29. SOCIAL CONCERNS: H. G. Wells, Rebecca West, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, Hugh Walpole, Frederic Raphael, Aldous Huxley, Arthur Koestler, George Orwell

The Novel ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 572-603
Red Britain ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Matthew Taunton

The introduction argues that the Russian Revolution should be understood as a fundamentally important precondition for mid-century British culture. It explains the range of intellectuals covered in the book, and the central importance of anti-Communists Arthur Koestler and George Orwell for its argument. It then outlines three key arguments that run through the book: first, that the effects of the Russian Revolution on British culture are best understood in terms of gradual sedimentation in a longue durée rather than as a catastrophic event; second, Red Britain emphasizes the ideological diversity on either side of the Cold War divide; third, that British responses to the Bolshevik Revolution should be understood not only as a clash of internationalist or cosmopolitan ideologies, but also as an episode within a longer history of nationally grounded Anglo-Russian cultural and political relations. The introduction ends with brief summaries of the book’s five chapters.


Author(s):  
John Peters

A prolific and popular author, English writer Arnold Bennett was one of the most important Realist/Naturalist writers of the early twentieth century. Strongly influenced by George Moore, Bennett made valuable contributions to this literary tradition, achieving distinction alongside contemporaries H. G. Wells and John Galsworthy. Enoch Arnold Bennett was born in Burslem, Staffordshire in 1867. Bennett showed promise as a student, but at sixteen left school to work in his father’s law office and then later as a clerk in a London law office. In 1893, Bennett left his job to become assistant editor of the journal Woman, later becoming editor-in-chief. He had been writing occasional pieces for the Staffordshire Sentinel for several years before he published his first story, ‘A Letter Home’ (1895), in The Yellow Book. His first novel, A Man from the North, appeared in 1898. Modelled after the fiction of George Moore, it tells the story of a man from the Potteries district of Bennett’s youth who tries to acclimatize to a life as a clerk in London. Emboldened by his initial literary success, in 1900 Bennett gave up his position with Woman to become a full-time writer.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelton Bruno Sabatke

Em 1940, o escritor George Orwell publicou no jornal Tribune de Londres um artigo intitulado Prophecies of Fascism [Profecias do Fascismo] que continha revisões bibliográficas de romances distópicos publicados anos antes por Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells, Jack London e, pelo hoje menos ilustre, Ernest Bramah. Apesar de suas diferenças e peculiaridades, todas possuíam em comum certa “pretensão premonitória”, cujos méritos foram reconhecidos por Orwell, especialmente, à medida que a marcha do fascismo tornava-se cada vez mais evidente e ameaçadora na Europa. Dentre as obras analisadas, Orwell dedica especial atenção a The Iron Heel [O Tacão de Ferro], de London. De acordo com ele, o que faz o livro de London parecer mais preciso do que os demais é o fato de o autor possuir o que Orwell intitulou “centelha fascista”.


Author(s):  
Dorothy Stark de Valverde

Resulta difícil definir en español el concepto de "novela política" que los críticos en literatura inglesa tan frecuentemente utilizan para describir cierto género, en que el sistema gubernativo puede ser escenario o catalizador de las acciones de los protagonistas.La novela política contemporánea, como la de Graham Greene, Arthur Koestler o George Orwell. es la resultante de un fenómeno que iniciaron Dostoievski y Corad, con su concepción del mundo político. En este análisis de las novelasde Conrad,enfatizó tres puntos fundamentales: a) la filosofía del autor acerca de los gobiernos, b) su filosofía del hombre, como ser solitario dentro de las estructuras político-sociales y c) la necesidad de principios morales tanto en el gobierno como en el ciudadano.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
Anna Alsztyniuk ◽  

The article analyses Zamyatin’s novel We (1921) and Hihiewicz’s story Martian Journey (1990). Zamyatin is considered to be the father of the anti-utopian genre, and We became a source of inspiration for many writers, including George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Hihiewicz, in his works, repeatedly portrayed the society of the future, completely subordinated to the system of state power. Similar issues and kinds of narration are the main features that link both analysed works. However, the transformation of Zamyatin’s protagonist is only temporary, as a consequence of which he returns to the initial situation, to the life absolutely subordinated to the state power. On the other hand, Hihiewicz’s protagonists solve existential problems by choosing between life in captivity and death.


Linguaculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-44
Author(s):  
Niculae Liviu Gheran

Within the present paper, I aim to discuss how Aldous Huxley and Ira Levin have employed the peripheral symbolic geography of their two works (Brave New World and This Perfect Day) to articulate their debate between different sets of social values. Unlike other authors of negative utopias such as George Orwell or Yevgeny Zamyatin, neither Huxley nor Levin idealized pre-modern values. In order to highlight how the two articulated their views with the help of symbolic geography, I will also make use of Michel Foucault’s theoretical concepts of heterotopias, heterochrony as well as the ideas developed by the critics Michael Lowy and Robert Sayre in their seminal work Romanticism against the Tide of Modernity. My purpose is thus firstly to point out how and why Huxley and Levin divided the symbolic geography of their works in two parts as well as how they employed the Romantic critique of modernity. Secondly, I aim to show how despite using this analytical tool, they also employed symbolic geography with the purpose of turning the critique on its head, thus unveiling both its strong points as well as its shortcomings.


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