The Modern Era

1
The Modern Era

• 1901-1960

2
About

• Period of great artistic change due to world
  wars.
• Reached its peak between the two world wars.
• During this time people began doubting the
  principles on which the Victorians based their
  social code.
• Politics, society, and an escape from Victorian
  past and beliefs were some of the many ideas
  authors had.

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Styles and Genres

• Greatly influenced through ideas
• Romanticism
• Political Writings----Karl Marx
• Psychoanalytic theories of subconscious----Sigmun
  d Freud
• Impressionism

4
Poetry

• Poetry for the most part during the modern era
  was greatly affected by the war.
• It summed up what the war generally was
  catastrophe, needless waste, and destruction of
  humanity.

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Poets

• Rupert Brooke
• Wilfred Owen
• Siegfried Sassoon
• Herbert Read
• Wilfred Gibson

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• Rupert Brooke
• Born in 1887.
• English poet known for his war sonnets during
  WWI.
• At the start of WWI he enlisted in the Royal
  Naval Division .
• His most famous work, a sonnet sequence 1914 and
  Other Poems were made public in 1915.
• Later in the year while taking part in an
  expedition he died of blood poisoning from a
  mosquito.
• A symbol of the tragic loss of talented youth
  during war.

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• Wilfred Owen
• Born in 1893
• In 1915 his interest in WWI increased and he
  enlisted in the Artists Rifles Group.
• In 1917 he was wounded and sent to Craiglockhart
  War Hospital where he met poet Sigfried Sassoon.
• Through Sassoon he was introduced to Robert
  Graves and H.G. Wells.
• During this time he wrote some of his most famous
  poems
• Anthem for Doomed Youth
• Dulce et Decorum Est
• Not patriotic poems like Brookes but Owens
  depicted horrors of war, surrounding physical
  landscapes, and human body in relation to that.
• Killed November 4th, 1918 while on a mission.
• One of the most admired poets of WWI.

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• Siegfried Sassoon
• born in 1886.
• His poetry before the war was hardly recognized.
• At outbreak of war he joined the cavalry.
• After being wounded in 1917 he was sent back to
  England.
• The Britishs armies tactics made Sassoon angry
  and he published A Soldiers Declaration.
• His poetry reflected his opinions of war as well.
• Through the war he took on a harsh satirical
  style which he used to attack incompetence and
  inhumanity of senior military officers.
• Caused controversy with The Old Huntsman and
  Counter-Attack.
• Continued to fight in the war.
• Died in 1967.

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• Herbert Read
• Born in 1893.
• Served as a captain of the Yorkshire Regiment
  during WWI.
• Military Cross for bravery.
• 2 volumes of poetry on his war experiences.
• Songs of Chaos
• Naked Warriors
• Died in 1968.

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• Wilfrid Gibson
• Born 1878.
• Close friends with Rupert Brooke.
• Joined the British Army but remained in England.
• Wrote poetry from the point of view of an
  ordinary foot soldier.
• After the war he wrote poetry and plays.
• His work focused on the poverty of industrial
  workers and village laborers.
• Volumes of poetry included
• Collected Poems 1905-1925
• The Island Stag
• Within Four Walls
• Died in 1962.

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• Authors
• John Buchan
• James Joyce
• D.H. Lawrence
• Virginia Woolf
• A A Milnes
• George Orwell
• J.R.R. Tolkein
• Ian Fleming

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Novels

• The Thirty-Nine Steps
• Ulysses
• Sons and Lovers
• To The Lighthouse
• Winnie the Pooh
• Animal Farm
• The Hobbit
• Casino Royale

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The Thirty-Nine Stepsby John Buchan

• Born in Perth, Scotland on August 26, 1875.
• He spent summers with his Grandparents in the
  Scottish Borders where he loved the local scenery
  and wildlife.
• Featured in many of his writings.
• Attended University of Glasgow. There he studied
  classics, wrote poetry, and became a published
  author.
• Moved to London in 1900.
• 2 yrs. Later at the end of the Boer War he took a
  post as private secretary to Lord Milner.

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• With him he traveled through refugee camps and
  colonies of South Africa.
• In 1903 back in London he partnered with Thomas
  Arthur Nelson, a publisher.
• Wrote Pester John in 1910.
• When WWI started he went to write for the
  British war Propaganda Bureau and wrote as a
  correspondent in France for the Times.
• 1915 he published his most famous work The
  Thirty-Nine Steps.
• A year later he enlisted in the British Army as
  a 2nd Lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps.

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• In 1935 accepted the position as Canadas
  Governor General.
• On Feb. 6th, 1940 Buchan suffered from a
  fainting spell while shaving striking his head,
  causing a concussion and swelling.
• An embolism had formed and after 3 brain
  operations he died on Feb. 11th, 1940.
• The Thirty-Nine Steps
• Published in 1915.
• First of the 5 novels featuring Richard Hannay.
• Spy-thriller set prior to WWI.
• The story combined personal and political
  dramas.
• Described as a shocker which the events in the
  story are unlikely to happen and reader is only
  just able to believe they really did.

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• Richard Hannay is the protagonist and narrator.
• After an American (Schudder) comes to him for
  help and afraid for his life he tells Hannay of
  an anarchist plot to destroy Europe, starting
  with a plan to kill Karolides a Greel premier on
  his visit in London.
• He lets the man stay at his flat and the next
  day he finds another man shot dead in the same
  building. 4 days later he finds Schudder dead
  with a knife through his heart.
• Hannay fears that he will be murdered next and
  cannot ask the police for help due to being
  imprisoned. He leaves for Scotland.
• He takes on Schudders cause of protecting
  Karolides.
• The story continues on as him on the run from
  the police and trying to stop the destroy of
  Europe at the same time.
• An example of a man who puts his countries
  safety before his own.

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• Widely popular with the men in trenches during
  WWI.
• The adventure continues throughout 4 more books.
• Greenmantle
• Mr. Standfast
• The Three Hostages
• The island of Sheep
• Was adapted into Alfred Hitchcocks 39 Steps.

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UlyssesBy James Joyce

• Born Feb. 2nd, 1882 in Dublin, Ireland.
• In 1898 he entered the University College,
  Dublin.
• Joyce's Irish experiences are essential to his
  writings and provide all of the settings for his
  fiction and much of their subject matter.
• His first publication was an essay on Ibsen's
  play When We Dead Awaken. It appeared in the
  Fortnightly Review in 1900. At this time he also
  began writing lyric poems.
• At the start of WWI he moved with his family to
  Zurich.

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• There he started his first chapters of Ulysses.
• In March of 1923 he started his second major
  work Finnegans Wake.
• Some considered Finnegans Wake a masterpiece
  while others found it incomprehensible.
• After Frances fall in WWII, he returned to
  Zurich.
• James Joyce died on January 13th, 1941 still
  disappointed with Finnegans Wake.
• Ulysses
• Published Feb. 2nd, 1922.
• First published in France due to censorship
  problems in Great Britain and the U.S., didnt
  became legally available there till 1933.

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• Said to be one of the most important pieces of
  modernist literature.
• Been called "a demonstration and summation of
  the entire movement".
• Chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through
  Dublin during an ordinary day.
• Title parallels and alludes to Odysseus, the
  hero of Homers Odyssey.
• Stream of consciousness technique, careful
  structuring, puns, parodies, and allusions makes
  the novel highly regarded in the Modernist genre.
• Made up of 18 chapters or episodes.
• Each has a theme, technique, and correspondences
  between the characters and those in the Odyssey.

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Sons and LoversBy D.H. Lawrence

• David Herbert Richards Lawrence
• Born September 11th, 1885 in Eastwood,
  Nottinghamshire.
• The tension between him and his parents and his
  working class background provided raw material
  for a number of his early works.
• In 1908 he left his home for London.
• While there he worked as a teacher in Davidson
  Road School where he contd. writing.

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• A London publisher became interested in his work
  and his profession as an author grew.
• White Peacock his first published novel appeared
  in 1910.
• In 1911 he worked on the first drafts of Sons
  and Lovers.
• When pneumonia struck and he recovered he
  abandoned his teaching post and became a full
  time author.
• Married to Frieda Weekly. During the war the two
  lived in near destitution and were viewed
  suspiciously due to Friedas German parentage and
  Lawrences open contempt for militarism.
• Lawrences The Rainbow was suppressed after an
  investigation into its alleged obscenity in 1915.
• They were accused of spying and signaling to
  German submarines.

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• After his experiences during the war he
  traveled, a time of voluntary exile.
• He even traveled to the U.S. where he bought
  land in New Mexico in exchange for the
  manuscripts of Sons and Lovers.
• A near fatal attack of malaria and tuberculosis
  required him to return to Europe.
• He died from complication of tuberculosis in
  France on March 2nd, 1930.
• Sons and Lovers
• Published in 1913.
• His earliest masterpiece.
• Semi-autobiographical.
• Tells the story of Paul Morel, a young and
  budding artist.

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• The female protagonist Gertrude Morel reflects
  the sense of his mothers wasted life, her
  unfortunate marriage, and also his admiration.
• Gertrude Coppard meets a rough-hewn miner at a
  Christmas dance and falls into a whirlwind
  romance. But soon after her marriage to Walter
  Morel, she realizes the difficulties of living
  off his meagre salary in a rented house. The
  couple fight and drift apart and Walter retreats
  to the pub after work each day. Gradually, Mrs.
  Morel's affections shift to her sons beginning
  with the oldest, William. As a boy, William is so
  attached to his mother that he doesn't enjoy the
  fair without her. As he grows older, he defends
  her against his father's occasional violence.
  Eventually, he leaves their Nottinghamshire home
  for a job in London, where he begins to rise up
  into the middle class. He is engaged, but he
  detests the girl's superficiality. He dies and
  Mrs. Morel is heartbroken, but when Paul catches
  pneumonia she rediscovers her love for her second
  son.

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To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

• Born January 25, 1882.
• An English novelist. She was a feminist.
• Known as one of the foremost modernist literary
  figures of the 20th century.
• Between the wars she was a well known figure in
  the London literary society and also a member of
  the Bloomsbury Group.
• At the age of 13 when her mother and her sister
  both died she had her first breakdown.

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• When her father died in 1904 she was
  institutionalized.
• Her breakdowns and common depressive periods
  were also influenced by the sexual abuse her and
  her sister endured by their brothers.
• Though all this affected her social life her
  literary productivity contd. With few breaks up
  until her society.
• Due to another onset of depression on March
  28th she committed suicide by drowning herself in
  the river near her home. Her body was not found
  until April 18th.
• To The Lighthouse
• Published May 5, 1927.
• A landmark novel of high modernism.
• A novel that manipulates temporality and
  psychological exploration.

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• Novel centers on the Ramsay family and their
  visits to the Isle of Sky.
• Takes place between 1910 and 1920.
• Has little dialogue and is mostly thoughts and
  observations made by characters.
• Starts out with the Ramsays at their summer
  home with friends visiting them. How the
  characters interact and affect one another. Next
  it goes to a second part Time Passing where
  Woolf tells of time passing and explains the
  absence of certain people. In the last section
  The Lighthouse the Ramsays that are remaining
  return to the Isle of Sky. Mr. Ramsay plans to
  take the trip to the Lighthouse he promised his
  son 10 years earlier. The story ends with the
  reflection and gratitude to Mrs. Ramsay.

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Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne

• Alan Alexander Milne born Jan. 18th, 1882.
• His father was a schoolmaster at the Henley House
  where Alan did get his first education. He
  continued his education at Westminster School and
  Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated
  with a degree in mathematics in 1903.
• When WWI began Milne joined the army. In 1916 he
  left the front lines due to fever. In 1919 he
  left the army and focused on writing plays.
• His first childrens poem Vespers was published
  in Vanity Fair and featured his son Christopher
  Robin.

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• In 1924 after the success of Vespers, Milne
  published a book When We Were Very Young which
  is a collection of childrens poems. Includes a
  poem about a chubby Teddy Bear. This was Pooh
  Bears unofficial fist appearance. Over 50,000
  copies sold within the first week.
• A bedtime story about Pooh and his adventures
  for his son turned into Milnes next book Winnie
  the Pooh.
• In 1952 Milne went under a brain operation which
  left him invalid. He survived and lived out the
  rest of his life in Sussex. After a long illness
  he died on January 31st, 1956.
• Winnie the Pooh
• Published in 1926.
• Started out as a bedtime story for his son
  Christopher Milne.

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• Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after
  teddy bear owned by his son, Christopher Robin
  Milne, who was the basis for the character
  Christopher Robin. His toys also lent their names
  to most of the other characters, except for Owl
  and Rabbit, as well as the Gopher character, who
  was added in the Disney version.
• Tells of Pooh and his friends adventures in the
  Hundred Acre Woods.

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Animal Farm by George Orwell

• Born June 25, 1903.
• English novelist and journalist.
• Works are keen intelligence and wit, a profound
  awareness of social injustice, an intense
  revolutionary opposition to totalitarianism.
• Had a passion for clarity in lang. and had
  beliefs in democratic socialism.
• Best known for his novels 1984 and a satirical
  novel Animal Farm.
• On Jan. 21st an artery burst in his lung killing
  him at age 46.

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• Animal Farm
• Published on August 17, 1945.
• The book is a reflection of the events leading
  up to and during the time of Stalin.
• Being a democratic socialist and a member of the
  Independent Labour Party for years he was a
  critic of Joseph Stalin and suspicious of Moscow
  directed Stalinism.
• It presents the corruption of revolution by
  leaders and how indiffernce, greed, and ignorance
  ruined any possibility of a Utopia.
• Old Major a boar on the farm calls the animals
  for a meeting and compares the humans to
  parasites. When he dies 3 days later two of the
  younger pigs Snowball and Napoleon take up
  command and lead a revolt which drives Mr. Jones
  from the farm renaming it Animal Farm.

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The Hobbit By J.R.R. Tolkien

• John Ronald Reuel Tolkein (1892-1973)
• A major scholar of the English language.
  Specialized in Old and Middle English.
• Twice professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University
  of Oxford.
• There he wrote many stories including the two
  most famous works by him The Hobbit and Lord
  of the Rings.
• Spent 4 months fighting in the war and from
  experiences and people he used for ideas in his
  stories.
• He retired from writing in 1959 and died in 1973.

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• The Hobbit
• Published in 1937.
• Originally written for his 4 children who loved
  every aspect of the story.
• Though it is a childrens story adults are drawn
  to it. Its packed full of plot, dialogue, and
  history.
• Many aspects of the adventure that takes place
  within the story is based off of Scandinavian
  myths.
• Bilbo Baggins is visited by Gandalf the Wizard
  and 13 dwarves who are on an adventure. They need
  someone to be a thief for them so they can steal
  the treasure from Smaug the Dragon. Though Bilbo
  is not interested in the mission he is roped into
  it any way which begins his adventure.
• Set in a prehistoric time in an invented version
  of the world which Tolkien called by the Middle
  English name Middle Earth that was populated by
  men, women, elves, dwarves, trolls, and goblins.

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Casino Royale By Ian Fleming

• Born in 1908. Grew up as a rare member of
  Englishmen whose every option was open.
• Attended Eton for 2 years but left and attended
  Sandhurst a military academy which also did not
  last very long. He found his place in a small
  Austrian town of Kitzbuhel where his education
  was changed drastically.
• After a short time being a journalist he went to
  work as a banker supposedly not happy with his
  job he took on an assignment with the Times to
  return to the Soviet Union to report on a trade
  mission. Here the whole time he was spying for
  the Foreign Office.

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• Worked with the Naval Intelligence Service.
  Became a right hand man to Britains top
  spymaster. This career helped him really tap into
  his imagination.
• In 1952 he wrote his first draft of Casino
  Royale. Continued 12 years with James Bond
  stories.
• He died on August 12th, 1964 at the age of 56
  from heart failure.
• Casino Royale
• Published in 1953.
• The first James Bond novel.

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• Monsieur Le Chiffre, the treasurer of a
  Soviet-backed trade union in the Alsace-Lorraine
  region of France, is running a baccarat game in
  the casino at Royale-les-Eaux, France, in order
  to recover union money he lost in a failed chain
  of brothels.
• Expert baccarat player James Bond is assigned the
  defeat of Le Chiffre, in the hope that his
  gambling debts will provoke Soviet espionage
  agency SMERSH to kill him.
• Many incidents throughout the story were based
  on incidents that happened throughout his naval
  career.
• 11 more novels that follow.
• Has been made into numerous movies today.

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Sources

• http//www.indepthinfo.com/tolkien/hobbit.shtml
• http//www.klast.net/bond/flem_bio.html
• http//www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jsassoon.htm