Chapter 8 English Literature of the first half of the 20th Century I. Historical Background
1. rational changes on old traditions, in social standards and in people's thoughts
2. the high tide of anti-Victorianism
3. the First World War
4. the success of women's struggle for social and civil rights
II.Overview of the Literature – the Modernism
1. What is modernism?
The reaction against the value of Victorian society and the theme of its literature that began in the 1890s, particularly with the so-called dissident writers, was manifested in the early decades of the 20th century by drastic changes in form, vocabulary, and image. These changes were not limited to England. The movement, which has come to be called modernism, was international in scope and drew heavily on the French Symbolist poets as well as on the new psychological teachings of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, and their followers in Vienna and Switzerland.
2. Features of modernism
（1）Complexity
（2）Radical and deliberate break with traditional aesthetic principles
（3）Back to Aristotle
3. Development of modernism after WWII
Section 1 Poetry I. A General Survey
1. The century has produced a large number of both major and minor poets, many of whom have received general acclaim.
2. Many writers of significant works of fiction also write distinguished poetry.
3. The poets of the 20th century have tended to group themselves into schools whose poetry has particular distinguishing characteristics.
II.Thomas Hardy
1. life
2. works
（1）his poetry
a.Wessex Poems and Other Verses
b. Poems of the Past and the Present
c.Time's Laughing Stocks
d. Moments of Vision
e.Late Lyrics and Earlier
f. The famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwell
g.Winter Words
（2）his fictions
a.Tess of the D'Urbervilles
b. Jude the Obscure
c.The Return of the Native
d. Far from the Madding Crowd
e.The Mayor of Casterbridge
3. point of view
According to his pessimistic philosophy, mankind is subjected to the rule of some hostile mysterious fate, which brings misfortune into human life.
III. William Butler Yeats
1. Life – poet and dramatist
2. Works
（1）his poetry
a.The Responsibilities
b. The Wild Swans at Coole
c.The Tower
d. The Winding Stair
（2）his dramas
a.The Hour Glass
b. The Land of Heart's Desire
c.On Baile's Strand
（3）his book of philosophy – Visions
3. style
He is a celebrated and accomplished symbolist poet, using an elaborate system of symbols in his poems. Some of his symbols are simple, whereas others are difficult to comprehend. But read as a whole, his poetry is elucidated by itself and gives the reader many memorable stanzas and lines of great poetry. He is referred to by T. S. Eliot as “the greatest poet of our age – certainly the greatest in this （i.e. English） language”.
IV. Thomas Stearns Eliot
1. life- poet, playwright, literary critic
2. works
（1）poems
l The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
l The Waste Land （epic）
l Hollow Man
l Ash Wednesday
l Four Quarters
（2）Plays
l Murder in the Cathedral
l Sweeney Agonistes
l The Cocktail Party
l The Confidential Clerk
（3）Critical essays
l The Sacred Wood
l Essays on Style and Order
l Elizabethan Essays
l The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticisms
l After Strange Gods
3. point of view
（1）The modern society is futile and chaotic.
（2）Only poets can create some order out of chaos.
（3）The method to use is to compare the past and the present.
4. Style
（1）Fresh visual imagery, flexible tone and highly expressive rhythm
（2）Difficult and disconnected images and symbols, quotations and allusions
（3）Elliptical structures, strange juxtapositions, an absence of bridges
5. The Waste Land: five parts
（1）The Burial of the Dead
（2）A Game of Chess
（3）The Fire Sermon
（4）Death by Water
（5）What the Thunder Said
Section 2 Fiction I. The Continuing of Realism
1. The two characteristics of 20th century fiction
（1）Modernism
（2）Continuation of the tradition of realism
2. The beginning
3. General features
II.John Galsworthy
1. life
2. works
（1）The Island Pharisees
（2）Turgenev
（3）The Man of Property
（4）In Chancery
（5）Forsyte Saga
（6）The End of the Chapter
（7）The Silver Box
（8）Strife
3. point of view
The novels and plays of Galsworthy give a complete picture of English bourgeois society. A bourgeois himself, Galsworthy nevertheless clearly saw the decline of his class and truthfully portrayed this in his works. Yet his criticism of the bourgeoisie was limited to the spheres of ethics and aesthetics only. He aimed to improve his class, wishing it might retain its ruling position in society. His bourgeois conservatism is particularly evident in the works written after WWI and the October Revolution. Facing the crisis of British imperialism and the growing forces of socialism, Galsworthy began to idealize the decadent bourgeoisie. This is particularly evident in his last trilogy The End of the Chapter.
4. style
（1）strength and elasticity
（2）powerful sweep
（3）brilliant illustrations
（4）deep psychological analysis
III. Stream of Consciousness
1. James Joyce
（1）life
（2）major works
a.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
b. Dubliners
c.Ulysses
d. Finnegans Wake
（3）significance of his works
a.He changed the old style of fictions and created a strange mode of art to show the chaos and crisis of consciousness of that period.
b. From him, stream of consciousness came to the highest point as a genre of modern literature.
c.In Finnegans Wake, this pursue of newness overrode the normalness and showed a tendency of vanity.
2. Virginia Woolf
（1）life
（2）works
a.Mrs. Dalloway
b. To the Lighthouse
c.The Waves
d. Orlando
e.Flush
f. The Years
g.Between the Acts
h.A Room of One's Own
i. Three Guineas
j. Modern Fiction
k. The Common Reader （2 series）
（3）point of view
a.She challenged the traditional way of writing and created her novels in a new way.
b. She thought the depiction of details darkened the characters.
c.She called the writers for writing about events of daily life that gave one deep impression.
3. influence
（1）The stream of consciousness presented by Joyce and Woolf marks a total break from the tradition of fiction and has promoted the development of modernism.
（2）However, at the same time, because of the newness in form but hard to understand, this kind of fiction cannot attract readers.
（3）The writers showed interest in the psychological depiction of the bourgeoisie but neglected the conflict that most people cared about at that time.
IV. David Herbert Lawrence
1. life
2. works
（1）Sons and Lovers
（2）The Rainbow
（3）Women in Love
（4）Lady Chatterlay's Lover
3. his influence
Section 3 Drama I. Overview
1. the development of science （light） and the revival of drama
2. social dramas
3. the renaissance of Irish dramas
4. the poetic drama
5. different schools of drama
II.George Bernard Shaw
1. life
2. works
（1）Widower's Houses
（2）Man and Superman
（3）Major Barbara
（4）Pygmalion
（5）Heartbreak House
（6）Mrs. Warren's Profession
（7）The Apple Cart
（8）Saint Joan
3. point of view
（1）Shaw was very much impressed by the Norwegian dramatist Ibsen.
（2）He opposed the idea of “art for art's sake”, maintaining that “the theatre must turn from the drama of romance and sensuality to the drama of edification”.
（3）He sought from the beginning to expose the hypocrisy, stupidity, and conventionality of the English way of life as he saw it with a rich wit and lively sense of comedy.
（4）His heroes and heroines are always unheroic, unromantic, common sense people, and he used them to convey ideas.
4. style
（1）Shaw is a critical realist writer. His plays bitterly criticize and attack English bourgeois society.
（2）His plays deal with contemporary social problems. He portrays his situations frankly and honestly, intending to shock his audiences with a new view of society.
（3）He is a humorist and manages to produce amusing and laughable situations.
