Brief Introduction of The Modern Period

Chapter 5
The Modern Period

Brief introduction of the modern period
In the second half of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20 th
century, both natural and social sciences in Europe had enormously

advanced.
Their rapid development led to great gains in material wealth. But
when capitalism came into its monopoly stage, the sharpened
contradictions between socialized production and the private
ownership caused frequent economic depreddions and mass
unemployment.
The gap between the rich and the poor was further deepened. To
crown ot all, the catastrophic First World War tremendously people as
well.
I. Historical, social and cultural background

1. Historically
Modernism rose out of skepticism and disillusion of capitalism. The
First World War and the Second World War had greatly influenced
the English literature.
2. Economically
The Second World War marked the last stage of the
disintegration of the British Empire. Britain suffered

heavy losses in the war: thousands of people were
killed; the economy was ruined; and almost all its
former colonies were lost. People were in economic,
cultural, and belief crisises.
3. Ideologically
The rise of the irrational philosophy and new science
greatly
incited
modern
writers
to
make
new
explorations on human natures and human relationships.
II. Literary history of the period

1.
Literary trends
After the First World War, all kinds of literary trends of modernism
appeared: symbolism, expressionism, surrealism, cubism, futurism,

Dadaism, imagism and stream of consciousness.
(1)Modern English poetry:

It is, in some sense, a revolution against the conventional ideas and
forms of the Victorian poetry.
(2) Modern English novels:
The first three decades of 20th century were golden years of the
modernist novel.
(3) The development of 20th century English drama:
The most celebrated dramatists in the last decade of the 19th
century were Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, who, in a
sense, pioneered the modern drama, though they did not make so
many innovations in techniques and forms as modernist poets or
novelists
2. Artistic features of modern peroid

(1) Modernism
Modernism was a complex and diverse international movement in
all creative arts, originating about the end of the 19th century. It
provided the greatest renaissance of the 20th century. After the First
World War, all kinds of literary trends of modernism appeared:
symbolism, expressionism, surrealism, cubism, futurism, Dadaism,
imagism and stream of consciousness .
(2) The basic characteristics of Modernism in literature:
Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of
psycho-analysis as its theoretical base. One characteristic of
English Modernism is "the dehumanization of art". The major
themes of the modernist literature are the distorted, alienated and ill
relationships between man and nature, man and society, man and
man, and man and himself.
3.Major figures of this period

George Bernard Shaw (1856- 1950) Mrs. Warrant Profession
John Galaworthy (1867- 1933) The Man of Property
William Butter Yeats (1865- 1939) The Land of Hearts Desire
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888- 1965) Murder in the Cathedral
David Herbert Lawrence (1885- 1930) Sons and Lovers
James Joyce (1882- 1941) Ulysses
III. Representatives of this period

D. H. Lawrence
1. Biography
1885David Herbert Lawrence was born at a mining village in
Nottinghamshire. His father was a coal-miner with little education; but

his mother, once a school teacher, was from a somewhat higher class,
who came to think that she had married beneath her and desired to have
her sons well educated so as to help them escape from the life of coal
miners.
The conflict between the earthy, coarse, energetic but often drunken
father and the refined, strong-willed and up-climbing mother is vividly
presented in his autobiographical novel, Sons and Lovers (1913).
Literary works
The Rainbow
Women in Love
Lady Chatterley's Lover
2.
Major theme
In his writings, Lawrence has expressed a strong reaction against
the mechanical civilization.

In his opinion, the bourgeois industrialization or civilization,
which made its realization at the cost of ravishing the land, started
the catastrophic uprooting of man from nature and caused the
distortion of personality, the corruption of the will, and the
dominance of sterile intellect over the authentic inward passions
of man.
Under the mechanical control, human beings were turned into
inanimated matter, while the inanimated matter should be
animated to destroy both man and earth.
It is this agonized concern about the dehumanizing effect of
mechanical civilization on the sensual tenderness of human nature
that haunts Lawrence's writing.
3. Analysis of his masterpiece

(1) Brief introduction of Sons and Lovers :
Sons and Lovers is largely an autobiographical novel told by means of
straight-forward narrative and vivid episodes in chronological

sequence. The story starts with the marriage of Paul's parents. Mrs.
Morel, daughter of a middle-class family, is "a woman of character and
refinement", a strong-willed, intelligent and ambitious woman who is
fascinated by a warm, vigorous and sensuous coal miner, Walter Morel,
and married beneath her own class.
(2) Theme
Lawrence was one of the first novelists to introduce themes of
psychology into his works. He believed that the healthy way of the
individuals psychological development lay in the primacy of the life
implulse, or in another term, the sexual impulse.huaman sexuality was,
to Lawrence, a symbol of life force.by presenting the psychological
experience of indivudual human life and of human relationships,
Lawrence has opened up a wide new territory to the novel
(3) Character analysis

Gertrude
Morel - The first protagonist of the

novel. She becomes unhappy with her husband Walter and
devotes herself to her children.
Paul Morel - Paul Morel takes over from his mother as the
protagonist in the second half of the book. After his brother

William's death, Paul becomes his mother's favorite and struggles
throughout the novel to balance his love for her with his
relationships with other women.
(4) Artistic features

Lawrences artistic tendency is mainly realism, which cimbines
dramatic scenes with an authoritative commentary. And the realistic

feature is most obviously seen in its detailed portraiture. With the
working-class simpilicity and directness, Lawrence can summon up
all the physical attributes associated with the common daily objects.
James Joyce
1.Biography
1882
James Joyce was born into a Catholic family Dublin, got his education
at Catholic schools where he passed through a phase of religious enthusiasm
but finally rejected the Catholic Church and started rebellion against the
narrowness and bigotry of the bourgeois Philistines in Dublin. Influenced by
Ibsen, Joyce finally decided to take the literary mission as his career.
Joyce is not a commercial writer. In his lifetime, he wrote altogether
three novels, a collection of short stories, two volumes of poetry, and

one play. The novels and short stories are regarded as his great works,
all of which have the same setting: Ireland, especially Dublin, and the
same subject: the Irish people and their life.
Literary works
Dubliners
A Portrait of Artist as a Young Man
2. Major theme
He changed the old style of fictions and created a strange mode of art
to show the chaos and crisis of consciousness of that period.
From him, stream of consciousness came to the highest point as a
genre of modern literature.
In Finnegans Wake, this pursue of newness overrode the normalness
and showed a tendency of vanity.
3. Analysis of his masterpiece

(1) Brief introduction of Ulysses :
Ulysses gives an account of man's life during one day (16 June, 1904)
in Dublin. The three major characters are: Leopold Bloom, an Irish

Jew, his wife, Marion Tweedy Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus, the
protagonist in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The whole
novel is divided into 18 episodes in correspondence with the 18 hours
of the day. .
(2) Theme
Ulysses is widely regarded as the most "revolutionary" literary efforts
of the twentieth century if only for Joyce's "stream of consciousness"
technique. In his efforts to create a modern hero, Joyce returned to
classical myth only to deconstruct a Greek warrior into a parody of the
"Wandering Jew." Joyce set a flawed and endearing human being.
Joyce devoted considerably detailed passages to the most banal and
taboo human activities: gluttony, defecation, urination, dementia,
masturbation, voyeurism, alcoholism, sado-masochism and coprophilia
and most of these depictions included the hero, Bloom.
(3) Character analysis

Bloom, Leopold "Poldy": The protagonist of Joyce's mock-epic. Bloom is a
"modern" hero in contrast to the Homeric Ulysses. Throughout the novel,
Joyce exposes Bloom, an ad-canvasser, as an outsider and as a Christ-like
figure.
Bloom, Molly (Marion Tweed): The wife of Leopold Bloom who has an
affair with fellow singer, Blazes Boylan
Boylan, Blazes: a Dublin singer who has sex with Molly Bloom on the
afternoon of June 16, 1904.
(4) Artistic features

Ulysses has become a prime example of modernism in literature. It is such
an uncommon novel that there arises the question whether it can be termed
as a "novel" all; for it seems to lack almost all the essential qualities of the
novel in a traditional sense: there is virtually no story, no plot, almost no
action, and little characterization in the usual sense. The events of the day
seem to be trivial, insignificant, or even banal. But below the surface of the
events, the natural flow of mental reflections, the shifting moods and
impulses in the characters' inner world are richly presented in an
unprecedentedly frank and penetrating way.

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Chapter 5

The Modern Period

century, both natural and social sciences in Europe had enormously

I. Historical, social and cultural background

disintegration of the British Empire. Britain suffered

II. Literary history of the period

appeared: symbolism, expressionism, surrealism, cubism, futurism,

(1)Modern English poetry:

2. Artistic features of modern peroid

man, and man and himself.

3.Major figures of this period

III. Representatives of this period

Nottinghamshire. His father was a coal-miner with little education; but

In his writings, Lawrence has expressed a strong reaction against

the mechanical civilization.

3. Analysis of his masterpiece

straight-forward narrative and vivid episodes in chronological

(3) Character analysis

Morel - The first protagonist of the

protagonist in the second half of the book. After his brother

(4) Artistic features

dramatic scenes with an authoritative commentary. And the realistic

Joyce is not a commercial writer. In his lifetime, he wrote altogether

three novels, a collection of short stories, two volumes of poetry, and

3. Analysis of his masterpiece

in Dublin. The three major characters are: Leopold Bloom, an Irish

(3) Character analysis

(4) Artistic features

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