英美文学20c英国文学背景

The expanding of Imperialism

World war I
World war II

The reawakening of a dominating spirit
Modernism
The term Modernism usually refers to the early part of the 20th century — sometimes beginning with the 1st World War in 1914, and continuing through the 1930s or so — perhaps up to the 2nd World War. Modernism is defined by its rejection of the literary conventions of the nineteenth century and by its opposition to conventional morality, taste, traditions, and economic values.
In doing so, the novelist abandoned the conventional usages of realistic plot structure, characterization and description, and their works became successions of “fleeting (lasting only a short time) images of the external world mingled with thoughts and half-thoughts and shadows of thought attached to the immediate present or moving back and forth in memory”.
Social Picture of the Period
-Rise of cities -Dehumanization(非人性化), anonymity(匿名，不知姓名) of people -Class structure changing -Advancing technology -Politics: revolutions, wars
Karl Marx

-Economic determinism(经济Fra Baidu bibliotek定论认为一切社
会、政治、文化和智力活动均为社会经济组织的产物)

-Human behavior controlled by forces OUTSIDE self -Class struggle, workers unite for utopian change

Sigmund Freud
-Psychoanalysis 精神分析 -Psychological determinism 心理决定论 -Man behavior from forces INSIDE the self -Interior forces, man‗s taboos and rules govern self and world 内部力量，人的禁忌和规则管理自我和世界 -Self-analysis
20th Century English Literature
Historical Background
representatives
刘叶繁 涂洁莹
Historical Background



The expanding of Imperialism Modernism Widespread demand for social reform Image movement The revival of the metaphysical The Irish Dramatic Movement
Imagism in Poetry

Imagism was an Anglo-American poetic movement flouring in the 1910s. The principles are: to use language of common speech to employ always the exact word to create new rhythms to present an image to produce poetry that is hard and clear
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

-God is Dead -Economic and psychological determinism 经济和心理决定论 -No divine patterns, search for meaning 没有神圣的模式,寻找意义 -Trying to put "world" back into some kind of form, structure 试图把“世界”回到某种形式、结构 -Spiritual ruins after the war, what is the meaning of life
Three Philosophical Backgrounds

As opposed to historic causes:

WW I The Depression America/Europe feeling lost

Karl Marx 马克思 Sigmund Freud 弗洛伊德 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 尼采
-Physics: quantum physics(量子物理学), Einstein, uncertainty principle -Religion: God is dead, everything is meaningless
The Psychological Novel


While modernist poetry arose as a break with 19th – century Romanticism, modernist fiction represented a trend drifting away from the tradition of 19thcentury realism. Modernist fiction put emphasis on the description of the characters‘ psychological activities, and so has sometimes been called modern psychological fiction.
In the 20th century, under the influence of Freud‘s theory of psychological analysis, a number of writers adopted the ―stream-ofconsciousness‖ method of novel writing. The striking feature of these novelists is their giving precedence(优先考虑) to the depiction of the characters‘ mental and emotional reactions to external events, rather than the events themselves.
The revival of the metaphysical poets

metaphysical poets 玄学派是指17世纪英国文坛出现的一个独特的诗歌流 派。玄学派在18世纪的古典主义潮流和19世纪浪漫派 的发展中都没有得到足够的重视，直到20世纪在文学 界才被充分肯定，对20世纪的英美文学影响颇深。

T. S. Eliot
Widespread demand for social reform

Immediate
Intemperate Spirit of rebellion and despair


Image（意象）


Words or phrases or any expressions that create pictures in the reader‘s mind are images. Images can appeal to senses: seeing, hearing, touch, taste, smell and movement.
The Irish Dramatic Movement

19～20世纪20年代，爱尔兰人民的民族意识 趋向高涨，纷纷要求摆脱英国的殖民统治，终 于在1937年通过新宪法宣告独立。与政治上的 独立运动相呼应，出现了复兴爱尔兰民族文学、 语言、艺术的文艺复兴运动。在D.海德 （1860～1949）领导下的盖尔学会提倡复兴 盖尔语。
Modernism
As a Term
Modernism in English Poetry
T. S. Eliot Modernism in English Fiction 1. Henry James 2. Conrad 3. D. H. Lawrence 4. James Joyce 5. Virginia Woolf
The “Stream of Consciousness” School of Novel

The ―Stream of Consciousness‖ is a psychological term indicating ―the flux (a flow; continuous movement and change) of conscious and subconscious thoughts and impressions moving in the mind at any given time independently of the person’s will‖.
Image movement

意象主义是20世纪初期英美诗歌届掀起的一场 运动，这场运动提倡诗歌应遵循意象的准确性， 使用清晰精准的语言。意象主义者反对过多的 涉及情感和技巧，而这些是在浪漫主义诗歌和 维多利亚诗歌中经常出现的。这和他们同时代 的乔治亚风格的诗人截然不同，乔治亚诗人提 倡继承传统。