George Bernard Shaw: The Irish Playwright and Social Reformer, Apuntes de Literatura inglesa

¡Descarga George Bernard Shaw: The Irish Playwright and Social Reformer y más Apuntes en PDF de Literatura inglesa solo en Docsity! George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) - The Irish-born playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw, is known in English literature for using SATIRE/IRONY on political and social topics. - These topics include: social class, war, or feminism in plays such as Arms and the Man (1894), Major Barbara (1905), and Pygmalion (1913). - Shaw developed an intellectual comedy of manners, and Mrs. Warren's Profession is a good example of this. - Like Oscar Wilde, Shaw wrote about hypocrisy in English society (Victorian) as one of his major themes. - He left Ireland for England as a young man in 1876 and like many other modern dramatists, he started writing novels and criticism before turning to the theater. - This writer has inspired countless authors and poets and he became one of the most popular playwrights of his time. Wit and irony were his main literary resources. - He wrote fifty plays, many of which are still in production today. He was also a brilliant photographer, social reformer, women's rights advocate, satirists, popular public speaker, among many other things. His idea on what education should be was: “Liberty is the breath of life to nations; and liberty is the one thing that parents, schoolmasters, and rulers spend their lives in extirpating for the sake of an immediately quiet and finally disastrous life.”— “Treatise On Parents And Children” (1910). - Although he could get a job at the age of 16, he found it boring. He noticed the disparity among the social classes, at the same time he managed to go to the theatre, read literature, and immerse himself in the poetry of Lord George Gordon Byron and William Blake. - Many critics during his lifetime and after his death would come to criticize Shaw' humanitarian politics and sometimes contradictory but often controversial opinions. “Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder).” (The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion, 1903). - Shawn was a socialist and member of the Fabian Society which he joined in 1884. This Fabian society was a revolutionary group whose main objective was to protect the interests of the poorer classes against what they perceived to be exploitative, capitalist society. His political interests led him, in 1893, to build the Independent Labour Party. - In 1895 he was one of the founders of the London School of Economics and Political Science. - Shaw was an ardent supporter of social reforms, and was an activist in campaigns that ranged from the movement to reform English spelling to women's rights, to the abolition of private property. - Shaw plays were written to shock audiences and teach new social and moral values (different from Victorian values). He used paradox and reversed the common patterns of judgement (i.e. the conventional hero became the villain and viceversa ). Even Shaw's lighter work contained a socio-political dimension. Pygmalion (1913), for example, which exposes the class divisions in British society, is a mixture of comedy and social observation. - The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was founded in 1903 to campaign for women's right to vote. Members of this movement, the “suffragettes” (different from suffragists), were outspoken and some employed violent tactics. “Deeds not words”: - During those years the Pankhurst took an important role in the militant campaign for the vote. In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst and others, frustrated by the lack of progress, founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) with the motto “Deeds not words”. - Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) became involved in women's suffrage in 1880. She was a founding member of the WSPU in 1903 and led it until it disbanded in 1918. Under her leadership the WSPU was a highly organized group and like other members she was imprisoned and went on hunger strike protests.