ModernismCultural History of Britain 11

Timeline 1837-1901 – Queen Victoria – the British Empire

1899-1902 Boer War1901-1910 Edward VII (Edwardians)1910-36 – George V (Georgians)

1914-1918 World War I 1917 Russian Revolution 1922 – Irish Free State 1929-1933 The Great Depression – politically committed literature

1936 – Edward VIII (abdicated)1936-52 – George VI

1939-45 World War II 1945 – Atlee’s Labour Government – the beginning of the welfare state 1947 – Declaration of Indian Independence – end of the Second Empire 1949 – Irish Republic

1952- Elizabeth II

2) Social and Intellectual Background The turn of the century (Fin de siècle)

a) Societymodern societyindividualism, psychological privacy, isolation, sense of fragmentation

(McFarlane, „The Mind of Modernism” 81)rise of the working classes – social and political movementsrise of the New Woman (Sarah Grand, McFarlane, „The Mind of

Modernism” 79)

b) SciencepositivismDarwin, The Origin of Species (1859)Einstein – theory of relativity (1905)(Bantock 13-56)scientific, mechanical worldview ↔ alternative versions, e.g. Theosophy

(especially after 1875) (McFarlane, „The Mind of Modernism” 75)

2) Social and Intellectual Background

b) SciencePsychology Stream of consciousness (William James, Principles of Psychology, 1890)

“A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it [the mind, inner life] is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.” (James quoted at Bradbury, British Novel 197)

Henri Bergson: objective and subjective time (clock time and duration) psychoanalysis (from 1895) – Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung

→ direct reaction and debate in Modernist literature, e.g. D. H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley

c) Philosophy (ethics) relativity in philosophy and morality (Nietzsche)1914-18 World War I, age of anxietyprivate morality – Nietzsche’s popularity after 1890 Marxism (McFarlane, „The Mind of Modernism” 79)

3) The Literary Scene

a) Turn of the century – Late Victorian literatureVictorian poetry, ivory tower, escapism (Lord Alfred Tennyson, Robert

Browning)↔transitory figures (Modernist poetry of Thomas Hardy)Late Victorian novel (Thomas Hardy, detective fiction, Rudyard

Kipling, Oscar Wilde)Edwardians (1901-10): H. G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett

Victorian moralism, formal social conventions and hypocrisies, culture of commercialism and literature of profit

modern but not Modernist influence of Naturalism (Bradbury, British Novel 69-75)

well-made play

b) Changes at the Turn of the Centuryinfluences fostering the emergence of Modernism (foreign influences):French SymbolismFrench NaturalismRediscovery of Italian Renaissance poetrytranslation of Dostoevsky’s novels – influenced most Modernist

writers, e.g. Virginia Woolf, Aldous HuxleyOriental literature (Japanese forms: Noh, haiku) and philosophy

(Buddism, occult philosophies) Ibsen – analytic drama1890s – The Nineties – acceptance of the Aesthetic Movement The Irish Renaissance (Holloway 61-113)

c) ModernismDefinition – umbrella term: a wide variety of actual movements,

which are subversive of romanticism or realism, such as ImpressionismPost-ImpressionismExpressionismCubismFuturismSymbolismImagismVorticismDadaismSurrealism

Impressionism: Claude Monet, Impression - Sunrise

Post-Impressionism: Paul Cézanne, Bathers

Expressionism: Edvard Munch, The Scream

Cubism: Georges Braque, Woman with a Guitar

Surrealism: Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory

Suprematism: Kazimir Malevich, Black Square

Modernist Continental Influence and Britain1910: First Post-Impressionist Exhibition in London (Roger Fry)

Bloomsbury Group

Roger Fry, Vision and Design (1920)Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry: A Biography (1940)

“On or about December 1910 human character changed”  (Virginia Woolf, “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown”, 1923) 

c) Modernism in Literature

it is an international tendency, not a universal style or tradition, art centred on a broadly symbolist aesthetics and an avant-garde view of the artist

urban phenomenon, associated with capitals, intellectual centresa conscious mannerism, based on shock, a violation of expected

continuitiesrealism↔ Modernism: deeper penetration of life through style,

technique and spatial form, art creating harmony, unity, life within itself

task of art = to redeem a formless universe, a new universe of discourse opposing a sense of universal fragmentation

Modernist texts work spatially, through a logic of metaphor or form

c) Modernism in Literaturetechnical features sophistication and mannerism introversion technical display crisis of the aesthetic ideal growing out of Romanticismconstant search for style (McFarlane, „The Mind of Modernism” 89)a crisis of culture, apocalypse of cultural community and a crisis of

reality

→ registers the collapse of myth, structure, organisation

↔ tries to recover this lost unity by creating harmony within the work of art, through myth – T. S. Eliot, “Ulysses, Order and Myth” (1923):

myth “is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history” (T. S. Eliot)

d) English ModernismNo clear-cut periods, sharp divisions, like in the 19th century ↔

major trends and tendenciesVirginia Woolf, “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” (1924)

“in or about December, 1910, human character changed” ← first Post-Impressionist exhibition in London, Matisse, Van Gogh, Cézanne

Malcolm Bradbury’s periodisation: 1890s-1920s Modernism

it includes the Edwardians! (1901-1910)1930s – politically committed literaturetwo main tendencies: new classicism and the continuation of

Romanticism (Symbolism) (Bradbury 199), but they are not absolute opposites

several foreign writers and 2-3 generations of English writers

“English” Modernists (Literature)

Joseph ConradHenry James T. S. EliotKatherine MansfieldEzra PoundW. B. YeatsG. B. Shaw James Joyce

Thomas Hardy (as a poet)Samuel ButlerArthur SymonsD. H. LawrenceE. M. ForsterVirginia WoolfAldous Huxley

Early Feminism:Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Women’s Situation in 19th-century Britain

1830: no rights for married women, part of the legal entity of the husband Property and incomeRight to divorce (custody of children)Public activities and officesSuffrage

1857: Matrimonial Causes Act (divorce)1870/1882: Married Woman’s Property Act (property and income)1918: suffrage1920s – first women to get degrees at English universities

1870s: women are allowed to attend university courses but no degrees

Virginia Woolf (neé Stephen)

Novelist, critic, feminist, editorinfluences: Chekhov, Dostoevsky, contemporary English

Modernists, Marcel Proust, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson’s theory of objective and subjective time → “moments of being” – duration (Goldman 3-4) → stream-of-consciousness technique; memories, tunnelling

Bloomsbury Group, Hogarth Presscriticism of contemporary literature and promoter of

Modernist ideas – four volumes of Collected Essays gathered posthumously by Leonard Woolf

Early Feminism: Virginia WoolfA Room of One’s Own (1929)- gender hierarchies and their possible subversion (Hanson 111)- Shakespeare’s sister- the fantasy of androgyny → fictional representation in Orlando

“And I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man’s brain the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman’s brain the woman predominates over the man.”

 “Professions for Women” (1931) – the “Angel in the House”

“Above all – I need not say it – she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beaty – her blushes, her great grace. In those days – the last of Queen Victoria – every house had its angel. And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. […] I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defence. Had I not killed her, she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.” (Professions for Women, quoted in Hanson 5-6)

Early Feminism: Virginia WoolfThree Guineas (1938)12 fictional letters and drafts title ← three guineas donated by the narrator to a peace society, a women’s college

and an organisation for helping professional women (Black 18) central argument: links fascism to the status of women; “war is only one of the

products […] of a system of power and domination that has its roots in gender hierarchy” – has been much debated (Black 6-7),

war = “preposterous masculine fiction” (Black 19)Pacifism (Black 17)humanism of the Bloomsbury circle ↔ different in her views on women (Black 2); social feminism ←”valorisation of women’s civilisation as a basis for social and

political transformation (Black 10) feminist-inspired quest for peace → first-wave women’s movement, sharing ideas

(Black 18)Woolf saw deeper controversies and problems, did not think that suffrage in itself

was the solution (Black 19)

ArchitectureContinent: new design and technique

Frank Lloyd Wright – organic architecture (1867-1959, America)

Gropius – pioneer of modern architecture, Bauhaus (1883-1969, Germany)

Le Corbusier – modern high design (1887-1965, France)

Modern Influences in British Architecture – 1930sCharles Holden (1875-1960, London

Underground)Owen Williams (1890-1969, factories)Maxwell Fry (1899-1987, domestic

architecture)

Sculpture – Advent of Abstract ArtHenry Moore (1898-1986)Barbara Hepworth (1903-75)

Hepworth, Pelagos

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure

Music: Benjamin Britten (1913-76)

Purcell’s influence (performance of Dido and Aeneas)Many genres, most famous for operas, also film musicCollaborated with outstanding modernist writers (Auden,

E. M. Forster)Works include:

Peter GrimesBilly BuddThe Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra

Works CitedBantock, G. H.. “The Social and Intellectual Background.” The Pelican Guide to English Literature. Vol. 7. From James to Eliot.

Ed. Boris Ford. London: Penguin Books, 1983, 13-60.

Black, Naomi. Virginia Woolf as Feminist. Ithaca, London: Cornell UP, 2004.

Bradbury, Malcolm and James McFarlane. “The Name and Nature of Modernism.” Modernism – A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. London: Penguin Books, 1991: 19-56.

Bradbury, Malcolm. “London 1890-1920.” Modernism – A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. London: Penguin Books, 1991: 172-190.

Bradbury, Malcolm. The Modern British Novel 1878-2001. Revised edition. London: Penguin Books, 2001.

Bullock, Allan. “The Double Image.” Modernism – A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. London: Penguin Books, 1991: 58-70.

Davidson, Harriet. “Improper Desire: Reading The Waste Land.” The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Ed. A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994: 120-131.

Eliot, T. S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York, London: W. W. Norton, 2001: 1092-8.

Eliot, T. S. “Ulysses, Order and Myth.” The English Modernist Reader. Ed. Peter Faulkner. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986: 100-104.

Eliot, T. S. “The Metaphysical Poets.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York, London: W. W. Norton, 2001: 1098-1105.

Goldman, Jane. The Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf – Modernism, Post-Impressionism and the Politics of the Visual. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.

Hanson, Clare. Virginia Woolf. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994.

Holloway, John. “The Literary Scene.” The Pelican Guide to English Literature. Vol. 7. From James to Eliot. Ed. Boris Ford. London: Penguin Books, 1983, 61-114.

Johnson, Trevor. A Critical Introduction to the Poems of Thomas Hardy. Houndsmills: Macmillan, 1991.

Kearns, Cleo McNelly. “Religion, Literature, and Society in the Work of T. S. Eliot.” The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Ed. A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994: 77-93.

Works CitedLeitch, Vincent B., ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York, London: W. W. Norton, 2001.

Longenbach, James. “’Mature Poets Steal’: Eliot’s Allusive Practice.” The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Ed. A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994: 176-188.

Marcus, Laura. “Woolf’s Feminism and Feminism’s Woolf.” The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf. Eds. Susan Roe and Susan Sellers. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000: 2009-244.

Materer, Timothy. “T. S. Eliot’s Critical Program.” The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Ed. A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994: 48-59.

Mays, J. C. C. “Early Poems: from ‘Prufrock’ to ‘Gerontion’.” The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Ed. A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994: 108-120.

McFarlane, James. “The Mind of Modernism.” Modernism – A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. London: Penguin Books, 1991: 71-94.

Moody, A. David. “Four Quartets: Music, Word, Meaning and Value.” The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Ed. A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994: 142-157.

Salingar, L. G. “T. S. Eliot: Poet and Critic.” The Pelican Guide to English Literature. Vol. 7. From James to Eliot. Ed. Boris Ford. London: Penguin Books, 1983: 443-461.

Schulkind, Jeanne. “Introduction.” Virginia Woolf. Moments of Being. Ed. Jeanne Schulkind. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976: 15-29.

Scott, Clive. “Symbolism, Decadence and Impressionism.” Modernism – A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. London: Penguin Books, 1991: 206-227.

Scott, Peter Dale. “The Social Critic and his Discontents.” The Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot. Ed. A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994: 60-76.

Williamson, George. A Reader’s Guide to T. S. Eliot – A Poem-by-Poem Analysis. New York: The Noonday Press, 1966.

Zach, Natan. “Imagism and Vorticism.” Modernism – A Guide to European Literature 1890-1930. Ed. Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. London: Penguin Books, 1991: 228-242.