- •Lecture course on the xXth century English literature
- •Plan of the lecture
- •1. General characteristic of the early twentieth century English literature
- •2. A major British novelist, critic, and essayist Virginia Woolf
- •3. The life and literary activity of James Joyce
- •4. David Herbert Lawrence – the explorer of the world of love between men and women
- •Plan of the lecture
- •1. John Galsworthy – one of the outstanding representatives of the English authors of the close of the XIX century and the beginning of the XX century.
- •2. Bernard Shaw – the fighter for family relations built on spiritual understanding free from social and class prejudices.
- •3. Literary activity of Herbert George Wells
- •4. William Somerset Maugham – one of the best known writers of the present day.
- •5. Richard Aldington – a writer, who showed life as it really was
- •6. John Bointon Priestley – the author of realistic novels and plays
- •7. Archibald Josef Cronin – a representative of realism in contemporary English literature.
- •8. Graham Greene, an English novelist and short story writer.
- •9. Jack Lindsay, an outstanding English writer and public figure, the most ardent fighter for peace and the national liberation movement
- •10. Evelyn Waugh - a satirist, prone to the hyperbolization of the evil, to the grotesque concentration of the especially repugnant features of life and human characters.
- •11. General problems of contemporary politics, of various ideological trends or theoretical currents treated in the works of Charles Percy Snow.
- •13. William Golding - the writer of philosophical and allegorical novels.
- •14. Muriel Spark – a representative of the critical realism in the newest English literature.
- •15. Iris Murdoch – the author of novels, drama, philosophical criticism, critical theory, poetry, a short story, a pamphlet, a philosopher and a novelist
- •16. Philip Larkin – a poet, a novelist and essayist.
- •17. John Robert Fowles
- •18. Maeve Binchy "All I ever wanted to do, is to write stories that people will enjoy and feel at home with."
- •Plan of the lecture
- •1. Angry Young men as a result of a disilusionment in post-war bourgeois reality.
- •2. John james osborne (1929)
- •3. John Waine – a poet, novelist and literary critic
- •4. Kingsley Amis (1922-)
10. Evelyn Waugh - a satirist, prone to the hyperbolization of the evil, to the grotesque concentration of the especially repugnant features of life and human characters.
Born in Hampstead in 1903, Evelyn Waugh was the son of Arthur Waugh, a writer and publisher, and the brother of Alexander Waugh, a novelist. He was educated at Lancing College and Hertford College, Oxford, where he studied Modern History. After a brief period of teaching career he abandoned it for writing.
In 1927 Waugh published his first literary Work, a study of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and in 1928 his first novel Decline and Fall appeared.
In the 1930s Waugh traveled much in Europe, Africa the Near East, the West Indies, and in Mexico. He wrote records of his travels which later were collected in a one-volume edition When the Going Was Good (1946). His second novel Vile Bodies appeared in 1930 and brought him fame. This was followed by Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934), Scoop, (1938), Put Out More Flags (1942). They established Evelyn Waugh among the most distinguished satirical writers of the day. He places his memorable comic characters in a world devoid of law and order, and through a constant use of satire, sometimes mild and sometimes scathing, of uproarious comedy and pure farce, transforms sociologically observed reality into complex ironic structures.
During World War II Waugh served with the Royal Marines in the Middle East, and in 1944 was a member of the British Military Mission in Yugoslavia. This experience laid the basis for his war trilogy Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and Unconditional Surrender (1961).
In his post-war novels Brideshead Revisited (1945), The Loved One (1948), Love Among Ruins (1953) he expressed his disapproval of modern civilization. His next novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinford (1957) is an autobiographical study of a middle-aged writer who suffers a nervous break-down.
Evelyn Waugh was fruitfully endowed with great satiric gift. His creativity was penetrated with striking contradictions, moods, doubts, hesitations and prejudices which were characteristic of other writers of the time such as Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) and Richard Aldington. These were well-educated people, brought up in the spirit of the old imperial traditions. Aldous Huxley received an upper class education, achieved first class honours in Englisli Language and Literature at Oxford's famous Balliol College. Many of his works deal with the conflict between the interests of the individual and society. His Brave New World raises some difficult questions about the nature of moral choices. The brave new world isn't an evil world because of the development of science, but because power hungry individuals misuse it. His other works include: Eyeless in Gaza (1936), Ape and Essence (1948), The Genius and the Godess, Point Counter Point, Island, Antic Hay, non-fictional work Perennial Philosophy.
The outlook of these writers was strictly circumscribed by the distinct system of moral standards and rules. They were absolutely sincere in their convictions that the British Empire, mode of life and state order were advantageous.
But in the period between the two world wars their beliefs and convictions were smashed. Perhaps, Waugh's harsh critical attitude towards the power-that-be can be accounted for these feelings of disillusion and loss.
Waugh was longing to find moral prop in the "merry old England", where traditions and such moral principles as kindness, honesty and modesty, were sacredly worshiped. Waugh described the life mostly of those layers of the English society which he perfectly knew and to which he was striving to belong: the English land aristocracy. But the description is transfused with satirical elements and deepest contempt to the modern society. He contemplates the XXth-century society with ruthless, precise and quick eye, devoid of illusions. At times Waugh’s mockery is exceedingly acrid, his observations arccute, and his irony is mortal. Waugh is a satirist, who is prone to the hyperbolization of the evil, to the grotesque concentration of the especially repugnant features of life and human characters.