The Struggle
for
IDENTITY
in Modern
Literature.
Some background
information and nonfiction texts.
Introduction - What is it that impacts on our sense of identity in the twentieth century?
Global war is one of the defining features of twentieth-century experience, and has affected
how we see ourselves and our relationships with other nationalities, cultures, religions and
races
Another of the twentieth century’s defining features is radical artistic
experiment. The boundary-breaking art, literature, and music of this
century has helped define who we are today. Among the leading aesthetic
innovators of the first decades of this era were the composer Igor
Stravinsky, the cubist Pablo Picasso, and the
futurist F. T. Marinetti and are represented in
Britain by the London-based vorticist sculptor Henri
Gaudier-Brzeska. Other modernists include such
English-language writers as Ezra Pound, Wyndham
Lewis, and Mina Loy.
The twentieth century also saw the emergence of new nations out of
European colonial rule, including India,
Australia and parts of Africa. Among these nations, Ireland was
the oldest of Britain’s colonies and the first in modern times to fight
for independence. We can explore how twentieth-century writers
fashioned new ideas about their changing nation.
Civil rights movements, fighting for equality for non-whites, women
and homosexuals also make up a huge part of our recent history.
Their relative (but by no means complete) successes can be
contrasted with newer prejudices, born out of tragedies such as the September 11th attacks.
Attempts at social progress in order to improve the quality of life for poorer citizens, can also
be seen as key features of the twentieth century, seen in innovations such as the creation of
the welfare state and the NHS.
Added to this are the huge technological advancements and scientific discoveries, which have,
unsurprisingly, had a major impact on how we live our lives in modern times. From the
invention of the television, to our brand new ipod age, technology has affected how we see
ourselves and interact with each other, as it opens up a wealth of possibilities and obstacles.
Similarly, scientific discoveries have impacted on our understanding of morality, ethics and
society.
Combined, these factors have produced a century of huge political, cultural and social
upheaval, where citizens across the globe have had to adapt to many changes and struggle
to find where they fit in. Nowhere is this reflected more strongly than in modern literature,
where, in fiction and non-fiction we can explore “The Struggle for Identity”.
A timeline of the twentieth century.
Before we start looking at texts, we need to think about the key events of the twentieth
century and their impact on literature:
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The roots of modern literature are in the late nineteenth century.
The war produced major shifts in attitudes towards Western myths of progress and
civilization.
The twentieth century witnessed the emergence of internationally acclaimed voices
from the former imperial dominions.
The years leading up to World War I saw the start of a poetic revolution.
By the end of the century modernism had given way to the striking pluralism of
postmodernism and post colonialism.
Rejecting Victorian notions of the artist’s moral duty, the aesthetic movement widened the gap
between writers and the general public. The “alienation” of the artist underlies key works of
modernism. The last decades of Victoria’s reign also saw the emergence of a mass literate
population. Modernity disrupted the old order, casting into doubt previously stable
assumptions about the self, community, and the divine. Freud’s psychoanalysis changed
understandings of rationality and personal development. As the influence of organized religion
weakened, many writers looked to literature as an alternative.
As terms applied to cultural history, Edwardian (1901-1910) suggests period marked by
intellectual change but social continuity with Victorian times, while Georgian refers to the lull
before the storm of World War I. The war produced major shifts in attitudes towards Western
myths of progress and civilization. The 1930s in Britain were called the red decade, for the
only solution to economic dislocation seemed to lie in socialism or communism. Victory in
World War II was accompanied by diminution in British political power. In the 1980s, Margaret
Thatcher’s conservative policies widened the gap between rich and poor and between the
constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Under Tony Blair, elected in 1997, Scotland and
Wales were empowered to elect their own legislative bodies.
In 1914, nearly a quarter of the earth’s surface and more than a quarter of its population were
under British dominion. Following victory in the Second World War, Britain lost its empire. The
twentieth century witnessed the emergence of internationally acclaimed voices from the
former imperial dominions. Migrants to Britain from the Commonwealth brought distinctive
vernaculars and cultural identities with them, prompting a large-scale and ongoing rethinking
of national identity. In the 1970s and 1980s a younger generation of black and Asian British
writers emerged, including Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi and John Agard.
The years leading up to World War I saw the start of a poetic revolution. The imagist
movement arose in reaction against Romantic fuzziness and emotionalism in poetry. A new
critical movement went hand in hand with the new poetry, and T. S. Eliot was high priest of
both. Poets looked back to the Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century and produced
work of much greater intellectual complexity than the Victorians. In the 1950s, poets such as
Philip Larkin and Thom Gunn were members of “the Movement,” which emphasized purity of
diction and a neutral tone. Leading poets at the close of the century were the Irishman
Seamus Heaney and the West Indian Derek Walcott, both of whom combine elements of the
English literary tradition with the rhythms of their native lands.
The twentieth-century novel experienced three major movements. High modernism, lasting
through the 1920s, celebrated personal and textual inwardness, complexity, and difficulties.
High modernists like Woolf and Joyce wrote in the wake of the shattering of confidence in old
certainties. The 1930s through the 1950s saw a return to social realism and moralism as a
reaction against modernism. Writers like Murdoch and Golding were consciously retrospective
in their investment in moral form. By the end of the century modernism had given way to the
striking pluralism of postmodernism and post colonialism.
Although there were major innovations in Continental drama in the first half of the twentieth
century, in Britain the impact of these innovations was delayed by a conservative theatre
establishment until the late 1950s and 1960s. Samuel Beckett played a leading role in the
anglophone absorption of modernist experiment in drama. In the shadow of the mass death of
World War II, Beckett’s absurdist intimation of an existential darkness without redemption
gave impetus to a seismic shift in British drama. The Theatres Act of 1968 abolished the
power of censorship that had rested in the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. Wole Soyinka and
Derek Walcott, two eminent poets from Britain’s former dominions, helped breathe new life
and diversity into English drama.
A Time line of Key Events
22 July 1901
The birth of the Labour party
The Labour Representative Committee, a socialist federation formed in 1900, convinced the
trade unions that the political representation of labour was now essential. This organisation
later became the Labour party.
May 1902
The Second Boer War Ends
The treaty of Vereeniging confirmed British victory over the Boer republics after three years of
war, and laid the foundations for the Union of South Africa. Notably, it still ignored the rights of
the black population. The cost and conduct of the war prompted concerns that Britain was no
longer fit for its imperial role.
10 October 1903
Women's Social and Political Union is formed to campaign for women's suffrage
The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was founded by six women, of whom
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst soon became the most prominent. Frustrated at the lack
of progress on women's rights, their activities soon became more confrontational, and
included prison hunger strikes.
27 October 1908
Parliament approves old age pensions
New legislation gave a weekly means-tested pension of a maximum of five shillings to all
those aged over 70. Only about half a million people received the pension, and thus the
significance of the legislation lay as much in the fact that it established a principle as in its
immediate benefits.
6 May 1910
Edward VII dies and is succeeded by George V
December 1911
National Insurance Act provides cover against sickness and unemployment
Creation of health insurance for those in employment, which provided payment for medical
treatment. Grafted on to the act was a limited plan for unemployment benefit drawn up by
Winston Churchill. With this legislation, the Liberals laid the foundations of the Welfare State.
15 April 1912
'Titanic' sinks with the loss of 1,503 lives
4 June 1913
Suffragette Emily Davison is killed by the king's horse
Emily Wilding Davison was severely injured when she threw herself in front of the king's horse
at the Derby, and died in hospital a few days later. The militancy of her organisation, the
Women's Social and Political Union, proved counter-productive to the cause of women's
rights, but the more moderate National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies also had little to
show for its efforts through negotiation.
20 March 1914
Elements of the army say they won't enforce Irish 'Home Rule'
The officers of the 6th Cavalry Brigade, stationed outside Dublin, indicated that they would
refuse to enforce Irish 'Home Rule' in Ulster if a parliamentary act proposing greater
autonomy for Ireland were carried.
4 August 1914
Britain declares war on Germany in response to the invasion of Belgium. World War
One begins.
2 November 1917
'Balfour Declaration' gives British support to a Jewish homeland in Palestine
In a letter to a leading member of the British Jewish community, Foreign Secretary Arthur
Balfour stated the British government's support for a Jewish national home in Palestine.
7 November 1917
Bolsheviks, under Vladimir Lenin, create a communist revolution in Russia
In February 1917, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was forced to abdicate after serious reverses in
the war against Germany. Inspired by the writings of Karl Marx, the Bolsheviks established a
communist government.
16 February 1918
Limited numbers of women are given the vote for the first time
The Representation of the People Act enfranchised all men over the age of 21, and propertied
women over 30. The electorate increased to 21 million, of which 8 million were women, but it
excluded working class women who mostly failed the property qualification.
11 November 1918
World War One ends when Germany signs an armistice
21 January 1919
Sinn Fein sets up its own parliament, the 'Dáil Eireann', in Dublin
11 September 1919
British government declares Sinn Fein's 'Dáil Eireann' (parliament) illegal
1 December 1919
Lady Astor becomes the first woman to take her seat in parliament
American-born Nancy Astor was not the first British woman member of parliament (MP), but
she was the first one to take her seat. Constance Markievicz became the first woman MP in
1918, but as a member of Sinn Fein she had refused to take her seat.
23 December 1919
Exclusion of women from many jobs is made illegal
The Sex Disqualification Removal Act made it illegal for women to be excluded from most
jobs.
1920
Women at Oxford University are allowed to receive degrees
Academic halls for women were first established at Oxford in the 19th century, but although
women had been able to attend degree level courses, they could not receive degrees until
1920.
28 June 1922
Irish Civil War breaks out
26 January 1926
John Logie Baird gives the first public demonstration of television
John Logie Baird, a Scottish engineer and inventor, gave a demonstration of a machine for
the transmission of pictures, which he called 'television'. Around 50 scientists assembled in
his attic workshop in London to witness the event. It was not until after the World War Two
that televisions became widely available.
19 October 1926
Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa are recognised as independent.
1 January 1927
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is created
7 May 1928
All women over the age of 21 get the vote
September 1928
The first 'talkie' (film with dialogue) is shown in Britain
British audiences were introduced to talking pictures when the 'The Jazz Singer', opened in
London.
30 September 1928
Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
24 October 1929
Wall Street Crash sparks the Great Depression
The crash of the American Wall Street financial markets in 1929 crippled the economies of
the US and Europe, resulting in the Great Depression. In Britain, unemployment had peaked
just below three million by 1932. It was only with rearmament in the period immediately before
the outbreak of World War Two that the worst of the Depression could be said to be over.
July 1935
First Penguin paperbacks go on sale, bringing literature to the masses
It was a revolution in publishing that massively widened public access to literature.
20 January 1936
George V dies and is succeeded by Edward VIII
12 May 1937
George VI is crowned king
3 September 1939
Britain declares war on Germany in response to the invasion of Poland
November 1942
'Beveridge Report' lays the foundations for the Welfare State
Sir William Beveridge's report gave a summary of principles aimed at banishing poverty from
Britain, including a system of social security that would be operated by the government, and
would come into effect when war ended. Beveridge argued that the war gave Britain a unique
opportunity to make revolutionary changes. Beveridge's recommendations for the creation of
a Welfare State were implemented by Clement Attlee after the war, including the creation of
the National Health Service in 1948.
May 1944
Butler Act creates free secondary education
RA Butler, the progressive Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, created universal free
secondary education to the age of 15, something people had campaigned for since the 19th
century. There were three types of schools - grammar, secondary modern and technical,
entrance to which was determined by the '11 plus' examination.
8 May 1945
Britain celebrates the end of war on Victory in Europe Day
German forces had been utterly defeated by the end of April 1945. Adolf Hitler committed
suicide on 30 April as Soviet forces closed in on his Berlin bunker. The entire country came to
a standstill as people celebrated the end of war.
15 August 1945
Victory over Japan Day marks the end of World War Two
On 6 August, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the
American bomber 'Enola Gay'. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on the port city
of Nagasaki. In all, 140,000 people perished. Less than a week later, the Japanese leadership
agreed to an unconditional surrender, and the Emperor Hirohito broadcast his nation's the
capitulation over the radio. Victory over Japan day also marked the end of World War Two.
24 October 1945
United Nations comes into existence with Britain as a founder member
15 August 1947
India gains independence from Britain
India was regarded as the most valuable British imperial possession. World War Two forced
Britain to realise that it could not maintain a global empire and the British agreed to Indian
self-government. However, they could not find a political solution that was acceptable to both
Hindus and Muslims, and the country was partitioned into India and Pakistan. The British
were unable to prevent the resulting inter-communal violence which resulted in hundreds of
thousands of deaths.
22 June 1948
Post-war immigration from the Commonwealth begins
The liner 'SS Empire Windrush' docked at Tilbury carrying nearly 500 Caribbean immigrants
to Britain, many attracted by offers of work. This arrival represented the beginning of
significant immigration to Britain from the Commonwealth, particularly the Caribbean, and
later the Indian subcontinent.
5 July 1948
National Health Service is established
18 April 1949
Republic of Ireland comes into being
The Republic of Ireland Act (1948) came into force on Easter Monday, April 1949, ending
vestigial British authority in Eire. Under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, the British crown had
retained some authority in the Irish Free State, although this was limited by the 1937
constitution. The 1948 Act repealed the External Relations Act and took Eire out of the
Commonwealth.
6 February 1952
Elizabeth II succeeds her father, George VI
25 April 1953
Watson and Crick publish their discovery of the structure of DNA
Scientists James Watson and Francis Crick were the first to describe the structure of a
chemical called deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, which makes up the genes that pass
hereditary characteristics from parent to child. They received the 1962 Nobel Prize for
Physiology or Medicine, which they shared with another DNA pioneer, Maurice Wilkins. A
hugely important discovery, it has since formed the basis for a wide range of scientific
advances.
8 May 1956
John Osborne's play 'Look Back in Anger' is staged
The 'Angry Young Men' generation of writers rejected what they saw as Britain's vulgar
'materialist' society, which they believed was disagreeable in itself and frustrating to them as
individuals. Social values were lacerated by Osborne's play and in the novels 'Room at the
Top' (1957) by John Braine, 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' (1958) by Alan Sillitoe, and
'This Sporting Life' (1960) by David Storey.
5 July 1956
Worsening pollution prompts the passing of the Clean Air Act
The Act was in response to the severe London smog of 1952, which killed more than 4,000
people. Another Clean Air Act followed in 1968.
6 March 1957
Ghana becomes the first British colony in Africa to gain independence
This event marked the beginning of rapid decolonisation in Africa.
15 May 1957
Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb
Following tests over Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean, the government announced that
Britain had joined the Soviet Union and the US as a nuclear power, with its own hydrogen
bomb. The tests led to a debate in Britain about the dangers of nuclear weapons, and to the
foundation in 1958 of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
12 July 1965
Comprehensive education system is initiated
This represented the first step towards a comprehensive education system that served all
pupils on an equal basis.
8 November 1965
Death penalty is abolished
1967
Abortion and homosexuality are legalised
6 February 1971
First British soldier is killed in Northern Ireland's 'Troubles'
The first British soldier, Gunner Robert Curtis (aged 20), was killed in Northern Ireland's
'Troubles' by the self-styled 'Irish Republican Army' (IRA). He was shot while on foot patrol in
North Belfast. British troops had been sent to Northern Ireland in 1969 in a 'limited operation'
to restore law and order.
30 January 1972
British army kills 14 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on Bloody Sunday
British troops opened fire on a crowd of civil rights protestors in Londonderry, Northern Ireland,
killing 14 civilians and injuring a further 17. The crowd of between 7,000 and 10,000 people
had been marching in protest at the policy of detention without trial. The sequence of events
on 'Bloody Sunday' remains highly controversial, with accusations that senior IRA figures
were present on the day and shot at British troops.
25 July 1978
World's first test-tube baby is born in Oldham
Winter 1978/79
Strikes paralyse Britain during the so-called 'Winter of Discontent'
Industrial action by petrol tanker and lorry drivers was followed by hospital ancillary staff,
ambulance men and dustmen going on strike. Hospitals were picketed, the dead left unburied,
and troops called in to control rats swarming around heaps of uncollected rubbish. The large
number of simultaneous strikes, the violence and perceived mean-mindedness of the
picketing (which included the turning away of ambulances) created a sense of alarm in the
electorate about the decline of British society.
3 May 1979
Conservative Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain's first female prime minister
11 April 1981
Racial tensions spark riots in Brixton and other areas
Serious rioting in Brixton following the arrest of a local black man marked the start of violent
unrest across England.
1989
Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web
In 1989, while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland,
Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea of the World Wide Web, a new way of using existing
internet technology to share information. He wrote the first web browser the following year,
and went on to found the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1994.
1994
First women priests are ordained by the Church of England
The decision to ordain women to the priesthood in the Church of England was taken in 1992
and implemented in 1994. It was a controversial step, welcomed by most of the church but
rejected by traditionalists, some of whom joined the Catholic Church in protest.
1 July 1997
Britain hands Hong Kong back to China
After more than 150 years of British rule, Hong Kong was returned to Chinese control.
September 1997
Scotland and Wales vote in favour of devolution
In two referenda, a large majority in Scotland (74.9% of those who voted), and a smaller one
in Wales (50.3%), provided the basis for the creation of national assemblies with legislative
powers. The assemblies first met in 1999, with the Scottish Parliament, but not the Welsh
Assembly, gaining tax-varying powers.
10 April 1998
Good Friday Agreement establishes a devolved Northern Irish assembly
An agreement between Northern Ireland's nationalists and unionists was reached after 30
years of conflict,
11 September 2001
Islamic terrorists crash aircraft on targets in New York and Washington
In response, US President George W Bush declared a worldwide 'war on terror'.
7 October 2001
Britain joins the US in strikes on Taleban-controlled Afghanistan
Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader responsible for the '9/11' attacks, was not found.
20 March 2003
Britain joins the US in an invasion of Iraq
Despite significant opposition at home, the British government gave military support to the
controversial United States-led invasion of Iraq.
7 July 2005
Suicide bombers kill 52 people on London's transport system
December 2005
Civil partnerships give same-sex couples legal rights
Defining Features of the twentieth century and texts influenced by them
Modernism
The early part of the twentieth century saw massive changes in the everyday life of people in
cities. The recent inventions of the automobile, airplane, and telephone shrank distances
around the world and sped up the pace of life. Freud’s theory of the unconscious and infantile
sexuality radically altered the popular understanding of the mind and identity, and the latenineteenth-century thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche in different ways undermined
traditional notions of truth, certainty, and morality. Theoretical science, meanwhile, was
rapidly shifting from two-hundred-year-old Newtonian models to Einstein’s theory of relativity
and finally to quantum mechanics.
At least partly in response to this acceleration of life and thought, a
wave of aggressively experimental movements, sometimes collectively
termed “modernist” because of their emphasis on radical innovation,
swept through Europe.
In Paris, the Spanish expatriate painter Pablo Picasso and the
Frenchman Georges Braque developed cubism, a style of painting that
abandoned realism and traditional perspective to fragment space and
explode form. In Italy, the spokesperson for futurism, F. T. Marinetti, led
an artistic movement that touched on everything from painting to poetry to cooking and
encouraged an escape from the past into the rapid, energetic, mechanical world of the
automobile, the airplane, and Marinetti’s own “aeropoetics.” People such as the Frenchman
Marcel Duchamp, author of the ready-made Fountain (1917), a urinal, began a campaign
against established notions of sense and the boundaries of what could be called art. In music,
meanwhile, composers such as the Frenchman Claude Debussy and
Russian-born Igor Stravinsky were beginning experiments with rhythm and
harmony that would soon culminate in the outright atonality of composers
such as the Austrians Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg.
In England, this outbreak of modernist experiment influenced a loosely interrelated network of
groups and individuals, many of them based in London. What connects the modernist writers
is a shared desire to break with established forms and subjects in art and literature.
Influenced by European art movements, many modernist writers rejected realistic
representation and traditional formal expectations. In the novel, they explored the Freudian
depths of their characters’ psyches through stream of consciousness and interior monologue.
In poetry, they mixed slang with elevated language, experimented with free verse, and often
studded their works with difficult allusions and disconnected images.
As modernism developed, the flashy, aggressive polemics of Lewis and Pound were replaced
by the more reasoned, essayistic criticism of Pound’s friend and collaborator T. S. Eliot.
Eliot’s Waste Land and James Joyce’s Ulysses were technically innovative and initially
controversial (Ulysses was banned in the United States and Great Britain), but their eventual
acceptance as literary landmarks helped to bring modernism into the canon of English
literature. In the decades to come, the massive influence of Eliot as a critic would transform
the image of modernism into what Eliot himself called classicism, a position deeply rooted in a
sense of the literary past and emphasizing the impersonality of the work of art.
In the post-World War II period, the influence of modernism, both
on those artists who have repudiated it and on those who have
followed its direction, was pervasive. Joyce, Eliot, Virginia Woolf,
and other modernists provided compositional strategies still
central to literature. Writers as diverse as W. H. Auden, Samuel
Beckett, Derek Walcott, and Salman Rushdie have all, in one
way or another, continued to extend the discoveries of the
modernist experiment—adapting modernist techniques to new
political climates marked by the Cold War and its aftermath, as
well as to the very different histories of formerly colonized nations
F. T. Marinetti, MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
Let's Murder the Moonshine: Selected Writings, translated by R. W. Flint and Arthur A. Coppotelli (Los Angeles:
Sun & Moon Classics, 1991).
Italian poet and propagandist F. T. Marinetti wrote and published his manifesto, ironically, before any such
futurist art existed, and his manifesto remains one of futurism’s most important and enduring works. In it,
Marinetti calls for the destruction of the past as entombed in museums and celebrates the speed of modern
technology.
We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness. Courage,
audacity, and revolt will be essential elements of our poetry. Up to now literature has exalted
a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and sleep. We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish
insomnia, the racer’s stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap.
We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of
speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath
- a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of
Samothrace. We want to hymn the man at the wheel, who hurls the lance of his spirit across
the Earth, along the circle of its orbit.
The poet must spend himself with ardour, splendour, and generosity, to swell the enthusiastic
fervour of the primordial elements. Except in struggle, there is no more beauty. No work
without an aggressive character can be a masterpiece. Poetry must be conceived as a violent
attack on unknown forces, to reduce and prostrate them before man.
We stand on the last promontory of the centuries! Why should we look back, when what we
want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died
yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent
speed.
We will glorify war - the world’s only hygiene - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of
freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman. We will destroy the
museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every
opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.
We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot; we will sing of the
multicoloured, polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant
nightly fervour of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway
stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of
their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter
of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose
wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the
sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like
an enthusiastic crowd.
It is from Italy that we launch through the world this violently upsetting incendiary manifesto of
ours. With it, today, we establish Futurism, because we want to free this land from its smelly
gangrene of professors, archaeologists, ciceroni and antiquarians. For too long has Italy been
a dealer in second-hand clothes. We mean to free her from the numberless museums that
cover her like so many graveyards.
Museums: cemeteries! Identical, surely, in the sinister promiscuity of so many bodies
unknown to one another. Museums: public dormitories where one lies forever beside hated or
unknown beings. Museums: absurd abattoirs of painters and sculptors ferociously
slaughtering each other with color-blows and line-blows, the length of the fought-over walls!
That one should make an annual pilgrimage, just as one goes to the graveyard on All Souls’
Day - that I grant. That once a year one should leave a floral tribute beneath the Gioconda , I
grant you that... But I don’t admit that our sorrows, our fragile courage, our morbid
restlessness should be given a daily conducted tour through the museums. Why poison
ourselves? Why rot?
And what is there to see in an old picture except the laborious contortions of an artist throwing
himself against the barriers that thwart his desire to express his dream completely? Admiring
an old picture is the same as pouring our sensibility into a funerary urn instead of hurtling it far
off, in violent spasms of action and creation. Do you, then, wish to waste all your best powers
in this eternal and futile worship of the past, from which you emerge fatally exhausted,
shrunken, beaten down?
In truth I tell you that daily visits to museums, libraries, and academies (cemeteries of empty
exertion, Calvaries of crucified dreams, registries of aborted beginnings!) are, for artists, as
damaging as the prolonged supervision by parents of certain young people drunk with their
talent and their ambitious wills. When the future is barred to them, the admirable past may be
a solace for the ills of the moribund, the sickly, the prisoner... But we want no part of it, the
past, we the young and strong Futurists!
So let them come, the gay incendiaries with charred fingers! Here they
are! Here they are! Come on! Set fire to the library shelves! Turn aside
the canals to flood the museums! Oh, the joy of seeing the glorious old
canvases bobbing adrift on those waters, discoloured and shredded!
Take up your pickaxes, your axes and hammers and wreck, wreck the
venerable cities, pitilessly!
The oldest of us is thirty: so we have at least a decade for finishing our
work. When we are forty, other younger and stronger men will probably
throw us in the wastebasket like useless manuscripts - we want it to
happen!
They will come against us, our successors, will come from far away, from every quarter,
dancing to the winged cadence of their first songs, flexing the hooked claws of predators,
sniffing doglike at the academy doors the strong odor of our decaying minds, which will have
already been promised to the literary catacombs.
But we won’t be there... At last they’ll find us - one winter’s night - in open country, beneath a
sad roof drummed by a monotonous rain. They’ll see us crouched beside our trembling
aeroplanes in the act of warming our hands at the poor little blaze that our books of today will
give out when they take fire from the flight of our images.
They’ll storm around us, panting with scorn and anguish, and all of them, exasperated by our
proud daring, will hurtle to kill us, driven by a hatred the more implacable the more their
hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us.
Injustice, strong and sane, will break out radiantly in their eyes.
Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice.
The oldest of us is thirty: even so we have already scattered treasures, a thousand treasures
of force, love, courage, astuteness, and raw will-power; have thrown them impatiently away,
with fury, carelessly, unhesitatingly, breathless, and unresting... Look at us! We are still
untired! Our hearts know no weariness because they are fed with fire, hatred, and speed!
Does that amaze you? It should, because you can never remember having lived! Erect on the
summit of the world, once again we hurl our defiance at the stars!
You have objections? - Enough! Enough! We know them... We’ve understood! Our fine
deceitful intelligence tells us that we are the revival and extension of our ancestors - Perhaps!
If only it were so! - But who cares? We don’t want to understand! Woe to anyone who says
those infamous words to us again!
Lift up your heads! Erect on the summit of the world, once again we hurl defiance to the
stars!
Post-colonialism: a focus on Ireland
Europe’s former colonies struggled often violently for political
sovereignty as nation-states. Ireland, Britain’s oldest former colony, was
one of the first to fight for its independence in the first half of the
twentieth century. In addition to the creation of a new government,
Ireland’s struggle for independence entailed creating new ideas about
Irish national identity through literature and the arts.
The 1916 Easter Rising grew out of Irish political and cultural
nationalism and the desire for political sovereignty in Ireland. The
growing resentment over the British control of Ireland led a secret
revolutionary group known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood
(IRB) to plan to take over Dublin on Easter Sunday, April 23,
1916. On the day after Easter,
Monday, April 24, 1916, a group of
Irish leaders and about 1,600 Irish
rebels issued a Proclamation of
Ireland’s independence from British rule. Five days later, with
much of Dublin’s city-center in ruins and aflame, the leaders were
forced to surrender to a much larger British military force. After
the swift execution and mass imprisonment of the Irish rebels, the
public became more fervently nationalist, opposing the British
presence in Ireland.
The Easter Rising challenged modern Irish writers to re-imagine the Irish nation and national
identity. Irish writers criticized the tyranny of British colonialism and shared the hope for an
independent Ireland. Yet they also depicted the dangers of Irish nationalism, including its
connections with armed violence, with cultural exclusion and racism, and, especially, with the
ethic of blood sacrifice. In different ways, both W. B. Yeats’s poem “Easter, 1916” and Sean
O’Casey’s play The Plough and the Stars ask skeptical questions about a violent Irish
nationalism, even as they imagine an Ireland free from colonial rule.
Many Irish writers have figured the Irish nation as a woman to be fought for, as in the Easter
1916 Proclamation: “Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her
freedom.” Since the rise of feminism in the 1960s, contemporary Irish women writers such as
Eavan Boland (NAEL) have attempted to revise this image of Ireland as woman—both to bear
witness to real Irish women’s oppression and to criticize how the long history of British
colonialism has limited Irish conceptions of gender and nationality.
Though Ireland gained national independence in 1922, the island
of Ireland is not politically united. The twenty-six counties that
comprise most of the island form the Republic of Ireland; the
largely Catholic Republic (called only “Ireland”) is fully
independent from British rule. The six counties forming Northern
Ireland are still under British control, and they constitute a
separate political entity. Northern Ireland is also religiously divided between a Roman Catholic
minority and an Ulster Protestant majority, and Ulster Protestants have historically had more
political and economic power than Northern Irish Catholics. The combination of political and
economic inequality and religious differences between these two groups has contributed to
the waves of political and sectarian violence, or Troubles, since the late 1960s.
The Troubles began when civil rights marches by Northern Irish
Catholics for equal housing, voting, and economic rights were
forcibly broken up by the Northern Irish police, or Royal Ulster
Constabulary. On Sunday, January 30, 1972, during a
demonstration against the unlawful imprisonment of Catholics,
British soldiers fatally shot thirteen unarmed demonstrators and
wounded another fourteen. “Bloody Sunday” inflamed Northern
Irish Catholics and led in the 1970s and ‘80s to increased armed
conflict between Catholic and Protestant paramilitary groups, frequent bombings, the
deployment of more British troops and tanks to the streets of Northern Ireland, and the illegal
internment of Catholics suspected of paramilitary ties.
By the 1990s, however, political leaders from both sides (including Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein
and John Hume of the Social Democratic and Labour Party) began a series of talks to end the
conflict in Northern Ireland. With the help of other Northern Irish leaders, British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, and U.S. President Bill Clinton, these talks culminated in the Good Friday
Agreement on April 10, 1998. This document effectively gives
Northern Irish people the power to implement and run their own
government apart from Westminster, London. The following
month, the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland
overwhelmingly passed by referendum the Good Friday
Agreement. Despite the passing of the Agreement and the IRA
announcement of a ceasefire in 1994, the political climate in
Northern Ireland remains tense.
Like earlier modern Irish writers, contemporary Northern Irish writers have also felt compelled
to respond to the Troubles in order to re-imagine Northern Ireland. The frequency and
intensity of the Troubles have placed new pressures and raised new questions for Northern
Irish writers. How, for instance, can a Northern Irish writer illustrate the disturbing nature of
political violence without sensationalizing it? Can literature effectively offer consolation in the
face of such atrocities? How can national unity and inclusiveness be imagined amidst ongoing
cultural, political, and religious divisions? In works that range from elegy to farce, these are
among the questions grappled with by writers of different political and religious communities,
including Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Michael Longley, Fiona Barr, and a London-born
writer of Irish parentage, Martin McDonagh.
The bloody events of the 1916 Easter Rising and the Troubles in Northern Ireland, both
historical outgrowths of British colonialism, have had a lasting impact on how Irish and
Northern Irish writers imagine the nation. Irish writers such as Yeats, James Joyce, and
O’Casey were among the century’s earliest postcolonial subjects to forge, question, and
critique the meaning of the Irish nation and national identity. Yeats and Joyce have influenced
postcolonial writers from countries that gained independence later in the century, such as
Salman Rushdie (India), Derek Walcott (St. Lucia), and Chinua Achebe (Nigeria).
Contemporary Irish, Northern Irish, and Irish diaspora writers such as Heaney, Longley,
Muldoon, Boland, Barr, and McDonagh continue to make sense of the still-present history of
British colonialism, the fact and meaning of sectarian and political violence, and they
sometimes even glimpse hope for peace and reconciliation.
“Easter 1916 Proclamation of an Irish Republic”
In 1916, members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (forerunners of the Irish Republican Army) decided they
would wait no longer for long-delayed British legislation to grant Ireland Home Rule. A force of about 1,600
rebels mounted what would come to be known as the Easter Rising. They took over key buildings, centered on
the General Post Office on O’Connell Street, Dublin. On Easter Monday, Padraic Pearse, head of a Provisional
Government of the Irish Republic, read from the steps of the General Post Office the following proclamation that
he and his colleagues had written.
The proclamation, a revolutionary political document for its time, announces the birth of a sovereign, selfdetermined Irish Republic based on the ideals of liberty and equality for all Irish people, both men and women. It
also invokes the rebel-leaders’ ethic of blood sacrifice.
ANONYMOUS
Easter 1916 Proclamation of an Irish Republic
Poblacht Na h-Eireann
The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic To the People of Ireland
IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which
she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her
flag and strikes for her freedom.
Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the
Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish
Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having
resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and
supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the
first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered
control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by
a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be
extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people
have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three
hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again
asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a
Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms
to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.
The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and
Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal
opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and
prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation
equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which
have divided minority from the majority in the past.
Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent
National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the
suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will
administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.
We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose
blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will
dishonor it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by
its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the
common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.
Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:
THOMAS J. CLARKE
“Declaration of Support” from “The Good Friday Agreement”
“The Good Friday Agreement” was signed by most of Northern Ireland’s political parties in Belfast on April 10,
1998 and passed by referendum by voters in Ireland and Northern Ireland in May. “The Declaration of Support”
(the first page of the Agreement) announces a “new beginning” for Northern Ireland by establishing the
commitment by both political groups (British Unionist and Irish Nationalist) to self-governance and to resolving
political and cultural differences by “exclusively democratic and peaceful means.” John Hume and David Trimble,
two principle creators of “The Agreement,” both won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998.
DECLARATION OF SUPPORT
We, the participants in the multi-party negotiations, believe that the agreement we have
negotiated offers a truly historic opportunity for a new beginning.
The tragedies of the past have left a deep and profoundly regrettable legacy of suffering. We
must never forget those who have died or been injured, and their families. But we can best
honour them through a fresh start, in which we firmly dedicate ourselves to the achievement
of reconciliation, tolerance, and mutual trust, and to the protection and vindication of the
human rights of all.
We are committed to partnership, equality and mutual respect as the basis of relationships
within Northern Ireland, between North and South, and between these islands. We reaffirm
our total and absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means of resolving
differences on political issues, and our opposition to any use or threat of force by others for
any political purpose, whether in regard to this agreement or otherwise.
We acknowledge the substantial differences between our continuing, and equally legitimate,
political aspirations. However, we will endeavour to strive in every practical way towards
reconciliation and rapprochement within the framework of democratic and agreed
arrangements. We pledge that we will, in good faith, work to ensure the success of each and
every one of the arrangements to be established under this agreement. It is accepted that all
of the institutional and constitutional arrangements - an Assembly in Northern Ireland, a
North/South Ministerial Council, implementation bodies, a British-Irish Council and a BritishIrish Intergovernmental Conference and any amendments to British Acts of Parliament and
the Constitution of Ireland - are interlocking and interdependent and that in particular the
functioning of the Assembly and the North/South Council are so closely inter-related that the
success of each depends on that of the other.
Accordingly, in a spirit of concord, we strongly commend this agreement to the people, North
and South, for their approval.
Post-war Britain.
The twentieth century has also been defined by global war. Approximately 35 to 40 million
soldiers have died in the wars of the Twentieth Century, nearly three quarters of them in the
two World Wars. The biggest wars of this century have been the two world wars but this is by
no means the only conflict. Other wars include the Korean War from 1950-53, the Vietnam
War from 1965-73, the Russian Civil War from 1918-21, the Biafran War from 1967-70 and of
course, more recent conflicts such as the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
These clashes have had a huge impact on the societies involved, most obviously on the
soldiers, but also on those who didn’t fight. World War One was a catalyst for huge social and
cultural changes, which both soldiers and non-combatants had to get used to. In the article
below, George Orwell examines the situation of British workers in post-war Britain and looks
at how these citizens must carve out a place for themselves in an unfamiliar world.
The German Story
Alongside the 35 to 40 million soldiers who have died in twentieth century wars,
approximately another 120 million civilians have died. World War Two, in particular saw huge
numbers of civilian casualties. For civilians living in cities and countries which were actually
taken in war, the experience was terrifying. Below an anonymous German woman recounts
her experiences when Russian soldiers entered and took the city of Berlin at the end of the
Second World War. The account is a diary and it allows us a first-hand account of these
difficult times. The woman in the extract is rediscovering the city she has grown up in and
reacquainting herself with a friend she hasn’t seen for a while. The extract also explores ideas
about sexuality and how early sexual experiences shape who we are. The unorthodox and
terrifying sexual encounter of the two young girls in the extracts, it is suggested, will be with
them always.
Refugees
Often, one of the after effects of war is the creation of refugees. A refugee is a person who
flees to a foreign country in order to escape danger or persecution.
The chapter below comes from a text called “With Their Backs to the World” by Åsne
Seierstad, a Norwegian journalist who is reporting on the lives and experiences of everyday
people following the conflict in Yugoslavia in the late 1990s (now called Serbia). Today there
are still thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons in the Balkan Region who
cannot return to their homes. Most of them are Serbs who cannot return to Kosovo, and who
still live in refugee camps in Serbia today. Over 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanian
minorities fled or were expelled from Kosovo after the Kosovo War in 1999.
In the extract below the matriarch of the refugee family, Verica, and her family discuss the
pain of having to leave the place of their birth. The extract examines how this experience
affects your identity, and also how different nationalities can impose identities onto each other.
Social Progress
Key events in the twentieth century, such as the creation of the NHS to provide free
healthcare for all; giving women the vote and providing free secondary education for all
children, all paved the way for a trend known as social progress. Social progress is defined as
the changing of society towards the ideal - in this case the ideal being equal value and
opportunities for all regardless of age, gender, race, religion or class. Social mobility (ie the
ability to move up - and down - the class system) is a key feature of this progress and many
laws and ideologies have been developed and discussed, with this goal in mind.
The following extract from a text called “Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain” by Polly Toynbee,
examines what the effects of this so-called social progress has had on the poorest citizens in
our society. Toynbee looks at how policies, claiming to work towards improving life for people
in Britain have excluded, marginalised and locked out poor people and ostracised them from
mainstream society. It also claims that social mobility has come to a halt, characterising our
society as strictly segregated into rich and poor.
Toynbee explores the effects of low wages on our sense of self-worth and how our identity as
a society has been shaped by the growing divide between rich and poor.
Polly Toynbee goes on to take up the challenge of living in one of the worst council estates in
Britain and taking whatever was offered to her a the job centre. What she discovered gives an
insight into the lives of the working poor and how they fit into twentieth century society.
Post-Colonialism: A Focus on India
In the essay below, Arundhati Roy in “The Algebra of Infinite Justice”, discusses how
independence from Britain has impacted on Indian Cultural Identity.
During World War II Indian troops fought for the Allies, and the country united to repulse a threatened Japanese
attack through Burma. Gandhi, however, the leader of the fight for Indian independence, renewed his noncooperation campaign, and he and the president of the Congress party, Jawaharlal Nehru, were imprisoned for
several years. Alongside this, the Muslim League, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, was demanding a separate
Muslim state. At the close of the war the British government announced that India would be granted
independence.
The Congress party then reluctantly agreed to the separate Muslim state of Pakistan, and in August, 1947, the
two countries became fully independent British dominions, with Nehru as India's first prime minister. Violence
broke out immediately between Muslims and Hindus, and thousands of persons were killed. In 1948 Gandhi,
who had worked to bring peace, was assassinated by a Hindu extremist.
The independent country of India was founded on August the 15th,
1947 and the day after the north-western and north-eastern parts of the
Indian sub-continent became the independent country of Pakistan.
Burma (now Myanmar) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) won independence
in 1948. East Pakistan broke away in 1971 and became the
independent
country
of
Bangladesh
America
John F Kennedy’s inaugural address, below, sets out a new identity for America as a nation
determined upon peaceful victory in the Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union.
America’s Political Identity
Much has been written on America’s foreign policy and the effects this has had. September
11th and subsequent events resulting from this attack have invoked both sympathy and
condemnation from the rest of the world. In the essay above Arundhati Roy in “The Algebra of
Infinite Justice” argues that America’s policies have created an identity, which is
interchangeable with the very thing it purports to hate.
The Motorcycle Diaries
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967) was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, politician,
author, physician, military theorist, and guerrilla leader. As a young medical student, Guevara traveled
throughout Latin America and was transformed by the endemic poverty he witnessed. These diaries are an
account of his trip. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region's
ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of political policies, with the only remedy being world
revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms and his later role in the Cuban
revolution with Fidel Castro.
These diaries show the young Che coming face to face with social injustice such as that described below. These
experiences change him, from a feckless young man to one with revolution in his view. The final chapter (a note
in the margin - below) sees him consolidate his identity as a revolutionary.