Twentieth-Century English Literature and Cultural Shifts

1. Context: An Era of Upheaval

The first fifty years of the twentieth century were marked by a series of upheavals more remarkable than those of "perhaps fifty generations in the past." This period witnessed an ever-accelerating mastery of the physical world, a product of the Scientific Revolution, which paradoxically brought both unprecedented material progress and a simultaneous "moral and spiritual relapse."

Social and Technological Revolutions.

Technological Acceleration: The perfection of the internal combustion engine led to the aeroplane, which facilitated mass slaughter in two world wars, and the motor car, which gave millions of young people unprecedented mobility, enabling them to travel far from parental guidance.

The Revolt of Youth: Among the various revolutions, the "revolt of youth" was particularly notable, with unpredictable repercussions. The ease of mass manipulation was demonstrated by movements like the Hitler Youth. This contrasted with the traditional British view that a student's primary duty was to study, not agitate.

The Rise of Mass Man: The post-World War II era saw the individual "Common Man" supplanted by "Mass Man." Mass production methods in industry were seen as destructive to craftsmanship and individual skill.

The Affluent Society: The post-1945 establishment of the Welfare State in Britain, with its promise of "fair shares for all," full employment, and high wages, created an "affluent State." However, this did not bring the expected contentment, instead fostering sullen discontent, a rise in crime, and a culture of consumerism fueled by hire-purchase systems and advertising.

Political and Imperial Shifts

Global Conflict: The century was defined by two world wars, the second of which was faced by the British people with a mood of "stoical determination and endurance" rather than the romantic fervor of 1914.

Dissolution of Empire: The British Empire rapidly shrank as overseas possessions gained self-government. This dissolution led to a loss of opportunities for enterprise and adventure for tens of thousands, contributing to a sense of being "morally and mentally frustrated" despite increased travel abroad.

Failure of Internationalism: The League of Nations, despite some humanitarian successes, failed to secure universal confidence. It was seen as a tool for keeping defeated nations in subjection and was ultimately disrupted by member-states who violated its ideals, leading to its inability to prevent the conflicts that culminated in the Second World War.

2. Key Ideas: From Certainty to Questioning

The literature of the first quarter of the twentieth century was a direct and forceful reaction against the prevailing spirit of the Victorian age. This shift represented a fundamental change in mental attitudes, moral ideals, and spiritual values.

The Rejection of Victorianism

The Victorian era was characterized by a distinct mindset that the subsequent generation aggressively dismantled:

Attitude of Acceptance: The defining Victorian trait was not a single doctrine but an "insistent attitude of acceptance, his persistent belief in (but rare examination of) the credentials of Authority, his innate desire to affirm and confirm rather than to reject or to question."

Belief in Permanence: Victorians held "a firm belief in the permanence of nineteenth century institutions, both temporal and spiritual." The home, the constitution, the Empire, and the Christian religion were viewed as final, unshakable revelations.

Second-Hand Convictions: To early twentieth-century minds, Victorian faith and morality "often seemed to lack any core of personally realised conviction- to be mere second-hand clothing of the mind and spirit."

The Twentieth-Century Interrogative

The post-Victorian period was driven by a restless desire to challenge and dismantle these certainties.

Universal Mutability: The Victorian idea of permanence was "displaced by the sense of a universal mutability." H. G. Wells captured this sentiment, describing the world not as a home but as "the mere sight of a home. On which we camped."

The Creed of Questioning: Bernard Shaw championed the new ethos with the watchwords: "Question! Examine! Test!" He argued that "every dogma is a superstition until it has been personally examined and consciously accepted by the individual believer."

Scrapping Old Moralities: Shaw’s character Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara delivered a "trumpet call" for the new era: "It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it won't scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions and its old political constitutions."

Spiritual Dislocation: For many, this revolt from Victorian stability and order created a "spiritual vacuum." The experience was articulated by Shaw's character Barbara: "I stood on the rock I thought eternal; and without a word it reeled and crumbled under me."

Dueling Artistic Philosophies

At the turn of the century, two distinct approaches to the purpose of art emerged among writers:

Art for Life's Sake: Embodied by the "Fabian Society group" (including Shaw and Wells), this creed held that art should serve sociological and political motives for the betterment of the community. Shaw stated he would not write a single sentence "for art's sake alone."

Art for Art's Sake (Restored): The "Bloomsbury Group," influenced by G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica, went some way toward restoring the principle of art for art's sake, attaching great importance to art as a central factor in civilized living.

3. Examples: Key Figures, Groups, and Works

The text illustrates these transformative ideas through a wide range of specific examples from literature, philosophy, and politics.

Category

Key Examples Mentioned in the Text

Victorian & Pre-20th Century Figures

Tennyson: His Idylls were criticized by Meredith for their "damned hypocrisy." Thomas Hardy: Murmured against "purblind doomsters" in his earliest poems. Samuel Butler: Attacked Victorianism vehemently, beginning with Erewhon (1872). The Decadents: Impatient "to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world."

Early 20th-Century Writers (Fabian/Sociological)

Bernard Shaw: A "foremost herald of change" who challenged all authority (Major Barbara, The Apple Cart). H. G. Wells: Articulated the sense of universal mutability (Art Kipps, Mr Polly). John Galsworthy: Maintained widespread public interest for half a century with The Forsyte Saga, despite critics claiming "Nobody reads Galsworthy now." Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling: Leading writers respected by critics and enjoyed by the "averagely intelligent" reader before 1922.

The Bloomsbury Group

Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, Roger Fry: A circle of intellectual friends who valued the arts, good manners, and felt a sense of superior mentality. Keynes, an economist, wrote the influential Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919).

The Modernist Turn (1922)

James Joyce: His novel Ulysses (1922) marked a point where literature "retreated into an esoteric fastness." T. S. Eliot: His poem The Waste Land (1922) had a similar effect. Eliot also directed the influential journal The Criterion.

Anti-War Literature

C. E. Montague: Wrote with "good-mannered indignation" in Disenchantment (1922). Erich Maria Remarque: His All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) reached millions. Richard Aldington: Wrote Death of a Hero (1929). Edmund Blunden: His Undertones of War (1928) established itself as a prose classic. Wilfred Owen & Rupert Brooke: Poets of the First World War. Owen's work gained new currency via Benjamin Britten's War Requiem.

Post-War & "Anti-Art" Figures

Samuel Beckett: His play Waiting for Godot (1955) could be taken as a "pattern play of the decade." Kingsley Amis: His anti-hero Dixon in Lucky Jim (1954) exemplified a new loutishness. John Osborne: His character Porter in Look Back in Anger (1956) served a similar function.

Influential Thinkers & Critics

G. E. Moore: His Principia Ethica (1903) shaped the ideas of the Bloomsbury Group. Sidney & Beatrice Webb: Indefatigable Fabian researchers and "architects of the Welfare State" whose work prioritized the masses over the individual. Søren Kierkegaard, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka: Their works, translated into English, fostered a preoccupation with states of consciousness, spiritual morbidity, and man's need for redemption. A. C. Bradley: His Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) championed the view of drama as a conflict of character, a theory later critics sought to demolish.

Social Movements

Fabian Society: Founded in 1884 to spread Socialist opinions and effect social and political change. Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: Launched by The New Statesman, it gave a cause to the "rebels without cause" of the 1940s and 50s. Beatniks: An American movement that contracted out of society, professing disgust with its values. British beatniks were a "twisted reflection" of the prototypes, exemplified by Jack Kerouac's novels.

4. Implications for Literature and Criticism

The social and intellectual shifts of the twentieth century profoundly reshaped the production, reception, and study of literature.

The Retreat into Esotericism

The year 1922, with the publication of Joyce's Ulysses and Eliot's The Waste Land, marks a crucial turning point. At this moment, "literature left the highroad of communication and retreated into an esoteric fastness." This created a new antimony between literature appealing only to a "small and fastidious public" and the life of the broader community. This intellectualism was rooted in contempt for normal intelligence, as shown by Stuart Gilbert's praise for Joyce for never betraying "the authority of intellect to the hydra-headed rabble of the mental underworld."

The Rise of Academic and Textual Criticism

A new style of academic criticism based on close textual analysis emerged, claiming to be an improvement on Matthew Arnold's principle that literature should be a "criticism of life." However, this led to several negative consequences:

Professional Inbreeding: The process was criticized as a form of "cerebral incest," where academic study's primary end is simply the "multiplication of academics ad infinitum," divorcing literature from its function as an "enrichment of life."

Irrelevant Debates: Critics became embroiled in quarrelsomeness, such as Professor Bowers' gleeful exposure of Professor Empson's complex theory about a T. S. Eliot poem, which was based entirely on a printer's error.

Attack on Character: Much critical energy was spent trying to demolish the long-held theory that drama, particularly Shakespeare, is pre-eminently a "conflict of character."

The Decline of Craft and the Rise of "Anti-Art"

The post-war period saw a widespread indifference and "positive antagonism- to form and style in writing."

Chaos as a Principle: The approved novels and plays of the 1950s "either ignored or of set purpose flouted literary craftsmanship." In this climate, "Art gave place to anti-Art... chaos had indeed come again, bringing its high priests and devotees."

Debasement of Language: The prevalence of clichés and the jargons of psychiatry and pseudo-science threatened literature with "a hardening of the arteries." The text suggests an antidote: educating public taste through a critical attitude towards words, arguing that a well-trained literary taste "will not tolerate a debased style and will thereby be protected if need be from debased subject matter."

The Politicization of Art

In the 1930s, as the European political scene darkened, a conviction arose among younger writers that art must be the "hand-maid of politics."

Proletarian Literature: This led to "dreary polemics" and writers suppressing their creative ability for social service. However, this literature often failed its intended purpose. As E. M. Forster noted, many who "professed to have simplified their way of saying the things... were actually employing and highly complex intellectualized language outside the mental range... of most of the proletariat."

The Ivory Tower: Forster also defended the artist's retreat from the community, arguing it could be motivated not just by fear but also by "Boredom: disgust: indignation against the herd." He concludes that the goal is "not to save ourselves and not to save the community, but to try to save both."

The Influence of Psychology

Freudianism and psychiatry became deeply rooted in the substance of contemporary fiction, drama, and verse. This led to a vogue that "tends to postulate almost universal mental invalidism," with the world viewed as a "vast clinic" where "nothing but abnormality is normal." This new "trade" was subserved by modern literature that exploited abnormality.

The Great Upheaval: The Setting of the Modern Age

The Great Upheaval: The Setting of the Modern Age

Hindi Overview of the Setting of the Modern Age

My Learning Outcomes

I can interpret the zeitgeist of the 20th century as explained by A.C. Ward and connect it to major literary transformations of the period.

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I can summarize complex literary and historical content into clear video, audio, infographic, and mind-map formats.

I have strengthened my skills in critical reading, multimodal communication, and digital storytelling.

I can integrate AI-generated content ethically and creatively into my academic assignments.

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