73. Queen Victoria, her social and international policy

Social policy

Sobriety, punctuality, industriousness, economy and thrift were valued even before the reign of Victoria, but it was during her era that these qualities became the dominant norm. The queen herself was an example: her life, completely subordinated to duty and family, was strikingly different from the life of her predecessors. Most of the aristocracy followed suit, abandoning the catchy lifestyle of the previous generation. Part of the working class did the same.

The middle class believed that prosperity was a reward for virtue and, therefore, losers were not worthy of a better fate. The extreme puritanism of family life gave rise to guilt and hypocrisy.

International policy

Foreign policy was relatively calm: there were no large-scale military campaigns.

In 1864, Victoria pressed her ministers not to intervene in the Prussia-Austria-Denmark war, and her letter to the German Emperor (whose son had married her daughter) in 1875 helped to avert a second Franco-German war.

On the Eastern Question in the 1870s – the issue of Britain’s policy towards the declining Turkish Empire in Europe – Victoria believed that Britain, while pressing for necessary reforms, ought to uphold Turkish as a bulwark of stability against Russia, and maintain bi-partisanship at the time when Britain could be involved in war.

After the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the government of India was transferred from the East India Company to the Crown with the position of Governor General upgraded to Viceroy, and in 1877 Victoria became Empress of India under the Royal Titles Act passed by Disraeli’s government.

74. Britain during the World Wars.

World War I

1914 - the balance of forces in Europe had developed into dangerous situation

August 1914 - Germany’s attack on France took the German army through Belgium. But by the treaty of 1838, Britain was supposed to guarantee Belgium’s neutrality, so Britain had to declare war on Germany.

No military actions occurred on the British Isles. Britain fought overseas

The war at sea was much more important for Britain than the war on land, because defeat at sea would have inevitably resulted in British surrender. From 1915 German submarines started to sink merchant ships bringing supplies to Britain.

In 1917 the attacks of German submarines on neutral shipping drew America into the war against Germany. The arrival of American troops in France and Italy ended Germany’s hopes and it surrendered in November 1918.

Britain in World War II

1935 - Germany was preparing to regain its position in Europe, and if necessary, by force. The government was faced with the problem of rebuilding the army and the navy. This meant huge investments in heavy industry. By 1937, British industry was producing weapons, aircraft and equipment for war. Financial aid was rendered by the United States of America.

In order to avoid a war, Britain cooperated with Germany in the take-over of the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia by Germany. Britain, realizing that the war was inevitable, gave a guarantee of support to Poland in case of a German invasion. In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and Britain declared a war.

May 1940 - Germany attacked the allied British and French forces, defeated the French army and drove the British army into the sea on the beaches of Dunkirk. At Dunkirk, a small French port, the British army was saved by thousands of private boats that crossed the Channel.

1940 -the Germans started bombing British cities. The name for the series of air-raids by the German Air Force is known as the Blitz. The purpose of the raids was to weaken British resistance to projected invasion.

Battle of the Atlantic began the same year. The German strategy was to cut off Britain’s supplies of food and munitions by submarine action.

1941 - Britain received first shipments of food and arms from the USA as part of the Lend-Lease Plan.

Japan attacked Britain’s colonial possessions in Malaya, Burma and India.

The USSR and the USA had jointed the war.

February 1945 - the leaders of the Allied Forces, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, met for a conference in Yalta, where the final defeat of Germany was planned.

75.British literature in the early 20th century

Poetry in the early 20th cent. was typified by the conventional romanticism - the finest poet of the period was Yeats, whose poetry fused romantic vision with contemporary political and aesthetic concerns.

New writers like Henry James , H. G. Wells , and Joseph Conrad expressed the skepticism and alienation that were to become features of post-Victorian sensibility.

The new era called for new forms, typified by the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins, first published in 1918, and of T. S. Eliot , whose long poem The Waste Land (1922) was a watershed in both American and English literary history.

Sensitivity and psychological subtlety mark the superb novels of Virginia Woolf , who, like Dorothy Richardson , experimented with the interior forms of narration.

Moved by the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and English policies of appeasement, many writers and intellectuals sought solutions in the politics of the left—or the right. Wyndham Lewis satirized what he thought was the total dissolution of culture in Apes of Gods (1930).

George Orwell fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. The experience left him profoundly disillusioned with Communism, a feeling he eloquently expressed in such works as Animal Farm (1946) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949).

This was called 'the Golden Age of Detective Fiction'. Dame Agatha Christie, a writer of crime novels, short stories and plays, is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays.

Georgette Heyer created the historical romance genre, and also wrote detective fiction.

Early 1930s to late 1940s - English faculty at the University of Oxford were The Inklings. Its leading members were the major fantasy novelists; J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Lewis is known for The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy, while Tolkien is best known as the author of The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

76. New voice in literature - Impressionism

Impressionism is a literary or artistic style originated with a group of French artists in the 19th century.

Impressionists always seek to capture a feeling or experience rather than to depict accurate depiction and perfection.

The writer creates an emotional landscape - a descriptive response of the character, and thereby the reader. The writer tells us the character's impression of the world, rather than giving clear details of reality

In literature, impressionist writers exhibit some special traits:

1. Narrative style and ambiguous meaning are the hallmarks of impressionistic literature. The narrator gives the readers more scope to think, judge and conclude, rather than depending upon him.

2. They often describe the action through the eyes of the character while the events are occurring, rather than providing minute details.

3. They’re concerned with the “emotional landscape” of the setting.

4. They exercise details so it's difficult to see a clear picture of events if one focuses on the details too closely.

5. They often avoid chronological telling of events.

77. The stream of conscience literature. Responses to new challenges

Stream of consciousness, narrative technique in nondramatic fiction intended to render the flow of myriad impressions—visual, auditory, physical, associative, and subliminal—that impinge on the consciousness of an individual and form part of his awareness along with the trend of his rational thoughts. The term was first used by the psychologist William James in The Principles of Psychology (1890). As the psychological novel developed in the 20th century, some writers attempted to capture the total flow of their characters’ consciousness, rather than limit themselves to rational thoughts. To represent the full richness, speed, and subtlety of the mind at work, the writer incorporates snatches of incoherent thought, ungrammatical constructions, and free association of ideas, images, and words at the pre-speech level.

The stream-of-consciousness novel commonly uses the narrative techniques of interior monologue. Probably the most famous example is James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), a complex evocation of the inner states of the characters Leopold and Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. Other notable examples include Leutnant Gustl (1901) by Arthur Schnitzler, an early use of stream of consciousness to re-create the atmosphere of pre-World War I Vienna; William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929), which records the fragmentary and impressionistic responses in the minds of three members of the Compson family to events that are immediately being experienced or events that are being remembered; and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931), a complex novel in which six characters recount their lives from childhood to old age.

78. Politics of the XIX century. British Empire at the turn of the centuries

79. Queen Victoria, her social and international policy

Queen Victoria is associated with Britain's great age of industrial expansion, economic progress and, especially, empire.

In foreign policy, the Queen's influence during the middle years of her reign was generally used to support peace and reconciliation. In 1864, Victoria pressed her ministers not to intervene in the Prussia-Denmark war, and her letter to the German Emperor (whose son had married her daughter) in 1875 helped to avert a second Franco-German war.

On the Eastern Question in the 1870s - the issue of Britain's policy towards the declining Turkish Empire in Europe - Victoria (unlike Gladstone) believed that Britain, while pressing for necessary reforms, ought to uphold Turkish hegemony as a bulwark of stability against Russia, and maintain bi-partisanship at a time when Britain could be involved in war.

80. Britain in the time of the world wars.

81. British literature of the early XXth century.

82. New voice in literature. Impressionism.

83. The stream of conscience literature. Responses to new challenges.

84. Modern British architecture

85. Cinematography in Great Britain