The Age of Reason: The Great Age of Satire (1700-1740)

• Age of Reason (enlightenment, Neo-Classicism)

  • rational, scientific thinking

  • way research is conducted changes, science still in its infancy (looks a bit like modern way of research)

• The Royal Society

  • institution to promote science and share results of research

  • one of earliest presidents: Sir Isaac Newton

• Writing

  • based on common sense, intellectual, emotion kept under perfect control

• Democracy started progressing in 18th century under King William III of Orange

  • Conservative Party a.k.a. Tories and Liberal Democrats a.k.a. Whigs

  • Britain was a large new trading empire with strongest navy in the world

  • this wealth/capital → agricultural and industrial revolution → most advanced economy in the world

• Jonathan Swift

  • made fun of everything he felt was wrong in hopes of people avoiding making the same mistakes and seeing their weaknesses and errors

  • Gulliver’s travels (1726)

    • allegory consisting of 4 parts, making fun of political and social situation in England (liliputians)

The Romantic Period (1798-1830)

• Reaction to rationalistic attitude in the age of reason

  • industrialization, urbanization, secularization, consumerizm

  • religion = less

  • delight in emotion and imagination above intellect

  • new interest in nature and Britain’s unknown past

  • children and poor people are best subjects

• William Wordsworth:

  • grew up close with nature and country people → crucial impact on his poetry

  • poetry: the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings

  • averse to artificiality & literary conventions, poetry should come from heart

Jane Austen: Comedy of manners (1775-1817)

• First female novelist, her novels of manners: neoclassical belonging to Age of Reason

  • characters (gentle people) become happy after controlling emotions and rational attitude and are dealing with social prestige, marrying right person and filling time pleasurably

  • despite uneventfulnes and repetition of themes, characters have psychological depth and precision

    • she introduces weaknesses of her characters and moral & social questions

  • with mild irony she attacks the narrow-mindedness and provincialism

  • they make grave mistakes, are led by false views and go through a process of ripening before achieving happiness in marriage based on sensible thinking and moderate feeling

The Victorian Age (1830-1900)

• Name comes from Queen Victoria (1837-1901)

• England was the most powerful nation at the time and many people came to work there which led to overpopulation

  • poor conditions for working classes, child labour and hardly any education

• Average Victorian wants to be respected and refined

  • proper thinking and correct behaviour taught in public schools

  • life in this age was prudish and repressive resulting in tendency to hypocrisy

• Novels are the most important literary form at the time (George Eliot, Thomas Hardy)

  • enormous length, published in serial form (equivalent to soap operas)

  • complex, clear distinguishment between good and bad, ends with poetic justice

    • good characters live on, bad are punished for evil deeds

  • highly moralistic tone

• Charles Dickens

  • fits romantic era better (too sentimental and melodramatic)

  • great comedian/entertainer, master of language

  • dialog = vivid, natural, vulgar

  • sympathy with poor, distrust to rich, clever and powerful (returns in novels)

Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë (19th Century)

• Gothic literature (Dracula/Frankenstein), romance vs. horror/supernatural

  • not chronological and complex, tales withing tales, change of narrator

  • atmosphere: claustrophobic, fearful ; plot: revenge, imprisonment, murder

  • present haunted by past (physical reminders)

• Byronic hero (after Lord Byron)

  • dark, outsider antihero

    • intelligent, arrogant, violent outbursts, emotionally tortured, manipulative, self-destructing, prone to substance abuse, seductive

Britain in the Great War (1914-1918)

• WW1 put an abrupt end to comfort for upper and middle class.

  • shocked country out of its Victorian attitude of greatness and superiority

• Causes of this trench war:

  • assasination of Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip

  • nationalism, imperialism**, militarism,** alliances

• Weapons:

  • rifles (Bayonet), machine gun, barbed wire, grenades and mortons, poison gas, tanks and submarines

• Diseases

  • trench foot and fever

  • STD’s

  • self inflicted injuries

  • shell shock (PTSD)

• propaganda:

  • going to war was made popular: ‘‘heroes for our country’’ → many volunteers

Modernist Movement (early 20th century)

• Modernism

  • reaction to industrialization, globalization, horrors of WW1

  • sudden break with tradition, experimentation (‘make it new‘ ~Ezra Pound)

  • collage and stream of consciousness

  • main character says everything that’s on his mind

  • images (may be figurative), symbols

  • non-linear time (flashbacks and flashforwards)

  • imagism (Ezra pound); clarity and economy of language

George Orwell (1903-1950)

• Wrote Animal Farm, because he’s Anti-stalin

• 1984 (published in 1949)

  • Oceania in constant war with Eurasia and/or Eastasia

  • The party, big brother

  • free thought, sex and expression of individuality are prohibited

  • winston smith- works for ministry of truth, rewriting history

  • 4 ministries:

    • truth (lies)

    • plenty (scarce)

    • peace (war)

    • love (torture, hate)

  • war = peace; freedom = slavery ; ignorance = strength

• dystopian novels (negative utopia, repressive and controlled state)

• reaction to totalitarianism

Postmodernism and the Theatre of the Absurd

• Postmodernism (experimental and pessimistic)

  • literature after WW2

  • reaction to the high culture ideas of modernism

  • post 1950’s society → technology and commercialism

• Sisyphus and the meaning of life

  • worst punishment: doing something for no reason

  • human need to find meaning clashes with meaningless universe

• tragicomedy: funny play about something dark

• Theathre of the Absurd:

  • bizarre characters in bizzare situations

  • often no plot, nothing seems to happen

  • characters are stuck, everything is unpredictable

  • absurdist movement: human existence is inherently meaningless

Postcolonial literature (1980 and forwards)

• Explores experience of colonialism and its past and present effects

  • Slavery, migration, suppression and resistance, difference, race, gender and place

    • Zadie Smith, Chinua Achebe, J.M. Coetzee

• Zadie Smith

  • history, search of identity, ethics of science and technology, politics of race and gender, uncertainty future and past