British literature and culture 2 –

exam material

Definitions (1st task)

1. An age of transition: the Victorian Age 1830-1901. A distinct historical and literary period, named
after the rule of Queen Victoria. The social, political and cultural life of England undergoes dramatic
changes, as a result of which she turns into the world’s leading imperial power. Steam power,
railways, printing presses, telegraph, photography, anaesthetics, compulsory education.

2. A time of troubles: the early period of the Victorian Era. 1830-48. Bad harvest, unemployment,
poverty, awful working and living conditions, of the working classes – child labour, chartist
movements, rioting, fears of revolution. Potato famine in Ireland.

3. The age of improvement: the mid-Victorian period. 1848-70. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
represents the main Victorian values: moral responsibility, earnestness, domestic property. Free
trade, economic prosperity, expansion of worldwide influence, missionary societies. Opening the Suez-
Chanel, the Great Exhibition.

4. Decay of values: the late period. 1870-1901. The prosperity and security of the Jubilee years turns
London into a flourishing city with booming consumerism. The strength of the Empire inside and
outside Britain is undermined by wars and rebellions. Germany, the US and Canada are economic
competitors. Rising rate of emigration. Critical voices are strengthening and gaiety is replaced by
melancholy. In the 1890s the social and moral values are rapidly changing, with the rise of the
aesthetic movement modernism takes shape. The role of woman is rapidly changing.

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5. Dramatic monologue: hybrid genre that matches lyric expression but dramatic in principle, poet gives
voice to an imaginary person, psychological representation of the mind of the individual. Robert
Browning – My last duchess

6. Pre-Raphaelite movement: a group founded by young painters: Dante Gabriel Rosetti, John Everett
Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, Julia Margaret Cameron. Aim to modernize painting, turn to the
directness of Italian artist Raphael (15th century) – medieval iconography, legends, colours, details.
Exploration of the female face and body, spirit and soul, erotic experience, powerful emotions, dream-
like experience. Christina Rosetti – the poem turns away from the public role, embraces the identity of
the bohemian rebel.

7. Aestheticism: Reacts against traditional Victorian social and moral values, beauty is the most
important.

8. Decadence: focus on the individual, appearance, pleasure, sensationalism, “dandy”. Oscar Wilde –
The picture of Dorian Gray

9. Bildungsroman: novel of personal development, emphasis on social values of self-control, loyalty and
responsibility. Charles Dickens – Great expectation or Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre

10. Condition of England novel: about social problems, widening gap between the social classes,
damaging effects of industrialisation. Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist or Hard times.

11. Historical fiction: deal with the past. Charles Dickens – A tale of two cities. Historical romance:
Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

12. Popular fiction: ghost stories and supernatural tales. Charles Dickens – A Christmas carol, Stevenson
– The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Fantasy literature (Dracula), detective fiction (Sherlock
Homes by Arthur Conan Doyle), science fiction (The island of the doctor Moreau), and adventure
stories (Kipling’s The jungle book)

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13. Victorian theatre: grows into a popular institution, offering a variety of entertainments with
spectacular effects, in the form of melodramas, farces, dramatization of novels, pantomimes and
musicals.

14. Parody: mocking imitation of the style of other literary works or authors, with the intention of
ridiculing or criticizing.

15. Satire: a mode of writing that exposes the failures of individuals, institutions or society. The critical
attitude is blended with and wit.

16. Subversion: poking fun at, and undermining the established values.

17. Comedy of ideas: focus on social problems, philosophical comedy. Long prefaces explain the main
ideas of the play.

18. Empire within Britain: 1536 Act of Union (wales); 1707 Act of Union (Scotland – great Britain); 1822
Act of Union (Ireland); 1922 Partition of Ireland

19. Empire outside Britain: “Rule Britannia”, large scale British emigration, 1867 Canada, 1876 Queen
Victoria becomes Empress of India, “the scramble of Africa”, 20% of the world-population, 25% of
lands.

20. Irish cultural nationalism: late 19th century resistance movement that looks for a distinctive
national identity by means of literature and culture through rediscovering distinctive Irish native
traditions. Revives Gaelic literature with the help of translations, adaptations, and the rewritings of
myths and folk-tales. Yeats.

21. Bloomsbury Group: was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and
artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster. This loose
collective of friends and relatives was closely associated with the University of Cambridge and

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 King’s Collage London. They lived, worked, or studied together near Bloomsbury, London. Their
works outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern
attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality.

22. Modernism: new, fashionable ideas and innovation against traditional values. Modernist art/artist
share the belief that modernity and changing the traditions are necessary for their art.

23. Modernist characteristics of the novel: narrative unfolding through the consciousness of the central
character(s) – the narrator makes no comment. New experimental modes of representation like the
steam of consciousness technique/interior monologue. Changes in perspective, plurality of vision.
Representation of complex and ambiguous realities, concern with: individual perception, fluidity of
the self with its internal conflicts, privileging the body over the mind, irrationality/strangeness in
everyday life. Characters often portrayed as hardly explicable and lack unity, representing what was
repressed by the given culture. In the modernist novel art becomes a topic itself, the artist examines
him/herself, artist characters. Awareness of words and language.

24. Characteristics of modernist poetry: symbols and intense images to convey private experience.
Aesthetic concern, focus on verbal precision. Frequent use of free verse, revival of epic forms.
Represents divided consciousness, fragmentation. Urban setting. Addressing the central question of
the era – alienation, existential anxieties, loss of faith, traditions, values and norms. Focus on the
relationship of the present to the past, visions of the future. Often sceptical, ironic.

25. Theatre of the absurd: dramatic presentation of the absurdity of the human condition by the use of non-
realistic form. Characterised by perplexity and spiritual anguish, portrays a pattern of images
presenting man as a bewildered being in an incomprehensible universe.

26. Dystopia: imaginative literature that constructs flawed fictional societies in the shortcomings of
which satirize ideal utopian societies, specific real-world societies, or both. In contrast with utopia
that emphasizes the community, in the dystopia individual needs are in opposition with the demands
of an oppressive regime. Set in worlds distant in space or time. Represents experiences about the
obstacles of true individuality. Mode of realism is used to imagine a nightmarish future –
information about Eastern European dictatorships as an important source.

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27. Postmodernism: post refers to what follows modernism, emerged as a reaction against established
forms of high modernism. Economical background – post-industrial or consumer society, media
spectacle, multinational capitalism, neo-colonialism, computerisation. In the postmodern the
traditional boundaries between high and popular culture are eroded. Characterised by theoretical
discourse – feminism, post-colonialism, subcultures.

28. Metafiction: a text that emphasizes its status as a text, self-consciousness of writing, calling attention
to the process of writing and reading, critical commentary of the literary text, art is about itself.

29. Intertextuality: rewritings. Nothing new (death of the author, death of the plot), everything is an
imitation. Narrative devices – self-reflective, framings: Chinese box structure, irony and parody,
manipulates space and time.

30. Historiographic metafiction: work of fiction that combines the literary devices of metafiction with
historical fiction. It contains frequent allusions to other artistic, historical and literary texts
(intertextuality) in order to show the discursive nature of literature and history. Offers critical
perspective on history and historical truth.

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 Authors (2nd task)

Charles Darwin
o The mid-Victorian period
o Evolutionary scientist
o The Descent of Man
▪ The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is a book by English naturalist
Charles Darwin, first published in 1871, which applies evolutionary theory to human
evolution, and details his theory of sexual selection, a form of biological adaptation
distinct from, yet interconnected with, natural selection. The book discusses many
related issues, including evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics, differences
between human races, differences between sexes, the dominant role of women in mate
choice, and the relevance of the evolutionary theory to society.

Alfred Tennyson
o Victorian poetry
o The lady of Shalott
▪ Narrative verse – story told in a poetic form, ballad-like
▪ The Lady of Shalott" is a lyrical ballad by the English poet Alfred Tennyson. Based on the
medieval Donna di Scalotta, it tells the story of Elaine of Astolat, a young noblewoman
imprisoned in a tower on an island near Camelot. One of the poet's best-known works, its
vivid medieval romanticism and enigmatic symbolism inspired many painters, especially the
Pre-Raphaelites and their followers.

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 Robert Browning
o Victorian poetry
o Pre-Raphaelite
o My last Duchess
▪ Dramatic verse – hybrid genre that matches lyric expression but dramatic in principle, poet
gives to an imaginary person, psychological representation of the mind of the individual.
▪ The poem is written in 28 rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter.
▪ the Italian Renaissance held a particular fascination for Browning and his contemporaries,
for it represented the flowering of the aesthetic and the human alongside, or in some cases in
the place of, the religious and the moral.
▪ A poem like “My Last Duchess” calculatedly engages its readers on a psychological level.
Because we hear only the Duke’s musings, we must piece the story together ourselves.
Browning forces his reader to become involved in the poem in order to understand it, and
this adds to the fun of reading his work

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

o Victorian poetry
o Pre-Raphaelite
o Lyric poetry – Sonnets to George Sand
▪ Express emotions and thoughts
▪ Universal themes of love, death and religion in melancholic tone. Experimentation in diction
and sound.
o Verse novel – Aurora-length: a poem in nine books
▪ Story told in a poetic form, ballad-like
▪ The use of pictorial elements, detailed description of visual images to represent emotion
makes poetry similar to painting.

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 Matthew Arnold
o Victorian poetry
o Pre-Raphaelite
o Lyric poetry – Dover Beach
▪ The first two sections each consist of 14 lines that suggest but do not achieve strict sonnet
form, and except for a short (three foot) opening line, the last section emulates the octave of
a sonnet, but closes with a single, climactic line instead of a sestet — as though the final five
lines had been eroded.
▪ "Dover Beach" is a melancholic poem. Matthew Arnold uses the means of 'pathetic fallacy',
when he attributes or rather projects the human feeling of sadness onto an inanimate object
like the sea. At the same time he creates a feeling of 'pathos'. The reader can feel sympathy
for the suffering lyrical self, who suffers under the existing conditions.

Christina Rosetti
o Victorian poetry
o Pre-Raphaelite
o In an artist’s studio
▪ The poet turns away from the public role, embraces the identity of the bohemian rebel
▪ Right at the beginning of the poem, we are confronted by repetition. One should
immediately note that this is a Petrarchan sonnet, written in the plodding and repetitive
rhythm and meter of iambic pentameter.
▪ Another important feature of Rossetti’s sonnet related to rhyme scheme is her use of
alliteration. The repeated consonants in “wan with waiting” work to mime, sonically,
the stretch of time. In other words, the repeated “w” sound slows down the reader’s
perception of time.

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 Gerald Manley Hopkins
o Victorian poet
o Manipulation of prosody – particularly his concept of sprung rhythm and use of imagery –
established him as an innovative writer of verse. Two of his major themes were nature and religion.
Only after his death did Robert Bridges begin to publish a few of Hopkins's mature poems in
anthologies, hoping to prepare the way for wider acceptance of his style. By 1930 his work was
recognised as being among the most original literary accomplishments of his century. It had a
marked influence on such leading 20th-century poets as T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden,
Stephen Spender and C. Day Lewis.

Oscar Wilde
o Victorian novelist
o Victorian theatre and drama
o The picture of Dorian Gray
▪ The work, an archetypal tale of a young man who purchases eternal youth at the expense of
his soul, was a romantic exposition of Wilde’s own Aestheticism.
▪ moral fantasy novel
▪ Publication of the novel scandalized Victorian England, and The Picture of Dorian Gray was
used as evidence against Wilde when he was tried and convicted in 1895 on charges related
to homosexuality.
▪ Reacts against traditional Victorian social and moral values, beauty is the most important.
▪ Decadence – focus on the individual, appearance, pleasure, sensationalism, “dandy”
o The importance of being ernest (1895)
▪ Transforms elements of the Restoration comedy of manners, subverts the clichés of popular
theatre, satire and parody of contemporary society.
▪ Mocks the conventions of Victorian popular theatre and subverts Victorian social and moral
ideals.
▪ Duality, doubles, masks
▪ Witty language use – puns, paradoxes

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 Emily Bronte
o Pen-name Ellis Bell
o Victorian novelist
o Wuthering Heights (1847)
▪ Enigmatic work in a mixture of styles: gothic fiction (dark setting and atmosphere,
cruelty, threatening plot), romance, psychological thriller. Complex narrative
structure: frame narrative, with multiple viewpoints.
▪ Set in two representative location – Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange and
the nearby areas of the Yorkshire moors.
▪ Motifs: doubles, repetition, the conflict between freedom and conventions, foreignness,
love-betrayal, revenge, the supernatural

Charlotte Bronte
o Pen-name Currer Bell
o Victorian novelist
o Jane Eyre (1847)
▪ Female Bildungsroman, narrated in first person
▪ Jane represents the values of self-help, discipline and independence. Refuses the
proposal of Rochester and Rivers.
▪ Diverse styles: realism, evocative descriptions, fairy-tale and Gothic-elements.
▪ Themes: love versus autonomy, religion, colonization, social position and gender
relations.
▪ Feminist and postcolonial readings.

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 Charles Dickens
o Victorian novelist
o The Bildungsroman – The great expectation
▪ Novel of personal development, emphasis on social values of self-control, loyalty and
responsibility.
o The condition of England novel – Oliver Twist and Hard times
▪ About social problems, widening gap between the social classes, damaging effects of
industrialisation.
▪ In Oliver Twist, Dickens mixes grim realism with merciless satire to describe the effects of
industrialism on 19th-century England and to criticise the harsh new Poor Laws. Oliver, an
innocent child, is trapped in a world where his only options seem to be the workhouse, a life
of crime symbolised by Fagin's gang, a prison, or an early grave. From this unpromising
industrial/institutional setting, however, a fairy tale also emerges. In the midst of corruption
and degradation, the essentially passive Oliver remains pure-hearted; he steers away from
evil when those around him give in to it, and in proper fairy-tale fashion, he eventually
receives his reward – leaving for a peaceful life in the country, surrounded by kind friends.
On the way to this happy ending, Dickens explores the kind of life an outcast, orphan boy
could expect to lead in 1830s London.
o Historical fiction – The tale of two cities
▪ Deal with the past
o Comic fiction and satire – The Pickwick Papers
o Popular fiction – A Christmas carol
▪ Ghost stories and supernatural tales

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 Thomas Hardy
o Victorian novelist
o Realism versus naturalism – Tess of the D’Urbevilles or Jude the Obscure
▪ Opposed the Victorian certainties of realist conventions and the improvement of individual
and society. Portrays life as hopeless struggle for survival, success, and self-improvement
are matters of chance.
▪ Jude the Obscure focuses on the life of a country stonemason, Jude, and his love for his
cousin Sue, a schoolteacher. From the beginning Jude knows that marriage is an ill-fated
venture in his family, and he believes that his love for Sue curses him doubly, because they
are both members of a cursed clan. While love could be identified as a central theme in the
novel, it is the institution of marriage that is the work's central focus. Jude and Sue are
unhappily married to other people, and then drawn by an inevitable bond that pulls them
together. Their relationship is beset by tragedy, not only because of the family curse but also
by society's reluctance to accept their marriage as legitimate

George Eliot
o Victorian novelist
o The lifted veil (1859)
▪ Gothic tale combined with science fiction elements.
▪ First person narrative by Latimer, who foresees the future.
▪ Exploration of the supernatural courses of creative power. Interested in the characters
motives and feelings, fears, alienation, doubt and guilt. Bertha can be read as the symbol of
female sexuality, representing the entrapment and oppression of women at home.
▪ Themes: science versus supernatural, psychology and consciousness, the limits of human
power and knowledge.

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 Robert Luis Stevenson
o Victorian novelist
o Historical fiction – Treasure Island
o Popular fiction – The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
▪ It is about a London legal practitioner named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange
occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde. The novella's
impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde"
entering the vernacular to refer to people with an unpredictably dual nature: usually very
good, but sometimes shockingly evil.
▪ Appearances figure in the novel both figuratively and literally. Dr. Jekyll definitely wants to
keep up a façade of respectability, even though he has a lot of unsavory tendencies. In a literal
sense, the appearances of buildings in the novel reflect the characters of the inhabitants. Dr.
Jekyll has a comfortable and well-appointed house, but Mr. Hyde spends most of his time in
the "dingy windowless structure" of the doctor’s laboratory. Other disreputable quarters of
London are described as well; this is the stomping ground of Mr. Hyde.

Bernard Shawn
o Victorian theatre and drama
o Founder of the Fabian Society socialist organization for political reforms. Novelist, journalist, public
speaker, wrote more than 50 plays.
o Influenced by Wildean comedy and Ibsenian realism. Plays Unpleasant and Plays Pleasant.
o Mrs. Warren’s profession (1893)
▪ Comedy of ideas – focus on social problems, philosophical comedy. Long prefaces explain
the main ideas of the play.
▪ Focuses on the woman question – contemporary debates about the role and position of
women. Fallen woman versus new woman.
▪ Criticises the corrupting influence of capitalism and attacks the hypocritical Church.
o Pygmalion (1914)
▪ Reconstructs the Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell in love with his own
creation, Galatea. Parodies the social importance of language, snobbery and traditional
gender roles.

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 W. B. Yeats
o Member of the Senate, receives Nobel prize
o Irish nationalist
o The lake isle of Innisfree (1890)
▪ Nature poetry, interest in Celtic myth and folklore
o Easter (1916)
▪ Disillusionment with the patriotic literary project, images of individual heroism and its tragic
failure, ambivalent political attitude
o The second coming (1919)
▪ Apocalyptic versions of historical change and transformation

Joseph Conrad
o Merchant seaman of Polish origins, British citizen from 1886
o “The artist, like the thinker or the scientist, seeks the truth and makes his appeal.”
o Wrote sea-stories; novels set in European colonies and in troubled contemporary Europe. He
questions the ethics of empire in his colonial themes. Exploitation of the colonial Other; colonial
power seen as corrupting both native and settler.
o Heart of darkness (1899)
▪ Victorian tales of adventure are developed by modern narrative strategies – frame narration,
fragmented perspective, focus on unconscious motives, loneliness and isolation.
▪ Novella using the motif of the journey down the river Congo to the heart of Africa.
▪ Non-linear chronology, frame narrator and a self-dramatizing narrator called Marlow (the
author’s alter ego) – offers multiple perspectives and several narrative layers.
▪ Nightmarish experience of colonial reality and imperial exploitation, corruption and moral
decay. By subverting the metaphors of light and dark, Heart of darkness questions familiar
orientalist representations.

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 E. M. Forster
o Member of the Bloomsbury Group, main interest in personal relations from an independent liberal
perspective.
o Inspired by the Greek mythology and the Italian Renaissance.
o A passage to India (1924)
▪ Colonized India, anti-colonial independence movement
▪ Critical of Victorian attitudes and British imperialism. Portrays British snobbery and sense
of cultural superiority; racial and gender hierarchies, failure of personal connections.
▪ Chapters arranged around key-scenes, narrative gap at the heart of the novel – mystery of
what happened at the Marabar Caves, shifts in perspective through free indirect discourse.

Virginia Woolf
o Modern fiction
o While she is best known for her novels, especially Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse
(1927), Woolf also wrote pioneering essays on artistic theory, literary history, women’s writing, and
the politics of power. A fine stylist, she experimented with several forms of biographical writing,
composed painterly short fictions, and sent to her friends and family a lifetime of brilliant letters.
o Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
o Themes: communication versus privacy, disillusionment with the British Empire, the fear of
Death, the threat of oppression.
o Symbols: the prime minister (embodies England’s old values and hierarchical social system,
which are in decline), The old woman in the window across from Clarissa’s house (represents
the privacy of the soul and the loneliness that goes with it, both of which will increase as
Clarissa grows older)
o Bloomsbury Group

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 James Joyce
o Modern fiction
o An Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist
avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century.
o Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey
are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, most famously stream of consciousness. Other well-
known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of
poetry, a play, his published letters and occasional journalism.

T. S. Eliot
o Modernist poetry
o Leading figure of the literary school called New Criticism.
o The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
• Dramatic monologue, fragmented syntax, surrealist images.
• Speaker middle-aged anti-hero, characterized by uncertainty.
• Modern, urban setting evokes depressing atmosphere.
• Addresses the modernist themes of self-division, evasiveness, uneasiness, isolation,
sensitivity.
• Ironic tone.

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 W. H. Auden
o Modernist poetry
o Musee des Beaux Arts (1938)
• Auden's free verse poem is divided into two parts, the first of which describes scenes of
"suffering" and "dreadful martyrdom" which rarely break into our quotidian routines: "While
someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully / along." The second half of
the poem refers, through the poetic device of ekphrasis, to the painting Landscape with the Fall
of Icarus (ca. 1560s), at the time thought to be by Bruegel, but now usually regarded as an early
copy of a lost work.
• Some years after Auden wrote this poem, William Carlos Williams wrote a poem titled
"Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" about the same painting, and with a similar theme.
• This poem and the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus appear side-by-side 22 minutes
into the 1976 film, The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring David Bowie.

Dylan Thomas
o Modernist poetry
o Do not go gentle into that good night (1951)
• The villanelle consists of five stanzas of three lines (tercets) followed by a single stanza of four
lines (a quatrain) for a total of nineteen lines. It is structured by two repeating rhymes and two
refrains: the first line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas,
and the third line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas.
• The theme of this line is morality and transcendentalism. This line laments the inevitability and
necessity of death, encouraging old people to rise up against their death and fate. The poets voice
is arguing that old people should not consent to die immediately. He has linked being alive with
passion and deep emotions. Thomas good men and wise men resist dying gently, because they
could not achieve what they might have achieved in their lives.

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 Samuel Beckett
o Post-war theatre and fiction
o Waiting for Godot (1949)
• A tragicomedy in two acts.
• Nothing happens, but words. Reduced dramatic elements, language dominates
• Waiting for Godot incorporates many of the themes and ideas that Beckett had previously
discussed in his other writings. The use of the play format allowed Beckett to dramatize
his ideas more forcefully than before, and is one of the reasons that the play is so intense.
Beckett often focused on the idea of \"the suffering of being.\" Most of the play deals with
the fact that Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for something to alleviate their boredom.
• The play has often been viewed as fundamentally existentialist in its take on life. The fact
that none of the characters retain a clear mental history means that they are constantly
struggling to prove their existence. Thus the boy who consistently fails to remember either
of the two protagonists casts doubt on their very existence. This is why Vladimir demands
to know that the boy will in fact remember them the next day. Waiting for Godot is part
of the Theatre of the Absurd.

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 George Orwell
o Post-war fiction
o Dystopia
o Animal Farm (1946)
• Animal fable
• Allegorical commentary on the tendency of the betrayal of revolutions.
• Interpreted as political satire on Stalinism
o Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
• Britain as part of Big Brother’s Oceania – evil on the home front, totalitarianism having arisen
from within.
• Continuous warfare with Eurasia or Eastasia
• The similarities between 1984's Oceania and Stalin's regime are particularly striking. Like Stalin,
the Oceanian government embraces characteristics of both fascist and communist
authoritarianism: the former glorifies the wisdom of the leader, and the latter, the infallibility of
the Party. We can see both trends in 1984, where Big Brother (albeit apparently a fictitious
entity) is worshipped as a wise and loving leader, and the Party is practically structured around
its own supposed infallibility.
• It is unclear to what extent Orwell believed 1984 to be an accurate prediction of the future, but
many critics agree that he wrote the book as a warning to modern society of the damage that can
come from embracing totalitarian regimes. The novel mourns the loss of personal identity while
demonstrating how to effectively rid a person of their independence, particularly through
extensive sexual repression and the prohibition of individual thought.

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 William Golding
o Post-war fiction
o Lord of the flies (1954)
• Background – experience of war
• Form – adventure story set on idyllic desert island; indebtedness to a Victorian source, R. M.
Ballantyne’s The Coral Island (1858), subversion of its simplistic Christian/pagan dichotomy of
good (English boys) and evil (white pirates, black cannibals)
• Story and themes – English boys’ regression to savagery and violence (superstition, pointless
cruelty), beast inside humans, battle for supremacy; Jack and his choir representing the effects
of the brutal culture of privet schools, violent behaviour “acquired culturally from the adult
system which trains the boys for imperial class rule”
• Viewpoints – plurality, different ideas on the nature of evil

John Fowles
o British postmodern fiction
o The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)
• Themes – fascination of Charles Smithson, a Victorian gentleman with the mysterious Sarah
Woodruff; moving through Victorian debates about science, religion and gender roles.
• Perspective – shifts between Victorian and contemporary, exposing the gap between the date of
the story and composition; anachronist references to 20th century culture.
• Form and style – pastiche (borrowing elements) pf the style of Victorian novels, intertextuality.
• Narrative – author sometimes appearing in the novel as a character, use and parody of the
omniscience of the author in realist works.
• Metafiction – novel calling attention to its fictional status
• Closure – three different endings demonstrate the artificiality of literary endings.

Julian Barnes
o Postmodern novelist
o A history of the world in 10 ½ chapters (1989)
• A History of the World in 10½ Chapters is a novel by Julian Barnes published in 1989. It is a
collection of short stories in different styles; however, at some points they echo each other and
have subtle connection points. Most are fictional but some are historical.
• Themes – religion and reality, disenfranchisement, chaos and order

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