Early 20 c. Novel

The century is characterized by great diversity of artistic values & methods. This age had a great impact on the literary process. Variety of social, ethic & aesthetic attitudes. New achievements in science have their impact on literature. Literature absorbs & transforms the material of their influences: ‘The First World War’, ‘Russian Revolution’, ‘Freuds psychoanalysis’, ‘Bergsons philosophy of subjective idealism’, ‘Einsteins theory of relativity’, ‘Existentialists thought’, ‘Economic crises 1919-1921 & consequent upheaval of social movement’, ‘Marxist ideology’, ‘Strike 1926’. All these factors lead to literature of social problematics. There existed three trends: critical realism, beginning of social realism, modernism. The writers revolutionized, changed literary form, as well as continued the traditional forms.

Representatives: Herbert George Wells(realism), John Galsworthy (social realism), James Joice (modernism), Virginia Woolf (modernism)

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. His early novels, called " scientific romances", invented a number of themes now classic in science fiction in such works as The Time Machine(1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds(1898), When the Sleeper Wakes, and The First Men in the Moon. He also wrote other, non-fantastic novels that have received critical acclaim including Kipps and the satire on Edwardian advertising, Tono-Bungay(1909).

John Galsworthy (1867 - 1933) is best known for his Forsyte Saga, a series of six novels which trace the story of a typically English upper-class family from Victorian days to the nineteen-twenties-presenting their reactions to great events which, in effect, spell the doom of all they stand for, including World War I, the growth of Socialism, the General Strike of 1926. Galsworthy also wrote serious social plays, including ‘strife’ (1909) and ‘justice’ (1910)

James Joyce (1882 – 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922) a novel of enormous length dealing with the event of a single day in the life of a single town-the author's native Dublin Joyce had previously published some charming but not outstanding verse, a volume of short stories called Dubliners, and a striking auto biographical novel-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The hero o this novel-Stephen Dedalus-appears again in Ulysses, this time subordinated in a secondary role: the hero is a Hungarian Jew, long-settled in Dublin, called Leopold Bloom. The novel has no real plot. Like the Greek hero whose name provides the title, Bloom wanders from place to place, but has very un-heroic adventures, and finally meets Stephen, who then takes on the role of a sort of spiritual son. After this the book ends But the eight hundred pages are not filled with padding; never was; novel written in conciser prose. We are allowed to enter the minds of the chief characters, are presented with their thoughts and feelings in a continuous stream (the technique is called 'interior monologue'). The book is mostly a never-ending stream of Bloom's half-articulate impression of the day, but Joyce prevents the book from being nothing but that, b; imposing on it a very rigid form. Each chapter corresponds to an episode in Homer's Odyssey and has a distinct style of its own; for instance, in thi Maternity Hospital scene the prose imitates all the English literary style from Beowulf to Carlyle and beyond, symbolising the growth of the foetus in the womb in its steady movement through time. The skill of the book is amazing, and when we pick up a novel by Arnold Bennett or Hugh Walpole after reading Ulysses we find it hard to be impressed by ways of writing which seem dull, unaware, half-asleep. Ulysses is the most carefully-written novel of the twentieth century.

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is another novelist hard to classify. She dispenses with plot and even characterisation, preferring to analyse in the closest possible detail a mood or thought as presented at a given moment in time. Like Joyce, she uses an interior monologue device to depict' the stream of consciousness' of her characters. Her prose is careful, exquisitely light, approaching poetry in its power to evoke mood and sensation. Her view of the novel was a comprehensive one; she did not wish to limit herself to the mere story-telling of men like Arnold Bennett and Hugh Walpole, but wanted to see the novel absorb as many literary devices as possible, even, occasionally, to break away from prose and use verse instead. To many readers her novels do not appear to be works of fiction at all: they seem too static, too lacking in action and human interest-a kind of literary form which is neither true poetry nor true prose, neither completely dramatic nor completely lyrical. Perhaps her best works are Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves. Mrs Dalloway (published in1925) is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway in post-World War I England. It is one of Woolf's best-known novels. Created from two short stories, " Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished " The Prime Minister", the novel's story is of Clarissa's preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess. With the interior perspective of the novel, the story travels forwards and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. ‘Время идет, Клариссе чего-то не хватает, хотя все есть. Решает в итоге жить для себя, начать новую жизнь, в 50 лет жизнь только начинается..’ © Малиновская