Towards the end of the 19th century the modern age was heralded: in the pessimistic novels by T. Hardys , reminiscent of Greek tragedies (e.g. “Tess of the d’Urbervilles”, 1891; German “Tess”, 1897), in naturalism the novels GR Gissings (eg “New Grub Street”, 1891; German “Liniengeld”, 1986), A. Morrisons (“A child of the Jago”, 1896) and GA Moores (“Esther Waters”, 1894; German 1895), in the science fantasies of H. G. Wells (“The time machine”, 1895; German “Die Zeitmaschine”, 1923) and finally in the beauty cult of aestheticism, as described by WH Pater (“Studies in the history of the Renaissance”, 1873; German “The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry”, 1902), O. Wilde, A. Dobson , A. Symons and Ernest Christopher Dowson (* 1867, † 1900) was practiced.
The modern
The literary modern age – an international movement, especially at home in big cosmopolitan cities, which also encompassed music and the visual arts – began in England as a reaction against the Victorian canon of forms, in particular against the aesthetic cult of beauty at the turn of the century. The destruction of traditional human images and concepts of reality through psychoanalysis (S. Freud , “Die Traumdeutung”, 1900), anthropology (J. Frazer , “The golden bough” 1890–1915; German “Der goldene Zweig”, 1928) and A. Einstein’s theory of relativity (1915), the experience of the modern metropolis, the trauma of the First World War and the Russian Revolution generated an awareness of the crisis that made the reorientation of literature inevitable. Competing, partly avant-garde, partly conservative styles now emerged in quick succession; From the beginning, literary production was driven by a lively and demanding, e. T. S. Eliot , I. A. Richards , F. R. Leavis, W. Empson ).
Hardy with his late poems, the “Georgians” like R. Brooke , W. de la Mare or E. Thomas with their realistic natural poetry, and authors like S. Sassoon or W. Owen with their disturbing war poems were already involved in poetry adopted fromaestheticism; the real break with tradition came with the precise, suggestive imagery of the “imagists” E. Pound , H. Doolittle and TE Hulme , with WB Yeats ‘ departure from late romanticism after 1914, with E. Pound’s experimental poetry(“Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”, 1920) and T. S. Eliots (“Prufrock and other observations”, 1917), but above all with T. S. Eliot’s monumental poem “The waste land” (1922; German “Das wüsten Land”), a polyphonic collage from images, voices and quotes that come together to form a picture of the age.
In the narrative prose, the realistic social novel lived in the works of authors such as J. Galsworthy (inter alia “The Forsyte saga”, 1906–28; German 1933), WS Maugham (inter alia, “Of human bondage”, 1915, “Der Menschen Hörigkeit”), 1938) and J. B. Priestley (inter alia “The good companions”, 1929; German, “Die gute Companions”, 1947); on the other hand, at the turn of the century, H. James and J. Conrad had perfected the personal narrative (inter alia “Lord Jim”, 1900; German 1927) broke new ground with the radicalization of perspective technology. The final break with traditional notions of reality, time, action, character and language was finally made in the experimental novels by V. Woolf (including “To the lighthouse”; German “Die Fahrt zum Leuchtturm”, 1931) and J. Joyce (et al »Ulysses«, 1922; German 1927), in which the outside world dissolves in the subjective stream of consciousness or in the ambiguity of language.
According to sportsqna.com, a number of novelists can also be attributed to the modern age, who abandoned traditional realism but not mimetic principles and used the novel to open up new areas of reality. So put D. H. Lawrence (eg “Women in Love” in 1920;. German “Women in Love”, 1927) the spontaneous life energy that drives and sexuality at the center of his human image and broke so with the Christian-humanist tradition; E. M. Forster showed his readers the limits of English culture (“A passage to India”, 1924; German “India”, 1936); E. Waugh (e.g., “A handful of dust,” 1934; “A handful of dust,” 1953) and A. Huxley (including “Point counter point”, 1928; German “counterpoint of life”, 1930) dealt with the social crises of their time in their satirical novels.
The early 20th century also saw the heyday of the short story – a genre coined by J. Joyce, DH Lawrence, V. Woolf, and v. a. K. Mansfield was masterfully handled and first recognized by critics as an art form in its own right.
The renewal of drama in the early 20th century is inextricably linked with GB Shaw’s socially and ideology-critical drama of ideas and debate (e.g. “Major Barbara”, 1905; German 1919), from whose socially critical realism dramatists such as H. Granville- Barker (e.g. “The Voysey inheritance”, 1905; German “Die Erbschaft der Voyseys”, 1913) and J. Galsworthy (e.g. “Strife”, 1909; German “Strike”, 1960). At the same time, the well-made plays by W. Maugham , N. Coward , Ben Travers (* 1886, † 1980), JM Barrie and J. B. Priestley dominated the commercial stages of London’s West End – Farces, comedies or problem pieces in conventional realistic mode. Against the dominance of stage realism developed – for the first time in the Irish Renaissance around the turn of the century (especially with W. B. Yeats) – a poetic drama, which was later developed in England with the verse dramas by T. S. Eliot (e.g. “Murder in the cathedral”, 1935; German “Mord im Dom”, 1946, translated by RA Schröder ), C. Fry (e.g. “The lady’s not for burning”, 1948; German “Die Dame ist nicht fürs Feuer”, 1950), WH Auden and C. Isherwood (e.g., “The dog beneath the skin,” 1935) achieved some success.
The literature of the 1930s
In the 1930s, against the background of the Great Depression, severe social tensions, the Spanish Civil War and the rise of fascism, the voice of a new generation could be heard in English literature who sympathized with communism or socialismand whose works were often clearly political Show commitment (including WH Auden , C. Day-Lewis , S. Spender ). G. Orwell belonged to this generation with the social report “The road to Wigan Pier” (1937; German “Der Weg nach Wigan Pier”, 1982) and “Homage to Catalonia” (1938; German “My Catalonia”, 1964) his solidarity with the English The proletariat and the Spanish Republicans. In Scotland, H. MacDiarmid initiated the renewal of an independent Scottish literature with the creation of the artificial language “synthetic Scots”, which was composed of various varieties of Scottish English (“Scots”) and founded a literary movement (“Scottish Renaissance”). and E. Muir , Neil Miller Gunn (* 1891, † 1971) and LG Gibbon felt belonging.
