Angloamericka knjizevnost

20th Century Anglo-American Literature until WWII

At the beginning of 20th the Commonwealth had become mostly industrial, and in the second decade of the century nearly 70% of 25 million people in the whole Britain lived in cities. Village way of life had almost disappeared. These were years known as the years of change. WWI (1914-1918) changed for many people their view of the world. Millions of men, including very young soldiers, were killed during the war, so the loss of so many lives was a horror that the country had not experienced before. And for many people there seemed to be no purpose to the war. During the WWI, basic religious sand political beliefs were questioned by more people.
In the arts, a clear change was that artists fell they had to express their ideas very differently, especially in new forms, which were difficult for everyone to understand at the time. On the other hand, some arts felt a duty to communicate simply and in popular forms to a better educated audience. They wanted to be far from traditional forms of writing. They thought only wider educated audience could read their poetry.

Novel

(Traditional novel: voluminous, with a lot of description and narration) Experimentation novel: experimentation in form, writing without an exact story and description, short, with a lot of dialog and internal monologue. The novel of the 20th century has more personal, individual themes, but as the novel examines the problems of the individual it also becomes the examination of the whole world.
England is no longer the main scene for literature, as during the last century. Many writers use the wider world, outside England as their setting. England is often seen in the contrast with the other countries described. Writers began to use different points of view, rather than seeing the world through only one character’s eyes.
Three Virginia Woolf’s novels with the stream of consciousness technique are The Waves, To the Lighthouse, and Mrs Dalloway. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses are James Joyce’s predecessors of stream of consciousness. The many points of view, the range of settings and quick moves from scene to scene became part of modern writing. Also did a psychological approach. This approach meant going deeply into the thoughts of characters (psychoanalysis).
The stream of consciousness technique named by an American psychologist William James became an important part of novelist’s technique in the early 20th century. William James’ brother, Henry James, though born in America, became a British citizen. His novels move from America to Europe in search for fixed cultural and social values. From his early novels in 1870s and 1880s, such as Roderick Hudson and Washington Square, James moved on to write three of his masterpieces in England, in the early years of 20th century. These were: The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904). All three are international in their subject, contrasting the American culture and character with the European. Like most of James’ writing, the language and the form are very complex. He belongs to the traditional writing with his story, description, and other elements.