Chapter19Introduction(I)讲稿.doc

Chapter 19: The Early 20th CenturyA Brief IntroductionWhen Queen Victorian died in 1901, an era was formally over. The new centrury began with its own problems.The crisis of faith.The British Empire was declining.The status of the arts and literature was beginning to undergo a process of redefining.The EdwardiansFeatures:Over-emphasis on the description of externalities in their representation of life rather than on the internal world of man. Representatives:Arnold Bennett, H.G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Rudyard Kipling, E.M.Forster, Joseph ConradArnold Bennett (1867-1931)Characteristics of Bennett’s Novels:a. He came under the influence of Zolan naturalism.b. Bennett is famous made notorious for his “Five Towns” stories, all of which are based on the pottery towns of northern England. The description s in these novels are true-to –life, naturalistic, reproductions of life there with its filth, stench, poverty, and the overall tedium and gray ugliness that characterized this segment of English society. These include:Anna of the Five TownsThe Old Wives’ TaleThe Clayhanger Trilogy-ClayhangerHilda LesswaysThese TwainBennett seems to take an immense delight in the minute and accurate portrayal of the exterior details of life, tells his stories with a calm countenance and takes care to avoid comments, and stops right at the point when the interior of the human soul gets involved.Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)Kipling is a short-story writer, who won the Nobel Prize in 1907. His masterwork is The Jungle Books. It is a fable in the world tradtion of beast fables, with each one of its own kind, offering good reading matter for all readers as a fable for children and as a book of wisdom for adults. For scholars as they can read and mediate upon the nature of the human condition.The first decade of the 20th century saw Kipling at the height of his popularity. In 1907 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The prize citation said: "In consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author."John Galsworthy (1867-1933)Galsworthy was on eof the most prolific writer, with 17 novels, over 20 plays, and a dozen volumes of short stories. He won the Nobel Prize in 1932.Features of His Novels:He inherited the grea tradition of realism in English literature and kept to his traditional way of writing amid the engulfing din of a new way of literary expression-Modernism. His themes focus on the lives and experiences of the rich men of property, their selfishness, their philistinsm, their decadence, depravity, and decline, and their fierce conflict with the workers.Major Works:The Forsyte Saga:The Man of Property, In Chancery, and To LetA Modern ComedyThe End of the Chapter H.G. Wells (1866-1946)Wells is remembered for his achievement in science ficion and his prophecies about the outbreak of the two world wars.He has been regarded as one the founding figures of science fiction. He takes hgis readers with him in his visionary flights through space and time, and offers them an amole opportunity to observe life from different spatial and temporal perspectives. His stories serve a serious purpose of social satire at the same time they entertain.Major Works:The Time MachineThe War of the WorldsThe First Men in the MoonThe Invisible ManE. M. Forster (1879-1970)Foster was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy and also the attitudes towards gender and homosexuality in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".Major Works:Aspects of the NovelPassage to IndiaForster's third novel, A Room with a View (1908), is his lightest and most optimistic. It was started before any of his others, as early as 1901, and exists in earlier forms referred to as "Lucy". The book is the story of young Lucy Honeychurch's trip to Italy with her cousin, and the choice she must make between the free-thinking George Emerson and the repressed aesthete Cecil Vyse. George's father Mr Emerson quotes thinkers who influenced Forster, including Samuel Butler. A Room with a View was filmed by Merchant-Ivory in 1985.Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room with a View can be seen collectively as Forster's Italian novels. Both include references to the famous Baedeker guidebooks and concern narrow-minded middle-class English tourists abroad. The books share many themes with short stories collected in The Celestial Omnibus and The Eternal Moment.Howards End (1910) is an ambitious "condition-of-England" novel concerned with different groups within the Edwardian middle classes represented by the Schlegels (bohemian intellectuals), the Wilcoxes (thoughtless plutocrats) and the Ba。