Twentieth Century British

Literature
Factors affecting the 20th Century Literature

Dr. Hala Salih Mohammed

University of Khartoum
Faculty of Arts /English Department
Factors affecting the
20th Century Literature
•The First world war
In late June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist in
Sarajevo, Bosnia. An escalation of threats and
mobilization orders followed the incident, leading by
mid-August to the outbreak of World War I, which
pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman
Empire (the so-called Central Powers) against Great
Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Japan (the Allied
Powers). The Allies were joined after 1917 by the
United States. The four years of the Great War–as it
was then known–saw unprecedented levels of
carnage and destruction, thanks to grueling trench
warfare and the introduction of modern weaponry
such as machine guns, tanks and chemical weapons.
By the time World War I ended in the defeat of the
Central Powers in November 1918, more than 9
million soldiers had been killed and 21 million more
wounded.
Wilfred Owen 1893-1918
Wilfred Owen only published five poems during his lifetime, but
his harrowing descriptions of combat have since made him into
one of the towering figures of World War I literature. Just 21 years
old when the war broke out, he enlisted in the British army in
1915 and later took part in heavy fighting in France. “I have not
been at the front,” he wrote his mother. “I have been in front of
it.” After being diagnosed with shellshock in 1917, Owen was sent
to convalesce at a hospital in Scotland. He soon began writing
about his experiences at the urging of fellow poet Siegfried
Sassoon, and by 1918 he had produced several now-famous works
including “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” “Strange Meeting” and
“Dulce et Decorum Est,” which describes a gas attack in grim
detail. Despite his increased opposition to the war—he described
soldiers being sent to “die as cattle”—Owen returned to the front
lines in August 1918 and was later killed while leading men across
a canal in France. His mother received notice of his death on
November 11, 1918—the same day that World War I finally came
to an end.
Great Depression

•The Great Depression was a severe

worldwide economic depression that took
place mostly during the 1930s, beginning in
the United States. The timing of the Great
Depression varied across the world; in most
countries, it started in 1929 and lasted until
the late 1930sThe World Depression broke
at a time when the United Kingdom had still
not fully recovered from the effects of the
First World War more than a decade earlier.
The country was driven off the gold standard
in 1931.
Second World War
World War II, also called Second World War,
conflict that involved virtually every part of the
world during the years 1939–45. The principal
belligerents were the Axis powers—Germany,
Italy, and Japan—and the Allies—France, Great
Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and,
to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many
respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year
hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World
War I. The 40,000,000–50,000,000 deaths
incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest
conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.
Sparked by the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland, the
war dragged on for six bloody years until the
Allies defeated Nazi Germany and Japan in 1945.
Second World War
•Keith Douglas was born in Royal Tunbridge Wells in 1920.
Douglas studied at Christ’s Hospital and went up to Merton
College, Oxford in 1938. His tutor at Oxford was Edmund
Blunden who had a high opinion of Douglas’ poetry which he
brought to the attention of T.S. Eliot. Within days of the
declaration of war Douglas reported to an army recruiting
centre but did not begin training until July 1940. On 1 February
1941 he passed out from the Royal Military College at
Sandhurst and was commissioned into the 2nd Derbyshire
Yeomanry at Ripon. He was posted to the Middle East in July
1941.Douglas served initially in Cairo and Palestine and, finding
himself 20 miles inland from the Battle of El Alamein,
disobeyed orders and reported to the front. He was posted to A
squadron and took part in the 8th army’s victorious sweep
through North Africa. He returned to England in December
1943 and took part in the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944. He
was killed by enemy mortar fire on 9 June whilst his regiment
was advancing from Bayeux. He was buried by a hedge close to
where he had died and was later re-buried at Tilly-sur-Seulles
War Cemetery 14 km south of Bayeux.
Social/political ideas
In this period:
• DARWIN had destroyed the old religious values;

• Marx supported the cause of proletariat and revolutionized both the old economic doctrines with some important
points: The power of the capital, profit, private enterprise, private property and free competition;

• Freud had laid the basis of psychoanalysis as a science. He discovered the prevalence of the instincts over the will,
the subconscious over the consciousness. He discovered that man’s actions could be motivated by irrational
forces.

• Some novelist tried to give interpretation to the social changes, Others novelists explored the human soul. The
second type of writers were searching for new form of expression. Innovations were carried on in fiction. Now the
novel stopped to be realistic and began to examine the inner part of the characters as well as their thought
Characteristics of 20th Century Literature
• Fragmented Structure
• Fragmented Perspective
• The Novel of the City
• Writing from the Margins
Modernism
• In the early 20th-century literary modernism developed in the
English-speaking world due to a general sense of disillusionment with
the Victorian era attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and belief in the
idea of objective truth.
• Modernism is a cultural trend. It is the movement in visual arts,
music, literature and drama which rejected the old Victorian
standards of how art should be made. Modernism was developed in
the first three decades of the 20th century. It was developed in
Europe, especially in the Great Britain.
Characterises of Modern Literature
• Individualism
• Experimentation
• Absurdity
• Symbolism
• Formalism