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1. Literature of the Middle Ages. The Anglo-Saxon period «Beowulf». The Anglo-Norman period. The romance. «King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table» cycle.
ANGLO-SAXON
PERIOD (5th—10th
centuries)During
the first five centuries Britain was inhabited by a people called
Kelts, who lived in tribes. The British history is considered to
begin in the 5th
century, when it was invaded from the Continent by the warlike
tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. At the very end of the 5th
century they settled in Britain and began to call themselves
English (after the principle tribe of settlers, called Englisc).
Although we know very little of this period from literature, some
poems have nevertheless come down to us. In those early days songs
called epics were created in many countries. The epics tell of the
most remarkable events of a people's history and the deeds of
heroic men (The first epic songs known in literature are Homer’s
Iliad
and Odyssey
(end of the 6th
c B. C.)THE
SONG OF BEOWULF.The
first masterpiece of English literature, the epic poem the
song of Beowulf,
describes the historical past of the land from Which the Angles,
Saxons and Jutes came. They brought the subject over the Continent
when they invaded Britain, and it was made to a poem in about the
7th
century. The story of Beowulf tells of the time when king Hrothgar
ruled Danes.T The Anglo-Saxons composed their own popular poetry. The main genres were the fabliaux — funny stories about townspeople, and the bestiaries — stories in which the characters were animals.
3. The Renaissance. William Shakespeare. His life and literary work. Historical Chronicles, sonnets, comedies and tragedies. LITERATURE OF THE RENAISSANCE (16*— 17th centuries) In the 15th—16th centuries capitalist relations began to develop in Europe. The former townspeople became the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie fought against feudalism because it held back the development of capitalism. The decay of feudalism and the development of capitalist relations was followed by a great rise in the cultural life of Europe. There was an attempt at creating a new culture free from the limitations of the feudal world of the Middle Ages. The epoch was characterized by a thirst for knowledge and discoveries, by a powerful development of individuality The invention and use of the printing press by Guttenberg (1399—1468) in Germany, Caxton (1422—1491) in England, Skaryna (1490—1541) in Belarus, Fyodorov (1510—1583) in Russia contributed to the development of culture in all European countries. Universities stopped being citadels of religious learning and turned into centres of humanist studies. There was a revival of interest in the ancient culture of Greece and Rome ("Renaissance" is the French for "re-birth"). The study of the works of ancient philosophers, writers, and artists helped the people to widen their outlook, to know the world and man's nature. On the basis of both ancient culture and the most progressive elements of the culture of the Middle Ages the fine arts, literature and science of the Renaissance began to develop. The culture of the Renaissance was, in fact, the first stage of bourgeois culture. The bourgeoisie as a class was being born and, as Engels said, the men who founded the modem rule of the bourgeoisie, had anything but bourgeois limitations. The progressive ideology of the Renaissance was humanism. Human life, the happiness of people and belief in man's abilities became the main subjects in fine arts and literature. The works of humanists proclaimed equality of people regardless of their social origin, race and religion. Humanism did away with the dark scholastic teaching of the Middle Ages. The development of a new social order presented great possibilites for man's creative powers. That is why the humanist outlook was marked with bright optimism, with belief in man's great abilities and his high mission. It was opposed to medieval ideology and, especially, that of the Catholic Church. People with a progressive outlook contributed to the development of the world's art, culture and science. According to Engels, the Renaissance was the greatest progressive revolution that mankind had so far experienced, a time which called for giants and produced giants of thought, passion and character, men of universal learning. The Renaissance produced such great men as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, Petrarch and Durer, Cervantes and Shakespeare. In the 16th century capitalism began to develop in England, as well as in other European countries. However, it had some peculiarities. Wool production became the leading manufacture in England. Landowners drove thousands of peasants off their lands, turning these lands into pastures, or "enclosures" for sheep. (This was the beginning of the process which by the end of the 18th century brought about the elimination of the peasantry as a class). There was no work for the peasants and many of them became homeless beggars. Lust for riches was typical of the new class of the bourgeoisie. The most progressive people of the country could not help seeing the growing power of money, and the injustice it caused. English humanists dreamed of social changes that would do away with the vices of society and establish equality among people. English humanism was both anti-feudal and anti-bourgeois. It was directed against the ignorance and oppression of the feudal lords, against the greed and self-interest of the bourgeoisie. It was the ideology of the most progressive people of the time. These ideas were best expressed by the first English humanist Thomas More (1478—1535) in his book Utopia. Utopia, which is the Greek for "nowhere", is a story about an imaginary island here all people are equal and free. Utopia had great influence on the development of humanist ideas in England as well as in the whole of Europe. It was the first literary work that conveyed the ideas of communism.More's Utopia marked the first period of English humanist literature. The second period which lasted from the middle of the 16th century up to the beginning of the 17th century, saw the Nourishing of the English drama. The theatre became a favourite amusement of people, especially in towns. Theatres sprang up one after another. At the end of the century there were about ten theatres in London. The theatres performed the plays written by one English dramatists of the time. Among the playwrights of the period were John Lyly, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and others. The most outstanding dramatist of the time and of all times was William Shakespeare.WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564—1616)The great English playwright and poet William Shakespeare was born on
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2. Literature of the Pre-Renaissance. Geoffrey Chaucer. The «Canterbury tales».PRE-RENAISSANCE (14th – 15th centuries)The 14th century was a difficult time for England. The country was waging the Hundred Years' War with France Though the power of the feudal nobles and the Church was still very great, there were already signs of the birth of a new class. The townspeople, that is the craftsmen and the tradesmen, were becoming an important social force. These townspeople later formed the class of the bourgeoisie. During this stormy century the English nation was being formed; English became the spoken language of the country; English literature was born. The scholastic literature of the Church ranked high, but a new spirit was already noticeable in the cultural life of the country. The new spirit was marked by optimism unknown to the Middle Ages. It was best reflected in the works by Geoffrey Chaucer, the last poet of the Middle Ages and the first poet who paved the way for English realistic literature, free of the influence of the Church POPULAR BALLADS The 15th century is known in English literature as the century of folklore. Many songs, called ballads, were composed then by the common people of the country. The ballads were songs in verses of four lines, called quatrains; the second and fourth lines if the verse rhymed. Among them there were historical and legendary ballads. Some were humorous and others were lyrical. A favourite legendary hero of the English people is Robin Hood. Many ballads have been composed about him and his friends. Some historians say that there really was such a person as Robin Hood but that is not certain. Popular ballads show Robin Hood as a tireless enemy of the Norman oppressors, of the Church and tradesmen. They sing about his courage, his readiness to help the poor and the needy. They tell about the love of the poor people for their legendary hero, and their deep gratitude to him.These melodious ballads were sung from generation to generation. In the 18th century they were collected and printed for the first time. Thus they became part of the wealth of English literature. GEOFFREY CHAUCER (1340—1400) Geoffrey Chaucer was the greatest writer of the 14th century. He was born in London in the family of a wine merchant. At 20 he took part in the war with France, was taken prisoner by the French and ransomed by his friends. He held a number of positions at the English king's court and several times visited Italy and France on diplomatic missions. In Italy he got acquainted with the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. What they wrote was full of new, optimistic ideas &love of life and had a great influence on his future works, the most important of which was the Canterbury Tales. CANTERBURY TALES The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories in verse told by people of different social standing. Chaucer had planned 120 stories but wrote only 24, because death broke off his work. The stories are preceded by a Prologue, in which the characters that will tell the stories are described. Short prologues to each story connect them to form one work. The Prologue tells about a group of pilgrims, who were on their way to pray at the Cathedral of Canterbury. One fine April evening these pilgrims met at a London inn called the Tabard; the innkeeper was a jolly man whose name was Harry Bailey. There were twenty-eight pilgrims, men and women, and with Harry Bailey and Chaucer himself there were thirty in all at the Inn. Harry Bailey proposed to the company that each pilgrim should tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two more on the way home. They would decide whose story was the best and a dinner would be given to the winner. The next morning the pilgrims set out for Canterbury. The Canterbury Tales was the first great work in verse in English literature. Chaucer painted a vivid picture of English society, as it was in his day; each of his characters was shown as an individual, typical of his country and his time. Among the pilgrims there was a knight, a doctor, a merchant, a student from Oxford, a carpenter, a miller, a lawyer, a sailor and a cook. There were also some women, some monks and a pardoner among the company. The pilgrims tell their stories according to their rank or standing, the knight tells a romance, the miller— a fabliau, the pardoner — a moralizing tale. Chaucer contributed to the formation of the English literary language. His works were written in the London dialect which, at the time, was becoming the spoken language of the majority of the people. He also worked out a new form of versification, which replaced alliteration. It was accentual-syllabic verse which was based on a definite number of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line. He showed life as it was; as a great artist and humanist he gave an equally masterly description of Good & Evil. The great writer believed in Man and was full of hope for future
April 23, 1564 in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon, about seventy-five miles from London. He was the son of a tradesman. When a boy he went to Stratford Grammar School, where Latin and Greek were almost the only subjects. Life itself, contact with people and his acquaintance with the rich English folklore gave him more than the scholastic methods used at school. In those days Stratford-upon-Avon was often visited by travelling groups of actors. It is quite possible that Shakespeare saw some plays performed by such actors and was impressed by them. Shakespeare lived in Stratford-upon-Avon until he was twenty-one. By that time he was married and had three children. At twenty-one he left his native town for London where he joined a theatrical company and worked as an actor and a playwright. In the late 1590s a new theatre called The Globe was built on the bank of the Thames. Shakespeare became one of its owners. The people of London liked it better than any other theatre. It was in The Globe that most of Shakespeare's plays were staged at that time. In 1613 he left London and returned to Stratford-upon-Avon.Three years later, on April 23, 1616 he died and was buried there.Shakespeare is the author of 2 poems, 37 plays and 154 sonnets. His creative work is usually divided into three periods.The first period which lasted from 1590 to 1600 was marked by the optimism so characteristic of all humanist literature. It is best reflected in his nine brilliant comedies: The Comedy of Errors (1592), The Taming of the Shrew (1593), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594), Love's Labour's Lost (1594), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), Much Ado About Nothing (1598), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1599), As You Like It ( 1599), Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will (1600). The comedies describe the adventures of young men and women, their friendship and love, their search for happiness. The scene is usually laid in some southern country. But one cannot help feeling that the comedies show the "merry England" of Shakespeare's time. The comedies are usually based on some misunderstanding that creates comic situations. They are full of fun. But the laughter is not directed against the people and their vices. Shakespeare never moralizes in his comedies. He laughs with people, but not at them. His comedies are filled with humanist love for people and the belief in the nobility and kindness of human nature. The historical chronicles form another group of plays written by Shakespeare in the first period. They are: King Henry VI (part II) (1590), King Henry VI (part III) (1590), King Henry VI (part I) (1591), The Tragedy of King Richard III (1592), The Tragedy of King Richard II (1595), The Life and Death ofKing John (1596), King Henry IV (part I) (1597), King Henry TV (part II) (1597), The Life of King Henry V (1598). Historical chronicles are plays written on subjects taken from history. Shakespeare's chronicles cover a period of more than three hundred years of English history (from the reign of King John in the 12th century up to the 16th century). However, the main subjects of the chronicles are not the lives and fates of kings but history itself and the development of the country. Like all humanists of his time Shakespeare believed a centralized monarchy to be the ideal form of state power. He thought it would put an end to the struggle of feudal lords and create the conditions for progress in the country. One of his great achievements was that in his chronicles he showed not only the kings, nobles and churchmen but men of the lower classes too. The drama The Merchant of Venice and the two early tragedies Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, also written in the 1590s, show a change in the playwright's outlook which becomes more pessimistic. The main works written by Shakespeare during the second period (1601—1608) are his four great tragedies: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1601); Othello, the Moor of Venice (1604); King Lear (1605); Macbeth (1605). The tragedies reflect the deep, insoluble contradictions of life, the falsehood, injustice and tyranny existing in society. They show people who perish in the struggle against Evil. The tragedies, like the chronicles, are also based on real events but there is a considerable difference between the two genres. The playwright raised great problems of Good and Evil in both. But in the chronicles they are mostly linked with political themes — the questions of the state and public life of the period described. In the tragedies, which are centred round the life of one man, Shakespeare touched on the moral problems of universal significance — honesty, cruelty, kindness, love, vanity and others. That is why his tragedies are of great interest to every new generation.e plays of the third period (1609—1612) differ from everything Shakespeare wrote before. He still touches upon most important social and moral problems, but now suggests Utopian solutions to them. He introduces romantic and fantastic elements, which have a decisive role in his plays.
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4. Literature of the 17th century. John Milton. "Paradise Lost". "Paradise Resained"LITERATURE OF THE 17™ CENTURY (THE PERIOD OF ENGLISH BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION ANDRESTORATION).In English literature the main representatives of this period are the following ones: John Milton (1608-1674) John Bunyan (1628-1688) John Dryden (1631-1700) It is generally agreed that the English poet second after Shakespeare is John Milton. He was born in London and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge. After leaving the university, he studied at home in Horton. Buckinghamshire, and was grateful to his father for allowing him to do this instead of preparing for a profession. He lived a pure life, believing that he had a great purpose to complete. At college he was known as The Lady of Christ's.It is convenient to consider his works in three divisions. At first he wrote his shorter poems at Horton. Then he wrote mainly prose. His three greatest poems belong to his last group. At the age of 23 he had still done little in life, and he admits this in one of his sonnets. In his another sonnet he wrote on his own blindness (Milton got blind when he worked at Cromwell's government as a consultant).Milton's studies at Horton were deep and wide. One of his notebooks contains pieces taken from 80 writers - Greek, Latin, English, French and Italian. At the same time he was studying music. Milton wrote different kinds of works. His prose works were mainly concerned with church affairs, divorce and freedom. His best prose work is probably the "Areopagitica, A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing" (1644). This is good writing, and it contains little of the violent language of his other pamphlets. The style of this book is quite simple. Milton's sincere belief in the importance of freedom of writing and speech fills the book with honest feeling. The English civil war between Charles I and Parliament (Cromwell) began in 1642 and lasted until 1646; and it was followed by the second civil war, 1648-1651. During these years Milton worked hard at his pamphlets, supported Cromwell, and became a minister of the government. His eyesight began to fail and by 1651 he was totally blind. He became unpopular when Charles II was made king (1660), but it was from this time onwards that he wrote his three greatest works. He considered several subjects for this great poem, and at one time wanted to write on King Arthur; but he finally chose the fall of the angels, the story of Adam and Eve, and their failure to keep God's commands. This great epic poem, "Paradise Lost"(first printed in 1667 and sold for 10 pounds), was planned in ten books, but written in twelve. The scene is the whole universe, including Heaven and Hell. The poem is written in a splendid blank verse and contains hundreds of remarkable thoughts put into musical verse. Like Marlowe Milton understood the beauty of proper names. Milton's other great poem, "Paradise Regained" (published in1671), is more severe and less splendid than "Paradise Lost". Yet the poem also shows the same splendid use of proper names "Samson Agonistes" ("camcoh-борец ") (1671) is Milton's tragedy on the Greek model. The play describes the last days of Samson, when he was betrayed by his wife Dalila, was blind and a prisoner of the Philistine lords; but later a messenger arrives to say that Samson has pulled down the whole theatre on their heads and his own. Milton had now been blind for about 20 years, and about three years later he died (in poverty as he was not in favour after the Restoration of the monarchy. He was even almost put to death but escaped this.). So Samson's sorrows no doubt reminded him of his own, and some of the lines of "Samson" probably reflect Milton's personal feelings.The ideology of the bourgeois revolution in England was Puritanism. The puritans at that time were influenced by the trend of the so called "new church" - the ideas, inspired by the teaching of the famous Jean Calvin from France. So the "new church" trend was called Calvinism. The puritans influenced the life in England greatly. And even theatres were closed at that time. The closing of theatres in 1642 meant that no important drama was produced in the years before 1660. When Charles II became king in 1660, the change in English literature was almost as great as the change in government For one thing, the theatres opened again, and new dramatists therefore appeared. But the new drama was in some ways different from the one of the previous periods. For example, the very theatres, performances, costumes became much more luxurious.
popular novel The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was written in 1719 when Defoe was nearly sixty. It was followed by Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, Roxana and some other adventure novels.Defoe wrote his novels in the form of memoirs, which made them seem like stories about real people. The detailed descriptions of Crusoe's labour— making a boat, cultivating the land and others — were just as interesting for the reader, as those of his adventures.As a true Enlightener, he set himself the task of improving people's morals, which is why he provided his books with moralizing comments. Robinson Crusoe praised the creative labour of man and his conquest of nature. JONATHAN SWIFT (1667—1745) Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667 in Dublin in an English family. His father died seven months before Jonathan's birth, leaving his family in poverty. Jonathan was brought up by his prosperous uncle Godwin Swift who sent him to school and then to Trinity College in Dublin. There he studied theology and later became a clergyman. His favourite subjects, however, were not theology but literature, history and languages. At twenty-one Swift went to live in England and became private secretary to a distant relative. Sir William Temple, a writer and well-known diplomat of the time. At Moor Park, Sir William's estate. Swift made friends with Hester Johnson, the daughter of one of Temple's servants, fourteen years his junior. Hester, or Stella as Swift poetically called her, remained his faithful lifelong friend. His letters to her, written in 1710—1713, were later published as a book under the title of Journal to Stella.During his two years at Moor Park Swift read and studied much, and in 1692 he took his Master of Arts Degree at Oxford University. With the help of Sir William, Swift was appointed vicar of a small church in Kilroot (Ireland) where he stayed for a year and a half. Then he came back to Moor Park and lived there till Sir William's death in 1698.In 1701 Swift went to the small town of Laracor (Ireland) as a clergyman. When the Tories came to power in 1709 Swift returned to England and edited their paper The Examiner. He became one of the leading political figures in England, although he occupied no official post in the government. Swift's enemies, as well as his friends, were afraid of him, for they knew his honesty and his critical attitude to all the party intrigues. They decided to send him as far away from London as possible and in 1713 made him Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Living in Dublin Swift became actively involved in the struggle of the Irish people for their rights and interests, againt poverty and English oppression. In fact he became the ideological leader of the Irish people. At the age of seventy-eight he died and was buried in the Cathedral, the Dean of which he had been most of his life.Among his early works was the allegory A Tale of a Tub, a biting satire on religion. In the introduction to A Tale of a Tub the author tells of a curious custom among seamen. When a ship is attacked by a whale the seamen throw an empty tub into the sea to distract the whale's attention. The meaning of the allegory was quite clear to the readers of that time. The tub was religion which the state (for a ship has always been the emblem of a state) threw to its people to distract them from any struggle. The satire is written in the form of a story about three brothers symbolizing the three religious trends in England: Peter (the Catholic Church), Martin (the Anglican Church) and Jack (Puritanism). It contains such ruthless attacks on religion that even now it remains one of the books, forbidden by the Pope of Rome.Swift's literary work was always closely connected with his political activity. In his numerous pamphlets Swift ridiculed different spheres of bourgeois life: law, wars, politics, etc. His strongest pamphlets were written in Ireland. One of the most outstanding pamphlets and the most biting of all his satires was A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People of Ireland from Being a Burden to their Parents (1729). It was directed against the colonial policy of England in Ireland. Swift wrote about the horrible poverty and starvation of the Irish people. He ironically suggested that parents of large families should kill their children and sell the flesh at the market to avoid starvation and overpopulation. This pamphlet, like his other ones, had a great effect. It attracted the public's attention to die terrible position of the Irish people. It was his novel Gulliver's Travels however, that brought him fame and immortality.Swift's language was more elaborate and literary than Defoe's. This does not mean that he did not make use of the language of the common people. He resorted to it when his criticism became most severeThe main features of his artistic method, such as hyperbole, grotesque, generalization, irony, were widely used by the English novelists Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, the poet Byron, the dramatists Sheridan and Shaw, Gogol and others.
7. Romanticism, its peculiarities. Two generations of English Romanticists. The poetry of G. Byron. The Romantic period lasted about thirty years, from the last decade of the 18th century to the 1830s. Romanticism in literature was a reaction of different strata of society to the French Revolution and to the Enlightenment associated with it. The people were disappointed with the outcome of the Revolution The new trend in literature (Romanticism) reflected it. The Revolution brought new problems for progressive-minded writers, who were faced with the necessity of finding an answer to such questions as their attitude to the feudal state, to the revolution, to the national liberation movements, to the relations between the individual and society, to the common people, to historical development. The Romantic period in England had its peculiarities. Some of these writers were definitely revolutionary: they opposed the existing order, called upon the people to struggle for a better future, shared the people's desire for liberty and objected to colonial oppression. Furthermore, they supported the national liberation wars on the continent against feudal reaction. Such writers were George Gordon Byron (1788—1824) and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792—1822). Others, though they had welcomed the French Revolution andits slogan of liberty, fraternity and equality, later abandoned revolutionary ideas. They turned to nature and to the simple problems of life. They tried to avoid the contradictions that were becoming so great in all the spheres of social life with the development of capitalism. They looked back to patriarchal England and refused to accept the progress of industry; they even called on the Government to forbid the building of new factories which, they considered, were the cause of the workers' sufferings. Among these writers were the poets William Wordsworth (1770—1850), Samuel T. Coleridge (1772—1834) and Robert Southey (1774—1843), who formed the "Lake School", so called because they all lived for a time in the beautiful Lake District in the north-west of England. They dedicated much of what they wrote to Nature, especially Wordsworth. They showed the life of the common people in the English countryside that was overlooked by their younger revolutionary contemporaries. The "Lake" poets resorted to popular forms of verse that were known and could be understood by all. The writers used such means as symbolism, fantasy, grotesque, etc.; legends, tales, songs and ballads also became part of their creative world. A typical romantic hero was, as a rule, a lonely individual, given to meditations and seeking for freedom. The romanticists were talented poets and their contribution to English literature was very important.GEORGE GORDON BYRON (1788—1824)One of the great poets of England was the romantic revolutionary George Gordon Byron. He was born on January 22, 1788 in London, in a poor, but old aristocratic family. The boy spent his childhood in Scotland, with his mother. At the age of ten he returned to England, as heir to the title of Lord and the family castle of Newstead Abbey. He went to school to Harrow, then to Cambridge University. When he was twenty-one he became a member of the House of Lords. In 1809 he travelled abroad, visiting Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece and Turkey. He returned home in 1811.In 1812 Byron delivered several speeches in the House of Lords. When, after an unhappy marriage in 1815 he and his wife parted, his enemies in high places seized this opportunity and began to persecute him. The great poet was accused of immorality and had to leave his native country. At the end of 1816 Byron continued his travels and went to Italy, where he lived till 1823. Byron's creative work is usually divided into four periods. 1. The London Period (1812—1816). At the beginning of this period the first two cantos (songs) of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage were published. During the years of the London period Byron wrote his famous lyrics Hebrew Melodies, his "oriental" poems (The Corsair, The Bride of Abydos, Lara, and others). He also began to write his political satires, the most outstanding of which is the Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill. 2. The Swiss Period (May-October 1816). During these months Byron wrote the third canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Prisoner of Chilian, his philosophic drama Manfred. 3. The Italian Period (1816—1823) is the most important and mature in his creative work. He wrote the last, fourth canto, of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cain, Beppo. Besides many other works he wrote Don Juan. This is considered to be his most important creation. It is a novel in verse, that was to contain 24 cantos, but death stopped his work and only 16 and half cantos were written. In them he gave a great satirical panorama of the European social life of his time. He came very close to a realistic approach here, and enriched the language of poetry with the everyday language, spoken by the people. 8. Critical realism. Charles Dickens, W. Thackeray, the Bronte sisters. LITERATURE FROM THE 1830s TO THE 1860s The social and political situation in the country influenced a number of novelists who realized that it wasNecessary to deal with actual facts and realities, to set their books in present and to pose topical problems in them.. These writers developed the traditions of English realist literature begun by the Enlighteners and further enriched by the historical approach of Walter Scott. In their works they exposed and criticized the vices and drawbacks of their time — social unjustice and inequality, poverty, lust for money, hypocrisy, etc. They drew their characters from all social levels; among them are reprentatives of the aristocracy and the middle class, as well as servants, clerks, workers, thieves, etc. The main subject of their novels was, however, the life of lower classes, and their sympathies always lay with common people who, as a rule, possessed higher qualities than the rich did. The negative characters embodied all the vices of the society that was a slave to gold. Still another feature of the work of critical realists was that they stressed the function of the social environment in shaping human character. The novels often traced the life stories of their characters from their early years and depicted the circumstances which they grew. The detailed descriptions of life in big cities and in the country, of rich houses and slums, of schools and prisons as wellas the introduction of colloquial speech made these novels true to life. The most prominent of the critical realists were Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. CHARLES DICKENS (1812—1870) Charles Dickens was born in Landsport, a small town near the sea, in a middle-class family. In 1814 the family moved to London. His father was a clerk in a office; he got a small salary there and usually spent more than he earned. As a result of this he was thrown into the debtors' prison when Charles was only ten. At that age the boy went to work at a factory which was like a dark, damp cellar. There he stuck labels on bottles of shoeblacking all day long, for a few pennies. Later he went to school which he attended for only three years and at the age of 15 he started his work in a lawyer's office. He continued to educate himself, mainly by reading books. At 18 he became a reporter in Parliament. There he got acquainted with politics and never had a high opinion of his country's policy afterwards. In 1833 he began to write his first short stories about London life. In 1836 those stories were published as a book, under the title of Sketches by Boz; Boz was the penname with which he signed his first work. In 1837 Dickens became well-known to the English readers. His first big work appeared, written in instalments for a magazine at first, and later published in book form. It was The Posthumous Papers of the Pick\vick Club. From then on Dickens was one of the best known and loved writers of his day. In 1842 he made his first trip to America. He said that he wanted to see for himself what real democracy was like. He was rather disappointed with it. He wrote about his trip and his impressions in his American Notes. Dickens travelled a lot. He visited France and Italy and later went to America again. At the same time he continued to write. In 1858 he began to tour England, reading passages from his works to the public. These readings were a great success, for Dickens was a wonderful actor, but the hard work and travelling were baa for his health. On March 15, 1870 he made his last reading and said to the public "From these garish lights I vanish now for evermore". He suffered a stroke on June, 8 and died the following day at his writing desk penning a sentence for Edwin Drude. The novel was left unfinished. Dickens literary heritage is of world importance. He developed the English social novel, writing about the most burning social problems of his time. He created a wide gallery of pictures of bourgeois society and its representative types which still exist in England; he wrote of the workhouses of England and the tragec Of the children who lived in them (Oliver Twist); he wrote about the problem of education and showed how it handicapped children (Nicholas Nickleby). After his trip to America Dickens wrote Martin Chuzzlewit.A part of this work had an American setting. He criticized American customs and democracy very severely. Later he wrote about money and its terrible, destructive power over men (Dombey and Son). David Copperfield, one of the most lyrical of his works, was to some extent autobiographical; it reflected a young man's life in bourgeois society. Dickens criticized some negative aspects of that society, especially child labour and the system of education. Such problems as marriage and love in the bourgeois world were Also treated in this novel.Dickens' later novels were Bleak House and Little Dorrit. Among his works there are two historical novels. In 1841 he wrote Bamaby Rudge, taking a subject from English history of the year 1780, known as the "Gordon Rebellion". In 1848 Dickens turned to history again; he wrote A Tale of Two Cities, a story about 9. Aestheticism 0. Wilde and his program. Neoromanticism and its representatives. R. Kipling. A new stage of social development began during the last two decades of the 19' century. Great Britain had become a highly developed capitalist country and a great colonial power. The merging of individual firms into monopolies began. With it Britain passed to a higher form of capitalism, known as imperialism. A violent economic crisis that occurred in the early 80s deepened the social contradictions in the country. Socialist ideas began to influence it and many important strikes took place. The bourgeoisie looked for ways of imperialist expansion in search of new markets. Puritanical hypocrisy became the accepted form of benaviour in society. It was accompanied by a degradation of moral and cultural values. New literary trends — Decadence, neoromanticism and socialist literature — were a reaction to the atmosphere in Britain. OSCAR WILDE (1854—1900) Oscar Wilde was the most outstanding representative of Decadence. He was the son of a well-known Irish physician. In his youth he was very much influenced by his mother, who was a highly educated woman. She wrote poetry and was an ardent Irish patriot. Her scornful attitude towards the hypocrisy of British bourgeois morals was probably responsible for the disrespect that characterized Wilde's approach toward; bourgeois customs and habits. Wilde's youth was a time of increasing crisis in bourgeois culture and the heyday of Aestheticism. The vulgarity ofbourgeois life in general, the money-making fever of the bourgeoisie, its hypocritical approach to moral standards, all this made the young man turn to the movement of the day — aestheticism. Attracted by its search for beauty and its motto "Art for Art's Sake", Wilde became an avowed aesthete and was very soon considered the leading figure of the movement. He studied at Oxford. After the publication of his first volume of poetry in 1881 he went on a lecture tour to America. Between the years 1881 and 1895 he wrote two volumes of fairy tales — The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891), the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and several plays. Oscar Wilde's work, like his outlook on life, is ven contradictory. His tales, probably his most popular works, were undoubtedly, much deeper in their approach to the problem of Good and Evil than most of the decadent literature. The writer laid great stress on the good qualities of the poor, and the vices of those who had power and money. Thus, in the tale The Devoted Friend, for example, Wilde produced a very bitter satirical portrait of a money-grabbing and hypocritical man of property. The Miller was Hans' "devoted friend" in summer, when he took flowers and fruit from him. Little Hans was always happy to give them to his "devoted friend". But when winter came the Miller would not give little Hans any flour to help him during the hungry months. Wilde achieved artistic heights of symbolic generalization in the story of little Hans, robbed in summer and sent to his death in winter by the rich Miller who called himself his "devoted friend". The tales do not, perhaps, have great depth of critical judgment on all aspects of the society of Wilde's time. However, his paradoxical form of expression is at times bitterly satirical as in The Devoted Friend. It is his originality in this genre, and it brings out the hypocrisy in human relations that so disgusted him. The endings in his tales are usually tragic — Good cannot triumph in a world of Evil. It is in these tales and in his comedies that the traditions of critical realism may be best seen. When Oscar Wilde turned to writing plays, he took up a new theme. He criticized the upper classes and gave satirical pictures of their members who were ruled by the love of power and money. The most outstanding of those plays is An Ideal Husband (1895), in which the author discloses the sordid intrigues in the business and political circles of England. The figure of Sir Robert Chiltem is very convincing. He is an outstanding statesman, who enjoys the love of his wife and everybody's respect, because he is good, honest, and correct in his political activities. However, it turns out that this impeccable statesman began his career of a politician and started to make his fortune by selling a state secret. Wilde brands the corruption that exists in the world of business. However, his criticism is mild, everything is settled in favour of the main character. NEOROMANTICISM Together with the Decadents another group of writers took up the protest against bourgeois rule. They also searched for an escape from a life without either beauty or interest. One of those writers was Robert Louis Stevenson (1850—1894), Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936), Joseph Conrad (1857—1924)Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936). Kipling was the son of well-to-do parents, bom and brought up in India; his first impressions were those of India's countryside and people. He introduced a new theme into English literature — that of the life of British people in the colonies. Kipling asserted white man's, the Englishman's, right to rule over the native 10. Critical Realism of the Early XX century. J.Galsworthy, H.G.Wells, B.Shaw and their major works. The Boer War lasted from October 1899 to May 1902. The English suffered many difficulties and losses at the beginning of the war, but they came out of it victors. However, this victory did not improve the negative attitude of progressive people in England towards bourgeois ideology and culture, towards its social life and economic development. During the 1890s critical realism continued to develop in the works of many writers. One of them was George Meredith (1828—1909). He is considered to be a master of irony. In his novel The Egoist he drew a portrait of a typical representative of the upper strata of English society and revealed the egoism that ruled their lives. JOHN GALSWORTHY came of well-to-do bourgeois family; after graduating from Oxford Univercity he became a lawyer but soon abandoned this profession to take up literature. He began to write in the last years of the 19th century, but his first works were not very successful. His best novels were written in the first decade of the 20th century. In them the reader finds a reflection of the opposition of the progressive-minded people to imperialism, to Britain's Boer War adventure. In 1904 Galsworthy wrote The Island Pharisees. In it he attacked the British privileged classes. He criticized them for being content with the bourgeois way of life; he stressed the fact that their minds had become inert and lazy. In 1906 Galsworthy's best novel appeared. It was The Man of Property. He achieved great heights of generalization in this work. In it he told the story of the upper middle class that dictated its laws to the country. During the period 1907—1918 Galsworthy turned to different subjects. He wrote many novels and plays. His main object, however, always remained that of reflecting social contradictions and trying to find a humanist solution to them. Galsworthy paid great attention to the composition of his novels. Thus, the composition of The Man of Property is thoroughly worked out. The events are presented so vividly that the chapters may be easily staged, for instance At Home, Dinner at Swithin 's, June's Treat and others. Galsworthy's "feeling" for the language may be compared with a painter's "feeling" for colour. His choice of words is so accurate that it is difficult to paraphrase his sentences. He makes use of irony when describing his characters and the weaknesses of his own class. John Galsworthy's contribution to the development of the English novel was very important. He was nearer than Wells and Shaw to his predecessors, the critical realists of the first half of the 19th century. Galsworthy brought the novel back to its former heights by creating a real "document" of the epoch, a deep, realistic picture of the bourgeois class. The Forsyte Saga, his greatest achievement, is the culmination of English critical realism of the early 20thcentury.HERBERT GEORGE WELLS (1866—1946)Herbert G. Wells was born in a poor family. In his youth he worked very hard, and, at the same time, managed to get an education. He became a biologist and for some time worked as assistant to a well-known English scientist, a follower of Charles Darwin. When Wells was quite young he became interested in social problems. He always called himself a socialist, but his socialism was very peculiar. He understood that the world had to be changed. At an early age he came to the Utopian conclusion that only scientists and technicians could solve the existing contradictions. According to Wells it was not revolution, but evolution — through certain reforms — that could change the world. And only science and technology could do it. World War I came as a shock to Wells. He could no longer be sure of peaceful progress. The October Revolution was, in his opinion, a social "experiment". He did not have much faith in it. However, in 1920 he visited Russia and was received by V. Lenin in Moscow. During his stay in Russia, Wells saw the devastation of the country. He described his impressions of this visit in his book Russia in the Shadows and called Lenin "the Kremlin dreamer".In Wells' novels science and technology form the background against which the plot develops. Besides this, there is always a very strong social aspect in his works. In this connection Wells always said that he was a follower of Swift. Swift's Gulliver's Travels, he pointed out, was also based on fantasy. This fantasy Served as a basis for social criticism. His early cycle of science fiction was written from 1895 to 1901. Among the works of those years were The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The First Men on the Moon and others. In the novels of this cycle Wells wrote about the fate of civilization. This was his main theme In The Island of Dr. Moreau he warned humanity against reckless experimentation. A later cycle of novels was written between 1901 and World War I. In these he reflected on the fate of mankind. Among them were The War in the Air, The World Set Free and others. After World War I, Well turned to the genre of the social novels. After his trip to the USSR he returned to social fantasies. In these novels he tried to reflect the danger of fascism in his country and |
5. English Enlightenment. The birth of the English Novel, its development. D. Defoe, J. Swift. (18TH century) .In the period of Enlightenment the poetic forms of the Renaissance were replaced by prose. The didactic novel was born and became the leading genre of the period. Ordinary people, mostly representatives of the middle class, became the heroes of these novels. The characters, either good or bad, were accordingly, either rewarded or punished at the end of the novel. By these means the Enlighteners idealistically hoped to improve the morals of the people and of society in general. The Enlightenment epoch in English literature may be divided into three periods: I. Early Enlightenment (1688—1740). This period saw a flowering of journalism, which played an important part in the public life of the country. Numerous journals and newspapers which came into being at the beginning of the 18th century not only acquainted their readers with the situation at home and abroad, but also helped to shape people's views. Most popular were the satirical journals The Taller, The Spectator, and The Englishman edited by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. In their essays — short compositions in prose — these two writers touched on various problems of political, social and family life. The essays paved the way for the realistic novel which was brought into English literature by Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. This period also saw the work of an outstanding satirical poet Alexander Pope. His poems The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad and others were written in a classical manner, that is, they imitated the style of ancient Greek and Roman poets and were characterized by clarity and precision.II. Mature Enlightenment (1740—1750).The didactic social novel was born in this period. It was represented by the works of such writers as Samuel Richardson (Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded; Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady), Henry Fielding (The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and other novels), and Tobias Smollett (The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker and other novels). III. Late Enlightenment (Sentimentalism) (1750—1790). The writers of this period, like the Enlighteners of the first two, expressed the democratic bourgeois tendencies of their time. They also tried to find a way out of the difficulties of the existing order. However, while their predecessors believed in the force of intellect, they considered feelings (or sentiments) most important. The principal representatives of sentimentalism in the genre of the novel were Oliver Goldsmith (The Vicar of Wakefield) and Lawrence Sterne (Tristram Shandy, The Sentimental Journey) and in drama — Richard Sheridan (School for Scandal and other plays). The poetry of Robert Bums belongs to this period, too. DANIEL DEFOE (1660—1731) Daniel Defoe is rightly considered the father of the English and the European novel, for it was due to him that the genre became firmly established in European literature.Daniel Defoe's life was complicated and adventurous. He was the son of a London butcher whose name was Foe, to which Daniel later added the prefix De. His father, being a Puritan, wanted his son to become a priest. Daniel was educated at a theological school. However, he never became a priest, for he looked for other business to apply his talents to. He became a merchant, first in wine, then in hosiery. He travelled in Spain, Germany, France and Italy on business. Though his travels were few they, nevertheless, gave him, a man of rich imagination, material for his future novels. Defoe's business was not very successful and he went bankrupt more than once. He took an active part in the political life of Britain. In 1685 he participated in the Duke ofmonmouth's Revolt against James II. The rebellion was defeated and resulted in a compromise between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. After this defeat Defoe had to go into hiding for some time. When the Dutchman William of Orange came to the throne of England in 1688 during the so-called "Glorious Revolution", he was among his most active supporters. After years of political ups and downs, including imprisonment for his attacks against the church, he died at the age of 71 having written more than 500 works of different kinds.Defoe turned to literature in the 1690s. His first literary works were satirical poems dealing with the urgent problems of the time. In 1697 he published An Essay on Projects, a typical enlightener's work in which he suggested all kinds of reforms in different spheres of social life. He paid much attention to public education and stressed the necessity of establishing a number of educational institutions to train specialists for various fields of activity. In 1702 Defoe published a satirical pamphlet written in support of the Protestants, or dissenters, persecuted by the government and the church. In the pamphlet called The Shortest Way with the Dissenters the author ironically suggested that the best way to fight against the dissenters was to execute them all. At first the Church thought that the pamphlet was written by a churchman. When it discovered the true author of the pamphlet, Defoe was arrested and sentenced to imprisonment. In order to humiliate him the government had him pilloried three times. Before it he wrote a poem called Hymn to the Pillory which at once became known all over London. While he was pilloried, with his head and wrists in the stocks, people came and threw flowers to him and sang the Hymn.His first and most 6. The Mature and Late Enlightenment. S. Richardson, H. Fielding, L. Sterne. . Mature Enlightenment (1740—1750). The didactic social novel was born in this period. It was represented by the works of such writers as Samuel Richardson (Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded; Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady), Henry Fielding (The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and other novels), and Tobias Smollett (The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker and other novels). Henry Fielding's works were the summit of the English Enlightenment prose. In The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling the hero, a charming, cheerful, kind-hearted man, has a number of adventures and meets with a lot of people from all walks of life. The novel is set in a poor country house, in an aristocratic mansion, in an inn, in a court-room, in a prison and in the London streets. This composition of the novel enabled the author to give an all-embracing picture of the 18 century England, to write "a comic epopee", as Fielding himself called his novel. He also elaborated a theory of the novel. In the introductory chapters to the eighteen parts of The History of Tom Jones he put forward the main requirements of a novel: to imitate life, to show the variety of human nature, to expose the causes of man's vices and to indicate ways of overcoming them. III. Late Enlightenment (Sentimentalism) (1750—1790). The writers of this period, like the Enlighteners of the first two, expressed the democratic bourgeois tendencies of their time. They also tried to find a way out of the difficulties of the existing order. However, while their predecessors believed in the force of intellect, they considered feelings (or sentiments) most important. The principal representatives of sentimentalism in the genre of the novel were Oliver Goldsmith (The Vicar of Wakefield) and Lawrence Sterne (Tristram Shandy, The Sentimental Journey) and in drama — Richard Sheridan (School for Scandal and other plays). The poetry of Robert Bums belongs to this period, too. Samuel Richardson is considered to be the creator of the family psychological novel. Among his most famous novels are the following ones: "Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded (1740 This story tells about Pamela who was a maid. Her master wanted to seduce her but she did not yield. As a result, the master fell in love with her and proposed to her. So here is the reward for her virtue. "Clarissa: or the History of a Young Lady" (1747-1748) - Ais novel is Richardson best one This book is often called the first tragic novel. This is a story of a young iady. Clarissa Harlowe, whose severe father wants to marry her against her will. So she decides to elope with her beloved. Lovelace. But then Lovelace betrays her and after all she dies an early death This novel is almost eight times longer than an ordinary modem novel. But the book was widely read in England and abroad in Richardson's days. Both the novels, "Pamela" and "Clarissa" are written in the epistle form. Henry Fielding is the father of the English social novel. "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling" (1749) is considered to be Fielding's best work. This is a social and family novel and gives a broad panorama of the life at that time. It is a combination of the traditional picaresque novel and many innovations (such as the first person narration, etc.). Tom Jones is a boy, found at the house of Mr. Allworthy. He is brought up there with love and kindness. Then he falls in love with the beautiful Sophia, the daughter of Squire Western. He does several other things that Mr. Allworthy does not like and as a result he is driven out of the house. In London Tom has manv various adventures and finally he meets Sophia there. So all ends well. Laurence Sterne is considered to be the father of the European sentimentahsm. Besides sometimes Steme was a parodist on the novels of other enlightenmenters. "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. Gentleman" (1760-1767) – this a very eccentric novel with long or short chapters, chapters written in English, French and Latin, with dots instead of words in the chapters, and with the main character only 5 years old at the end of the novel The book contains many funny personages. The plot of the novel is inconsistent. "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, by Mr. Yorick" (1768) - this was a novel that introduced some novelty into literature: here Mr. Yorick's feelings and thoughts are dealt with. It was a step towards psychology. And in a way Steme anticipated the literature of the beginning of the 20th century with its modernism and the stream of conscience technique modernists had.
4. The Greek Period (1823—1824). During the short months in Greece Byron wrote little: some lyrical poems, among them On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year, and his Cephalonian Journal in prose. THE CORSAIR POLITICAL POETRY The "Luddite" theme is quite important in Byron's poetical work. It is with this theme that he began his defence of the oppressed, his biting satirical poetry directed against the ruling classes. He first approached the "Luddite" theme in his speech in the House of Lords in 1812. He stood out against the ruling class of his country defending the men who broke weaving machines. Parliament passed a death sentence upon them. Byron's famous speech in defence of the weavers became a speech of accusation against the ruling classes. Four days after his speech in Parliament an anonymous Ode appeared in a morning newspaper. The title (Ode) was very ironic, because an ode is supposed to be a dignified poem, or a song, recited on formal occasions. Byron's Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill was a combination of biting satire, revolutionary romanticism and democratic thought. In the Ode the anonymous poet showed how to deal with the rebellious weavers, who came to their masters to ask for help. He suggested that the best thing to do was to hang them. This would save both the money and the meat they asked for. The poet stressed that men are cheaper than machinery; and if they were hanged around Sherwood Forest for breaking the machinery, it would improve the scenery. Those who had heard Byron in Parliament had no difficulty in recognizing the author of the Ode, for in the verse Byron repeated most of the thoughts and accusations expressed in his speech. In 1816, in Italy, when he heard of the disturbances caused by the Luddites he wrote his famous Song for the Luddites, in which he called upon the people to revolt against their tyrants. It is considered to be one of the first revolutionary songs in English classical poetry.
People closely connected with the French Bourgeois Revolution, and the time that preceded it. Doomney and son Dickens possessed an immense power of generalization which made all his characters look familiar and recognisable types. He used to repeat that the best compliment to him was to hear his readers say that he or she had known personally this or that one of his characters. The critical realistic approach to society was established by him at the very beginning of his creative life. His criticism of reality became sharper as his outlook and art matured. In the course of time the soft humour and light-hearted laughter of his first works gave way to mockery and satire. His novels were socially Effective because they drew the wide public's attention to various problems and made the authorities consider and introduce reforms into such spheres as education, law and others. Up to our days Dickens has remained one of the most widely read writers. He is loved and honoured by readers all over the world. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811—1863) W. M. Thackeray was born in Calcutta, India, in the family of an English official of high standing. Unlike Charles Dickens, he had a very good education both at school and at Cambridge University. Wishing to be an artist, he went to Europe to study art. For some time he lived among the artists of Paris. Later, when he returned to London, he learned that he had lost all his money, for the bank where it was deposited had gone bankrupt. Thus, he had to earn his living. He began to draw sketches, but was not very successful. He started writing satirical and humorous stories and essays. Later he wrote novels and delivered lectures. Thackeray wrote in the same years and under the same political conditions as his great contemporary Dickens did. Their works complement each other in presenting the life of the period. Dickens usually chose for his main character the "little" man with his troubles and difficulties.Thackeray directed his satire against the representatives of the upper classes of society, whom he knew better. Dickens was inclined to look for a happy solution that smoothed over the existing contradictions. Thackeray, by contrast, was merciless in his satirical attacks on the ruling classes. He considered that art should be a real mirror of life. He showed bourgeois society and its vices without softening their description. In this approach to art he was a follower of Jonathan Swift, the great satirist of the Enlightenment. Thackeray's most outstanding works are The Book of Snobs (under this title he published a collection of satirical essays) that appeared in 1846—1847, and his novel Vanity Fair (1847—1848). CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1816 -1855) EMILY BRONTE (1818 - 1848) ANNE BRONTE (1820 - 1849) Charlotte Bronte ' s principal work is the novel " Jane Eyre : An Autobiography (1847) which tells a story of a poor orphan - a girl whose high moral standards , her dignity, chastity, strong will helped her to get through all her life hardships and won her the respect and love of a man (Rochester). Her novel " Shir1ey " (1849) was inspired by the Chartist Movement and has class struggle for its background. Emily Bronte’s work was smaller in scope but not in importance. Her only novel "Wuthering Heights" (1847) combines elements of romantic aesthetics and literature on the one hand (Heatheliff has all the features of the Byronic character - he is a strong individual, very passionate, struggling for his independence) and realistic features on the other hand (all the characters, especially the main ones, are not only psychologically, but also socially motivated). Anne Bronte is known for her poems.
population, calling it "a white man's burden". In his books, however, the idea of colonial expansion concealed by descriptions of beautiful exotic things. Admiration for strength and activity sounded as a call to submit the weaker peoples: it was heard in the songs of the British soldiers, who were sent by their government to conquer India. At the very beginning of his work as a writer Kipling created his famous poems dedicated to the soldier of the British empire. His best ones, from the point of view of their poetical value, were the Barrack Room Ballads, addressed to Tommy Atkins. (Tommy Atkins generalized name for the British soldier.) These poems were written in the form of songs that could be sung to popular music: they have catchy, rhythmical refrains and their form is the traditional one of English folklore songs. But the content is entirely new; it is clearly military and racial, which is quite alien to English folklore. Among Kipling's best works are the Jungle Book, a collection of stories of the jungle, in most of which Mowgli, a child brought up by a pack of wolves, plays the major role. By means of a logical system of images, in very simple but carefully selected words, he constructs his stories of man's mastery over the alien forces of nature. He gives the jungle beasts Indian names that make the stories sound mysterious and exotic (Sheer Khan, Bagheera, Baloo, Kaa). Kipling was the first writer to get the Nobel prize for short stories.
in the rest of the world.THE WAR OF WORLDS This novel is many-levelled. We hear the author's question, addressed to all mankind: "What will happen to humanity if cold intellect triumphs over feelings and emotions?" This question is, at the same time, a call to people to reorganize their way of life. And, above all, it is a warning to humanity to avoid destructive wars. Thus, Wells revealed in his novels the possible negative consequences of technical progress. He showed how tragic the achievements in science could be if they were applied with destructive intentions. The pessimistic theme that the earth is a temporary phenomenon, and that the human race is determined to destroy itself, permeates all his work.GEORGE BERNARD SHAW (1856—1950)George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in a middle class family. In 1876 he came to London. After an unsuccessful career as a novelist he wrote art, music and book criticism for several periodicals. In his articles on drama he protested against the artificiality of the London theatre which at that time was full of shallow sentimental plays. He demanded that theatres should perform plays dealing with contemporary social and moral problems and should rouse people, make them think and suffer. He called the first cycle of his dramatic works — Widower's Houses (1892), The Philanderer (1893) and Mrs. Warren's Profession (1894)—Plays Unpleasant. They were unfavourably received by the public because they unmasked bourgeois espectability by exposing the true source of rich families' wealth. It were his witty comedies to which he gave the name Plays Pleasant—Arms and the Man (1894), The Man of Destiny (1895), etc. — that established his popularity. In these, as well as in Caesar and Cleopatra, he destroyed romantic illusions about some historical personages and showed the true motives of human actions. Shaw wrote over 50 plays including John Bull's Other Island (1904) and Saint Joan (1923). In the former he criticized England's colonial policy in Ireland. In the latter he gave his own dramatic interpretation of the character of Joan of Arc, the national heroine of France, also called the Maid of Orleans, who fought against the Englishmen during the One Hundred Years' War. One of his best known works is the comedy Pygmalion (1913), later turned into a popular musical My Fair Lady. His plays are, as a rule, based on paradoxical situations and dramatic discussions; they are full of brilliant witty dialogues. A lot of his remarks have become well known aphorisms. Here are a few of them: — A pessimist? A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself and hates them for it. — A lifetime of happiness? No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth. — He who can, does, he who can't, teaches. — The test of a man's or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel. Shaw was always very active in political and social life of his country. In his younger years he joined several literary and political societies. Thus, he was a member of the Fabian society which advocated gradual reforms as a way of social reorganisation, opposed to immediate revolutionary action. In his numerous essays he set down his socialist and collectivist principles; he supported women's rights, abolition of private property and radical changes in the voting system. He also stood for the simplification of spelling and punctuation and the reform of the English alphabet. Omission of the apostrophe in all contracted verb forms in his plays (cant for can't, youre for you're, whats for what's, etc.) Is due to his hope to initiate these Changes with his own writing. Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925.
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11. Modernism. J. Joyce and V. Woolfand their aesthetic programmes. D.H.Lawrence's work. Like many other European countries Britain was badly stricken by World War I, often called the Great War. Thousands of young Englishmen remained forever on the fields of France and Belgium, thousands more came home to die slowly and painfully of gas poisoning and wounds. The spirits of those who managed to survive were very low, too. They had entered the war full of romantic ideas and came out of it. Disillusioned and desperate as they had realized the futility and senselessness of it. These young people, as well as the writers who described them in their books, came to be called the "lost generation". The first post-war years saw a boost in industrial production, but the Depression, that is, the general economic crisis of 1929—1934, brought about unemployment, starvation and misery. Class contradictions became especially sharp and obvious. The General Strike of 1926 and several hunger marches from various parts of Britain to London demonstrated the desperate position of the common people. The complicated political situation in Europe especially in Germany (Hitler came to power in 1933) could not but affect Britain, too. The industrialists organized "The British Fascist Union", but the majority of people reacted negatively against it. Then came the Civil War in Spain, and the English workers showed their solidarity with Spanish republicans. They organized protest demonstrations and refused to load arms for the fascists. A lot of British people joined the International Brigade which fought against fascism in Spain. Among them was Ralph Fox (1910—1937), a publicist, a historian and a literary critic. In spite of his short life (he was killed in Spain) his work, especially his book The Novel and the People (1937), had a great impact on Literature. English writers reacted differently to the complicated and constantly changing situation of the 1910—1930s. Some of them continued the traditions of critical (social) realism, others preferred to turn away from the acute topical issues. They were searching for new themes and modes of expression, and fell under the influence of Decadence which at the beginning of the 20th century acquired the name of modernism. Modernism became the leading trend in the period between the two World Wars. MODERNISM At that time the works of Sigmund Freud (1856—1939), an Austrian psycho-analyst, professor of neurology, became very popular in England and had a great influence on the development of modernism. The attitude of modernists to life and Man is different from that of realists. Modernism is characterized by an absolute disregard for social problems, by a strong emphasis on the hero's private world, his feelings, reactions, subconscious life. It refuses to depict characters as determined by concrete historical conditions. Man is pessimistically shown as a primitive and low creature guided by instincts. In order to reflect the workings of man's subconsciousness modernists employed a special technique of writing known as "the Stream of consciousness". It consists in recording a person's every thought, impression and sensation without any selection. The most outstanding representatives of modernism were James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence. JAMES JOYCE (1882—1941) James Joyce was born in a well-to-do Irish family in a small town near Dublin. His father was interested in politics and his mother was a very religious woman. His parents' views made a very important influence on his outlook and creative work. He was educated at two Jesuit Colleges from where he went to Dublin University to study history and literature. His articles written when a student (1899—1902) give a good idea about the formation of his aesthetical views. It was then that he became utterly engrossed in the Dublin literary atmosphere which became a new Irish Renaissance. The leaders of that movement took a great interest in the ancient Irish traditions, in its folklore. They fought for the formation of national literature and the revival of national language which the English had endeavoured to do away with. His article The Day of the Crowd (1901) is typical of his further position. His point of view was that a real artist could only create abroad, far from his native land. After the university he went to Paris to study medicine. There he met Nora Barnacle, his future wife. His mother's sudden illness, however, made him return to Ireland. Yet, the political situation in Ireland, which had been struggling for many centuries for its liberation from English oppression, forced him and his wife to leave the country. However, Joyce missed his native land during all the thirty-seven years that he lived on the continent. As one of his biographers said, he left Ireland forever to return to it on every page of his books. He died in Switzerland, in January 1941 and was buried there. In 1914 his first book Dubliners appeared in print. The stories in |
it were true to life, they conveyed the gloomy atmosphere that ruined the hopes of the Irish intellectuals. In 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published. Its plot is complicated and much of it is autobiographical. The novel consists of three parts and tells the reader of Stephen Dedalus' childhood, adolescence and youth, yet the form of presentation is untraditional. The book includes a number of fragmentary, disconnected episodes presented through the hero's perception. The reader has to work hard to put them together and to follow the main themes of the novel: family, politics, religion and art. Gradually the reader comes to know about the complex political situation in Ireland which was closely interwoven with religious issues. He also traces the painful process of Stephen Dedalus' growing up, the development of his relations with his parents, his loss of faith and hesitations about his future career. The "stream-of-consciousness" method, of which Joyce is considered to be the initiator, is especially obvious in the last chapter of the novel. Here the author presents the reader with a new form of writing: short notes in which the main character puts down his disconnected thoughts: Joyce's contemporary, Virginia Woolf, in her turn, showed through the "stream-of-consciousness" the tragic aspects of human life and the way people were bound together by memories, reactions and obsessions. VIRGINIA WOOLF brought together English intellectuals who were followers of Freud in a literary circle known as the "Bloomsbury group".' Virginia Woolf's best work, Mrs. Dalloway (1925), is an outstanding example of psychological prose of the 20th century. The novel shows Clarissa Dalloway spending one day of her life preparing for an evening party. This begins at nine in the morning when she goes out to buy flowers for her party, and finishes at dawn the next day. Here Woolf portrays the English society: the Nobility, the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the middle classes. She depicts every detail of a situation with vivid, impressionistic strokes. However, she never arranges these strokes rationally, but makes them "stream" through the minds of her characters. Woolf's other profoundly psychological novels are To the Lighthouse (1927), The Waves (1931), Between the Acts (1941). The name of D. H. LAWRENCE (1885—1930) is worthy of special attention. He was an admirer of Freud, too. At the same time, however, he adhered to realism in art. The son of a Midland miner, brought up in a working class environment, Lawrence, for the first time introduced in English literature the working man in his everyday life, paying much attention to his inner, private world. The working people in Lawrence's novels are described as respectable, sensible, shrewd men. The major novel that brought him success is Sons and Lovers (1913). Like the author, the main character Paul Morel was brought up in a working class environment. His life is greatly affected by the conflict between his parents — a rough, unambitious father and an intelligent and refined mother. Paul's mother has one passion in her life — a passion for her sons. And this strong feeling affects Paul's private life. He realizes that he cannot really love any woman. When his mother dies he finds himself quite alone. Much attention is given to the detailed and precise descriptions of men's feelings, the subconscious, to the world of natural human instincts. Lawrence's firm belief was that all the social injustice in the world could be overcome by love and sincere relations between people. The idea also permeates his other novels – The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), Lady Chatterley Lover (1928). Virginia Woolf lived in the suburb of London, called Bloomsbury. There the members of the group met and discussed their works. |
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12. Realism in the English post-War II literature. Ch.P.Snow, G.Greene, their major works. The Second World War influenced greatly the ideological and economic life of Britain. This could not but affect the development of English literature. The failure of the Labour Government that promised a lot and did nothing, the cold war and the atomic threat, the rapid intensification of the cultural and moral crisis — these were the factors in the 50s—60s which influenced the minds of the British people, particularly the intellectuals, and caused their disillusionment.The continuous arms race and the growing threat of a third world war led to a new wave of the anti-war movement which developed on a wide scale and involved millions of British people. All this was reflected in the literature of that time. GRAHAM GREENE(1904—1991) Graham Greene was born at Berkhamsted, near London. He was educated at Oxford. From 1926 to 1930 he was sub-editor of the London Times. He started writing in the late 20s. He wrote a lot of short stories, critical essays, travel books plays and novels. He travelled a good deal and his novels are set in various countries of the world. Since the beginning of his literary career Greene has been writing in two veins — the so-called "serious novels" and the "entertaining novels". While the former are generally a meditation on the psychology of man, the latter are more of the detective type of novel. The group of "serious novels" is represented by The Man Within (1929), England Made Me (1935), The Power and the Glory' (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), The Quiet American (1955), A Burnt-Out Case (1961). The "entertaining novels" are: Stamboul Train (1932), A Gun for Sale (1936), The Confidential Agent (1939), Loser Takes All (1955), The Ministry of Fear (1968) and others. The borderline between these two groups is, however, vague because the former are often constructed along detective or adventure lines while the latter often pose serious problems.Greene's novels touch on the burning political issues of the day — the American war in Vietnam in The Quiet American (1955), the people's struggle against the reactionary dictatorship in Haiti in The Comedians (1966), racism in South Africa in The Human Factor (1978), political terrorism in Getting to Know the General: the Story of an Involvement (1984). The social and political events serve as a background against which the problems of an ethical nature are dealt with. Greene's novels present a profound search into the depths of human psychology and are permeated with philosophical reflections on the nature of man and the human predicament. His last novel The Captain and the Enemy (1988) shows how complex and unpredictable human characters are. It treats of love and hatred, of devotion and betrayal. The major conflict in several of his novels occurs between believers, who live according to the law of the Church and unbelievers. And yet Greene avoids the easy solution that the believer will be saved and the unbeliever damned. He tries to find a way to reconcile these opposite views. This idea permeates the novel Monsignor Quixote (1982) and his public speeches, one of which was delivered at the International Forum "For Nuclear-Free World, for Survival of Humanity" held in Moscow in 1987. Well-known are also his short stories and funny entertaining tales for children such as The Little Fire Engine (1950), The Little Horse Bus (1952) and others. His last collection of short stories was prophetically headlined The Last Word (1990). The title story of the collection sounds as the writer's behest to the living. It asserts the necessity of faith for every individual and for society at large. Greene is a contradictory writer; theoretically he is noncommittal; in his works, however, the characters are forced to take sides, or to make a choice, in the political struggle. The novel Doctor Fischer of Geneva, or the Bomb Party (1980) disclosed a new aspect of Greene's literary skill. This relatively short work contains a sombre satire on the modem bourgeois world. It exposes the overwhelming power of money and the limitless lust for it in the rich. Greene's novels are characterized by a great force of conviction, concreteness of description and precision in rendering characters and situations. These, as well as the wide scope and preoccupation with the most urgent problems of the day, make Greene one of the most prominent writers of contemporary world literature. CHARLES PERCY SNOW (1905—1980) C. P. Snow is one of the most outstanding realist writers of the 20th century England. He was bom in Leicester in 1905, the second of the four sons. Snow's father was a clerk in a shoe factory. Charles was educated in Alderman Newton Grammar School, where, in the sixth form, he specialized in science. Later he worked as a laboratory assistant at the same school, while studying for a university scholarship. At Leicester University College in 1927 he took a First Glass Honours degree in chemistry. After that he worked on molecular physics and became a Fellow of Christ's College in 1930. When World War II broke out. Snow joined the Civil Service and was engaged in |
Selecting scientific personnel. Alongside with his public activities Snow devoted himself to literature. His first novel was a detective story Death Under Sail (1932). Literary fame came to Snow when in 1940 he started publishing a series of novels under the general title of Strangers and Brothers. In took him more than a quarter of a century to finish his work comprising eleven novels, the most important ones being: The Light and the Dark (.1947), Time of Hope (1949). The Conscience of the Rich (1958), The Affair (1960), Corridors of Power (1964). His last novel of the series was finished in 1970, it is called Last Things. The title of the series came from the title of the first novel, Stangers and Brothers (1940). It is about George Passant, a qualified clerk in a solicitor's firm. His strong personality makes him the focus of a group of young people who follow him. The life of George Passant is tragic; he is an idealist, who believes in man and society, and the ability of man to live in freedom. But his best dreams are frustrated and life shows its darker side. The title of the series is highly symbolic. People are "strangers" if they live alone, isolated from their environment. But there is something uniting all of them: griefs and sorrows, happiness and joy which make all of them "brothers". The limits of these notions are very frail, for today's "strangers" may become tomorrow's "brothers", and vice versa. Thus the main problems of all the novels are as follows: what makes people brothers? What should a man do to survive in a hostile world? All these novels are united by one main character, Lewis Eliot. Through him Snow set out to examine and portray the life of an English man in the post-World War I years. Eliot is clearly a man of modern society: he is ambitious, anxious to gain comfort and power. He understands that to achieve these he must struggle and compromise. Snow is realistic in his description of the vast labyrinths of a bureaucratic society where the individual, if he has no guidance, has to look for the way out himself. He is a master of the social portrait, too. In his series of novels he creates a gallery of typical representatives of all the strata of contemporary society. THE WORKING-CLASS NOVEL An important development of the 1950s and early 1960s was the emergence of the working-class novel. By this time the "angry young men" had shown the first signs of reconciliation with the existing reality. In fact, the reading public was expecting something new and fresh. The working-class novel of the 50s-60s brought new themes into the proletarian English literature. First of all they introduced a new working class hero, with his aimless protest and passionate fury against everything and everybody. Another peculiarity of the working class novels is a strong emphasis on the workers' private life. The first books were very favourably greeted by the English bourgeois critics, because the hero introduced by the writers agreed with the Labour ideal of the young worker. The reading public and the critics saw in the books of Sillitoe, Chaplin, Barstow and others the true representation of the working class life, the sincere attempts of the writers to achieve a better understanding of life conflicts, to solve some of the urgent problems of our times.
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13. Literature of the “lost generation”. E. Hemingway. S. Fitzgerald. Many historians call the 1920s the roaring 20s or the Jazz Age. On the one hand American people were recovering from the tragedy & trauma of World War I. Those, who had taken part in the war, had come back home crippled either physically or morally or both. They tried to adjust themselves to the post - war mode of life, but often failed to do that as the dramatic war experience had ruined their old set of ideals & values, & made them unable to adopt themselves to the changed conditions. These people as well as the writers who described such people got the name of the “lost generation”. — Ernest (his real name was Miller) Hemingway (1 899 -1961); —Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940); —John Don Passes(1896- 1970) -"Three Soldiers" (1921); —William Harrison Faulkner (1897 - 1962) - "Soldier's Pay" (1926) - his first novel based on the problem of "the lost generation", it was not very successful, especially in comparison with the two titans of American "lost generation" writers - Ernest Hemingway & Francis Scott Fitzgerald. On the other hand the 20s with their industrial boost also saw the great upheaval of the moods of the people, their desire to compensate for the austerity & deprivations of the war years. Moreover World War I turned out to be quite profitable for America as it was, the only country which really profited from the war. So the Americans partied, partied & partied. Besides the 20s can be summed up as the age of prosperity, entertainment (jazz music gets enormous popularity) & fashion. In the 30s the situation changed drastically because of the Great Depression (not only in America but in the whole world). The living standards dropped very low. There was a rise of proletariat movement in America The 30s are sometimes called the red 30s, as society was oriented on socialist ideas. So the Depression & the natural disasters which aggravated the economic disaster – all this was naturally reflected in literature (especially in realistic literature). One of the best books on the 30s was John Ernest Steinbeck's (1902 - 1968) novel "The Grapes of Wrath (1939) a story a family in Oklahoma which is a victim of the natural disasters & the economic crisis. They have to move to California - a sort of "promised land". And the author depicts their sufferings very well. The writers of that day tried to reflect the everyday life of common people, they showed people's search for the "promised land" & showed that there was no such land. Steinbeck's personages also move from place to place to find a better life.
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14. Realism of the XXth century. J. Galsworthy, G.Greene JOHN GALSWORTHY came of well-to-do bourgeois family; after graduating from Oxford University He became a lawyer but soon abandoned this profession to take up literature. He began to write in the last years of the 19th century, but his first works were not very successful. His best novels were written in the first decade of the 20th century. In them the reader finds a reflection of the opposition of the progressive-minded people to imperialism, to Britain's Boer War adventure. In 1904 Galsworthy wrote The Island Pharisees. In it he attacked the British privileged classes. He criticized them for being content with the bourgeois way of life; he stressed the fact that their minds had become inert and lazy. In 1906 Galsworthy's best novel appeared. It was The Man of Property. He achieved great heights of generalization in this work. In it he told the story of the upper middle class that dictated its laws to the country. During the period 1907—1918 Galsworthy turned to different subjects. He wrote many novels and plays. His main object, however, always remained that of reflecting social contradictions and trying to find a humanist solution to them. Galsworthy paid great attention to the composition of his novels. Thus, the composition of The Man of Property is thoroughly worked out. The events are presented so vividly that the chapters may be easily staged, for instance At Home, Dinner at Swithin 's, June's Treat and others. Galsworthy's "feeling" for the language may be compared with a painter's "feeling" for colour. His choice of words is so accurate that it is difficult to paraphrase his sentences. He makes use of irony when describing his characters and the weaknesses of his own class. John Galsworthy's contribution to the development of the English novel was very important. He was nearer than Wells and Shaw to his predecessors, the critical realists of the first half of the 19th century. Galsworthy brought the novel back to its former heights by creating a real "document" of the epoch, a deep, realistic picture of the bourgeois class. The Forsyte Saga, his greatest achievement, is the culmination of English critical realism of the early 20th century. GRAHAM GREENE (1904—1991) Graham Greene was born at Berkhamsted, near London. He was educated at Oxford. From 1926 to 1930 he was sub-editor of the London Times. He started writing in the late 20s. He wrote a lot of short stories, critical essays, travel books plays and novels. He travelled a good deal and his novels are set in various countries of the world. Since the beginning of his literary career Greene has been writing in two veins — the so-called "serious novels" and the "entertaining novels". While the former are generally a meditation on the psychology of man, the latter are more of the detective type of novel. The group of "serious novels" is represented by The Man Within (1929), England Made Me (1935), The Power and the Glory' (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), The Quiet American (1955), A Burnt-Out Case (1961). The "entertaining novels" are: Stamboul Train (1932), A Gun for Sale (1936), The Confidential Agent (1939), Loser Takes All (1955), The Ministry of Fear (1968) and others. The borderline between these two groups is, however, vague because the former are often constructed along detective or adventure lines while the latter often pose serious problems. Greene's novels touch on the burning political issues of the day — the American war in Vietnam in The Quiet American (1955), the people's struggle against the reactionary dictatorship in Haiti in The Comedians (1966), racism in South Africa in The Human Factor (1978), political terrorism in Getting to Know the General: the Story of an Involvement (1984). The social and political events serve as a background against which the problems of an ethical nature are dealt with. Greene's novels present a profound search into the depths of human psychology and are permeated with philosophical reflections on the nature of man and the human predicament. His last novel The Captain and the Enemy (1988) shows how complex and unpredictable human characters are. It treats of love and hatred, of devotion and betrayal. The major conflict in several of his novels occurs between believers, who live according to the law of the Church and unbelievers. And yet Greene avoids the easy solution that the believer will be saved and the unbeliever damned. He tries to find a way to reconcile these opposite views. This idea permeates the novel Monsignor Quixote (1982) and his public speeches, one of which was delivered at the International Forum "For Nuclear-Free World, for Survival of Humanity" held in Moscow in 1987. Well-known are also his short stories and funny entertaining tales for children such as The Little Fire Engine (1950), The Little Horse Bus (1952) and others. His last collection of short stories was prophetically headlined The Last Word (1990). The title story of the collection sounds as the writer's behest to the living. It asserts the necessity of faith for every individual and for society at large.
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Greene is a contradictory writer; theoretically he is non-committal; in his works, however, the characters are forced to take sides, or to make a choice, in the political struggle. The novel Doctor Fischer of Geneva, or the Bomb Party (1980) disclosed a new aspect of Greene's literary skill. This relatively short work contains a sombre satire on the modem bourgeois world. It exposes the overwhelming power of money and the limitless lust for it in the rich. Greene's novels are characterized by a great force of conviction, concreteness of description and precision in rendering characters and situations. These, as well as the wide scope and preoccupation with the most urgent problems of the day, make Greene one of the most prominent writers of contemporary world literature.
Plato and tried to work out some positive ethical ideals. In her lectures as well as the novels of the period — The Nice and The Good (1968), Bruno's Dream (1969), A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970) — Murdoch asserted that good deeds were the most powerful means to overcome one's loneliness. An illustration of this thesis is Diana's (Bruno's Dream) resolution to dedicate herself entirely to the care of her decrepit old father-in-law after her dramatic separation from her husband. Another cornerstone of her neo-platonic philosophy is the problem of love. Murdoch investigates different manifestations and aspects of this human feeling. She shows selfish and disinterested, passionate and rational love, love verging on hatred and self-sacrificing love. The most elevated form of love, in Murdoch's opinion, is the one that inspires man for artistic creation. Characteristic of the writer's preoccupation with this theme is the novel The Black Prince. THE BLACK PRINCE The main themes in the novel The Black Prince (1973) are those of love and chance. It seems that everything in people's lives happens by chance, that there is something fatal that influences human destinies. In the author's opinion this fatality is created by the people themselves, by their passions, deeds and intentions. Bradley Pearson, the main character of the novel, is, quite by chance, a person who influences the lives of all other personages, especially, of the Baffin family. Arnold Baffin is a prosperous commercial novelist. His private life is one of routine. Rachel, his wife, once persuades herself that she has fallen in love with Bradley Pearson, who seems attached to her. Very soon, however, Pearson understands that he loves Julian, Baffin's daughter.The action of the novel develops quite rapidly. Bradley and Julian have a few happy days together. Then due to her parents they are forced to separate. Bradley Pearson is unjustly accused of the murder of Arnold Baffin. He is put into prison and dies there. It is there that he creates his best novel, in which he tells of his life and love. The following short extract from the novel renders Pearson's, and, evidently, Murdoch's own idea of the present-day world and man's destiny in it: Since the 1970s Murdoch's novels such as A Word Child (1975), The Sea, the Sea (1978), The Philosopher's Pupil (1983), The Book and the Brotherhood (1987) and others have acquired a more definite social background. The construction of the plot has become less schematic, the characters have grown more life-like and their actions have become more socially motivated though therelations between the personages of her novels are as always complicated and entangled. Her last novels were The Message to the Planet (1989), The Green Knight (1994) and Jackson's Dilemma (1995). Murdoch is a contradictory writer. A search for moral values goes in her novels side by side with the assertion that the world is a place of continuous suffering where there is no room for any sort of lasting ties or relations. Alongside a truthful presentation of life she creates a mystical world. Her work is marked with an original endeavour to reflect the complicated relations between people in the world of today
17. Critical Realism in American Literature. M. Twain, J. London, Th.Dreiser, J. Salinger. American literature within this period is noted for its realistic character. And literature between World War 1 & World War II is mostly of modernist character. The writers of this period realized that their task was not to take the reader away into the past or into some remote exotic places like Melville, or Cooper, or Poe did but that they should deal with everyday realities. Unlike Romaiitic characters who were usually outcasts, the characters of realislic novels were typical people of their time & place. Like the European counterparts American writers stressed the link between Man & society that is influence of society on the formation of human character. All these writers in some way dealt with the notion of the so called American Dream (the idea of having an opportunity to go "from rags to riches" - such a "poor-boy-gets-rich-myth"), explaining it, showing its reverse side. The most prominent writers of this period are: Mark Twain (originally - Samuel Clemens) (I 835 - 1910); Jack London (1876 - 1916); Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (1871 -1945). Mark Twain was born on the Mississippi River, state Missouri. He spent his first 40 years there. The sight of the Mississippi River inspired him to become a pilot. Later it inspired his many works. He worked as a pilot for many years, his literary pseudonym came from this experience: his name means "two fathoms deep". So he commemorated his love to the river in this way. 1) The 1st period of his literary work (50 - 60s) was closely connected with & based on folklore popular stories, fairy tales, legends & tall tales (a tall tale is a humorous exaggerated story, common on the American frontier, often focusing on cases of superhuman powers). The most famous of his stories of the 1st period is "The Celebrated Gumping Frog of Calabenes Country". M. Twain's greatest merit was the introduction of the life language of his countrymen into literature. 2) The 2nd period of his work was the most productive & significant. A number of fantastic or imaginary tales were written at that time (the so called novels of the Old Times): —"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876) it is a book for & about children (!),yet it touches upon some serious matters. Its hero hates protests against hypocrisy, religious fanatism & philistinism; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884) - it is a sequel of the book about Tom Sawyer. — "T he Prince and the Pauper" (1882) - it is one of Twain's three novels dedicated to the history of Europe (here - the middle of the 16th c.) The story deals with such historical figures as King Henry III & his son Edward, who alter his father's death became King of England but very soon died as he was a very weak boy. Twain did not show the historical process & event, and actually all his novels of this kind are of entertaining character. Behind the episode of English history lies Twain's hidden democratic idea. Through the adventures of Tom Canty - a poor hoy from the slums of London - Twain proves that the Royal power is not a gift given by the Heaven, and anyone who is endowed with wit & prudence can run a state; -- “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc" (1896) - "A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur" (1889) for 3) The 3rd period of Twain's work (the last) was marked by his satirical attitude towards reality. In his publicist works & his numerous short stories he exposed many vices of American life, as well as political affaires & intrigues in many other parts of the world. One of the best-known works of the time are the satirical story "The Man That Corrupted Hadleydurg" (the themes here are money worship & hypocrisy), satirical pamphlels "We are Americanizing Europe", "As I Run for the Government” (a story), “The United States of Linchendom” (about racism in the USA). Ernest Hemingway stressed the significance of Twain's "Huckleberry Finn": "All American literature had come out of the novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". Indeed this book influenced American literature a lot. Besides Twain's merit also lies in the fact that he considerably broadened the language of literature by bringing into it the life language - colloquial language - of common people, by making use of its various dialects.
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. 15. Philosophical novel. W. Golding, I. Murdoch. The political and social developments in the second half of the 20th century led the literary men of England to serious meditations on the future of mankind, the aim of man's life, man's place in society. These problems are the essence of the philosophical novel which came into existence in the early 1950s. The most prominent representatives of the genre are William Golding, Iris Murdoch, Colin Wilson and, to a certain extent, John Fowles. Much of their work is influenced by the existentialist philosophy of the French modernists Sartre, Camus and others. Existentialism is a view of the world that stresses the uniqueness and isolation of individual experience in an indifferent and even hostile universe. Human existence is meaningless and absurd, yet people somehow can and do control their destiny through freedom of choice. Thus, ultimately every person must take responsibility for whatever he or she does. When individuals realize that they are completely responsible for their decisions, actions and beliefs, they are overcome by anxiety. They try to escape from this anxiety by ignoring or denying their freedom. The existentialists criticize this flight from freedom and responsibility into self-deception. They insist that individuals must accept full responsibility for their behaviour, no matter how difficult it may be. If a person wants to live a decent and meaningful life in the alien and absurd world one must become fully aware of the true character of the human situation and bravely accept it. None of the English writers followed the ideas of the French existentialists completely, yet existentialist motifs permeate their works. Their novels are marked by pessimism and fear. Most of their heroes are lonely despairing individuals, powerless in a hostile and chaotic world. The relations between people are usually characterized by indifference and alienation. Symbolism and allegory are the chief literary devices in the philosophical novel.WILLIAM GOLDING (1911—1993)William Golding denied any links with existentialism, yet his ideas are close to it. Golding was born in 1911 in Cornwall. He graduated from Oxford University. During World War II he served in the British Navy; later he worked as a school teacher in the town of Salisbury. The atrocities of fascists, the horrors of the war made him think of the nature of man and the future of mankind. All his novels, in one way or another, raise the problem of Good and Evil in man and society.This problem has occupied people's thoughts for a long time. In the 18th century philosophers and writers thought that man was born good and virtuous and it was the ugly environment that could sometimes spoil him. Yet they believed in the ability of man's reason to defeat Evil. The complicated atmosphere of the 20th century, the two world wars, the moral crisis of society, violence and crime characteristic of the modem world led some people, Golding among them, to see the cause of Evil in man's nature Like many others, Golding came to the pessimistic conclusion that evil was inherent in man, that man was bom with a disposition to egoism, greed and violence.He often presents his characters — either isolated individuals or small groups — in some extreme situations which bring out every man's basic traits, or his identity. Golding's major work of the last period is the Sea Trilogy which consists of Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989) set on an old ship bound for Australia during the Napoleonic wars. Like his other works the trilogy combines elements of several genres: a sea novel, a historical and a psychological ones. At the same time it is a profound philosophical fable dealing with such problems as man versus society and the contradictory prospects of human progress. For his contribution to world literature Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983. IRIS MURDOCH (1919—1999) Iris Murdoch may well be considered the initiator of the genre of the philosophical novel. In her novels one can find the most typical examples of correlation between philosophical ideas and life. She was born in Dublin into an Anglo-Irish family. She graduated from Oxford University and after the war lectured in philosophy both at Oxford and Cambridge. In her philosophical studies she followed Sartre, a famous French philosopher, and his existentialism.The novel, in her opinion, should touch upon the complicated moral aspects of man's life and the enigma of his individuality. Philosophical truths, she thinks, should be presented not in the form of abstract ideas but through well-drawn portraits of characters. Her early novels are practically devoid of a coherent plot and consist of a number of disunited episodes, reflecting the chaos characteristic of the modem world. All her novels have a more or less similar composition: they contain a set of five or six personages who interconnect and interact with each other. In the late 1960s there came a change in Murdoch's philosophical orientation. She took up the ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher 16 Two generations of American romanticism. F. Cooper, E.A. Poe, W. Irving, N. Hawthorne, H. Melville. In the early 19th century, New York city was the center of American writing. Its writers were called «Knickerbockers», and the period from 1810 to 1840 is known as a «Knickerbockers era» ща American literature. The name comes from The History of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1890), by Washington Irving(1783-1859). Irving’s book created a lot of interest in the history of New York, but it was a humorous rather than a serious history of the city. More importantly the book is a masterpiece of comedy which laughs at the Puritans. Neither Washington Irving nor any of the other Knickerbockers tried to speak for the whole country. For them the American world tended to stop at the borders of New York State. James Fennimore Cooper(1789-1851) on the other hand, wanted to speak for all America. His books contain much criticism of American society and the American personality and severely criticized the worst parts. Cooper’s character’s are Americans, not New Yorkers. He describes such American character types as pioneers, the Indian and the Yankee sailor. There were other poets and writers which can be referred to the period of an American Renaissance. Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864) always writers about man in society, rather then bout simply man in nature. His characters usually have some secret guilt or problem which keeps them at a distance with other people. He carefully describes the psychology of his characters. Loneliness and waste are themes of his first novel, Fanshawe. His best work is connected with the Puritan past of the 17th century New England. This is Scarlet Letter. It is considered to be masterpiece. It is the study of adultery. Hester is forced to wear a red letter «A» on her dress, showing the world that she is adulteress. In Herman Melville’s(1819-1891) fiction, man lives in a world divided into 2 warring parts: Good against Evil, God against Satan, the head against the heart. Melville has a tragic view of life: he seems to feel that the universe itself is working against the human happiness and piece of mind. Melville’s most important experiences in life started when he became a sailor at the age of 20. On board ship, he was deeply shocked by the life of the sailors. His stories are always more then simple sea adventures. Typeewas quite popular. The hero escape from his ship and lives among the tribes of cannibals(the Typee) . He finds them happy, morally pure and better then Europeans. But they do kill and eat other human beings. Omoo continues the adventures of Tom, the hero of Typee. Both novels contrast civilization with primitive life,. Writing these novels helped to prepare him for Moby-Dick, perhaps the greatest novel of American literature. Unfortunately the public didn’t like it . It was many years before the genius was recognized. Edgar Allan Poe(1809-1849) was another writer interested in psychology and the darker side of human nature. Poe made important contribution to American literature in 3 areas: the short stories, literary criticism, and poetry. His method was to put his characters into unusual situations. Next he would carefully describe their feelings of terror and guilt. The greatest examples are The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat. The interest in Poe’s poetry is in its sound, rather than its content. He constantly experimented with ways to make it musical.
Theodore Herman Dreiser was born in the state of Indiana in an immigrant family of a weaver; from his early age he knew poverty. He managed to attend Indiana University for a year but then he had to supplement this lack of education by reading. He had to do many off jobs. In 1892 he began to work as a newspaper reporter. In 1897 he abandoned journalism for literary work. He wrote a great number of publicist works throughout all his life. All his novels deal with the notion of the American Dream, which as popular through propaganda & the works of some second rate but very prolific, prosperous & quite popular writers. Dreiser showed the other side of the so called "from rags to riches" or "a-poor-boy-gels-rich" myth. At thst time there was a writer in the USA Horatio Alger (a teacher at a boys' school) who wrote 130 novels all telling of a successful career of a poor boy who gets rich, acquires wealth & position owing to his wit, or a successful marriage, or something else, Dreiser's novels showed the reverse side of this American Dream - he tried to draw the reader's attention to the fact that the very system in the USA makes a person sacrifice his humanity for the sake of achieving this Dream of Success. And this money worship is usually accompanied by moral fall & degradation (this problem was already touched upon in his first novel, mentioned below, and actually that is why the American public was not ready to recognize this book at once - the story criticized the very fundamental ideal of American life ). Dreiser was greatly influenced by Spenser's ideas about social Darwinism & on this basis he tried to develop his own theory of individual & social determinism. Being a naturalist (remember the concept of naturalism - "human life is very much alike animal life, he survives who is the fittest"), Dreiser avoided passing a moral judgment on his protagonists. Because of his first novel was not welcome in the USA, and for a while was even banned. In this book book "Sister Carrie" (1900) - he does not censure his heroine, who in the eyes of the public is a fallen woman, who has made her career by immoral means, i.e. By exploiting men, and earned her living in this way. First this book got popularity in Great Britain & only after that became widely known in the USA. His other famous works are the following ones: — "Jennie Gerhardt" (1927) - a story about a poor girl who preserves her moral chastity but is unhappy in her family life; a trilogies - "The Financier” (1912), “The Titan”; “The Stoic” (published in 1947, after the death of the author) – this trilogy is a thorough study of the life of a self-made man - Frank Calperwood, who succeeds in life at the expense of moral sacrifices. Much of his talent & time was spent on ephemeral values, so that he had suffered moral losses on his way to material success. It is a story of the rise of a mightiest American family. F. Cowperwood is a typical man of the American transition from capitalism to imperialism. Dreiser's masterpiece is the novel "An American Tragedy" (1925) which like his other hooks was based on true to life stories. A case of murdering a beloved by her boyfriend was quite a common case at that time. So, Dreiser got interested in the problem. The novel consists of 3 parts: —the 1st part - "Bildungsroman" - from the German verb "bilden" -"to bring up") which shows the life of Clyde Griffiths, that brought him to committing the crime; — the 2nd part the crime itself - it can becalled partially a detective story; — the 3rd part the court trial & Clyde Griffiths' slay in the death house & his thoughts about the crime, his repentance. "An American Tragedy" can be called a psychological novel. It exposes the reasons for the protagonist's nagic fate. Dreiser tried to refrain from passing any moral judgments. He just traces the states of Clyde's moral form, shows the subjective &. Objective reasons for his criminal act. He neither condemns nor justifies Clyde. Nevertheless he manages to prove that America with its American Dream (the unlimited possibilities for a young man to succeed) may lead its citizens to commit unlawful & criminal actions.
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18. Naturalism in American Literature. J. London. Jack London was born in California. The circumstances of his family life did not give him a chance to get a proper education but made him try different jobs: a sailor & quite odd occupations (for example he was involved into the Gold Rush which brought him to Alaska). He was greatly influenced by thesocialist ideas & joined the American socialist party, took part in marches & demonstrations. All these experiences were reflected in his writing which was also influenced by his reading on different, sometimes contrasting authors - Spenser (a philosopher - positivist), Marx, Engels, Nietzsche, Darwin, etc. The real fame came to London when he published his collection of stories "'The Son of The Wolf” Actually he wrote an enormous number of short stories. Their value varies - as London had decided to become a rich man one day, he was often like a literary time worker. Nevertheless many of his works are really brilliant; they are examples of real mastery & a combination of realism, romanticism & of course, naturalism. They certainly influenced the next generations of writers. Among London's best & most famous novels & most famous stories of the 1s' period of his work are the following ones: "A Daughter of The Snows" (1902);"The Call of the Wind" (1903) - a collection of animal short stories about a dog which becomes a wild wolf; “The White Fang” (1906) a collection of animal short stories;“Children of The Frost” (1902) - a collection of stories. London’s first works were all based on his dramatic experience of the life in the North. In many of them the writer turns to the theme of nature, human & animal life, and very often the animal world is shown kinder & fairer than the world of people. Besides their entertaining plot the stories show the great power of psychological insight & analysis. London’s social works are also very important & written at the beginning of the 20th c.: --- "The People of The Abyss" (1903) - it is a publicist work which gives a picture of the life of the working class people, proletariat, which London knew from his experience as he had spent several months in London & there he witnessed the misery & privations of the people as well as their struggle for belter wages & better conditions; — "The Iron Heel" (1907) this novel call be considered one of the very first books which touched upon the genre of dislopia in llic 20th c. & which raised the problem of future possibilily of fascism with its dictatorship of the Iron Heel; — "Martin Eden" (1909) - it is an autobiographical novel which traces all the life stages & hardships that London himself had overcome; the story deals with the eternal problem of the artist & society. The novel depicts the inner stresses of the American Dream as London experienced them during his meteoric rise from obscure poverty to wealth & fame. Eden, an impoverished but intelligent & hardworking sailor & laborer, is determined to become a writer. Eventually, his writing makes him rich & well-known, but Eden realizes that the woman he loves cares only for his money &fame. His despair over her inability to love causes him to lose faith in human nature. He also suffers from class alienation, for he no longer belongs to the working class, while he rejects the materialistic values of the wealthy whom he worked so hard to join. He sails for the South Pacific & commits suicide by jumping into the sea. Actually in this novel London predicts the end of his own life. He was disillusioned & disappointed with his dreams, ambitions & may have committed suicide – he took an overdose of drugs, though no one can say for sure whether he did it deliberately or by chance. Like many of the best novels of that time "Martin Eden" is an unsuccessful story. It looks ahead to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" in its revelation of despair amid great wealth. Jack London was often called a "socialist boy" by the press. But by the end of his life he got disappointed with the socialist idea & abandoned his membership in the socialist parly in 1916. London's psychological crisis was deepened by his chronic alcoholism & the shock he had experienced after the fire in his mansion house (London had put almost all his money into this house, the dream of which he had described in his novel "The Little Lady of the Big House". Thus the novels he wrote in his last years show his attempt to find some other ideals & life principles. These works concentrate mostly on family affairs and devoid of any social conflicts: "The Valley of the Moon" (1913) - a novel; "The Scarlet Plague" (1915) - a long short story;"Hearts of Three" (1920) - a novel.
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19. American Novel of the 30s. The Dreiser’s work. J.Steinbeck. The economic collapse of 1929 destroyed the happy, confident mood of America in the twenties. Millions of Americans lost their jobs as the nation entered the Depression era. Most writers turned to a new kind of social realism and naturalism. It showed the struggles and tragedies of ordinary people. In the early 30s the first reaction to the Depression was a literature of social protest. There was a powerful Marxist Proletarian Literature movement. The main intellectual magazine of the era was the Partisan Review, edited by Jewish intellectuals in New York. Michael Gold (1896-1967) wrote Jews without Money as a model for other Proletarian writers. His novels was also the start of the Jewish-American novel, which became an important type of literature in the 60s-70s.He describes the failure of the American Dream for those who had left Europe looking for a new and better life. Theodore Dreiser(1871-1945) was one of the America’s greatest writers. He and his characters ignored moral code. This attitude shocked public when Sister Carrie came out in 1900. Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire shows a new development in his thinking. He had already found life to be meaningless and morals to be absurd. Now he stressed the will to power. Dreiser’s greatest novel An American Tragedy reveals a third stage in his thinking: social consciousness. Clyde Griffiths thinks money and success will bring him happiness. When a pregnant girlfriend threatens to destroy this dream, he plans to kill her. At the last moment, he changes his mind, but the girl dies accidentally anyway. Since he had decided not to kill her, is he really responsible for her death? This becomes the main question during the trial. It is not fair. Society and its false moral code are far guiltier. John Steinbeck(1902-1968) His characters were driven by forces in themselves and in society: fear, hunger, sex, evils of Capitalism. Crime is often the result of these forces. In all of his plays, he combines a naturalistic way of looking with a deep sympathy for people. Like some other writers, he tried to paint large portraits of the national spirit. In The Grapes of Wrath he is not simply describing the experiences of a single family of individuals. He is really telling a story of a great national tragedy through the experiences of that one family. But the literary interest of the book is in its descriptions of the daily heroism of ordinary people. Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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20. Modernism in American literature. W. Faulkner THE Ist HALF OF THE 20th CENTURY. MODERNISM IN AMERICAN LITERATURE(1914-1940s) Many historians call the 1920s the roaring 20s or the Jazz Age. On the one hand American people were recovering from the tragedy & trauma of World War I. Those, who had taken part in the war, had come back home crippled either physically or morally or both. They tried to adjust themselves to the post - war mode of life, but often failed to do that as the dramatic war experience had ruined their old set of ideals & values, & made them unable to adopt themselves to the changed conditions. These people as well as the writers who described such people got the name of the “lost generation”. — Ernest (his real name was Miller) Hemingway (1 899 -1961); —Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896 - 1940); —John Don Passos (1896- 1970) -"Three Soldiers" (1921); —William Harrison Faulkner (1897 - 1962) - "Soldier's Pay" (1926) - his first novel based on the problem of "the lost generalion", it was not very successful, especially in comparison with the two titans of American "lost generation" writers – Ernest Hemingway & Francis Scott Fitzgerald On the other hand the 20s with their industrial boost also saw the great upheaval of the moods of the people, their desire to compensate for the austerity & deprivations of the war years. Moreover World War I turned out to be quite profitable for America as it was, the only country which really profited from the war. So the Americans partied, partied & parlied. Besides the 20s can be summed up as the age of prosperity, entertainment (jazz music gets enormous popularity) & fashion. In the 30s the situation changed drastically because of the Great Depression (not only in America but in the whole world). The living standards dropped very low. There was a rise of proletariat movement in America The 30s are sometimes called the red 30s, as society was oriented on socialist ideas. So the Depression & the natural disasters which aggravated the economic disaster – all this was naturally reflected in literature (especially in realistic literature), One of the best books on the 30s was John Ernest Steinbeck's (1902 - 1968) novel "The Grapes of Wrath” (1939) a story a family in Oklahoma which is a victim of the natural disasters & the economic crisis. They have to move to California - a sort of "promised land". And the author depicts their sufferings very well. The writers of that day tried to reflect the everyday life of common people, they showed people's search for the "promised land" & showed that there was no surely land. Steinbeck's personages also move from place to place lo find a better life. Ihe period between the two World Wars also saw the emergence ofmodernism, the trend which broke up with the traditional realistic manner of writing & which ignored the social aspect of literature & concentrated on the inner world of man.The vision & viewpoint became an essential aspect ol the modernist novels. Novelists gave up writing a straightforward narration & began to experiment with fictional points of view, that is - representing the world as it seen from the inside of the characters. Their narration became fragmentary, incoherent. The most prominent modernist prosaic writers were Henry James (1843 -1916) & William Faulkner (1897 - 1962), while Thomas Eliot (1888 - 1965) & St Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (1885 - 1972) excelled in modernist poetry William Faulkner had in his works both the traces of “the lost generation" & modernism. W.Faulkner was born in the state of Mississippi, he took part in World War 1 (but not for long as he was wounded & came back home). As it was already mentioned his works were influenced by the war experience ("Soldier's Pay") and often dealt wilh the theme of "the lost generalion". Besides he also represented the Southern School of Writers. The other writers who belonged to this school were: — Erskine Caldwell(1903 - 1987) his novels "'Tobacco Road” (1932) & “God’s Little Acre” (1933) put the author among the classics of'american literature; —Margaret Mitchell (1900 - 1949) the novel "Gone with the Wind" (1936) was her only novel; — thomasclayton Wolfe (1900 - 1938) - his first novel at once brought fame to its author – “Look Homeward, Angel”(1929); —Robert Penn Warren (1905 - 1989) - "All the King's Men” (1946) is his most famous novel; — Tennessee Williams (1911 - 1983) - he was a playwright. One of his most popular plays are "The Glass Menagerie” (1944), "A Streat Car Named Desire"(1947), "0rpheus Descending” (1957), etc. 21. American Drama. E.O'Neill, T. Williams. AMERICAN DRAMA The greatest American playwrights ol the 20"' century are Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953), Tennesse Williams (1911 - 1983), Arthur Miller (1915). American Drama of the l9th c. Was aimed at entertaining - vaudevilles & musicals were very popular. So, everything in drama was done for entertainment or melodrama. But the situation in Europe was similar). But at the end of the 19th c, & at the beginning of the 20th c. New tendencies began to appear in theeuropean theatre opposing the previous ideas that plays should he just "well - made". 0. Wilde (1854 - 1900) gave some wit & fantasy to English drama in hiscomedy of manners "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895), a comedy that is worthy to rank with Sheridan. But the really great dramatic genius of'the age was not to come from Britain but from Norway, Henric Ibsen's (1828 - 1906) work cannot be considered here but we must note the tremendous impact it made on the English theatre, and in the long run on the American theatre. Ibsen delved deep into the social & domestic problems of his age (problems common to both Scandinavia & England), and his presentation of a tailed marriage in "A Doll's House", and the sins of the fathers being visited on their children in “Ghosts", caused a sensation when William Archer translated these plays into English for production in London. George Bernard Show (1856 - 1950) defended Ibsen against the attacks of the critics, and stated that this was the way the new drama should go - it should not be afraid to shock, it should concentrate on ideas, it should rely on its own inner life rather than on external "accidents" like spectacle & comic turns. Shaw put hisown notions of drama into practice, and from "Widower's Houses" (1892) onward he dominated the European theatre & influenced American drama, too. August Strindherg was another playwright who introduced some novelty into drama. He & Ibsen introduced elements of expressionism into European drama. Like Shaw, Chekhov in Russia also introduced drama of ideas (remember his words – Люди едят, пьют, спят, я в это время проходят человеческие жизни” - so, nothing may happen, there may be quite few actions in the play, but the dramatism will be found in the principle of stoicism – people should live whatever the circumstances are). So American Drama had many examples to follow in the theatre developing, and had its own geniuses in this field. Drama in America focused on the evils of American society: its economic conditions & impossibility to achieve the American Dream. That is how the American Dream turns out to be the American Tragedy due to the impossibility to implement this dream! At that time many small theatrical companies began to appear in the USA. One of the most influential among them was the one of "province town players" (near Boston). They were dissatisfied with the productions on Broadway. E. O'Neill got acquainted with them. They all wanted to introduce new American drama. (By the way one of the members of this group was John Rid who wrote the famous book "The Ten Days That Shocked the World” His wife fell in love with E. O'Neill but for him art was more important than love). R. O'Neill found Broadway plays absolutely stupid. He read & was influenced by the works of Strindberg, Ibsen, Chekhov. In his works he managed to combine elements of expressionism with the traditional realism, mythology, classical tragedy (the Ancient Greek traditions) & usage of Biblical myths. In all his plays E. O'Neill touches upon the problem of dramatism of our human existence, nevertheless all his works differ from one another. E. O'Neill was born at the theatre. His parents were actors. And he was always behind the scene. His play "Long Day's Journey Into Night" (1956) is autobiographical. His will was not to publish the play until 25 years after his death but his wife broke the will & published it shortly after his death.
23.Afro-American Literature. F. Douglas, R. Wright, Toni Morrison. One of the most important themes in the twentieth-century American history is the struggle of black Americans for their human and social rights. In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln had ended the slavery of blacks. But their position in American society remained very bad, in the South especially. There was also a powerful organization called the Ku Klux Klan, which often used violence against blacks. Around the turn of the century, large numbers of blacks began moving from the South to the Cities of the North. In such cities as New York, their situation was somewhat better. In the North, young black artists and writers began their long struggle for social justice for their people. Richard Wright (1908-1960) was trying to bring «the heart that bleeds » out of hiding. He used powerful realistic techniques. The five short stories give a detailed description of the violence, which Southern white society uses against blacks. In his novel Native Son he uses naturalistic techniques to describe the social and psychological pressures on his black hero. Wright knows that the social situation of blacks causes them to become violent, too. Many critics compare Wright’s naturalism in this novel with that of Dreiser’s in American tragedy. Both works see human nature as basically good. It is society, rather than the individual, which is really bad. Toni Morrison. American author, who was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1993. In her work she has explored the experience and roles of black women in a racist and male dominated society. In the centre of her complex narratives is the unique cultural inheritance of African-Americans. She was in born in Lorain, Ohio, where her parents had moved to escape the problems of the southern racism. Her family was migrants. She grew up in the black community of Lorain. In 1949 she entered Howard University in Washington, American’s most distinguished black college. There she changed her name from «Chloe» to «Toni», explaining once that people found «Chloe» too difficult to pronounce. While teaching at the University and caring for her two children, she wrote her first novel The Bluest eye (1970). With the publication of Song of Solomon (1977), she gained an international attention. Written from a male point of view, the story dealt with Milkman Dead’s efforts to recover his «ancient properties», a cache of gold. In 1988 she received the Pulitzer Prize for the novel Beloved (1987). Her last novel is Love (2003).
temptations of Christ in his novel The Quarantine.Many postmodernist works have a self-reflexive, or metafictional, character which means that they deal with the problems of novel-writing. As a rule, these novels have writers or poets as protagonists. Typical of this are John Fowles's novels Daniel Martin (1977) and Mantissa (1982), as well as Peter Ackroyd's novels The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983) and Chatterton (1987).One of the key issues of postmodernist writing is the interrelation of literature and history. Postmodernists think that everything in this world, including history, can be viewed as a text, that is why the borderline between literature and history has become very vague. They both are intertextual, relying on the texts of the past. Postmodernists are keen on re-evaluating history, on giving their own interpretation of historical facts and events, blending, as in The French Lieutenant's Woman, historical and documentary materials with fiction. Barry Unsworth, the author of Losing Nelson, examines sceptically the myth of the British national hero and the whole process of constructing historical legends.The historicism of British postmodernist prose is different from the traditional treatment of the past. Unlike W. Scott and his followers, contemporary writers do not try to immerse their readers in the past, so that they should entirely forget the present. On the contrary, they keep reminding readers of it, stressing that the present is closely interwoven with the past. The means of dealing with history in postmodernist literature are very diverse. In his novel The French Lieutenant's Woman, set in the 19th century, John Fowles constantly draws parallels between the past and the present, thus stressing that, basically, human nature remains unchanged. Peter Ackroyd's novel The House of Dr. Dee is based on the monologues of two protagonists — our contemporary and his 16th century predecessor; and these monologues echo one another. Julian Barnes managed to "squeeze" the history of the world into 10 1/2 chapters. Tibor Fischer's novel The Collector Collector is about an ancient talking bowl which tells its long history to its 20th century owner.One of the most important historical themes is that of WW II. Writers keep turning to it in attempts to remind mankind of its tragic past and in the hopes that the remembrance of it will prevent another world disaster. James Ballard's autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun deals with an English teenager's dramatic experience in China during the Japanese occupation. In his two novels, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist in the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro shows how the war affected the lives of people who were not even directly involved. A number of novels — Time's Arrow by M. Amis, Too Many Men by Lily Brett and others — condemn the atrocities of the Holocaust. However, even when writing on explicitly moral issues, postmodernist writers try not to impose their views; they seem to leave it to their readers to pass their own judgement. This indeterminacy of the message and freedom of interpretation made some postmodernist scholars speak about the "death of the author” in modern literature, by which they meant that it is the reader, rather than the writer, who "owns" a literary work. Indeterminacy is one of the "games" that authors can play with their readers. Another kind of game is "an open end", when the author leaves his reader in the dark about the fate of his characters or gives alternative endings to his novels. A similar result is achieved by introducing multiple narrators, that is, letting several characters give different stories of the same events, thus forcing the readers to make their own interpretation of the plot. Indeterminacy affects the form of contemporary literature, too. Postmodernist authors tend to combine elements of various genres and forms of writing. Fiction can go hand-in-hand with documentary material, and historical facts; philosophy can intermingle with detective episodes or elements of horror stories. Thus, the traditional borderline between high and mass culture has been eliminated. In a word, "anything goes", as one critic put it. The literature today is no longer dominated by writers from the metropolitan Britain. A number of people bom in its former colonies and immigrants from other countries entered the British literary scene at the end of the 20th century. V. S. Naipaul (from Trinidad), Salman Rushdie (from India), Ben Okri (from Nigeria), Kazuo Ishiguro (from Japan) and others have brought a fresh stream into English literature |
All these writers dealt with the Southern Myth in their work's, with the process of disintegration of the American South up to the Civil War. The Southern Myth meant the idealization of the prewar (the Civil War) past, of the relationships & mentality of the Southerners before the war, the superiority of the South over the pragmatic & commercial North. All that "was gone with the wind theof the Civil War. And all that was replaced. The moral superiority of the Southerners, the elegance & refinement of the southern women - all was gone & replaced by the pragmatism & unscrupulousness after the war. In all such novels we feel the nostalgia for the past. The writers of the Southern School asserted the myth, on the other hand denounced it, showing that the roots of the postwar vices lie in the prewar reality. In all these works we see that it was a crucial thing that destroyed the lives of many characters. None of the Southern families managed to revive morally after the war. William Faulkner had in his works both the traces of “the lost generation" & modernism. W.Faulkner was born in the state of Mississippi, he took part in World War 1 (but not for long as he was wounded & came back home). As it was already mentioned his works were influenced by the war experience ("Soldier's Pay") and often dealt wilh the theme of "the lost generalion". Besides he also represented the Southern School of Writers. W. Faulkner said that "once he realized that his small country, the sign of a post stamp presents enough material to write about". "Sartoris” (1929) was Faulkner's first novel which really brought him fame (though it was already his 3rd published novel). In this book we find ourselves in the district ot Yoknapatawpha (which very much resembles the stale of Mississippi where Faulkner lived) with the town of Jefferson as its capital. "Yoknapatawpha is an Indian phrase which means “quiet flows the river here" (it is consonant with Sholohov’s Тихий Дон"). And in many of the writer's other novels we come across the characlers from this district, so the theme of Yoknapatawpha & its people is many times repeated in Faulkner's future works. About 14 other novels of Faulkner deal with life of families from there & trace the process of disintegration of these families: "As I Lay Dying" (1930);'Light in August” (1932); ''Absalom, Absalom!”(1936); —the trilogy: — "The Hamlet” (1940); "The Town"1957); “The Mansion" (1959) this trilogy shows a rise of a bourgeois family. All these novels are marked with a very deep insight into human psychology, They bring out the innermost thoughts & feelings of the characters. Besides the writer introduces the device of multiple narration, when one & the same story is told by several people (for example, "As I Lay Dying" consists of 59 monologues of the 15 characters). Faulkner thought that the position of the narrator, standing above the characlers is not applicable - many viewpoints should be shown. In the 30s Faulkner wrote under a great influence of Freud's ideas. And his so called "black novels" are full of scenes of madness, schizophrenia, insanity (such a piece modernism is his novel " The Sound and The Fury”(1929). And the trilogy shows his turn to realism. It traces two opposite processes: the downfall of the rich, aristocratic families & the rise of a capitalist family with the American Dream as their target i life "from ags to riches". Faulkner was really a Southern writer with the feeling of defeated mode of life of the Southerners after the Civil War. In his works he often shows the black slaves as primitive people who need the guidance. He also touches upon the blood relationships in the works (for example, the right of the landowner to have any black woman & children from her). Actaully aamericans are always likely to be quite optimistic but Faulkner was deeply influenced by Dostoyevsky and he was not afraid to show the worst sides of human nature. For his literaturry work he was awarded the Nobel Prize. And speaking about modernists of the time we can’t mention Henry James whose concept was “the many windowed house” (концепция множественности точек зрения) had a great influence on the development of the novel as a genre. The concept reflected the many-sided character of the perception of the reality by different personages, as they look on the world from different view points (this idea is very consonant with the ideas of Leo Tolstoy).
22.Postmodernism in British and American Literature. K. Vonnegut, J. Heller, G.Vidal. The 1960s were years of great cultural excitement and social pain. In the fifties, the Beats had called for «revolution in consciousness». It began among college students in the sixties. They were the «Hippies». They looked for new experiences through love, drugs and Oriental religions. Many people called it a joyful «second American Revolution». But this was also a decade when John F. Kennedy, the young American President, was murdered and the country began a long, hopeless war in Vietnam. By the middle of the sixties, the streets were filled with angry young people demanding equal rights for blacks and an end to the Vietnam War. By 1970, the national mood was very unhappy. The war was going badly and Americans were losing their confidence. Some writers of the sixties and seventies look deep into the nature of American values in order to understand what is happening in their souls. In many ways, they continue the psychological studies of the fifties. In certain important ways, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (b. 1923) established the mood of American fiction in the sixties. The hero is a pilot in WW II, called Yossarian. He tries to prove that he is crazy so that he doesn’t have to fight. But an Air Force rule(called Catch-22) says that «anyone who wants to get out of combat missions isn’t really crazy». Therefore he fails. The same «Catch-22» works in ordinary life. It stops him from marrying the girl he loves: «You won’t marry me because I’m crazy, and you say I am crazy because I want to marry you». This kind of humor is «black humor» because it makes us laugh at the darkness of cruelty. We cannot understand life’s «Catch-22» situations because they are absurd. They seem completely foolish. We may think we are free but the absurd language of society controls us. Kurt Vonnegut(b. 1922) is another master of black humor. During WW II, he was made a prisoner in Dresden, Germany. One night the city was fire-bombed by the British. He came out of the prison. The terrible experience of Dresden influenced Vonnegut as a writer. His first novel Player Piano describes a future world of computers and other scientific machines. Humans have become completely useless. They live bored, unhappy lives. Then they rebel and begin destroying the machines. Soon, however, they find that they cannot live without machines and they start them up again. Cat’s Cradle invents a false religion, based on «foma». (lies that make people happy). With this novel Vonnegut’s humor becomes very black, life seems to be a terrifying joke. Gore Vidal - American novelist, playwright. Gore Vidal grew accustomed at an early age to a life among political and social notables. Vidal learned about political life from his grandfather, senator. After graduating from Academy in New Hampshire, he served on an army ship in Alaska. Much of his time he devoted to writing. His first novel, Williwaw, was based on his wartime experiences. The story was written in the spirit of Ernest Hemingway. The novel was praised, although The city and the Pillar (1948) shocked the public with its homosexual main character. Later Vidal published three detective novels, some historical and contemporary novels, some books about the life of the US president Lincoln. Among Vidal's finest works are two novels which deal with power and sex. Vidal published a collection of essays, Armageddon (1987), in which he explored his love-hate relationship with contemporary America. His collected essays, Unites States (1993), won a National Book Award. It is a valuable introduction for those interested in American politics and literature. As an essayist Vidal has dealt with a wide range of subjects from literary to issues of national interest, and people he has known. It has been said, that "probably no American writer since Franklin has ridiculed, and mocked Americans more skillfully and more often than Vidal
24.POSTMODERNISM IN BRITAINThe last decades of the 20th cent saw an upsurge of literary production in England. However, literal seemed to take little interest in actualities. All critics noted the absence of "straight" novels, that is, works with a traditionally solid, coherent narrative. There were very few long prose works about the condition of England or the class system, or other themes so characteristic of the 19th century and pre-WW II novels focusing on the life of an individual or a family. Instead of writing about here and now, more and more writers set their novels either in the past or in the future They intertwined past, present and future and often sent their characters abroad. Alongside such well-established men of letters as Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch, John Fowles, Margareet; Drabble, who went on writing actively in the 1980s, there emerged a group of young writers who brought into literature new themes, ideas and techniques: Martin Amis, Graham Swift, lan mcewan, Salman Rushdie and others. Like other national literatures the English literature of the late 20th century was permeated with fin de siecle spirit — an apocalyptic feeling typical of the end of every century, more so the end of the millennium. Characteristic of this was the atmosphere of dismay and uncertainty. "The modem situation is full of suspense: no one, no one at all has any idea how things will turn out", said Martin Amis. The new period of literature came to be known as postmodernism. Since it emerged at the end of the century and of the millennium, it tended to re-evaluate the accomplishments of the preceding stages of literary history. One of the contemporary scholars said that postmodernist writing is characterized by distrust of great, or "master" narratives, by which he meant a skeptical attitude towards all the significant books about man and society, whose ideas seemed to be disproved by the realities of the 20th century. This scepticism and reevaluation resulted in parodying the works of predecessors. Parody, however, did not necessarily mean mocking them. Most often it took the form of revision: using old plots, images, characters for creating new literary works with new ideas, new attitudes and new approaches to eternal and topical problems. As one of the writers put it, "books always speak of other books and every story tells a story that has already been told". The presence of these incorporated images could be either explicit or implicit, but it was always clearly manifest. This phenomenon is called "intertextuality", that is, interaction of texts. Thus, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) by John Fowles, which was one of the first to display postmodernist traits, is all built on parallels with the works of 19th century writers. Not only do his characters resemble those of Dickens, Thackeray, Bronte and Hardy, but the novel abounds in numerous allusions to and quotations from the works of writers, poets, sociologists and thinkers of the previous age — Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Mathew Arnold, Alfred Tennyson, etc. The kind of literary creation which combines elements of other works is known as "pastiche". Shakespeare's work was very often referred to by postmodernist authors. There are echoes of The Tempest in Fowles' novels (The Collector and The Magus), in Iris Murdoch's novels (The Sea, the Sea and The Philosopher's Pupil), of Hamlet in Angela Carter's Wise Children and in Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince, as well as of Romeo and Juliet in Ben Okri's Dangerous Love and others. Other classical works of English literature were revised and reworked, too. W. Golding's Lord of the Flies, which is a parody of J.Ballantyne's novel The Coral Island, was also reworked by Emma Tennant in her The Queen of Stones, a novel about a group of girls from 6 to 12 years of age who became separated from their teacher and lost their way in the mist. They then invented a game in which they beheaded the commonest and the most miserable of them, acting out the story of Queen Elisabeth and her niece Mary Stuart. No less popular with postmodernist writers is the Bible. The novel The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by John Bames opens with the story of Noah's Ark as told by a woodworm. The same passage from the Scriptures was used by Michele Roberts for her novel The Book of Mrs. Noah, and in The Wild Girl she revised the story of Mary Magdalene. Muriel Spark built her novel The Only Problem on parallels with The Book of Job, one of the most remarkable parts of the Old Testament. And Jim Crace reworked the story of the desert with their national themes and a new, original mode of writing. This new phenomenon is called "postcolonial literature".Thus, the English literature of the last decades of the 20th century is rich and varied. John Fowles is the leading figure of English postmodernist literature. He belongs to the older generation of postmodernist writers while Martin Amis represents the younger JOHN FOWLES (b. 1926)John Fowles was born in the town of Leigh-on-Sea in Essex. Since 1950, on graduating from Oxford where he studied French language and literature, he worked as a teacher in France, Greece and England. In 1963 he gave up teaching to devote himself to writing fiction. His first novels — The Collector (1963), The Magus (1966), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) — won him international recognition. John Fowles masterfully experiments with traditional literary forms. As he himself says, his ambition is to write a book in every imaginable genre. His works are very diverse in form and contents — from an imitation of a medieval romance (Elidue, 1974) to an intricate psychological allegory (Mantissa, 1982). Fowles believes that the traditional purposes of the novel — to entertain, to satirize, to describe new moods, to record life — are still alive and that the duty of all art is to improve society at large.MARTIN AMIS (b. 1949)Born in 1949 Martin Amis is the son of the famous writer Kingsley Amis. He spent his first ten years in South Wales, and during the following several years lived in the USA, Spain and the West Indies. After graduating from Oxford in 1971 he began to write book reviews and criticism for various periodicals. In 1977 he became literary editor of the weekly magazine "The New Statesman". His first novel The Rachel Papers was published when he was only 21. In 1980 after the publication of two more novels — Dead Babies and Success — he gave up his editorial work and began to write full-time. During the next two decades he wrote eight novels and several collections of stories and became acknowledged as one of the most prominent writers of his generation.The novel Money (1984), which is considered to be the writer's most significant work so far, has the subtitle A Suicide Note, which can be interpreted in two ways — as "a note left by a suicide" or as "a banknote leading to suicide". The novel shows the destructive force of money in contemporary life. The world described in this and Amis' other novels is that of violence, crime, fraud, drug abuse and pornography. Most of his novels are written in first person narration and, as the critic Malcolm Bradbury said, "his central characters are no longer the rounded characters of traditional realist fiction, but traumatized, fragmentary, rootless figures, suffering from a contemporary waste and fatigue, and living in collapsing urban jungles on both sides of the Atlantic in an age of globalism, afflicted by nameless crisis". To describe the absurd and chaotic modem world Amis often resorts to parody, irony, the grotesque, mistaken identities and various other devices which he himself has called "postmodernist trickiness". The most unusual of his novels is Time's Arrow (1991).
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he
second part of the poem tells of Beowulf’s deeds when he was
king of Norway.Thus, the epic The
Song of Beowulf,
tells of some events from a people's history, sings the heroic
deeds of a man, his courage, his desire for justice, his love for
his people and self-sacrifice for the sake of his country. The
poem is a classic example of Anglo-Saxon poetry. It has no rhyme,
but each line has alliteration, which is a repetition, at close
intervals, of the same consonant in words or syllables.
ANGLO-NORMAN
PERIOD
(11TH
—13th
centuries)In
the year 1066, in the Battle of Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon king's
army was defeated by William, Duke of Normandy, who became King of
England. A strong feudal monarchy was established in the country.
The ruling classes consisted of the Norman nobility and the
clergy. The power of the Catholic Church had become very great.
Most of the English people became serfs.The Normans came from the
north-west of France. They brought with them the culture of their
country and the French language. Thus, three languages were spoken
in England. The language of the nobility was French, the churchmen
used Latin, and the common people spoke Anglo-Saxon. The three
social classes of the country had their own literature. Very
popular with the Normans were romances — tales in verse praising
the bravery and nobleness of knights. They were sung by minstrels
to the accompaniment of a lute. Many romances were based on Celtic
legends, especially on those about King Arthur and the Knights of
the Round Table. King Arthur was a half-legendary Celtic king who
probably lived in the 6th
century, had been brought up by magician Merlin who later helped
him in all his deeds. He had his seat in the town of Camelot. In
his castle there was a Round Table at which one hundred knights
could be
seated at a time. Qne seat was always reserved for the
bravest knight. King Arther was married to Guinevere.Later, in the
15th
c. Sit Thomas Malory wrote the book Morte
d’Arthur
(Death of Arthur) based entirely on these and other romances. One
of the best known among them is Tristram
and Isoud (Tristan and Isolde).
Tristram was the son of King Meliodas and Elisabeth, the sister of
King Mark of Cornwall. After the death of his parents he was
brought up at the court of King Mark. Later the king sent him to
Ireland to seek for him the hand of the young princess Isoud of
the Golden Hair. Before their departure the Queen of Ireland gave
her daughter's maid a love-potion which was to be given to Isoud
and King Mark on their wedding-night and was to bind them in
eternal love. By mistake the love-potion was drunk by Tristram and
Isoud who were then bound in endless passion though Isoud was to
marry King Mark. Tristram had to leave his uncle's court and,
while fighting in France, he married another woman, Isoud of the
White Hands. He was heavily wounded in a battle and, while he lay
on his deathbed, he sent for his beloved. It was agreed that if
Isoud of the Golden Hair was on the ship when it returned, a white
flag would be raised, if not, a black one. The flag was white, but
Tristram's wife told him it was black, which hastened Tristram's
death. When Isoud of the Golden Hair came to his deathbed she died
too.In later centuries this touching story of tragic love inspired
a great number of poets, writers and composers, the German
composer Richard Wagner among them. The literature of the Church
was scholastic, moralistic, and it supported the feudal system.
The books written in Latin by monks taught the common people that
their sufferings on earth would be rewarded in heaven.