TWENTIETH CENTURY
BRITISH LIT
WRITERS AND TERMS
Themes of the 20th Century
 Adversity
 Diversity
 Industrialism
 Experimentation
 Pluralism
 Anti-realistic
 Shunned tradition
 Disillusionment from
war
Influences on the 20th Century
 Sigmund Freud
 Psychoanalysis and the power
of the subconscious
 Charles Darwin
 Social Darwinism, evolution,
competition, survival of the
fittest
 Karl Marx
 Socialist theories; communism;
influenced events of Russia
Modernism: 1900-1940
Post-Modernism: After WWI
Only constant has been change….
Changes…
Votes and employment for women
Social welfare programs
Advances in science and technology
Rise of mass communication
Decline in national fortunes
Decline in industry
Loss of colonies
The need to import a lot more products
Commonwealth of nations, now European Union
Literature Trends
Prior to WWI, literary style had been more Georgian, very romantic
*More focus on lower and middle class life
Political and social themes
Use of impressionism
More examination of the inner self
Avoided realism and sentimentality
Anti-materialistic
Mistrust of religion and philosophy
Feeling of crisis
Psychological turmoil
Important
Writers
James Joyce
DH Lawrence
George Orwell
William Butler
Yeats
Virginia Woolf
Samuel Becket
T.S. Eliot
Salman Rushdie
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
DH Lawrence 1885-1930
 Brilliant, imaginative, and emotional
 Suffered from censorship and public condemnation
 Portrays characters as victims of a restrictive society
 Portrays nature as symbolic of what is vital in life
 Wrote Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover,
and Women in Love: all dealt with relationships
 Felt the source of all knowledge in life was in man
and woman
 Felt there was a conflict between instinct, which he
saw as good, and education, which he saw as bad
His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the
dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In them,
Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality,
spontaneity, and instinct.
Lawrence is now valued by many
as a visionary thinker and
significant representative of
modernism in English literature.
“Money poisons you when you've
got it, and starves you when you
haven't.”
The Rocking Horse Winner
 Deals with conflict between instincts and education
 Paul rides his horse to find a winner
 Whispering increases after his mother gets money
 Bassett is his first partner
 He loses on his first bet
 Wins on Malabar, his final pick
 His mother’s heart is a little stone
 She thinks about her son; her instincts start to kick
in
 Conflict between materialism and nature
Traveled with his German wife Frieda
Lived in New Mexico, England, Italy, and
Australia
Died of tuberculosis
Influenced by Freudian psychology
“Snake”
 Set in Italy
 Speaker goes to water trough and meets a snake
 He becomes intrigued by it and watches it
 The voices of his education tell him to kill it
 His instinct tells him to admire it
 He listens to his education and throws something at
it
 He says he has something to expiate…a pettiness.
 Conflict: Instinct vs. Education; Nature vs. Society
WWI Trench Poets
Siegfried Sassoon
Wilifred Owen
Trench Poets
Believed in
Became Disillusioned by
 The glory and honor of
The carnage
The suffering
The lack of progress
The lack of support
The hopelessness
Owen was killed a few
days before the war
ended; died young

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war and serving one’s
country
Enlisted with pride
Very romanticized view
of war
Sassoon had a
breakdown; almost went
AWOL
The two met in a hospital
Chinua Achebe 1930From Nigeria
Social Novelist
 Wrote Things Fall Apart,
the most widely read
African novel
 Wanted to educate
everyone about the noble
qualities of Africa
 Reacted against Joseph’s
Conrad’s version of the
black man as a foolish
loyal servant in Heart of
Darkness
Nnaemeka-The son of
Okeke. A man who is
engaged to Nene. He is
an Ibo.
2. Nene- She is engaged
to Nnaemeka. Grew up
in the big city of Lagos,
she follows modern
ways; she is a good
Christian, and a teacher
in a girls' school in
Lagos.
3. Okeke-The father of
Nnaemeka. An Ibo.
4. Madubogwu- A highly
practical man.
5. Ugoye Nweke- An Ibo
woman. The woman that
Okeke wants to marry
his son.
6. The Children-The
sons of Nnaemeka and
Nene.
South African Apartheid
1976 Riot in Soweto
Sharpsville Massacre
 Police fired into backs of crowd
 Soweto protested policy that
of people who were protesting
law that made all blacks carry a
pass book to travel in and out of
the city; employers could write
negative things to prevent them
from entering.
 Laws stated black could not
hold a post higher than the
lowest white
required classes to be taught in
Afrikaans, the language spoken
by white SA’s
 More than 600 blacks were
killed.
 This spurred Gordimer’s
interest in apartheid
18
From Johannesburg,
South Africa
Parents were immigrants
from Lithuania & England
Grew up in conventional
society
Wrote about effects of
apartheid, legal until 1991
She understood the black
man’s burden in her
country; treats SA from a
literary perspective
Activist for AIDS
Believed short story was
literary form of our time
Very sensitive to
discrimination of any kind
Nadine Gordimer 19231991 Nobel Prize Winner
An English novelist and
journalist. His work is
marked by keen
intelligence and wit, a
profound awareness of
social injustice, an
intense opposition to
totalitarianism ,a
passion for clarity in
language and a belief in
democratic socialism.
Orwell's influence on
popular and political
culture endures, and
several of his neologisms
along with the term
Orwellian— a byword
for totalitarian or
manipulative social
practices — have entered
the vernacular
George Orwell (Eric Blair) 19031950 Born in India; from England
Orwell, the narrator
writes of his experience
as a police officer in
Burma. He shoots an
elephant, even though
he knows he should not,
in order to avoid being
laughed at. He regrets
his action.
The essay is also a
condemnation of
imperialism:
“When the white man
turns tyrant it is his own
freedom that he
destroys.“
A narrative essay: his
first famous piece.
First published in the literary magazine New Writing
in the autumn of 1936 and broadcast by the BBC
Home Service on 12 October
1948.
William Butler Yeats 1865-1939
Irish poet and playwright;
revived Irish theatre
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
 Represents an escape
from the stress of reality.
Portrays the countryside
as an idyllic refuge.
 Uses assonance and
alliteration.
 Based on his
grandparents’ farm in
Ireland
William Butler Yeats’ Reading
 http://youtu.be/cy4gFQwDfic
 I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some
peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket
sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
 I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
 1892
Katherine Mansfield
1888-1923
From New Zealand

Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry
(14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a
prominent modernist writer of short fiction
who was born and brought up in colonial
New Zealand and wrote under the pen name
of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for
Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered
Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence
and Virginia Woolf with whom she became
close friends. Her stories often focus on
moments of disruption and frequently open
rather abruptly. Among her most well-known
stories are "The Garden Party,” "The
Daughters of the Late Colonel," and "The
Fly." During the First War Mansfield
contracted extra pulmonary tuberculosis,
which rendered any return or visit to New
Zealand impossible and led to her death at
the age of 34.
The light is
central symbol
Conflicts:
1)Class vs Humanity
2)Rich vs Poor
3) Power
“I seen [sic] the little
lamp.”
James Joyce
1882-1941
Famous novelist and short story writer
Dublin, Ireland
Works:
Dubliners
Ulysses
A Portrait of the Artist as aYoung Man
Finnegan’sWake
Known for his stream-of-consciousness style.
Considered to be one of the most influential
Writers of the twentieth century
“Araby” is a carnival or bazaar that the narrator
wants to attend in order to purchase a gift for
Mangan’s sister whom he barely knows.
He has an epiphany at the end: realizes the futility
of his mission.
“Araby”
Everyone needs to escape
The Quest
 The priest: his books
 The boy goes on a
 Mangan’s sister: her
quest.
 His views himself as a
gallant knight on a
noble quest.
 Mangan’s sister is
described with images
of light and white.
religious retreats
 His uncle: alcohol
 The boy: his fantasies
 Coping with the
dreariness of reality is
a theme.
Frank O’Connor 1903-1966
Born Michael O’Donovan
 Proud of being Irish
 Member of Irish Republican Army
 Prolific short story writer
 Over 70 dealt with Irish family life
Famous Short Story
Writer
O’Connor knew education was way our of his
horrific family life.
His dad was an alcoholic and cruel; called him a
sissy because he liked to read.
My Oedipus
Complex
Larry: unreliable
narrator
Story relies on dramatic
irony
Larry wants to get rid of
his dad because he
competes with him for
his mother’s attention
Humorous Tone
Uses British idiom: “in
a wax”
In resolution Larry and
his father unite against
Sonny, the new baby
 1) More concerned with nuances
The Modern
Short Story
Very different from
19th century stories
Often use dramatic
irony
Climax may be an
epiphany the
character has at
the end
of character than with
construction of plot
 2)More apt to imply facts and
psychological truths than to state
them directly
 3)More apt to move toward a
revelation of truth than toward an
effect
Dylan Thomas 1914-1953
From Wales but
mostly lived in
London.
Wrote first volume
of poetry at 20.
Gave lectures and did
readings in the U.S.
Died in NYC at 39 of
alcoholism.
Flamboyant and
popular figure.
Famous relationship
with his wife Caitlin
Idioms
An expression that does
not literally mean what
the words say
British idiom is
different from
American idiom
“Round the
neighborhood”
“In a wax”
“Honor Bright”
Do Not go Gentle into That Good Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2cgcxGJTQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNvujNd1gLw
&feature=related
A villanelle (a 19-line lyric poem)
Written for his father who was on his
Deathbed.
Thomas wanted him to resist death.
Builds an argument to persuade him
Fern Hill
Poem uses half rhyme, internal rhyme,
and end rhyme
Lyric poem
Comments on the cruelty of time
Irony is that we are always moving
closer to death even while wonderfully
alive.
Uses puns and words in a playful manner
“Though I sang in my chains by the
sea.”
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
 Waiting for Godot
Samuel
Beckett
1906-1989
An avant-garde
playwright, novelist,
poet, and director
1969 Nobel Prize
Irish but lived in Paris
Work is bleak and
offers a tragi-comic
outlook on human
nature
Associated with black
comedy or gallows
humor
Waiting for Godot
 Beckett is considered by
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many to be most important
post-modern work
Modernist writer
Work is minimalist
Associated with Theatre of
the Absurd: uses dark
elements to create humor
Very little scenery
Characters wait for Godot:
that long-expected
something that people wait
for but which never comes
Virginia Woolf 1882-1941 (English)
For most of history, Anonymous was a
woman.”
― Virginia Woolf
 A woman must have
money and a room of her
own if she is to write
fiction.”
― Virginia Woolf, A
Room of One's Own
Early feminist; founded Hogarth Press
and The Bloomsbury Groups
Woolf used stream of consciousness style; she was a mentor to other writers
and suffered from manic depression.
She wrote To the Lighthouse; A Room of One’s Own, and Mrs. Dalloway.
She was from a distinguished family, grew up wealthy, was abused
y her stepbrothers, had a wonderful marriage, and dealt with depression
most of her life.
Committed suicide by filling her pockets with stones and walking
Into the river. Felt she was a burden on her husband.
Considered a literary giant, she expanded the genre of nonfiction and was like
James Joyce with her use of psychoanalysis and stream of consciousness