The Victorian Age

Name of the era taken from Queen Victoria (1837-1901)

Early Victorian Period (1830s – 1848)
- Decade of Transition – between Romantic and Victorian Age.
- almost all Romantic poets dead or inactive, but still a major inspiration
- Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning as pioneers of the new movement.
- Charles Dickens releases his debut novel “The Pickwick Papers” in 1836

Parliamentary Reforms (Early Victorian Period)

- William Thackeray’s novel “Vanity Fair” satirizes the rotten boroughs
- 1832 – First Reform Bill - extension of the vote to the male lower middle class, abolishment
of rotten boroughs (more equal Parliamentary representation)
- 1867 – Second Reform Bill - expands the vote further - majority could vote
- 1884 – Third Reform Bill – gives the right to vote to the working class

- rapid industrialisation and advancement in technology (the railway)

- 1846 – abolishment of Corn Laws and introduction of free trade
- serious unemployment and poor living conditions lead to numerous riots
- 1834 – The New Poor Law – creation of very harsh work houses for poor people
- Charles Dickens criticizes the system in “Oliver Twist”
- social division into upper class (minority), middle class (growing in power and influence)
and working class
- formation of the Chartist – workers trying to achieve changes through legislation
- victorian literature as a commentary on the society, offering critique and solutions
(“condition of England novel”, as defined by Thomas Carlyle) – importance of compromises
- Dickens - “Oliver Twist”, “Hard Times” – nightmarish landscape of the industrial
town
- Elizabeth Gaskell – “Mary Barton”, “North and South” – emphatic portrayal of the
poor; offers the solution of mutual respect between the workers and factory owners
- Benjamin Disraeli – “Sibyl, or the Two Nations”
- Arthur Hugh Clough - “The Latest Decalogue” – satire of the ten commandments, to expose
the hypocrisy and materialism of the middle class

Middle Victorian Period (1848-1870)

Age of Equipoise
improvement of living conditions and wealth, political stability
- 1851 - The Great Exhibition in Crystal Palace in London – showcase of the latest
achievements
- Thomas Babington Macaulay - History of England – perceives England as the leading nation
of the world

Late Victorian Period (1870-1900)

Increasing instability and concerns
- invention of the modern idea of invention
- Darwin’s theory of evolution causes a religious crisis
- The Age of Umber (Shadow) – describing the lack of faith
- increasing criticism of Victorian morals and institutions (patriarchy)
- victorian literature seen as old-fashioned and moralistic compared to romanticism
- new literature as a combination of Romanticism with the Neoclassical (discarding
the social aspects of victorian literature)
- emerging of feminism, socialism and worker unions (Darwin, Marx, Freud)

Victorian Poetry
- central problems of Victorian poetry:
- what is art and what may its relation to society be?
- what is literature and how does it change over time?
- how do language and representation work?
- what do gender and sexuality mean?
 Alfred Tennyson (1809 – 1892)
- most popular and respected poet of Victorian era
- held the title of Poet Laureate after Wordsworth
- his reputation declined towards the end of the Victorian Era (“corruptor of poetry”)
- spent a lonely childhood as a son of a clergyman
- in 1827 joined The Cambridge Apostles, an intellectual discussion group
- “Poems by Two Brothers” (1827) – debut poetry volume, dismissed as derivative
- “Poems, Chiefly Lyrical” (1830) – a volume that brought him popularity and attention
- “Mariana” – vivid description of the protagonist’s state of mind through scenery
- “Poland” - support of parliamentary reforms
- “Poems” (1832) – released after he quit Cambridge, speaks on role of the artist in society
- “The Palace of Art” – leaving a palace of art for a country cottage
- “The Lady of Shalott” – shows artists as inherently detached from society
- “The Lotus-Eaters” – based on an episode of “The Odyssey”; vivid imagery/mood
(lot of liquid sounds), but poor dramatic skills (too rhetorical style)
- Arthur Henry Hallam advises Tennyson to be more grounded as a poet
- “In Memoriam” (1850) – inspired by Arthur Henry Hallam’s death in 1833
- over 100 poems, can be divided into 3 sections (despair, recovery, hope)
- questions of mortality, life and afterlife (religious crisis caused by science progress)
- caused Tennyson to be appointed as Poet Laureate in 1850
-“Poems“ (1842) – Tennyson follows Hallam’s advice to be more in touch with humanity
- “Break, Break, Break” – sorrow after friend’s death, and desire to overcome it
- “Ulysses” – expression of Victorian ideas of progressiveness
- “The Princess” (1847) – reinforces the patriarchal seperation of gender roles
- “The Charge of the Light Brigade” – dynamism of the battlefield action
- “Maud” (1855) – social commentary in a form of a long monologue; protagonist finds a
remedy for his mental distress by joining the common cause (glorification of Crimean War)
- “Idylls of the King” – cycle of four volumes released between 1859-1888 – attempt to
recreate the story of Arthur as a moral and spiritual allegory for the rise and fall of
civilisation
- with age, Tennyson grew more pessimistic, as evidenced by:
 - “Locksley Hall” (1842) – a man angry but hopeful after being rejected by a woman
- “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After” (1886) – the same speaker much more bitter
- “Crossing the Bar” – Tennyson’s last poem - imminent death represented by a sea voyage
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
- poet, essayist, professor of poetry at Oxford University, literary and social critic
- first two poem books unsuccessful
- most of his poems share a pessimistic, morbid tone (“disease of modern life”)
- “The Scholar-Gypsy” (1853) – a disillusioned Oxford scholar joins the Gypsies
- a preface lays out principles of good poetry (first critic work) – clearness and rigor
- “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” (1855) – inspired by a visit to a monastery,
speaker stuck between two worlds (nostalgia for the past and fear for the future)
- “Dover Beach” (1867) – erosion of religion, anxiety for the future
- more optimistic as a social critic
- “Culture and Anarchy” (1869) – future of humanity relies on culture
- “The Study of Poetry” (1888) – poetry will replace religion as social disciplining force
- truth and “high seriousness” as cornerstones of good literature

The Bronte Sisters

Early Life
- daughters of a clergyman and sermon writer Patrick Bronte from Haworth, Yorkshire

- their mother soon died, leaving Partick with 6 children

- their caretaker Tabitha as an inspiration for the character of Nelly Dean

- Yorkshire moors were a big inspiration for Emily Bronte

- lived an isolated existence, which led them to invent the kingdoms of Angria and Gondor

- they were encouraged to read extensively (Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth and Walter Scott)

- two eldest sisters sent to a school at Cowan Bridge, died from bad conditions, Charlotte and Emily
sent home (model for the law school in “Jane Eyre”)

- “Jane Eyre’ and “Villette” by Charlotte and “Agnes Grey” by Anne inspired by their own struggles

- Charlotte and Emily go to Brussels to learn so they can set up their own school

- Charlotte becomes a teacher and stays in Brussels for a while, Emily goes back home
 Poetry

- all three sisters struggle and fail to open a school in their hometown, decide to make a living by
writing after their brother becomes a drunk

- Charlotte discovers Emily’s poetry and deems them good for publication

- soon the three sisters release a tome “Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell” in 1846

- they used male pseudonyms, wanting to be perceived as authors, not as women

- the tome ends up being a commercial failure, and they decide to write novels

- the 21 poems by Emily show the greatest talent (“To Imagination”)

- loneliness, exile, death, love

- imprisonment, rebellion, longing for liberation

- images of nature; human emotions expressed in terms of natural phenomena

Novels

- books sent in 1847: Emily’s “Wuthering Heights”, Anne’s “Agnus Grey”, Charlotte’s “The Professor”

- only Charlotte’s book is not accepted, which makes her write “Jane Eyre”

- all three sisters achieve success, despite there being doubts that the authors are women

- “Jane Eyre” is the most successful – story of spiritual and emotional development of a woman

- inspired by Charlotte’s experiences of teaching and infatuation

- Anne’s “Agnes Grey” has the most Victorian outlook, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” is more feminist

- a campaign novel for women’s independence (themes of abusive marriage)

- Charlotte finds the novel too shocking and prevents it from being republished after Anne’s
death, contributing to its lesser popularity

- “Wuthering Heights” was the most challenging book of the sisters, and was initially criticised

- in contrast to her sister’s novels, Emily avoids moralising and long expositions

- little attention is devoted to class relations or the outside world

The Brownings & Rosetties

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

- started reading and writing early, with her first poem emerging at 13

- considered for Poet Laureate after William Wordsworth’s death

- her poetry admired by Robert Browning, who she eventually marries against her father’s will
- her early work was influenced by the romantics like Percy Shelley

- “The Cry of the Children” is a response to a parliamentary reform for child labor

- “Casa Guidi Windows” and “Poems for Congress” concern the fight for independence in Italy

- “Aurora Leigh” (1857) - a novel in verse; female Bildungsroman, condemns patriarchy

- held at high esteem in both United States and England, especially admired by Virginia Woolf

- “Sonnets from the Portugese” devoted to her husband Robert

Robert Browning

- his first poem “Pauline” criticised for self-expression, which leads him to adopt personas

- his next poems “Paracelus” and “Sordello” also criticised :(

- switches to theater, and even though he doesn’t succeed there, he discovers dramatic monologue:

- a kind of poem in which a single fictional or historical character other than the poet speaks
to a silent ”audience” – it is the opposite of Elizabeth’s personal approach to poetry

- releases “Dramatic Lyrics” (1842), each poem showcasing a different character

- “My Last Duchess”

- “The Bishop Orders His Tomb…” – a dying bishop instructs his son to build a tomb for him

- “Fra Lippo Lippi” – memoirs of a monastic painter

- “Andrea del Sarto” – a painter reflects on his career and putting up with failure

- ”Mr. Sludge the Medium” – a medium tries to justify his mental tricks being exposed

- “Cleon” and “An Epistle of Karshish” have the form of letters that examine immortality

- his love poems are usually simple and direct (“Love among the Ruins”, “The Last Ride Together”)

- “Two in the Campagna” – explores a lack of communication in a relationship

- “The Ring and the Book” (1868-9) – narrative poem based on a murder case, told from several
angles

- as Robert gained in popularity, his wife’s reputation diminished

- appreciated by modernists for difficult interpretations and fragmentation of perspectives

The Pre-Raphaelite Movement

- Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848): Dante G. Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais

- rejection of the established academic style – natural and realistic paintings

- admiration for medieval painting, before Raphael

- The Germ – poetry and essay magazine (“The Blessed Damosel”)

- artists such as William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown influenced by Brotherhood

- Pre-Raphaelite style:

- simplicity, directness (art should imitate reality)

- bright and vivid colours

- attention to detail

- decorativeness

- favourite subjects: religion, literature,

- romanticised medieval past

William Morris (1834–1896)

- influenced by Pre-Raphaelite Movement

- a painter, poet, author of prose romances, designer, typographer, publisher

- “The Defence of Guenevere” (1858)

- translated Icelandic sagas

- Morris & Co., 1861

- Kelmscott Press, 1891; Kelmscott Chaucer (illustrated by Burne-Jones)

Dante Gabriel Rosetti

- married a paiting model Elizabeth Siddal, who commited suicide because of him cheating

- famous for his paintings of women

- “Poems” (1870) included a sonnet sequence “House of Life” (about spiritual, erotic love)

- criticised for lewdness by Robert Buchanan in The Fleshly School of Poetry

- poetry focused on aesthetics and moods (painting a picture with words) rather than ideas

Christina Rosetti

- lived a quiet life of religious devotion

- known for introspective, melancholic poetry from a female point of view

- themes of unfulfilled love, death and loneliness

- wrote religious (“Up-Hill”) and love poetry (“After Death”) and verses for children

- style - sophisticated metrics, careful use of anaphora, verbal repetition as musical (and thematic)
leitmotiv, oxymoron, paradox, intentional anticlimax, punning
 Charles Dickens
- was a law clerk and parliamentary reporter
- most of his fiction is set in London and explores the working class
- famous for serialisation of his works - publishing them in sections
- novels known for representation of childhood (Oliver Twist, Dombey and Son, David
Copperfield, Great Expectations)
- novels touching on the condition of England, written in realistic, but satirizing manner:
- “Sketches by Boz” (1836) - comedy and satire, observing human mannerisms
- “The Pickwick Papers” - observation of life and travels
- “Oliver Twist” (1837-9)
- “Nicholas Nickleby” (1838-9)
- “The Old Curiosity Shop” (1840-1)
- “Barnaby Rudge” (1841)
- ‘Martin Chuzzlewit” (1843-4)
- “Dombey and Son” (1846-8) - modern business and trade; railway
- “David Copperfield” (1849-50)
- “Bleak House” (1852-3) - satire on law
- “Hard Times” (1854) - industrialisation, utilitarianism
- “Little Dorrit” (1855-7)
- “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859)
- “Great Expectations” (1860-1)
- “Our Mutual Friend” (1864-5)
- “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (unfinished) (1870)
- reporter in magazines such as Master Humphery’s Clock, The Daily News, Household
Words, All the Year Round
- visited prisons and homeless shelters (Urania Cottage)
- died during writing “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”
 Religion & Science
Religious Movements and Denominations
- secularizing tendencies vs. religious revival
- Church of England:
- Broad Church
- High Church (Catholic) - importance of tradition (developed into Anglo Catholicism)
- The Oxford Movement (Tractarianism) - propagated by John Henry Newman
- Low Church (radical form of protestantism)
- Evangelicals (Methodist Revival etc.)

New Perceptions of Science

- Higher Criticism - literary study of the Bible as a literary and historical narrative
- Charles Lyell - “Principles of Geology”
- Alfred Tennyson - “In Memorial 56” speaks about merciless nature
- William Wordsworth - “Tintern Abbey” (“I, so long a worshipper of nature…”)
- Charles Darwin’s discoveries:
- “The Origin of Species” (1859) - natural evolution, no concept of good and evil
- “The Descent of Man” (1871) - man as a part of nature
- Thomas Henry Huxley - concept of agnosticism
- Matthew Arnold - “Dover Beach” - crisis of faith

Thomas Hardy
- architect, poet and novelist
- born in Higher Bockhampton in Dorset
- lost faith as a young man, which is reflected in his works and characters
- critical of institutions and Victorian hypocrisy
- “Hap” - bleak vision of the world; importance of artistic honesty
- “novels of character and environment” - characters as part of landscape
- “Far from the Madding Crowd” (1874)
 - “The Return of the Native” (1878)
- The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)
- The Woodlanders (1887)
- Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) - no justice in the world
- Jude the Obscure (1895)
- a collection of stories: “Life’s Little Ironies” (includes ”On the Western Circuit”)

Victorian Novel & Drama

- novel - the dominant genre in Victorian literature
- writers and readers – mainly middle class
- increasing number of women writers and women readers
- growing audience for novels
- spread of literacy
- lower production costs
- concentrated markets for books in cities; public libraries, circulating libraries
- instalments/serialisation - ”three-deckers” (three-volume publications)
- authors:
- William Makepeace Thackeray
- Anne Brontë (Anton Bell)
- Emily Brontë (Ellis Bell)
- Charlotte Brontë (Currer Bell)
- Elizabeth Gaskell
- George Eliot (Marian Evans) - focus on society (the middle class and its daily life)
- “Adam Bede” (1859)
- “The Mill on the Floss” (1860)
- “Middlemarch” (1871-2)
- “Daniel Deronda” (1876)
- Charles Dickens
- Anthony Trollope
 - George Meredith
- Thomas Hardy

Victorian Fiction
- avoidance of open treatment of offensive subjects and language
- expectations of a consolatory, happy ending (“Great Expectations” double ending)
- “Condition of England” Novels (“Hard Times”, “North and South” - industrial novel)
- realism - moral framework/didacticism, melodrama and Gothicism
- significance of time and history:
- Bildungsroman - “Jane Eyre”, “David Copperfield”
- representations of a large social spectrum and historical changes (“Middlemarch”)
- preoccupation with questions of social class (class identity, class differences, class mobility)

Drama in the Victorian Age

- types of theater so far:
- dramatic adaptations of novels
- melodrama
- musical comedy, music hall, comic opera
- burlesque
- pantomime
- proficient playwrights:
- William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
- Dion Boucicault
- Robert Browning

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

- born in Dublin, lived in London
- socialist (Fabian Society)
- journalist and playwright from 1890s
- influence of Henrik Ibsen
- problem plays (drama of ideas) - plays with a spirit of discussion:
- “Widowers’ Houses” (1892)
- “Mrs Warren’s Profession” (1893) (prostitution, social divisions)
- “Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant” (1898)
- Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925

Aestheticism & Decadence

- Aestheticism - beauty as an end in itself, not amoral, didactic, or political vessel
- The Aesthetic Movement (19th cent.) - advocated artistic independence
- l’art pour l’art - art for art’s sake
- Decadence (Gautier, Baudelaire) - an attitude of world-weariness, escapism, ennui
- sensations and experiences for their own sake, hedonism, contempt for society
- cultivation of artificiality, ritual, dandyism, affectation, overemphasis on form
- influence of French literature:
- Charles Baudelaire, “Les Fleurs du Mal” (1857)
- Joris-Karl Huysmans’ novel “À Rebours” (1884) (“the breviary of the Decadence”)
- The Pre-Raphaelite Movement - art should imitate reality
- Walter Pater, “Studies in the History of the Renaissance” (1873)
- “Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.”
- magazines:
- The Yellow Book, 1894-97 (1890s - ”The Yellow Decade”, ”The Yellow Nineties”)
- The Savoy, 1896
- Aubrey Beardsley’s drawings - “The Peacock Skirt”, “Illustration for Morte d’Arthur”

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

- born in Dublin to a distinguished Protestant family
- Trinity College, Dublin
- Oxford University (classics; admirer of Greek culture)
- influence of Walter Pater
- celebrity in literary and artistic circles in London, chief advocate of Aestheticism
- reviewer, editor, essayist
- wrote plays, stories, fairy tales (“Poems” (1881))
- “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - art vs. reality
- vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art
- there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book, but well or badly written
- comedies:
- “Lady Windermere’s Fan” (1892)
- “A Woman of No Importance” (1893)
- “An Ideal Husband” (1895)
- “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1895)
- in 1895 went on trial for being homeosexual (Alfred Douglas), spent 2 years in prison

Modernism
- defines in opposition to the existing and to the old
- variety of different movements characterised by experimenting:
- symbolism:
- poetry of suggestion rather than direct
- statement
- evocation of subjective moods
- use of private symbols
- avoiding descriptions of external reality or the expression of opinion
- formal innovations: free verse (T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock”), prose poem (Amy Lowell, ”Breakfast Table” (1916))
- imagism (1909-17) - short poems built around single images instead of action (Ezra
Pound - “In a Station of a Metro”)
- Surrealism - Salvador Dali, ”Persistence of Memory” (1931)
- Futurism - Umberto Boccioni’s ”The City Rises”, violation of the rules of grammar
- Constructivism
 - Dadaism
- Vorticism - violence, filth, destruction (”The Mud Bath”, “Blast” magazine)
- Expressionism - Oskar Kokoschka, ”Bride of the Wind” (1914), expresses energy
- Cubism - Pablo Picasso, ”Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”
- key English modernists (not English by birth):
- Henry James (from USA)
- Joseph Conrad
- Ezra Pound
- T.S. Eliot (from USA)
- W.B. Yeats
- Katherine Mansfield - born in New Zealand, wrote short stories
- James Joyce
- Virginia Woolf
- Dorothy Richardson - challenging existing conventions, variety of styles
- D.H. Lawrence (violence, passion, sex)
- Ford Madox Ford
- Wyndham Lewis
- Modernism showed itself mostly in literature (in England)
- for D.H. Lawrence started in 1915 (WWI), for Virginia Woolf in 1910 (human nature change)
- 1910: Roger Fry -“Manet and the Post-Impressionists” exhib. (Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin)
- 1912: another Post-Impressionist exhib.: Matisse, Picasso, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell
- major works of English modernism (world seen as more and more complex):
- James Joyce - “Ulysses” (1922)
- T.S. Eliot - “The Waste Land” (1922)
- Virginia Woolf - “Mrs Dalloway” (1925), “To the Lighthouse” (1927)
- new ideas about space and time (experiments with chronology and special expression)
- emergence of modern psychology
- Sigmund Freud - id, ego, superego, the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, dreams
- D.H. Lawrence’s works associated with Expressionism (violence, passion)
- collage - Georges Braque, ”Violin and Pipe” (1913)
- stream of consciousness - defined by William James in “Principles of Psychology” (1890)
- literary magazines:
- T.S. Eliot - “The Criterion”
- Wyndham Lewis - “Blast”
- Ford Madox Ford - “The English Review”

WWI & D.H. Lawrence

War Poets
- Rupert Brooke - (1887-1915) - an officer, published before the war, believed in England
- “The Soldier” - patriotic duty, willingness for sacrifice
- Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) - disillusioned with war (“Anthem for the Doomed Youth”)
- “Mental Cases” - how war affected soldiers’ minds (Shell Shock)
- Siegfried Sassoon - war portrayed as futile and unnecessary (“The General”)

D. H. Lawrence
- exploration of human psychology (deep-rooted, irrational elements)
- instinct and intuition vs. intellect
- realism and symbolism (nature)
- criticism of Western civilisation, search for alternatives (“Kangaroo”,“The Plumed Serpent”)
- the problem of leadership (“Aaron’s Rod”)
- modern civilisation in need of spiritual regeneration, search for a solution
- realistic in descriptions of setting
- continues the realistic tradition of the English novel
- psychological insight
- stories of relationships that usually fail:
- “Sons and Lovers” (1913) - struggles in his two relationships
- “The Rainbow” (1915)
- “Women in Love” (1920)
- ”England, My England” (1922)
- “Why the Novel Matters” (1922) - an essay celebrating the novel / rejection of patterns
- travel books/sketches - “Sea and Sardinia” (1923)
- poems - “Birds, Beasts and Flowers” (1923)
- “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (1928) - condition of England novel, banned for obscenity

Joseph Conrad (Early Modernism)

- born in Ukraine, parents involved in underground activities
- 1878-94 - seaman in the British Merchant Navy
- 1886 - British citizenship
- 1890 - journey to Congo
- stories about encounters between different cultures:
- “Almayer’s Folly” (1895) - first novel, moderate success
- “Amy Foster”
- “Heart of Darkness” 1902
- novels based on his seamen career
- “The Nigger of the Narcissus”, 1897
- “Lord Jim”, 1900
- “The Shadow-Line”, 1917
- other novels:
- “Nostromo”, 1904
- “The Secret Agent”, 1907
- “Under Western Eyes”, 1911
- characters more important than the plot (1st person subjective narration)
- focus on characters’ psychology, motivation, moral choices
- multiple perspectives (“Lord Jim”) and departions from chronology
- complex narrative structures full of mystery (“Heart of Darkness”)
 James Joyce (High Modernism)
- “Dubliners” (1914) - “moral history” of Ireland in 15 short stories
- 4 stages - childhood, adolescence, mature age, public life
- epiphany: a sudden spiritual manifestation (often inspired by insignificant things)
- “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” - Bildungsroman
- homeric parallels
- stream of consciousness
- Bloomsday – 16th June, from 8 o’clock till 4 o’clock next day

Ulysses
- modern epic
- stylistic innovation - interior monologue, stream of consciousness, drama, literary cubism,
parody and pastiche, etc.
- themes: relations/family, identity, writing, modern life, and more

W.B. Yeats
- born in Sandymount, County Dublin, but lived in Sligo, then family moved to London
- came from a protestant family, but didn’t identify with any religion
- part of Irish Literary Revival
- Abbey Theatre (patronship of Lady Gregory)
- Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923
- Senator for the Irish Free State in 1922-28
- Early Yeats (1865-1910;) Middle Yeats (1914- 1921;) and Late Yeats (1921-1939)
- while in London - evocative imagery
- 20th century - modern poetry, more insight and knowledge, improved language
- mature - more straightforward; combined symbolism with modernism
- interest in philosophy (Neo-Platonism), spiritualism, esoteric knowledge
- Theosophical society
- The Hermetic Order of the Order Dawn secret society
- life as a spiritual movement upwardsL
- “The Tower”
- “The Winding Stair and Other Poems”
- “The Circus Animals' Desertion” - autobiographical, one of his last poems - Yeats no
longer wants to ascend
- his Irishness important to his poetry
- “A Vision” - man/mask (self/anti-self) - personality in constant tension
- “The Second Coming” - believed that during his life one cycle would end and other begin
- “September 1913”- critical of present Ireland (too isolated), romanticises past Ireland
- “Easter 1916” - changes his mind about present Ireland
- he glorified Irish peasants unspoiled by modern life
- “The Book of Irish Verse”
- “The Celtic Twilight”
- “Stories of Red Hanrahan”
- was in love with Irish actress Maud Gonne, but didn’t agree with her politics

Irish Literature
- The Irish Literary Revival:
- J. M. Synge (1871-1909)
- Sean O’Casey (1880-1964)
- Padraig (Padraic) Colum (1881-1972)
- Isabella Augusta (Lady Gregory) - supported Yeats financially (1852-1932)
- Douglas Hyde (1860-1949)
- The Abbey Theatre, 1904:
- Lady Gregory (“Spreading the News”)
- Edward Martyn
- George Moore
- John Millington Synge (“The Playboy of the Western World”)
- Yeats’ “The Countless Cathleen”
 T.S. Eliot
- poet, literary critic, essayist
- Education - Harvard, the Sorbonne, Oxford
- subjects: Greek, Latin, French, German, medieval history, comparative literature, Dante,
philosophy, also oriental philosophy, Sanskrit
- literary career:
- collaboration with Ezra Pound
- reviewer, editor
- literary magazines (The Egoist, The Criterion)
- publishing house Faber & Gwyer / Faber & Faber
- Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948
- collections:
- “Prufrock and Other Observations” (1917)
- “Poems” (1919)
- “The Waste Land” (1922)
- “Poems” 1909-1925 (1925)
- “Ash Wednesday (1930)
- “Collected Poems”, 1909-1935 (1936)
- “Four Quartets” (1944)
- “Collected Poems”, 1909-1962 (1963)
- Eliot’s poetry
- avoidance of direct statement - oblique suggestion, allusion, evocation of ideas,
ambiguity, irony (influence of French symbolists)
- no clear sequence - fragmentariness, juxtaposition of images, collage
- elimination of connective, transitional passages
- avoidance of self-expression
- avoidance of narrative or argument
- focus on subjective experience, representation of consciousness
- frequent allusions to the literary tradition (Dante, Shakespeare, Jacobean drama,
metaphysical poets, French symbolists), philosophy, the Bible, etc.
 - vers libre (free verse)
- selected plays:
- ‘’Murder in the Cathedral” (1935) - on Thomas Becket, Canterbury Cathedral, 1170
- “The Family Reunion” (1939) – drama about a contemporary upper-class family
- “The Cocktail Party” (1949)
- the musical “Cats” composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, is based on his 1939 poetry
collection “Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats”
- introduced some important concepts to British and American literary scholarship
- tradition as a dynamic, ever-modified entity (“Tradition and the Individual Talent”)
- impersonal theory of poetry (poetry as an “escape from reality”)
- objective correlative - events representing emotions (“Hamlet and His Problems”)
- dissociation of sensibility(thought and feeling separated)(“The Metaphysical Poets”)
- several collections of critical essays:
- “The Sacred Wood” (1928)
- “Homage to John Dryden” (1924)
- “For Lancelot Andrewes” (1928)
- “Selected Essays” (1932)

The Waste Land (1922)

- poem dedicated to Ezra Pound (“the better craftsman”), who helped Eliot edit the poem
- Kulturpessimismus (cultural pessimism)
- Oswald Spengler’s work of metahistory (“The Decline of the West”, 1918)
- Part I - “The Burial of the Dead” - symbolism:
- water (“rain”, “Thames”, “no water”)
- Part II - “A Game of Chess” - literary allusions:
- Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”
- Virgil’s “Aeneid” - allusion to the passage describing the feast hall where Aeneas
recounts his story (and Venus plots to entangle him with Dido)
- Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” - myth of Philomela changed into a swallow)
- Thomas Middleton’s “A Game at Chess”
- Part III - “The Fire Sermon”
- Part IV - “Death by Water”
- Part V - “What the Thunder Said”
- fragments from “Dante’ s Inferno”, Tiberianus’s poem about Philomela, and Gerard
de Nerval’s “Sonnet El Desdichado”
- literary collage:
- fragmentary, mixture of short textual passages: the voice of the speaker, overheard
dialogues, direct quotations from different sources, literary allusions, popular culture
- juxtaposed, disconnected or loosely linked (no logical or chronological sequence)
- metrically irregular scansion, free verse
- stylistically varied: poetic, lyrical, colloquial, humorous, serious, ironic, surrealistic
- mythical method instead of narrative method

Virginia Woolf
- affected by her mother’s mental illness and suicide
- “The Voyage Out” (1915) - Woolf’s first novel, a journey from England to South America
- “Modern Fiction” (1919) - an essay defining the characteristics of Modern Fiction
- 1920’s - peak of Modernism in England, Virginia’s most acclaimed fiction:
- “Jacob’s Room” (1922) - loose, fragmented story of Jacob’s life
- “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925) - party hosted by Mrs. Dalloway during a single day
- “To The Lighthouse” (1927)
- “A Room of One’s Own” (1929) - non fiction / women’s right for privacy
- “The Waves” (1931) - 6 interior monologues (stream of consciousness)
- “Three Guineas” (1938) - a relationship during the rise of fascism
- “Orlando: A Biography” (1928) - experiments in gender fluidity
- literary criticism, diaries (“The Diaries of V.W.”) and letters (“The Letters of V.W.”)
- “Between the Acts” (1941)
- The Bloomsbury Group (located in Charleston House) - informal group of artists and
writers:
- Virginia Woolf
 - Leonard Woolf - Virginia’s husband
- Vanessa Bell - painted a portrait of “Virginia Woolf” and “Pond at Charleston”, as
well as the first cover of “To the Lighthouse”
- Clive Bell
- Roger Fry - painter (“River with Poplars”)
- Lytton Strachey
- J.M. Keynes
- Duncan Grant
- Dora Carrington
- no plot - other patterns of organisation
- stream of consciousness (flow of associations, tracing patterns on impressions an event
impresses on one’s mind)
- succession of interior monologues
- unmarked changes of perspective
- unclear boundary between dialogue and thought
- focus on inner life rather than external events
- difference between internal and external time
- psychological effects achieved through imagery, symbol, and metaphor

Modernist Fiction
- beginning in medias res, involving uncertainty of spatial and temporal orientation
- open, ambiguous endings
- weakening or disappearance of plot
- chapters structured according to a loosely symbolic logic
- simultaneity of events, extensive treatment of single movements, fleeting descriptions of
longer period, disruptions of sequential time
- multiple, shifting narrative viewpoints
- focus on the inner life, and representation of consciousness
- language as opaque, non-transparent medium
- epistemological dominant
- Modernist writers:
- Joseph Conrad
- Ford Madox Ford
- Dorothy Richardson
- May Sinclair
- Katherine Mansfield
- D.H. Lawrence
- James Joyce
- Wyndham Lewis
- Virginia Woolf
- Modernism largely defined in Virginia Woolf’s “Modernist Fiction”
- Henry James (1843-1916)
- novels - complex, psychological, examine human personality
- “The Portrait of a Lady” (1881), “The Ambassadors” (1903)
- “The Art of Fiction” (1884), “The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces” (1909)
- center of consciousness (focalisation)
- novel should be a work of art, carefully composed
- use of subjective narrators, multiple points of view, fragmented images (To the
Lighthouse”)
- the stream of consciousness technique
- defined by William James in “Principles of Psychology” (1890)
- Édouard Dujardin - “Les Lauriers sont coupés” (1888)
- Marcel Proust - “À la recherche du tempts perdu” (1913-27)
- James Joyce’s “Ulysses”(1922) - every character thinks in a different way
- Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” - subjective experience of time

The Writers of 1930s-40s

Dylan Thomas
- believed in the special role of poetry
- bohemian poet
- known for his alcoholism and womanizing
- Welsh by birth, father was an English teacher
- worked in BBC
- “18 Poems” (1934)
- “Twenty-Five Poems” (1936)
- “The Map of Love” (1939)
- “Deaths and Entrances” (1946)
- “Fern Hill” (1946)
- looks back nostalgically on his childhood
- impressions of a place - visual effects, smells
- world of nature, a recurring motif in his poetry
- coexisting of life and death as two sides of the same natural process
- Biblical references (garden of Eden)
- unusual word combinations and collocations (“the lamb white days”)
- prioritizes sound/effect to intellectual content in order to surprise the reader
- ”The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower” (1934)
- unity of all life
- celebration of natural processes
- nature poetry (lot of natural images)
- variety of images (unity of life and nature)
- Biblical references
- great attention to the rhythm of the poem

W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

- The Auden Circle (The Oxford Group) - social and political themes
- W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden (1907–1973)
- Stephen Spender (1909-1995)
- Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972)
 - Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)
- wrote about capitalism, fascism, great depression of the 1930’s
- critical of establishment, diagnosing the condition of the country
- went to Spain to fight against Fascism
- emigrated to US before WWII, became the professor of literature, finally settled in England
- interested in Marxism and Fraudian theories
- felt obliged to address wide audience
- later poetry more introspective and personal
- the importance of love, friendship, morals, religion (metaphysical themes)
- relied on tradition, Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse
- dramatic poetry, ballads
- introduction of colloquial/conversational language into poetry

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

- “Point Counter Point” (1928) - a novel of ideas, represents the world of its time
- “Brave New World” ((1932) - world of the future dominated by technology

Graham Greene (1904-1991)

- journalism, travel books (travel also inspired much of his fiction)
- references to current political situation (Cold War)
- exploration of moral and existential problems
- sensational plots full of dramatic events full of intrigue
- characters faced with moral problems
- “It’s a Battlefield” (1934)
- “The Quiet American” (1955)
- “Our Man in Havana” (1958)
- “A Burnt-out Case” (1960)
- “Monsignor Quixote” (1982)
- novels he wrote after his conversion to Catholicism (viewed himself as Catholic Agnostic)
 - “Brighton Rock” (1938)
- “The Power and the Glory” (1940)
- “The Heart of the Matter” (1948)
- “The End of the Affair” (1951)
- clash between the doctrine of the Church and complications of individual situations
- presenting different perceptions of the world
- fiction - realistic, well constructed novels with traditional structure
- Greenland - world that Greene depicts - ugly, moral wasteland full of anarchy and crime
- influenced by cinematic techniques (“Quick Action” - a lot of moves, suspense)
- clash between religious and secular perspective

George Orwell
- born in Motihari (British India), “lower upper middle class”
- educated in St. Cyprian’s and Eton
- served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma
- fought for the Republican cause in the Spanish civil war (1936-37)
- 1936-43 - active as a journalist and writer - essays (”Why I Write”), journalism, novels
- autobiographical writing:
- “Down and Out in Paris and London” (1933)
- “The Road to Wigan Pier” (1937)
- “Homage to Catalonia” (1938)
- novels (elements of satire and humour):
- “Burmese Days” (1934)
- “Keep the Aspidistra Flying” (1936)
- “Coming up for Air” (1939)
- “Animal Farm” (1945) - comment on historical processes
- “1984”(1949) - Big Brother, doublethink, newspeak
 1950s - The Angry Decade
- insistence on realism instead of modernism and experimentation
- William Cooper, C.P. Snow and Angus Wilson - critical of the modernists, embrace society
- Angus Wilson - criticizes Virginia Woolf’s essay “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown”
- longing for the victorian novel to make a comeback
- Angus Wilson’s “Diversity and Depth in Fiction” (1960) (man in the community)
- “The Great Tradition”, F.R Leavis - (1948) - study of literary realism (D.H. Lawrence)

Angry Young Men

- young writers disillusioned with British society
- term derived from John Osborne’s play “Look Back in Anger” (1956)
- paints a picture of a frustrated, vocal young man
- theater turns to representing realistic life of the middle class (Kitchen Sink Drama)
- novels often set in a provincial town and portraying alienated misfits, quite like the authors:
- William Cooper, “Scenes from Provincial Life” (1950)
- John Wain, “Hurry On Down” (1953)
- Kingsley Amis, “Lucky Jim” (1954)
- John Braine, “Room at the Top” (1957)
- Alan Sillitoe, “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” (1958), The Loneliness of the
Long-Distance Runner (1959)
- a provincial, lower-middle or working-class setting
- concern with class and social ambition
- a new type of hero
- feelings of discontent, frustration, alienation
- rebellion; tendency towards social integration
- humour rather than serious social critique
- traditional form
 The Theater of Absurd
- violations of the conventions of realism
- no plot/parody of the plot
- strange, enigmatic characters
- obscure settings
- irrationality, absurdity of the situations
- inadequacy of language, full of cliche and misunderstandings
- combination of comedy and tragedy with horror
- tension, atmosphere of menace and terror

Samuel Beckett
- went to Paris to teach English, met many artists
- plays with language, irony, absurdity of life
- worked for theatre
- minimalism of language
- “Stirrings Still” (1989) - consciousness of a dying man/memories
- plays:
- “Waiting for Godot” (1954)
- “Happy Days” (1961) - a monologue of a woman absorbed into earth
- “Breath” (1969) - birth and death after 25 seconds
- “Not I” (1973) - a monologue where we can only see a mouth
Harold Pinter
- critical against American foreign policy (War in Iraq)
- kitchen sink drama - realistic theater set in lower class contemporary England
- difficult to find meanings of his plays
- memory plays - “Ashes to Ashes” - woman remembers her past (incoherent monologue)
- political drama - “Press Conference” - hypocrisy of politicians
- Nobel Prize in 2005

Women’s Fiction
- 1960’s - changing gender relations
- 1st-wave feminism (19th cent.) - right to vote, political representation, education, property
- 2nd-wave feminism - workplace, family, feminine identity (1960’s/70s)
- postwar decades - rise of women’s suites at universities
- literary studies:
- attempts to create feminine canon, recovery of forgotten woman writes
- emergence of journals and publishing houses specialising in women’s literature
- theorisation (marxism, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism)
- post-feminist/third wave (1990’s onwards) - exploration of complex gender identities
- tendencies of feminist writing:
- engagement with theory
- departures from realism - Gothic, carnivalesque and magic elements (Angela Carter)
- rewriting canonical texts from new perspectives:
- Angela Carter - “The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories”
- Jean Rhys - “Wide Sargasso Sea” (1966) - re-written “Jane Eyre”
- Michelle Roberts - re-writing canonical narratives and biographies
- “The Wild Girl” - the fifth gospel
- “The Book of Mrs. Noah” - story of the flood
- “The Mistressclass” - based on the lives of Bronte sisters

Margaret Drabble
- contemporary social and cultural changes
- male-female/partners-children relationships
- typical protagonist of early novels - a young educated middle class woman; facing a choice
- “The Summer Bird-Cage” (1963) - context of the 60’s, changing perception of women
- “The Millstone” (1965) - a woman’s choice between a motherhood and a career
 Beryl Bainbridge
- “The Dressmaker” (1973), “The Bottle Factory Outing” (1794), “Sweet William” (1975)
- working class provincial milieu
- role of the environment in shaping characters
- realism combined with elements of grotesque, black humour and bizzare plots
- women characters in the contemporary changing social world
- heroines caught up in conflicting roles and social expectations
- women’s personal freedom restricted in comparison with men’s
- re-examination of family life, generation gap

Doris Lessing
- “The Grass is Singing” (1950) - life of a woman in a British colony in Africa
- “Children of Violence” a woman on a quest to define herself in terms of class and gender
- “The Golden Notebook” (1962)- fragmented story about a female writer and her
notebooks
- feminist, social and racial issues
- representations of the contemporary world
- science-fiction
- Nobel Prize in 2007

Angela Carter
- challenge to gender relations and identities
- references to literary and cultural tradition
- women’s role and identity
- magic realism - fantastical events included in a realistic, objective narrative
- “Nights at the Circus” (1984) - a circus woman believing she can fly
- “The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories” (1979) - collection of psychological fairy tales
 Post-War Poetry
“The Movement”
- a group of like-minded poets set to redirect the course of English poetry
- references to contemporary, post-war England, indirect political commentary
- common sense, scepticism, irony, emotional restraint
- plain colloquial language
- no intention to experiment
Philip Larkin
- plain and colloquial poetic mode
- themes of melancholy, doubt, irony, transience and mortality
- a note of doubt, disillusionment, scepticism

William Golding
- school teacher, sceptical about scientific attitude (doesn’t represent real life)
- not preoccupied with questions of class differences
- portrays human beings in extreme situations (war)
- themes of sin, guilt and loss of innocence
- rational and imaginative in human experience
- polarity between the rational and the imaginative/mysterious in human experience
- “Lord of Flies” (1954) - intertextuality
- Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe”
- children’s adventure stories (R.L. Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”)
- R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island (1857) (“Jolly good show. Like the Coral Island”.)
- The Bible - Lord of the Flies -> Beelzebub
- “The Inheritors” (1955) - about prehistoric times
- “Pincher Martin” (1956) - a soldier after shipwreck/retrospective mood
- “Free Fall” (1959) - isolated character faces death
- “The Spire” (1964) - set in the Middle Ages
- “To the End of the World: A Sea Trilogy” - a ship in the middle of the ocean
- “Rites of Passage” (1980)
- “Close Quarters” (1987)
- “Fire Down Below” (1989)
- the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983

John Maxwell Coatzee

- born in 1940 in Cape Town
- literary scholar and critic
- Booker Prizes for:
- “Life and Times of MIchael K” (1983) - interpretation of Kafka’s “Trial”
- “Disgrace” (1999) - post-apartheid Africa, ageing and confrontation with mortality
- Nobel Prize in 2003
- fictionalised autobiographies:
-”Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life” (2003)
- Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life” (2002)
- “Summertime” (2009)
- South-African novels:
- “Dusklands” (1974) - travel/exploration narrative
- “In the Heart of the Country” (1977) - plaasroman (farm novel)
- “Age of Iron” (1990) - set in South Africa after apartheid
- moral responsibility for one’s actions
- confrontations between the individual and the system
- influence of political and historical forces on the individual
- confrontation between different cultures
- encounters with the Other (“Age of Iron”, “Life and Times of MIchael K.”)
-anti-illusionism - not maintaining the illusion of a narrative, very postmodern
- ”Foe” (1986) -
- “Slow Man” (2005) -
 - “Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons” (2003)
- “Diary of a Bad Year” (2007)

Contemporary Poetry
Seamus Heaney (1939 - 1013)
- poet, lecturer, literary critic, translator (Kochanowski’s “Lament”)
- “The Tollund Man” - reflects ancient rituals (a “bog poem”)
- “Digging” - tries to define himself in relation to his family of farmers (other kind of digging)
- poetry always grounded in real world
- Troubles in Northern Ireland - addressed in “North” (1975), “Field Work” (1979)
- “Sweeney Astray” - based on a medieval Celtic legend
- references to the tradition of European literature:
- “Station Island” (1984) - Virgil, Dante
- “The Human Chain” (2010) - Virgil, Aeneid
- role of poetry - to show the world anew, move beyond cliche
- Nobel Prize in 1995

Ted Hughes (1930 - 1998)

- “The Hawk in the Rain” (1957) - reconstructs the animal way of thinking (pleasure in killing)
- interest in themes of metamorphosis

Carol Ann Duffy

- Poet Laureate 2009-2019
- Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University
- Creative Director of the Manchester Writing School
- issues of class, gender, children and politics
- personal relationships
- other voices/perspectives
- simple language, dramatic monologue
- political issues - “Selling Manhattan”, “The Other Country”
- female identity - “Feminine Gospels”, “Love Poems”
- relationships - “Mean Time” (1993), “Love Poems” (2010), “Bees” (2011)

1970-2000 Fiction
- “The Novelist at the Crossroads” (1972) - an essay by Lodge
- traditional realism - possibly a dead end
- fabulation
- non-fictional narrative
- concept of problematic novel

Ian McEwan
- darker areas of human psyche, pathology, obsession, perversion, madness
- states of alienation from society
- traumatic experiences
- contemporary history and politics
- early fiction:
- “First Love, First Rites” (1745) - short stories, pervertive relationships
- “The Cement Garden” (1978) - controversial, children live without their parents anc
create their own world
- “The Comfort of Strangers” (1981) - love triangle, world full of violence and mystery
- history and politics:
- “The Innocent” (1990) - political intrigue and espionage, R-rated
- “Sweet Tooth” (2012) - mix of politics and private life during the Cold War
- “The Child in Time” (1987) - dystopian satire of Thatcher's government
- “Saturday” (2005) - one day in a world full of violence
- “Black Dogs” (1992) - different perspectives after the end of World War II
- diverse perceptions of reality, conflicting perspectives
- “Black Dog” - conflict of science and intuition leads to the end of a relationship
 - “Enduring Love” (1997) - similar conflict of science and literature/intuition
- “The Children Act” (2014) - female lawyer deals with a tough case (moral dilemma)
- trauma, time memory
- “The Child in Time” - memory of the character’s kidnapped daughter shapes his life
- “Enduring Love”, “Saturday” - both have traumatic openers
- “Atonement”

Kazuo Ishiguro
- educated in England
- themes of memory and struggles with the past
- “A Pale View of Hills” (1982) - Japan during WWII, unreliable memories
- “An Artist of the Floating World” (1986) - Japan during WWII, 1st person
retrospectives
- “The Remains of the Day” (1989) - inability to speak about the past, problems with
remembering (Booker Prize for fiction)
- “Never Let Me Go” (2005)
- “The Buried Giant” (2015) - memory ensures the sense of identity

Postcolonial Literature
Disintegration oif the British Empire
- Indian independence in 1947 --> India and Pakistan
- Malaya 1957
- independence of African colonies:
- Sudan, Ghana 1950s
- Kenya, Nigeria 1960s
- Rhodesia --> Zimbabwe 1980
- West Indian colonies (Trinidad, Jamaica) 1960s
- Hong Kong 1997
 Postcolonial Studies Since 1970s
- race, racial relations, ethnic identity
- historical revisionism
- challenges to the literary canon
- hybrid identity, hybridity

- postcolonial literature - term applied to literatures from the non-white former colonies,
inhabited primarily by people of non-European roots
- white writers from former colonies - Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee
- native writers form former colonies - Chinua Achebe, James Ngugi [Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o], R.K.
Narayan
Postcolonial Theory
- Edward Said: “Orientalism” (1978), “Culture and Imperialism” (1993)
- “Orientalism is (…) distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, economic,
sociological, historical, and philological texts”
- Homi Bhabha: hybridity
- “The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures” (1989) - Bill
Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin
- Salman Rushdie - “The Empire Writes Back”
- beginnings of multicultural Britain:
- The British Nationality Act, 1948
- arrival of Empire Windrush, 1948 (The Windrush Generation)
- writers associated with former colonies:
- Nigeria: Ben Okri
- Hong Kong: Timothy Mo
- West Indies: V.S. Naipaul, Caryl Phillips, Zadie Smith
- Pakistan: Hanif Kureishi
- India: Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai

Frequent Themes in Postcolonial Literature

- historical themes: a number of immigrant writers return to the country of their origins in
their writings, rewrite the history of their country from the point of view of the colonized
- migration or transition to another country and another culture, problems of adaptation
- ethnic and intercultural relations in contemporary, ethnically diverse British society

Postcolonial Writers
- Salman Rushdie (b. 1947) – “Midnight’s Children” (1981), “The Satanic Verses” (1988)
- Caryl Phillips (b. 1958, St. Kitts [the Carribean]) – “The Final Passage” (1985), “A State of
Independence” (1986), “Cambridge” (1991), “A Distant Shore” (2003)
- Hanif Kureishi (b. 1954) – “The Buddha of Suburbia” (1990), ”My Son the Fanatic” (1994)
- Zadie Smith (b. 1975) – “White Teeth” (2000), “The Autograph Man” (2002), “On Beauty”
(2005), “NW” (2012), “Swing Time” (2016)

Scottish Literature
- divergence from English or British cultural identity in subject matter, technique or language
- formal and linguistic inventiveness
- (the first) Scottish Literary Renaissance, 1920s - 1930s:
- distinct language: Scots
- Robert Burns, Hugh MacDiarmid
- the Second Scottish Renaissance 1970s - 1980s
- languages: standard English, regional accents, authentic speech, Scots, Gaelic
- James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Liz Lochhead

Contemporary Scottish Writers

- Edwin Morgan:
- the first Glasgow Poet Laureate (1999-2005)
- Scots Makar [National Poet of Scotland] (2004-2010)
- concrete poems and sound poems (“The Loch Ness Monster’s Song”)
- science fiction poems (”The First Men on Mercury”)
- poems about his native Glasgow (Glasgow Sonnets, 1972;
 - Cathures, 2002) and about Scotland (Sonnets from Scotland, 1984); “For the
Opening of the Scottish Parliament” (2004)
- personal lyrics
- essays
- Alistair Gray (1934-2019) – “Lanark: A Life in Four Books” (1981)
- Ali Smith (b. 1962):
- short stories – “Free Love and Other Stories” (1995), “Public Library and Other
Stories” (2015)
- novels – “Like” (1997), “Hotel World“ (2001), “There But For The” (2011), “How to
Be Both” (2014)