Britain and the Turning Point of the 20th Century: From Social Reforms to World War I, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

Scarica Britain and the Turning Point of the 20th Century: From Social Reforms to World War I e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THE EDWARDIAN AGE (1901 - 1910) The historical and social context 1901: death of Queen Victoria (royal house took the Germanic surname of her consort, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) -> Edward VII came to the throne but since he wasn't as strong as his mother, his reign lasted only 9 years. -> he was crowned August 1902; the same year he founded the Order of Merit to reward the people who distinguished themselves in science, art, literature. 1903: Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). The “Suffragettes”, whose slogan was “Deeds not Words”, campaigned for the right to vote and drew people's attention to their cause through large marches in London, during which they chained themselves to railings, broke windows and spit at policemen. Lots of them were sent to prison and went on hunger-strike. They finally gained the vote in 1918, but only for women aged 30 and over. 1904: The Entente Cordiale, an agreement with France, was signed and it settled outstanding colonial disputes -> allowing respectively Britain to pursue its interest in Egypt and France in Morocco. The way to this alliance was made possible by King Edward's intervention in foreign policy negotiations. Thanks to the king's diplomacy, Britain was aligned with France and Russia (King Edward's was the first British monarch to visit Russia) in case of conflict with Germany, Austria, or Italy. From a social point of view, Edwardian England resembled Victorian England: class distinctions and inequalities of wealth were the same, serious poverty was widespread in a large part of the population. This period was one of industrial unrest, strikes and violence, because of the high prices and low wages. The strikes involved a high number of men and women, that used violence as well. 1905: the extension of London's underground, which was now electrified, allowed working-class people to live on the edges of the town and commute into the town centre at low cost. 1906: after the victory of the Liberals in the general election, a series of social reforms were introduced, favoured by a New Liberal, David Lloyd George, who was in charge of the finances and considered the Government responsible towards the poor. These reforms marked the beginning of the welfare state -> national insurance and old-age pensions were introduced. 1908: the introduction of old age pension for people with a low annual income prevented many old people from entering workhouses. 1906-1908: The Children's Charter guaranteed free meals to poor children, started medical inspection in schools and banned children from public houses. 1909: minimum wages were fixed -> same year the Liberal Programme tried to pass the “People's Budget”, included welfare programmes and taxes on the wealthy -> the House of Lords refused -> this led to a constitutional crisis. 1911: free medical treatment and sickness benefits for workers were introduced. In the same year, the Parliament Act made it impossible for the House of Lords to reject a bill about money, after the upper house of the Parliament had opposed Lloyd George's budget, which entailed an increase in taxes for its members. Moreover, it established that general elections would take place at least every five years. In the same year, George V was crowned after his father's death in the previous year (1910). He maintained a certain informality that made him popular. He was able to demonstrate the importance of the king's right to advise. 1914: the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo triggered the outbreak of World War |. Russia defended Serbia against the Austro-Hungarian empire, which was allied with Germany. Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914, when Germany attacked France marching through Belgium, a neutral territory. The war involved the Central European Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary) and on the other side the Allies (USA, British Empire, Russia, France and later Italy). In Britain, the war was welcomed with great patriotic enthusiasm, encouraged by wide governmental propaganda. They told the people that they fought to defend the weak (Belgium) from the strong (Germany). However, by the end of 1915 the losses on the battlefields were so high that the government introduced conscription for all men aged 18-41. The king made several visits to troops and to hospitals; he also asked for proper treatment of German prisoners and for more humane treatment of conscientious objectors. In the first few weeks Germany was almost able to defeat the Allies, since they had better equipped and trained soldiers. Moreover, Britain wasn't ready for the modern artillery. In the meantime, the war had come to a standstill and started to be fought in trenches, where huge numbers of men were killed by machine guns, barbed wire, gas, and shells. The survivors were frequently struck by ‘shell shock’, a form of psychological disorder due to the shell explosions, and by various types of obsession. 1917: the US entered the war (as a crusade to make the world “safe for democracy” and contributed to the final victory of the Allies over Germany. The king changed his family name to Windsor due to anti- German feeling. 11 November 1918: end of the war, Allied and German leader signed an armistice. 1919: Peace treaty was signed at Versailles (Lloyd George, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Clemenceau, Wilson). President Wilson proposed “Fourteen Points” to work out the peace treaty and prevent future occasion of war, he also devised a plan to set up the “League of Nations”, however, the USA never joined the League of Nations. Irel : Irish people asked for the support for Home Rule for the country (right for the people to control their own affairs) but it was opposed by the Unionists in the north and by the Conservative party. The 1916 “Easter Rising” in Dublin resulted in a civil war and in the consequent setting up of the Irish Free State (future Irish Republic) in 1922 while the six northern countries remained part of the UK. THE AGE OF ANXIETY The last decades of the 19°" century saw the crisis of the old Victorian system of values, with its authoritarian and taboo-ridden private morality, its positivistic faith in science and progress and its rationalist self-confidence. The First World War brought about a sense of disillusion and widened the gap between the young and the old generation, while the slow dissolution of the Empire into the Commonwealth spread an increasing feeling of rootlessness and frustration. In the pre-war years, new views of man and the universe were introduced by scientists and philosophers and destroyed the optimistic outlook of the Victorians. 1900: Sigmund Freud published his essay The Interpretation of Dreams, which emphasised the power of the unconscious and of irrational forces on man's action and recognized the distorting effect of society, education, and moral laws on man's behaviour. Freud’s theories affected family relationships and conventional models of relationship between the sexes. Moreover, the analysis of dreams and the idea of “free association” deeply influenced modern writers. Carl Gustav Jung added the concept of “collective unconscious”, a cultural memory which includes the universal myths and beliefs operating on a symbolical level. Only the psychologist or the poet could understand and explain symbols and archetypes behind everyday objects and figures. As for science, Albert Einstein's theory of relativity contributed to change the concepts of time and space, which took on subjective dimensions. A new idea of time was also proposed by the American philosopher William James and by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. According to James, our mind records every single experience as a continuous flow of ‘the already’ into ‘the not yet’. Bergson distinguished historical time (external, linear, and measured by the clock) from psychological time (internal, subjective, and measured by emotional intensity). The new theories of time and space were reflected by the verbal experimentation and the exploration of memory in literature, which also absorbed the more relativist standpoints expressed by James Frazer's The Golden Bough and by other studies of anthropology about primitive societies. On the whole, the modern writer had to deal with the impossibility of mastering the chaotic universe. MODERNISM The first decades of the 20°" century were characterized by extraordinary vitality and originality, which culminated in a radical innovation of all arts in Europe and in America. This powerful international movement, generally known as Modernism, includes trends and currents that shaped the modern consciousness and broke with established forms and subjects. In the novel, the character's psyche was explored through In poetry, experimentation involved as well as a mixture of Common features of modemists: * Intentional distortion of shapes * No limitations in space and time * Radical disruption of the linear flow of narrative or conventional verse Wilde adopted the aesthetical ideal: he affirmed that his life itself was a work of art. His aestheticism clashed with the didacticism of Victorian novels. - The artist -> the creator of beautiful things - Art-> used only to celebrate beauty and the sensorial pleasures - Virtue and vice -> employed by the artist as raw material in his art The Picture of Dorian Gray 1890 -> first appeared in a magazine 1891 -> revised and extended It reflects Oscar Wilde's personality and it was considered immoral by the Victorian public. Plot: O lItissetinLondon atthe end of the 19*" century o The painter Basil Hallward makes a portrait of a beautiful young man, Dorian Gray. o A temptation is placed before Dorian: a potential ageless beauty -> his desire of eternal beauty is satisfied. o Experience and vices appear on the portrait, whereas Dorian keeps his beauty and youth. o Lord Henry's cynical attitude his the same as the devil, in fact he acts as the “Devil's advocate” o Dorian lives only for pleasures. The picture stands for the dark side of his personality. o When the painter discovers Dorian's secret, the young man kills him o In order to get free from the portrait, Dorian stab it but he ends up killing himself and when he dies, the portrait returns to its original purity and instead Dorian turns into a wrinkled and loathsome man. The moral of the novel » Every excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped » When Dorian destroys the picture, he cannot avoid the punishment for all his sins -> death » The horrible, corrupting picture could be seen as a symbol of the immorality and bad conscience of the Victorian middle class » The picture, restored to its original beauty, illustrates Wilde's theories of art: art survives people, art is eternal THE WAR POETS With the outbreak of the First World War thousands of young men volunteered for military service; most of them saw the conflict as an adventure undertaken for noble ends. However, when thousands of men died in the Battle of Somme in 1916 the sense of pride was replaced by disillusionment. The life of soldiers in the trenches was like hell due to mud, dead bodies who rat fed on and the repeated bombings and the use of poison gas. The soldiers improvised verses, that were never read by the literate people who were comfortably living at home, because they were too obscene. However, there was a group of poets who actually experienced the conflict and, in most cases, lost their life in this way, who represented the warfare in a realistic way to awaken the conscience of the readers to the horrors of the war. These poets are called the War Poets. They created a definite move away from the 19*" century poetic conventions, which could not be convey the new reality that faced them and forced them to find another mode of expression. Rupert Brooke (1887-1915 He was born in 1887 into a wealthy family and was educated at Rugby School and then at King's college. He was familiar with literary circles and came to know many important political, literary figures before the war. He volunteered for war and died in April 1915 after he contracted blood poisoning. He was buried far from home, on the Greek island of Skyros. He wrote 5 sonnets in 1914 and represented the war as clean and cleansing and tried to testify the safeness of the war and represented death as a reward. His poems were traditional, not only in form, and his poems show a sentimental attitude which was completely lost in the brutal turn that war poetry took in the works of the other War Poets. His death coincided with the publication of his works and that made him the new symbol of the “young romantic hero” and his figure inspired patriotism. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918 He was born in 1893 and he worked as a teacher in France before visiting a hospital for the wounded and then decided to come back to England and enlist in 1915. Two years later he was sent to France and saw his first action. He was then injured and recovered in Edinburgh to recover from shell shock. There he met Siegfried Sassoon, who was already known as a poet. He read Owen's poems and encouraged him to continue, as well as introducing him to other literary figures. On august 1918, Owen returned to the war and died just seven days before the end of the war. His poems are accurate accounts of the horrors of the war. He used assonance and alliteration extensively, so his poems had a hunting gravity, that made them perfect to describe death and suffering.