《英美文学选读》资料-5-英国modern.docVIP

Charpter 5---------The Modern Period(英国) Historical background: 1.?The 1st World War tremendously weakened the British Empire and brought about great sufferings to its people as well 2. The 2nd World War marked the last stage of the disintegration of the British Empire. Cultural background: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels put forward the theory of scientific socialism Einstein’s theory of relativity provided entirely new ideas for the concepts of time and space. Freud’s analytical psychology drastically altered our conception of human nature. Henry Bergson established his irrational philosophy, which put the emphasis on creation, intuition, irrationality and unconsciousness. Modernism—theoretical base and theme Modernism takes the irrational philosophy and the theory of psycho-analysis as its theoretical base. 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. The modernist writers concentrate on the private and the subjective. They are mainly concerned about the inner being of an individual. definition Modernism is a reaction against realism. It rejects rationalism; it excludes from its major concern the external, objective material world; by advocating a free experimentation on new forms and new techniques in literary creation, it casts away almost all the traditional elements in literature such as story, plot, character, chronological narration, etc. As a result, the works created by the modernist writers are often labeled as anti-novel, anti-poetry and anti-drama. Stream of consciousness It is a literary technique that presents the thoughts and feelings of a character as they develop. With the notion that multiple levels of consciousness existed simultaneously in the human mind, that one’s present was the sum of his past, present and future, and that the whole truth about human beings existed in the unique, isolated, and private world