History, Culture and Literature

THE YEARS 1901-l918

LIBERAL REFORM UNDER EDWARD VII

On Queen Victoria's death, her son Edward VII (1904-l0) came to the throne. The  Liberals, in 1906, won the election and promoted some social reforms:

- free school meals were pro­vided;

- an old age pensions scheme was started;

- Labour Exchanges were opened;

- the Education Act was introduced. It stated the necessity of compul­sory school.

In 1941 the Parliament Act was introduced, by which the House of Commons

became the governors of Britain.

THE END OF THE BALANCE OF POWER

Germany, with her modern industries and powerful army and navy, wanted to extend her control over the Balkan states of southeast Europe. Britain allied herself with France and with Japan and Russia.

WORLD WAR I

War broke out in June 1914 when the Arch­duke Francis Ferdinand was murdered at Sarajevo, during an official state visit. Austria and Germany declared war on Serbia. France, Russia, Britain and Serbia were against Austria and Germany. Then also Italy (1915) joined France and Britain.

The war ended in November 1918, when a peace treaty was signed at Versailles and in 1919 there was the birth of the League of Nations was founded at Geneva.

THE INTER - WAR YEARS

After world war i

During the war there was a strong patriotism in Britain. The king of this time was George V, who transformed his title of Hannover into Windsor

THE RISE OF THE LABOUR PARTY

In 1924 there was the rise of the Labour party, which replaced the Liberal Party. It supported the interests of working classes.

THE VOTE FOR WOMEN: SUFFRAGETTE MOVEMENT

The battle for the right to vote was fought especially by the "Suffragettes" or Women's Suffrage Movement. Its most famous leaders were Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst and her two daughters.

WORLD WAR II

A GREAT LEADER: CHURCHILL

World War II was longer and more terrible than World War I. Britain was organising her army against Germany.

France was occupied by the Germans, while Britain was governed by an energetic and brilliant Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill who promised his countrymen noth­ing but "blood, toil, tears and sweat" and prepared them for the sacrifices of the war.

THE SPREAD OF THE CONFLICT WORLDWIDE

The war soon spread all over the world, and a lot of troops joined the British, for example in the battle fought against Japan.

TURNING POINT AND END OF THE WAR

On 6 June 1944 ('D Day'), British, Canadian and US forces invaded Normandy and German towns, many of which were completely devastated. In May 1945 Germany surrendered; in August of the same year the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan too surrendered.

SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE

CHANGING IDEALS

During the Edwardian and Georgian ages the life-style of the Victorian Age continued, while in the 20^th century it was very difficult to believed in religion, progress and science.

PACIFISM

Most of the poets, who fought in World War I, exposed the cruelty of hting (Bertrand Russell) and for this reasons they were against heroism and nationalism.

PESSIMISM

Victorian optimism was replaced by pessimism.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

In 1905 the German physicist Albert Einstein published his "Theory of Relativity" which changed man's idea of himself and of the Universe: he believed in science as an exation of the Universe.

THE IMPACT OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

Sigmund Freud, an Austrian doctor, began to explore new areas of sensibility, which came to be known as the unconscious, for Freud the realm of fantasy; the unconscious was considered a dynamic force originating in instinct and repressed desires.

MODERNISM

Modernism in English literature was anticipated by two foreign writers: the Pole Joseph

Conrad and the American Henry James.

THE NEW ARTISTIC MOVEMENTS

A PROLIFERATION OF MOVEMENTS

During the 20^th century there was the birth of many movements.

FUTURISM

The Futurist Movement celebrated the triumph of the 'modern' over the 'ancient'. This change was considered virtue, and novelty now became essential to artistic success.

CUBISM

Cubism took Impressionism and Post-Impressionism to extremes, breaking

the subject into pieces and then recomposing it geometrically as in the works of Pablo

Picasso

DADA AND SURREALISM

In 1916 in Switzerland Tristan Tzara founded the most radical of the modernist movements: Dadaism. They were against progress, morality and family values, and cultivated destructiveness, randomness and incoherence, even in their language. The very name 'Dada' was a random combination of letters.

The Poetry of Transition

GLIMPSES OF MODERNISM

Between 1900 and the end of World War I in 1918, English poetry changed profoundly.

GEORGIAN POETRY

A poetical movement developed and advocated a return to nature and simple emotions. These poets called themselves Georgian.

William Butler Yeats

(1865-l939)

IRISH BACKGROUND

William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin into an Anglo-Irish Protestant family.

FIRST ARTISTIC EXPERIENCES

In London he met Oscar Wilde, and was in favour of aesthetic ideas.

CELTIC LORE AND SYMBOLIST POETRY

The 1890s were important years for Yeats. He was interested in Irish folklore and country speech, based on Celtic mythology.

In 1892 he published "The Countess Cathleen" ; this was a verse play for Maud Gonne, the beautiful Irish revolutionary who she refused to marry him several times.

THE ABBEY THEATRE

in 1896 he met Lady Augusta Gregory and the Irish playwright John Millington Synge. With them there was the revival of Irish theatre. He became the President of the Irish National Drama Society and Director of the Abbey Theatre.

THE MEETING WITH POUND

After an American tour with the Abbey Theatre, Yeats met the American poet Ezra Pound. Ezra Pound put him in contact with Modernism and taught him the value of clears expressions.

THE EASTER RISING

Yeats' political enthusiasm grew (CREBBE) with the Easter Rising of 1916 and one of his most famous poems, Easter 1916, commemorates this event.

A VISION

During his honey-moon, Yeats was convinced that he was in contact with the spirit world. The result was his prose work A Vision, where he assumes that everything in the world is interrelated. The various phases of history and human personality were related to phases of the moon. Like the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico, Yeats believed that history was a succession of opposing cycles.

A PUBLIC URE

During this period Yeats was a public ure: a Senator of the Irish Free State and a Nobel Prize.

WORKS: - The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, poems on Celtic mythology.

- The Celtic Twilight a collection of essays on Celtic lore.

- The Countess Cathleen, a verse drama telling the story of the Irish countess who

sold her soul to save her people, written for the woman Yeats loved, Maud

Gonne

- A Vision a prose work resulting from his research into the symbols of his own

elaborate theory of history, derived from the philosopher Giambattista Vico and

the neo Platonic philosophy.

- The Winding Stair and Last Poems which represent the best achievement of

Yeats' mature poetry

The Poetry of World War I

A NEW KIND OF WAR

The poets who took part in World War I could understand its horror; this war was in fact different from any that had preceded it, and changed man's view of life.

THE HORROR OF THE TRENCHES

For the soldiers in the trenches life was hell (INFERNO). They lived in mud (FANGO) and water, among decaying bodies. In the first year soldiers, for their patriotic and Romantic attitude to war, were little more than pawns (PEDINE) in the politicians' hands.

THE GAP BETWEEN SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS

The true horror of trench was concealed from the civilian populations. People had regarded war as a glorious occasion for heroism, while soldiers on the front resented this.

THE END OF CIVILISATION

Writers who had lived this hell denounced its horrors. Later novels such as the German Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, or Hemingway's A Fare well to Arms, shocked public opinion with their revelations.

A ROMANTIC VISION OF WAR: BROOKE

Rupert Brooke was educated at Rugby School at Cambridge. He wrote the 'war sonnets' that made his fame; they show the heroic side of war, very much in the old classical tradition, and as such his "The Soldier was even read in St. Paul's Cathedral.

THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF WAR: OWEN

One of the most significant war poets was Wilfred Owen He rejects totally not only the traditional pieties of Georgian verse, but also its stylistic features. In his poems he used often: half-rhymes, assonance and alliteration, a vision of horror and apocalyptic desolation.

The novel of Transition

FROM REALISM TO MODERNISM

The English novel moved from late Victorian realism to modernism; this events caused a phase of Transition ( Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Edward Morgan Forster ), while David Herbert Lawrence, of a later generation, was the first novelist to feel the impact of new sciences such as psychoanalysis and psychology. All these writers reacted against an 'realistic' novel form.

ANTI- VICTORIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Two factors contributed to the disappearance of the old models, social and narrative:

- the criticism of Victorian values;

- deeper and more subtle psychological analysis.

MODERNISM AND THE NOVEL OF TRANSITION: COMMON TRAITS

The novelists of this age of transition used language and plots, which are still traditional.

Conrad, James, Forster and Lawrence had some common traits:

they built up their systems of values instead of drawing on an existing one;

they concentrated on their characters' consciousness rather than on external events;

- they stressed the isolation of the individual and his/her difficult search for love.

NEW NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES

Novelists abandoning traditional plots and to concentrate on man as a psychological being.

THE ENLARGED WORLD OF MODERN FICTION

Modern fiction enlarges its setting which are different from the old picaresque or adventure novels. The exploration of the human mind may take place anywhere, in Conrad' s exotic lands or in James' Italy and England.

THE RISE OF SCIENCE FICTION WELLS

The influence of science and machines was reflected by a genre a part: science fiction. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was an antecedent of the scientific romances of Herbert George Wells, which established science fiction as a genre.

Joseph Conrad

(1857-l924)

POLISH BACKGROUND

Joseph Conrad was born in Ukraine. Both parents had died when he was twelve.

THE SEA

Conrad' s dream was to go to sea. Even if his family didn't want, he went to Marseilles in 1874, where he joined a French ship. In 1878 Conrad joined an English merchant ship. He started to learn the English language, which was his third, after Polish and French.

He won his Master Mariner's Certificate in 1886 and became a British citizen in the same year. His first command came in 1888, and in 1890 he went up the River Congo. That event impressioned him for the rest of his life and so he wrote "Heart of Darkness".

In 1924 Conrad died in England.

NOVEL WRITING

Conrad began to write during his sea trips and the result was "Almayer' s Folly". The success of the book was his start point for a career as a writer. "A Outcast of the Islands" betray his problems with the English language. Then he wrote "Lord Jim" his first major novel, and "Heart of Darkness", his masterpiece, a long short story or novella.

A MODERN NOVELIST

Conrad is considered a modern novelist, because he didn't write adventure stories about the sea or exotic foreign places, but (and his) geographical isolation was a symbol of

psychological isolation

ADVENTURE AS A PERSONAL TEST

In Conrad' s novels, his characters' adventures are alone in a moment of crisis, resulting in a test of man's integrity.

ROMANTIC ADVENTURE AND MODERN INTROSPECTION

Conrad' s heroes are often haunted (COLPITO) by past sins (PECCATI), like the dark or Byronic heroes of Romantic literature. Lord Jim (the first mate who leaves his ship before it has actuality sunk and is haunted by remorse for the rest of his life) is a typical example.

Conrad's fiction characterised individual consciousness.

NARRATORS AND POINTOF VIEW

From the technical point of view, in Conrad' s novels the narrators lived in the novels. But the narrators didn't express Conrad' s point of view. This technique allows Conrad to show: there are as many realities as there are people in the world.

THE USE OF DOUBLES

Conrad often makes use of a 'double character'. Unlike Stevenson, Conrad puts (METTE) two characters alongside each other (UNO CONTRO L'ALTRO); one of this, like Kurtz in "Heart of Darkness", represents the dark under different circumstances.

WORKS: - The Nigger of the "Narcissus , in which a dying negro seaman - Jamnes Wait - puts a curse on a ship, thus corrupting the crew' s morale. The novel focuses on the sailors' selfish reaction to this curse and on the heroic ure of old Singleton, the only sailor who is indifferent to Wait and to his curse and who can resist the dangers of human contact.

- Lord Jim, the story of the 'fail' of Jim, the first mate on the Patma who has to face trial for abandoning the passengers during a storm. Jim gains redemption through self sacrifice. The novel was partly written with Ford Nadox Hueffer.

- Heart of Darkness, a novella, or long short story, about the trip of a seaman, Marlow, up the River Congo in central Africa in search of a mysterious Mr. Kurtz. Finding him and seeing him die will mean for Marlow a deeper knowledge of the hypocrisy of social relationships.

David Herbert Lawrence

A working-class background

David Lawrence was born at Eastwood, in the English industrial Midlands. His father was a miner, while his mother came from an higher social class. The tensions of his family and the effect on him were fundamental to Lawrence later development as a man and a writer.

Education as an escape from poverty

With his mother's encouragement, Lawrence escaped from his background of industrial poverty. In this period he also start to write his great novel, "Sons and Lover", encouraged by Jessie Chambers. Lawrence's relationship with Jessie was continually frustrated by his mother's. Jessie become the 'Miriam' of "Sons and Lovers".

First works and the meeting with frieda

After the first sign of the tuberculosis, Lawrence moved back to East­wood, where he met and fell in love with Frieda von Richthofen, the wife of one of his professors at Nottingham University College.

life with Frieda and further works

In 1912 David and Frieda going first to Germany and then to Italy, where he com­pleted "Sons and lovers" and wrote more poetry: "The Rainbow", published in 1915, and "Women in Love", completed in 1916, but published in England only in 1921.

Life abroad

In 1919, at the end of World War I, Lawrence and Frieda started wandering about Italy, Germany and Austria. During this period he wrote two studies of Sigmund Freud, "Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious" and "Fantasia of the Unconscious". Then he accepted an invitation to go to Ceylon in 1922.

Australia and Mexico

From Ceylon he moved to Australia, where he produced his novel "Kangaroo", and then to Mexico, where he was fascinated by the Aztec civilisation. In 1925 he moved back to England, then to Italy, and finally to France. During his last period he produced his great novels, "Lady Chatterley' s Lover" - published in Florence in 1928 - more poems and short stories and an im­portant pamphlet, "Pornography and Obscenity". He died in France.

Themes in the novels

Lawrence' s major novels revolve around a series of themes:

- the relationship between man and woman: son and mother, lovers, husband and wife;

- the relationship between men who live accord­ing to natural instincts and men who live

accord­ing to social conventions - the relationship is often conflictual, even violent;

- the contrast between 'natural' and 'artificial' cultures: Lawrence contrasts his idea of

Italian or Mexican peasants with the formality of English life;

- the bitter denunciation of industrialism and modern mechanised civilisation;

- as a counterpart, the praise of nature, economies based on agriculture and crafts, and primitive so­cieties;

- an interest in the British class system.

Characters and settings in the novels

Lawrence's novels present characters and settings, which are recognisably realistic, showing a given social class or profession and a geographical place: the north of England in "Sons and Lovers" and "Lady Chatterley's Lover", London in parts of "Women in Love", Australia in "Kangaroo", Mexico in "The Plumed Serpent".

Lawrence's characters inhabit intensely sym­bolic landscapes.

The characters are presented in terms of their psychic and instinctive natures rather than in terms of social behaviour.

Lawrence was the first great working-class British writer. He saw himself as a lone, prophetic voice persecuted in a decadent world intent on its own destruction.

works: - Sons and Lovers, an autobiographical novel, dealing with the relationship

between a mother and her sons, set in Midlands mining town.