Modern Novel
The is the most important and popular literary medium in the modern times. It is the only literary form which can compete for popularity with the film and the radio, and it is in this form that a great deal of distinguished work is being produced. The publication of a new novel by a great […]
Modern Dramatists
1. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) The greatest among the modern dramatists was George Bernard Shaw. He was born and brought up in Ireland, but at the age of twenty in 1876 he left Ireland for good, and went to London to make his fortune. At first he tried his hand at the novel, but he […]
Modern Drama
After the death of Shakespeare and his contemporaries drama in England suffered a decline for about two centuries. Even Congreve in the seventeenth, and Sheridan and Goldsmith in the eighteenth, could not restore drama to the position it held during the Elizabethan Age. It was revived, however, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, […]
Modern Poets
Robert Bridges (1884-1930) Robert Bridges, though a twentieth century poet, may be considered as the last of the Great Victorians as he carried on the Victorian tradition. He is not a poet of the modern crisis except for his metrical innovations. Belonging to the aristocracy his work is also concerned with the leisured and highly […]
Modern Poetry
Modern poetry, of which T. S. Eliot is the chief representative, has followed entirely a different tradition from the Romantic and Victorian tradition of poetry. Every age has certain ideas about poetry, especially regarding the essentially poetical subjects, the poetical materials and the poetical modes. These preconceptions about poetry during the nineteenth century were mainly […]
Modern Literature (1900-1961)
The Modern Age in English Literature started from the beginning of the twentieth century, and it followed the Victorian Age. The most important characteristic of Modern Literature is that it is opposed to the general attitude to life and its problems adopted by the Victorian writers and the public, which may be termed ’Victorian’. The […]
Prose-writers of the later Victorian Period
In the later Victorian period there were two great prose-writers-Newman and Pater. Newman was the central figure of the Oxford Movement, while Pater was an aesthete, who inspired the leaders of the Aesthetic Movement in English poetry. (a) Newman and the Oxford Movement The Oxford Movement was an attempt to recover a lost tradition. England […]
Novelists of the Later Victorian Period
The novel in the later Victorian period took a new trend, and the novels written during this period may be called ’modern’ novels. George Eliot was the first to write novels in the modern style. Other important novelists of the period were Meredith and Hardy. The year 1859 saw the publication not only of George […]
<strong><em>Poets of the Later-Victorian Period</em></strong>
Pre-Raphaelite Poets In the later Victorian period a movement took place in English poetry, which resembled something like a new Romantic Revival. It was called the Pre-Raphaelite Movement and was dominated by a new set of poetsRossetti, Swinburne and Morris, who were interested simply in beauty. They were quite satisfied with the beauty of diction, […]
Prose-writers of the early Victorian Period
The early Victorian prose is in keeping with the energetic temperament of the time. An expansive energy seems to be characteristic of the whole period, displaying itself as freely in literature as in the development of science, geographical exploration and the rapidity of economic change. This energetic mood prescribes the inventiveness and fertility of the […]