inactive of English society which was still dominated by the social classes. Life, for the rich, was full of possibilities but also of restrictions ([rɪ'strɪkʃ(ə)n] ограничение).

Victorian laws of Christian faith, became more problematic, as did the
different versions of Socialism, and these two factors had great
influence upon literature, many intellectuals were concerned with
finding something to believe in and out of this grew a movement
called Vortex (['vɔːteks] водоворот).

This was founded by Ezra Pound and Whyndham Lewis (writers) and had some of the aims of Futurism, a movement launched ([lɔːnʧ] начало (каких-л. действий)) in 1909 by Marinetti, an Italian intellectual who called for
recognition of modern technology, speed and noise in the art and an
abolition ([ˌæbə'lɪʃ(ə)n] отмена) of syntax in poetry. Futurism let to “Dada” ['dädä] in 1916. Dada was launched in Zurich in 1916 by Tristan Tzara and others, soon merging with a similar group in New York. This international movement in art, literature, music, and film, repudiating ([rɪ'pjuːdɪeɪt] отвергать) and mocking artistic and social conventions and emphasizing the illogical and absurdIt favored montage, collage, and the ready-made. Leading figures: Jean Arp, André Breton, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp.

Postwar depression and the rise of Communism were abundant ([ə'bʌndənt] изобилующий) in the 1920's and Modernism was a product of this. The Modernism movement is generally categorized as having existed between 1922-1925 and it was a reaction against the past, Newness became
essential as beat the necessity for change; this is reflected in the
work of James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and
Virginia Woolf amongst other.

There was not direct link between politics and literature but the
leaders of the modernism movement were biased (['baɪəst] предвзятый, предубеждённый) towards the Right, although in different ways. W.B.Yeats' politics focus on Ireland, Lawrence referred to the need for aristocracy and the threat of the Jews; TS Eliot was an Anglo-catholic Tory and Ezra Pound identified with Italian Fascism. For the first time there seemed to be a unity
between all modernist novels and poetry.

Another aspect of novels during this period was the satire of English society, particularly the social class system. This can be seen to its effects in the works of Aldows Huxley and later Evelyn Vaugh.

During the 1930's the intellectuals on the whole began to move towards the Left. It was heightened by the Spanish Civil War which, for the first time, demonstrated the confrontation between Left and Right. Many intellectuals, the most famous been George Orwell and American Ernest Hemingway as well as ordinary people came to fight in Spain, the majority for the
Republicans.

The Second World War was not particularly prolific ([prə'lɪfɪk] плодовитый) in the literary sense, apart from which paper was in short supply and therefore
limited the amount of books that could be printed. Nevertheless
Elliot's ‘Little Gidding’ was written in 1941. The best
novel of the world war period is considered to be Woolf's ‘Between two acts’ (1941), which was her reaction against the crisis and after which she killed herself.

After the Second World War, it maybe observed that there was no specific movement, although novelists and playwrights Reith Waterhouse, John Osborne, Allan Sillito reflected the middleclass revelation ([ˌrev(ə)'leɪʃ(ə)n] разоблачение) and the discontent ([ˌdɪskən'tent] недовольство) against the society's hypocrisy ([hɪ'pɔkrəsɪ] лицемерие) of the British establishment.

The 1960's had a second wave of modernismin Neo- Dada. But it had little more impact than the movement of the 1950's whose best poet was Philip Larkin.

Irish literary renaissance [rə'neɪs(ə)n(t)s], late 19th- and early 20th-century movement that aimed at reviving ancient Irish folklore ['fəuklɔː], legends, and traditions in new literary works. The movement, also called the Celtic renaissance, was in part the cultural aspect of a political movement that was concerned with self-government for Ireland and discovering a literary past that would be relevant to the struggle for independence. The revival produced some of the best plays of the 20th cent. in the dramas of J. M. Synge and Sean O'Casey and some of the greatest poetry in the works of W. B. Yeats [yāts]. One of the movement's most impressive achievements was the establishment of the Abbey Theatre. Other important writers of the revival were James Stephens and James Joyce was a caustic (['kɔːstɪk] язвительный, колкий, ироничный) sometime participant in the movement.

Irish drama flowered in the early 20th century, largely under the aegis (['iːʤɪs] эгида (щит Зевса) of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. John Millington Synge, William Butler Yeats, and Sean O'Casey all wrote on Irish themes—mythical in Yeats's poetic drama, political in O'Casey's realistic plays. Also Irish, George Bernard Shaw wrote biting dramas that reflect all aspects of British society. In fact, many of the towering figures of 20th-century English literature were not English; Shaw, Yeats, Joyce, O'Casey, and Beckett were Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, T. S. Eliot was born an American, and Conrad was Polish.

Poetry in the early 20th cent. was typified (['tɪpɪfaɪ] типизированный) by the conventional (традиционный; общепринятый) romanticism of such poet as John Masefield and by the experiments of the imagists (имажинисты), notably (['nəutəblɪ] особенно) Richard Aldington and D. H. Lawrence. The finest poet of the period was Yeats [yāts] (1865 – 1939), whose poetry fused ([fjuːz] соче-тать, объединять) romantic vision with contemporary political and aesthetic concerns. Though the 19th-century tradition of the novel lived on in the work of Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy, new writers like Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916), H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946) and Joseph Conrad (1857 - 1924) expressed the skepticism and alienation ([ˌeɪlɪə'neɪʃ(ə)n] отчуждение) that were to become features of post-Victorian sensibility.

World War I shook England to the core ([kɔː] суть, сущность). As social mores (['mɔːreɪz ] нравы, обычаи) were shaken, so too were artistic conventions (обычай, традиция). The new era ['ɪərə] called for new forms, typified by the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins, first published in 1918, and of T. S. Eliot, whose long poem The Waste Land (1922) was a watershed (водораздел) in both American and English literary history. Its difficulty, formal invention, and bleak antiromanticism were to influence poets for decades (['dekeɪd] десятилетие).

Equally important was the novel Ulysses [yo͞o'lisēz], also published in 1922, by the expatriate Irishman James Joyce. Although his books were controversial ([ˌkɔntrə'vɜːʃ(ə)l] спорный) because of their freedom of language and content, Joyce's revolutions in narrative (['nærətɪv] повествовательный) form, the treatment of time, and nearly all other techniques of the novel made him a master to be studied, but only intermittently ([ˌɪntə'mɪt(ə)ntlɪ] периодически) copied. Though more conventional in form, the novels of D. H. Lawrence were equally challenging to convention; he was the first to champion both the primitive and the supercivilized urges ([ɜːʤ] побуждение, порыв) of men and women.

Sensitivity and psychological subtlety (['sʌtltɪ] утончённость) mark the superb novels of Virginia Woolf, who experimented with the interior forms of narration ([nə'reɪʃ(ə)n] описание, повествование). Woolf was the center of the brilliant Bloomsbury group, which included the novelist E. M. Forster, the biographer Lytton Strachey, and many important English intellectuals of the early 20th century. Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh satirized the group and the period.

Moved by the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and English policies of appeasement ([ə'piːzmənt] успокоение, умиротворение), many writers and intellectuals sought solutions in the politics of the left — or the right. Wyndham Lewis satirized what he thought was the total dissolution of culture in Apes of Gods (1930). George Orwell (1903 – 1950) fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. The experience left him profoundly ([prə'faundlɪ] глубоко) disillusioned with Communism, a feeling he eloquently expressed in such works as Animal Farm (1946) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949).

The Postwar Era to the Present

After the war most English writers chose to focus on aesthetic [iːs'θetɪk] or social rather than political problems. The novelists Henry Green, Joyce Cary, and Lawrence Durrell tended to cultivate their own distinctive voices. Other novelists and playwrights of the 1950s, often called the angry young men, expressed a deep dissatisfaction with British society, combined with despair that anything could be done about it.

While the postwar era ['ɪərə] was not a great period of English literature, it produced a variety of excellent critics, including Frank Kermode and F. R. Leavis. The period was also marked by a number of highly individual novelists, including Kingsley Amis, William Golding, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark.

Some of the most exciting work of the period came in the theater, notably (['nəutəblɪ] особенно) the plays of John Osborne, Tom Stoppard and David Storey. Among the best postwar British authors was the Irish expatriate ([ɪk'spætrɪət ] эмигрант; беженец) novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett. Beckett, who wrote many of his works in French and translated them into English, is considered the greatest exponent ([ɪk'spəunənt] представитель) of the theater of the absurd ([əb'sɜːd] абсурд). His uncompromisingly bleak ([bliːk] гнетущий, безрадостный), difficult plays (and novels) depict ([dɪ'pɪkt] изображать) the lonely, alienated (['eɪlɪəneɪt] отчуждать) human condition with compassion ([kəm'pæʃ(ə)n] жалость, сострадание) and humor.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04