The Twentieth Century

Edward VII 1901-1910

Edward VIII -1936

George VI 1936-1952

Elizabeth II 1952-present

George V 1911-1936

Mass Media• Time reading now spent on other mass

media:– British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in

1922– BBC Television, 1937– Radio– Motion pictures

• Powerful tools now shaping public opinion

Characteristics of 20th Century Literature

Georgian -- idealized beauties of nature in tradition of Wordsworth.– Rubert Brooke “The Soldier”

Imagism – use of precise, concrete images, free verse, using common language and no excess words (reaction against Georgian).

“In a Station of the Metro” Ezra PoundThe apparition of these faces in the crowd;petals on a wet, black bough.

Characteristics of 20th Century Literature

Existentialism -- centering on the need of the individual to accept responsibility for one’s actions with out a certain knowledge of what is right or wrong.

Surrealism – an attempt to portray or interpret the workings of the unconscious mind as manifested in dreams.

Modern Poetry

• Experimentation in form and subject matter

• 3 leading poets:– Thomas Hardy (pessimistic, ironic)– A.E. Housman (pessimistic, ironic) romantic

feel of nature seen through realistic lens– William Butler Yeats (positive feelings of

nationalism - Ireland)

British-American Literary Relationships

• America to Britain– Henry James– Robert Frost– Ezra Pound – Imagism– T.S. Eliot* - Modern

• Britain to America– W. H. Auden*– I.A. Richards

Additional Poets

• Dylan Thomas - rich poems about life in Wales (optimistic contrast)

• Christian influences– Amy Carmichael, missionary to India– Oswald Chambers, Bible teacher and

missionary to troops in Egypt

20th Century Drama

• Drama revived

• Oscar Wilde – witty comedies– “The Importance of Being Earnest”

• Bernard Shaw – comedies to criticize virtues of all societies (advocate of socialism) – Pygmalion (basis of musical comedy My Fair

Lady)

Modern Fiction

• Characterized by secularism• Exceptions:

– J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings trilogy of good over evil – fantasy

– C.S. Lewis: defended Christianity – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe series and a number of apologetics books for the laymen

– G.K. Chesterton: Father Brown mystery books (wrote devastating attacks on Darwinism and defended Christianity)

Modern Fiction

• H.G. Wells: The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds [science fiction classics]

• George Orwell: Animal Farm, 1984 [satirized socialism]

• Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited, 1945

• William Golding: Lord of the Flies, 1954

Short Story

• An imaginative, relatively short prose narrative written to give the reader entertainment and insight.

• Made a late Victorian period appearance answering the growing demand for brevity in writing. Established through writers:– Robert Lewis Stevenson– Rudyard Kipling

• Freudian psychology in short story with emphasis placed on inner nature of characters rather than external details:– D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf,

Katherine Mansfield