British literature

Poetic drama today is often religious in intent. T. S. Eliot set the tone in Murder in the Cathedral. Christopher Fry followed with The Boy with a Cart (1939) which tells in a series of small scenes the story of the building of a village church. It uses a technique of straightforward narrative with the stage not representing any particular place. It gains considerable effect from this apparently simple method which throws the entire attention on the actor and his text. Among his other religious plays are a tragedy on the story of Moses in The Firstborn (1946) and a study of the power of Christian conversation in Thor, with Angels (1949).

A biblical theme is treated by Norman Nicholson (1914- ) in The Old Man of the Mountains (1946), and Ronald Duncan (1914-) has dealt interestingly with the struggles of a saint in the modern world in This Way to the Tomb (1946).

All these plays are concerned with man's relationship to himself and to his God. Even Christopher Fry's lightest comedies ask questions about the spiritual position of his characters. This is also the case with the more interesting prose playwrights. John Whiting (1917- ) in Saint's Day (1951), A Penny for a Song (1951), Marching Song (1954) and The Devils (1961) has been more interested in the human condition of his characters than in their position in society or their economic status, to the extent that they are less creatures of every day than (for example) the characters of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays whose standing is always made quite clear.

Robert Bolt (1924- ) is just as interested in the human condition in A Man for all Seasons (i960), but he is considerably more aware of the pressures of society and that each person stands not only on his own, but also among others. The late ninetcen-fifties brought a wave of plays aggressively critical of society. These plays have an urgency and impact which has brought new life into the theatre and, although few of these scripts have any depth, it may be hoped that something exciting will grow out of them. The excitement, however, has been caused by their outspoken social criticism which has renewed the theatre's contact with the community.

2. Novels and general prose

The preoccupation with society has been stronger in the novel since the end of the war than in other literary forms. Although very few writers have been openly critical of the social set-up, most have explored their characters' relationship with it. Some, such as Charles Percy Snow (1905- ) are interested in the way men organize themselves. His novel about the election of a new master of a Cambridge college, The Masters (1951), is full of insight into human motives. He sees human life not as a question of a man and his God, but as a series of changing relationships with other people. Such an attitude Hes beneath die work of Henry Green (1905- ) in Concluding (1948), Nothing (1950) and Doting (1952). Where Snow reports the detailed manipulation of committees and finds his drama in the complexity of motive, Green records without probing die snippets of conversation and little unimportant actions which make up daily life and gives us by montage and accumulation our own insight into the way his people behave. Joyce Cary (1888-1957) uses the opposite technique. He picks one character whose personality he takes over for the course of the novel, writing and thinking completely in that person's idiom. He thus reconstructs man as a separate consciousness living in a society which is not of his making and yet which moulds much of his destiny. He has done this most successfully in his portrait of a disreputable artist in The Horse's Mouth (1944). His interest is not only in his main character, but in people's view of each other, which leads him to rewrite the same story several times in different books, each time from the angle of a different character.

While Graham Greene (1904- ) is in many ways our most politically-conscious novelist, his primary concern is not with society or its reform but with the spiritual position of his main character. In The Heart of the Matter (1948), The End of the Affair (1951), The Quiet American (1955) and A Burnt-Out Case (i960) be shows his heroes aware of a sickness in themselves and trying to heal it. The sickness is related to society, which is made up of sick people, and the healing involves some form of withdrawal from it. Yet the withdrawal is more a recognition of responsibility than a denial of it. Greene does not make his characters give up being bad and start being good; he draws them in greater complexity and with greater subtlety, and often the solution which they find leaves them feeling rather emptier dian before. The fact that they recognize this emptiness distinguishes them from the characters of most other contemporary novelists. A sense of the frightening spiritual emptiness of humanity is conveyed in the novels Lord of the Flies (1954) and Pincher Martin (1956) by William Golding (1911- ), whose work pictures the degradation of people freed of the civilizing bonds of society.

Works of the 'angry young men' are mostly of no more than passing interest, although in Hurry on Down (1953) John Wain (1925- ) showed some of the possibilities of the picaresque form.

George Orwell (1903-50) was also a novelist, although he openly used the form to convey his view of life and politics rather than to tell a story or to probe character. His most outstanding work of fiction is a political satire, Animal Farm (1945), which tells of a revolution in a farmyard. The animals take over the farm. They are led by the pigs, who deal with, the administration and plan production. Eventually the pigs begin to behave like human beings and the rest of the animals find themselves in a worse state than before. The book does not attack revolution; its tone is rather one of sadness at the way revolutionary aims are distorted. In Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) he draws a nightmarish, depressing picture of England under a socialist-totalitarian regime, constantly at war and with all news and values distorted. It is a gripping piece of writing which presents not so much a serious view of the future as a comment on certain trends in England at me time when it was written, drawing part of its material from the experience of the war and part from reports of what went on in totalitarian countries. His essays which examine critically various aspects of English life and literature from a political but non-party standpoint are among the most perceptive in modern English writing, and he was particularly skilful in revealing the social attitudes behind a writer's work. Among the mass of pedestrian literature which is published annually a few writers stand out. Most of these are specialists, such as the art critic Kenneth Clark, the scientist Fred Hoyle, or the historian Herbert Butterfield. Writers with, a wider range are still suspect, for the feeling is that general knowledge is no knowledge, and only the expert has the right to speak. Nevertheless, Bertrand Russell (1872- ) continues to write on every subject which catches his attention, with no more excuse than that he has something to say. "With experts being proved wrong every day, it may well be that the new generation will produce a 'general' writer of the standing of Carlyle or Ruskin.

Conclusion

British literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, as well as to literature from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, prior to the formation of the UK. By far the largest part of British literature is written in the English language, but there are bodies of written works in Latin, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Cornish, Manx, Jèrriais, Guernésiais and other languages. Northern Ireland has a literary tradition in English, Ulster Scots and Irish. Irish writers have also played an important part in the development of English-language literature.

For more than 1,500 years, the literature of this tiny island has taught, nurtured, thrilled, outraged, and humbled readers both inside and outside its borders. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Swift, Conrad, Wilde—the roster of British writers who have made a lasting impact on literature is remarkable. More importantly, Britain's writers have long challenged readers with new ways of understanding an ever-changing world.

It is thought that the golden age of English literature was gone with a lot of famous and talented poets and writers. But it’s not true. Nowadays we have a lot of young writers, who in near future will prove themselves and make British literature more bright and rich!

Bibliography

1. Fowler, A History of English Literature (1987)

2. The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, ed. by G. Watson (4 vol., 1969–72)

3. The Oxford English Literary History, vol. 2 by J. Simpson, 1350–1547