TEXTS |
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CONTEXTS |
1899
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
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1899–1902
Boer War in South Africa
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1900
Max Planck proposes quantum
theory, the first step in the discovery of
the atom
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1903
Henry James, The Ambassadors
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1903
Wright brothers invent the powered
airplane
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1904
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism • Private
publication of poems by Constantine
Cavafy
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1905
Sigmund Freud, “Dora” (Fragment of
an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria)
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1905
Modern labor movement begins with
the founding of the Industrial Workers of
the World (IWW)
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1907
August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata
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1907
Japanese immigration to the United
States prohibited
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1908
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives
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1909
F. T. Marinetti, Futurist Manifesto
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1909
Commercial manufacture of plastic
begins • NAACP founded in the United
States
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1910
Mexican Revolution begins
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1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica (eleventh
edition)
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1912
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
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1912–1913
Balkan wars
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1913
Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, first
volume of Remembrance of Things Past
(1913–27) • D. H. Lawrence, Sons and
Lovers
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1914
James Joyce, Dubliners, which
includes The Dead
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1914–1918
World War I involves Europe,
Turkey, the Middle East, Africa, the
United States, and the Pacific
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1915
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis •
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock
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1915
Albert Einstein formulates general
theory of relativity • First
transcontinental phone call in America
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1916
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man
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1917
Russian Revolution overthrows the
Romanov dynasty
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1918
Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto
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1918–1919
Global influenza epidemic;
more than 20 million die
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1919
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the
West • Paul Valéry, The Crisis of the
Mind • Alfonsina Storni, Irremediably
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1919
League of Nations formed (U.S.
Senate rejects membership, 1920)
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1920
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
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1920
Mahatma Gandhi leads India’s
struggle for independence from Britain •
Women given the vote in the United
States
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1921
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in
Search of an Author
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1921–1935
Harlem Renaissance, black
literary and artistic movement
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1922
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land • Paris
publication of James Joyce, Ulysses
(imported copies burned in U.S. Post
Office) • Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to
Orpheus
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1922
Irish Free State established • USSR
formed • Discovery of Egyptian pharaoh
Tutankhamen’s tomb
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1923
Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
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1923
Turkey becomes a republic
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1924
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain • André Breton, First Surrealist Manifesto
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1924
Insecticides first used
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1926
Franz Kafka, The Castle • Paul Éluard, Capital of Pain
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1927
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse •
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an
Illusion
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1928
William Butler Yeats, The Tower •
André Breton, Nadja
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1928
Sixty-two nations sign the Kellogg-
Briand antiwar pact in Paris • First Five-Year Plan in USSR • Penicillin
discovered • First scheduled television
broadcasts • Women given the vote in
Great Britain
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1929 William Faulkner, The Sound and the
Fury • Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s
Own • Sigmund Freud, Civilization and
Its Discontents
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1929
Stock market crash heralds beginning
of world economic crisis; Great
Depression lasts until 1937
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1930
Katherine Anne Porter, Flowering
Judas
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1932
Zuñi Ritual Poetry published by
anthropologist Ruth L. Bunzel
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1933
Federico García Lorca, Blood
Wedding
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1933
Adolf Hitler given dictatorial powers
in Germany • Nazis build first
concentration camps
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1934
Stalin begins purges of Communist
party
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1937
Wallace Stevens, The Man with the
Blue Guitar
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1938–1940
Bertolt Brecht, The Good
Woman of Setzuan
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1939
Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return
to the Native Land
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1939
Germany invades Poland; all Europe
is drawn into World War II
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1940
Richard Wright, Native Son
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1941
Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of
Forking Paths
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1941
United States formally enters World
War II
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1942
Albert Camus, The Stranger •
William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses
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1943
T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets • Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
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1944
Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House and
Other Short Stories, which includes An
Unwritten Novel
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1945
Hannah Arendt, Organized Guilt
and Universal Responsibility
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1945
World War II ends with the dropping
of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki • United Nations and Arab
League founded
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1946
George Orwell, The Prevention of
Literature • Tadeusz Borowski, Ladies
and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber
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1946
Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech
marks beginning of Cold War • Pan-African Federation formed
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1947
Religious massacres accompany
partition of India and Pakistan into
independent states • Transistor invented
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1948
Ezra Pound, Pisan Cantos
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1948
Creation of Jewish state in Palestine
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1949
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second
Sex • George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four
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1949
Communist People’s Republic of
China established • Apartheid Instituted in South Africa
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1950
Pablo Neruda, General Song
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1950–1953
Korean War involves North
and South Korea, the United Nations,
and China
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1951
Doris Lessing, The Old Chief
Mshlanga
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1952 Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
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1952
Revolution in Egypt, which becomes
a republic in 1953 • First hydrogen
bomb
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1953
Joyce Mansour, Screams
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1953
Discovery of DNA structure launches
modern genetic science
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1955 Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Voyeur
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1956
First Congress of Black Writers
meets in Paris
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1957
Albert Camus, Exile and the
Kingdom, which includes The Guest •
Samuel Beckett, Endgame
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1958
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
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1958
European Common Market
established • Algerian War of
Independence (ends in 1962)
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1960
Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon
amour |
1960–1962
Independence for Belgian
Congo, Nigeria, Tanganyika, and Uganda
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1961
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the
Earth
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1961
Soviet astronaut orbits Earth |
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1961–1973
United States engages in the
Vietnam War |
1962
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook • Alain Robbe-Grillet, Snapshots, which
includes The Secret Room
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1963
Anna Akhmatova, Requiem,
published • Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
Matryona’s Home
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1966
First Dakar Arts Festival provides
showcase for African culture |
1967
Gabriel García Márquez, One
Hundred Years of Solitude
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1968
Alice Munro, Dance of the Happy
Shades, which includes Walker Brothers
Cowboy
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1969
American astronaut is first man on
the moon
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1970
Gabriel García Márquez, Death
Constant beyond Love
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1972
Ingeborg Bachmann, Three Paths to
the Lake, which includes The Barking •
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
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1973
Arab oil producers cut off shipments
to nations supporting Israel; ensuing
energy crisis reshapes global economy
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1977
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
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1978
Edward Said, Orientalism
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1981
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children • Leslie Marmon Silko, Storyteller,
which includes Yellow Woman
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1981
AIDS virus identified and named;
kills 6 million worldwide by 1996 |
1984
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, which
includes Age,Race,Class, and Sex |
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1986
Nuclear disaster in Chernobyl
spreads radiation contamination
throughout Europe
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1987
World stock market crash
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1989
Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native,
Other
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1989
Mikhail Gorbachev restructures the
Soviet state • Berlin Wall demolished
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1990
Derek Walcott, Omeros
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1990
East and West Germany united
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1991
United States and USSR agree to
arms reduction • Economic chaos and
nationalist unrest bring end of Soviet
Union
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1992
Rio Earth Summit: 172 nations
discuss global environmental damage and
disagree on economic responsibility •
Fighting between Christian Serbs and
Muslim Croats marks beginning of ethnic
wars in the former Yugoslavia; UN troops
intervene and effect temporary peace
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1993
European Community, the West’s
largest trading unit, formed; talks begin
on a common currency
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1994
Nelson Mandela becomes president
of South Africa after first multiracial
elections • Israel and PLO sign peace
agreement and begin negotiating its
conditions
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1996
Scientists in Scotland create Dolly,
the clone of an adult sheep
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1997
Death of Mother Teresa |
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2001
Terrorists attack the World Trade
Center in New York and the Pentagon in
Washington, D.C., on September 11
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2002
Salman Rushdie, Step across This
Line
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2002
Euro banknotes and coins introduced
as legal tender for members of European
Monetary Union
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2004
Death of Yasser Arafat
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