Modernism in 20th-century english literature
20th-century English literature witnessed processes such as the development of the short story, new movements in poetry, exciting experiments in fiction, and drama worthy of the nation that bred Shakespeare. Modern literature is characterized by differences from the past in both form and content. Of course, it did not mean drastic changes in the case of authors who saw the turn of the century as Archibald Joseph Cronin or John Galsworthy. The Forsyte Saga by the latter, an epic product of the 20th century, depicts a great time span in the life of an upper-bourgeois family, and no other modern author could better analyze the fading Victorian values. However, the literary changes of 20th century were more extreme than at any other time in literary history. Writers were creating a new way of seeing the world and of expressing feelings about it. The subject matter of literature changed, too. With the shocks of the wars, technological advances, and greater social freedom, authors realized that they could write about anything.
Spurred on by Ezra Pound’s outcry, “Make it new!” poets in Great Britain broke out of established forms and meters. New rhythms were invented, especially in free verse, an approach that emphasized matching rhythm to meaning rather than remaining confined to arbitrary meters.
The development of psychology brought psychological realism into literature. Writers attempted to show not only what their characters thought but how they thought. A technique named stream of consciousness and its modifications created a new attitude toward writing and reading.
Following World War II, English literature saw the emergence of a trend termed “The Angry Young Men” formed by lower-class university graduates who could not find any career prospects in the conditions of post-war unemployment and still prevailing British conservatism. Authors such as John Wain, Kingsley Amis, and John Osborne (dramatist) expressed the anger and disappointment of the deceived generation.
In the 1960s, a strong critical note was heard in the working-class novel represented by Alan Sillitoe and others whose characters originated from the working class but belonged to petty bourgeoisie psychologically. It may be said that this trend to some extent evolved from the novels by Archibald Joseph Cronin who deeply sympathized with the fate of lower and lower middle classes of the British society (The Citadel, Hatter’s Castle, The Stars Look Down).
No poet better demonstrates the range of modern poetic possibilities than the Irishman William Butler Yeats. Yeats also provides a bridge from the Victorian Age into the 20th century. His early Romantic work, produced before the century turned, gradually became more realistic and direct, personal yet politically committed, and finally mystical and visionary. Yeats remains, in the opinion of many readers and critics, the finest poet of the early 20th century.
T.S. Eliot, an American expatriate, responded to the horror of World War I and the confusion of modern life with The Waste Land, a fragmented poem of disillusion and the difficulty of human communication in the modern world. With its portrayal of “hollow” people, its unconnected images, and the use of myths of the past to describe the present, it is certainly one of the most influential poems of the century.
W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Louis MacNeice – prominent poets of the 1930s – suggested that the world could be improved. The Welshman Dylan Thomas did not burden his poems with social or political ideas. His affirmation of life and his overpowering love of language make his poems sing with a musical quality surpassed only by William Butler Yeats.
After decades of innovation, since World War II poets have been free to develop in many different directions. Modern poetry ranges from Thom Gunn’s use of non-poetic language and subject matter to Ted Hughes’s fascination with animals, from Charles Tomlinson’s abstract images to Geoffrey Hill’s new use of myths.
Drama in modern Britain thrives. Several major playwrights and theatrical movements, many brilliant actors, and innovative directors have established Britain’s theatres as models for the world.
William Butler Yeats started the trend to poetic drama with plays based on Irish folklore, including On Baile’s Strand. John Millington Synge’s masterpiece is The Playboy of the Western World and Sean O’Casey is best known for The Plough and the Stars.
Another Irish-born playwright is George Bernard Shaw. He applied his satirical approach to such contemporary and eternal themes as war, religion, and women’s rights. Pygmalion is one of Shaw’s most popular plays, a box-office success as well as a biting satire on male-female relationship and British class distinctions.
With the exception of Yeats and Eliot, Britain’s greatest writers of the 20th century are novelists. In British fiction daring innovation produced a stunning string of achievements. Virginia Wolf reflected this enormous change of the new century in her elegant, intellectual, and introspective novels. Her use of stream of consciousness, lyrical imagery, and sophisticated wit made Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse modern masterpieces.
Polish-born Joseph Conrad, for whom English was a second language, wrote lush and vivid adventures like Lord Jim that explored such themes as honour, fate, identity, and disillusion. Agatha Christie’s detective novels and stories brought her immense fame all over the world. Science fiction by Herbert George Wells is an outstanding example of the genre until now.
No writer can match Irish novelist James Joyce. Joyce took the stream of consciousness technique to its limits in Ulysses, creating a book that is simultaneously realistic, symbolic, poetic, didactic, comic, ironic and mythical.
The novelists mentioned and others – among them William Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene – also produced short stories. Some authors as Katherine Mansfield and Nadine Goldimer established their literary reputations largely through short stories.