The age of conflicts and Modernism

The age of conflicts and the Modernism

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HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND

The British Commonwealth of Nations (1931)

The General strike (1926)

The Great War breaks out (1914-1918)

George V (1910-1936)

Edward VII (1901-1910

The Irish Question (1916)

The Great Depression(1929)

Reform and the suffragettes

The First World War

The rise of Totalitarianiasm

MODERNISM

Modernism was influenced by different artistic movements. The main ones were:

• Futurism;
• Cubism;
• Expressionism
• Surrealism

RUPERT BROOKE

• He was born in 1887
• He studied at Cambridge University
• He published his first poems in 1912, Georgian Poetry (1911-1912)
• Commissioned into the Royal Naval Division
• He published a collection of Sonnets, 1914 & Other Poems
• He died on a hospital ship in Greece in 1915

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Industrial decline and the General Strike

The owners of the mines tried to solve the problem by reducing the workers' pay and increasing their working hours; On 1 May 1926, the Trade Unions Congress, announced a strike to begin on the 3 May. In 1927, the Trade Disputes Act made general strikes illegal.

• The Great Depression followed the Wall Street Crash in Octobet 1929
• The United States reacted by putting up customs barriers to stop imports of foreign goods.
• This created a global depression
• By the end of 1931, millions of people in Britain were unemployed.

Colonial and dystopian novelists

• Forster adopted a rather conventional narrative style to depict the cultural clash between colonisers and colonised;
• Orwell and Huxley wrote dystopian novels (representations of degraded futuristic societies in which humans are oppressed).

The Irish Question

• The British government had promised "Home Rule" to Ireland
• On Easter Monday in 1916 they staged the Easter Rising, in Dublin
• Proclaimed the Irish Republic
• This revolution that led to the creaction of the Irish Free State in 1922.

The precursor of Modernism

The spread of Modernism was anticipated by writers that experimented with narrative techniques to fragment the author’s point of view. The most representative these “experimental” writers were: • Conrad: who used multiple points of view to drive the attention to the limits of writing, to the impossibility of telling stories, to the mystery of human unconsciousness. • Lawrence: whose novels were influenced by Freud’s theories.

• The major dominions became interested in their own indipendence.
• This new idea of the Commonwealth was defined by the Balfour Declaration, formalised by the Statue of Westeminster.

• Ghandi launched a major civil disobedience movement which would result in India's indipendence in 1947.
• The British Nationality Act of 1948 granted subjects of the Commonwealth the right to live and work in the UK.

The "War Poets"

• a group of men who fought in the trenches during the First World War;
• they all took in the War as soldiers;
• they all enrolled when War broke out
• War is described as a terrible experience leading to death, suffering and alienation.
• Brooke, Sassoon, Owen, Rosenberg.

The Great War breaks out

• Assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo
• King George V declared War in 1914
• Italy entered the War on 24 May 1915
• The United States joined the War in 1917
• The Treaty of Versailles, signed in Paris in 1919, marked the end of the War

The rise of Totalitarianism

• emergence of fascist or totalitarian political movements in Italy, Germany and Spain.
• Mussolini and Hitler were seen as a dictators who could put an and to economic depression and to comunism.
• dictatorship in 1939.

Edward VII

• He succeded his mother, Victoria, in 1901
• He was granfather of Elizabeth II
• He modernized the fleet and army
• His reign ended in 1910

Patriotism and War

• Did not have a long experience of war
• He idealized War as a purifying experience for people and nations
• Exalted patriotism, heroism and sacrifice

The first World War

• The rivarly between Austria and Russia for influence in the Balkans;
• The rivarly between Britain and Germany for commericial and naval supremacy;
• The rivarly between France and Germany after the Franco-German War in 1870.
• The Triple Alliance
• The Triple Entente

• General election (1906)
• 83% of the electors voted
• 60% of the population was allowed to vote, only the male landowners
• Old Age pension ActThe National Insurance Scheme.
• The "suffragettes": demanding the right to vote.

George V

Became king in May 1910 on the death of his father. He was Edward's second son, but his brother had died before