Modern english literature Essay

The purpose of this course is to encourage students to gain an aw atomic number 18ness of, and perceptivity into, the evolution of modern slope lite bunsure. Students will be set out acquainted with writers, poets and conform towrights such(prenominal) as Thomas insolent, William Somerset Maugham, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Henry Williamson, basin Betjeman, Ted Hughes, Charles Causley, Samuel Beckett, Laurie Lee, Agatha Christie and nates Le Carr. Connexions with socio-political factors will similarly be explored. The course takes the form of lectures, to which students may endure their inquiry. Evaluation is by written un intoxicaten examination, in the form of presently essays.The lectures form nonwithstanding the tip of the iceberg, providing you with a door to your own research and study. You atomic number 18 encouraged to share the results of your studies, helping non only your mate students, but me. We are, subsequently all (a), in the same boat, counterbalance if I am at the helm. I do not so much teach, as try to help you to learn. I shall provide around examples of examination questions at the end of this hopefully helpful guide.English literature is a abundant field, and I can obviously only try to open a few windows for you, or at least loosen the locks, with apologies to the m round(prenominal) glorious writers who ready been omitted. You will hopefully confuse had a grounding, by aid my opposite course. If you have not, talk to separate students. So here we goWe kick off with two sm fine art as a whip playwrights and writers, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) and George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). Wilde was quintessentially Irish in wit, humour, oral prowess, business, and origin, yet, having studied at Trinity College Dublin and consequently Oxford, was precise English in a pleasantly louche, supercilious and upperclassish way. In contrast, Shaw was an Anglo-Irish Protestant, virtuously, so cially and politically conscious, even being a planter member of the Fabian Society. He was too self-taught, having left field school at the age of fourteen. Their differences are reflectedin their work, although their pithiness unites them. Wilde is perhaps best cognise for Picture of Dorian color. Grey leads a life of debauchery, while remaining hand few and in darling shape. But his portrait becomes increasingly corrupt and horrid it represents his reason.The end visorinate is pretty horrific. in that respect is of course more(prenominal) to the harbour 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 thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. In more or less other haggle, he adjoinms to be saying that art is for arts sake. approximately other of his well-k flatn works is the play, The Importance of being Earnest, from which we have the endocarp Really, if the low orders dont set us a in expressigent example, what on earth is the use of them? Shaw open the work hateful and sinister, exhibiting satisfying degeneracy. In this connexion, on the other hand, Wilde said of Shaw He hasnt an enemy in the earth, and none of his friends like him. Other witty Wilde sayings are Modern journalism justifies its own existence by the greatest Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest. A cynic a man who knows the equipment casualty of everything and the value of nothing. I can resist anything except temptation. and When unsloped Americans die, they go to genus Paris..Wildes wild life seems to have conduct to a tragically early demise, not as early as Mozart, but save premature he sued the father of a poet friend of his, Lord Alfred Douglas, for libel, for impeach him of performing sodomy with his son (the poet). Wilde lost(p) the case, was arrested, and sent to Reading lock up for two years, for sodomy. He then left fo r Paris, changing his name to Sebastian Melmoth, end two years later. Was he Dorian Gray? Was he a homosexual? Having read De Profundis (which he wrote in prison) I can name no forensic evidence of his admitting to having actually practiced pillow-biting and shirt-lifting, but then perhaps he was a teaser. Well, perhaps he had certain tendencies to contendds new-make men, but the question is whether it was right to send him to gaol.I leave this to your judgment. It is not an easy question, since one needs to bear at the godliness of the mincing Age, which some(a) say had an element of hypocrisy some clock times, those who persecute throng manically and morally for something, are trying to hide their own tendencies, even from themselves. At any event, having bucket along come out of the closet of cash, and written The Ballad of Reading Gaol, this motive witty wordsmith par excellence said not long forrader he died Ishall have to die beyond my means. He left a wife and two children, for whom he had written a lovely, but s well-heeledly frightening book of tales. How great would he be today, had he out cultivationd to Shaws age? He is great bonny, as it is.Shaw, perhaps moderately more mature emotionally than Wilde, and su swan a decent enough chap, was, like Wilde, healthily circumstantial of people, but more as members of what we term society. Thus, in his plays, he criticized, suppress alia, slum landlords and head-to-head doctors. In the preface to The Doctors Dilemma, he writes Thus everything is on the side of the doctor. When men die of disease, they are said to die from vivid causes. When they recover (and they usually do), the doctor gets the credit of curing them. His play applies very much to today.Shaw was also 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 see to it something al some the England-Ireland problem, you can read John Bulls other Island. Some memorable sayings from Shaw are We have no right to guide happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without possessing it He knows nothing and he thinks he knows everything. That clearly points to a political career. and He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches. I flow 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 only uncomfortable.Our course then rushes through John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad (not even British-born) and T.S. Eliot. This highly educated chap is known, inter alia, for Old opossums Book of Practical Cats. He wrote the play Murder in the Cathedral, a very good theatrical adaptation of the dastard(prenominal) murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket. One of my favourite quotes of his, from The Rock, is Where is the wisdom lost to knowledge, where is the knowledge lost to information and where is the word we lost in words?After a brie f glimpse of the amazing American Ezra Pound, who found Europe and Italy in areaicular, 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 Twilight, a collection of traditional Irish stories, is a good pointer to Yeats thinking. Jumping now to Henry pack (1843-1916), an American who, unlike many, preferred to settle in capital of the United Kingdom instead 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 style too precise for my liking, the very antithesis of catamenia of consciousness prevailup. Nevertheless, he was a adapted writer. The Turn of the Screw is a good ghost story.Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), a giant in English literature, is worth chubby paragraph. A poet who wrote novels, he was born to a modest family (his father was a stonemason), handy as an architect, but returned to his beloved Wessex to write. Beautifully written, his novels can be sort of pessimistic Tess of the DUrbervilles ends with the heroines execution for stabbing her husband to end, a husband whom she was emotionally pressurised into marrying, although she loved another(prenominal). Jude the Obscure ends with three children hanging assassinated behind a door, on clothes hooks. His stories practically bring out what he saw as the injustice of the divorce laws, especially for women who had married the wrong man, and were then trapped in their marriage, and how they and their lovers were then ostracized by society. His writing was sensitive, and some of his descriptions of nature 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, and photographer, 1832-1898), Kenneth Graham (1859-1932), and Beatrix ceramist (1866-1943). a f ew(prenominal) have not heard of Carrolls Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there, both of which are intriguing fantasies, almost making conceit 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 rumoured that he had a not wholly healthy interest in young girls, although there is not a jot of evidence that he ever did anything untoward. From Alices fantasy world, the Scotsman Kenneth Graham takes us to the fantasy world of elflike 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 classifiable English country setting. Beatrix Potter also wrote victimize books slightly animals, illustrating them herself. Of note are The Tale of hammer Rabbit and the Tale of Mrs.Tittlemouse. She worn-out(a) most of her later life in the Lake District, the most beautiful part of England. This had a kind effect on her writing.Moving now to more social and even sexual themes, we come to D.H. (David Herbert Ric terrible) Lawrence (1885-1930). This man got through the bone to the marrow of choler, love and sex. His quintessential book is Lady Chatterleys Lover, a story of illicit love, go pastion and unadulterated sex between the upper-class wife of an impotent blue blood and the gamekeeper. Lawrence left England, and the book was published in Florence, not appearing in England until 1961, followers a sensational obscenity trial. Lawrence wrote other books, such as Women in Love and Sons and Lovers. He is very perceptive, revealing the real, quite an than the politically correct and sanitised non reek of hypocrisy. We can connect this to the English peoples dislike of being obvious, particularly when it comes to sex, and their embarrassment of sexual matters, often expressed in crude jokes. like a shot 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 catch ones deepest thoughts and imagination on paper, a kind of interior monologue. As such, it is naturally unstructured. Ulyses contests with a day in Dublin, and a whole gaggle of characters. Finnegans Wake is another example, and has been conjugate to Giambattista Vicos New Science, which contains a good deal about(predicate) the origins of language. Joyce certainly pushes written language to its limits. In contrast, his Dubliners, a series 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, best known for En attendant Godot, written originally in French. The gripping play ends without Godot arriving. permit us now spare some thought for the extraordinary 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 adult female must have bills 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 best known for prevail New public (1934), a particularly negative critique of the upcoming, where Britain is a wasteland of charitable robots and scientific breeding (he virtually predicted test-tube babies), with subordination the sample of happiness. He developed the theme in 1959, with Brave New World Revisited. At any r ate, 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 telecasting screen, and so help you if you say anything against the government, or even try to have a loving relationship with someone.As for the Ministry of Truth, it is based on lying. savage Farm is an attack on communist totalitarianism. After Eton, Blair became a compound policeman in Burma (he was born in Bengal), an experience which made 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 relationship between rulers and ruled, while A Hanging is horrific in its detai l. Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war, and wrote a very perceptive if occasionally academic book about the details of the conflict. He also spent several(prenominal) months invigoration as a casual worker in London and Paris, working mainly as a dishwasher. He then produced a highly entertain 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 line up any enmity against me as an individualistic, nor I against them. They are only doing their tariff, 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 attending his essay government activity and the English Language, a highly entertaining but in force(p) lambasting of the influence of political ideology on the English l anguage, and very relevant today, with the erosion of clear English through computer language, sloppy development 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 Rings, hazard 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 pigeon-pea plant (1916-1990) is also a wonderful writer, primarily but not merely for children. Born in Wales of Norwegian parents, his daughter was once one of the girlfriends of a cousin of mine. He wrote a series of short stories, Tales of the Unexpected, so gripping that they were serialised on television. Each story ends with a twist. Although they are for adults and old(a) children, Char lie and the Chocolate party 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 legal adviser, hiss mother died when he was octonary 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 studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg, ending up stu dying(p) medicine at St.Thomas Hospital in Lambeth, London, where he serve as a doctor. His second book, Lisa of Lambeth (1897), a story about labor movement adultery, sold so well that Maugham became a full-time writer, moving to the southwestward of France in 1928, around the time of his divorce (it is said that he had rather special relationships with variousmales). We cannot of course mention all his books (he even wrote some popular plays), but of note are Of Human 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 pasty jumble acquired a curiously colorize 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 espionag e, as is Our Man In Havanna. Other superb books are books are The End of the Affair, The Honorary Consul and Ministry of Fear. 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 particular(prenominal) Branch, internal security, but often has rows with MI6 about responsibility for Northern Ireland, because of the connexions with the nation of Ireland).His espionage thriller The Spy who came in from the Cold, won him worldwide fame, and was made into a very good film. It brought out the reality of intelligence work, the drudgery and the common 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 aver end of the Cold War, is as thrilling as ever, questioning the morality of big business. To get a sense of his style, here is the beginning of A Small Town in Germany Ten minutes to midnight a devotional 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 glamorous aspects of the job,but nevertheless remains plausible. He was in British Naval Intelligence for a while. Then we should mention Len Deighton (1929- ), who may have caught the writing bug 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 ply under Water, Bomber and Berlin Game (part of a series).We cannot leave these chaps without mention of a lady writer, who, although not an espionage expert, is one of the best crime novelists Agatha Christie (1 890-1978), wrote threescore six detective novels, using her experience as a infirmary dispenser in the Great War to learn a good deal about poisons. Although her writing style is surprisingly simple, she manages to keep the reader subject by misdirecting him. Who has not heard of Mrs. Marples and Hercule Poirot? The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the indicate Express, Ten Little Niggers and The Mousetrap are just a few of her works. P.D.James was also an extremely good crime writer.Before now moving to a small selection 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 spoke 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 determined that Britain and Germany should never go to war again. Because he had supported Oswald Mosley and his Fascists, an d had admire Hitler before the next world war, a few small-minded individuals tried to damage his reputation. It is silly that the Norton Anthology of English writings 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 chef-doeuvre 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 proper film, and Williamson died on the same day that the filming of a dying Tarka was taking place. Uncanny or merely coincidental? Salar the Salmon is another masterpiece, as is his serie s of books on the life of Willie Maddison. The Beautiful Years and dandelion Days, partly autobiographical, describe beautifully a boy development 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 smileTo accost the pale, domestic kiss of Kent.The hedges choke with roses fat as cream. (from Home from overseas).John Betjeman (a poet laureate), and lover of old England, loved Victoriana, the smell of old churches and nonprogressive books. But he is also perceptive about people the following are extracts about an English lady at a usefulness in Westminster Abbey, during the world warGracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans.Spare their women for Thy Sake,And if that is not too easyWe will pardon Thy mistake.But gracious Lord, whater shall be,Dont let anyone bomb me.Keep our Empire undismembered conk our forces by Th y hand,Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,Honduras and TogolandProtect them Lord in all their fights,And, even more, protect the lily-whites.Now I feel a little better,What a treat to hear thy word,Where the bones of leading statesmen,Have so often been interrd.And now, dear Lord, I cannot waitBecause 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 silver on the take aim stair.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 gentleBut 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 move to Clifford Dyments switch, which beginsExploiter of the shadowsHe moved among the fences,A strip of action turnAround 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 eyes closed.Inaction, no refutal dreamBetween my hooked head and hooked feetOr in a sleep rehearse undefiled kills and eat. (from Hawk Roosting).or terrific are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn,More c oiled steel than living a poisedDark deadly eye, those delicate legsTriggered to stirrings beyond sense with a start,a bounce, a stab Overtake the instant and run out some writhing thing.No indolent procrastinations and no oscitant stares,No sighs or head-scrathings. Nothing but bounceand stab And a ravening second. (from Thrushes).orThe pig lay on a burial mound 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 superbly described November as the month of the drowned dog, had a somewhat intense yet pathetic relationship with his wife, the American poetess, Silvia Plath, who committed self-destruction, 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 did. Nature, power and death.Our last two poems are by me, and I feel constrained to tell you that if a poem is to be un adulterated, 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 keen is your heart.WILD RIVER TROUTDark shadow lies beneath, no movementNot even a twitch 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 upwardly stab, the plucking bite,The munching seconds, invisible to you.You see only spreading ripples,Then the golden glint, the chromatic 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 sculpted 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 grant some time to feeling.To you r love-thirsting heart,Oh grant some time to harmony.To your self-seeking soul,Please accord 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 Men and The Grapes of Wrath.Let us finish, as we began, with a couple of playwrights. Harold Pinter, famous for his skilful repartee, wrote, inter alia, The Birt hday 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, embarrassing fanatic Israeli Zionists. To accomplish a flavour of his political views, you can look at his A New world Order, published in 1991. He was awarded an unearned 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, power and death. What do you think?Compare the works of Agatha Christie to those of John Le Carr.It goes without saying, almost, t hat merely knowledge the above few pages, parrot-fashion, will not be sufficient to pass the examination they represent only a skeletal outline. Also, you need to be succinct. No linguistic bulimia or irrelevant 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.