英国文学The Modern Period (近代时期)

The Modern Period (近代时期)

本章概述

一. 20世纪批判现实主义文学和现代主义文学产生的历史、文化背景；
二.该时期文学创作的基本特征、基本主张；
三、对现当代英国文学的影响；
四、主要作家作品。


文学史分析

一、The cultural Background
1、In the mid-19th century , Karl Marx 马克思and Friedrich Engels恩格斯 put forward the theory of scientific socialism .
2.Darwin's theory of evolution exerted a strong influence up on the people . The social Darwinism , advocated colonialism or jingoism 沙文主义.
3.Einstein's theory of relativity provided entirely new ideas for the concepts of time and space .
4.Freud's弗洛伊德 analytical psychology drastically altered our conception of human nature .
5.In philosophy , Arthur Schopenhauer阿瑟?叔本华 , stared a rebellion against rationalism .Stressing the importance of will and intuition , Friedrich Nietzsche 弗里德里希?尼采went further against rationalism ,Henry Bergson柏格森 established his irrational philosophy .
二. The rising of modernism :
1. The movement of modernism :
A. The source :
Modernism rose out of Skepticism and disillusion of capitalism .

B.The forms :
The French symbolism heralded modernism . After the First World War ,all kinds of literary trends of modernism appeared :expressionism , surrealism 超现实主义,futurism 未来主义,Dadaism达达主义 ,imagism 意象派and stream of consciousness意识流 .
C. The process
Modernism现代主义 was somewhat curbed in the 1930s. But after the Second World War , a variety of modernism ,or post-modernism ,like existentialist literature,theater of the absurd , new novels and black humor , rose with the spur of the existentialist idea that "the world was asurd ,and the human life was an agony ."
2.The theoretical Base :
A.The theory :
Modernism takes the irrtional philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base .
B.The themes :
The major themes of the modernist literature are the distorted ,alienated ['eilj?neitid]疏远的and ill relationships between man and nature , man and society , man and man ,and man and himself .
C.The features :
The modernist writers concentrate more on the private , the subjective ,the inner being of an individual , the psychic time .
三. The literary forms :
1.The poetries :
A. The 20th century has witnessed a great achievement in English poetry .Hardy expressed his strong sympathies for the suffering poor and his bitter disgusts at the social evils in his poetry as in his novels .
B.The early poems of Pound and Eliot and Yeats's matured poetry marked the rise of "modern poetry"

C.The 1930s witnessed great economic depressions ,mass unemployment ,and the rise of the Nazis 纳粹党人,most of the young intellects started to turn to the left .
D.With the coming of the 1950s ,there was a return of realistic poetry again

.
2. The novels :
A. The realistic novels :
a.The realistic novels in the early 20th century were the continuation of the Victorian tradition. the outstanding realistic novelists of this period were John Galsworthy高尔斯华绥 ,H.G.Wells 赫伯特?乔治?威尔斯and Arnold Bennett.阿诺德?本涅特
b.Realism was ,to a certain textent ,eclipsed by the rapid rise of modernism in the 1920s.The realistic novels of this period wre more or less touched by a pessimistic mood, preoccupied with the theme of man's loneliness .Another important aspect of realistic novels in this period is the fact that there rose a few working-class writers .Among this group ,Gibbon吉本 was the most outstanding .His trilogy三部曲 .Sunset Song日落之歌 , Cloud How 克劳德.豪,and Grey Granite 灰色的花岗岩present the social changes .
C.In the mid-1950s and early 1960s ,there appeared a group of young novlists and playwrights with lower-middle-class or working -class background .who were known as "The Angry Young Men." Amis was the first to star the attack on middle-class privileges and power in his novel Lucky Jim.
B.The modernist novels :
a. The first three decades of this century were golden years of the modernist novel . The theory of the Freudian and Jungian psycho-analysis played a particularly important role .
b. Writers like Dorothy Richardson,James Joyce and Virgina Woolf 伍尔芙concentrated all their efforts on digging into the human consciousness .James Joyce詹姆斯乔伊斯 is the most outstanding stream-of-consciousness novelist ,in Ulysses尤利西斯 ,Bloom 本杰明?布鲁姆,becomes the symbol of everyman in the post-World-War-I Europe . Forster's福斯特 masterpiece , A Passage to India, is a novel of decidedly symbolist asirations ,Lawrence 劳伦斯is regarded as revolutionary as Joyce 乔伊斯in novel writing .In his best novels like The Rainbow 虹and Women in Love恋爱中的女人 ,Lawrence made a bold psychological exploration of various human relationships ,especially those between men and women .
3.The drama :
A.The pioneer dramatists :
a.The most celebrated dramatists in the last decade of the 19th century were Oscar Wilde奥斯卡王尔德 and George Bernard Shaw萧伯纳 ,who ,in a sense, pioneered the modern drama .
b.Wilde expressed a satirical and bitter attitude towards the upper-class people ,in his masterpiece ,The Importance of Being Earnest . Shaw is considered to be the best-known English dramatist since Shakespeare .Galsworthy made considerable achievements in his plays . The Silver Box银盒 and Strife 抗战.
B. The Irish National Theater Movement :
a . With their jont efforts, the Irish playwrights brought about the Irish National Theater Movement in the early 20th century .
b.Yeats叶芝 was a verse playwright who desired to restore lyrical drama to popularity . By adopting the vivid figurative language形象语言 of the Irish peasantry ,Synge 约翰?辛厄brought vigor , ironic humor , a

nd dramatic pathos to the Irish stage . His most popular play is the comedy ,The playboy of the Western World . O'Casey 西方世界的花花公子presented an urban drama of Dublin slum 贫民窟life to the Irish audience in plays like Juno and the Paycock 朱诺与孔雀, and The plough and the Stars .犁与星
C. The revival of poetic drama :
a. The 1930s witnessed a revival of poetic drama in England .T.S. Eliot regarded drama as the best medium of poettry . Murder in the Cathedral 教堂里的谋杀, remains the most popular of his verse plays .
b. Fry gained considerable successes in poetic drama . The Lady's Not For Burning不该烧死她 attracted delighted audience .
D. The English dramatic revolution :
a. The English dramatic revolution came in the 1950s .This revolution developed in two directions the working-class drama工人阶级 and the Theater of Absurd .荒诞戏剧. John Osborne约翰?奥斯本 was the man who stared the first change in drama by presenting his play Look Back in Anger Osborne 愤怒中的回顾brought vitality to the English theater and became known as teh first "Angry Young Man ." 愤怒的年轻人The most original playwright of the Theater of Absurd is Samuel Beckett.His first play , Waiting for Godot等待戈多 ,is regraded as the most famous and influential play of the Theater of Absurd .



主要作家作品

A. 乔治.伯纳德.萧伯纳
B. 约翰.高尔斯华绥
C. 威廉.勃特勒.叶芝
D. T.S.艾略特
E. 戴维.赫伯特.劳伦斯
F. 詹姆斯.乔伊斯




A. 乔治.伯纳德.萧伯纳
一. The literary creation :
1.The early period
A. The works "
a.Shaw began his literary career by writing novels the best know is Cashel Byron's Profession . 卡歇尔拜伦的职业
b.Shaw directed his attacks on the Neo-Romantic tradition and the fashionable drawing-room drama .In a collection Our Theaters in the Nineties .九十年代的戏剧
c. His first play is Widower's Houses 鳏夫的职业. Shaw's play ,Candida ,was produced and since then ,Shaw's position as the leading playwright of his time was established .
d.Widowers' House and Mrs. Warren's Profession沃伦夫人的职业 can be regarded as the typical representatives of Shaw's early plays .
B.The theme :
His early plays were mainly concerned with social problems and directed towards the criticism of the contemporary social ,economic ,moral and religious evils.
2.The middle period :
A. The miscellaneous[,misi'leinj?s,多方面的 subjects :
There are history plays ,the idea of "Life Force " and other subjects .
B. The works :
a.The history plays includ Caesar and Cleopatra and St.Joan
b. Shaw also produced several plays , exploring his idea of "Life Force ". The typical examples of this group are Man and Superman and Back to Methuselah [mi'θju:z?l?.玛士撒拉
c.Shaw wrote plays on miscellaneous subjects : The Apple Cart苹果车 is about Politics ;John Bull 's other Island is about racial prob

lems ; Pygmalion卖花女 is about culture and art .

3.The later period :
A. The features :
In the 1930s, Shaw continued his dramatic career and wrote several plays ,but his satire became weaker and less effectual .
B.The works :
Too True to Be Good is bette难以置信r play of the later period .
二. The artistic features :
1.The problem plays :
As a realistic dramatist ,he took the modern social issues as his subjects they can be termed as problem plays .
2.The character-portrayal:
Shaw's characterization is that he makes the trick of showing up one character vividly at the expense of another . Another feature is that Shaw's Characters are the representatives of ideas ,points of view .
3.The inversion of the situation :
Much of Shavian drama is constructed around the inversion of a conventional theatrical situation. The inversion is an integral part 主要的部分of an interpretation of life .Inversion is also used in character portrayal to achieve comic effects .
4. The vitality of the talk
It is the vitality of the talk that takes primacy over mere story . Action is reduced to minimum ,while the dialogue and the imterplay of the minds of the characters maintain the interest of the audience .





B. 约翰.高尔斯华绥
一. The literary creation :
1.The novels :
A.Galsworthy published his first book ,From the Four wind .来自四位吹奏者
B.The Man of Property 财主,together with his first play , The silver Box银盒 ,established him as a prominent novelist and playwright in the public mind .
C.Other novels include the Forsyte Saga福尔赛世家三部曲 --his first trilogy ;The Man of Property 财主,In Chancery and To Let 骑虎难下; His second Forsyte trilogy , A modern Comedy and the third ,End of the Chapter .篇章末尾
2.The plays :
His first play is the Silver Box .
二.The artistic features :
1.The conventional style :
Galsworthy was a conventional writer ,having inherited the fine traditions of the great Victorian novelists of the critical.
2.The traditional spirits :
Technically ,he was more traditional than adventurous ,focusing on plot development and character portrayal .
3.The satire and humor:
He was also successful in his attempt to present satire and humor in his writing .



C. 威廉.勃特勒.叶芝
一.The creation in poetry:
1.The early period :
A.The themes:
The major themes are usually Celtic legends ,local folktales ,or stories of the heroic age in Irish history .
B.The features :
Many of his early poems have a dreamy quality ,expressing melancholy ,passive and self-indulgent feelings.
C.The representatives:
"The Lake isle of Innisfree"莱尼西湖莉的湖中沙洲 is just a popular representative of such poems .
2.The middle period :
A.The themes:
Now Yeats began to write with realistic and concrete themes on a variety of subjects ,exploring the profound and complicated human problems .With the combination of his appreciation of beauty and a se

nse of tragedy in life , Yeats gave significance to the ordinary events of life in his poetry .
B.The features :
yeats turned from the traditional poetry to a modernist one .Artistically ,he came under the influence of French Symbolism and John Donne's metaphysical poetry ; poeticlly ,he accepted the modernist ideas .
C. The representatives :
"No second Troy," 没有第二个特洛伊"September 1913".1913年9月
3.The later period :
A.The themes :
His concern has turned to the great subjects of dichotomy二分法 ,and this dichotomy has brought constant tensions in his works and revealed the human predicament .
B.The features :
The scorn so pervasive 普遍的before was gone ; He yearned to move away from the sensual world of growth and change ,and enter the timeless ,enternal world of art and intellect .
C.The repressentatives :
"Sailing to Byzantium ,"驶向拜占庭 " Leda and the Swan "丽达与天鹅
二. The creation in play :
1.The early period :
A.The theme:
The stories of his early plays all came from the Irish myth or legends.
B.The work :
His first play is The countless Cathleen 凯斯林伯爵夫人.Cathleen ni Houlihan is a forceful play of patriotism .
In addition to the above -mentioned ,The Land of Heart's Desire The Shadowy Waters , Purgatory also regarded as fairly good plays by Yeats .凯斯琳尼霍利翰
2.The later period :
A. The theme:
In his later phase of dramatic career , in order to reflect "the deeps of the mind ," Yeats began experimenting with techniques borrowed from the Japanese Noh plays .
B.The features :
Eve in his plays Yeats remained a lyrical poet .As a matter of fact , his dramas are far less "dramatic " in force and in tension than his poetic works .



D. T.S.艾略特
一. The creation in poetry :
1.The early period :
A.The theme:
Eliot had explored in his early poetry various aspects of decay of culture in the modern Western world most his early poems are about a state mind .

B.The representatives :
The more important poems of this period are : "prufrock ,"布鲁弗劳克 "Gerontion ," 衰老The West Land 荒原and The Hollow Men 空洞的人.
a.The Waste Land has been hailed as a landmark and model of the 20th-century English poetry ,comparable to Wordsworth's Lyricla Ballads .抒情歌谣集
b.The Waste Land is a poem concerned with the spiritual breakup of a modern civilization in which human life has lost its meaning ,significance and purpose .
2.The later period :
A.The representatives:
In his later period ,Eliot produced only two major volumes of poetic works: Ash Wednesday灰色星期三 and Four Quartets .四个吹奏者
B.The themes :
Both clearly reflect his allegiance to the church of England . The Four Quartets,is concerned with the quest for the immortal element ,Four Quartets is characteried by a philosophical and emotional calm quite .
二. The creation in play :
1.The works :
Eliot had written in his lifetime five full-length plays :Murder i

n the Cathedral 教堂里的谋杀,The Family Reunion 家人团圆, The Cocktail party 鸡尾酒会,The Confidential Clerk ,机政要员 The Elder Statesman .年长的政客 All the plays have something to do with Christian themes .
2.The representatives :
Murder in the Cathedral is concerned with the death and martyrdom ['mɑ:t?d?m]牺牲 of Thomas Becket 托马斯?贝克特.The Family Reunion has a modern setting .
三. The creation in prose :
1.The theme :
His essays are mainly concrned with cultural ,social ,religious ,as well as literary issues .
2.The representatives :
"Tradition and Individual Talent ," Eliot put great emphasis on the importance of tradition both in creative writing and criticism .Eliot argued that a poet 's mind should remain "inert " and "neutral "towards his subject matter .



E. 戴维.赫伯特.劳伦斯
一. The creation in novel :
1.The early period :
A. The works :
a.His first novel is The White peacock .白孔雀
b.His second novel is The Trespasser .过客
c. Lawrence was recoganized as a prominent novelist only after he published his third novel ,Sons and Lovers .儿子与情人
B.The masterpieces :
The Rainbow 虹and Women in Love 恋爱中的女人are generally regarded as his masterpieces .
The Rainbow :
a.The content :
The rainbow is a story about the three generations a the Brangwen family on the Marsh farm .
b.The significance :
In this novel ,Lawrence illustrates a terrible social corruption that accompanies the progress of human civilization.
Women in Love :
As a matter of fact ,it is the first time for Lawrence to make a conscious attempt to combine soical criticism with psychological exploration in his novel writing .

a. The content :
Women in Love is a novel about two pairs of lovers ,around whom a series of episodes are dramatically presented . The two heroines are Ursula Brangwen and her younger sister Gudrun ;and two chief male characters are Gerald Crich ,a young coalmine owner ,and Rupert Birkin ,a school inspector .
b.The significance :
Women in love is rich in its symbolic meanings .Gerald Crich , is a symbolic figure of spiritual death , representing the whole set of bourgeois ethics .Whereas Birkin is presented as a symbolic figure of human warmth , standing for the spontaneous Life Force .
2.The later period :
A. The features :
In the novels of his later period ,Lawrence deals more extensively with themes of power ,dominance ,and leadership ;the relationships that men form with one another , rather than with women ,are also under exploration .
B. The works :
a. Aaron's Rob亚伦的神杖 shows that every man is a sacred and holy individual whose integrity should never be violated or dominated .
b.Kangaroo袋鼠 gives a rich portrayal of the Australian life and scenery .
c.The plumed serpent shows that Lawrence tries to give symbolic fictional form to his preoccupation with the concept of "blood consciousness ," a mystical religion of instinct .

d. In Lady chatterley's Lover 查莱泰夫人的情人, Lawrence has returned to his early subjects and background of Nottinghamshire.
二. The creation in poetry :
1. The classifications :
His poems fall roughly into three categories
A. Satirical and comic poems ;

B. poems about human relationships and emotions ;
C.poems about nature .
2.The features :
Lawrence does not care much about the convention metrical rules ;what he tries to do in poetry is to catch the instant life of the immediate present .
三. The creation in play :
https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5817811523.html,wrence was discovered to be an important playwright in 1968 with the efforts of Peter Gill.
2.These three plays : A Collier's Friday Night 矿工的周五晚上, The Daughter-in-Law 儿媳and The widowing of Mrs.Holroyed .寡妇的霍尔罗一德夫人
四. The artistic feature :
https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5817811523.html,wrence was one of the first novelists to introduce themes of psychology into his works .He believed that the healthy way of the individual 's psychological development lay in the primacy of the life impulse .
https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5817811523.html,wrence 's artistic tendency is mainly realism , which combines dramatic scenes with an authoritative commentary . Lawrence endows the traditional realism with a fresh psychological meaning .




F. 詹姆斯.乔伊斯
一.The literary creation :
1.The works :
A. He wrote altogether three novels , a collection of short stories , two volumes of poery , and one play .
B. The novels and short stories are regarded as his great work , all of which have the same setting : Ireland , especially Dublin 都柏林人, and the same subject : the Irish people and their life .
2.The masterpieces :
A.Dubliners , a collection of 15 short stories , is the first important work of Joyce's lifelong preoccupation with Dublin life .
B. Joyce published his first vovel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man 艺术家年轻时代的肖像, The title of the novel suggests a character study with strong autobiographical elements . The story develops around the life of a middle-class Irish boy , Stephen Dedalus .
C. Ulysses尤利西斯 ,Joyce's masterpiece , has become a prime example of modernism in literature .
D. Joyce spent 17 years working on his last important book ,Finnegans Wake ,Finnegans Wake is regarded as the most original experiment ever made in the novel form , and also the most difficult book to read .
二. The artistic features:
1. The innovation of literature :
A. The objectivity description:
In Joyce's opinion , the artist should rise to the position of a godlike objectivity; He should appear as an omniscient [m'nisi?nt无所不知的author and present unspoke materisals directly from the psyche of the characters.
B. The stream of consciousness :意识流
The literary approach to teh presentation of psychological aspects of characters is usually termed as "stream of consciousness." And Joyce is regarded as the most prominent stream-of -consciousness novelist .
2.The style
A.His own style

is a strainghtforward one ,lucid and leisurely ; subtlety ,economy and exactness are his standards .
B.To create his modern odyssey -Ulysses , Joyce adopts a kind of mock-heroic style.