English literature of the first half of the 20th century modernism

Questions:

1. Modernism

1.1 James Augustine Aloysius Joyce

1.2 David Herbert Lawrence

1.3 Virginia Woolf

1. 4 Aldous Leonard Huxley

1.5 Thomas Stearns Eliot

2. The 20^th –century drama: G.B. Shaw.

1. Modernism

20^th century English literature is remarkable for a great diversity of artistic values and artistic methods.

The previous age had been marked by Great Britain’s unparalleled colonial and industrial expansion. Colonial expansion transformed the economic structure of British capitalism. The decline of small-scale industry crushed by imperialist monopoly was the cause of mass unemployment. During the last years before World War I the number of unemployed was seldom below a million. And the cost of the war was a great increase of taxes which led to disagreement between workers and the government resulting in serious strikes. At the same time Ireland was fighting for its independence from the British Crown. As a result in 1921 Britain agreed to the independence of southern Ireland, but the Northern Ireland remained under the British Empire.

Following the rapid introduction of new modes of thought in natural science, sociology and psychology, it has naturally reacted to absorb and transform this material into literary communication. Widely different trends- the philosophy of Henry Bergson, Sigmund Freud’s psychology, the philosophical implications of Albert Einstein’s theories, the great progress in most brunches of biology, the later popularity of Existentialist thought and at the same time, the widening recognition of the Marxist interpretation of history and society have all had their impact on British fiction and art.

Fundamental political, social and economic changes on the British scene deeply affected the creative writing of the new century. Men-of-letters of different generations and aesthetic views were critical of the new era; they were spiritual explorers voicing their discontent with life.

At the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century English literature was influenced by writers and poets who made persistent attempts to break away from the established literary forms. The spirit of modernism—a radical and utopian spirit stimulated by new ideas in anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis—was in the air.

”Modernism” is a term used to distinguish early experimental 20^th century writing from the narrative, descriptive and rational forms and traditions of 19^th century writing. The writers experimenting with forms defined the title of “modernists”, as distinct from traditionalists.

The first modernists to put forward a programme of some consistency (согласованность, последовательность) were the “imagists”- a group formed shortly before World War I in 1912 by American writer Ezra Pound and listing among its members R. Aldington, J.Joyce, D.H.Lawrence. The imagists agreed upon the following principles:

To use common speech with exactness.

To try new musical rhythms and create new moods.

To have freedom of subjects.

To avoid vagueness in imagery: to be hard, clear and direct.

To be economical in the use of language.

Modernists refused to deal with actualities, social, political or moral issues. Unlike realists they refused to treat their characters as socially predetermined. Modernism is characterized by a strong emphasis on the heroes’ private life world, reactions, subconscious life. Man is pessimistically shown as a primitive and low creature guided by instincts. A lot is taken from Freud’s psychoanalysis. The modernists favoured a number of stylistic devices, the most typical being unmotivated allusions to the mythological and literary personages, to quotation, foreign place names, words or entire lines in a foreign language.

One of the characteristic features and techniques of Modernism was stream of consciousness, literary technique, that reveals the character's feelings, thoughts, and actions, often following an associative rather than a logical sequence, without commentary by the author. To represent the full richness, speed, and subtlety of the mind at work, the writer includes pieces of incoherent thought, ungrammatical constructions, and free association of ideas, images, and words at the pre-speech level.

Stream of consciousness is often confused with interior monologue, but the latter technique works the sensations of the mind into a more formal pattern: a flow of thoughts inwardly expressed, similar to a monologue. The technique of stream of consciousness, however, attempts to portray the remote, preconscious state that exists before the mind organizes sensations. Consequently, the re-creation of a stream of consciousness frequently lacks the unity, explicit cohesion, and selectivity of direct thought.

The most prominent figures in modernist literature were James Joyce, David Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Aldous Huxley in prose and Thomas Sterns Eliot in poetry.