Brit Lit: The Modern Age--1902-1960 Quiz

Answer: William Butler Yeats

Despite growing up in the Dublin suburb of Sandymount and London, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) nurtured a close connection with the countryside of Ireland and its myths and legends. When Yeats was three years old, his father moved the family to London so that he could pursue studies as an artist; the family lived in poverty, and Yeats found life in urban London ugly and sad. Fortunately, portions of each year he was able to spend in Sligo, where he occupied his time learning folklore and taking long, wide-ranging walks.

Much of Yeats' earlier poetry imitated the Romantic style, as is seen in poems like "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", which also demonstrates his love of the American Thoreau's "Walden". Consider these lines, for example: "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, / And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; / Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, / And live alone in the bee-loud glade". Of course, the overall message of the poem is that people have the ability to travel spiritually if they cannot do so physically.

While stuck in the noisy, dirty chaos of the city, perhaps London, Yeats explains: "While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement grey, / I hear it in the deep heart's core".

Answer: Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, the son of Polish parents in Berdychiv, Ukraine, thus making him a Russian citizen. He left after he turned sixteen to pursue a dream of being a sailor, ended up in England, and became a naturalized British subject in 1886.

He learned English while working in the British merchant service and so mastered the language that many other writers have praised his ability to use English as far superior to that of native speakers and some other great English writers.

This accomplishment is remarkable, given the fact that he never began to learn English until he was twenty-one years old. In addition to all of the titles mentioned among the multiple choice answers, he also wrote "Nostromo", "The Secret Agent", "The Duel", and several other novels and short stories. "The Heart of Darkness" reveals Conrad's pessimistic view of humanity; basically we live with only two choices in life, both of them nightmares: we can either see the world's people and its resources as tools for financial gain, or we can become like Kurtz, a self-tortured and corrupted idealist.

Answer: Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) composed "Dulce et Decorum Est", the poem whose lines are quoted in the question, in 1917. The poem portrays nightmarish and hellish images of soldiering and death and then ends bitterly with an attack on Jessie Pope, who published children's books encouraging young boys to seek the glory of war with the Latin words of Horace: "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori", or "sweet and fitting it is to die for country". Obviously, Owen found nothing glorious or sweet in the reality of war. Owen struggled for more than a year with his decision about whether to enlist in the British army; he was hesitant not only because of his poetic sensibilities but also because of his Christian beliefs.

After finally enlisting, he served as an officer in the Battle of the Somme, suffered shell shock, and wrote much of his war poetry while recuperating. Owen is celebrated today not only because of his imagery and themes but also because of his musical lines which incorporate alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, and pararhyme, which he pioneered. Pararhyme is the pairing of two words with similar consonants but differing, stressed vowels, the second vowel being lower in pitch than the first (take "hall" and "hell", for instance).

This "failure" to rhyme or "unfulfilled" rhyme creates dissonance; thus, the very form of his poems often reinforces his tragic themes.

Answer: E. M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) did write a sixth novel--"Maurice"--some time before "A Passage to India", but it was not published until 1971 after his death. The subject of "Maurice" was a relationship between two men, and the novel became extremely controversial, especially as most of the public at large had not been aware of Forster's own homosexuality.

He explains his own struggle with his homosexuality in the foreword to "Maurice". Forster was in a long-term relationship with Bob Buckingham, a police officer and married man; he often invited both Buckingham and his wife on various outings and died at the age of 91 in the Buckinghams' home. All but one of Forster's novels--"The Longest Journey"--have been transferred to film adaptations, perhaps with David Lean's "A Passage to India" being the most critically acclaimed.

Answer: A. E. Housman

Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) was esteemed for his scholarship and criticism of Latin poetry, but he was also known for his harsh and unprofessional remarks about other critics. Take the following, for example: "[Elias] Stoeber's mind, though that is no name to call it by, was one which turned as unswervingly to the false, the meaningless, the unmetrical, and the ungrammatical, as the needle to the pole". Housman also possessed a great love for poetry; in his lecture "The Name and Nature of Poetry", he argues that poetry is not to be analyzed or explained but is the result of the physical effects on the reader as he or she reads.

Many of his poems focus on a fatalistic and gloomy view of existence. In "Is My Team Ploughing?" a dead man is awakened from his slumber to discover that he is buried in the very field he used to plow and that his "sweetheart" is now sleeping with his best friend, who is now plowing over the dead man's grave; basically, the world goes on without us when we die, and no one grieves for long or at all for us.

Answer: The Garden Party

Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp. She became a master of the short story and is still celebrated for her skill today. "The Garden Party", published in 1921, is not only her most famous and critically praised but is also considered by many to be one of the best in all of British literature. Laura, the main character of the story, is in transition between childhood and adulthood and is having to decide her own morals and principles.

She is trapped between her family's way of life and her own inward leanings.

After pleading with her mother to postpone the party, her mother laughs at Laura's concerns, calls her sentiments absurd, and admonishes her with statements about how people of the lower classes don't expect "sacrifices" from the upper classes and about how Laura is selfishly ruining everyone else's fun.

The mother places a fancy hat on Laura's head, and Laura, looking at herself in a mirror, is quickly pulled away from her awareness of what's wrong with their lives by the dazzling glitter of what's attractive. Later, at the dead man's wake, she most profoundly and symbolically says, "Forgive my hat". Mansfield seems to have led a rebellious life, rejecting the values of her class by marrying a teacher, then becoming pregnant with another man's child, and then entering into a relationship with yet a third man while she was still married to the teacher.

Answer: The Razor's Edge

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) served in both the Red Cross and the ambulance corps during World War I before he entered the British Secret Intelligence Service in 1916. He then worked in Switzerland and Russia, shortly before the Bolshevik Revolution. Later, he studied to become a doctor but gave up his medical career due to the success of his novel "Liza of Lambeth".

He followed this book with a string of popular successes, including "Of Human Bondage", "The Moon and Sixpence", and "The Painted Veil".

These were all published in the teens and twenties whereas "The Razor's Edge" was a much later success from the forties. The title comes from a passage from the Upanishads: "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard". Larry Darrell, the novel's central character, discovers this wisdom through the course of the novel.

The entire novel begins most interestingly: "I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. If I call it a novel it is only because I don't know what else to call it. I have little story to tell . . . ". Two film versions exist of the novel: one in 1946, starring Tyrone Power, and one in 1984, starring Bill Murray. Maugham also achieved fame for a couple of decades as a playwright.

He had an affair with Syrie Wellcome, who left her husband to marry Maugham; however, she left him after about twelve years because she could no longer deal with Maugham's homosexual relationship and travels with Frederick Gerald Haxton, an American from San Francisco. Maugham and Syrie had a daughter Mary Elizabeth "Liza", who as an adult sued her father for selling off part of his extensive art collection, paintings she believed were already deeded to her. The court awarded her £230,000, and Maugham disowned his daughter, going so far as to adopt a son and name him his heir and publishing a memoir in which he claimed Liza was not even his biological daughter.

Answer: 1984

George Orwell (1903-1950) was born Eric Blair in India, where his father was a British civil servant. His experiences in the British colonies of India and Burma convinced him that a profound change in the capitalistic countries of the West was mandatory, and he never wavered from this position; one can see his anti-colonialism in his 1934 novel "Burmese Days" and his 1936 essay "Shooting an Elephant".

However, he was gravely disturbed by the Soviet Union's communism, which he believed was a perversion of socialism and a front for tyranny.

The 1945 novel "Animal Farm" uses allegory to express exactly how such a perversion of socialism could occur, and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" illustrates a totalitarian government that uses the language of socialism to cover up the efforts of those in power to destroy the human will and spirit.

In 1946, Orwell had already published an essay entitled "Politics and the English Language" in which he foresaw the eventual decay of language from a means of communication and unification to a means of manipulation and deception.

Answer: Araby

James Joyce (1882-1941) was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland; however, in college he refused to play a part in the nationalist movement supported by his fellow students and eventually left Ireland, returning rarely and living most of his life elsewhere. Nevertheless, he entitled his first major work, published in 1914, "Dubliners" and rarely wrote about anything else but Dublin. Three other important publications of his are his novels "A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man", published in 1916", "Ulysses", published in 1922, and "Finnegans Wake", published in 1939. "Ulysses", a complex piece that relies as much on its symbolic aspect as its realistic one, was originally banned in both Britain and America.

In fact, the novel's serialization in the American magazine "The Little Review" was temporarily halted while the U. S. Post Office brought charges of obscenity against it in a U. S. district court.

The judge sided with "Ulysses", and the ban was lifted. Joyce attended Jesuit schools as a child and seemed to be headed toward priesthood for a career until he grew disillusioned with Christianity. "Araby" captures that disillusionment with descriptions of yellowing pages of a dead priest's papers and romance fiction as well as a scene of the young boy fantasizing of carrying a chalice through the throngs of dirty commoners.

Answer: To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) published "To the Lighthouse" in 1927. It is a highly successful modernist novel, and Modern Library has ranked it as number fifteen on its list of "100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century". The novel consists of three parts, all of which take place on the Isle of Skye.

In the first part, "The Window", most of the Ramsay family want to sail to a lighthouse on the next day, but Mr. Ramsay does not believe the weather will be accommodating. The readers also encounter other characters, guests of the Ramsays, such as Lily Briscoe, who is doubting her ability to be a successful painter, and Charles Tansley, who contributes to her her doubt by suggesting that women do not make good artists.

The second part, "Time Passes", is a brief interlude that presents time passing, of course, and is the only part that appears to be told by a traditional narrator.

In the third part, the Ramsays, minus a few who have died in the ten-year interlude, make the voyage to the lighthouse, relationships seem to be mending, and Lily paints a picture and learns that success is about self-fulfillment, not public recognition.

The novel concerns itself with loss, perception, and subjectivity as well as with the role of gender and incorporates Freudian psychology as represented by the phallic lighthouse. Virginia Woolf was a practicing bisexual. While married to the writer Leonard Woolf, she experienced a passionate relationship with the poet Vita Sackville-West. Woolf's husband was supportive and understanding, so their marriage withstood this affair and other strains, including her bouts of major depression. In March of 1941, she was suffering seriously from depression brought on in part by less-than-glowing reviews of a recent publication, the destruction of her home during Germany's air raids, and fear of the Nazis. Believing that she was losing her mind (she was beginning to hear voices) and that she was becoming a burden to her husband, she put on an overcoat, filled its pockets with rocks, and walked into a river to drown herself. However, before taking her life, she left a note to her husband explaining that he had been the best part of her entire life and had brought her "the greatest possible happiness".

Answer: D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) grew up in the mining village of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire. His father was a miner, and his mother, better educated than her husband, fought all of her married life to lift her children out of the working class. His first novel was "The White Peacock", published in 1910, but "Sons and Lovers", published in 1913, was his first major success.

He went on to publish "The Rainbow" (1915), "Women in Love" (1920), "Aaron's Rod" (1922), "Kangaroo" (1923), "The Plumed Serpent" (1926), and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (1928).

Some of these were banned or the subjects of controversy because of material many considered indecent. Lawrence eventually fell in love with the wife of another man, and they ran away together to Germany, her native country.

After her divorce, they returned to England as a married couple, but her German heritage and his objection to England's involvement in WWI led to conflict in British society. Lawrence came to feel that the forces of modern civilization were against him. Following the Great War, he left England for Italy, Australia, Mexico, and then Italy again, constantly searching for inner peace.

He was often desperately ill and died of tuberculosis in the south of France at the age of 44. Lawrence was also known for his poetry--like "Snake" and "How Beastly the Bourgeois Is"--and his short stories--like "Odor of Chrysanthemums", "The Horse Dealer's Daughter", and "The Rocking-Horse Winner".

Answer: Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) was born in Swansea, Wales, and published his first volume of poems--"18 Poems"--when he was just twenty years old. The poems focused on the cycle of birth, childhood, life, and death in Swansea as well as his perspective of how all of life was linked in a union that arose from an infinite diversity of possible organisms. "18 Poems" was well received in England but not so in Wales, interestingly enough. Thomas felt Wales was provincial and sought to escape his home; he did so by moving to London and eventually going to work for the BBC. Poetry did not provide enough to live on, so he also performed radio broadcasts and wrote screenplays and short stories.

In the 1940s, Thomas became famous both in England and the United States for his public readings of poetry, which he read with a vibrant, rich, and full Welsh-accented voice mixed with the chanting lyricism of poetic language.

He died in New York City from alcohol poisoning, having drunk too much whiskey, and had been preparing to travel to California to partner with Igor Stravinsky to write an epic opera.

The quotations from the question are from "Fern Hill" and "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night", respectively. "Fern Hill" is one of his most successful poems, a poem about his aunt's farm in Wales, where he spent his summers as a boy.

Answer: W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) was born in York and eventually attended Christ Church College at Oxford, during which time he published his first publication of poetry in 1928 called simply "Poems". During the 1930s, he wrote poetry and literary criticism and collaborated with Christopher Isherwood on various plays and screenplays. Isherwood wrote "I Am a Camera", which became the basis of the musical "Cabaret"; it documented the experiences of Isherwood, Auden, and a few others who were living in Berlin for a while.

In 1935, Auden married Erika Mann, the daughter of Thomas Mann, to save her from political persecution in Nazi Germany; however, Auden was homosexual and lived most of his adult life with the poet Chester Kallman, whom he met in 1939. "Musee des Beaux Arts", published in 1938, is a remarkable piece in which Auden notes how past artists have always seemed to be aware of how suffering has always been a normal part of human existence.

He uses "The Fall of Icarus" for an example; Auden notes how in the painting a farmer continues to plow his field and a ship continues to sail on by as Icarus plummets into the sea and dies.

Answer: Endgame

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was born near Dublin, Ireland, earned an M.A. in 1931, and then gave up his teaching career a year later to devote himself to writing. Early in his life, he worked as James Joyce's secretary, and many have claimed that Joyce's work had a tremendous impact on Beckett's style and philosophy of literature. Through both novels and plays, Beckett would set the stage for post modern literature, which disrupts the conventions of traditional composition, intentionally draws attention to its own fictionality, incorporates little if any plot or incident, relies heavily on either inner or outer dialogue, purposefully avoids progression and resolution, assumes that our existence has no meaning, and suggests that such a meaningless existence is comical. Consider the following line from "Endgame": "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that".

His important novels are "Murphy", "Watt", and the trilogy "Molloy", "Malone Dies", and "The Unnameable". Besides "Endgame", Beckett is also famous for "Waiting for Godot" (1952), about two characters who sit and wait and think of moving on but never do, and "Not I" (1973), which presents the most minimal embodiment of human consciousness possible for a staged presentation: a disembodied mouth. Beckett won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.

By the way, "Man and Superman" and "The Apple Cart" are plays of George Bernard Shaw's.

Answer: The Second Coming

"The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats was published in 1919. The "gyre" to which the speaker of Yeats' poem refers is the symbol Yeats uses to represent his understanding of the progression of time, which moved in a spiraling cone-shaped motion. He envisioned that history repeated itself; thus, while the Christian Age started with the end of a time of evil rule from Babylon to Rome, the Christian Age was now coming to a close after two thousand years to be replaced by another period of horrible rule. Of course, these fears were a result of the ugliness of the Great War, the Communist Revolution, and other conflicts. Thus, Yeats wrote the following: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity". Evil then will thrive because good does nothing, and the title "Second Coming" ends up referring not to the "second coming" of Christ but rather the "second coming" of anti-Christ, which Yeats believed had already existed on Earth during the governments represented by Babylon and Rome.

While "Sailing to Byzantium" is another of Yeats' poems, "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" are two of T. S. Eliot's.