20th century Britain - English literature and culture 1 - modulo 2

Celtic Revival

After the nationalist Easter Rising, he grew disenchanted with the Nationalist movement. After the 1916 Easter Rebellion he gradually placed his sympathies with the 'moderate' members of the government.

"I have met them at close of day And thought before I had done This is Yeats' poem 'Easter, 1916'. Coming with vivid faces Of a mocking tale or a gibe Here he says 'a terrible beauty is From counter or desk among grey To please a companion born' (Oxymoron) because the Eighteenth-century houses. Around the fire at the club, Irish independence meant the I have passed with a nod of the head Being certain that they and I death of a lot of people. Or polite meaningless words, But lived where motley is worn: Or have lingered awhile and said All changed, changed utterly: Polite meaningless words, A terrible beauty is born [...]"

Britain during the Twenties During the war the manufacturers and those who produced goods for

The war became wealthy people and women were able to reach a new economic independence. The Twenties, also called Roaring Twenties in the USA, were years of economic boom and prosperity. By the mid-twenties, post-war prosperity was in decline due to high interest rates and expensive exports. The number of unemployed increased dramatically until 1929, when the Wall Street Crash took place. The Wall Street Crash on the Black Thursday 29th April 1929 led to a global depression.

Università degli Studi di Verona English literature and culture 1 - Module 2

Literature

Modernist literature

Modernism is the literary movement of this period. Modernism is complex and some critics now prefer to talk of disparate 'modernisms' rather than of one overarching 'modernism'. It is a loose retrospective label which came into regular use in literary studies in the 1960s, and there was never any single 'movement' or grouping of writers who actually identified themselves as modernists.

In fact, in a rather circular fashion, the term tends to encompass a range of other discrete literary and artistic movements (or tendencies) whose various elements together help to define what we mean by modernism. These movements include naturalism, symbolism, imagism, futurism, cubism, vorticism, expressionism and surrealism. In the light of such a list, it is useful to bear in mind a well-known description of modernism as 'an appallingly explosive fusion' of many different and often contradictory trends. English-language modernism is usually defined as the experimental and innovative literature of the period roughly between 1890 and 1939, and, traditionally, critics have emphasized formal or technical experimentation over newness of theme or content, although form and content are not always easy to disentangle. For some critics, modernism (or 'high modernism') has meant only James Joyce and a handful of other radical innovators such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot,

Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson, while others have a more expansive view of the term and apply it to a much wider range of writers (and across a broader period). Modernist poetry First decades of the 20th century were characterized by an extraordinary originality and vitality. There was a wide variety of trends and currents expressed the nature of modern experience: Imagists (between 1912 – 1917) ● American poet Ezra Pound (1885-1972) ○ The poems of the imagists, such as Ezra Pound, consisted on short poems with the juxtaposition of two objects, like in his poem “In a station of the metro” “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; / petals on a wet, black bough.” Symbolist Poets ● Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (1857) ○ importance given to dreams, visions ○ evocative language and images War Poets ● William Butler Yeats used symbols to convey his inner sensations, visions and mystic experiences. Thomas Stearn Eliot used poetry asan escape from emotion and personality.
Modernist novel
From the Victorian to the modern(ist) novel there was a transformation of British society, also due to the unrest and ferment after the First World War.
The novelists had a position of moral and psychological uncertainty and acted as mediators between the unquestioned values of the past and the confused present. The novelists, however, wanted to keep an uninterrupted dialogue with tradition and never really broke up with the previous features and traditions.
Literary modernism wasn't regarded as disruptive or innovative in this period.
A new concept of time was introduced, as well as the theory of the unconscious.
Victorian Age novels Modernist novel
- omniscient narrator
- stream of consciousness technique
- chronological order of events
- characters make/decide their own destiny
- importance of morality and values through their actions
The American psychologist William James in "The Principles of Psychology" (1890) held

that: 4Universita’ degli Studi di Verona English literature and culture 1 - Module 2“Our mind records every single experience as a continuous flow of ‘the already’ into the ‘not yet’’ so there is→no past, no future and no present but everything is just mixed-up.

The French philosopher Henri Bergson made a distinction between:

1. Historical time, which is external, linear and measured by the hands of a clock.
2. Psychological time, which is internal, subjective, measured by the relative emotional intensity of the moment.

Pars destruens Pars costruens

Vorticism (in art) + «BLAST» (title of the After WW1● ●«Review of the Great English Vortex») Rappel à l’ordre

«Make it New!» (Ezra Pound)

Re-newed reflection on form

Stylistic experimentations modernists● →never really tried to break the relationship with the past and maintained a constant dialogue with tradition

Sigmund Freud’s works,

Lawrence. Lawrence was greatly influenced by Freud's ideas and incorporated them into his own works. He believed that the unconscious mind played a significant role in shaping human behavior and emotions. In his novel "Sons and Lovers," Lawrence explores the complex relationships between parents and children, particularly the Oedipus complex. The protagonist, Paul Morel, struggles with his intense love for his mother and his conflicting feelings towards his father. This theme of repressed desires and the struggle for individuality can be seen throughout Lawrence's works. Freud's theories also influenced Lawrence's views on sexuality. Lawrence believed that sexual repression and the denial of one's desires could lead to psychological and emotional problems. In his novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover," Lawrence explores the theme of sexual liberation and the importance of embracing one's desires. Overall, Freud's theories had a profound impact on the literary world, particularly during the Modernist period. Writers like David Herbert Lawrence embraced Freud's ideas and used them to explore the complexities of the human mind and the subconscious.

Lawrence.→David Herbert Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, in 1885. Eastwood was a coal mining town.

His father was a miner and his mother belonged to a higher class. He became the center of his mother’s emotional life after the death of his brother Ernest. This mother-son relationship is the key to the fiction “Sons and lovers”.

David Herbert Lawrence saw men as a mixture of culture and biology, natural impulses and instinct: ‘My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says is always true.’

According to Lawrence, the sexual instinct the strongest natural impulse that can save humanity from self-destruction. He was dissatisfied with the modern world, ruined by civilisation and made too dehumanizing. Instead, he promoted a new awareness of the self and admiration of Nature.

His most famous works are the autobiographical novel

“Sons and Lovers” (1913), which records the emotional bond between the protagonist and his mother, and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”. These novels, together with “The Rainbow”, show the importance of Freud’s theories and studies as they talk about the unconscious, the sexual instincts and the Oedipus Phase.

Lawrence’s “The Rainbow” show some features of modernism, such as:

• Realism (plot) + Modernism (style)
• A family saga
• New Woman Ursula Brangwen
• →Self-fulfilment
• Sexual independence

As he said «You musn’t look in my novel for the old stable ego of the character. There is another ego, according to whose action the individual is unrecognisable, and passes through, as it were, allotropic states…» 5

Universita’ degli Studi di Verona English literature and culture 1 - Module 2

Modernist drama

Modernism wasn’t really famous for drama and remained unheard in Europe. It consisted mainly

of experiments. ,like August Strindberg’s “A Dream Play” (1902). They used a different – even anti-modernist – agenda.

Modernist drama faced some problems in this period:

• Public event = censorship
• Communication mediated by actors
• Theatre as a group activity vs. Modernist stress on individualism

Wyndham Lewis

Lewis was at the forefront of the modernist movement in England and searched for a dramatic form capable of translating the qualities of his vorticist painting into words. He wrote the play “The Enemy of the Stars” (1914), a composite of fragmented cubist visions. He tried to bring on stage a new concept of drama, a «dream of action», which was a dream specifically within a dream. The perspective that the author wanted to give to the drama is deliberately impossible, as we can read into this passage: "AUDIENCE LOOKS DOWN INTO SCENE, AS THOUGH IT WERE A HUT ROLLED HALF ON ITS BACK, DOOR UPWARDS, CHARACTERS MOUNTING GIDDILY IN ITS"

OPENING.“The script, almost without dialogue, results impossible to represent on stages that’s why it has never been produced.”

William Butler Yeats

Yeats also experimented with drama but in a poetic way. In fact he was more interested in its literary form. He used a poetic form with:

• solitary reading
• elitist performances
• BUT kept it still a form of entertainment
• Experiments with drama

Yeats’s figures are pure images without social context or human form. In his play “Four Plays with Dancers”(1921), he mixed dance with Japanese Drama. As the dancer is inseparable from the dance, there is a total unity of theme and expression.

Thomas Stearns Eliot

Eliot wrote poetic dramas in order to find the finest resources which can express the permanent struggles and conflicts of human beings. He opposed the superficial or photographic realism and used a rhythm pattern close to the contempo