Poetry: The Movement
Philip Larkin: Churchgoing – a poem
The Movement:
Stress on common, ordinary things, pragmatism (everything is a matter-of-fact, austerity)
Refused T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Dylan Thomas (Romantic Bohemian)
Rational, apolitical, agnostic, conservative
Prose: Angus Wilson, Charles Percy Snow, Graham Greene – realistic tradition
Return to the traditional narrative, novel (influence of Fielding – K. Amis, tradition of Tom
Jones), Hurry on Down, John Wain: tradition of the picaresque novel
Emphasis on belonging to the tradition of Jane Austen, Fielding, Dickens, Trollope
x
Experimental novel:
1. Lawrence Durrell: Alexandria Quartet - modernism
2. W. Golding: Lord of the Flies – fable, allegory, influenced by existentionalism
(similar to Iris Murdoch, J. Fowles)
3. A. Burgess: A Clockwork Orange – linguistic experiment
1960s/70s meta-fiction, non-fiction, documentary material used, heading towards the
postmodern (keyword: intertexuality, fusion of reality and fiction, wordplay)
Angry young men, poets of The Movement: influenced by George Orwell (left-wing
intellectual), sympathized with his skepticism, common sense, negative attitude towards
literary modernism, admired his social concern, sharp criticism
Animal Farm, 1984
Sense of parody, satire on snobbery, anti-romantic sensibility, emphasis on “Englishness”,
“little Englandism”, English provincialism, distaste for anything foreign, for existential
philosophy, refusing French novel and modernism, “high art”
William Golding 1911-1993
Nobel Prize laureate
- Royal Navy, briefly involved in the pursuit of Germany's mightiest battleship, the Bismarck.
- participated in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day
- at war's end returned to teaching and writing
prominent among Loch Ness Monster theorists, wrote articles for Popular Science (NessieThe Legend)
all novels: examined the essence of evil (within ourselves, bravery: to face the evil and admit
it), criticized for not writing a realistic novel, for nihilism
Conrad: Heart of Darkness
essay Fable – subjective reaction to war, allegory of men, skepticism, as a human he can
never admit that the evil was committed by a “civilized nation” (German)
Poems (1934)
Lord of the Flies (1954)
Parody of Ballantyne: Coral Island (1857) – the boys civilize the “savages”, G. opposed to
the “labeling” of dark skin as evil, British empire and Victorian values promoted x Golding
anti-utopia, collapse of civilization
Symbols: the conch – magic power, principle of humanity, democracy, order – smashed (sim.
to Piggy)
Heroes: prototypes
Jack: leader, soldier, hunter
Piggy: tragicomic char., discriminated, fat, glasses – symbol of knowledge, keeping the fire
Ralph: common sense, humanity
Simon: saint, victim
Innocent child games – turn into fight, war, atrocity, children – copy the adults in WWII
(paradox)
Two film adaptations: 1963 Peter Brook, 1990 Peter Hook
The Inheritors (1955) – Neanderthals – simpleminded, superseded by a new, aggressive
nation (irony) – two tribes standing against each other, hopelessness, loneliness of men
Pincher Martin (1956) – explored the afterlife of a marooned sailor, his hallucination of living
for seven more days before he is washed away by a wave, flashbacks of his life
The Brass Butterfly (play) (1958)
Free Fall (1959)
The Spire (1964) C14, cathedral town (inspired by Salisbury), dangerous construction, unsafe,
built out of pride, vanity of the local dean
The Pyramid (1967)
The Scorpion God (1971)
Darkness Visible (1979) – War London
The Paper Men (1984) – satirical comedy about a writer
Lawrence Durrell 1912-1990 – infl. of Joyce
Experiments out of the ordinary “realistic” novels of 1950s
Modernist method
The Alexandria Quartet 1957-60
Melodramatic, romantic prose
Exaltation (baroque, the macabre), gothic infl., detective motifs
Modern meta-novel
Blend of the high and lower art forms
Metaphysical, erotic fantasies + rational, speculative artificiality
Too rich, too decorative
Occultism, black romance, mysticism, kabala, witchcraft, alchemy
Evocation of landscape (Alexandria) – illusion, myth – intimate dialogue of the poet with
landscape – sensual (Joyce – Dublin: myth, history)
Aesthetic novel: art for life, not for art’s sake
Self-reflection
Cyclic structure
The four novels are:
Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), Clea (1960)