British Literature (Realism – 20th century)

• realism, modernism, postmodernism

Realism – 1820 – 20^th century

• from Latin – means real
• changes in society, social problems
• mainly in prose – novel
• effort to show society as a whole
• actions chronologically + take place mainly in present time
• surrounding (environment) – a big city
• characters – escape from a village to a big city, in other direction only for money
• language – not literary, dialects

– descriptions of surrounding and characters

• in not so developed states – historical themes
• influenced by philosophy – positivism, materialism
• naturalism – about bad phenomena in society (alcoholism, prostitution), show human’s passion and behavior

• take inspiration in previous authors + respond to problems of present
• Charles Dickens – childhood in poverty – his characters are children (autobiographical features)

– David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers, Great Expectations 

• William Makepeace Thackeray – satire against higher classes, popular at youth

– Vanity Fair – “a novel without hero”

• Brontë sisters – books influenced by romanticism – unhappy love

– Charlotte – Jane Eyre; Emily – Wuthering heights

• Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange case of dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde
• Conan Doyle – detective stories – Sherlock Holmes
• Thomas Hardy – Under the Greenwood tree

Modernism – 1^st half of the 20^th century

• symbiosis of tradition and experiment
• diversity – detective stories, sci-fi, nonsense literature, novel, literature for children
• Irish literature – tradition, country, nationalism, B.Yeats
• types:

1. critical to British imperialism – Rudyard Kipling – The Jungle book
2. experimenters – hard for readers – breaking rules (grammatical, time)

– try to show the reality newly

– sometimes banned

– stream of consciousness – floating thoughts,

– hard to find logic

– Virginia Woolf – member of Bloomsbury

– against realists

– lyrical novel, tabooed themes (lesbian love – Orlando)

– To the Lighthouse

– James Joyce – Irish, stream of consciousness

– Ulysses – inspirations in Odysseus, banned for obscenity

3. outstanding authors – show social evil, anti-hero (divorced, alcoholism)

– George Orwell – Animal farm, Nineteen Eighty-four

• other authors: G.Wells, L.Caroll, J.R.R.Tolkien, Agatha Christie

Postmodernism – 2^nd half of the 20^th century

–    many interpretations, sometimes author plays a game with reader, penetrations of genres, intertextuality (links to other books)

• 50’s and 60’s – Angry young men – against values of society, criticize, not so vulgar and extreme

– campus novel – young graduated man doesn’t want to take place in society (careerism) but then marry rich woman and settle down

– Amis Kingsley – Lucky Jim

– John Osborne  – Look back in anger

– John Braine, John Wain, Doris Lessing

• Graham Green – The Quiet American
• William Gerald Golding, Patrick Ryan (parody to WWII – How I won the war)