THE MODERN AGE - · PDF file · 2017-02-062017-02-06 · WORLD WAR II...

THE MODERN AGE

1901 – 1945

THE MODERN AGE

THE DECLINE OF BRITISH POWER

- tremendous growth of German industry

- spread of new powers: USA and Japan

- the Edwardian period sees the reduction of the role of monarchs

- the Labour party grows representing the working-class interests

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE

© De Agostini Scuola 2012

WORLD WAR I 1914 - 1919

- international character of the war

- German Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire

against Britain and France

- mobilisation of the masses

- 1919 Treaty of Versailles drawn up by the Allied powers to prevent

Germany from building up its military machine again

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

THE MODERN AGE VISITING LITERATURE


STEPS TO INDEPENDENCE

IRELAND

- in 1918 the Sinn Fein party proclaims the Irish Republic

- in 1919 the IRA (Irish Republican Army) is created and and fights against

the British colonial power

INDIA

- Mahatma Gandhi starts a protest

movement based on the principles of

non-violence

HISTORICAL CONTEXT



WORLD WAR II 1939 – 1945

- necessary war to safeguard civilisation

from the Fascism of Adolf Hitler and Nazi

Germany

- global war fought on two main fronts:

Europe and Asia

- the Allies launch an offensive in 1944 with

the June D-Day landings

- the war in Europe ends in May, 1945.

Three months later the Americans drop the

atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

HISTORICAL CONTEXT



- complex movement which flourishes in the

1920s and 1930s

- involves all forms of art, from literature

and music to the visual arts and cinema

- desire to make a clean break with the

previous movements, through

experimentation with form and style

- fragmentary nature of modernist work,

favouring subjective perceptions of reality

MAIN INFLUENCES: Sigmund Freud,

Carl Gustav Jung, Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein and James Frazer

WHAT IS MODERNISM?

LITERARY CONTEXT



- poets begin to see themselves in more international terms

- key figures in the Modernist movement are not English → Ezra Pound

and T. S. Eliot are American, Yeats is Irish

- poetry has to face the complexities of the times → hermetic poetry often

based on personal symbolic systems of symbols

MODERN POETRY

- Imagist movement → concise use of language and imagery, free rhythm,

freedom of choice in subject matter

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- great interest in spiritualism, mysticism and magic → Celtic Revival

- cyclic view of history and of the phases of human experience

- symbolism:

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 1865 – 1939

the Great Wheel containing two opposite gyres

→ cycles of human life and centuries

the rose → principle of eternal beauty

the tower → arcane wisdom

Byzantium → the timeless world of art

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

MAIN WORKS

1889 The Wanderings of Oisin

and Other Poems

1899 The Wind Among the Reeds

1910 The Green Helmet and Other Poems

1917 The Wild Swans at Cole

1933 The Winding Stair

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- possesses a great knowledge of the

masterpieces of world literature → admires

Dante and his works

THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT 1888 – 1965

- in order to reflect the broken, modern world he

creates a new symbolic system

- poetry must be objective, impersonal

- images are the objective correlative of the

emotions they aim to suggest → an exterior

object can evoke an emotion more effectively

than the description of the emotion itself

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


MAIN WORKS

THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT

1922 The Waste Land

1925 The Hollow Men

1927 The Journey of the Magi

1942 Four Quartets

1935 Murder in the Cathedral

1939 The Family Reunion

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

1922 Prufrock and Other Observations

VISITING LITERATURE


- it portrays modern London as a sterile

land and expresses the depression of the

postwar period

The Waste Land 1922

- repetitions, allusions and

similarities help the reader to detect

themes and motifs

- Eliot uses different verse forms, the

metre and the length of the lines vary

- different registers of speech

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- the Modernists’ aim is to recover the unique experience of the individuals

- the omniscient narrator is replaced by the direct or indirect presentation of

characters’ thoughts, feelings and memories

MODERN FICTION

- plot is often ignored → exploration of the inner complexities of experience

→ Woolf’s ‘moments of being’

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

- language is pushed to the outer

limits of communication → James

Joyce’s Stream of Consciousness

Technique

VISITING LITERATURE


- skilful creation of characters, depth of insight,

beauty and power of language

JOSEPH CONRAD 1857 – 1924

- exotic atmosphere, perfumes, mystery and

fascination of the East

- multiple points of view, fragmentary

presentations of the stories given by one or

more witnesses

- the narration is not always told in a linear way

→ it includes flashbacks, time-shifts

MAIN WORKS

1900 Lord Jim

1904 Nostromo

1902 Heart of Darkness

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- it expresses the lack of certainties, the loss of identity of the early

20th century

Heart of Darkness 1902

- evil is not an external force, it lies inside one person → the jungle is the

symbol of the animalistic side of man

- inner journey into human consciousness → Kurtz’s double nature

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- as a humanist, he explores complex themes

such as the irreconcilability of class

differences, the disastrous effects of sexual

repression and prejudices dividing the East

and the West

EDWARD MORGAN FORSTER 1879 – 1970

- uses multiple perspectives and the

predominance of a subjective viewpoints

MAIN WORKS

1905 Where Angels Fear to Tread

1908 A Room with a View

1910 Howards End 1924 A Passage to India

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- novel about relationships between people from different cultures

A Passage to India 1924

- modern novel in the way it deals with the colonial theme

- Forster is critical and realistic about the injustices of the British rulers

toward the native population

- the Marabar caves symbolize the ambiguous and mystifying nature of

India

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


LITERARY CONTEXT

- love-hate relationship with Dublin

JAMES JOYCE 1882 – 1941

- his writings make a frequent use of interior

monologue → the readers find themselves

inside a character’s mind

MAIN WORKS

1907 Chamber Music

1914 Dubliners

1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 1922 Ulysses

- epiphany: peak of intensity in the

narration, a sudden revelation in which a

spiritual awakening is experienced

1922 Finnegans Wake



LITERARY CONTEXT

- mythical metod → shows the decay of modern civilisation in contrast with the

mythical heroes of the past

Ulysses 1922

- the various odysseys of the characters are voyages through the internal

sea of their own consciousness

- Joyce does not select material on aesthetic grounds

- Joyce’s mastery of language, his

range of vocabulary, his power to

create words, the puns, make Ulysses

one of the major literary

achievements of the 20th century



- her life is haunted by periods of depression,

which lead her to attempt suicide more than once

VIRGINIA WOOLF 1882 – 1941

- the novel is no longer chronological but is

reduced to the time of the character’s mind

MAIN WORKS

1915 The Voyage Out

1925 Mrs. Dalloway

1927 To the Lighthouse 1931 The Waves

- Woolf is interested in her characters’

subjectivity, especially in females ones.

1929 A Room of One’s Own

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- the main themes are loneliness and time

Mrs Dalloway 1925

→ Clarissa is planning a party, but her party doesn’t bring her a feeling of

togetherness but a deeper solitude

- novel built around the events of a

single day → following Clarissa’ s

flow of consciousness we learn

the history of her life

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- voices the state of mind of the “Roaring Twenties” → the escape from

society is in constant fun and partying

FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD 1896 – 1940

MAIN WORKS

1920 The Side of Paradise

1922 The Beautiful and the Damned

1922 Tales of the Jazz Age

1925 The Great Gatsby

- his life influences his works → autobiography

1934 Tender is the Night

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- portrait of the American society in the 1920s → materialism,

snobbishness and loss of ideals

The Great Gatsby 1925

- contrast between the simple but moral West and the fascinating but

corrupted East

- events are filtered through the narrative of just one of the characters

→ this contributes to the ambiguity of Jay Gatsby

- Gatsby represents the American Dream, the desire for self-improvement

and realisation

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- journalist and essayist, works for the BBC

during World War II

GEORGE ORWELL 1903 – 1950

MAIN WORKS

1934 Burmese Days

1937 Homage to Catalonia

1939 Coming Up for Air

1945 Animal Farm

-depicts the squalor of working-class life

→ political formulas can’t change it

1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


- bitter attack against totalitarian oppression

Nineteen Eighty-four 1949

- idea that government may enslave its people through controlling the

media

- “the Party” keeps people ignorant of history and current affairs and

destroys all human feelings except hate and fear

- Orwell invents the Newspeak, the Party approved language → people

can’t voice controversial opinions

THE MODERN AGE

LITERARY CONTEXT

VISITING LITERATURE


THE MODERN AGE - · PDF file · 2017-02-062017-02-06 · WORLD WAR II...

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