Twentieth-Century English Literature: Progress and Upheaval

This blog is written as a task assigned by the head of the Department of English (MKBU), Prof. and Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. Here is the link to the professor's blog for background reading: Click here.

Here is mindmap of my blog : Click Here

Concise Infographic:


Executive Summary

The provided text presents a critical analysis of the profound social, intellectual, and literary transformations that characterized the first half of the twentieth century in Britain. It argues that this period was defined by a series of radical upheavals that dismantled the perceived stability and certitude of the preceding Victorian era. The core thesis posits that the Scientific Revolution, while driving unprecedented material progress, also catalyzed a significant "moral and spiritual relapse." This dual effect manifested in a widespread revolt against all forms of established authority—parental, political, religious, and artistic.
Key takeaways include the sharp ideological break from Victorianism, which exchanged a belief in permanence and order for a new consciousness of universal mutability and skepticism, championed by figures like Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. In literature, this shift led to a fragmentation of purpose and audience, moving from the community-focused "art for life's sake" of the Fabians to the intellectual elitism of the Bloomsbury Group, and culminating in the esoteric modernism of James Joyce and T.S. Eliot after 1922, which alienated the "common reader." The document also charts the unforeseen negative consequences of the post-WWII Welfare State, where economic affluence failed to produce social contentment, instead fostering consumerism, a cult of immaturity, and a general decline in civility and social cohesion.

I. The Twentieth Century: An Era of Upheaval and Contradiction

The analysis opens by framing the first fifty years of the twentieth century as a period of unparalleled upheaval, where "the human race moved through a remarkable series of upheavals than during perhaps fifty generations in the past." This era is defined by a fundamental paradox: ever-accelerating material progress running parallel to an "unprecedented moral and spiritual relapse."
• The Scientific Revolution's Dual Impact: The Scientific Revolution is identified as the primary engine of both progress and regress.
    ◦ Progress: Technological advancements like the internal combustion engine provided millions with "almost unlimited mobility" via the motor car and motorcycle.
    ◦ Regress: The same engine made possible the aeroplane and other tools of "mass slaughter in two world wars," with nuclear power later bringing the threat of universal destruction.
• The Revolt of Youth: This is presented as a "revolution within the Scientific Revolution."
    ◦ Increased mobility enabled young people to travel far from home, escaping "parental guidance and control."
    ◦ A shift occurred in the role of students, who were increasingly utilized as "active political partisans," a departure from the British tradition where the "first duty of students is to study, not to agitate."
    ◦ The text warns that political demonstrations by "untutored youth" are susceptible to emotional conditioning and could potentially lead to "mob rule."

II. The Revolt from Victorianism

A central theme is the complete inversion of the values and worldview that defined the Victorian age. The post-Victorian generation viewed its predecessors as "dull and hypocritical," with ideals that were "mean and superficial and stupid." This rejection created a spiritual vacuum for many.
• Victorian Mindset: Characterized by:
    ◦ Acceptance of Authority: A "widespread and willing submission to the rule of the Expert" and the "Voice of Authority" in religion, politics, and family life. This was an "insistent attitude of acceptance" and a desire to "affirm and confirm rather than to reject or to question."
    ◦ Belief in Permanence: A firm conviction in the unshakable foundations and perpetual nature of institutions like the home, the constitution, the Empire, and the Christian religion. To the Victorians, the world was a "house built on unshakable foundations."
    ◦ Surface Morality: While faith and morality appeared "unflawed on the surface," early twentieth-century minds saw them as lacking a "core of personally realised conviction," viewing them as "mere second-hand clothing of the mind and spirit."
• Twentieth-Century Counter-Values:
    ◦ Universal Mutability: The Victorian idea of permanence was replaced by a "sense of a universal mutability." H.G. Wells is quoted describing "the flow of things" and the feeling that the world was no longer a home but "the mere sight of a home."
    ◦ Skepticism and Interrogation: The new era was driven by a "restless desire to probe and question." Bernard Shaw is positioned as a primary herald of this change, with a creed summarized by the watchwords: "Question! Examine! Test!"
    ◦ Challenging Dogma: Shaw's influence, exemplified by Andrew Undershaft's declaration in Major Barbara ("It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it won't scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities"), spread the "interrogative habit of mind," which was invigorating for some but destabilizing for others.

III. The Evolution of Literary Purpose and Audience

The upheaval in social values was mirrored by a fragmentation in literature, which saw a stark divergence in its perceived purpose and intended audience over the decades.

A. The Fabian and Community-Oriented Writers

At the turn of the century, prominent writers adhered to a creed of "art for life's sake" or for the community's sake.
• The Fabian Society, founded in 1884, attracted authors like Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Its primary motives were sociological and political, aiming for the "spread of Socialist opinions." Literature was secondary to this goal.
• Sidney and Beatrice Webb were the prime movers of orthodox Fabianism, becoming the "architects of the Welfare state."
• The text critiques their approach for its blindness to "the exceptional, the eccentric, the individually independent-minded," arguing that State socialism inevitably treats individuals as "punched cards" and leads to the dominance of "Mass Man" over the "Common Man."

B. The Bloomsbury Group

This intellectual circle, which included Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and J.M. Keynes, went "some way to restoring, though with a difference, the art-for-art's sake principle."
• Characteristics: They were a circle of friends, former Cambridge intellectuals, who valued art, conversation, and good manners. They felt themselves to be of "superior mentality" and could be "contemptuous of lesser minds."
• Influence: J.M. Keynes stood out as a man of affairs whose economic theories would "revolutionize British thinking." His book Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) is highlighted as a destructive commentary on the Versailles Treaty that may have encouraged German resentment.

C. The 1922 Divide: The Rise of Esoteric Modernism

The year 1922, with the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, is marked as a critical turning point.
• A Retreat from the Public: With these works, "literature left the highroad of communication and retreated into an esoteric fastness."
• Intellectual Elitism: This new literature was rooted in a "contempt for normal intelligence." T.S. Eliot is quoted defending the "antimony between 'literature'…which can appeal only to a small and fastidious public, and life." Stuart Gilbert, an interpreter of Joyce, praised him for never betraying "the authority of intellect to the hydra-headed rabble of the mental underworld."
• The "Common Reader" Left Behind: This contrasted sharply with pre-1922 writers like Hardy, Kipling, Shaw, and Wells, who were enjoyed by the "general body of averagely intelligent readers." The text notes that despite critical dismissal, authors like Galsworthy retained widespread public interest for decades.

D. The Proliferation of Academic Criticism

The rise of modernist literature was accompanied by a new style of academic criticism based on close textual analysis.
• Isolation from "Life": The text argues that the "handicap borne by the professional academic scholar is his isolation from 'life' as it is lived by the community at large."
• Professional Inbreeding: When academic study's end is simply the "multiplication of academics ad infinitum," it becomes a form of "cerebral incest" that prevents literature from being an "enrichment of life."
• Critical Fallibility: The fallibility of this method is illustrated with an anecdote where Professor William Empson spun elaborate theories about a T.S. Eliot poem based on a printer's error that transposed punctuation, a mistake that the poet did not create and which was later corrected.

IV. War, Politics, and Literature

The major conflicts of the century profoundly shaped literary output, increasingly binding art to political and social causes.
• The First World War: This period produced a "surprising outburst of poetry" that was "intelligible and attractive to the common reader," with poets like Rupert Brooke remaining popular for decades. This was followed by an "avalanche of anti-war books" in the late 1920s, such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1929).
• The Politicization of Art in the 1930s: As the "European scene darkened," it became a conviction among younger writers that "no art could justify itself except as the handmaid of politics." This led to "dreary polemics" and socialist literature that preached to the converted.
• The Second World War: The mood was one of "stoical determination and endurance," not the "romantic-patriotic fervor" of 1914. This war "produced little verse and that little was mostly in a minor key and often obscurely phrased."
• Existential and Religious Preoccupations: The inter-war and post-war periods saw a growing interest in writers like Kierkegaard, Rilke, and Kafka, fostering a "pre-occupation with states of consciousness" and the idea that the world is a "vast clinic" where "nothing but abnormality is normal."

V. The Post-War Welfare State: Affluence and Anomie

The establishment of the Welfare State after 1945 created an affluent society, but its social outcomes defied optimistic expectations.
• Unintended Consequences: The removal of economic stress did not bring contentment. Instead, a "mood of sullen discontent settled upon large numbers."
    ◦ Crime and prostitution "flourished as never before."
    ◦ Increased university access bred a class of graduates who were "culturally served from their families and socially rootless."
• The Rise of Consumerism: The prudent pre-war principle to "have only what you can afford" was replaced by the age of "status symbols' and 'keeping up with the Joneses'," accelerated by the hire-purchase system.
• The Power of Modern Advertising:
    ◦ Advertising shifted from being informative to being manipulative, employing "depth psychology" and subconscious influence.
    ◦ The National Union of Teachers expressed anxiety over ads evoking an "automatic emotional response" by linking products to powerful images, such as suggesting it is "manly and grown-up to smoke and drink."
    ◦ Products like beer, chocolates, and footwear were intimately connected with "human love" and sexual suggestion.
• The Cult of Abnormality: The influence of "Freudianism in all its imperfectly understood manifestations" became rooted in fiction, drama, and verse. Psychiatry, viewed as a panacea, contributed to "as much disordered in imaginative literature as it has contributed to the disintegration of individual personality."

VI. The Fragmentation of Social Order

The final part of the analysis details specific symptoms of social decay and the erosion of traditional norms in the post-war era.
• The "Revolt of Youth" and the Beatnik Cult:
    ◦ A "cult of immaturity" was encouraged by the "unprecedented and mainly undiscriminating spending power" of adolescents.
    ◦ Protest movements like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament became a cause for the "rebels without a cause."
    ◦ The Beatnik movement, a reflection of its American prototype, emerged. Beatniks professed disgust with debased society and chose to "contract-out" by abandoning respectability, adopting promiscuity, drug addiction, and indifference to hygiene.
• The Decline of Authority and Civility:
    ◦ A "prevalence of contempt for authority" became characteristic of the period.
    ◦ This was expressed through "bastard satire," which lacked the intelligence and understanding of true satire and descended into "witless innocence" and ridicule for popular entertainment.
    ◦ The text cites Bernard Shaw: "without good manners human society is intolerable and impossible."
• The Cult of Personality and Exhibitionism:
    ◦ The so-called "hypocrisies" of the Victorian age are re-evaluated as "commendable reticence and modesty."
    ◦ This is contrasted with the modern era, where many "preferred to live in public." The "personality cult developed by television and other media created a passion for exhibitionism," a trend seen as detrimental to literature and scholarship.
    ◦ The analysis concludes that in this new media environment, it had become easy to gain a reputation, and just as "easy to lose it."

Detailed Infographic:


Twentieth-Century English Literature: Progress and Upheaval (English)



बीसवीं सदी साहित्य का विश्वास से मोहभंग और विद्रोह (HINDI)

Learning Outcomes


I gained a clear understanding of the overall spirit of the 20th century as described by A.C. Ward and learned how its major social changes shaped modern English literature.

I learned to use Gen-AI tools such as NotebookLM, Kinemaster, and YouTube resources to make my study process more creative, efficient, and engaging.

I became confident in converting complex literary concepts into simple and appealing digital formats like video summaries, Hindi podcasts, infographics, and mind maps.

I learned to design two different types of infographics and create a well-structured mind map, which helped me visualize, connect, and remember key ideas.

I improved my ability to write a brief yet meaningful report on the text by using AI tools that supported me in summarizing and organizing information effectively.

I strengthened my critical reading, digital communication, and storytelling skills through working with multiple formats and media.

I also learned to use AI-generated content ethically and responsibly while ensuring that my own understanding and voice remained central to the work.