Головна

LITERATURE BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

  1.  A CHILDREN'S WORLD
  2.  ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE, OR THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES IN ENGLISH
  3.  BETWEEN THE WARS
  4.  Chapter 6: Love between a Man and a Woman
  5.  Differentiating between Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Alcohols
  6.  Exercise 8. Speak about basic types of economic systems in the world.
  7.  Extract full square and use inequality between mean arithmetic and mean geometric).

The realistic school between the two World Wars and in the Post War period was represented by a great number of writers who in one way or other dealt with serious social, ethic and moral issues.

In the period after World War I there emerged both in Great Britain and in the USA (as well as in France and Germany) a group of writers who were called "the lost generation" ("втрачене покоління"). These writers as well as their personages had all passed through the horrors of the war which they had entered with somewhat naive and optimistic illusions, concerning the war's nature and their own mission.

So at last war became a kind of novel enterprise. Having faced the reality of the war, the soldiers -writers lost their pre - war ideals and illusions. Many of the characters in the books of "the lost generation" lost their lives or returned crippled from the trenches (фронт), either physically or morally, spiritually or both. Having come back from the trenches they found it next to utterly impossible to adjust themselves to the post - war mode of life. So they felt themselves alien among those who had not experienced the war.

Among the most prominent representatives ofthe lost generation "are:

1) Richard Aldington (Річард Олдингтон) (1892 - 1962) with his novel "Death of a Hero" ("Смерть героя") (1929) represents the English "lost generation";

2) Ernest Hemingway (Ернест Хемінгуей) (1899 - 1961) with his works "A Farewell to Arms" ("Прощавай, зброє") (1929) - a novel, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" - story - represents the American "lost generation ";

3) Francis Scott Fitzgerald (Френсіс Скотт Фіцджеральд) (1896 -1940) with his novel "The Great Gatsby" ("Великий Гетсбі і") (1925) (in this work the writer shows the character's desire to find some lost ideal) represents the American "lost generation";

4) William Faulkner (Вільям Фолкнер) (1897 - 1962) with his novel "Soldier's Pay" ("Солдатська нагорода") (1926) (this is a story of a soldier who was mutilated and came back home to die) represents the American "lost generation";

5) Erich Maria Remarque (Еріх Марія Ремарк) with his novels "Three Comrades" ("Три товариші") and "All Quiet on the Western Front" ("На західному фронті без змін") represents the French "lost generation".

By the way, the shock after the war was greater in America for young people than for others.

Richard Aldington was the editor of the magazine "The Egoist" and a member of the Bloomsbury group. He started his literary career with rather obscure verses under the influence of i m a g i s m. During World War I he was badly wounded and after the war he made his living as a critic and a translator (from Latin and Italian). He published 4 volumes of poetry and soon began writing p г про s e. He also lived abroad much (France, America).

His first novel "Death of a Hero" ("Смерть героя") (1929) is a very complicated work of three parts, different by genre:

l) a Bildungsroman - the author traces the shaping of the hero's character, the influence of education on him;

2) a Kunstroman (or a love story) with complicated love affairs and artistic ambitions of George Winterbourne;

3) a war novel - with the description of the horrors ofthe war which the main character can not

stand.

The grim war experiences as well as his hopeless future drive Winterbourne to suicide. The title of the novel is ironical as there is nothing heroic in this death. The beginning of the novel tells about the "hero's" death, the end of the novel - shows that there was nothing heroic in this death. The novel has a frame structure (рамкова конструкція) -the book starts and ends with the description of the same scene.

Aldington is a master of battle - scene descriptions: the reader is like a cameraman, the language is rich in military terms, expressive and dynamic. All his novels are written in a strong antimilitary key.

The period between the two world wars also saw the beginning of the work of a great number of writers who would continue their work (novel writing) in the post - War II times. These were:

1) John Boynton Priestley (Джон Прістлі) (1894- 1984);

2) Charles Percy Snow (Чарльз Персі Сноу) (1905 - 1980) ж

3) Graham Greene (ГремГрін) (1904 - 1991).

John Boynton Priestley was a novelist, playwright, publicist. His most important works are plays and n про v e 1 s. He is often compared with Chekhov as he is concerned about the problems of an ordinary man.

His most important plays are "An Inspector Calls" ("Інспектор прийшов") (1945), "Dangerous Corner" ("Небезпечний поворот") (1932), "Time and the Conways" ("Час і сім'я Конвей") (1937).

His most important novels are "The Good Companions" ("Добрі товариші") (1929), "Three Men in New Suits" ("Троє в нових костюмах") (1945).

In his famous novel "Angel Pavement" ("Вулиця ангела") (1960) we read a story about the life and problems of a "small man" - "a man from the street" in the society ruled by rich and unscrupulous people.

Charles Percy Snow was a well known politician, novelist, scientist and publicist. His scientific and political career brought him into contact with the ruling circles of Great Britain as well as the intellectual elite of the country. This enabled him to depict the atmosphere in these layers of English society in his humorous novels.

His first and last novels were detective ones - "Death Under Sail" ("Смерть під вітрилом") (1932), "A Coat of Varnish" ("Шар лаку / Лакування") (1978). But he was not merely a detective writer. His main contribution to English literature is a series of novels "Strangers and Brothers" ("Чужі і брати") which he wrote for 30 years (1940 - the first novel; 1970 - the last novel). It consists of 11 novels and deals with various spheres of English life. All the 11 novels are linked together by one character - Lewis Eliot - who is either the protagonist or a secondary character in this or that book. Here are some of the books among these 11 novels: "Time of Hope" ("Пора надій") (1949) and "Homecomings" ("Повернення додому") (1956) are mostly family novels showing the life of petty bourgeoisie as well as the ambitions and frustrations of the main character; "The Masters" ("Наставники") (1951) reveals the atmosphere and the relations of people in the prestigious universities of Oxford and Cambridge; "The New Men" ("Нові люди") (1954) raises the problem of science and ethics, its characters are scientists working in the field of atomic research, and the conflicts that arise out of the prospects of use of the results of the research make up the plot of the novel; "Corridors of Power" ("Коридори влади") (1964) is the most important work among these 11 novels, it mostly deals with political problems and issues. It was Snow who introduced this term - "corridors of power" ("коридори влади") - which is quite common and widely used now.

Graham Greene was a very prolific writer, novelist, short - story writer, playwright, publicist. He himself divided his novels into two groups:

1) "serious novels" -

"The Quiet American" ("Тихий американець") (1955) - the setting

is Vietnam,

"The Power and the Glory" ("Сила і слава") (1940) - the setting is

Mexico,

"The Heart of the Matter" ("Суть справи") (1948),

"The Comedians" ("Комедіанти") (1966) - there was a great movie

shot by the motifs of the novel with Elizabeth Taylor

starring; the setting is Haiti, "The Honorary Consul" ("Почесний консул") (1973) - the setting

is Argentina,

"The Human Factor" ("Людський фактор") (1978), "Doctor Fisher of Geneva, or the Bomb Party" ("Доктор

Фішер з Женеви, або Вечеря з бомбою ") (1980) - the setting is Switzerland.

2) "entertaining novels" -

"Stamboul Train: An Entertainment" ("Стамбульський

експрес ") (1932)," A Gun for Sale: An Entertainment "(" Найманий вбивця ")

(1936),

"Our Man in Havana" ("Наша людина в Гавані") (1958).

One of the most important features of Greene's works is the extremely wide geography of his novels (Vietnam, Central and South Africa, Haiti, Latin America, Geneva, etc.).

But this borderline between the novels is very vague - very often "serious novels" contain some detective elements (which are not characteristic of very serious literature), while the "entertaining novels" raise serious social and political problems.

Serious and political matters are in all his novels and other works, But it is not politics itself that was Greene's main concern. He was interested in man's psychology, reaction to the events the character witnesses. Voluntarily most of his characters at the beginning of novels try to keep aloof from the political and social developments. They often stick to the principle - "I do not want to be involved". But as a rule they have to take sides, they are forced to do so. But in this case the character is not guided by any political or social considerations. They make their choice, proceeding from what Greene called "the human factor" ("людський фактор") -the decent, normal man's desire to be on the side of the oppressed and suffering. It was the writer's own life principle. The idea of ??moral choice and moral involvement brings Greene close to existentialism.

THE MAIN NEW TENDENCIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE POST - WAR PERIOD "THE ANGRY YOUNG MEN" ("THE ANGRTES") AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL NOVEL (50 - 60SS OF THE 20th CENTURY)

"The Angry Young Men" ("Сердиті молоді люди") as a group of writers emerged in the 1950s. It was not a literary trend, because they did not work out any philosophical or aesthetic platform. They were united only thematically. The main problem of their works was the position of young people in the post - war period in Britain. The situation in the country in the 1950s, when the Labour party was in power and some democratic processes were underway, the young people from the working class and lower middle families began to cherish hopes for some good position in life, for some promising future, which was provoked and encouraged to a great extent by the changes in the educational system in great Britain.

At that time many provincial "redbrick universities" were founded in the country (the oldest British universities of Oxford and Cambridge are traditionally called "grey brick" universities as they were built of grey brick, while the new universities were mostly built of red brick) . The graduates of these new universities however were soon disappointed with the reality because it did not come up to their expectations. They failed to get good prestigious jobs to which they hoped. So they felt as if deceived and duped by the Establishment (Істеблішмент) and the whole state system at large - they had got good education but could not get good jobs. They protested against this state of things but their protests was not organized, it was individual, mostly confined to their families. This protest took different forms in literature. Some of the Angries very soon conformed to the laws, conventions and norms which they had recently criticized.

The most prominent representatives of the group were:

1) Kingsley Amis (Кінгслі Еміс) (1922 - 1995) - his first novel "Lucky Jim" ("Щасливчик Джим") (1954) was written in the manner of the Angries;

2) John Braine (Джон Брейн) (1922 - 1986) - his novels "Room at the Top" ("Путь наверх") (1957) and "Life at the Top" ("Життя нагорі") (1962) told about the upper class and the upper society. He criticized their bourgeois conformism. But his later works showed that he himself was prone to this conformism;

3) John Osb orne (Джон Осборн) (1929 - 1994) - he became famous after his play "Look Back in Anger" ("Озирнись у гніві") (1956)

5) John Wain (Джон Уейн) (1925).

John Osborne was responsible for the appearance of the name of the group "the Angry Young Men". In his play "Look Back in Anger" the protagonist - Jimmy Porter -graduated from one of the provincial universities but did not get a good job. In the end he got a sweet stall with the help of his friend but he was not content with his life and was angry. But his wife was the one who suffered most of all because of his anger.

The Philosophical novel was another phenomenon of the 1950 - 60ss in English literature. It was called so, because unlike the predecessors who also posed some philosophical issues, the writers of this time dealt with various life situations from a purely philosophical point of view. They were less concerned with concrete realities, with the day-to-day problems, but they tried to understand the general laws of human development and human predicament.

These writers were influenced by the philosophy of existentialism (екзистенціалізм) (the philosophy of human existence) which was based on subjective idealism (суб'єктивний ідеалізм) .Asa philosophy existentialism was first developed in the 19th century by the philosopher Kierkegaard, his followers Heidegger and later - French writers Sartre (Сартр) and Camus (Камю)

(Camus was especially influenced by existentialism in his novel "The Stranger" ("Сторонній")).

Existentialism looks at the world as absurd, uncognizable (непізнаваний) and chaotic. Human life is purposeless, for its final end is death. Man is a lonely, despairing individual (alien to all the others), living in fear, dismay, anxiety ("Angst" - German, "Angoisse" - French). This philosophy disregards the social preconditions of man's life. The relations between people are characterized by indifference, alienation, lack of understanding and true unity. Man's life is in the hands of some uncognizable force, yet it depends to a great extent on man's free choice. The concept of "free choice" ("свобода вибору") is one of the key ones of the existential philosophy.

Existentialism is a moral philosophy dealing with the moral laws, principles of human life. It suggests some ways for human existence. Despite life's absurdity and futility (марність), man should try to live his life decently, he should not lose his self, he should have the right to act as he chooses but yet he should be responsible for his actions and his choice, because it affects not only his own destiny but the destiny of the other people too.

The works of philosophical writers also have a sort of experimental character. They often put their characters in hypothetical situations or extreme situations, which demand a lot of effort, thinking, serious consideration. So, fear of freedom (страх свободи) and often fear of death are also among the concepts of existentialists.

Actually none of the English writers followed the ideas of Camus and Sartre completely. Yet their works are permeated with existentialist motifs. Such novels are usually pessimistic and marked by fear. Most of the characters are lonely, despairing individuals, powerless in a hostile and chaotic world.

Symbolism and allegory are the chief literary devices in the philosophical novel. The type of the character is also specific. The characters are rather archetypes (архетипи) (Карл Юнг - автор теорії архетипів) than social or psychological types. Archetypes take their roots in mythology. The archetype is a pattern which is reproduced again and again in the course of civilization (for example - Cinderella is the archetype which is understood as "a girl who was miserable but at the end her dreams come true"; the archetype of love triangle, etc.). Archetypes are preserved in the collective unconscious, i. e. they will be understood by anyone in different periods.

The most prominent representatives of the philosophical novel in English literature are:

1) Iris Murdoch (Айріс Мердок) (1919 - died recently);

2) William Golding (Вільям Голдінг) (1911- 1992).


LITERATURE OF POSTMODERNISM (SINCE THE 70 - 90SS OF THE 20TH CENTURY)

There is no definition for postmodernism as a term. The word itself suggests that the period came after modernism.

The 20-3 Oss - the period between the two World Wars - can be regarded as the summit of modernism (J. Joyce, V. Woolf, D. H. Lawrence). In the 50-60ss modernist and realistic tendencies coexisted in literature. "The Angry Young Men" as a phenomenon was a certain return to realism (they discussed the position of the lower middle class).

Postmodernism started in the 70-90ss.Itisa new phenomenon and has features which make it different from modernism and realism. The metaphorical image of literature (from the point of postmodernism) is a mirror.

 REALISM  MODERNISM  POSTMODERNISM
 1) period - the 2nd part of the 19th century - Critical or Social Realism - but actually realism breaks the period limits  1) period - the 1st part of the 20tfi century  1) period - we can not say for sure that postmodernism is limited only by the 70-90ss
 2) method 1. realistic literature mirrors (reflects) objective reality 2. realistic literature aims at consistency, continuity -logical, chronological order, which is not interrupted 3. the message is clearly defined, it is explicit(Експліцитно, явна, видна, «нагорі»). The message is social and moral, ethic 4. realistic personages are social types 5. realistic literature is addressed to all people without any discrimination  2) method 1.modernist literature refuses to deal with objective reality, it mirrors subjective reality 2.modernist literature rejects consistency and continuity. The narration is as if from the inner world of the character (as a result we deal with psychologism and elements of psychoanalysis). So the narration is based on reminiscences, and as the inner world is chaotic, based on associations, the narration is also based on associations 3. the message is implicit (Імпліцитно, неявна, «Між рядків»), the message does not lie on the surface, as modernists refused to deal with social or moral issues4. modernist characters are unique personalities, they are psychological types (for example, we may remember the interpretation of the articles in the title "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ") 5. modernists wrote their books only for high-brow intellectuals, the elite  2) The method the tendency and the whole trend are still being a point for discussion - 1. Literature is like a big mirror that is broken into pieces, it gives no complete picture, no continuity (безперервність): in one piece literature reflects objective reality, in another - it mirrors subjective reality. So, postmodernist literature is like fragments of objective and subjective reality + art reality 2. postmodernist literature rejects both of these orders (of modernism and realism), as such an artificial order, i.e. structural organization is the source of artificiality in literature 3. there is no message. It is indefinable, indeterminate. Books have open ends (like in the novel "The French Lieutenant's Woman"). There is usually no definite clue to the characters 'further fates4. postmodernist characters are archetypes ("archetype" is the most typical example of something, as it has all the most important features, such types are repeated throughout centuries. E. G: Merlin is the archetype of the wise old man) 5. postmodernist literature is for all categories of readers (including mass readers), because of the m u 1 t i -levelled character of these works and the fact that postmodernist works have features of both high and mass culture (pulp culture)  




There are some other important features ofpostmodernist literature:

1) As there are open ends in postmodernist books, the reader is likely to ask "And what of if?" at the end. Besides it is quite difficult to say whether the characters are good or bad. The form and genre of postmodernism is mainly the novel with elements of different genres and forms.

e.g .: Graham Swift, "Out ofThis World" -the novel says that human nature is very complicated, unpredictable, complex. And no one has the right to be the judge of another person. This book is a story of a grandfather, father and his daughter;

John Fowles, "The French Lieutenant's Woman" -the novel has elements of different genres:

historical novel, psychological novel, detective elements, adventure elements, philosophical novel.

Postmodernist literature combines fiction and non-fiction (documentary prose, statistical facts, quotations from different documents, etc.). So, postmodernist literature combines different forms of literature.

2) In postmodernist works history goes side by side with the present and the future. So we may speak about overlapping of time levels in these works.

3) In postmodernist works it is common to mix high culture and mass culture (Or "kitsch" [kitS] - pulp culture, which is the culture of very low intellectuals).

4) Combination of different moods, comic, tragic, humorous, etc. There is usually no general tone in the books.

5) M a g i з realism (Магічний реалізм) is another feature of postmodernist
 literature, though the very name of this feature is very contradictory in itself. The Latin-American writer
 Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Габріель гарів а Маркес) invented it (наприклад,
 його роман «Сто років самотності» та інші).

In British literature the representatives of magic realism are Salmon Rushdie and Angela Carter. Salmon Rushdie is an Indian writer and writes about Indian reality. For his "Satanic Verses" ("Сатанинські з т і х і") he was cursed by Muslims and sentenced to death. In the end he had to hide. In his book "Midnight's Children" the protagonist has a magic faculty to communicate at distance.

Angela Carter in her novel "Nights at the Circus" discusses levitation.

6) Inter textuality - The use of previously written texts and their elements as the material
 for postmodernist writings. Such a use of other texts can also take the form of a parody.

Postmodernist works are like pastiche (a combination of different elements). They may even combine elements of prose and poetry at the same time.

So the writer tries to modify all such elements in order to make them look similar. They often say that postmodernist works remind a kind of patchwork (клаптева ковдра). And all such things as borrowings, allusions, parody (critical attitude to the primary source), patchwork (combination of different primary sources) are one of the most vivid and bright postmodernist features.

7) Actually, in postmodernist literature there are very few social, novels. And in Great Britain even
 if authors touch upon the problems which would be touched upon in social (so called serious) novels,
 dealing with contemporary realities and issues, the authors make use of various devices: they draw
 parallels with the past or look into the future, resorting to magic realism. In a word they write the so
 called experimental novels r resort to what Martin E m i s (he is one of the most well-
 known contemporary English writers) called postmodernist t r i з до n e s s .He Himself resorted
 to such a trickness in his famous novel "Time's Arrow". John Fowles in his novel "The
 French Lieutenant's Woman "introduces himself as a character of the book, in his book
 "The Collector" the author resorts to the device of allusion - an allusion to
 Shakespeare's play "The Tempest". Marina Warner in her book "Indigo"
 also reworks "The Tempest".

The main themes in postmodernist works:

1) the widely exploited theme - art and literature. Novelists write fictional life stories of the writers
 of the former, preceding times:

e.g .: Peter Ackroyd - "The Last Testament of Oscar

Wilde "- this book is an imaginary diary of O. Wilde;

"Milton In America" ??- Milton never was in

America but the author imagined this fact;

Antonia Silvia Byatt- "Possession" -the book shows a parallel between the love stories of two couples: of the 19th century and of the 20th century;

2) history is another popular theme in contemporary English literature:

e.g .: GrahamSwift- his novel "W a t er 1 a n d" - presents the history of a county in Central England;

"Out of This World" - a story how father made bombs and then his son took pictures of the ruins;

"The Last Order";
 IanMcEvan- his novel "The Black Dogs" - tells about the

extermination of people in Holocaust during World War II;

Kazuo Ishiguro - "A Pale ViewofHills", "An Artist in the Floating World" - in the works of this writer his nationality (Japanese) told on his manner of writing: reticent, never explicit, always implicit;

James Ballard - "Empire ofthe Sun" - this is a very powerful novel (the writer himself was a prisoner in a concentration camp).

The downfall ofthe empire is best treated in the novel "Midnight's Children" by Sal mon Rushdie;

3) feminist literature is very rich nowadays in Great Britain:

e.g .: FayWeldon- "Female Friends" ("Подруги");

Margaret Drabble - "The Realms of Gold" (the writer started as "an angry young woman");

AnitherBrookner - "A Start In Life", "Hotel de Luck" (the author is an Oxford scholar in art);

4) still another phenomenon of postmodernist literature is the widening of ethnic paradigm: a great number of writers born outside Britain have come into English literature lately (Kazuo Ishiguro, Salmon Rushdie, Ben Okri (fromNigeria));

5) many works ofthe British literature ofthe last decades of the 20th century is permeated with the. apocalyptical mood- "fin de si e cle" (кінець світу).

American literature falls into the following periods:

1) Colonial period, or Puritan Age (the 17th c. - The first half of the 18th c);

2) Revolutionary period, or the Enlightenment (the 2nd half of the 18th c. - The first half of the 19th c.);




 ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE, OR THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES IN ENGLISH |  FRENCH CULTURE & LITERATURE |  LATIN CULTURE & LITERATURE |  LATE MIDDLE AGES, OR PRE-RENAISSANCE, OR EARLY RENAISSANCE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE |  LATE MIDDLE AGES, OR PRE-RENAISSANCE, OR EARLY RENAISSANCE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE |  THE TUDORS |  JAMES I (James VI of |  THE PERIOD OF ENGLISH BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION AND RESTORATION |  MATURE ENLIGHTENMENT |  LATE ENGLIGHTENMENT |

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