Contemporary English Literature Notes

George Orwell Life

• Born in India in 1903 as Eric Blair, during British colonial rule.

• Grew up in England's Thames Valley, lower-upper middle class, without manual labor.

• At 8, sent to boarding school on scholarship, treated as an outcast.

• Joined Indian Imperial Police in Burma instead of university (via mother’s connections), felt isolated.

• After India, felt guilty, lived with English tramps to experience hardship, realizing the difficulty of changing social class.

• Lived in bohemian poverty in Paris for a year and a half, avoiding family contact.

• Chose pseudonym "George Orwell" due to writing insecurity, inspired by H. George Wells and the River Orwell.

• Orwell's writing motivated by injustice, especially political. Considered Animal Farm his first conscious (political and artistic) work. Against art for art's sake.

1984

Genres

Satire

• Uses exaggeration to critique and frighten readers.

• Employs exaggeration and humor to critique aspects like the Ministries and Parson's family.

Realism

• Winston's character is relatable, making him a real person in extraordinary circumstances.

• Recreates wartime London (the Blitz) with devastation and destruction, especially in prole districts.

• Comparisons to Lenin, Marx, and Stalin posters as Big Brother, Ministry of Information as Ministry of Truth source, Trafalgar Square, youth groups like Stalin's, Spies with red scarves, blue overalls referencing factory workers. Goldstein is needed as a hate figure.

Dystopia

• Dystopia is a logical extension of utopia ("no place"), often related to ideal societies.

• Dystopias depict real events and tendencies projected into a futuristic setting, serving as a warning.

• Set in a futuristic society, 40 years ahead (near future).

• Familiar becomes unfamiliar through science fiction.

• Inventions exaggerate present tendencies.

• Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948, inverting the last two digits.

• Warns Britain about unchecked absolute power leading to totalitarianism.

Winston Smith

• Represents everyman.

• Inspired by Winston Churchill.

• Name combines the ordinary (Smith) and extraordinary (Winston).

• Third-person narrator from Winston’s viewpoint.

• Experience fear, wrath, frustration, guilt, survivor instincts, illness, etc.

• A 39-year-old man appearing older due to an unhealthy lifestyle.

• Surname "Smith" signifies an average person, but Winston is unique, evoking Winston Churchill.

• Protagonist in London narrated in the present with youth flashbacks.

• Grew up around 10 during a totalitarian government post-WWII, sent to an orphanage, making childhood memories difficult.

• Experiences extreme feelings: isolation, loneliness, frustration, feeling like a monster alone at the ocean's bottom with some possible amnesia.

• Sexually repressed due to Party restrictions (sex only for procreation for the Party).

• Lives in a terror-promoting and guilt-inducing society.

• Frail man with an itchy varicose ulcer, unhealthy, weak, and thin lifestyle.

• Deepest desire is to remain human, but the Party opposes everything that makes someone human.

• Another title considered: The Last Man in Europe, signifying the struggle to stay human; but less intriguing than 1984.

Writing of diary / job

• Writing in a diary bought years before: An act of individualism seeking truth.

• In his job: Lies, alters, modifies, and changes the truth. Opposites to his diary entries.

Narration and Structure

• Recurring elements: dreams, key phrases, songs, objects.

• Narration: circular but progressive structure.

• Simple narration: 3rd person narrator focalized through Winston, sharing Orwell’s ideas.

• Structure: 3 parts and an appendix. Winston’s rebellion and its reaction drive the book.

• Appendix: different narrator, no characters, refers to Newspeak.

• Different ending; Newspeak didn't last, a more optimistic and hopeful tone if the appendix is included.

• Repetition creates an internal pattern.

• Key phrases: "I shall meet you in the place where there is no darkness."

• Songs: Oranges and lemons song, lyrics completed gradually.

• Objects: Paperweight.

Language

• Tendency towards certain metaphors (men as insects).

• Theme song: Sexcrime by Eurythmics.

• "Politics and the English language" essay: Originality, simplicity, and clarity must prevail. Against euphemisms (hiding the truth).

• Language is viewed as a dangerous tool.

• Passages dealing with intense emotions are more poetic.

• Key word: perhaps.

• Combination of realism and fantasy, with heavy satire.

Trends in Post War British Theater I

• Time of innovation in theatre, internationally.

• Divided into two types of innovative theatre:

  • Absurdist drama (Waiting for Godot, 1953 - French, Paris; 1955 - English, Britain): experimental, influenced by French avant-garde.

  • Kitchen-sink drama (A Taste of Honey, 1958): New realism, social realism, focused on the everyday life of ordinary people neglected in English theatre (kitchen-sink = domestic setting).

• Historical climate of Samuel Beckett while writing Waiting for Godot

  • Written October 1948 – January 1949

Samuel Beckett

• Born in Dublin, Irish (Protestant family). Studied languages (mainly French) at Trinity College.

• Spent time in Paris, worked as an assistant to James Joyce.

• During WWII, visited his mother in neutral Ireland but returned to war-involved France. Persecuted by the Gestapo, hid on a rural farm.

• Became a prolific writer post-war.

• Won a Nobel Prize in 1969.

• Influenced Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard.

Waiting for Godot: Theme and Form

• Theme and form are highly connected: absurdity.

Theme

• Meaningless, absurd world (no purpose, direction, etc.).

  • No beliefs/reason/hope/rational explanations of things/religion/ideologies, there is uncertainty/disorientation/loneliness/isolation.

• No one knows who Godot is, not even the author.

• There are possible symbolic reasons to Godot's identity: God, meaning to life, and a "little god".

• Human condition worsens, shown through characters in 2 acts.

• Allusions to inevitable truths (oppressor and oppressed).

• "Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful."

• Lack of meaning, logic, rationality, beliefs > lack of system of belief, absence, clarity about life. Godless post-Holocaust world.

• There is a desire for meaning and answers. He represents God, and the things that lacked and never arrived.

• Search for meaning. Human condition -> act of waiting, hoping for something to happen.

• Inevitable truths. Deterioration mentally and physically.

Form

• Not a well-made play; lacks conventional structure. Called an anti-play or anti-theatre.

  • Lacks a plot; two men waiting for Godot. Static situation, repetitive actions. Characters focus attention on boots and a hat.

  • Divided into 2 acts (one day passing), both ending similarly (circular).

  • Stage directions contradict character's dialogue (absurdity).

  • Minimalistic setting: country road, a tree (leaves grow between acts). Unknown time and place. Gloomy/bleak, dystopian/post-apocalyptic, post-war landscape.

  • Dialogues are short and funny, like a sketch; illogical

  • Characters: Vladimir and Estragon (no apparent connection). Pozzo and Lucky (master-slave relationship, dehumanizing). Levy was Lucky's original name.

  • Vladimir and Estragon are interdependent, but Estragon is less attached. Vladimir is philosophical, observant, more interested in waiting. Estragon is mundane, associated with boots. Both wear bowler hats, looking clownish but they may have been upper class in the past.

  • Pozzo and Lucky are secondary characters, serving to entertain. Lucky is always on a leash and Pozzo is a powerful man but in the second act he is blind.

Sources of Absurdist Theatre

• Inspired by French avant-garde (early 20th century; surrealism, critics of reason; dadaism) and existentialism (life is meaningless, individuals are alone, each must create their own path).

• Traditional comedy: mime, clown, silent film (Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Marx Brothers).

• Literature of verbal nonsense: Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear (characters call each other by nicknames, such as Didi and Gogo).

Waiting for Godot as Tragicomedy

• A tragicomedy in 2 acts.

• Vladimir and Estragon are a comic duo.

Trends in Post-War British Theater II

• Change and continuity.

Changing Times: Post-War Social Reform

• War revealed social problems, like poverty, leading to discussions about social reforms.

  • The welfare state was created: free healthcare and education. The National Health Service (NHS) was created, as well as education acts and housing projects.

• Economic prosperity; a new consumer society.

Continuity

• Inequality and hardship persisted.

• Racial attitudes: British society became multicultural due to post-war migrations, causing conflict and social tensions (Notting Hill Race Riots in 1958).

• Gender attitudes: Conservative backlash after war. Cult of domesticity; women became homemakers.

• Sexual identity attitudes: Transitional; homosexuality was penalized.

• Censorship: Attacks against family roles, religion, homosexuality.

• Transitional time, change coexisted with valued attitudes.

Kitchen Sink Drama

• Need for a place to reflect these changes, a need for realism and social relevance in theatre.

• Response to the lack of change in conventional theatre (example: Terence Rattigan).

Characteristics

• Social realism: Represents reality authentically.

• Social extension: Working-class, everyday life, playwrights were also working-class.

• Socially-marginal characters.

• Setting: Domestic and private. Indicates class and social determinism.

• Socially critical: Challenges myth of affluence and post-war optimism.

• New content: Adult themes, breaks taboos, influenced by American (Broadway/Hollywood) plays.

Writers: The 'Angry Young Men' Generation

• New wave of writers: working-class origins, rebellious, critical, anti-establishment (John Osborne, Shelagh Delaney, Joe Orton).

Shelagh Delaney

• Born in Salford, 1938, with Irish roots (associated with the working class, hard life, sickness, infant mortality).

• After the war, she was taken to a convalescent home to recover her health.

• Described as someone with a personality that has quick wit and a sharp tongue by nurses in hospital

• No theatrical training, was self-taught through a job providing theatre access.

• Wrote 'A Taste of Honey' at 18-19, her first play.

• Radical theatre for a radical play.

Controversial Themes

• Teenage sex - deviation from the norm.

A TASTE OF HONEY

Themes/Issues

• Class.

• Gender: Challenges stereotypes (except Peter). Unconventional characters.

• Family: Unconventional; no father figure, dysfunctional. Conservative rebellion, surrogate characters, Helen has reasons to what makes her act the way she acts.

• Race: Relationship with Jo was not accepted.

Title

• "Please look…, because I tasted a little of this honey"

• Honey represents sin, breaking rules, brief happiness, ephemeral relationships.

Structure

• 2 acts and 2 sub-scenes.

• 10 months

  • Act 1: December

  • Act 2: June-September

Language

• Colloquialism and vulgarism.

• Irony, metaphors…

• "I write as people talk", natural language.

• Intelligence through language in spite of having bad language.

• Helen: creative, sophisticated, formal language.

Other Styles

• Sub-genres: comedy, melodrama, music-hall.

• Comic duo (Helen and Jo), similar to Vladimir and Estragon.

• Overdramatic melodrama: fallings, exaggerating, not really injuries, violence for fun.

• Helen addresses the audience often, and also the orchestra.

LITERATURE AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE

The British Empire

• Britannia is the goddess symbol of the British Empire, a symbol of global power.

• The British Empire was the largest and longest-lasting European empire, covering a quarter of the globe.

• The Caribbean is a poli-linguistic place, islands changed colonizers.

The End of Imperial English

• Decolonization in post-war period (India, Nigeria, Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados…)

• Post-war need for peace (UN creation). Domination of other countries became unreasonable.

• Colonies were no longer economically profitable.

• Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were considered white dominions, not colonies.

• British Commonwealth: Association formed after decolonization to preserve ties, reflecting a global family of nations.

Post-Colonial Literature: Definition and Themes

• Post-colonial era: Strong connection with colonialism.
  English literature becomes internationalized.

• New Englishes: Variations of English spoken in independent countries.

• New nations challenge the Western view and belief of superiority.

• Texts deal with the past (pre-colonial and colonial) and present.

Britain and the Caribbean

Post-War Colonial Migration

• British Nationality Act, 1948 (needed workers, stop anti-colonial feelings).

• The Windrush: first arrival of Caribbean migrants to Britain, mostly men.

• Britain becomes more multicultural than ever.

• Worked as drivers and in manual jobs. Migrant musicians gave themselves names from British generals. Lord Kitchener wrote “London is the Place For Me" on the boat for his trip to London.
  Poem: “Colonization in Reverse” – letter home about the impact of the immigrants.
  Anti-migration arises

DUB POETRY: LINTON KWESI JOHNSON

Dub Poetry

• Connected to Reggae. It's a performance poetry.

• Spoken word over reggae rhythm (reggae poetry).

• Purpose: Political, protest poetry, anger, comment on events.

• Language: Caribbean creole, "nation language."

Linton Kwesi Johnson

Video- 1963, isolation, marginalization, fire, black panther, gangs, knives, racial oppression, abuse

Poems

• it dread inna englan

LITERATURE AND EMPIRE: AFRICA

Brief Introduction to the History of Colonization in Africa and Nigeria

• The Scramble for Africa; “everyone wants a piece of this pie”.

• Nigeria: palm oil business. Britain builds closer relationships with the Hausas

Chinua Achebe

• Igbo, probably Christianized.

• Church missionary society, born into a Christian family.
  Video: Condescending, authority, consequences of this encounter (something was gain but something was lost), depict the people

Life

• Never won a Nobel Prize.

Motivation for Writing

• Pedagogical: The novelist as a teacher.

• Also inspired by Frantz Fanon – Black Skins, White Masks.

Works

• The African trilogy (Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God).

THINGS FALL APART

Setting and Time

• Village setting, Umuofia (one of 9 villages that form a cluster) in Igboland.

• Based in the 1890s, before the arrival of the colonizers to Africa.

• Mbanta, another village, the setting for Part II. Umuofia is the father’s origin – Mbanta is the mother’s origin.

• Based in Ogidi, the author’s hometown.

Structure

• Part I is the longest, more than half of the novel, the pre-colonial past.

  • Traditional non-Christian way of life, presented with dignity, not as savages.

  • Everyday life of individuals that have families and are members of the community. Strong social system. Strong source of punishment.

  • Social, economic, political, and religious system.

  • Culture isn’t idealized, but credible and real, also showing troubling aspects of the culture.

  • Based on the lives of the author’s great-grandparents.

• Parts II and III.

  • He’s exiled, spends 7 years out of his hometown.

  • The (English) missionaries start to arrive.

  • In Part III, he returns to see how the missionaries have affected the community. Consequences = things start to fall apart.

Title

• The title of the novel comes from poem “the second coming” from Yeats (the epigraph to the novel).

Characters

• Okonkwo: A winning warrior, he has a tragic flaw: arrogant, proud, violent, rigid; has a bad tragic ending.

• Okonkwo and women: A contradiction in terms. The use of gender in the novel caused the author to be accused of sexism.

Language

• The author confronted the dilemma of which language to write. Wrote in English. Mixed with African words.

Importance of Oral Tradition

Proverbs

• Communicative: Art of the conversation.

• Proverbs as the palm oil with which words are eaten.

• Wisdom, values, tolerance, humility, achievement/personal effort, respect for elders.

Folktales

• Similar idea as proverbs, but in the form of stories.

• The Tortoise and the Birds.

Igbo Cosmology

• View of the world; spiritual, connection of physical and spiritual worlds.

• Spirit of the ancestors (good spirits, living dead); spirits are part of their everyday life. They pray to the ancestors, not to their god.

• Egwugwu: 9 masked spirits (villagers), believed to have a spirit inside; believed to have a symbolic spirit. There is one from each village.

• Obanje: Evil spirits, they kill the children before they’re born.

Gods

• Chukwu – supreme god

• Goddess below, but lesser

• Goddess of the earth, fertility, morality/judge of behaviour. They depend on her because they’re farmers.

Chi

• A personal god, like a guardian angel.

• The worth and independence of every person.

• Achebe’s influence: Chimamanda Adichie.

LITERATURE AND GENDER: WOMEN’S WRITING

Flourishing of Women’s Writing

• A boom in women centered women writers

Precursor Texts/Authors

• Doris Lessing: Martha Quest, the golden notebook

• Margaret Drabble: the L-shaped room

• Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea (Jane Eyre)

Socio-Historical Context, Women’s Liberation

• Second-wave feminism.

First Wave of Feminism

• Suffrage movement: Women were able to vote.

Women’s Liberation Movement (1970s)

• Wanted equal legal rights and challenged the definition of ‘femininity’.

• Women’s liberation conference at Oxford; the 4 demands:

  • Equal pay, equal opportunities, and education

  • 24h nurseries, free contraception, and abortion

  • Self-defined sexuality, freedom from violence, the body

• Women’s liberation march 1971 (London) : Protests against Miss World contest 1970

Philosophical Context, Freud, Simone de Beauvoir

• Freud thought that:

  • Women are jealous of men because they don’t have a penis like them

  • Women are more jealous than men by nature

  • Women were more worried about their appearance

  • Shame is a feminine characteristic

  • Importance of having a son, as he brings the penis the woman can’t have

  • Masculinity = activity, femininity = passivity

• Beauvoir
  -She says says that Freud understood nothing about women, and what he said about them and femininity affected women

  • One is not born, but rather becomes, woman
    -Women should be more united; stop being allies of men and start being allies to other women.

Ecriture Feminine

• Central concept à women’s writing / ecriture feminine

• The laugh of the medusa (Helene Cixous) à Raped by Poseidon and cursed by Athena because she was jealous of the attention she had

Examples of Women Authors

• Angela Carter, Fay Weldon, Jeanette Winterson (lesbianism and androgenism) àThey challenge classic gender characteristics by creating complex gender identities

LITERATURE AND GENDER: ANGELA CARTER

Angela Carter’s Life

• Her mother was overly involved in her life and fed her too much food.

• She was dissuaded from attending Oxford due to her parents wanting to follow her, according to her biographer.

• She was hired by a journal to review music and records, where she met her husband, Paul Carter.

• She got married at 20, seeing it as a way of becoming independent from her parents.

• Became proficient in French.

• She travelled to Tokio and stayed there for 2 years, alone, which radicalized her as a feminist.

• Then returned to England, where she met another man, Mark Pearce.

• Her grandma was the most important storyteller in her life, she stayed with her during WW2

Folklorist and Novelist

• The bloody chamber à A collection of 10 fairytales (bluebeard, the beauty and the beast, puss in boots, sleeping beauty, snow white

• Novelist: fantasy, speculative fiction. Feminist stories, gender transformation.

Relation to Feminism

• Implicit way.

• She translated 10 Perrault short stories, which was helpful for the making of ‘the bloody chamber’

ANGELA CARTER AND THE FAIRY TALE TRADITION

Canonical Voices

• Folk tales were not only pieces of imagination and amusement but also of instruction and warning.

• The literary fairy tale represent the appropriation if the wonder folk tale to address the aristocracy but mainly the bourgeois reader.

Main Characteristics

• Conventional stock figures

• Static and stereotypical characters

• Dream-like speed from event to event.

• Flat descriptions or even absent for some characters

- This is not a text

• Stereotypical: Gender

• Saviour (resilient man) vs object (damsel in distress).

• Women are killed and villainized much more often

THE BLOODY CHAMBER

Introduction

• The bloody chamber is based on Bluebeard.

• To be able to use the old stories with different gender roles is to make it subvert the old values – by making women objects that need to be saved.

Feminist Retellings

• Transgression is prohibited à She disobeys the husband, women figures seem to be punished.

• Carter endows he heroine with transgressive force.

Intertextuality

• Sources and influences:
  -Forbidden chamber

Bluebeard

• Subversion of the damsel in distress motif – a man doesn’t save her, and the male figure present isn’t capable of helping her

Setting and Language

• Exaggerated, ostentatiously violent and sexually explicit- “I’m not scared of him, but of myself”

• The marquis

• Jean-Yves: Blind, he doesn’t have the male gaze, he can’t sexualize her

• The mother

Narrative Techniques

• Dream-like atmosphere: Fantasy

• Magical realism (the insertion of inexplicable magical elements, the blood on the keys)

Binaries

objectification and male gaze: flesh, meat, purchase

POETRY: CAROL ANN DUFFY

• Contemporary poetry

Contemporary

• Living or occurring at the same time, recent years/decades, and it deals topics that concern us today

• “Poetry”: literature that evokes an emotional response through written language arranged for its meaning, sound and rhythm

• Poet Laureate: Chosen by the English matriarch, most important poet

• Free verse: follows variations upon standards rhythm and rhyme

• Punctuation steps back and gives way to lyricism, deromantization, ecopoetics (connection to nature), estrangement, the reader is encouraged to find personal revelations in the poetic message traditional themes from experience and more personal

Carol Ann Duffy

Biography

• CarolAnn Duffy was born on December 23, 1955, in Glasgow, Scotland to Mary Black and Frank Duffy, both of Irish Catholic descent.

- Themes:

Love and relationships

• Her exploration of love reflects its complexities (ecstasy and anguish), and the different forms of love. Not only romantic love, but also maternal and daughterly love. Duffy has stated in several interviews that the experiences of falling in love has influenced her work immensely

Feminisms and identity

• Duffy’s works often challenge societal norms and explore themes of gender and identity. Her feminist voice becomes more focused in this very direct critique of patriarchy, which uses the dramatic monologue form satirically.
  -When her first collection, Standing Female Nude, was published in 1985, she was introduced“as a poetess”, which she has criticized in numerous occasions: Sadly, “we still have a way to go”.

Memory and nostalgia

• Memory serves as a vital theme in Duffy’s poetry, where nostalgia intertwines with longing for the past. Her poignant reflections convey how memories shape personal identities and influence present realities.

Social issues

-Inequality, violence, and cultural identity -Duffy addresses pressing social issues such as inequality, violence, and cultural identity. which She stresses “how the political moves out of the personal”, for example in one of her new poems, “Britannia”, which connects the Grenfell fire last year with the Aberfan tragedy in 1966.

* Duffy’sImpact and Legacy: Influence on Contemporary Poetry

• Duffy’s unique voice and innovative use of language has inspired a generation of poets. Her works often challenge conventions, exploring themes of identity, feminism, and social issues, contributing to a richer, more diverse poetic form. -She’s part of the GSES but she’s highly controversial.

Nocture and Valentine

• Originally, In this autobiographical poem, Duffy considers and explores the sense of isolation and confusion felt when as a child her parents moved from the Gorbals in Glasgow to England. She describes both the literal details of the journey and the move as well as the deeper, metaphorical journey that she and her family experienced as a result of this decision.

Themes

• In this poem, Duffy reveals the importance of early childhood memories and experiences in shaping identity and also considers the impact of significant domestic changes during the formative years. It is clear that even though Duffy was only six when she moved to England, her sense of Scottishness has stayed with her. However, this affinity has resulted in a sense of confusion about her own identity and where she belongs.
  Form and Structure
  Much of Duffy's work, the poem has a regular structure. The three stanzas of eight lines help to divide the poem into a straightforward chronology.: Stanza 1 recalls the journey from Glasgow towards her new home, 2 nd stanza explores her initial sense of not fitting into this new landscape while in 3 consider the larger question about how our sense of identity is formed, shaped and affected by such transitions.. However, underneath this apparently ordered structure, the poet’s anxiety and uncertainty is revealed through the lack of a regular rhythm or rhyme scheme which reinforces the lack of order in her own life at this time.-

# SIMON ARMITAGE

Contemporary Poetry suggests ideas rather than overtly stating them
Is brief in comparison to other traditional poetry forms
-Literary Context (Ted Hughes as The Alvarez Poet)

• Simon Armitage (1963- ) English poet, playwright, novelist, singer and DJ, Armitage has been Poet Laureate since May 2019
  concerned with social issues has led him to create poetry such as Out of the Blue, focused on the tragic 9/11 attacks, and Lockdown, centred on the pandemic caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease SimonArmitage Education Curriculum -Any of Armitage’s poems that appear in the AQA(Assessment and Qualifications Alliance) GCSE syllabus for English Literature in the United Kingdom. These include“Homecoming”, “November”, “Kid”,“Hitcher”, and a selection of poems from Book of Matches, most notably of these“Mother any distance…

NOVEMBER–end of the year

-Overview The speaker of the poem describes his and his friend John’s experience when taking John’s grandmother to the hospital one last time to die notice the decaying bodies of old people realizing that the same will happen to them they go back home and drink to forget about what they have experienced
THEMES:(all the leaves will fall of) Death: (we are going to die), passing of time, Carpe Diem( Enjoy life while we can),
-Structure 6 stanzas, 5x3 lined stanzas plus final couplet at the end (mirroring in some ways but rethinking the sonnet form) No rhyme scheme- Tone has a colloquial style with wry understated humour. He uses standard English sometimes combined with slang, wit, jargon and vernacular of his native Northern England.

Stanzas

• -“Badly the parked car” physical signs of aging rhyme of“trinkets’ and “blankets” Visualimagery

• “”bloodless smiles stunned brains directley afffecting every one
  what they have experienced
  carpe diem ( enjoy life) -all of the leaves will fall of