world wars and modernism | Appunti di Inglese

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, her son became king as Edward VII. At the time, British power

was being challenged by France, Germany and America, especially in the emergent industries.

Edward signed an agreement with France (Entente Cordiale), establishing that Britain was interested

in Egypt and France in Morocco.

As regarding politics, the Liberals won the elections: they were divided in two groups: those who

supported the laissez-faire and those who supported New Liberalism. Moreover, there was the

foundations of the Welfare State with the introductions of an old-age pension, free melas and medical

inspections in boarding schools. Also workers had free medical treatment and sickness benefits.

When the king died he was succeeded by George V.

In 1903 Mrs. Pankhust founded the “Suffragettes”, which included women that wanted the vote; they

held large marches in London. Women over 30 would gain the vote in 1918, and for women over 21

in 1928. Other important changes were the women's colleges and the fact that women were recruited

in factory work.

An important issue was the Irish Question for the Irish Independent; there was a rebellion in Dublin

(the Easter Rising) because the Home Rule had been suspended until the end of the war. The rebellion

was repressed and the leaders executed. So there was the Irish Republican party SInn Fein, which

was fighting for the reunification of Ireland.

WWI

The war broke out in 1914, when a Serbian nationalist assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian

throne, and this event triggered a series of reactions. Britain declared war when Germany violated

Belgian neutrality. By September 1914 the German army had reached the River Marne in France.

Then in 1915 a German Submarine sank the British passenger liner Lusitania, so Thomas Wlson (US

president) sent diplomatico protests to Germany. The worst battle took plaeìce on the Somme: it was a

war of attrition, so it was fought to kill soldiers, who retreated into trenches. Their life eìwas really

stressful and shell shock was the term used for the psychological effect of shell explosions. By

October 1918 the Germans were reatrating along the Western Front. On 4th October Germany asked

President Wilson for armistice and the 11th November is remembered as the Armistice Day; it was

also called Poppy Day, because the poppy was the only plant to grow on the battlefields.The peace

treaty was signed at Versailles in 1919; president Wilson proposed 14 points to prevent future wars,

and presented the League of Nations, who was the forerunner of the United Nations.

AGE OF ANXIETY

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When Queen Victoria died in 1901, her son became king as Edward VII. At the time, British power was being challenged by France, Germany and America, especially in the emergent industries. Edward signed an agreement with France (Entente Cordiale), establishing that Britain was interested in Egypt and France in Morocco. As regarding politics, the Liberals won the elections: they were divided in two groups: those who supported the laissez-faire and those who supported New Liberalism. Moreover, there was the foundations of the Welfare State with the introductions of an old-age pension, free melas and medical inspections in boarding schools. Also workers had free medical treatment and sickness benefits. When the king died he was succeeded by George V. In 1903 Mrs. Pankhust founded the “Suffragettes”, which included women that wanted the vote; they held large marches in London. Women over 30 would gain the vote in 1918, and for women over 21 in 1928. Other important changes were the women's colleges and the fact that women were recruited in factory work. An important issue was the Irish Question for the Irish Independent; there was a rebellion in Dublin (the Easter Rising) because the Home Rule had been suspended until the end of the war. The rebellion was repressed and the leaders executed. So there was the Irish Republican party SInn Fein, which was fighting for the reunification of Ireland. WWI The war broke out in 1914, when a Serbian nationalist assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and this event triggered a series of reactions. Britain declared war when Germany violated Belgian neutrality. By September 1914 the German army had reached the River Marne in France. Then in 1915 a German Submarine sank the British passenger liner Lusitania, so Thomas Wlson (US president) sent diplomatico protests to Germany. The worst battle took plaeìce on the Somme: it was a war of attrition, so it was fought to kill soldiers, who retreated into trenches. Their life eìwas really stressful and shell shock was the term used for the psychological effect of shell explosions. By October 1918 the Germans were reatrating along the Western Front. On 4th October Germany asked President Wilson for armistice and the 11th November is remembered as the Armistice Day; it was also called Poppy Day, because the poppy was the only plant to grow on the battlefields.The peace treaty was signed at Versailles in 1919; president Wilson proposed 14 points to prevent future wars, and presented the League of Nations, who was the forerunner of the United Nations. AGE OF ANXIETY

In this period, nothing seemed to be certain: scientists and philosophers destroyed the old universe and new views of man and universe emerged. The first set of ideas was introduced by Freud: he emphasized the power of the unconscious to affect behavior and placed importance on the demands of “libido”, especially those manifested in the Oedipus phase, in which the child sees the father as a rival for his mother’s affections. Jung continued Freud’s studies and added the concept of “collective unconscious”, it’s a cultural memory containing the myths and beliefs of the human race: so figures and objects of the everyday world had symbolic power and only poets and psychologists could understand these symbols. Also, the crisis of confidence was due to the relativity by Einstein, whose theory discarded the concepts of time and space. Then, the idea of time was questioned by James and Begson, who made distinction between historical time and psychological time. In the religious field, more people became aware that there were alternatives to Chroistianity, because of Nietsche’s ideas who declared that “God was dead”. In the inter-war years, the British Empire dominions were granted to control their own domestic and foreign affairs; also in India steps towards self-government were taken under the pressure from Gandhi. In the 1918 election in Ireland the Sinn Fein party won almost all seats, but instead of going to Westminster it set up an independent parliament in Dublin. The Irish organization became the IRA (Irish republican army) and declared war on Britain under Michael Collins. The IRA met the “Black and Tan” police and the conflict culminated with the “Bloody Sunday”. IN 1921 an ANglo Irish treaty established the Irish Free State, this led to a war in Ireland between those who accepted the Treaty and those who didn’t. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 there were miners strikes and the most urgent issue was unemployment: the industrial North was challenged by industries in the South. King Edward VIII succeeded his father George V, but he wanted to marry a twice divorced American woman, so Baldwin forced his abdication: the king's brother succeeded as George VI. WW Adolf Hitler sent troops illegally into Rhineland and then invaded Austria proclaiming its union with Germany; then there was violence against jewish in the Kristallnacht. In August 1939 he signed a secret non aggression pact with Stalin and invaded Poland. War began in 1939 and the British sent troops to aid in the defense of France; then in May 1940 there was a German attack on Holland and BELgium. Meanwhile Japan overran Hong Kong and Burma. Hither planned the invasion of Britain and then decided to declare war on the SOviet Union because he wanted to get the oilfield in the Caucasus region. In decembe 1941 Jaoan bombed the US fleet in Pearl Harbour; in July 1943 the Allies landed in SIicly. The Allies continued to score victories against the Germans, helped by the

upper-middle-class of Victorian society. Regarding art, Picasso and Braque began to develop cubism, in England Lewis founded Vorticism, italian futurism led by Marinetti celebrated power and dynamism. In music therewew Stravinsky and Schoenberg. MODERN POETRY The poetry of the years before the First World War regarde Georgian poets: they felt sympathy for specifically english elements; then there were the war poets: when the war broke out, thousands of men volunteered for military service and they saw the conflict as an adventure for noble end; then this sense of pride was replaced by disillusionment. RUPERT BROOKE He was a good student, went to King's College; he joined up at the beginning of the conflict but died early of blood poisoning. In his sonnets he advanced the idea that war is clean and cleansing. “The Soldier”: The Soldier is a sonnet in which Brooke glorifies England during the First World War. He speaks in the guise of an English soldier as he is leaving home to go to war. The poem represents the patriotic ideals that characterized pre-war England. It portrays death for one’s country as a noble end and England as the noblest country for which to die. WILFRED OWEN He was affected by shellshock and had to stay in the hospital in Edinburgh: here he met Sassoon. Once he recovered, joined the army again and was killed a few days before the armistice. He gives a different way of the war and introduces lots of figure of speech (wants to reproduced the souns of bombs). “Dulce et decorum est”: this poem is based on the poet’s experience of the horrors of war in the trenches. In the poem he is saying that it is anything but sweet and proper to die for one's country in a hideous war. One of the main themes of this poem is war. It deals with a soldier's experience in World War I, and contrasts the realities of war with the glorified notion of what serving in a war is like."Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," means it is sweet and proper to die for one's country. This idea of patriotism fueled the hopes and dreams of many young soldiers who entered World War I. Once they realized the horrors that awaited them, however, this ideal patriotism was rightly viewed as ridiculous.

MODERN NOVEL

The origins of the English novel were bourgeois and the novelist was a mediator between the characters and the reader. The shift from the Victorian to the modern novel was caused by a transformation of British society, which passed from the Victorian world to the inter-war years. Now the novelist had a new role: he mediated the solid values of the past and the confused present. This new realism tended to shift from society to individual. The modern novelist rejected omniscient narration, and experimented with new methods to portray the stream of consciousness: the view point shifted from the external world to the internal world of a character's mind. The tratament of time was different: it was subjective and internal, because if the distinction between past and present was meaningless, there was no point to building a well structured novel. The narrative technique was the stream of consciousness: the continuous flow of thought and sensation that characterize the human mind. There were 3 groups of novelist: -psychological novelist: they were about the development of the characters mind (Conrad-mystery of human experience; Lawrence-inner conflicts of workers; Forster-complexity of human relationships) -novelist that experimented with subjective narration, exploring the mind of one or more characters -novelist that focused on the society around them. To reproduce the stream of consciousness, novelists used the interior monologue. It was characterized by: -verbal expression of a psychic phenomenon; -lack of chronological order; -lack of formal logical order; -the action takes place in the character’s mind -speech has no introductory expressions. There are two kinds of interior monologue: -indirect interior monologue: the narrator lets the characters' thoughts flow without control and the thoughts are presented directly or adding description or comments. In the character's mind everything happens in the present, so the inner time is preferred to show the relatives of a subjective experience; -direct interior monologue: the narrator seems not to exist. Joyce used two kinds of direct interior monologue: one with two levels of narration and the one with and only the mind level of narration.

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MODERN NOVEL