WWI - The first world war
When queen Victoria died, her son Edward VII took power.
The British social life was living industrialization, the growth of urban areas
and transportation and an increase of population. When Edward VII died, his
son George V became king.
In June 1914 the heir to the Austrian throne was killed in Sarajevo during an
official visit.
Austria and Germany declared war to Serbia in July: France, Russia and Great
Britain sided with Serbia.
During the war, there was a strong patriotism and hate for the Germans so King
George V changed his German name “Saxe-Coburg-Gotha” to “Windsor”.
In 1915 Italy entered the war on the side of France and Great Britain.
In 1917 Russia abandoned the war after the bolshevik revolution.
By 1917 the American president Wilson decided to enter the war on Britain's
side.
During the war, a lot of British troops died and others were seriously wounded.
War was conducted mostly in the trenches, but also airplanes, submarines,
tanks and chemical gasses were used.
WWII - The second world war
When George V died, his son Edward VIII became king but soon after he
abdicated to marry an american divorced woman. His brother George VI
succeeded.
The treaty of peace was signed in Versailles in June 1919 and it imposed harsh
conditions on Germany. Germans experienced a terrible economical crisis so
the Nazy party became very popular among people.
The British ignored the Spanish civil war while Hitles and Mussolini gave their
support to general Francisco Franco.
In 1938 Hitler annexed Austria with the Munich Agreement. In 1939 Germany
invaded Poland and so France and Great Britain declared war against Germany.
The fascist Italy entered the war in 1940 with Germany. The USA were neutral
until December 1941, after the Japanese air attack occurred in Pearl Harbor.
In 1940, in Dunkirk a lot of british soldiers on a shore were saved by boats after
a german attack and in the same year the Royal air force won the Battle of
Britain.
In this period, Winston Churchill became prime minister.
In 1941 the Soviet Union joined the war.
On June 6th 1944 the allies arrived in Normandy and invaded Germany.
Russia occupied nations in eastern Europe and in 1945 Germany surrendered.
Japan kept fighting until the two atomic bombs were thrown by American in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
In February 1945 Roosevelt met Stalin and Churchill at Yalta to agree on the
division of Germany in two zones (east and west) and the creation of the United
Nations Organization.
THE TWENTIES AND THIRTIES
During WWI women started to work in factories replacing men.
The battle for the right to vote was fought by the Suffragettes (Women’s suffrage
movement). The famous leader was Mrs Emmeline Pankhrust.
This movement had to use violence to gain equal political rights.
Industrial production had been maintained but the situation after war was more
difficult.
In 1918 all men aged 21 and women over 30 were allowed to vote.
In 1924 the first labour government was created. In Britain the labour party has
never been completely identified in socialism or communism but it was more in
line with working-class aspirations and ideas.
The modern habits were: cigarette smoking, cinema, less attention to religion,
more sexual freedom. The upper class searched for fun during what we call the
Roaring Twenties. Families were smaller and both parents used to work.
During this period new technologies took place: telephone, electricity,
phonograph, record player, motion picture, radio, automobile (Ford used the
assembly-line).
In 1929 there was a sudden crash in the American stock market: the Wall Street
crash, which contributed to the Great depression (called the “slump” in Great
Britain).
The modernist revolution
During the 19th century religion was questioned and in the 20th century people
had difficulties in believing in something (religion, philosophy, science).
In this period of time, Einstein published the theory of relativity: science was
replacing religious belief. Opponeimer created the atomic bomb.
Some people were worried about the use of science.
Nietzche proclaimed that abstract values such as “good”, “truth” and “beauty”
were decadent.
New psychological theories of the human mind arose: Freud invented the
psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis. He talked about the
“unconscious”: the human mind has many layers and some of them are hidden.
The modernism follows these important characteristics:
● the breakdown of traditional literary genres
● fragmentation of the traditional time and place
● collapse of the traditional plot
● complex language
● psychological truth
● use of myth
● free verse
first generation of modernists: Eliot, Joyce and Woolf, with the use of the
unconscious in daily life and stream of consciousness
second generation of modernist: Orwell, who was a journalist of the political left
during the spanish civil war
Writers were influenced by cubism, futurism, dadaism, surrealism
THE USA
During WWI the president of the USA was Wilson. At the beginning America was
neutral but eventually it got involved in the conflict.
Many Americans were volunteers at the beginning but with time detachment
and disillusion took place. After the conflict, the USA adopted an isolationist
policy.
Industrial enterprises developed quickly and immigration from Europe and
southern states increased: this caused hostility against foreigners. An example
can be Sacco and Vanzetti’s execution because they were anarchists, but not
criminals.
There can be a distinction between traditional Americans, who believed in social
conformity, work ethic and respectability, and immigrants who wanted to reach
freedom and progress. The decade where “new Americans” tried to gain these
new values is called Jazz Age (the 20s).
In 1919 a law forbidding the production and the sale of alcohol started
Prohibitionism. The illegal production of alcohol was called bootlegging.
After the Wall Street Crash, the new president Roosvelt started a period of liberal
reforms called the New Deal trying to save the nation from poverty and
unemployment.
MODERN POETRY
Between 1900 and the end of WWI the first modernist poetry developed (Pound
and Eliott).
The waste land, the central poem by Eliott, is based on myth and anthropology:
he took the myth of Holy Grail as a base to criticise the failure of western
civilization.
In this poem we can find typical modern features:
● absence of a clear narrative order
● juxtaposition of past and present (the past is used to underline the
present);
● time shift, which reveals the stream of consciousness.
The second generation of modernism started in the 1930s. Its members are
called Oxford poets. They preferred the traditional forms and not the nichilist
attitude.
MODERN NOVEL
The technical revolution was preceded by the novel revolution.
These novels were characterized by new narrative structures and the use of
time-shift, flashbacks, different points of view and ways to describe human
psychology.
Conrad was polish but he chose english as his narrative language. Heart of
darkness is a short novel based on his experience in Congo. Congo is used as
an exotic setting where the adventurous plot takes place. Marlow, the main
character, realizes that when an individual is alone and he can’t rely on social
institutions and social values he can discover his dark side. It’s a criticism of
European colonialism in Africa.
Joyce and Virginia Woolf reflected the novelist's lack of faith in traditional values,
the trauma of WWI and disillusionment with modern technologies.
Classic myths were incorporated in modern novels, such as Joyce’s Ulysses
where there is the description of a journey in city life. Even in this work we can
find a stream of consciousness.
Joyce’s Dubliners is a collection of 15 stories about people living in Dublin. The
central theme is paralysis represented as mental frustration. Joyce believed in
the lack of heroism of the modern world.
For Virginia Woolf human perception depends on time in the mind (the way the
human mind is affected by “real” time”) and not on time on the clock. In Mrs
Dalloway a single day can contain a whole life.
George Orwell wrote “1984”, where he describes a future world where a power
directed by the Big Brother controls men's action with microphones and screens.
It is a criticism of the mass media.
MODERN AMERICAN WRITERS
Fitzgerald describes the effect of the war at home and described a vivid picture of
the new generation of americans: he wrote The Great Gatsby to represent the
failure of the American dream.
Hemingway reflects on his experience battling in Italy and the postwar physical
and mental trauma.
Between 1920 and 1930 there was the rise of cinema, jazz, automobiles and
psychoanalysis.
Paris was the center of American literature in Europe.
