Eng426 20th century english literature

Self-Assessment Exercise

Discuss the changes that took place in Twentieth (20th) Century Britain.

List three features each of Victorian and modernist literatures

Post-Victorian literature was a precursor to the modernist movement. Discuss.

4.0 CONCLUSION

Literature reflects life and every literary or creative work has an element of verisimilitude as it feeds on history or real life issues. Twentieth Century English literature evolved as a response to the realities of the First World War. We have opened this module and unit by looking at some of the socio-political, historic events and intellectual developments of the Twentieth Century and how they connect to the English Literature. As members of the society, writers are also affected by these events and their works reflect the changes that the world around them has experienced or is experiencing.
The emergence of modernist writers marked a significant change in English Literature because modernists attempted to free the writer and his imagination. For modernists, the traditional methods of representation are inadequate to relate the true life experiences of the modern man. Modernist writing, however, has its root in the years that preceded the First World War. That is the Post-Victorian period

5.0 SUMMARY

In this unit, we have attempted to lay a foundation for this course so that you would be familiar with the effect of the First World War on Britain, its people, and its literature. In the next unit, you will get acquainted with the changes English literature had to go through and how modernist writers represented the complexities that characterised life after the First World War in literature.

You have also learnt about some features of Victorian literature. You have also encountered how modernist writers thought that the upheaval and sadness that the First World War brought would not be well reflected in traditional or Victorian mode of writing. Modernists felt that literary representations should reflect life as it was: disjointed, fragmented, gloomy, unending, without rationality, love, or happiness. You have equally learnt that the modernist ideas began in the early Twentieth Century, prior to the First War, but became more prominent in the years after the war.