Chapter Seven
English literature at the turn of the century
1. The background of the period
2. The ideas of the period
3. The general trend of the literature at this
period
4. Some influential writers:
5. Hardy’s achievements, Galsworthy’s
achievements, Bernard Shaw’s plays
6. Some terms: Naturalism, neo-romanticism,
aestheticism as literary trends
Theory of “art for art’s sake”
 1.Background: second half of the 19th century to
early of the 20th decades
 (1) Natural and social sciences enormously
advanced.
 (2) Capitalism came into its monopoly stage
 (3) The gap between the rich and the poor was
further deepened
 (4) World War 1& 2 broke out
 2. Ideas influence this period: all kinds of
philosophical ideas
 (1) Karl Marx: scientific socialism
 (2) Darwin‘s theory of evolution, “survival of the
fittest”
 (3) Freud‘s analytical psychology
 (4) The irrationalism philosophers give immense
influence
 3. Ideas:
(1) Modernism originated from skepticism and
disillusion of capitalism
(2)The French symbolism announced modernism
(3) It takes the irrational philosophy and the
theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base.
The major themes are the distorted, alienated
and ill relationships.
literature trend
and Influential writers
 1. The English literature at the turn of the century
was notable mainly for its critical realism, a tradition
that had been passed down from the early Victorian
Age.
 Writers, such as William Morris, Georte Meredith,
Thomas Hardy, Samuel Butler, John Galsworthy,
Bernard Shaw, showed sympathy in their works for
the laboring masses by describing their miseries on
the one hand and attacked capitalism on the other.
 2. Another literary trend the English writers
followed at the turn of the century was
naturalism. Writers of this school tried to
reproduce life exactly as it was without any
selection of details. George Gissing and
George Moore were the two representative
naturalist writers in England.
 3. A third group of writers took the path of neoromanticism in their writing. The neoromanticists, totally dissatisfied with the
contemporary reality, indulged themselves in
The description of exciting adventures and
romantic characters in an effort to criticize
existing social reality. Robert Louis Stevenson
was the main figure of this group.
Influential writers
 Thomas Hardy,
 John Galsworthy,
 Bernard Shaw,
 Oscar Wilde,
Thomas Hardy and his creation
 Son of a mason, Thomas Hardy was born in
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Dorsetshire, Southwest of England, the area that
later became the famous "Wessex" in many of his
novels.
In 1871, Desperate Remedies《绝望的补救》
In 1872 Under the Greenwood Tree . 《绿荫树下》
In 1873, A Pair of Blue Eyes 《一双湛蓝的眼睛》
In 1874 Far from the Madding Crowd 《远离尘嚣》
In 1878 The Return of the Native 《还乡》
In 1880, The Trumpet Major 《号手》
 In 1886, The Mayor of Casterbridge 《卡斯特桥市长》
 In 1891 Tess of the D‘Urbervilles 《德伯家的苔丝》
 In 1896 Jude the Obscure 《无名的裘德》
 Hardy was also a poet, his poem collections are:
Wessex Poems 1898, 《威塞克斯诗集》
Poems of the Past and the Present 1902 《》
The Dynasts 1904, 1906 and 1908 《统治者》
Time’s Laughingstocks and Verses 1909 《笑料和诗歌》
Satires of Circumstance 1914 《环境的讽刺》
1. Evaluation: naturalist (D.H.Lawrance;
Theodore Dreiser; George Eliot), also
critical realist writer (Dickens)
2. his works: Wessex
The Return of the Nature; The Mayor
of Casterbridge; Tess of the D‘Urbervilles;
Jude the Obscure
3. Features: nostalgic (Washington Irving;
F.Scott Fitzergerald; William Faulkner), also
pessimistic
4. Naturalism: Darwin‘s idea of "survival of the
fittest"
(1)Man is born with tragic, inevitably
bound by his own hereditary traits
(2)Man proves powerless before fate
however he tries, he seldom escapes his
doomed destiny
5. Tess of the D‘Urbervilles:
(1)criticize the society, hypocricy of the
society
(2)nauralism,the misery, poverty Tess
suffers.
John Galsworthy(1867-1933) and his creation
 John Galsworthy (1867-1935) was born into a wealthy family.
He established himself as a leading novelist and dramatist,
with seventeen novels, twenty-six plays and some short stories.
 Main works:
《天涯海角》
The Man of The Property 《有产业的人》
The Silver Box 《银盒》
The Forsyte Saga 《福尔赛世家》(his first trilogy :
The Man of Property 1906; In Chancery 1920《骑
虎》; To Let 1921 《出租》)
A Modern Comedy 《现代喜剧》(his second trilogy:
The White Monkey《白猿》 Swan Song 《天鹅曲》
The Silver Spoon 《银匙》)
 From the Four Winds (short stories)
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His works’ characters
1. He was a conventional writer, having
inherited the fine traditions of the great
Victorian novelists of the critical realism such
as Dickens and Thackeray.
2. Technically, he was more traditional than
adventurous, focusing on plot development
and character portrayal.
3. With an objective 客观的observation and a
naturalistic description, Galsworthy had
tried his best to make an impartial
presentation of the social life in a
documentary precision.
4. He was also successful in his attempt to
present satire and humor in his writing. He
wrote in a clear and unpretentious style
with a clear and straightforward language.
Bernard Shaw
 George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in
1856, but removed to London in 1876. he
began his career as a novelist, then joined the
Fabian socialist movement and , then became a
brilliant dramatist.
 Main works:
 First period:
《不愉快戏剧
集》 and Plays Pleasant 《愉快戏剧集》
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Widowers’ Houses 1892 《鳏夫的房产》
Mrs . Warren’s Profession 1894 《华伦夫人的
职业》Caesar and Cleopatra 1898
 1894--1900: Plays Unpleasant
Second period:
1901--1913:
Man and Superman 《人与超人》 John
Bull’s Other Island 《英国佬的另一个岛》
Major Barbara 1905《巴巴拉少校》
Pygmalion 1912《窈窕淑女》
Third period 1913—1929:
The heartbreak House 1917 《伤心之家》St.
Joan 《圣女贞德》
Fourth period:
 The Apple Cart 1929《苹果车》
 Why She Would Not 1950《为什么她不肯》
 Too True to Be Good 1932《真相毕露》
 works’ character:
 a. structurally and thematically, Shaw followed the
great traditions of realism. Most of his plays are
concerned with political, economic, moral, or
religious problems, and, thus, can be termed as
problem plays.
 b. One features of Shaw’s characterization is that he
makes the trick of showing up one character vividly
at the expense of another. Another feature is that
Shaw’s characters are the representatives of ideas,
points of view, that shift and alter during the play.
 c. Much of Shavian drama is constructed around the
inversion of the conventional theatrical situation.
The inversion, a device found in Shaw from
beginning to end, is an integral part of an
interpretation of life.
 d. Shaw’s plays have plots, but they do not work by
plots. It is the vitality of the talk that takes primacy
over mere story. Later Shaw came under the
influence of Henry George and William Morris and
took an interest in socialist theories.
Oscar Wilde
dramatist, poet,
novelist and essayist,
spokesman for the
school of “Art for art's
sake”, the leader of
the Aesthetic
movement
Theory of “art for art’s sake”:
 Oscar Wilde
 The picture of Dorian Gray《道林格雷的画像》,
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1891
Salome《萨勒姆》, 1893
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892
A Woman of No Importance, 《一个无足轻重的妇女》
1893
An ideal Husband, 《理想丈夫》 1895
The importance of Being Earnest, 《认真的重要性》
1895
The Ballad of Redding Gao, 《累丁狱之歌》1898
Some terms for knowing
 Art for Art’s sake
 Neo- Romanticism
 Naturalism
 Realism
 Aestheticism
Art for Art’s sake
 That art is nothing to do with morality (art is
not moral immoral but amoral), that the best
of art is pure art, that the duty of an art critic
is to tell his own impressions of a work of art,
and that the function of art is to attract, to
please and to provide enjoyment. But he
elaborated on this theory of art for art’s sake,
and even declared that it is not art that
reflects nature but it is nature that is the
reflection of art.
Naturalism
 Naturalism is a term of literary history,
primarily a French movement in prose fiction
and the drama during the final third of the
19th-cent.
 In France Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the
dominant practitioner of Naturalism in prose
fiction and the chief exponent of its doctrines.
 Broadly speaking, Naturalism is
characterized by a refusal to idealize
experience and by the persuasion that human
life is strictly subjected to natural laws.
Realism
 Realism is a literary term , the original
definition of realism by Sir P. Harvey was "a
loosely used term meaning truth to the
observed facts of life (especially when they
are gloomy)." Realism has been chiefly
concerned with the commonplaces of
everyday life among the middle and lower
classes, where character is a product of social
factors and environment is the integral element
in the dramatic complications.
 Realism in literature is an approach that
attempts to describe life without
idealization or romantic subjectivity. It is
most often associated with the literary
movement in 19th-century France,
specifically with the French novelists
Flaubert and Balzac. In the drama, realism
is most closely associated with Ibsen's
social plays. Later writers felt that realism
laid too much emphasis on external reality.
 Aestheticism唯美主义
 It was an aesthetic movement which
originated in the second half of 19th and
flourished in the last decade of 19th
century.
 Socially, it was a reaction against the
materialism and commercialism of the
Victorian industrial era.
 Artistically, it was a revolt against
grubby naturalism. Aestheticism
advocated the independence of art
from social reality and the divorce of art
from morality. It emphasized the value
of the ecstatic nature of the moment
inspired by art. It reached its peak in
England with the efforts of Oscar Wilde.
 Some important event in this period
At the turn of the century England entered a
transitional period, which bridged a time of
prosperity and stability, and a time of steady social
changes and violent upheaval.
1. The rapid growth of industry and development of
capitalism made the various contradictions
inherent in the capitalist system all the more felt
both at home and abroad.
2. The great Britain began to have its monopoly
position challenged and its position at the center of
world in the South African Boer War(1899-1902)
and its inability to defeat the smaller forces of the
Boers made its government quite unpopular.
3. Workers worked long hours under filthy and
dangerous conditions, making huge profits
for capitalists. Yet poverty was widespread.
4. At the same time the women’s Rights
Movement continued to conduct an
increasingly violent campaign for Women’s
Suffrage.
5. The Irish Question, unresolved throughout the
century, became even more acute.
6. In the nineteenth century, numerous socialist
parties, some reformist, some utopian,
flourished in the cities, endeavoring to
criticize capitalism and imperialism.