Рефераты. Humanity in J. Conrad's and W. Somerset's creativity

Humanity in J. Conrad's and W. Somerset's creativity

Content

INTRODUCTION

PART I. ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EDWARDIAN LITERATURE

1.1 The main representatives of the prose writing in the first half of the twentieth century

1.2 The similarity and difference of themes and genres of the leading literature representatives

Conclusion to part I

PART II. HUMANITY AS THE MAIN PHILOSOPHICAL AND LITERARY PROBLEM IN THE WORK OF THE WRITERS BFORE THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

2.1 The Moral Sense in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim

2.2 "Human Bondage" and it's moral duality

Conclusion to part II

GENERAL CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

William Somerset Maugham (pronounced 'mawm'), CH (25 January 1874 - 16 December 1965) was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was one of the most popular authors of his era, and reputedly the highest paid of his profession during the 1930s.

Joseph Conrad (December 3, 1857 - August 3, 1924) was a Polish-born British novelist, one of the most important and respected writers of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries. Conrad's works emerge out of the confluence of three literary currents prominent in the Europe of Conrad's time: Romanticism, particularly in the works of Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz; realism, which flowered in Russia in the works of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky; and modernism, which emerged as the dominant literary aesthetic of the twentieth century.

Conrad's works draw on the symbolism of the Romantics and the psychological acuity of the realist and modernist schools. Despite these affinities, Conrad defies easy categorization. Conrad saw in Western colonialism the failure of the "civilized world" to fulfill its moral responsibilities. He witnessed and then documented through his fiction how the "white man's burden," or the West's responsibility to the rest of the world, became clouded by selfish ambition through its quest for colonial domination.

Born and raised in Poland, Conrad spent part of his youth in France and the majority of his early life at sea; only in his mid-thirties would he settle down, in England, to start a career as a writer, writing not in Polish or French, but in English, his adopted third language. Like the Russian emigre Vladamir Nabokov, Conrad is regarded as a master prose stylist among authors in the English literary canon. His knowledge of languages and cultures, gleaned not only from his European experiences but also from his decades spent as a sailor at sea, can be seen in the haunting style of his prose and the enormity of the themes which he constantly brings to the surface. His works inspired writers throughout the twentieth century.

Our work is devoted to the analysis of the novels by William Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad. The plots of there novel generally revolve around the subject of marriage and lay emphasis especially on its tremendous importance in the lives of the nineteen century women.

While making our research we used the works of such linguists as Vinokur G.O., Suvorov S.P., Arnold I.V. and many others. During our work we used the works on the translation theory of such linguists as Levitskaya T.R., Fiterman A.M., Komissarov V.N., Alimov V.V., Shveytser A.D., Garbovskiy N.K., Dmitrieva L.F., Galperin I.R., Arnold I.V., Yakusheva I.V., van Deik, Kolshanskiy and others. We used also the articles from the the periodical editions.

The aim of our work is to reveal W. Somerset Saugham's "Of Human Bondage" and Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim": plot structure and character analysis.

The hypothesis: in our investigation we suppose to prove that the literature can reflect humanity problems such as problem of morality and human relationships on example of W. Somerset's and J. Conrad's creativity.

The aim and hypothesis have defined the next tasks:

- to research the main representatives of the prose writing in the first half of the twentieth century;

- to investigate the similarity and difference of themes and genres of the leading literature representatives;

- to research The problem of humanity in the work as a leading Inclination of W. Somerset and J. Conrad;

- The Moral Sense in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim;

- Human Bondage" and it's moral duelety and "Human heart" in the symbol of new wave of human evolution.

Object of research in the given work is W. Somerset Saugham's and Joseph Conrad's creativity.

Subject is W. Somerset Saugham's "Of Human Bondage" and Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim": plot structure and character analysis.

Concerning the aim and the tasks we have used such method as a descriptive one, the method of the experience, the contextual method and the comparative method. These methods weren't used as the isolated methods, they were used in their complex to satisfy the aim and the task in the best way.

PART I. ENGLISH NARRATIVE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EDVARDIAN LITERATURE

1.1 The main representatives of the prose writing in the first half of the twentieth century

Literature in 20th century begins with a serie of movements, some of them contradictory between them, as Symbolism, Decadentism, Impressionism and, in Hispanic literature, Modernism, The Generation of '98 [21, 121]. During the two first decades , two literary conceptions are imposed to writers: Those writers for whom literary work is the expression of a cultural experience and fall in intellectualism; and writers who, in view of the chaos of the time and the dissatisfaction of bourgeois world, see literary work as an adventure, as an irrational experience. In the thirties, some historic and socioeconomic facts, affected literature. It will express the search, through the action, of ethical values. After the World War, writers will insist in the same attitudes: moral crisis and tecnical experimentation.

Coinciding the beginning of the new century with Queen Victoria's death in 1901, Britain seemed to start a new period that wasn't seen immediately, because the short reign of Edward VII (1901-1910) was the continuity of the previous period. English society was divided in social classes: wealth was held by a few people thanks for the Industrial Revolution. The poor were still poor, although by the Educative Act of 1870 some instruction was guaranteed. The first threats for Britain appeared with anglo-boer war to become evident in 1914 with the beginning of the First World War.

In ideas, changes were more spectacular. In the beginning of the century Einstein's relativity theory becomes true, and in 1905 Freud's new theories started to be renewal in human interpretation. Nothing could be like before, because art and ideas wished to advance quickly. Even in picture, for example, Cubism and Dadaism broke all imaginable visual molds: Modernism crystallized as a global result of all possible desires of change and renovation. In fact, every intellectual, political or artistic movement tries to broke with the past and fix new directions to follow. Modernism, not only wished to broke with the past, but also abolish them. However, it wasn't possible; in ideas world always exists something "already invented" where we resort to and in this way, Modernism had to create its own tradition, looking for affinities in the past history [21, 127].

In literature, it was the Ullyses (1922) by James Joyce the work that produced the true impact because of its new character and its perfect style and the scandol of its publication. The woman would have an important paper in the society and this would have an excellent representant in Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). She belongs to an artistic and intellectual circle in Bloomsbury. Woolf was a writer with a lot of sensibility and wrote a beautiful poetic prose in the shape of novels like Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse.

Prose poetry is usually considered a form of poetry written in prose that breaks some of the normal rules associated with prose discourse, for heightened imagery or emotional effect. Arguments continue about whether prose poetry is actually a form of poetry or a form of prose, or a separate genre altogether. Most critics argue that prose poetry belongs in the genre of poetry because of its use of metaphorical language and attention to language.

Other critics argue that prose poetry falls into the genre of prose because prose poetry relies on prose's association with narrative and its reliance on readers' expectation of an objective presentation of truth in prose. Yet others argue that the prose poem gains its subversiveness through its fusion of poetic and prosaic elements.

As a specific form, prose poetry is generally assumed to have originated in 19th-century France.

At the time of the prose poem's emergence, French poetry was dominated by the Alexandrine, an extremely strict and demanding form that poets such as Aloysius Bertrand and Charles Baudelaire rebelled against. Further proponents of the prose poem included other French poets such as Arthur Rimbaud and Stephane Mallarme.

The prose poem continued to be written in France and found profound expression, in the mid-20th century, in the prose poems of Francis Ponge. At the end of the 19th century, British Decadent movement poets such as Oscar Wilde picked up the form because of its already subversive association. This actually hindered the dissemination of the form into English because many associated the Decadents with homosexuality, hence any form used by the Decadents was suspect.

Notable Modernist poet T. S. Eliot wrote vehemently against prose poems, though he did try his hand at one or two. He also added to the debate about what defines the genre, saying in his introduction to Djuna Barnes' highly poeticized 1936 novel Nightwood that this work may not be classed as "poetic prose" as it did not have the rhythm or "musical pattern" of verse. In contrast, a couple of other Modernist authors wrote prose poetry consistently, including Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson. In actuality, Anderson considered his work to be short fictions--in the current term, "flash fiction." The distinction between flash fiction and prose poetry is at times very thin, almost indiscernible.

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