Unit Nine-1.ppt

T.S.Eliot (1888~1965) D.H.Lawrence (1885~1930) James Joyce (1882~1941) Comment From a comparably early age Joyce regards himself as a rebel against the shabbiness and Philistinism of Dublin. He wrote only and always about Dublin. He devised ways of expanding his accounts of Dublin, however, so that they become microcosm, small-scale models, of all human life, of all history and all geography. Indeed that was his life’s work: to write about Dublin in such a way that he was writing about all of human experience. Dubliners Dubliners are more than sharp realistic sketches, a book about man’s fate as well as series of sketches of Dublin. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man shows how carefully Joyce reworked and compressed his material for maximum effect. The Portrait is not literally true as autobiography, though it has many autobiographical elements; but it is representatively true not only of Joyce but of the relation between the artist and society in modern world. His masterpiece is Ulysses. Unit Nine Twentieth Century Literature Chapter I Introduction Part I Modern PeriodSince the First World War Social Background: 1. Capitalism came into monopoly stage 2.After WWI, there was economic dislocation and spiritual disillusion. 3. After WWII, disintegration of the British Empire occurred. Cultural Background 1. Marxism: the theory of scientific socialism for working people 2. Darwinism: the theory of evolution advocates the principle of “survival of the fittest” 3. Einstein’s theory of relativity: new ideas for the concepts of time and space. 4. Freud: analytical psychology of human nature 5. Schopenhauer: stress on will and intuition 6.Nietzsche: be against rationalism; advocates completely rejecting the Christian morality. 7. Henry Bergson: stress on creation, intuition, irrationality and unconsciousness Modernism /Modernist Movement Under the influence of all the above theories and ideas, modernism rose out of skep