212- ] English Literature

212- ] English Literature

 Modern Period in English Literature

The 20th century began with both great optimism and some fear because it was the century closest to the start of a new millennium. A new era for humankind had begun, as believed by many. The literary movement known as the modern period, which existed from the late nineteenth century to around the middle of the twentieth, comprised a number of developing writing styles that had an impact on the development of literature.

Literary modernism gave authors more freedom to experiment with their modes of expression than in the past. The experiences and feelings of the person are frequently highlighted in the free-flowing inner dialogues and non-linear storylines seen in modernist works. Writers of modern literature include W.B. Yeats, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Beckett, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams.

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Introduction to the Modern Period

The modern period in English literature begins with the 20th century and continues till 1965. The period saw an abrupt break away from the old ways of interacting with the world. In all the previous periods experimentation and individualism were highly discouraged but With the onset of the modern period, both these things became virtues. There were many cultural shocks with the beginning of modernism. The blow of the modern age was World War 1 and 2. These wars began in the year 1914 and lasted till 1919 and 1939 to 1945 respectively. The aftermath of the world wars was traumatic for everyone. The horror of the World War 1 was evident in the face of every citizen. The feeling of uncertainty was spread and no one knew where the world was heading into.

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There are five traits of modernist literature.

Here are a few elements that modernist literature has in common.

The process of experimentation: Modernist literature used a variety of innovative writing strategies that defied accepted principles of narrative structure. 

1-The use of mixed images and themes, absurdity, nonlinear tales, and stream of consciousness—a free-flowing internal monologue—are a few of these strategies.

2. Individualism: Instead of emphasizing society as a whole, modernist literature frequently concentrates on the individual. Stories follow characters as they adjust to a changing environment, usually coping with challenging situations and issues.

3. Different points of view: To highlight the subjectivity of each character and give the reader a range of points of view that might be taken into consideration, many modernist writers wrote in the first person with several characters.

4. Open verse: In place of the conventional poetic form, many modernist poets chose free verse, which lacks a recurring rhyme scheme, metrical framework, or musical rhythm.

5. Creative techniques: Many modernist authors use literary techniques like symbolism and imagery to make their writing easier to understand and to build a better bond with the reader.

Key Points to Remember About the Modern Period

Advancement of social science and natural science in the latter half of the 19th century and early decades of the 20th century. Gains in material wealth with the rapid development and industrialization. The difference between aristocrats and clergy increased more.

English literature of the modern age started with the initiation of the 20th century. The prominent feature of the literature during the modern age was that it opposed the general attitude towards life as shown in Victorian literature. Understanding about modern period can be complex at times. However, as a solution, you can hire someone to take your online class regarding the same. Additional guidance will make your learning experience smooth.

People started to regard the Victorian age as a hypocritical age, having superficial and mean ideals. The hypocrisy of the Victorian period generated a rebellious attitude in the writers of modern literature. Things that were considered beautiful and honourable during the Victorian age were considered ugly by the writers of the modern period. Sense of questioning was absent in the minds of the people from the Victorian age.

During Victorian times, people adhered to the voice of the people who were in power, they accepted the rules made by the church. People started to accept the law without questioning them. But the generation came after critical thinking, they raised questions against the decisions produced by supreme authorities. Writers of the modern age refuted the ideas and beliefs of the previous era.

The modern age helped in replacing the simple belief of the Victorians with modern man’s desire to probe. George Bernard Shaw attacked the old superstitious religious beliefs as well as the superstitions of science. He was the one who pioneered the interrogative habits in the middle of modern people. Shaw openly challenged the voice of those who were ruling the country, and religious authority. He provoked the people to come up with questions about morality and religion.

 List of modernist writers

Literary modernism has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America. Modernism is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional styles of poetry and prose. Modernists experimented with literary form and expression, adhering to Ezra Pound's maxim to "Make it new".[1] The modernist literary movement was driven by a conscious desire to overturn traditional modes of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time.[2] It is debatable when the modernist literary movement began, though some have chosen 1910 as roughly marking the beginning and quote novelist Virginia Woolf, who declared that human nature underwent a fundamental change "on or about December 1910."[3] But modernism was already stirring by 1899, with works such as Joseph Conrad's (1857–1924) Heart of Darkness, while Alfred Jarry's (1873–1907) absurdist play, Ubu Roi appeared even earlier, in 1896. Knut Hamsun's (1859–1952) Hunger (1890) is a groundbreaking modernist novel and Mysteries (1892) pioneers modernist stream of consciousness method.

When modernism ends is debatable. Though The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature sees Modernism ending by c.1939,[4] with regard to British and American literature, "When (if) Modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to Modernism occurred".[5] Clement Greenberg sees Modernism ending in the 1930s, with the exception of the visual and performing arts.[6] In fact many literary modernists lived into the 1950s and 1960s, though generally speaking they were no longer producing major works. The term late modernism is also sometimes applied to modernist works published after 1930.[7] Among modernists (or late modernists) still publishing after 1945 were Wallace Stevens, Gottfried Benn, T. S. Eliot, Anna Akhmatova, William Faulkner, Dorothy Richardson, John Cowper Powys, and Ezra Pound. Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published his most important modernist poem Briggflatts in 1965. In addition Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil was published in 1945 and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus in 1947. Samuel Beckett, who died in 1989, has been described as a "later modernist". Beckett is a writer with roots in the expressionist tradition of modernism, who produced works from the 1930s until the 1980s, including Molloy (1951), En attendant Godot (1953), Happy Days (1961), Rockaby (1981). The poets Charles Olson (1910-1970) and J. H. Prynne (1936- ) are, amongst other writing in the second half of the 20th century, who have been described as late modernists.

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

The following is a list of significant worldwide modernist writers:

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) , Jorge Amado (1912–2001) , Mário de ndrade (1893–1945) , Oswald de Andrade (1890–1954) , Gabriele d'Annunzio (1863–1938) , Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) , W. H. Auden (1907–1973) , Djuna Barnes (1892–1982)*, Samuel Beckett (1906–1989), Andrei Bely (1880–1934)

Gottfried Benn (1886–1956), Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), Alexander Blok (1880–1921), Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), Menno ter Braak (1902–40)

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), André Breton (1896–1966), Hermann Broch (1886–1951), Basil Bunting (1900–1985), Ivan Cankar (1876–1918), Karel Čapek (1890–1938), Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933), Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961), Inger Christensen (1935-2009), Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)

Hart Crane (1899–1932), E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), Rubén Darío (1867–1916) , Alfred Döblin (1878–1957) , Leonid Dobychin (1894–1936 [?]) , John Dos Passos (1896-1970) , Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987) , Gunnar Ekelöf (1907–1968) , T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) , Ralph W. Ellison (1914–1994) , Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967) , William Faulkner (1897–1962)

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) , E. M. Forster (1879–1971) , Robert Frost (1874–1963) , Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893–1973) , André Gide (1869–1951)

Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) , Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) (later works)

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886–1961) , Knut Hamsun (1859–1952) , Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923) , Sadegh Hedayat (1903-1951) , Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) , Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) , Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929)

Max Jacob (1876–1944) , David Jones (1895–1974) , James Joyce (1882–1941)[10] , Franz Kafka (1883–1924) , Georg Kaiser (1878–1945) , Daniil Kharms (1905–1942) , Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981) , D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) , Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) , Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) , Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) , Robert Lowell (1917–1977) m Mina Loy (1882–1966) , Leopoldo Lugones (1874–1938) , Artur Lundkvist (1906–1991)

Hugh MacDiarmid (1892–1978) , Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908), Antonio Machado Ruiz (1875–1939), Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938)

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) , Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923), Harry Martinson (1904–1978) , Eugenio Montale (1896–1981), Marianne Moore (1887–1972) , Robert Musil (1880–1942) , Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), Yone Noguchi (1875–1947) , Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) , George Orwell (1903–1950) , Aldo Palazzeschi (1885–1974)

Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) , Ramón Pérez de Ayala (1880–1962) , Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) , Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) , Andrei Platonov (1899–1951), Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) , Ezra Pound (1885–1972), Anthony Powell (1905-2000) , John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) , Marcel Proust (1871–1922) , Aleksey Remizov (1877–1957), Jean Rhys (1890-1979)

Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957), Klaus Rifbjerg (1931–2015),Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926),Mário de Sá-Carneiro (1890–1916),Peter Seeberg (1925–1999),Victor Serge (1890–1947),Gertrude Stein (1874–1946),John Steinbeck (1902–1968),Wallace Stevens (1875–1955),Italo Svevo (1861–1928),Edith Södergran (1892–1923),Villy Sørensen (1929-2001),Dylan Thomas (1914–1953),Ernst Toller (1893–1939) ,Federigo Tozzi (1883–1920),Georg Trakl (1887–1914) ,Konstantin Vaginov (1899–1934) ,Paul Valéry (1871–1945)

Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941) ,Robert Walser (1878–1956),Frank Wedekind (1864–1918),Nathanael West (1903–1940),William Carlos Williams (1883–1963),Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) ,Lu Xun (1881–1936),W. B. Yeats (1865–1939),Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) 

211- ] English Literature

211-] English Literature

 Modern Period

Overview of Modern Age Literature

James Joyce set his novels and short stories in a small city of Dublin. Dubliners published in 1914 is a part of the modernist literature along with The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. Stephen Daedalus is a central character both in the Portrait and Ulysses. The latter however was banned.

The next important writer was Virginia Woolf who was associated with the Bloomsbury Group which was a group of intellectuals and writers that met at her house which included E.M Forster and Leopold Woolf. Woolf attempted to present the changed world through a changed style of writing. In 1915 came her first novel called The Voyage Out and then came Night and Day in 1919. There was a realistic serious tone to both these books. Modernist strain in her writing began with her next novel call Jacob’s Room which was published in 1922 along with Ulysses. The rest of the novels like Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves, and Orlando had the same modernist tone.

After Queen Victoria’s death in 1901 came the period which saw writers like Joseph Conrad, H.G Wells, D.H Lawrence, E.M Forster and others. The most important event in the early part of the 20th century was the First World War that took place from 1914 to 1918. It was a crucial event that changed the way of the world, impacted the psyche of the people and also the way literature was written. The pessimism and doubts that were a part of the writings of the earlier period may perhaps have anticipated the War. Hence Joseph Conrad, instead of talking of the society and its change now focused on dislocated individuals, a question of where one belongs in a seemingly cruel world. Colonialism are important part of his works wherein he presents a stark reality of exploitation and greed. Lord Jim, Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, are some of his major works. H.G Wells was a prolific writer and wrote around a hundred novels. The Time Machine, Ann Veronica, The History of Mr. Polly, The War of the Worlds, are some his important novels and Tono- Bungay is seen as his most brilliant work . Lawrence , was a controversial writer because of the open sexual references in his work. His work was different because of the sensual language and emotional feelings that made them. Therefore the novel then moved from the realism of the world outside more towards a description of the reality of the individual within. Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love are important works by him. E.M Forster, lastly wrote his famous Howard’s End that deals with the Schegel and the Wilcox family and the society in 1910, brilliantly and delicately described which would then be transformed permanently by the First World War.

The Georgian Poets and World War I

During the reign of George V, was published five anthologies of poetry by Edward Marsh in the year 1912 to 1922. Many important writers like of the time like Edward Thomas, Robert Graves, D.H Lawrence, Walter de la Mare contributed to these anthologies. The main concern was to depict the real issues surrounding the world around the World War.

Modernism

Modernism as a movement was a response to the horrors of World War-I and to the rising industrial societies and growth of cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It challenged the harmony and the rationality of the Enlightenment and sought to reinvent art and literature of the age. To do so, it broke away from the works of the past and conventions that were earlier held at a pedestal. The view that traditional conceptions of beauty and on the whole the meaning of art itself did not fit the age lead to another movement called “Dadaism” that consciously set to redefine art itself. The movement was seen as “anti-art” that aimed to upturn its order. Chaos then as the basic antithesis to order was abundantly used by artists. Started by Tristan Tzara (1896- 1963) as a reaction against the senseless violence of the First World War and to reflect the anarchy that it spread in the social system as well as in the lives of ordinary people. What was also opposed was the conception of what was worthy of being the object of art. The classical subjects were replaced by the mundane as the urinal that Marcel Duchamp placed as an object of art in his gallery. Also in his ‘LHOOQ’ Duchamp’s Mona Lisa with a moustache was a direct means to shake the viewer and the age out from his complacency that lead to the war itself. It was the direct expression of disillusionment with the war and that art too had lost its meaning like the literature of the classical time. The breaking down of any previously set rules and a violent portrayal of freedom of expression to shock and awe was the channel of the time that saw the violence of the World War firsthand. The artists and writers of the Dada movement were mostly war veterans and expressed through their work the psychological devastation of the war. The call for re-invention was echoed in the movement and stood for what modernism broadly aimed at.

Thematic and Technical Features of Modern Literature

The conception that reality could be easily be comprehended was replaced by modernism with a more subjective argument. Reality became not what was directly seen but what was behind the apparent surfaces and it took a crude look at the ugly, the stark behind the glossy surfaces. It was to raise these questions that distortion became a crucial trope in the visual arts of the era. Comte’s Positivism could no longer be used to describe reality. The distorted images force the onlooker to step out of his comfort zone and to question his conception of reality. It highlights the dialectical relationship between the object of expression and the language that expresses it. This was echoed in the Literature of the time where sentences are fragmented and deliberately left incomplete as in Waiting for Godot. Dialogues are seldom completed and there is an inability to find the correct words to describe the state of the self. This breakdown of language after the World War calls out for a need to reinvent language to fit the post war world.

Hitler’s use of almost an enigmatic, opera type use of words (he admired Wagner) that achieved his mass appeal, did also lead to the war. It was perhaps then necessary to breakdown language to reinvent it. The distortion and the fragments not only hint at the former but to a unity that needs to be rediscovered. The half-sentence make the reader seek to complete them and participate in the call for a search of a new unity and identity which is Pound’s injunction to “Make it New”. The onlooker/reader is removed from his role as a mere passive observer to an active one who contributes to the meaning of the art he views/reads. Hence the incompleteness was not aimed at a completely pessimistic answer that leads to a loss of hope, but to different source of comfort similar to what T.S Eliot finds in the world of ‘shanti shanti shanti’ at the end of ‘Wasteland’.

Stream of Consciousness

Picasso’s cubism became an important part of modernism’s subjective view of reality and a need to move away from traditional forms of art. It was this subjectivity that lead to the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique of narration, as used by Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway. The focus on the interiority of the self and its perception of the objects it conceives was way to grasp the changed notion of reality. The ‘Pre-Speech’ level of consciousness (as Henry James called it) of the character where the narrative deals with what is freely sensed or felt by the characters rather than what is directly uttered changed the way that narratives functioned. The expression of the self was also to highlight the crisis of the self within itself. The existential view of life and its cyclical futile form was what entrapped it rendering it unable to transcend futility of existence. This pessimistic view was a residue of the war which saw man as Sisyphus with his worthless search for meaning, identity and unity in an age that cannot satiate his search. In ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ Albert Camus dwells on this futility of the modern experience.

Poetic Drama

The term ‘poetic drama’ was made popular during the middle of the 20th century. The term was made famous due to the works of T.S Eliot who used his work as a reaction to the drama of G. B Shaw and Galsworthy who were immensely influenced by Henrik Ibsen who wrote A Doll’s House and Ghosts. In the ‘The Quintessence of Ibsenism’ written by G.B Shaw, he accepted the former’s influence on him. T.S Eliot apart from being a poet was also a critic and wrote many important works like ‘Possibility of Poetic Drama’ and ‘Poetry and Drama’ in which he expressed his belief that poetry and drama are linked inseparably. W.B. Yeats, W. H. Auden and other poets also tried writing poetic drama. 

210- ] English Literature - Modern Age Writers

210-] English Literature

  

The Transition From the Victorian Period to the Modern Period

It is nearly a fact to state that no other transitional period in English literature has been as rich in its diversity and complexity, in the confluence of advancement and regression at the same time. Writing is always a reflection of life and also a product of the times, and modernist writing has been more influenced by its social environment than literature from other eras. In the first decades of the century, new technologies and ideas were quickly changing the globe, and social life in all of its diverse physical, intellectual, political, economic, and moral facets had essentially begun afresh.

Changes in the literature

There were various changes took place in the field of literature also during the modern period. The imaginative writing, verses, and structure of the verses of the Victorian period became obsolete. Writers’ work started losing the magic they used to have in the previous age. Victorian writers were becoming rancid and their works were failing to evoke the spirit of the readers. Art has to be renewed in order to revitalize the readers. However Victorian artworks lacked the surprising elements and freshness in the content.

Declination of sentiments and values

Modern world people are more into independence, they don’t want to be bound by parental authority, whereas Victorians believed in maintaining the home life, they consider themselves a family person. Moreover, the feeling of love was getting limited to sex in modern times, love had become less of a romance and more like a greed. Such things portray the decline in the values, emotions and feelings of the people of the modern period. Literary work also portrays a similar lifestyle. If writers tried to write on the themes of the Victorian age then it would be no longer a striking piece of literature. Therefore, you will find the literature of the modern period having less zeal for love, natural beauty and sentiments. Modern writers come up with fresh points of view to suit the conventional audience.

Age of machinery

There is no doubt that machinery has dominated the modern people’s life. The modern period is also known as the age of machinery. People had become too materialistic brought by the machinery. There is no doubt that the advent of machinery made life comfortable for modern man. Living became quite easy and production of goods was also accelerated. But the downward side of mechanical life was that man has mechanical like a clock, using all his energy not according to his/her own will but rather according to the time scheme. Such an atmosphere of modern life brought great distress among the people.

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Literature of the Modern period

Everything in Victorian culture suffered greatly from a large deal of contempt during this all-encompassing and thorough transition process. New spheres of experience were included, outdated literary expression theories were abandoned, and new ones emerged. All branches of the period’s literature, including poetry, the novel, and drama, reflect this.

Literary trends

The trend of modernism emerged after the end of the First World War. They include:

-Stream of consciousness

-Surrealism

-Cubism

-Dadaism

-Futurism

-Expressionism

-Imagism

-Symbolism

a) Modern English poetry

Modern English poetry is a sort of revolution against the traditional thoughts and types of Victorian-era poetry. The Red Wheelbarrow, The Embankment, Darkness, and Image are a few of the masterpieces of modern English poetry. There is no doubt that these poems are the best in their way, but the major problem arises when it comes to understanding their meaning. Students studying English literature often experience issues comprehending the serious compression of information in these lyrics.

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b) Modern English novels

They rein the literature in the initial three decades of the twentieth century, these years are known as the golden period of modernist novels.

c) The development of 20th-century English drama

George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde were the most known, praised and celebrated drama writers of the nineteenth century. They were highly popular in the last decade of the century. One can say that they marked the beginning of the modern drama. However, these two eminent writers never brought many variations or innovations in the writing techniques and types.

2. Modern period: Artistic features

Rapid advancements in technology and industry have inspired artists to portray the world in fresh and creative ways. The end result was art that experimented with minimalism and incorporated new colours and other forms.

a) Modernism

Modernism is a quite unique and complex movement in almost all the creative areas. It began at the end of the 19th century. During this period literature was the inception of the greatest renaissance of the 20th century. When the First World War ended, a number of literary trends of the modern period such as Dadaism, stream of consciousness, futurism, cubism, expressionism and imagism emerged.

b) Basic characteristics of modernism:

The foundation of modernism lies in the theory of psychoanalysis and irrational philosophy. One of the main characteristics of the modern period is “the dehumanization of art”. Some other crucial themes of modernism involve alienated, ill and distorted relations between man and man, man and his own self, man and society and most importantly between man and nature.

The pillars of modernism

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) – Sons and Lovers

James Joyce (1882- 1941) Ulysses

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888- 1965) Murder in the Cathedral

George Bernard Shaw (1856- 1950) Mrs. Warrant’s Profession

William Butler Yeats (1865- 1939) The Land of Heart’s Desire

John Galsworthy (1867- 1933) The Man of Property

These authors are regarded as major figures in modernist literature. Reading their literary works can help you become familiar with the main modernist concepts. If you need some guidance with any literary device, technique, or work, you can rely on an online assignment service for assistance. The talented English experts at these websites have extensive knowledge of everything and can assist you with everything you need.

Let’s know more about the lives, thoughts and works of some major representatives of this age:

D. H. Lawrence

David Herber Lawrence was born in 1885 in a mining village which lies in Nottinghamshire. He was reared by parents who belonged to different classes and saw a silent conflict of views. His father was a man who acquired little education and led his life as a coal miner. On the other hand, his mother was educated and had experience working as a teacher. She used to think that she her marriage was beneath her and had a strong desire to provide education to her sons so they could stay away from the tough life of the coal miners.

His personal life had a great impact on this literary work. It can be read in his masterpiece “Sons and Lovers” as well. In that, he has portrayed the consistent conflict between a strong strong-willed, up-climbing mother and a coarse, energetic, earthy but often drunken father. “Sons and Lovers” is considered an autobiographical novel.

His masterpieces include:

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

The Rainbow

Woman in Love

The theme in the novels of Lawrence

In his opinion, the bourgeois industrialization or civilization, which made its realization at the cost of ravishing the land, started the catastrophic uprooting of man from nature and caused the distortion of personality, the corruption of the will, and the dominance of sterile intellect over the authentic inward passions of man.

In most of his writings, D.H. Lawrence showcased a stern reaction against the then-mechanical civilization.

According to him, materialistic civilization or industrialization became the cause of detachment between man and nature. His opinion suggested that these factors are at the cost of ravishing lives and land.

He considered materialism as the prime cause of the corruption of the will, the dominance of sterile intellect defeat of real inward passion of humans and distortion of personality.

Lawrence thought that the mechanism for making humans in animated matter, this agonized view regarding the dehumanizing impact of robotic civilization on the sensitivity of human nature always haunted the writing of Lawrence.

Read More: A Complete Guide on Reflection Paper

Brief Analysis of Lawrence’s Masterpiece

Sons and Lovers – Introduction

Sons and Lovers is known as one of the best writings of Lawrence. It is more or less an autobiographical piece which is written in vivid episodes and straightforward narrative. The novel follows a chronological sequence, where the story begins with the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Morel, parents of Paul. Mrs. Morel belongs to a well-settled middle-class family who is highly ambitious, Lawrence presents her as “a woman of character and refinement”. She is an intelligent, strong-will woman and falls in love with an energetic and sensuous coal miner named Walter Morel. In the course of her love, she marries beneath her own class and enters into a chaotic life full of everyday struggles.

Sons and lovers – Theme

D. H. Lawrence is remembered as one of the first writers who brought the theme of psychology into literature. Through his works, he presented a number of psychological themes in a precise manner. Lawrence had an opinion that life impulse or sexual impulse is the safest way to the psychological development of human beings. For him human sexuality had some different notions, he considered him a symbol of the force of life. He showcases the slight and deep psychological experience of individuals and relationships. Through Sons and Lovers, he began a new territory of novels.

Analysis of two main characters of Sons and Lovers

Mrs. Gertrude Morel

She is the first major character and protagonist in the story. She marries beneath her class in her fascination with energetic Walter Morel, a coal miner. With the passage of time, she comes one after another struggling with both financial and emotional aspects of her marriage. Her unhappiness with her marriage creates detachment with her husband and she devotes her life to their 4 kids.

Paul Morel

After Gertrude Morel her son Paul Morel takes over the role of main protagonist from the second half of the novel. He emerges as a main character after his elder brother William dies. William Morel was the first child of Mrs Morel and her favourite among all children. When he dies, it is Paul who becomes her favourite. Throughout the novel, he struggles to bring a balance between his love for Mrs. Morel and other relationships with women.

James Joyce

James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. He belonged to a Catholic family and got his education from Catholic schools. During his studies he went through a phase of religious zest, however, he rejected the Catholic Church. He was influenced was Ibsen and inspired by his views, Joyce took literary mission as a career. He was sternly against the bigotry of Philistines in Dublin.

His most remarkable works include:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Dubliners

The theme in the works of Joyce

Ulysses

Joyce brought a number of changes in the conventional forms of fiction by generating a unique medium of art. He portrayed the crisis and chaos of consciousness in his contemporary world.

He brought light to the stream of consciousness as a genre in modern period literature.

Brief analysis of Joyce’s writing

Ulysses

It gives insight into a man’s life in a day (16 June, 1904). The main characters of Ulysses are An Irish Jew, his wife, Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and Marion Tweedy Bloom. The novel’s division is into eighteen chapters resembling 18 hours of the day.

Conclusion

All the institutions that once rebelled against now adhere to modernism as the new tradition. The grand story of modernism was broken down by postmodern artists with the goal of studying cultural norms, politics, and social ideology in their specific environment, pushing the boundaries of modernism to new heights. The use of new media and technology, such as video, techniques of bricolage and collage, the collision of art, and the appropriation of older styles within a contemporary context are characteristics of postmodern art.

To conclude everything, in short, I would say there are many more things you should know about the modern period and the literary development of this era. The more you study the works of this modernist literature, the more you will admire them. We all know that English literature can both be interesting and difficult at the same time.

209-] English Literature - Charles Dickens

209-] English Literature

Charles Dickens 

Posted By lifeisart in Dickens, Charles || 23 Replies

What do you think about Dickens realism?

Generally speaking there are two definitions of literary realism (More precise definitions or arguments are absolutely welcome): 1-It is the aim of some of the modern fiction to portray the fictional characters and their enviroments as closely as posible to the world of the readers in order to convince them of their plausibility. 2-It is a literary period (usually of the 19 C) specially devoted to paint "the world as it was". It was usually a very pessimistic trend. Some of its most famous representatives are Stendhal, Balzac and Flaubert (France), Eça de Queirós (Portugal) and Machado de Assis (Brazil). But Dickens highly imaginative (and sometimes phantastic) fiction is also considered r...

Posted By Danik 2016 in Dickens, Charles || 27 Replies

Favorite Charles Dickens novel

I'm a big fan of Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities remains a powerful, exciting adventure novel with an epic and a prophetic voice behind it, with thoroughly allegorical and primeval feeling. A Christmas Carol has the energy of an allegory with the concise feature of a novella. Great Expectations is not a novel I immediately thrilled to while reading, but it has lingered in my memory as perhaps one of Dickens's most mature, retrospective, elegaic novels. David Copperfield was a bit too long for my taste, but I thought it was a great novel overall, filled with some of the best prose and some of my favorite literary characters - Mr. Micawber, David Copperfield, Betsy Trotwood, Uriah...

Posted By ajvenigalla in Dickens, Charles || 4 Replies

 An Accomplished writer

I'm reading Little Dorrit, and I find it fascinating. I've read 3 other books by Dickens: Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers, and A Tale of Two Cities. He was such an accomplished writer. I'm marveled at his delicacy in conveying his characters' feelings and thoughts. When I read him I find myself pausing and thinking: 'Oh Charles, how wonderful you were at describing and portraying.' Have you read any of the books I mention here? How did you like them?...

 Posted By Carmilla in Dickens, Charles || 48 Replies

 The letter

SPOILERS: I was slightly puzzelled by Dr Manette's letter that was read out in Charles Darnay's second trial. When I checked back to the chapter in which the Bastille was stormed, it seemed like M Defarge never found any letter. He sook out the tower in which Dr Manette had been imprisoned, but didn't find anything. So, was the letter a forgery? Why wasn't it produced at Darnay's first trial? OTOH, how is it that the story matched up with Mme Defarge's family history, and how come Dr Manette's face used to cloud over when he saw Charles Defarge?...

 Posted By kev67 in Dickens, Charles || 2 Replies

 Dickens' meeting with Dostoevsky

I was disappointed to read that the meeting between Dickens and Dostoevsky never happened. They were supposed to have met in 1862 when Dostoevsky was in London, but it seems the article in which the meeting was first referred to was a fraud. Still, it led to quite an amusing article in the TLS....

 Posted By kev67 in Dickens, Charles || 3 Replies

 Dickens' influence on society

How influential was Charles Dickens on society in the countries in which he was read? He seemed to be more than a popular author. He was a campaigner on social issues. The 19th century was one of great change and great social reform. For example, at the start of that century, you might be executed for dozens of not particularly serious offences. By the end of the century, you would only be hanged for premeditated murder. I don't think that had much to do with Dickens, but perhaps there were others issues in which he was more influential. For instance, children started to get some rights, including state provided education by the 1870s. Divorce laws were loosened just a little bit. Dickens wa...

 Posted By kev67 in Dickens, Charles || 2 Replies

Essays about Dickens

I recently read George Orwell's long essay on Charles Dickens, in which he referred to George Gissing's essay on the famous author, written in 1898. Gissing was a big Dickens fan too, at a time when Dickens' stock had fallen. When I searched for it, I noticed there was yet another essay about Dickens, written by G.K. Chesterton in 1906. Being a philistine and an ignoramus, I cannot remember having heard of G.K. Chesterton before, but he is esteemed enough to have his own forum on this site. Wouldn't it be a really great assignment to inflict on some English literature students to write an essay about essays on Dickens?...

Posted By kev67 in Dickens, Charles || 4 Replies

 Is it true quote by Charles Dickens about "Imam Hussain"

I would like to know if this quote by Charles Dickens about "Imam Hussain" is real or fake ?? If this is real, in which book he mentioned this quote?? “If Husain had fought to quench his worldly desires…then I do not understand why his sister, wife, and children accompanied him. It stands to reason therefore, that he sacrificed purely for Islam.”

 Posted By Alirez in Dickens, Charles || 2 Replies

 

  

208- ] English Literature

208- ] English Literature

Charles Dickens 

Legacy

Museums and festivals celebrating Dickens's life and works exist in many places with which Dickens was associated. These include the Charles Dickens Museum in London, the historic home where he wrote Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby; and the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth, the house in which he was born. The original manuscripts of many of his novels, as well as printers' proofs, first editions, and illustrations from the collection of Dickens's friend John Forster are held at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Dickens's will stipulated that no memorial be erected in his honour; nonetheless, a life-size bronze statue of Dickens entitled Dickens and Little Nell, cast in 1890 by Francis Edwin Elwell, stands in Clark Park in the Spruce Hill neighbourhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Another life-size statue of Dickens is located at Centennial Park in Sydney, Australia. In 1960 a bas-relief sculpture of Dickens, notably featuring characters from his books, was commissioned from sculptor Estcourt J Clack to adorn the office building built on the site of his former home at 1 Devonshire Terrace, London. In 2014, a life-size statue was unveiled near his birthplace in Portsmouth on the 202nd anniversary of his birth; this was supported by his great-great-grandsons, Ian and Gerald Dickens.

A Christmas Carol is most probably his best-known story, with frequent new adaptations. It is also the most-filmed of Dickens's stories, with many versions dating from the early years of cinema. According to the historian Ronald Hutton, the current state of the observance of Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival of the holiday spearheaded by A Christmas Carol. Dickens catalysed the emerging Christmas as a family-centred festival of generosity, in contrast to the dwindling community-based and church-centred observations, as new middle-class expectations arose. Its archetypal figures (Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Christmas ghosts) entered into Western cultural consciousness. "Merry Christmas", a prominent phrase from the tale, was popularised following the appearance of the story. The term Scrooge became a synonym for miser, and his exclamation "Bah! Humbug!'", a dismissal of the festive spirit, likewise gained currency as an idiom. The Victorian era novelist William Makepeace Thackeray called the book "a national benefit, and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness".

Dickens was commemorated on the Series E £10 note issued by the Bank of England that circulated between 1992 and 2003. His portrait appeared on the reverse of the note accompanied by a scene from The Pickwick Papers. The Charles Dickens School is a high school in Broadstairs, Kent. A theme park, Dickens World, standing in part on the site of the former naval dockyard where Dickens's father once worked in the Navy Pay Office, opened in Chatham in 2007. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens in 2012, the Museum of London held the UK's first major exhibition on the author in 40 years. In 2002, Dickens was number 41 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. American literary critic Harold Bloom placed Dickens among the greatest Western writers of all time. In the 2003 UK survey The Big Read carried out by the BBC, five of Dickens's books were named in the Top 100.

Actors who have portrayed Dickens on screen include Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, Simon Callow, Dan Stevens and Ralph Fiennes, the latter playing the author in The Invisible Woman (2013) which depicts Dickens's alleged secret love affair with Ellen Ternan which lasted for thirteen years until his death in 1870.

Dickens and his publications have appeared on a number of postage stamps in countries including: the United Kingdom (1970, 1993, 2011 and 2012 issued by the Royal Mail—their 2012 collection marked the bicentenary of Dickens's birth), the Soviet Union (1962), Antigua, Barbuda, Botswana, Cameroon, Dubai, Fujairah, St Lucia and Turks and Caicos Islands (1970), St Vincent (1987), Nevis (2007), Alderney, Gibraltar, Jersey and Pitcairn Islands (2012), Austria (2013), and Mozambique (2014). In 1976, a crater on the planet Mercury was named in his honour.

In November 2018 it was reported that a previously lost portrait of a 31-year-old Dickens, by Margaret Gillies, had been found in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Gillies was an early supporter of women's suffrage and had painted the portrait in late 1843 when Dickens, aged 31, wrote A Christmas Carol. It was exhibited, to acclaim, at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1844. The Charles Dickens Museum is reported to have paid £180,000 for the portrait.

Works

Dickens published well over a dozen major novels and novellas, a large number of short stories, including a number of Christmas-themed stories, a handful of plays, and several non-fiction books.

Novels and novellas

Dickens's novels and novellas were initially serialised in weekly and monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats.

The Pickwick Papers (The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club; monthly serial, April 1836 to November 1837). Novel.

Oliver Twist (The Adventures of Oliver Twist; monthly serial in Bentley's Miscellany, February 1837 to April 1839). Novel .

Nicholas Nickleby (The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby; monthly serial, April 1838 to October 1839). Novel .

The Old Curiosity Shop (weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock, April 1840 to November 1841). Novel .

Barnaby Rudge (Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty; weekly serial in Master Humphrey's Clock, February to November 1841). Novel.

A Christmas Carol (A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost-story of Christmas; 1843). Novella .

Martin Chuzzlewit (The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit; monthly serial, January 1843 to July 1844). Novel .

The Chimes (The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In; 1844) . Novella .

The Cricket on the Hearth (The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home; 1845) . Novella .

The Battle of Life (The Battle of Life: A Love Story; 1846) . Novella .

Dombey and Son (Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation; monthly serial, October 1846 to April 1848) . Novel .

The Haunted Man (The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain: A Fancy for Christmas-time; 1848). Novella.

David Copperfield (The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery [Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account]; monthly serial, May 1849 to November 1850). Novel.

Bleak House (monthly serial, March 1852 to September 1853). Novel.

Hard Times (Hard Times: For These Times; weekly serial in Household Words, 1 April 1854, to 12 August 1854). Novel.

Little Dorrit (monthly serial, December 1855 to June 1857) . Novel .

A Tale of Two Cities (weekly serial in All the Year Round, 30 April 1859, to 26 November 1859). Novel .

Great Expectations (weekly serial in All the Year Round, 1 December 1860 to 3 August 1861) . Novel .

Our Mutual Friend (monthly serial, May 1864 to November 1865). Novel.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood (monthly serial, April 1870 to September 1870), novel left unfinished due to Dickens's death.

  

107-] English Literature

107- ] English Literature

Charles Dickens

Episodic writing

A pioneer of the serial publication of narrative fiction, Dickens wrote most of his major novels in monthly or weekly instalments in journals such as Master Humphrey's Clock and Household Words, later reprinted in book form. These instalments made the stories affordable and accessible, with the audience more evenly distributed across income levels than previous. His instalment format inspired a narrative that he would explore and develop throughout his career, and the regular cliffhangers made each new episode widely anticipated. When The Old Curiosity Shop was being serialised, American fans waited at the docks in New York harbour, shouting out to the crew of an incoming British ship, "Is little Nell dead?" Dickens was able to incorporate this episodic writing style but still end up with a coherent novel at the end.

Another important impact of Dickens's episodic writing style resulted from his exposure to the opinions of his readers and friends. His friend Forster had a significant hand in reviewing his drafts, an influence that went beyond matters of punctuation; he toned down melodramatic and sensationalist exaggerations, cut long passages (such as the episode of Quilp's drowning in The Old Curiosity Shop), and made suggestions about plot and character. It was he who suggested that Charley Bates should be redeemed in Oliver Twist. Dickens had not thought of killing Little Nell and it was Forster who advised him to entertain this possibility as necessary to his conception of the heroine.

At the helm in popularising cliffhangers and serial publications in Victorian literature, Dickens's influence can also be seen in television soap operas and film series, with The Guardian stating that "the DNA of Dickens's busy, episodic storytelling, delivered in instalments and rife with cliffhangers and diversions, is traceable in everything." His serialisation of his novels also drew comments from other writers. In Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Wrecker, Captain Nares, investigating an abandoned ship, remarked: "See! They were writing up the log," said Nares, pointing to the ink-bottle. "Caught napping, as usual . I wonder if there ever was a captain yet that lost a ship with his log-book up to date ? He generally has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles Dickens and his serial novels."

Social commentary

Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social commentary. Simon Callow states, "From the moment he started to write, he spoke for the people, and the people loved him for it." He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. In a New York address, he expressed his belief that "Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen".Dickens's second novel, Oliver Twist (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime: it challenged middle class polemics about criminals, making impossible any pretence to ignorance about what poverty entailed.

At a time when Britain was the major economic and political power of the world, Dickens highlighted the life of the forgotten poor and disadvantaged within society. Through his journalism he campaigned on specific issues – such as sanitation and the workhouse – but his fiction probably demonstrated its greatest prowess in changing public opinion in regard to class inequalities. He often depicted the exploitation and oppression of the poor and condemned the public officials and institutions that not only allowed such abuses to exist, but flourished as a result. His most strident indictment of this condition is in Hard Times (1854), Dickens's only novel-length treatment of the industrial working class. In this work, he uses vitriol and satire to illustrate how this marginalised social stratum was termed "Hands" by the factory owners; that is, not really "people" but rather only appendages of the machines they operated. His writings inspired others, in particular journalists and political figures, to address such problems of class oppression. For example, the prison scenes in The Pickwick Papers are claimed to have been influential in having the Fleet Prison shut down. Karl Marx asserted that Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together". George Bernard Shaw even remarked that Great Expectations was more seditious than Marx's Das Kapital. The exceptional popularity of Dickens's novels, even those with socially oppositional themes (Bleak House, 1853; Little Dorrit, 1857; Our Mutual Friend, 1865), not only underscored his ability to create compelling storylines and unforgettable characters, but also ensured that the Victorian public confronted issues of social justice that had commonly been ignored.

It has been argued that his technique of flooding his narratives with an 'unruly superfluity of material' that, in the gradual dénouement, yields up an unsuspected order, influenced the organisation of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

Literary techniques

Dickens is often described as using idealised characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his caricatures and the ugly social truths he reveals. The story of Nell Trent in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) was received as extremely moving by contemporary readers but viewed as ludicrously sentimental by Oscar Wilde. "One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell", he said in a famous remark, "without dissolving into tears ... of laughter." G. K. Chesterton stated, "It is not the death of little Nell, but the life of little Nell, that I object to", arguing that the maudlin effect of his description of her life owed much to the gregarious nature of Dickens's grief, his "despotic" use of people's feelings to move them to tears in works like this.

he question as to whether Dickens belongs to the tradition of the sentimental novel is debatable. Valerie Purton, in her book Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition, sees him continuing aspects of this tradition, and argues that his "sentimental scenes and characters [are] as crucial to the overall power of the novels as his darker or comic figures and scenes", and that "Dombey and Son is [ ... ] Dickens's greatest triumph in the sentimentalist tradition". The Encyclopædia Britannica online comments that, despite "patches of emotional excess", such as the reported death of Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol (1843), "Dickens cannot really be termed a sentimental novelist".

In Oliver Twist, Dickens provides readers with an idealised portrait of a boy so inherently and unrealistically good that his values are never subverted by either brutal orphanages or coerced involvement in a gang of young pickpockets. While later novels also centre on idealised characters (Esther Summerson in Bleak House and Amy Dorrit in Little Dorrit), this idealism serves only to highlight Dickens's goal of poignant social commentary. Dickens's fiction, reflecting what he believed to be true of his own life, makes frequent use of coincidence, either for comic effect or to emphasise the idea of providence. For example, Oliver Twist turns out to be the lost nephew of the upper-class family that rescues him from the dangers of the pickpocket group. Such coincidences are a staple of 18th-century picaresque novels, such as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, which Dickens enjoyed reading as a youth.

Reputation

Dickens was the most popular novelist of his time, and remains one of the best-known and most-read of English authors. His works have never gone out of print, and have been adapted continually for the screen since the invention of cinema, with at least 200 motion pictures and TV adaptations based on Dickens's works documented. Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his own lifetime – early productions included The Haunted Man which was performed in the West End's Adelphi Theatre in 1848 – and, as early as 1901, the British silent film Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost was made by Walter R. Booth. Contemporaries such as publisher Edward Lloyd cashed in on Dickens's popularity with cheap imitations of his novels, resulting in his own popular 'penny dreadfuls'.

Dickens created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest British novelist of the Victorian era. From the beginning of his career in the 1830s, his achievements in English literature were compared to those of Shakespeare. Dickens's literary reputation, however, began to decline with the publication of Bleak House in 1852–53. Philip Collins calls Bleak House "a crucial item in the history of Dickens's reputation. Reviewers and literary figures during the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s, saw a 'drear decline' in Dickens, from a writer of 'bright sunny comedy ... to dark and serious social' commentary".The Spectator called Bleak House "a heavy book to read through at once ... dull and wearisome as a serial"; Richard Simpson, in The Rambler, characterised Hard Times as "this dreary framework"; Fraser's Magazine thought Little Dorrit "decidedly the worst of his novels". All the same, despite these "increasing reservations amongst reviewers and the chattering classes, 'the public never deserted its favourite'". Dickens's popular reputation remained unchanged, sales continued to rise, and Household Words and later All the Year Round were highly successful.

As his career progressed, Dickens's fame and the demand for his public readings were unparalleled. In 1868 The Times wrote, "Amid all the variety of 'readings', those of Mr. Charles Dickens stand alone." A Dickens biographer, Edgar Johnson, wrote in the 1950s: "It was [always] more than a reading; it was an extraordinary exhibition of acting that seized upon its auditors with a mesmeric possession." Juliet John backed the claim for Dickens "to be called the first self-made global media star of the age of mass culture." Comparing his reception at public readings to those of a contemporary pop star, The Guardian states, "People sometimes fainted at his shows. His performances even saw the rise of that modern phenomenon, the 'speculator' or ticket tout (scalpers) – the ones in New York City escaped detection by borrowing respectable-looking hats from the waiters in nearby restaurants."

Among fellow writers, there was a range of opinions on Dickens. Poet laureate, William Wordsworth (1770–1850), thought him a "very talkative, vulgar young person", adding he had not read a line of his work, while novelist George Meredith (1828–1909), found Dickens "intellectually lacking". In 1888, Leslie Stephen commented in the Dictionary of National Biography that "if literary fame could be safely measured by popularity with the half-educated, Dickens must claim the highest position among English novelists". Anthony Trollope's Autobiography famously declared Thackeray, not Dickens, to be the greatest novelist of the age. However, both Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were admirers. Dostoyevsky commented: "We understand Dickens in Russia, I am convinced, almost as well as the English, perhaps even with all the nuances. It may well be that we love him no less than his compatriots do. And yet how original is Dickens, and how very English!" Tolstoy referred to David Copperfield as his favourite book, and he later adopted the novel as "a model for his own autobiographical reflections". French writer Jules Verne called Dickens his favourite writer, writing his novels "stand alone, dwarfing all others by their amazing power and felicity of expression". Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh was inspired by Dickens's novels in several of his paintings, such as Vincent's Chair, and in an 1889 letter to his sister stated that reading Dickens, especially A Christmas Carol, was one of the things that was keeping him from committing suicide . Oscar Wilde generally disparaged his depiction of character, while admiring his gift for caricature. Henry James denied him a premier position, calling him "the greatest of superficial novelists": Dickens failed to endow his characters with psychological depth, and the novels, "loose baggy monsters", betrayed a "cavalier organisation". Joseph Conrad described his own childhood in bleak Dickensian terms, noting he had "an intense and unreasoning affection" for Bleak House dating back to his boyhood. The novel influenced his own gloomy portrait of London in The Secret Agent (1907). Virginia Woolf had a love-hate relationship with Dickens, finding his novels "mesmerizing" while reproving him for his sentimentalism and a commonplace style.

Around 1940–41, the attitude of the literary critics began to warm towards Dickens – led by George Orwell in Inside the Whale and Other Essays (March 1940), Edmund Wilson in The Wound and the Bow (1941) and Humphry House in Dickens and His World. However, even in 1948, F. R. Leavis, in The Great Tradition, asserted that "the adult mind doesn't as a rule find in Dickens a challenge to an unusual and sustained seriousness"; Dickens was indeed a great genius, "but the genius was that of a great entertainer", though he later changed his opinion with Dickens the Novelist (1970, with Q. D. (Queenie) Leavis): "Our purpose", they wrote, "is to enforce as unanswerably as possible the conviction that Dickens was one of the greatest of creative writers". In 1944, Soviet film director and film theorist Sergei Eisenstein wrote an essay on Dickens's influence on cinema, such as cross-cutting – where two stories run alongside each other, as seen in novels such as Oliver Twist.

In the 1950s, "a substantial reassessment and re-editing of the works began, and critics found his finest artistry and greatest depth to be in the later novels: Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Great Expectations – and (less unanimously) in Hard Times and Our Mutual Friend". Dickens was a favourite author of Roald Dahl; the best-selling children's author would include three of Dickens's novels among those read by the title character in his 1988 novel Matilda. An avid reader of Dickens, in 2005, Paul McCartney named Nicholas Nickleby his favourite novel. On Dickens he states, "I like the world that he takes me to. I like his words; I like the language", adding, "A lot of my stuff – it's kind of Dickensian." Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan's screenplay for The Dark Knight Rises (2012) was inspired by A Tale of Two Cities, with Nolan calling the depiction of Paris in the novel "one of the most harrowing portraits of a relatable, recognisable civilisation that completely folded to pieces". On 7 February 2012, the 200th anniversary of Dickens's birth, Philip Womack wrote in The Telegraph: "Today there is no escaping Charles Dickens. Not that there has ever been much chance of that before. He has a deep, peculiar hold upon us".