DISCUSSIONS FORWK TWO BRITISH MODERN LITERATURE

1a.Frustration in Look Back in Anger

 

Discuss the theme of frustration in Look Back in Anger?

 

 

2.Theatre of the Angry Young Men

 

Use Look Back in Anger to discuss the concept of Theatre of the Angry Youngmen?

 

 

3.Waiting for Godot

 

Discuss Waiting for Godot as Theatre of the Absurd?

4. The Homecoming

Discuss sexual power in Pinter's The Homecoming?

5. T.S. ELIOT and HARDY

Discuss the theme of collapse in the poetry of T.S. Eliot and Thomas Hardy?

6. Modern literature and society

Discuss violence in the poetry of Yeats and Owen?

 

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7a.ABSURD DRAMA

 

Discuss central themes in modern literature?

PRINT OUT  on the structure of MODERN BRITISH LITERATURE

Forces Behind Modernism

·         The sense that our culture has no center, no values.

·         Paradigm shift

·         from the closed, finite, measurable, cause-and-effect universe of the 19th century to an open, relativistic, changing, strange universe;

Characteristics of Modernism in Literature

·         Literature Exhibits Perspectivism

·         Meaning comes from the individual’s perspective and is thus personalized;

·         A single story might be told from the perspective of several different people, with the assumption that the “truth” is somewhere in the middle

Characteristics of Modernism in Literature

·         Inner psychological reality or “interiority” is represented

·         Stream of consciousness—portraying the character’s inner monologue

2007-06-09-Stream_Of_Consciousness

Characteristic of Modernism in Literature

·         Perception of language changes:

·         No longer seen as transparent, allowing us to “see through” to reality;

·         But now considered the way an individual constructs reality;

·         Language is “thick” with multiple meanings and varied connotative forces.

Characteristic of Modernism in Literature

·         Emphasis on the Experimental

·         Art is artifact rather than reality;

·         Organized non-sequentially

·         Experience portrayed as layered, allusive, discontinuous, using fragmentation and juxtaposition.

·         Ambiguous endings—open endings which are seen as more representative of reality.