Surrealism in English literature

 

  Surrealism was a Cultural Movement which developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and was largely influenced by Dada movement.

           Surrealism is a movement of art and literature which was founded by the poet and critic Andre Breton in 19224. It became popular in 1920s ad lasted till 1940s. Andre Breton published the "Manifesto of Surrealism" in 1924 where he has explained this new movement in detail. It was a movement which was mainly inspired by the phycho-analytical theories by Sigmund Freud.

DEFINATION:-

         Surrealism is a 20th century movement which is emerged in contrast to realism of the 19th century. Andre Breton, a French surrealistic has defined a term Surrealism,

       "Surrealism is pure psychic automation, by which one intends to express verbally, in writing or by any other method, the real functioning of the mind. Dictation by thoughts, in the absence of control exercised by reason, and beyond any aesthetic or moral preoccupation."

• Verbal representation of the psyche 
• Expression of the activity of the mind
• Absence of reason or logic
• No esthetic or moral purpose                              

          Surrealism means supper realism. It means the reality which is 'beyond reality'. It expresses the true process of thoughts. Image come from the subconscious mind.

FEATURES OF SURREALISM:-

1. Automatic writing 
2. juxtaposition
3. Associations 
4. Irrationality
5. Unconscious mind
6. Dream & Fantacy
7. Surrealism vs. Fantacy                                                                                      

 MAJOR WRITERS OF SURREALISM:-

            It was between 1924 and 1945 that the movement of Surrealism became widely popular in literature. Major writers eho became the outstanding exponents of Surrealism were...

•     Andre Breton
•     Salvador Dali
•     De Chirico
•     Robert Desnos
•     Marcel Duchamp  

So... by this term analysis, we can find some salient features of this term...

• Supper realism
• Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism)
• Revolt against restraint on free creativity 
• Talk about freedom 
• Directed against sung traditional
• Emphasis on unconsciousness in sculpture, painting, literature   

STYLE OF THE TERM:-

• Broken syntex    
• Free- logical
• Non- logical
• Non- chronological
• Dream like and nightmarish sequences    

CONCLUSION:-

                

               So, Surrealism was a literary movement which emerged and became popular after World War I and ended before the World War II. It was sharp reaction against the traditional ways of expression in literature.                                                                                                                                    

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Dadaism in English literature

 

               Dadaism was a movment of young artists and writers in Peris during and after first world war. It aimed at suppressing relationship between ideas and statement. An absolute freedom held meeting at bar and theatres and delivered itself of numerous non-sensical and semi-nonsensical manifestos. It was meant to signify everything and nothing. It became popular in Peris immediately after the first world war. Nothing was the basic word in vocabulary of Dadaism. 

           In art and literature manifestos of this esthetic were mostly collage effects. The arrangement of unrelated objects and word in a random fashion. Dada artists felt the war called into question every aspect of a society capable of starting and then prolonging it- including its art. Their aim was to destroy traditional values in art and to creat a new art to replace the old. It was opposed to form an order.  

            The artists and poets who followed Dadaism, used collage to arrange objects and words into meaningless and illogical pattern. 

              The word Dada is accidentally discovered by Hugo Ball that mean is wooden horse. Dadaism was founded in ZURICH  in 1960 by Tristan Tsara - chef spokesman and theoretician with about the object of poverty and demolishing the tenets of art, philosophy and logic and substituting them with conscious madness as protest against madness of war.

           It moved between fantacy and destruction and its influence spread from London to Newyork. It was influenced by Futurism. 

ITS CHIEF OBJECTIVES:-

• Manifestos
• Simultaneous poems, noise, music
• provocative public spectacles 

...all these were borrowed from futurists and stood as an image of a Dissolution with seemed the central fact of modern existence.

         After analysing Dadaism we can observe some salient features of it, Which are...

• A result of the despair, alienation and frustration of the war
• Dada Manifesto 1918
• Also originated from a sense a a disgust and a spirit of protest against the static ana smug establishment
• Basically a nihilistic movement 
• Poet wrote non-vertical verse
• Imagination to be freed of the tyranny of pre-conception and reasons 

• According to the movement "THERE IS NOTHING IMPOTANT IN THE WORLD"
• Intended to outrage and scandalize
• Later on culminated in surrealism

  DADA artists:-

• Marcel Duchamp
• Picasso
• Chirico
• Andre Breton
• Max Ennest
• Louis Dragon

Problem plays in English literature

 

                  The problem play is a form of drama that emerged during the 19th century as part of the wider movement of realism in the arts. The problem plays are also called by the name 'Thesis play'. It is a comparatively recent form of drama. Ideas of the problem play is  a play in which a problem is discussed in all its aspects. This play emerged during 19th century. In this play characters and situations are so designed as to give scope for a discussion of the problem from various points of view.

      

              The trend of writing plays discussing various social, economic, political and domestic problems was first started by a Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. 

            He created a sensation in the literary circles of Europe publishing in 1879 play called "Doll's House" containing his revolutionary ideas about a domestic problem. The discussion in that play disturbed the peace of a thousand homes. In 1889  it was produced in England as translated by William Archer. It ceated a storm in England. Many critics condemned this new drama of ideas. They argued that a discussion or a debt had no peace in drama. But George Bernard Shaw strongly supported Ibsen. He started writing plays discussing problems could succeed on the stage.

           Other dramatists like Galsworthy also started writing problem plays.

            This drama is basically different from the traditional drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries and successors. There the emphasis was on the creation of living characters and the plots were based on the fundamental human emotions like, love, jealousy, anger, bitterness etc. In these plays conflicts means clash involving violent physical action or intense emotional disturbance. In the modern drama  of idea characters are introduced to represent different points of view regarding the problem. Hero is generally the mouthpiece of the dramatist himself.

              George Bernad Show held revolutionary views on the problems of love, marriage, sex, prostitution, capitalism, religion, evolution and war, and he started writing plays to present his point of view about all these problems. He used the stages a platform from which to deliever his sermon.

SUBJECT OF THIS KIND OF PLAY:-

               The subject is some current problem. It's deal with contemporary issues. It looks like sermon. This play , therefore has a universal appeal. But the problems presented in problem plays may be of only local interest. Thus a play dealing with constitutional monarchy will interest people in England but will not appeal to people in contries where is no monarchy.

             However, it is typical product of the modern age. Our modern life is such that we are constantly placed in difficult situations and are all the time face to face with social, economic, political and domestic problems.

CONFLICT:-

            The conflict is purely mental. We can see a clash of conflicting ideas and beliefs and of opposing standards of values. In Shakespeare's Othello the hero is a black Moor who marries a very beautiful and virtuous white girl, Desdemona. Othello has all possible virtues but he has one fatal jealousy. 

SOME OF THE PROBLEM PLAYS:-

• Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
• Mrs. Dane's Defence, Saints and sinners by H. A. Janes (1851-1920), disciple of Ibsen
• Pygmalion, Widower's House, Mr. Warren's Profession, Candida by G. B. Show (1856-1950)
• Strife, The Silver Box, Loyalties and Justice by John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
• The Voysey Inheritance and Wash, The Marying of Ann Leete by Granville Buker (1877-1946)
• Hindle Wakes by Stanley Houghton (1881-1913)
•  Rachel by Angelina Weld Grimke (1880-1958)

             RACHEL is one of the finest play to protest lynching and racial violence.

Stream of consciousness in novel

 

                    The term Stream of Consciousness, comes from psychology.  It was coined by William James in 1890 and popularised in his Principles of Psychology in 1890.

According to William James,

Every definite image in the mind is stopped and dyed in the free water that flows round it... Consciousness does not appear to itself chopped up in bites... It's nothing joined, or flows... Let us call it stream of thing, stream of consciousness, or of subjective life.

 

  The concept of Stream of consciousness has added new and significant dimension to the art of prose fiction. Actually this new genre of novel took birth between 1913 and 1915. 

                   Stream of consciousness is the name for a special mode of narration that undertakes to reproduce, without a narrator's intervention, the full spectrum and the continuous flow of a character's mental process in which sense perceptions mingle with conscious and half conscious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings and random association. 

               The stream of consciousness in its radical form is sometimes described as the exact presentation of the process of consciousness. Because sense perceptions, mental images, feelings and some aspects of thought itself are non- verbal. But an author can present these non-verbal elements only by converting them into some kind of verbal equivalent. James Joyce developed variety of devices for the stream of consciousness narrative in "Ulysses". 

   

                In stream of consciousness novel everything is presented through an apparently unorganised succession of images and ideas connected by association rather than by logical argument or narrative sequence. The action takes place and the plot develops through the mind of the principle character and his stream of consciousness reflects all the forces of which he is aware as they are playing upon him at anyone moment both inside and outside, more or less simultaneously. 

◾ Stream of consciousness novel is a reaction against the well made novel of them 19th century. It's tendency is towards Demoralisation. There are some significant features of this new literary genre:

1. In this kind of novel, plot and characters have decayed

2. Set descriptions of the character of the older novel are subtitled by depiction of the inner selves. 

3. In place of plot construction, in the sense of a logical arrangement of incidents, we notice a backward and forward movement in time. There is no plot, no character, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest in new novel.

4. Instead of concentrating arround a limited issue, the stream of consciousness novelists fly off in an eccentric manner in different direction.

.

Most famous novelist:-

• The first modern novelist who consciously employed the stream of consciousness was Dorothy Richardson. She came in the lime light by her novel Pointed Roof(1950) and Pilgrimage (1915-1935). 

• James Joyce was a major novelist, who used the stream of consciousness in A portrait of the artist as a young man, Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake .

• Virginia Woolf began as a traditional novelist and then showed remarkable courage to break free from the tradition and wrote a few remarkable stream of consciousness novels. Her Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the light House, The Waves and Between the Act depict the psychological time and incoherent state of consciousness. 

      

               D. H. Lawrence thought not a stream of consciousness novelists was very well conversant with psycho-analytical theories of Freud and Jung and depicted the unconsciousness of his mind through impressionistic and symbolic techniques. As the stream of consciousness technique is a bold experiment in modern fiction, its potency and possibility are well demonstrated by great authorities like- James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. The experiment is, however, going on and the complete success is yet to be achieved to harmonize the inner stream of consciousness and the natural fictional structure.  

     

  

Theme of the play The Monkey's Paw

 

Introduction:-

'The Monkey's Paw' is a supernatural short story by author W. W. Jacobs, first published in England in the collection The Lady of the Barge in 1902. In the story, three wishes are granted to the owner of The Monkey's Paw, but the wishes come with an enormous price for interfering with fate.

Themes:-

                 Theme is an idea that recurs in or pervades a work of art or literature. Here the play monkey's paw depicts various themes. The whole play is based on supernatural power and fate, which make it very interesting as well as informative that how fate controls human desires. 

                  In the play, four things stand out clearly, which make the play outstanding. The whole play is running in and around this four things, which are...

1. Fate:- 

               The Indian fakir (wandering Hindu holy man) who gave the monkey's paw. Its magic did so with an explicit purpose: to show that fate rules human life and that challenging this reality leads to pain. Although Sergeant-Major Morris says this early in the story, fate had already made an appearance in the story.                                                                                     

In the second paragraph, Jacobs describes Mr. White as having made a "fatal mistake" while playing chess with his son. When something is fatal in a game, it is only a metaphor. In the rest of the story fate plays a literally deadly role. Jacobs links these two words intentionally, and the White continue to make mistakes as they try to play on this larger board of fate: they disregard the advice from their expert guide Morris and buy the paw, which they then use.

2. Nature and Limits of Desire:-

When the story opens, the White family is relatively content. They are not rich, but they have a warm and comfortable home, and their son has a job. As Mr. White says, he has all he wants. However, once Morris shares his stories, the family's balance is upset, specifically by desire. White begins to wish that he too could have traveled to India.

                Once White buys the paw, he is at first at a loss as to what to wish for. At his son's suggestion he wishes for enough money to pay off the home's mortgage. 

This suggests a pattern that Jacobs continues throughout the story: those who accept their limits will be content and safe—as the Whites are early in the story. Once desire enters the story, it unbalances their lives, leading to greater and more tragic disorder.

3. Domestic Happiness:-

Throughout the story the relationship of inside and outside—and how that which comes from without (outside) can disrupt the home—is continually underscored. The story starts with the word without and then goes on to describe first the weather outside and then the condition inside the house. 

                Outside it is "cold and wet," while inside it is warm and bright. Mr. White then keeps watch on the outside world, anticipating their visitor's arrival—but seeming a tad too eager for the intrusion from the outside world. When Morris does come, he brings stories from a distant land. He also brings the monkey's paw into the house, which changes it and its inhabitants forever.

                In Part 2 Herbert White leaves the house, the first time in the story a family member does so. Within just a few lines Mrs. White observes a well-dressed stranger on the boundary to their property. She thinks he seems lost, but he is really gathering his courage to enter the house. When he does enter, he, like Morris, changes the inside of the house forever: he brings the horrific news of their son's death and the money the company is giving them in condolence.

               Part 3 starts with the Whites returning home from the cemetery where their son is buried, and then almost the whole of the section is dedicated to two things: calling their dead son in, and then keeping him out.

4. Magic:-

         Mystic or spiritual beings can "charge" a talisman to do harm upon those greedy enough to interfere with fate. Magical forces rarely work the way people want them to. The whole play is based on magic from starting to the end. It also depicts the supernatural powers led by magic. 

Conclusion:-

                Thus, the play has various themes which helps the play to construct its plot. 

                   

Expressionism in English literature

              

Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Expressionism developed as an Avant Garde style - started before World war I (1914-1918). Later the movement was attributed to literature, theatre, dance, film, music, etc.

               More specifically, Expressionism as a distinct style or movement refers to a number of German artists, Austrian, French and Russian ones, who became active in the years before World war I and remained throughout much of the interwar period. The Expressionism emphasis on individual and subjective perspective has been characterized as a reaction to positivism and other artistic styles such as Naturalism and Impressionism. 

Eg. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

            One major focus of expressionism is on the subjective, or how people are thinking and feeling rather than facts and statistics.

                  Expressionist author uses point of view as well as descriptive elements to show how the world, or at least a particular situation is seen by an individual. In the "Metamorphosis", that individual is "Gregor Samsa",a traveling salesman who wakes up one day as a giant beetle. 

                 The main aim of expressionism is to express inner world subjectivity, emotions rather than the external world and the physical reality. The term refers to an "artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person". Expressionism is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for an emotional effect. This term refers to imitating reproducing or repeating existence. 

                    According to the Expression the current civilization superficially proper's and looks attractive but rotten at he core. With them the focus shifted to the soul of man, his inner expression. In their works, the protagonist is emotional, troubled are abnormal, representing the modern anxiety- ridden man in mechanical society. It deliberate distortion of reality and subjects. 

                   Each writer of the movement has her/his own way to expressing ideas through art. It is also seen as movement against realism and Naturalism. Unlike impressionism,  its goal were not to reproduce the impression suggested by the surrounding world, but to strongly impose the artist's own sensibility to the world's representation. The expressionist artist substitutes to the visual objects reality his own image of this object, which he feels as an accurate representation of its real meaning. The search of hormony and forms is not as important as trying to achieve the highest expression intensity both from the aesthetic point of view and according to idea and human critics. 

            It indicates struggle against bourgeois values and identity. There is boldness, distortion and forceful representation of the emotions. 

Expressionism influenced American theatres, like...

• Eugene O'Neill
• The Hairy Ape
• Emperor Janes

Playwrights influenced by Expressionism, like

• Arthur Miller's Death of Salesman
• Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
• T. S. Eliot's Waste land

Style:-

◾ Disjointed Syntox

◾ Dynamic use of imagery

◾ Discontinuity of time sequence, masked                        characters

◾ Special effects

◾ Also talk of the evils in the society (communism,        racism, suppression, etc.)

◾ completely self - centred are form

◾The whole cosmos is viewed subjectively

The most famous or well known German expressionists are 

• Max Beckmann,
• Fritz Bleyl, 
• Heinrich Campendonk, 
• Otto Dix, 
• August Macke, Franz Marc,
• Ludwig Meidner,

                  

 

Theatre of absurd in English literature

 

                  The absurd theatre in English literature shows absurd human condition during world war II. Drama portraying the futility and anguish of human struggle in a senseless and inexplicated world. 

 

                    The theatre of the absurd is post world war II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for style of theatre the play represent. The play focus on ideas of Existentialism and express what happens when human existence lacks meaning or purpose and communication breaks down. The structure of the play is typically a round shape with the finishing point the same as staring point. Logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and tothe ultimate conclusion. 

               The British Critic Martin Esslin coined the term eassay " The Theatre of the Absurd" in 1960.

                Albert Camus uses the term in his essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" in 1942. Albert Camus employed the term to describe the futility of human existence, which he compared to the Sisyphus, the figure in the Greek mythology condemned for eternity to push as tone to the top of a mountain only to have it roll back down again.

Esslin wrote about Absurd theatre in his book Absurd Drama:-

The Theatre of the Absurd attacks the comfortable certainties of religious or political orthodoxy. It aims to shock its audience out of complacency, to bring it face to face with the harsh facts of the human situation as these writers see it. But the challenge behind this message is anything but one of despair. It is a challenge to accept the human condition as it is, in all its mystery and absurdity, and to bear it with dignity, nobly, responsibly; precisely because there are no easy solutions to the mysteries of existence, because ultimately man is alone in a meaningless world. The shedding of easy solutions, of comforting illusions, may be painful, but it leaves behind it a sense of freedom and relief. And that is why, in the last resort, the Theatre of the Absurd does not provoke tears of despair but the laughter of liberation.

 

 The important features of the Absurd theatre are according to  given bellow:-

• Meaningless human existence
• Non- realistic characters and situations
• Farce and comedy
• Dream like situations
• Meaningless plot and dialogues
• Irrational things

             Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" is one of the most effective example of this kind of drama.

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