English_literature_in_20th_century__20世纪英国文学.ppt

Chapter 8 English Literature in the 20th Century Ⅰ. General View of English Literature in the 20th Century History Background For Britain ,it was a time of declining in national fortune and power. During the 19th century, in order to pay for the wars,Britain had to give up many of its investments abroad. Since World War Two, Britain has become subordinate to the United States.. The first period(1900-1918): The second period(1918-1939) It provided a favourable condition for the further development of modernism. The third period (20th century): In the years that followed, the colonies of the Empire gradually broke away and formed independent states until the British Empire was transformed into the British Commonwealth in 1931, consisting only Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, etc., all of which were joined to the mother country in only a loose association. The downward slide of Great Britain, which was brought by the first war, continued through the second (1939-1945), in which it was finally destroyed as a great world power. In the early years of this century, a major technical revolution occurred in English, as well as in American, poetic theory and practice. W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were the leading characters in this revolution. In different ways, they revolted against the imprecise language and sentimental emotions of the late Victorian poets. The result of this revolt was the literary movement that has come to be called Modernism and has great influence on the poetry as well as the fiction of the century. Wessex Poems, 1898 Poems of the Past and Present《今昔诗篇》 The Dynasts, 《列王》 Times Laughingstocks《时间的笑柄》 Satires of Circumstance, 1914《环境的讽刺》 Moments of Vision, 1917 《幻觉的瞬间》 Human Shows, 1925 《人性面面观》 A. E. Housman阿尔弗雷德·爱德华· 豪斯曼 A.E. Housman (short for Alfred Edward Housman) was born on March 26th of 1859 in a family of a country solicitor as the eldest of seven children and died on April 30th, 1936. He was an English clas