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• Literature of the 40s,50s and 60s
• Angry Young Men
• Theatre of the Absurd
• Postmodern literature
Late 40s and early 50s (writers of the pre- and post-war fiction):
• George Orwell (1903-1950) (Eric Arthur Blair)
• Born in Bengal
• Educated at Eton
• Served in Indian Imperial Police in Burma
• Burmese Days (1934)
• Homage to Catalonia (1938)
• Animal Farm (1945)
• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
• Democratic socialist, deeply disillusioned with Communism
• Animal Farm: Discussion with equality: ”all animals are created equal but some are more equal than others”
• 1984 totalitarianism, Big Brother, the Thought Police, newspeak
• Society dominated by slogans: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery
• Fantasy: post-war fantasy literature is interested in alternative worlds, magic
• John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1873)
• Trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
• The Two Towers (1954)
• The Return of the King (1955)
• Working-class novel:
• Alan Sillitoe (b. 1928)
• Philosophical novel:
• Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) Under the Net, The Unicorn (a parody of the 18th century Gothic novel), The Green Knight
• William Golding (1911-1993)
• Lord of the Flies (1954)
• Innate human aggression, evil, and violence appear especially in extreme situations
• Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
• Born in Persia, brought up in South Rhodesia and in 1949 came to England
• 2007 Nobel Prize
• Anti-rascist, psychological, femnist, experimental, sci-fi
• E.g. A Briefing for a Decsent into Hell (1971)
• Love, Again (1996)
• The Sweetest Dream (2001)
• Laurence Durrell (1912-1990)
• Alexandria Quartet (1957-60) the same events narrated from different points of view (the titles of the separate parts indicate it: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea
• Love, sex, romance, quite scandalous
• Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)
• Irish, self-imposed exile to France
• Writing in French – discipline
• Friend and secretary to Joyce
• Nobel Prize 1969
• Anti-novels – the new novel – nouveau roman
• Against traditional realism
• Subjective, authorial point of view
• Murphy
• Molloy
• Malone Dies
• Experimental novel – novel of the 60s
• Originated with Beckett
• Inspired by John Barth (an American critic and writer)
• ”Literature of Exhaustion” 1967 – v. important – the beginning of postmodernism
• Postmodern fiction
• Intertextuality – Julia Kristeva
• End of omniscient narrator
• Play with the reader
• Theoretical study of the novel
• Victorian archetype
• Historiograpfic metafiction – Linda Hutcheon
• The Angry Young Men
• English society as hypocritical
• Working class and lower middle class
• Domestic realism
• Kitchen sink drama
• John Osborne (1929-1994)
• Look Back in Anger 1956
• Jimmy, a university graduate, sweet stall, wife- upper class – frustration, eruption of frustrations, psychological abuse of his wife
• Shelagh Delaney (b. 1939) kitchen sink realism A Taste of Honey 1958
• The Theatre of the Absurd
• Martin Esslin 1961
• Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot
Fr. 1953, Eng. 1955
• Stream of consciousness• Circular time• No God/ pessimistic vision of God• Immobility• Metaphysical despair and inertia• Lack of communication• Cogito ergo sum replaced by Dico ergo
sum
• Deterioration of civilization
• Language games
• Contemporary human being (devoid of dreams, memory)
• Everyman
• Theater of menace /comedy of menace• Harold Pinter (1930-2008)• Nobel Prize 2005• Menace• Unknown danger• Human isolation• Terror• The Dumb Waiter (1957)• The Birthday Party (1958)