Реферат: Английская литература (представители)

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;letter-spacing:1.0pt">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Daniel Defoe

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1660-1731) was ajournalist, and that fact itself draws him to our own time. The development ofthe newspaper and the periodical is an interesting literary sideline of theseventeenth century. The Civil War undoubtedly stimulated a public appetite forup-to-the-minute news (such news then was vital) and the Restoration period,with its interest in men and affairs, its information services in the coffee­houses,was developing that wider interest in news — home and foreign — which is soalive today. Defoe is, in many ways, the father of the modern periodical,purveying opinion more than news, and The Review, which he founded in1704, is the progenitor of a long line of 'well-informed' magazines. Defoe didnot see himself primarily as a literary artist: he had things to say to thepublic, and he said them as clearly as he could, with­out troubling to polishand revise. There are no stylistic tricks in his writings, no airs and graces,but there is the flavour of colloquial speech, a 'no-nonsense', down-to-earthsimplicity. He was — like Swift — capable of irony, however, and his ShortestWay with the Dissenters states gravely that those who do not belong to theChurch of England should be hanged. (Defoe himself was a Dissenter, of course.)This pamphlet was taken seriously by many, but, when the authorities discoveredthey had been having their legs pulled, they put Defoe into prison.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Themost interesting of Defoe's 'documentary' works is the journal of the PlagueYear (one gets the impression that Defoe was actually present in Londonduring that disastrous time, seriously taking notes, but a glance at his dateswill show that this was impossible). But his memory is revered still primarilyfor his novels, written late in life: Robinson Crusoe,Moll Flanders, Roxana,and others. The intention of these works is that the reader should regardthem as true, not as fictions, and so Defoe de­liberately avoids all art, allfine writing, so that the reader should con­centrate only on a series ofplausible events, thinking: 'This isn't a story­book, this is autobiography.'Defoe keeps up the straight-faced pretence admirably. In Moll Flanders weseem to be reading the real life-story of a ' bad woman', written in the styleappropriate to her. In Robinson Crusoe, whose appeal to the young cannever die, the fascination lies in the bald statement of facts which are quiteconvincing-even though Defoe never had the experience of being cast away on adesert island and having to fend for himself. The magic of this novel neverpalls: frequently in England a musical comedy version of it holds the stageduring the after-Christmas 'pantomime season'.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black; letter-spacing:1.0pt">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">  

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> The greatest prose-writer of the firstpart-perhaps the whole-of the century is <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Jonathan Swift<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1667-1745). A greathumorist and a savage satirist, his meat is sometimes too powerful even for ahealthy stomach. He is capable of pure fun-as in some of his poems-and evenschoolboy jokes, but there is a core of bitterness in him which revealed itselffinally as a mad hatred of mankind. On his own admission, he loved Tom,Dick,and Harry, but hated the animal, Man. Yet he strove to do good for hisfellow-men, especially the poor of Dublin, where he was Dean of St. Patrick's.The Drapier's Letters were a series of attacks on abuses of the currency,and the Government heeded his sharp shafts. The monopoly of minting coppermoney, which had been given to a man called Wood, was withdrawn, and Swiftbecame a hero. In his Modest Proposal he ironically suggested thatfamine in Ireland could be eased by cannibalism, and that the starving childrenshould be used as food. Some fools took this seriously. His greatest books are ATale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels. The first of these is a satireon the two main non-conformist religions- Catholicism and Presbyterianism.Swift tells the story of three brothers-Jack (Calvin), Martin (Luther), andPeter (St.)-and what they do with their inheritance (the Christian religion).The story is farcical and at times wildly funny, but people of his day couldperhaps be forgiven if they found blasphemy in it. It certainly shocked QueenAnne so much that she would not allow Swift to be made a bishop, and thiscontributed to Swift's inner frustration and bitterness. Gulliver's Travels hidesmuch of its satire so cleverly that children still read it as a fairy story. Itstarts off by making fun of mankind (and especially England and Englishpolitics) in a quite gentle way: Gulliver sees in Lilliput a shrunken humanrace, and its concerns-so important to Lilliput-become shrunken accord­ingly.But in the second part, in the land of the giants, where tiny Gulliver seeshuman deformities magnified to a feverous pitch, we have some­thing of this madhorror of the human body which obsesses Swift. (According to Dr. Johnson, Swiftwashed himself excessively-'with Oriental scrupulosity'-but his terror of dirtand shame at the body's functions never disappeared.) In the fourth part of thebook, where the Houyhnhnms-horses with rational souls and the highest moralinstincts-are contrasted with the filthy, depraved Yahoos, who are really humanbeings, Swift's hatred of man reaches its climax. Nothing is more power­ful orhorrible than the moment when Gulliver reaches home and cannot bear the touchof his wife-her smell is the smell of a Yahoo and makes him want to vomit.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Swift is a very greatliterary artist, and perhaps only in the present cen­tury is his full staturebeing revealed. He is skilful in verse, as well as in prose, and his influencecontinues: James Joyce-in his The Holy Office-has written Swiftianverse; Aldous Huxley (in Ape and Essence} and George Orwell (in AnimalFarm) have produced satires which are really an act of homage to Swift'sgenius. Yet Gulliver's Travels stands supreme: a fairy story forchildren, a serious work for men, it has never lost either its allure or itstopicality.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The first part of thecentury is also notable for a number of

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">philoso­phical<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> and <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">religious<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> works<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> which reflect thenew 'rational' spirit. The Deists (powerful in France as well as in England)try to strip Christianity of its mysteries and to establish an almost Islamicconception of God- a God in whom the Persons of the Christian Trinity shallhave no part -and to maintain that this conception is the product of reason,not of faith. On the other hand, there were Christian writers like William Law(1686-1761) and Isaac Watts (1674-1748) who, the first in prose, the second insimple pious verse, tried successfully to stress the importance of pure faith,even of mysticism, in religion. The religious revival which was to be initiatedby John Wesley (1703-91) owes a good deal to this spirit, which kept itselfalive despite the temptations of 'rationalism'. Joseph Butler (1692-1752) usedreason, not to advance the doctrine of Deism, but to affirm the truths ofestablished Christianity. His Analogy of Religion is a powerfully arguedbook. The most important philosopher of the early part of the century is BishopBerkeley (1685-175 3), whose con­clusions may be stated briefly: he did notbelieve that matter had any real existence apart from mind. A tree existsbecause we see it, and if we are not there to see it, God is always there.Things ultimately exist in the mind of God, not of themselves. He was answeredlater by David Hume (1711-76), the Scots philosopher, who could not accept thenotion of a divine system enclosing everything. He could see little system inthe uni­verse: he begins and ends with human nature, which links together aseries of impressions, gained by the senses, by means of 'association'. We makesystems according to our needs, but there is no system which really exists inan absolute sense. There is no ultimate truth, and even God is an idea that manhas developed for his own needs. This is a closely argued kind of scepticalphilosophy, very different from Berkeley's some­what mystical acceptance ofreality's being the content of the ' Mind of God'.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">The novel develops,after the death of Defoe, with

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Samuel Richardson<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> (1689-1761), aprofessional printer who took to novel-writing when he was fifty. Richardsonliked to help young women with the composition of their love-letters, and wasasked by a publisher to •write a volume of model letters for use on variousoccasions. He was inspired to write a novel in the form of a series of letters,a novel which should implant a moral lesson in the minds of its readers (hethought of these readers primarily as women). This novel was Pamela, orVirtue Rewarded, which describes the assaults made on the honour of avirtuous housemaid by an unscrupulous young man. Pamela resists, clingingtightly to her code of honour, and her reward is, ultimately, marriage to herwould-be se­ducer, a man who, despite his brutishness, has always secretlyattracted her. It is a strange sort of reward, and a strange basis formarriage, ac­cording to our modern view, but this moral persists in cheapnovelettes and magazines even today-a girl makes herself inaccessible beforemarriage, and the man who has tried to seduce her, weary of lack of suc­cess,at last accepts her terms. Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe is about ayoung lady of wealth and beauty, virtue and innocence, who, in order to avoid amarriage which her parents are trying to arrange, seeks help from Lovelace, ahandsome but, again, unscrupulous young man. Lovelace seduces her. Repentant,he asks her to marry him, but she will not: in­stead, worn out by shame, shedies, leaving Lovelace to his remorse. This is a more remarkable novel than itsounds: close analysis of character, perhaps for the first time in the historyof the novel, looks forward to the great French novelists, Flaubert andStendhal, and Lovelace has a com­plexity of make-up hardly to be expected inthe literature of the age. Sir Charles Grandison is Richardson's thirdnovel: its hero, full of the highest virtues, wondering which woman duty shouldcompel him to marry, is anaemic and priggish. (A hero should have something ofthe devil in him.) This novel is far inferior to the other two.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Thegreatest novelist of the century is

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Henry Fielding<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1707-54). He startedhis novel-writing career, like Richardson, almost by accident. Moved to write aparody of Pamela, he found his Joseph Andrews develop­ing intosomething far bigger than a mere skit. Joseph, dismissed from service becausehe will not allow his employer, Lady Booby, to make love to him, takes the roadto the village where his sweetheart lives, meets the tremendous ParsonAdams-who then becomes virtually the hero of the book-and has many strangeadventures on the road, meeting rogues, vagabonds, tricksters of all kinds, buteventually reaching his goal and happiness ever after. With Fielding one isinclined to use the term picaresque (from the Spanish picaro, meaning'rogue'), a term originally applicable only to novels in which the leadingcharacter is a rogue (such as the popular Gil Blas by Le Sage, publishedbetween 1715 and 1755). It is a term which lends itself to description of allnovels in which the bulk of the action takes place on the road, on a journey,and in which eccentric and low-life characters appear. Don Quixote is,in some ways, picaresque; so is Priestley's The Good Companions. Fielding'sJonathan Wild is truly-picaresque, with its boastful, vicious hero whoextols the 'greatness' of his every act of villainy (his standards ofcomparison are, cynically, pro­vided by the so-called virtuous actions of greatmen) until he meets his end on the gallows or 'tree of glory'. Tom JonesK Fielding'smasterpiece. It has its picaresque elements-the theme of the journey occupiesthe greater part of the book-but it would be more accurate to describe it as amock-epic. It has the bulk and largeness of conception we expect from an epic,and its style sometimes parodies Homer:<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> ‘Hushedbe every ruder breath. May the heathen ruler of the winds confine in ironchains the boisterous limbs of noisy Boreas, and the sharp-pointed nose ofbitter-biting Eurus. Do thou, sweet Zephyrus, rising from thy fragrant bed,mount the western sky, and lead on those delicious gales, the charms of whichcall forth the lovely Flora from her chamber, perfumed with pearly dews.. .’

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Scott

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">'<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">s themes arehistorical. They deal with European history-some­times French, as mQuentinDurward, but more often English or Scottish. The novels about Scotland'spast include Waverley, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, TheBride of Lammermoor; England in the time of the Tudors and Stuarts is thetheme of The Fortunes of Nigel, Kenilworth, Peveril of the Peak, and soon. What interests him most are the great political and religious conflicts ofthe past-the Puritans and the Jacobites (the followers of the exiled Stuarts)fascinate him especially, and against a big tapestry of historical events hetells his stories of personal hate, of revenge, of love, of the hard lives ofthe common people and their earthy humour. Scott has a scholar's approach tohistory: he is accurate and, for the most part, unbiased. His Toryism led himto choose periods when the old values flourished-chivalry, honour, courtly man­ners,fealty to the king-and this affects his attitude to his invented characters:the women are often too good to be true, the men too honour­able or chivalrous.His style is not distinguished, and his dialogue some­times absurdly stilted.Here is an example from The Talisman. (The English are fighting theSaracens; it is the age of King Richard the Lion-hearted)-<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> 'My watch hath neither been vigilant, safe norhonourable,' said Sir Kenneth. 'The banner of England has been carried off.'

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">'And thou alive totell it?' said Richard in a tone of derisive incredulity. ' Away, it cannot be.There is not even a scratch on thy face. Why dost thou stand thus mute? Speakthe truth-it is ill jesting with a king-yet I will for­give thee if thou hastlied.'

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">'Lied, Sir King!' returned the unfortunate knight, with fierce emphasis, and oneglance of fire in his eye, bright and transient as the flash from the cold andstony flint. 'But this also must be endured-1 have spoken the truth.' 'By Godand by St. George!' said the King-[and so on].

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Thiskind of prose became a standard for writers of historical novels. The 'out onthee, false varlet' and 'speakest thou so, sirrah?' which we now cannot takevery seriously, derive from Scott. It is only fair to say that Scott has evennow many ardent admirers, especially among people who love Scottish scenery.But his reputation generally is not what it was.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Thereputation of

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Jane Austen<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> (1775-1817), on theother hand, has never been higher. She has not dated: her novels have afreshness and humour sadly lacking in Scott, a delicacy we can appreciate morethan his 'big bow-wow style'. The first important woman novelist, she standsabove both the classical and romantic movements; in a sense she bridges the gapbetween the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but she can be<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">assigned to nogroup-she is unique. In her novels-Sense and Sensibility, Pride andPrejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbej, and Per­suasion-sheattempts no more than to show a small corner of English society as it was inher day-the sedate little world of the moderately well-to-do county families.This world provides her with all her material; the great historical movementsrumbling outside mean little to her, and the Napoleonic Wars are hardlymentioned. Jane Austen's primary inter­est is people, not ideas, and herachievement lies in the meticulously exact presentation of human situations,the delineation of characters who are really living creatures, with faults andvirtues mixed as they are in real life. Her plots are straightforward; there islittle action. In this, and in her preoccupation with character as opposed to 'types' (the static hero and heroine and villain, beloved of Victoriannovelists) she shows herself closer to our own day than any other novelist ofthe period. She has humour and is the creator of a gallery of richly and subtlycomic portraits -Mr. Woodhousein Emma, Mrs. Bennet in PrideandPrejudice,Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion, to mention but a few. Her proseflows easily and naturally, and her dialogue is admirably true to life. She isnot afraid of 'wasting words' in the interests of naturalistic dialogue, butshe can also write very concisely when she wishes. A good example of her stylecan be found at the end of Persuasion (perhaps her best novel):

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Anne was tendernessitself, and she had the full worth of it in Captain Went-worth's affection. Hisprofession was all that could ever make her friends wish that tenderness less;the dread of a future war all that could dim her sun­shine. She gloried inbeing a sailor's wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging tothat profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domesticvirtues than in its national importance.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Everybody is aware ofthe faults of

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Dickens<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">-his inability toconstruct a convincing plot, his clumsy and sometimes ungrammatical prose, hissentimentality, his lack of real characters in the Shakespearian sense- but heis read still, while more finished artists are neglected. The secret of hispopularity lies in an immense vitality, comparable to Shakespeare's, whichswirls round his creations and creates a special Dickensian world which, if itdoes not resemble the real world, at least has its own logic and laws and itsown special atmosphere. Dickens is a master of the grotesque (he is, as T. S.Eliot points out, in the direct line of Marlowe and Ben Jonson) and hischaracters are really ' humours'-exaggerations of one human quality to thepoint of caricature. Mr. Micawber is per­sonified optimism, Uriah Heep merecreeping hypocrisy, Mr. Squeers a monster of ignorance and tyranny-they aregrotesques, not human beings at all. In a sense, Dickens's world is mad-most ofhis characters have single obsessions which appear in practically everythingthey say or do, and many of them can be identified by catch-phrases like 'Barkis is willin" or tricks of speech such as Mr. Jingle's clipped'telegraphese' and Sam Weller's confusion of 'v' and ' w'. (The heroes andheroines are, in comparison with the full-blooded comic monsters, anaemic, con­ventional,and dull.) The world created by Dickens is mainly a kind ofnightmare London ofchop-houses, prisons, lawyers' offices, and taverns, dark, foggy, and cold, butvery much alive. Dickens's novels are all ani­mated by a sense of injustice andpersonal wrong; he is concerned with the problems of crime and poverty, but hedoes not seem to believe that matters can be improved by legislation or reformmovements-every­thing depends on the individual, particularly the wealthyphilanthropist<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(Pickwick or the Cheeryble brothers). If he has adoctrine, it is one of love.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Dickensis unlearned, his style grotesque, inelegant. But he has a lively ear for therhythms of the speech of the uneducated, and he is not afraid of eithervulgarity or sentimentality. It is his complete lack of restraint which makesfor such an atmosphere of bursting vitality and for a warmheartedness that canrun to an embarrassing tearfulness, as in the description of Little Nell'sdeath in The Old Curiosity Shop. His novels fall roughly into groups.Starting with Pickwick Papers, a picaresque masterpiece in which plotdoes not matter, but everything depends on humorous types and on grotesqueincidents (and, incidentally, on a large appetite for convivial fun, as in thepicnic and Christmas scenes), Dickens moved towards historical novels-BarnabyRudge and A Tale of Two Cities. He also concentrated on the socialconditions of his own day, as in Oliver Twist and Hard Times (anattack on the Utilitarians), and presented, in A Christmas Carol, hisview of man's duty to man-Scrooge, the miser, miraculously becomes aphilanthropist; Christmas symbolises the only way in which the world can beimproved-by the exercise of charity. David Copperfield isautobiographical in its essence, and, in its long parade of grotesques, it canbe associated with Nicholas Nickleby. Perhaps the finest of the novelsis Great Expectations, a long but tightly-knit work, moving, withsomething like penetration of character, and full of ad­mirably conceived scenes.It is in this book that Dickens reveals, at its finest, his understanding ofthe mind of the child, his sympathy with its fantasies and its inability tounderstand the grown-up world. In some ways, Dickens remained a child: it isthe weird wonderland of ogres and fairies that one finds perpetually recurringin his books.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Thisis a convenient place to mention briefly two Victorian writers who frankly,without any disguise, explored the world of fantasy for the benefit of childrenbut were perhaps themselves more at home in that world than in VictorianUtilitarian England. These writers are very widely read-

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Lewis Carroll<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">, pseudonym ofCharles Dodgson (1832-98), and Edward Lear (1812-88). CarrolPs Alice'sAdventures in Wonderland and Through the Booking-Glass have a madDickensian flavour with a curious undercurrent of logic (Dodgson was amathematician); Lear's nonsense rhymes are also mad, but far less mad than someof the works of the sane writers. Carroll and Lear are among the literaryriches of the Victorian era; they may well be read when Carlyle and Ruskin arefor­gotten.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">      It is customary to group with Dickens anovelist who does not re­semble him in the slightest-

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">William MakepeaceThackeray<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN-US"> (1811-63). Dickens wrote of low life and was a warm-blooded romantic;Thackeray wrote of the upper classes and was anti-romantic. Thackeray startedhis career as a satirist, and wrote many humorous articles for the comic weeklyPunch, also a couple of curious works-The Book of Snobs and the YellowplushPapers-which made fun of the pretensions of the upper-classes and theirworshippers in the middle-classes-and then wrote a novel in the manner ofFielding-The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which, like Fielding's JonathanWild, makes a rogue complacently recount his wicked exploits as if theywere thoroughly moral and lawful. Vanity Fair is still his most-readwork: it tells of the careers of two girls with sharply con­trastedcharacters-Becky Sharp, unscrupulous and clever; Amelia Sedley, pretty, moralbut unintelligent-and draws clever-wickedly clever-portraits of officers andgentlemen of the time of Waterloo. His historical novels, such as Esmond andThe Virginians, are very different in technique from those of Scott. Thefirst tells, in autobiographical form, of a man who lives through the age ofQueen Anne and of the Georges who follow, and it shows a remarkable knowledgeof the literature and life of the eighteenth century. In many ways, Thackerayis closer to the Age of Reason than to his own times. But his book forchildren-The Rose and the King-is one of the best-loved of all Victorianfantasies, and a certain tenderness that Thackeray hides in such works as VanityFair appears in The Neivcomes, with its portrait of the gentlechildlike old Colonel. His deathbed scene should be contrasted with LittleNell's:' He, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to hisname, and stood in the presence of the Master.' Capable of tenderness, butnever of sentimentality, Thackeray is in many ways the superior of Dickens, buthe lacks that strange, mad glamour that Dickens shares with Shakespeare.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> Meanwhile, in the isolation of a Yorkshirevicarage, three sisters, none of them destined to live long, were writingnovels and poems.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing: 1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Charlotte Bronte<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1816-55), whoadmired Thackeray, dedicated her most un-Thackerayan novel, Jane Eyre, tohim. Here, in this story of the governess who falls in love with her master,himself married to a madwoman, we have a passion not to be found in eitherThackeray or Dickens, a genuine love-story of great realism, full of sharpobservation and not without wit. This story, with its frank love-scenes, wassomething of a bombshell. Charlotte Bronte's The Professor, laterre-written-with some quite radical changes-as Villette, tells of her ownexperiences as a teacher in Brussels, and Shir ley is concerned withindustrial Yorkshire, jane Eyre, one of the really significant Victoriannovels, remains her masterpiece. Emily Bronte (1818-48) had, if anything, amore remarkable talent than her sister. Her poems are vital and original, andher novel Wuthering Heights is the very heart and soul of the romanticspirit, with its story of wild passion set against the Yorkshire moors. AnneBronte (1820-49), with her Agnes Grey and The Tenant ofWildfellHall, isperhaps best remembered now because of her sisters: her talent is smaller thantheirs.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Other novelistsincluded

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Mrs. Gaskell<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing: 1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> (1810-65), <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Charles Kingsley<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> (1819-75), <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Charles Reade<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> (1814-84), and <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Wilkie Collins<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1825-89). The firstthree are much concerned with social reform. Mrs. Gaskell, most<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> readfor Cranford, a study of life in a small provincial town, also wrote MaryBarton and ILuth, full of pity for the down-trodden dwellers infactory towns, the working-class exploited by profit-seeking capitalists.Kingsley preaches a kind of Christian Communism in Alton Eocke and Yeast,but turns to the Elizabethan past in Westward Ho! and to the worldof the Vikings in Henward the Wake. The Water Rabies, a story of alittle chimney sweep -who runs away from his master and, falling into a river,learns of the under-water world, is a charming fantasy still read. Readeattacked such social abuses as the state of the prisons and the lunatic asylumsin It is Never Too Late to Mend and Hard Cash, but his story ofthe late Middle Ages, The Cloister and the Hearth, keeps his name alive.Wilkie Collins is, at present, enjoying a revival of interest with his Womanin White and The Moonstone. He is the first great British writer ofmystery-stories, and to a gift of maintaining suspense, terror, and a credibleplot he adds a clear prose-style which is quite individual.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">AnthonyTrollope

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN-US"> (1815-88) invented a county called Barset and a town called Barchester,and, in novel after novel (The Warden, Earchester Towers, Dr. Thorne,Framlej Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, and The Last Chronicleof Barsef) he paints life in a provincial cathedral town atmosphere, withhumour and without passion. His work is a little too lacking in warmth for somepeople, but he has still many devotees. Trollope, who worked in the GeneralPost Office and was busy there, was only able to write by forcing on himself amechanical routine-so many pages per day, no rest between finishing one bookand starting another. This perhaps explains a lack of inspiration in hisnovels; but, in good, plain, undistinguished prose, he builds up his own world,and this world has a remote charm.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Shaw

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">had many things tosay, all of them important, but he should not be regarded as a mere preacher whoused the stage as a platform. Being an Irishman like Wilde and Sheridan, he hada native gift of eloquence and wit, and — much helped by his interest in music- a sharp ear for the tones and rhythms of contemporary speech. For the 'well-made ' play he had little use: he constructed his dramas on rules of hisown, some of them most irregular, but he knew that, whatever tricks he played,his ability to hold the audience's attention through sheer words wouldcarry him through. Thus, Getting Married is written in one huge act,lasting over two hours; Back to Methuselah lasts for five nights; Manand Superman shifts the main characters to a mythological plane right inthe middle of the story, and keeps them there for a long time arguingphilosophically. Shaw deliberately uses anachronism, making Cain in the Gardenof Eden quote Tennyson, and Cleopatra speak in the words of Shelley; earlyChristians sing a hymn by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and Queen Elizabeth I use a lineof Lady Macbeth's long before Shakespeare wrote it. Strict realism is notnecessary to Shaw's purpose: speech can be, at one moment, colloquial, and, atanother, biblical; history can be distorted and pro­bability ignored — it doesnot matter in the least. Shaw was a disciple of Samuel Butler, but of otherphilosophers as well. His doctrine of the Superman comes from Germany — Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)-and his theory of Creative Evolution owes some­thingto Henri Bergson (1859-1941). But he had his own views on practicallyeverything. Generally, the aim in his early plays is to make audiences (andreaders) examine their consciences and overhaul their conventional beliefs.Thus, he attacks those people who derive their rents from slums in Widowers'Houses, faces the question of prostitution in Mrs. Warren's Profession, subjectsthe medical profession to critical scrutiny in The Doctor's Dilemma, anddeflates the glory of war in Arms and the Man. He turns the conventionalassumptions of English society upside-down, so that woman becomes the strongersex and man the weaker, man the dreamer, woman the realist, woman the pursuer,man the pursued. This is an important idea in Shaw, and is the basis of Manand Superman. Shaw conceives of a great creative will in the universe,which is endeavouring to produce higher and higher forms of life (CreativeEvolution). As woman has the greater part to play in the making of new life, itfollows that, perhaps quite unconsciously, she will look for a man in whom thegerms of human superiority lie, pursue him, mate him, and help forward theevolution of the Superman. The power oiwill is also the theme of Backto Methuselah which, in five separate plays, whose action starts with Adamand Eve and ends in the remotest possible future, presents the thesis that onlyby living longer can man become wiser; longevity is a matter of will: as Adamand Eve willed individual death but immortality for the race, so we can willindividual immortality.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;letter-spacing:1.0pt; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Shawwas fascinated by ideas of all kinds, and he used his outstanding dramaticskill to publicise all sorts of notions-from the importance of the science ofphonetics (Pygmalion) to the 'Protestantism' of Joan of Arc (St.Joan). He attacked everything (being a born rebel) but, strangely, he neverlays a finger on the Christian religion-the Church, yes, but belief, no. Shawwas a great rationalist, very like the Frenchman Voltaire, but there was a deepcore of mysticism in him. At times he sounds like an Old Testament prophet, andhis finest speeches (as of Lilith at the end of Back to Methuselah) arein the great tradition of English biblical prose. Finally, his work will endurefor its dramatic coherence, its wit, its com­mon sense, and a literary giftwhich prevented him from ever writing a dull line.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Hedonismwas the thesis of some of

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing: 1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Oscar Wilde's<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> witty essays, asalso of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde (1856-1900) seems,in the latter book, however, to be concerned with showing the dangers of askingfor too much from life. The beautiful Dorian Gray-Faustus-like -wishes that heshould remain eternally young and handsome, while his picture, painted in thefinest flush of his beauty, should grow old in his stead. The wish is granted:Dorian remains ever-young, but his portrait shows signs of ever-increasing ageand, moreover, the scars of the crimes attendant on asking for too much (amurder, the ruining of many women, unnameable debauchery). Dorian, repentant,tries to destroy his portrait, symbolically quelling his sins, but-magically-itis he himself who dies, monstrous with age and ugliness, and his portrait thatreverts to its former perfection of youthful beauty. The sense of guilt-as muchmediaeval as Victorian — intrudes into Wilde's bright godless world un­expectedly,and this book prepares us for those later works of his- written under theshadow and shame of his prison-sentence-which lack the old wit and contain asombre seriousness-The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Another substitutefor religion was Imperialism (with undertones of Freemasonry), and

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Rudyard Kipling<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> (1865-1936) was thegreat singer of Empire. Born in India, Kipling knew the British Empire from theinside, not merely, like so many stay-at-home newspaper-readers, as a series ofred splashes on the map of the world. This concern with Empire expres­sesitself in many forms-the sympathy with the soldiers who fought the frontierwars, kept peace in the Empire, did glorious work for a mere pittance and thereward of civilian contempt; the stress on the white man's responsibility tohis brothers who, despite difference of colour and creed, acknowledged the sameQueen; the value of an Empire as the creator of a new, richcivilisation. Kipling's reputation as a poet has always been precarious amongthe 'intellectuals': they have looked askance at his mixture of soldier's slangand biblical idiom, his jaunty rhythms and 'open-air' subjects. RecentlyKipling was rehabilitated by T. S. Eliot, in his long essay prefacing hisselection of Kipling's verse, and George Orwell has said, in an essay on Eliot'sessay, valuable things which put Kipling firmly in his place: he is not a greatpoet, but he sums up for all time a certain phase in English history; he hasthe gift of stating the obvious-not, as with Pope, for the men of reason andlearning, but for the man in the street-with pithy memorableness. He is a poetwho knows the East, and certain lines of his (as in The Road to Manda/aj) evokethe sun and the palm-trees, and the oriental nostalgia of many a repatri­atedEnglishman, with real power. As a prose-writer, Kipling is known for one novel (Kirn)and a host of excellent short stories, also for a school­boy's classic, Stalkyand Co. He has, in both verse and prose, a vigour and an occasionalvulgarity that are refreshing after men like William Morris, Swinburne, andRossetti.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Theother side of the coin is shown in the poems of writers like

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">John Davidson<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1 8 5 7-1909), <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Ernest Dowson<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1867-1900) and <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">A. E. Housman <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1859-1936), whoexpressed a consistent mood of pessimism. In Hous-man's A Shropshire Lad we.have exquisite classical verse-regular forms, great compression-devoted tothe futility of life, the certainty of death, the certainty of nothing afterdeath. There is a certain Stoicism: the lads of his poems maintain a ' stiffupper lip' despite disappointment in love and their sense of an untrustworthyworld about them. Some of the poems express the beauty of nature in a clipped,restrained way which still suggests a full-blooded Romanticism. But other poetsof the same period sought a new meaning for life in the Catholic faith-FrancisThompson (1859-1907), who, following Coventry Patmore (1823-96),<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">expressedthe everyday from a ' God's eye' point of view (as in the brief In NoStrange Land) but turned to a rich, highly-coloured style in The Houndof Heaven-a mixture of the Romantic and the Metaphysical; and Alice Meynell(1850-1922), who wrote highly individual Christian lyrics.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Pessimism reigned inthe novel.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN-US"> Thomas Hardy<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing: 1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1840-1928) pro­duced a wholeseries of books dedicated to the life of his native Dorset, full of the senseof man's bond with nature and with the past-a past revealed in the age-oldtrees, heaths, fields, and in the prehistoric remains of the Celts, the ruinedcamps of the Romans. In his novels, man never seems to be free: the weight oftime and place presses heavily on him, and, above everything, there aremysterious forces which control his life. Man is a puppet whose strings areworked by fates which are either hostile or indifferent to him. There is nomessage of hope in Tess of the D'Urbervilles (when Tess is finallyhanged we hear: '... And so the President of the Immortals had finished hissport with Tess') nor in The Mayor of Casterbridge or ]ude theObscure. The reception of this last work, with its gloomy ' Curst be theday in which I was born' and its occasional brutal frankness, was so hostilethat Hardy turned from the novel to verse. Today it seems that his stature as apoet is considerable, and that both as poet and novelist he will be remembered.His verse expresses the irony of life-man's thwarted schemes, the need forresignation in the face of a hostile fate-but also he expresses lighter moods,writes charm­ing nature-poems, even love-lyrics. Hardy's skill at depictingnature, his eye for close detail, is eminently apparent in the novels, and itcomes to full flower in the poems. His verse occasionally suffers from a'clotted' quality-consonants cluster together in Anglo-Saxon violence('hill-hid tides throb, throe-on throe')-but this is an aspect of his masculineforce. An ability to produce a verse-composition of epic length was shown in TheDynasts, a vast un-actable drama meant to be presented on the stage of thereader's own imagination, dealing with the Napoleonic Wars as seen from theviewpoint not only of men but of the Immortal Fates, who watch, direct, andcomment.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">A return to optimismis shown in the verse and prose of

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Robert LouisStevenson <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">(1850-94), but it is a rather superficial one, for Stevenson is a rathersuperficial writer. He is at his best in adventure stories which show theinfluence of his fellow-countryman, Walter Scott-Kidnapped, The Master ofBallantrae-and boys' books like Treasure Island, a juvenilemasterpiece. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde deals with the duality of good andevil within the same man, but it is perhaps little more than a well-writtenthriller. The poems, especially those for children, are charming, and theessays, which have little to say, say that little very well. His short storiesare good, and we may note here that the short story was becoming an acceptedform-writers had to learn how to express themselves suc­cinctly, using greatcompression in plot, characterisation, and dialogue_ heralding the approach ofan age less leisurely than the Victorian, with no time for three-volume novels,and demanding its stories in quick mouthfuls.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">A new faith, morecompelling than Pater's hedonism or Kipling's Imperialism, was still needed,and Bernard Shaw and

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing: 1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">H. G. Wells<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> (i 866-1946) foundone in what may be called Liberalism-the belief that man's future lies onearth, not in heaven, and that, with scientific and social progress, an earthlyparadise may eventually be built. Wells is one of the great figures of modernliterature. He owed a lot to Dickens in such novels as Kipps and TheHistory of Mr. Polly-works which borrow Dickens's prose-style, his humour,and his love of eccentrics, and which deal affectionately with workingpeople-but he found themes of his own in the scientific novels. The TimeMachine, The First Men in the Moon, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man,When the Sleeper Awakes, and The Food of the Gods all seem concernednot merely with telling a strange and entertaining story but with showing that,to science, everything is theo­retically possible. The glorification ofscientific discovery leads Wells to think that time and space can easily beconquered, and so we can travel to the moon, or Martians can attack us; we cantravel forward to the future, and back again to the present. The old Newtonianworld, with its fixed dimensions, begins to melt and dissolve in theimaginative stories of Wells: flesh can be made as transparent as glass, humansize can be increased indefinitely, a man can sleep for a couple of centuriesand wake up in the strange Wellsian future; a man can work miracles; anewspaper from the future can be delivered by mistake; a man can lose weightwith­out bulk and drift like a balloon.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Wells sometimesdescribed himself as a 'Utopiographer'. He was always planning worlds in whichscience had achieved its last victories over religion and superstition, inwhich reason reigned, in which every­body was healthy, clean, happy, andenlightened. The Wellsian future

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;letter-spacing:1.0pt; mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> has been, for many years,one of the furnishings of our minds-sky­scrapers, the heavens full of aircraft,men and women dressed something like ancient Greeks, rational conversation overa rational meal of vitamin-pills. To build Utopia, Wells wanted-like Shaw-todestroy all the vestiges of the past which cluttered the modernworld-class-distinction, relics of feudalism, directionless education,unenlightened and self-seeking politicians, economic inequality. In otherwords, both Shaw and Wells wanted a kind of Socialism. Rejecting the doctrineof sin, they believed that man's mistakes and crimes came from stupidity, orfrom an unfavourable environment, and they set to work to blueprint the deviceswhich would put everything right.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Wells,in book after book, tackles the major social problems. In Ann Veronica wehave the theme of woman's new equal status with men; in Joan and Peter educationis examined; in The Soul of a bishop we hear of the new religion of therational age; in The New Machiavelli we have Wells's philosophy ofpolitics. But these works remain novels, charac­terised by a Dickensianrichness of character and not lacking in love-interest. Tono-Bungaj isabout commerce, Mr. Blettsivorthy on Rampole Island a satire on our 'savage' social conventions, The Dream a story of the muddle of twentieth-centurylife as seen from the viewpoint of a thousand years ahead. Wells was a prolificwriter and, when he kept to a story, always an interesting one. His preachingis now a little out of date, and his very hope for the future, rudely shatteredby the Second World War, turned to a kind of wild despair: mankind would haveto be super­seded by some new species, Homo Sapiens had had his day; 'You fools,' he said in the preface to a reprint made just before his death,'you damned fools.' Optimistic Liberalism died with him.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">JohnGalsworthy

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt; mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing: 1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1867-1933) is best known for his ForsyteSaga, a series of six novels which trace the story of a typically Englishupper-class family from Victorian days to the nineteen-twenties-presentingtheir reactions to great events which, in effect, spell the doom of all theystand for, including World War I, the growth of Socialism, the General Strikeof 1926. Galsworthy had shown himself, in his early The Island Pharisees, tobe critical of the old standards-the philistinism, decadence, dullness, atrophyof feeling which characterised the so-called 'ruling class'. The ForsyteSaga, in trying to view this dying class dispassionately -with occasionalirony-nevertheless seems to develop a sympathy for the hero of The Man of Property,Soames Forsyte, the epitome of the money-seeking class which Galsworthy issupposed to detest. Gals­worthy, in fact, is himself drawn into the family ofForsytes, becomes in­volved with its fortunes, and what starts off as a work ofsocial criticism ends in acceptance of the very principles it attacks. Thiswork is still widely read, though it is not greatly esteemed by the moderncritics. It came into its own as a television serial in the 19605.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">In1922 there appeared an important work in prose which (inevitably sometimessounds like verse. This was Ulysses, by the Irishman

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">James Joyce<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> (1882-1941), a novelof enormous length dealing with the event of a single day in the life of asingle town-the author's native Dublin Joyce had previously published somecharming but not outstandin| verse, a volume of short stories called Dubliners,and a striking auto biographical novel-Portrait of the Artist as a YoungMan. The hero o this novel-Stephen Dedalus-appears again in Ulysses, thistime sub ordinated in a secondary role: the hero is a Hungarian Jew,long-settlec in Dublin, called Leopold Bloom. The novel has no real plot. Likethi Greek hero whose name provides the title, Bloom wanders from place tcplace, but has very un-heroic adventures, and finally meets Stephen, whc thentakes on the role of a sort of spiritual son. After this the book ends But theeight hundred pages are not filled with padding; never was; novel written inconciser prose. We are allowed to enter the minds of thi chief characters, arepresented with their thoughts and feelings in a con tinuous stream (thetechnique is called 'interior monologue'). The bool is mostly a never-endingstream of Bloom's half-articulate impression of the day, but Joyce prevents thebook from being nothing but that, b; imposing on it a very rigid form. Eachchapter corresponds to an episodi in Homer's Odyssey and has a distinctstyle of its own; for instance, in thi Maternity Hospital scene the proseimitates all the English literary style from Beowulf to Carlyle andbeyond, symbolising the growth of the foetu in the womb in its steady movementthrough time. The skill of the bool is amazing, and when we pick up a novel byArnold Bennett or Hugh Walpole after reading Ulysses we find it hard tobe impressed by ways of writing which seem dull, unaware, half-asleep. Ulyssesis the most care­fully-written novel of the twentieth century.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">InFinnegans Wake Joyce tried to present the whole of human history as adream in the mind of a Dublin inn-keeper called H. C. Earwicker, and here thestyle-on which Joyce, going blind, expended immense labour-is appropriate todream, the language shifting and changing, words becoming glued together,suggesting the merging of images in a dream, and enabling Joyce to presenthistory and myth as a single image, with all the characters of history becominga few eternal types, finally identified by Earwicker with himself, his wife,and three children. This great and difficult work probably marks the limit ofexperiment in lan­guage-it would be hard for any writer to go farther thanJoyce. In both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake Joyce shows himself tohave found a positive creed: man must believe in the City (symbolised byDublin), the human society which must change, being human, but which willalways change in a circular fashion. Time goes round, the river flows into thesea, but the source of the river is perpetually refreshed by rain from the sea:nothing can be destroyed, life is always renewed, even if the 'etym' 'abnihilises'us. The end of Ulysses is a triumphant 'Yes'; the end of FinnegansWake is the beginning of a sentence whose continuation starts the book.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Onereaction against the Liberalism of Wells and Shaw was to be found in thenovels and poems of the Englishman

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">David Herbert Law­rence<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1885-1930), who ineffect rejected civilisation and, like Blake, wanted men to go back to the'natural world' of instinct. Lawrence's novels-Sons and Lovers, The PlumedSerpent, Aaron's Kod, and Lady Chat-terley's Lover, to mention afew-are much concerned with the relation­ship between man and woman, and heseems to regard this relationship as the great source of vitality andintegration (Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned until 1960 because ittoo frankly glorified physical love). Law­rence will have nothing of science:instinct is more important; even re­ligions are too rational, and, if man wantsa faith, he must worship the 'dark gods' of primitive peoples. Nobody has everpresented human passion, man's relationship to nature, the sense of thepresence of life in all things, like Lawrence. His poems, which express withintimate know­ledge the 'essences' of natural phenomena and of the humaninstincts, are also capable of bitter satire on the 'dehumanisation' of man inthe twentieth century.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;letter-spacing:1.0pt; mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Somenovelists found their subject matter in modern political ideol­ogies, and oneof the most important of these -was

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">George Orwell<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1904-50), whoseearly works expressed pungently a profound dissatis­faction with the economicinequalities, the hypocrisies, the social anach­ronisms of English life in thenineteen-thirties, but whose last and finest novels attack the Socialistpanaceas which, earlier, seemed so attractive. Orwell was a born radical,champion of the small man who is 'pushed around' by bosses of alldenominations, and something of Swift's 'savage indignation' as well as hishumanitarianism is to be found in Animal Farm and NineteenEighty-Four. The former is a parable of the re­action which supervenes onall high-minded revolutions: the animals take over the farm on which they havebeen exploited for the selfish ends of the farmer, but gradually thepigs-ostensibly in the name of demo­cracy-create a dictatorship over the otheranimals far worse than any­thing known in the days of human management. Thefinal farm-slogan- ' All animals are equal, but some are more equal thanother'-has become one of the bitter catch-phrases of our cynical age. NineteenEighty-Four is a sick man's prophecy of the future (Orwell was dying oftuberculosis when he wrote it) and with its nightmare picture of a totali­tarianworld it has helped to create a new series of myths. The eternal dictator, BigBrother, the concept of 'double-think', the notion of the mutability of thepast-these have become common furniture of our minds.<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Graham Greene

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1904- ), anotherCatholic convert, has been ob­sessed with the problem of good and evil, and hisbooks are a curious compound of theology and stark modern realism. Greene seesthe spiritual struggle of man against a background of 'seedy' town life<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(BrightonRock)

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language: EN-US">or in the Mexican jungle (The Power and the Glory] or in wartimeWest Africa (The Heart of the Matter). In this last work, and also inthe moving The End of the Affair, Greene shows a concern with theparadox of the man or woman who, technically a sinner, is really a saint. Someof his works have conflicted with Catholic orthodoxy (especially in Ireland). TheQuiet American, dealing with the Indo-China War, turns to a moral theme-howfar are good intentions enough? Greene's lighter novels-' Entertainments', ashe calls them-are distinguished by fine construction and admirably terse prose.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">Itis hard to say how far E.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing: 1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">M. Forster<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US"> <span Tahoma",«sans-serif»; color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">(1879-1970) fits intoany pattern. His influence on the construction of the novel has been great, buthe has no real£ message', except about the value of individuallife, the need not to take too seriously out-moded moral shibboleths (A RoomWith a View, which affirms passion rather than control). Howard's Endand Where Angels Fear to Tread are distinguished by very tautconstruction and the creation of suspense through incident-Forster does notthink a plot very important. A Passage to India-perhaps his finestnovel-deals with the East and West duality: can the two really meet? After along analysis of the differences, expressed in terms of a vividly realisedIndia, against which the puppets of English rulers parade, Forster comes to thecon­clusion that they cannot-at least, not yet. Forster's book, Aspects ofthe Novel, is admirable criticism and entertaining reading.

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spacing:1.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-US">VirginiaWoolf

<span Tahoma",«sans-serif»;color:black;letter-spa
еще рефераты
Еще работы по литературе, лингвистике. иностранным языкам