The Twentieth Century: A Time of Transformation in Britain, Sintesi del corso di Storia Inglese

Scarica The Twentieth Century: A Time of Transformation in Britain e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Storia Inglese solo su Docsity! THE TWENTIETH CENTURY For most British people the world in 1900 seemed the same world of 1850, and Britain held a central place within it (British Empire had reached its zenith in the Victorian Era). By 1950 the world had been distinctly altered: e four years of World War | (1914 - 1918) had resulted in the deaths of millions of people; the great economic depression of 1930s increased poverty and despair; six years of World War Il (1939 - 1945) had threatened Britain's survival and left the nation exhausted; ® thestart of the “Cold War” against the Soviet Union; Big changes during the XX century: Britain lost its place as the world's leading power to the United States (in 1950) Daily life was radically changed by the radio, telephone, automobile; Church on-going was in decline; Class structure also had seen changes; Women had done “men's work" during the two World Wars and won the vote; The British Empire began to drift away from its mother country culturally: India had been parted into two independent nations in 1947 and things started to move even in British possessions in Africa and Carribean. 1900 - 1950: Modernist revolution in British literature — sometimes fractured and sometimes free-flowing from that used T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf. Modernist revolution had expanded the possibilities of literary form. BUT the fracture between the old Britain and the Britain of the XX century didn't begin to be visible until the years after the 1910s. The year 1910 was marked by the death of Edward VII, but more significant was the time of the first explosion of Modernism-Cubism in painting, Imagism in poetry and the groundbreaking music works of Stravinsky. These were the movements that began the fracturing of form that would become a dominant theme in cultural history of the century. This fracture was also influenced by the outbreak of World War | (battle of Somme*) , which created a more visceral sense of fracturing, full of horror. The deaths of Victoria in 1901 and her son's nine years later were defining moments in the change from the Victorian to the modem world. Edward's reign was basically a continuation from the Victorian one, besides some changes in architectural style (less ornate) and social style (less formal). In the literary world Victorian tradition was being carried forward by novelists such as George Moore, Amold Bennett. Much of the literature that we think of as recognizably modem today may be seen connecting with that of the late Victorian era as anticipating the later literature of the century L the prose fiction of Joseph Conrad explored dark corners of human soul and of the dark realities of colonialism and touched these nerves of the reader in a distinctively modern way. His narrative techniques and layering of viewpoints (stories within stories and multiple narrators) impacted modem literature. *British and French vs. German — fourth months in which more than 400.000 British soldiers lost their lives. E. M. Forster is an important author of the XX century for the treatment of the sexual and spiritual in his works: his approach to the spiritual realities that transcend the everyday life connected to the work of later writers such as Elizabeth Bown, Graham Greene and Kazuo Ishiguro. His style also has affinities with modemism (ex: A Passage to India, 1924) Wells founded the genre of science fiction as we know it today (The Time Machine 1895, The Invisible Man 1897, The War of the Worlds 1898). He is also well known for his comic novels (Love and Mr. Lewisham 1900, The History of Polly 1910) where he drew a strongly critical picture of the English social class system. Wells became a committed socialist in the early years of 1900. The Fabian Society + founded in 1884, it promoted evolutionary socialism (thus disavowing violet class struggle) and was led by George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb and Beatrice Potter Webb. Then The Fabian Society formed part of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 that transformed itself into a political party in 1906. George Bernard Shaw gave progressive views in his works (Mrs. Warren's Profession, Major Barbara 1905) and his sense of change was more in the content of his works rather than in its form. David Lloyd George: he was a leading advocate of the interests of the working class at the beginning of the century b he was the one who introduced the People's Budget of 1909: called for new taxes on the better-off to pay for measures to improve the lot of the poor, including an old age pension. It was resisted by the House of Lords, but in 1911 a law established the supremacy of the House of Commons. National Insurance Act (1911): provided protection for workers who lost eamings through the illness of unemployment. When the first World War broke out, the civilization that had long been known collapsed. And when the Second World War broke out in 1940 authors such as George Orwell had adopted a vein of pessimism. Today the two World Wars are seen as part of a continuum: in both wars Britain and the Commonwealth allies, joined belatedly by the USA, fought against the militaristic expansion of Germany. At the end of the First World War reparations were demanded to Germany, which crippled Germany economically and that caused the embitterment of german people and then Hitler's appeals on nationalism, expantionism, anti-Semitism and hate. So the eventual rise to power of Hitelr was partly fueled by the hardships imposed on Germany by the Allies at the conclusion of World War |. *British and French vs. German — fourth months in which more than 400.000 British soldiers lost their lives.