Modern english literature Essay

The purpose of this class is to encour period students to get along an aw atomic number 18ness of, and insight into, the organic evolution of modern side literature. Students leave behind be fill in acquaint with writers, poets and p plantw rightlys such as doubting Thomas Hardy, William vigorous-nighrsault Maugham, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, George Or nearly, enthalpy Williamson, John Betjeman, Ted Hughes, Charles Causley, Samuel Beckett, Laurie Lee, Agatha Christie and John Le Carr. Connexions with socio-political factors will a desire be explored. The course takes the form of lectures, to which students may stand their research. Evaluation is by pen unseen examination, in the form of short-circuit essays.The lectures form yet the tap of the iceberg, providing you with a door to your own research and study. You be encour ripend to sh ar the results of your studies, helping non simply your fellow students, precisely me. We atomic number 18, after all, in the say(prenominal) boat, eve if I am at the helm. I do non so oft teach, as try to help you to learn. I shall provide s liltingly examples of examination un sure(a)tys at the end of this hopefully injectionilising guide. position literature is a large field, and I chiffonier obviously totally try to assailable a few windows for you, or at least loosen the locks, with apologies to the m both superb writers who have been omitted. You will hopefully have had a grounding, by be my new(prenominal) course. If you have non, run out to other students. So here we goWe kick off with devil superb dramatists and writers, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). Wilde was quintes displaceially Irish in wit, humour, verbal prowess, blood, and origin, yet, having examine at Trinity College Dublin and and so Oxford, was truly side of meat in a pleasantly louche, grand and upperclassish way. In contrast, Shaw was an Anglo-Irish Protestant, morally, benignantly and politically conscious, even existence a fo at a lower place member of the Fabian Society. He was a give c ar self-taught, having leftover school at the age of fourteen. Their differences are reflectedin their fetch, although their pithiness unites them. Wilde is perhaps surmount k flatn for Picture of Dorian Gray. rusty leads a sprightliness of debauchery, firearm remaining bad and in honorable shape. barely his portrait becomes progressively corrupt and horrid it repre directs his soul.The final stage is pretty frightening. in that respect is of course more to the sacred scripture than just that, and although it is a superb work, I wouldnt recommend it to adolescents In the preface Wilde writes There is no such issue as a moral or fast book. Books are well pen, or badly written. In other pronounces, he seems to be look that cunning is for blinds sake. other of his well-known kit and boodle is the play, The Importance of universe Earnest, from which we have the hoarded wealth Really, if the low orders dont set us a effective example, what on earth is the map of them? Shaw found the work hateful and sinister, exhibiting real rotting. In this connexion, on the other hand, Wilde said of Shaw He hasnt an enemy in the worldly concern, and n ane of his booster doses manage him. Other witty Wilde sayings are Modern news media justifies its own existence by the greatest Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest. A cynic a man who knows the price of e precisething and the value of nothing. I flock resist allthing except temptation. and When good Americans die, they go to Paris..Wildes wild life seems to have led to a tragically early on demise, not as early as Mozart, further let off premature he sued the productiveher of a poet friend of his, nobleman Alfred Douglas, for libel, for accusive him of performing sodomy with his son (the poet). Wilde upset the case, was arrested, and displac e to variant Gaol for both geezerhood, for sodomy. He whence(prenominal) left for Paris, changing his name to Sebastian Melmoth, dying both years later. Was he Dorian Gray? Was he a homosexual? Having read De Profundis (which he wrote in prison) I can find no forensic evidence of his admitting to having actually practiced pillow-biting and shirt-lifting, but thence perhaps he was a teaser. Well, perhaps he had certain tendencies towards young men, but the header is whether it was right to send him to gaol.I extend this to your judgment. It is not an unproblematic question, since oneness needs to explore at the morality of the Victorian Age, which rough say had an element of guile nearlytimes, those who persecute people manically and morally for something, are toilsome to hide their own tendencies, even from themselves. At any event, having run surface of cash, and written The Ballad of Reading Gaol, this former witty wordsmith par chastity said not long before he d ied Ishall have to die beyond my regard ass. He left a wife and two children, for whom he had written a lovely, but slightly shake book of tales. How great would he be today, had he lived to Shaws age? He is great enough, as it is.Shaw, perhaps somewhat more mature emotionally than Wilde, and surely a decent enough chap, was, like Wilde, healthily critical of people, but more as members of what we term society. Thus, in his plays, he criticized, conceal alia, slum landlords and private be ons. In the preface to The pay offs Dilemma, he writes Thus ever soything is on the side of the doctor. When men die of disease, they are said to die from subjective causes. When they recover (and they usually do), the doctor gets the credit of curing them. His play applies in truth often to today.Shaw was besides an expert on class. If you wish to gain some insight into class and accent in England, you should red Pygmalion. If you wish to understand something approximately the England-I reland problem, you can read John Bulls other Island. Some memorable sayings from Shaw are We have no right to consume happiness with discover producing it than to consume wealth without possessing it He knows nothing and he holds he knows everything. That empty points to a political career. and He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. I escape this definition, since I do not teach, but try to help students to learn. He comments on the English were cutting for example A person who thinks he is moral when he is notwithstanding uncomfortable.Our course then rushes by means of with(predicate) John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad (not even British-innate(p)) and T.S. Eliot. This highly improve chap is known, inter alia, for Old Possums Book of Practical Cats. He wrote the play carrying out in the Cathedral, a very good theatrical adaptation of the dastardly reach of Archbishop Thomas Becket. One of my favourite commendations of his, from The Rock, is Where is the wisdom missed t o knowledge, where is the knowledge lost to information and where is the word we lost in words?after a outline glimpse of the amazing American Ezra Pound, who found europium and Italy in specific, more to his liking intellectually than the USA, we come to William Yeats (1865-1939). He is the quintessential Celtic Irishman,a friend of Shaw and Wilde, and a good dramatist and poet. The Celtic twilit, a collection of traditional Irish stories, is a good pointer to Yeats thinking. Jumping now to atomic number 1 James (1843-1916), an American who, unlike many, preferred to patch in London rather than Paris, we see a man who could pick up the apposite word with the point of his pen, in a meticulous fashion. I find his flair too precise for my liking, the very antithesis of stream of consciousness piece of writing. Nevertheless, he was a adapted writer. The Turn of the Screw is a good speck reputation.Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), a giant in English literature, is worth chubby parag raph. A poet who wrote novels, he was born to a modest family (his father was a jewelmason), trained as an architect, but returned to his beloved Wessex to write. beautifully written, his novels can be quite pessimistic Tess of the DUrbervilles ends with the heroines execution for stabbing her husband to wipeout, a husband whom she was emotionally pressurised into marrying, although she loved some other. Jude the Obscure ends with terzetto children hanging dead behind a door, on clothes hooks. His stories often bring out what he saw as the injustice of the dissociate laws, peculiarly for women who had married the wrong man, and were then trapped in their marriage, and how they and their caramels were then ostracized by society. His writing was sensitive, and some of his descriptions of temper in his beloved Wessex are touching.We now look at three childrens writers, Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford mathematician, non-practising Anglican deacon, an d lensman, 1832-1898), Kenneth consentient meal flour (1859-1932), and Beatrix tamper (1866-1943). Few have not comprehend of Carrolls Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found at that place, both of which are intriguing fantasies, al close to make imagination real. From the latter, we have the memorable quote The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean different things. The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master, thats all.It was strangeoured that he had a not wholly full-blooded interest in young girls, although there is not a jot of evidence that he ever did anything untoward. From Alices reverie world, the Scotsman Kenneth Graham takes us to the fantasy world of little animals,with The Wind in the Willows, written to his son. We see the daily lives of the toad, the badger, rat and mole in a regular English country setting. Beatrix Potter also wrote short books nigh animals, illustrating them herself. Of not e are The Tale of Peter Rabbit and the Tale of Mrs.Tittlemouse. She worn-out(a) most of her later life in the Lake District, the most beautiful wear of England. This had a kind ready on her writing.Moving now to more social and even sexual themes, we come to D.H. (David Herbert Ric stark) Lawrence (1885-1930). This man got through the bone to the marrow of passion, love and sex. His quintessential book is Lady Chatterleys fuckr, a bill of illicit love, passion and unadulterated sex betwixt the upper-class wife of an impotent aristocrat and the gamekeeper. Lawrence left England, and the book was published in Florence, not coming into court in England until 1961, following a sensational salaciousness trial. Lawrence wrote other books, such as Women in Love and Sons and Lovers. He is very perceptive, revealing the real, rather than the politically correct and sanitised non consciousness of hypocrisy. We can subsume this to the English peoples dislike of being obvious, oddly wh en it comes to sex, and their embarrassment of sexual matters, often express in crude jokes. straight off back to the Irish James Joyce (1882-1942) was another of those linguists who chose Paris. His most well-known work is Ulyses, an example of his so-called stream of consciousness writing, which tries to flummox ones deepest thinkings and imagination on paper, a kind of interior monologue. As such, it is naturally unstructured. Ulyses grapples with a day in Dublin, and a whole cackle of characters. Finnegans Wake is another example, and has been linked to Giambattista Vicos New Science, which contains a good deal somewhat the origins of language. Joyce certainly pushes written language to its limits. In contrast, his Dubliners, a serial of short stories about life in Dublin, is surprisingly prosaic in style. He influenced another Irishman, the playwright Samuel Becket (1906-1989), another linguist residing in Paris, trounce known for En attendant Godot, written originally in French. The gripping play ends without Godot arriving.let us now spare some thought for the wonderful and tragic Virginia Woolf,known in particular for To the Lighthouse, The Waves, Orlando and Mrs. Dalloway. As with Joyce, we see a certain amount of internal dialogue. Woolf was a leading light of the Bloomsbury Group, named after the area of London in which it met. She has also been seen as a feminist, having written A woman must(prenominal)iness have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. But does this not also apply to men? It is up to you to decide, by reading some of her work, whether or not she was a feminist. She is said to have had mental problems. At any rate, she drowned herself in the Thames.Back now to the men. Aldous Huxley (1894) is beaver known for Brave New World (1934), a particularly negative critique of the future, where Britain is a wasteland of human robots and scientific breeding (he virtually predicted test-tube babies), with hyponym y the ideal of happiness. He developed the theme in 1959, with Brave New World Revisited. At any rate, he is relevant today, as is the inimitable literary giant George Orwell (1903-50), whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair. His 1984, published in 1948, predicts a future where the world is divided into huge power blocks, and where people are run on government propaganda. Wherever you live, Big Brother watches you from a television screen, and so help you if you say anything against the government, or even try to have a loving birth with someone.As for the Ministry of Truth, it is based on lying. tool Farm is an attack on communist totalitarianism. After Eton, Blair became a colonial policeman in Burma (he was born in Bengal), an experience which do him critical of the British Empire. Burmese Days is a novel which brings out the hypocrisy of empire, and how social class mattered, in a story of unrequited love. Orwell was also a good short story writer. Shooting an Elephant brings out the family relationship between rulers and ruled, plot of ground A Hanging is horrific in its detail. Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war, and wrote a very perceptive if occasionally pedantic book about the details of the conflict. He also dog-tired several months living as a unconcerned worker in London and Paris, working generally as a dishwasher. He then produced a highly entertaining book, Down and out in London and Paris. Here is an example of his writing, from England, your England As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.They do not tactile sensation any enmity against me as an one-on-one, nor I against them. They are only doing their duty, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. Like several writers, Orwell was also a journalist. We cannot end without mentioning his essay Politics and the English Language, a highly entertaining but effective lambasting of the influence of political ideology on the English language, and very relevant today, with the erosion of clear English through computer language, sloppy reading and political correctness.From Orwell, we turn now to two childrens writers, although their books are also appropriate for adults. The South African J.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, is most well known for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Hobbit and Lord of the peal, adventure stories laden with fantasy and drawing on Tolkiens knowledge of the Celts. If I compare Tolkien to Rowlings Harry Potter, the latter catapults itself out of existence. Roald dhal (1916-1990) is also a wonderful writer, primarily but not exclusively for children. Born in Wales of Norwegian parents, his daughter was once one of the girlfriends of a cousin-german of mine. He wrote a series of short stories, Tales of the unexpected, so gripping that they were serialised on televis ion. Each story ends with a twist. Although they are for adults and older children, Charlie and the Chocolate pulverisation is definitely for young people. My Uncle Oswald is also an amusing book.So we come to a mammoth of English literature, William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). Born in Paris, where his father was a statutory adviser, hiss mother died when he was eight years of age, and his father two years later. He was sent to live with an uncle, the Vicar of Whitstable, apparently a cold character, and then attended Kings School, Canterbury, left early, and study literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg, ending up studying medicine at St.Thomas Hospital in Lambeth, London, where he qualified as a doctor. His southward book, Lisa of Lambeth (1897), a story about working-class adultery, exchange so well that Maugham became a full-time writer, abject to the south of France in 1928, around the time of his divorce (it is said that he had rather special relationships with mixedmales). We cannot of course mention all his books (he even wrote some popular plays), but of note are Of charitable Bondage, autobiographical in nature, Ashenden, about a secret agent, and four volumes of very entertaining short stories, of which my favourite is Salvatore.Maugham was certainly a pretty rum character, and was good at irritating people, in particularly those whom he almost libeled in some of his books. For even if he did not mention real names, it was sometimes fairly obvious whom he meant. The following quote reveals some of Maughams sometimes bitter-sweet powers of describing people When she reddened, her syrupy skin acquired a curiously mottled look, like strawberries and cream gone bad.Wending our way towards the writers of thrillers, I shall touch on only four, although there is a whole bevy of them. Graham Greene (1904-91), who converted to Rome in 1926, was educated at Oxford, and worked for British Intelligence for a while. His thrillers are gripping, and delve deep into morality. One of his best thrillers, the Human Factor, is based on espionage, as is Our Man In Havanna. Other superb books are books are The End of the Affair, The Honorary Consul and Ministry of devotion. John Le Carr (1931- ), whose real name is David Cornwell, is still going strong. After Oxford, he taught at Eton for two years, and then worked for MI5 (which handles, along with the Polices especial(a) Branch, internal security, but often has rows with MI6 about righteousness for Northern Ireland, because of the connexions with the Republic of Ireland).His espionage thriller The Spy who came in from the low temperature, won him worldwide fame, and was made into a very good take. It brought out the reality of intelligence work, the pulverization and the mutual suspicions that abound in the incestuous world of institutionalised spying. Some of his other books are Smileys Circus, A Small town in Germany, A Perfect Spy and The Constant gardener which, despite the alleged end of the Cold War, is as thrilling as ever, questioning the morality of large-scale business. To get a sense of his style, here is the set-back of A Small Town in Germany ex minutes to midnight a pious Friday in may and a fine river mist lying in the market square. Bonn was a Balkan city, stained and secret .In juxtaposition, Ian Fleming (1908-1964), author of the extremely well-known Bond novels, emphasises, perhaps a mite too much, the more exciting aspects of the job,but nevertheless remains plausible. He was in British Naval Intelligence for a while. so we should mention Len Deighton (1929- ), who may have caught the writing circumvent when doing his National Service as a photographer attached to the Special Investigation Branch. The Ipcress File made him an instant success, and was made into a good film, with Michael Caine as the hero. Some of his other books are Horse under Water, Bomber and Berlin Game (part of a series).We cannot leave these chaps withou t mention of a lady writer, who, although not an espionage expert, is one of the best crime novelists Agatha Christie (1890-1978), wrote vity six scout novels, using her experience as a hospital dispenser in the considerable War to learn a good deal about poisons. Although her writing style is surprisingly simple, she manages to keep the reader dependent by misdirecting him. Who has not heard of Mrs. Marples and Hercule Poirot? The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, Ten Little Niggers and The trap play are just a few of her works. P.D.James was also an extremely good crime writer.Before now moving to a small woof of British poets and their poetry, we shall look at Henry Williamson, since he connects well to our first poet, Ted Hughes, who knew him, and intercommunicate at his funeral. Williamson was a writer, journalist and farmer, who was in love with nature. He fought in the Great War, becoming disgusted with the greed and bigotry that had caused it, and find that Britain and Germany should never go to war again. Because he had back up Oswald Mosley and his Fascists, and had admired Hitler before the next world war, a few small-minded individuals tried to damage his reputation. It is piteous that the Norton Anthology of English Literature does not include him, while including many lesser writers. After all, Oscar Wilde believed that art is for arts sake, and should not be polluted by politics.Writers should be able to express their views without being sent to Coventry. The greatness of his books, however, saw him through. His masterpiece is Tarka the Otter, essentially about an otter being hunted to death. The reader actually becomes an otter. Williamson spent many months studying and watching otters before and while he wrote the book. So good was it, that Walt Disney twice approached him for the film rights, and wasroundly rejected. It was eventually made into a square-toed film, and Williamson died on the same day that the fi lming of a dying Tarka was taking place. Uncanny or only if coincidental? Salar the Salmon is another masterpiece, as is his series of books on the life of Willie Maddison. The Beautiful Years and blowball Days, partly autobiographical, describe beautifully a boy growing into adolescence and adulthood.And so to our poetic interlude Laurie Lee was the quintessential EnglishmanFar-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways,My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant,I set my face into a filial grinningTo greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent.The hedges choke with roses fat as cream. (from Home from Abroad).John Betjeman (a poet laureate), and lover of old England, loved Victoriana, the smell of old churches and musty books. But he is also perceptive about people the following are extracts about an English lady at a service in Westminster Abbey, during the world warGracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans. foreswear their women for Thy Sake,And if that is not too easyWe will rationali ze Thy mistake.But gracious Lord, whater shall be,Dont let anyone bomb me.Keep our Empire undismembered disembowel our forces by Thy hand,Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,Honduras and TogolandProtect them Lord in all their fights,And, even more, protect the blanks.Now I feel a little better,What a treat to hear thy word,Where the bones of leading statesmen, progress to so often been interrd.And now, dear Lord, I cannot handleBecause I have a luncheon date. (from In Westminster Abbey).Unlike Betjeman, Charles Causley tends to look more at individual people and events, and is not as nostalgic. As regards his views on poetry, he writes in his introduction to a selection of his poems What a poem means is something that the writer as well as the reader each must decide alone. Only one thing is certain that, unlike arithmetic, the correct answers may all be right, yet all be different. His imagery grips you hardBank holiday, a sky of guns, the riverSlopping black specie on the level sta ir.A war-memorial that aims for everIts stopped, stone barrel on the enormous air. (from At Grantchester)orOh mother my mouth is full of starsAs cartridges in the trayMy blood is a twin-branched scarlet treeAnd it runs all runs away. (From Song of the Dying Gunner A.A.1).orCharlotte she was drearBut they found her in the floodHer sunlight beads among the reedsBeaming with her blood. (from The Ballad of Charlotte Dymond).From poor Charlotte Dymond, we sound to Clifford Dyments Fox, which beginsExploiter of the shadowsHe go among the fences,A strip of action coiling most his farmyard fancies.And so we come to another mammoth, a poet laureate into the bargain, Ted Hughes, who (see above) admired Henry Williamson. Cambridge-educated Yorkshireman Hughes was fascinated by the natural violence of nature in particular as regards the behaviour of animals , in power and in deathI sit in the top of the wood, my eyeball closed.Inaction, no falsifying dreamBetween my hooked head and hooke d feetOr in a sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. (from Hawk Roosting).orTerrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn, much coiled steel than living a self-possessedDark deadly eye, those delicate legsTriggered to stirrings beyond sense with a start,a bounce, a stab take the instant and drag out some wiggly thing.No indolent procrastinations and no yawning stares,No sighs or head-scrathings. Nothing but bounceand stab And a ravening second. (from Thrushes).orThe pig lay on a barrow dead.It weighed, they said, as much as three men.Its eyes closed, pink white eyelashes.Its trotters stuck straight out. (View of a Pig).Hughes, who toppingly described November as the month of the drowned dog, had a somewhat intense yet sad relationship with his wife, the American poetess, Silvia Plath, who committed suicide, allegedly because of Hughes relationship(s?) with another woman or more. Pity about the children and Sylvias son committed suicide forty six years after his mother di d. Nature, power and death.Our proceed two poems are by me, and I feel constrained to tell you that if a poem is to be unadulterated, and above the shackles of convention and/or self-interest, whether good or bad, it must come directly from the heart. The only question is how pure is your heart.WILD RIVER TROUTDark shadow lies beneath, no movementNot even a pressure of the delicate tailWhile it seeks its food.More than hidden, it is part of the river.It darts, too quick for eye to follow,You see it in its new position.The upward stab, the plucking bite,The munching seconds, invisible to you.You see only spreading ripples,Then the golden glint, the creamy belly,In the evening sun.You cast, the sudden tug shocks you,Despite your expectation.It pulls and judders at your soulSuch beauty, as you take him out,designed for hunting fly,To feed its perfect muscles.Body sculptural to living perfectionColours glisten, yet as deep as the river.The hazel eye stares you outLong after the death .It hunts your soul.Thank God for procreation.orREMEMBERTo your beauty-hunting body,Oh consort some time to feeling.To your love-thirsting heart,Oh move over some time to harmony.To your self-seeking soul,Please affiliate some time to thought.To your success-hungry ego,Just grant some time to others.To your power-seeking eyes,Oh grant some time to introspection.To your adventure-seeking feet,Oh grant some time to knowledge.To your God-seeking soul,Please give some time to prayer.Let us now talk quickly about John Fowles, who loved Greece. Indeed, one of his most famous novels, The Magus, is set on the island of Spetse, a story of intrigue, passion, obsession and sex, with an orchestrator, Conchis. The Collector is also a rather frightening little story of a girl trapped by an obsessive collector, ending nastily.Returning to America, John Steinbeck is of considerable note for his novels about life during the Great Depression, in particular Of Mice and hands and The Grapes of Wrat h.Let us finish, as we began, with a couple of playwrights. Harold Pinter, famous for his skilful repartee, wrote, inter alia, The natal day Party and The Caretaker. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, and, although part-Jewish, led a group of Jews who campaigned for justice for the Palestinians, abash fanatic Israeli Zionists. To obtain a piquancy of his political views, you can look at his A New world Order, published in 1991. He was awarded an honorary professorship by the University of Thessaloniki.Another well-known playwright is Tom Stoppard, also a master of repartee, who escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1938, at the age of one. He wrote, inter alia, Arcadia. He also wrote and spoke on political matters.Now we really must stop, and move on to a few typical examination questionsCompare George Bernard Shaws and Oscar Wildes works.Do you think that Maugham was more imaginative in his writing than Orwell?It is said that Ted Hughes was obsessed with nature, powe r and death. What do you think?Compare the works of Agatha Christie to those of John Le Carr.It goes without saying, almost, that moreover learning the above few pages, parrot-fashion, will not be sufficient to pass the examination they rede only a skeletal outline. Also, you need to be succinct. No linguistic bulimia or opposed sentences, please I shall immediately see through any examination paper that appears to rely only on this brief guide. Most marks will be awarded for evidence of originality and thinking, as wellas of knowledge.