The Role of Britain in World War I and the Emergence of Modernist Thought, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

Scarica The Role of Britain in World War I and the Emergence of Modernist Thought e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Edwardian England When Queen Victoria died in 1901, her son Edward became king as Edward VII. At that time the British Empire was the most powerful compared to the other kingdoms. However, British might has been challenged by technicians in France, Germany and growing America, especially in the emerging automotive, film and aviation industries. In this context, King Edward proved to be a skilled diplomat when he signed an agreement with France in 1904, the Cordial Entente, which stipulated that Great Britain could pursue its interests in Egypt, and France in Morocco. 'The king's diplomacy helped Britain join a new alignment of European countries: Britain could count on France and Russia in any conflict against Germany, Austria or Italy. As for society, Edwardian England was still similar to Victorian England. Class distinctions were well defined and preserved and severe poverty affected a large part of the population. The seeds of the welfare state The political landscape began to change. The general the elections of the same year were won by Liberals, who were divided into two groups: those who supported the traditional liberal values of laissez-faire and self-help, and those which supported the new liberalism. Among the new liberals was David Lloyd George, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in charge of the country finances at that time. The foundations of the Welfare states have been established through a series of measures, such as introducing a old- age pension from one to five shillings for those over 70; also, there were free meals and regular medical inspections in schools. In 1909 the minimum wages were set and in 1911 workers were granted as free benefits medical treatment and sickness benefits. In 1910 the king died and succeeded him his son who became George V. He also declared that general elections will be held at least every five years. This system still works. In the same year mass strikes by miners, sailors, dockers and railway workers led to a period of social unrest not previously experienced. Lloyd George responded with unemployment benefits e health insurance for major workers industries. The Suffragettes In 1903 Ms. Emmeline Pankhurst played the Social and political union of women. They wanted the 'Suffragettes', as they were called the women got the vote and soon they won massive publicity for their cause. They kept great protest marches in London. Women over 30 he would get the vote in 1918, while the suffrage it would have been granted to women over 21 in 1928. The Easter Rising in Ireland An important issue of British politics in the first two decades of the 20th century were the Irish request. The term refers to the tragic events regarding the struggle for Irish independence. In April 1916 there was a rebellion in Dublin, the the so-called Easter Rising. The leaders of the insurrection received support from Germany and seized the general Post office and other buildings in the center of the city. The rebellion was suppressed and 15 of the leaders executed. The Irish Republican party Sinn Féin, who was fighting for the reunification of Ireland began to grow popularity by exploiting the fear that the Irish had military conscription could extend to Ireland. The outbreak of war In 1914 a Serbian nationalist was assassinated Archduke Francesco Ferdinando, heir of the Austro- Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie inside Sarajevo. This event triggered a series of reactions: Austria started bombing Belgrade, capital of Serbia; the German Kaiser, declared war on Russia and then on France. So when Germany violated the Belgian neutrality, Britain declared war and a force of 130,000 soldiers crossed the English Channel to fight on the western front in northern France. Great Britain at war In September 1914 the German army had reached the River Marne in France, where a great battle stopped the German advance at cost of many lives. The Empire made its contribution by sending troops. Women have replaced men in their civilians you work with seriousness and competence, that helped determine women's suffrage. A war of attrition In May 1915 in a German submarine sank the British passenger ship Lusitania and more of a thousand people died, including 128 Americans. US President Thomas Woodrow Wilson sent a diplomat protests in Germany. In the same month Italy joined France and Great Britain. The bloodiest battle in British history took place on the Somme, in July 1916. La Somme was a perfect example of the war of attrition, where huge battles were fought kill the soldiers and wear down the enemy. Life in the trenches was very stressful because of mud, lack of hygiene, boredom and fear gas. The the horror of life in the trenches was remembered by the war poets. National and international stress peaked in late 1917 and in early 1918 the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia and the Italian army collapsed in the battle of Caporetto in October 1917. The United States entered the war April 1917 on the side of Great Britain. The end of the war In September 1918, Great Britain attacks Germany. By October the Germans were retreating along the western front. The war cost the allies and the Germans 260,000 victims respectively. On October 4, 1918, Germany asked the president Woodrow Wilson an armistice that did not include any punishment for the country. On November 11th there was the end of the war. The peace treaty was signed in Versailles in 1919 by the allied powers. President Woodrow Wilson proposed “Fourteen Points” to work exit from the peace treaty and prevent future wars. He presented a plan to create the League of Nations. The crisis of certainties World War I left Great Britain disillusioned and cynical mood. The gap between the younger generation and the older generation, held responsible for the terrible waste of human life during the war, was widening more and more. Writers such as Edward Morgan Forster became averse to political subjection and thinking in terms of personal relationships based on equality and sentiment. Committed writers such as Wystan Hugh Auden and George Orwell warned their readers against totalitarianism. Nothing seemed to be right or certain: scientists and the philosophers have destroyed the old, predictable universe that had supported the Victorians in their optimistic view and new visions of man and the universe that had emerged at the at the beginning of the century it spread throughout society. Freud’s influence The first set of new ideas had been introduced by Sigmund Freud. Freud's point of view of the developing psyche emphasized power unconscious to influence behavior. History too gave enormous importance to requests of the "libido", particularly those manifested in the Oedipus phase. The effects in the sphere of family life were profound: the relationship between parents and the children was altered; the Freudian concept of infantile sexuality has focused attention the importance of early development, childhood has regained a status it had only in pages by Rousseau; Freud also provided a new method of investigation of the human being mind through dream analysis that deeply influenced the writers of the modern age. The collective unconscious Carl Gustav Jung continued Freud studies and added the concept of 'Collective unconscious', only the psychologist or poet could understand these symbols and archetypes and explain them. The theory of relativity The growing crisis of confidence was also due to the introduction of "relativity" into science. with Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, the world view lost its own solidity and the scientific revolution was supplemented by verbal experimentation and the exploration of memory in literature. A new concept of time Even the idea of time has been questioned by the American philosopher William James and the French philosopher Henri Bergson. James believed that our minds register every single experience as a continuous flow of the "already" into the "not yet". Bergson made a distinction between historian time and psychological time. Historical time is external, linear and measured in terms of spatial distance traveled by a pendulum or the hands of a clock, while it is psychological time internal, subjective and measured by the relative emotional intensity of a moment. Anthropological studies In the social sphere, increase knowledge it tended to shake the belief in supposed rightness Western ways of behavior. Sir Giacomo Giorgio Frazer's (1854-1941) The Golden Bough (1890) and other anthropology studies helped undermine the absolute truth of religious and ethical systems in favor of more relativists points of view. A new image of man The problem behind all of this manifestations of uncertainty was inability to arrive at a commonly accepted image of man. For Freud man was part of nature, a biological and psychological phenomenon; for Marx it was the result of the social e economic forces. Under the influence of the ideas of the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who had he declared that 'God is dead' and had replaced Christian morality with a faith in the human power and perfectibility, the Christian notion of man as a debtor of his chances of salvation by the grace of God it has lost its ancient strength. The advent of Modernism The term 'Modernism' refers to an international movement which involved Western literature, music, the visual arts and the cinema in the first decades of the 20th century. Modernism is associated with the period after World War I. The horror of the war had shaken the certainties of the pre-war society, which were replaced by a sense of disillusionment and fragmentation. The Modernists expressed the desire to break with the past and find new fields of investigation, such as urbanisation, technology, war, speed and mass communication. Main features of Modernism Artistic forms of Modernism share several common features: the intentional distortion of shapes, as in the Cubist paintings of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso; the breaking down of limitations in space and time and the radical disruption of the linear of narrative; the emphasis on subjectivity; in literature, the objectivity provided by an omniscient third-person narrator was abandoned in favour of new techniques; the use of allusive language; the intensity of the isolated 'moment' or ‘image' to provide a true insight into the nature of things; the importance of unconscious; the need to reflect the complexity of the modern urban life.