The twentieth
century, properly beginning during the
last few years of the nineteenth century,
opened with the Edwardian period and the
Georgian period. Leading up to the
beginning of the twentieth century, social
and aesthetic changes were already marking
the passing of the Victorian era. With
the aesthetic movement of "art for
art's sake" challenging middle-class
assumptions about the nature and function
of art and with educational reforms increasing
literacy, the periodical press experienced
rapid growth, and literature became a more
pessimistic and skeptical mode of expression.
Literature in the beginning of the century,
exemplified in Lytton Strachey's Eminent
Victorians and Samuel Butler's The
Way of All Flesh, openly indicted and
ironically debunked Victorian mores. More
anti-imperialist sentiment found its way
into fiction and essays, such as those
of Kipling and E. M. Forster. From the
1960s onward, postcolonial literature,
supplementing commonwealth literature of
non-British writers living and writing
in Britain, such as Jean Rhys, appeared
as part of the decentralizing of England.
This was accompanied by other acts of decentralization,
such as the appearance of regional dialects
in public radio and increased support for
regional arts.
The war years, making way
for a large body of war poetry, only exacerbated
the skepticism and pessimism that were, in
part, a reaction to Victorian securities. In
the years leading up to World War I, the
imagist movement set the stage for a poetic
revolution and a reevaluation of metaphysical
poetry. Following this movement came
the influence of impressionism's, post-impressionism's,
and cubism's challenge to assumptions
about the nature of reality. Surrealism also
found its way into literature with the poetry
of Dylan Thomas, Edith Sitwell, and others.
Following them, "The Movement" was
introduced in the poetry of Donald Davie,
Thom Gunn, and Philip Larkin, who encouraged
a more spare language and a desire to represent
a seeing of the world with fresh eyes.
Like
poetry, fiction of the twentieth century
aimed to challenge assumptions about the
content of literary representation and
its confidence in reproducing the "real." The
twentieth-century novel experienced three
major movements: the high modernism of
the 1920s; the return to social realism
and documentary projects as a reaction
to modernism in the 1930s; and the postmodern
movement, which can only be adequately
expressed as postmodernisms, since
the movement emphasizes the fictional claims
of various realisms, including regional,
gay, postcolonial, urban, etc. All
trends in fiction, whatever the reactionary
aims of a movement, continue to demonstrate
the legacy of modernism with its self-consciousness
about language, form, and meaning. Virginia
Woolf brought the notion of reality as
something fixed and dependable into question
in her unreliable narration and "stream
of consciousness" writing. This high-modern
period was characterized by a turn inward
with an emphasis on a continual flow of
impressions. The modernists also adopted
the French free indirect style to
allow them to enter the minds of their
characters and speak on their behalves.
Existential loneliness, a revivification
of mythology, and a skeptical modernist
linguistic turn characterize modern literature.
In the postwar, postimperial period, the
fiction of William Golding and Iris Murdoch
and their contemporaries began to examine
the moral bases of society. Some nostalgia
for imperial days gets expressed in the
fiction of Paul Scott and J. G. Farrell,
to name two. On the whole, the reading
public was getting to hear from a wider
range of voices: women, regional writers,
gay men and women, writers challenging
assumptions about legitimate literary genres,
and postcolonial writers.
In the realm of drama, the
twentieth century saw radical changes throughout
the century. The revolution
in twentieth-century drama occurred in the
decade following the end of World War II,
beginning with war-time verse plays and developing
into drama that pushed theatrical representation
and expression to extremes, testing the limits
of language and its theatrical function. Television,
with its ready public access, and technicolor
cinema forced theater to carve out a unique
niche for itself as a visual art. Political
critique also played a large role in postwar
theater, especially with such writers as
Harold Pinter and John Arden. The plays of
Joe Orton and Tom Stoppard further demonstrate
the focus on self-conscious theatricality
that was becoming a centerpiece of later
twentieth-century drama. A watershed came
in Lord Chamberlain's abolition in 1968
of state censorship of plays: from that point
on, theaters could commission and perform
plays that addressed controversial political,
social, and sexual issues. This also encouraged
the emergence of new theatrical groups addressing
specific political agendas, such as the Monstrous
Regiment. This further coincided with the
appearance of important contributions by
women playwrights.