Unseen Prose

• Welfare state


  1940s

  -NHS

  -State Schooling

  -Benefit system
• Post - Imperialism


  -breakup of the British Empire

  -Indian Independence in 1947

  -Suez Canal crisis 1956 - condemned for their aggression
• Industrial unrest


  Miner's strike 1984
• Thatcherism


  -Known for privatising industries, restricting strike action, capitalist polices and allowing social inequality to grow.

  - viewed as being cruel and heartless to working class

  - others saw her as paving the way to prosperity.
• Terrorism


  - Irish nationalism - the 'Irish Problem' has been presented peacefully (Sinn Fein) as well as violently (IRA)
• Cold War


  An impending sense of doom and disaster

  Critiques overbearing governments which interfere with an individual's wisdom
• Counter-cultural movement


  Rejection of traditional literary forms - experimental, colloquial styles; blurring of popular art forms and literature

  Satire
• Post - Imperialism


  Consequences of the breakup of the Empire and takes the view of people from countries that were colonised
• Irish Nationalism


  Compulsive need to 'bear witness' to traumatic events occurring on the national stage.
• WW2


  -writers felt compelled to reflect on the moral consequences of the enormity of the holocaust's impact

  - exploring the extent of mankind's capacity for cruelty and how crowds of people can be brainwashed into obeying authority figures.

  -fragmentary texts conveying the sense of chaos and destruction created by the war.
• Counter - cultural movement

  Political demonstrations

  Strikes protesting against economic policy

  1960s permissive society

  Rise of Youth Culture
• Changing morality and social structures

  Liberalised attitudes to sex / more choices for women

  Fluidity in family structure

  Liberalised attitudes
• WW2


  -British National Pride

  -Disillusionment with the human condition - man's capacity for evil

  -Reflecting a chaotic, broken and morally corrupt world

  -Heightened sense of social justice

  -Post-war deprivation and shortages making post-war exhaustion.
• Impact of WW2


  -6 million Jews killed

  -Minority groups attacked and discriminated against

  -the public struggled coming to terms with the vast scale of genocide
• Cold War


  -Capitalism vs Communism

  -No actual fighting, lots of propaganda from both sides and espionage.

  -Cuban Missile Crisis
• Protest and suspicion


  e.g Vietnam, Iraq

  The public oppose the government, fear of corruption
• Rise of youth culture

  politicised student movements, youth seeking to create a distinctive identity apart from the adult world
• 1960s permissive society


  Liberated attitude to relationships

  Leisure activities - drugs, festivals

  Fashion

  rejection of traditional family structure through communal structures

  Eastern religions
• Liberalised attitudes to sex

  Introduction of contraceptive pill (1961)

  Abortion Act (1969)
• Fluidity in family structure

  1969 - divorce act

  Diverse family structures - single parent
• Liberalised attitudes to sex

  Homosexuality decriminalised (1967)

  Legalisation of gay marriage (2014)
• Gender


  Opportunities in the workplace

  Pill

  Feminist campaigns 1970s - laws against gender discrimination

  More women in high powered jobs but 'glass ceiling' still evident in many industries
• Class


  Focus on national unity after WW2

  Creation of the welfare state

  Decline in manufacturing industry - traditional working class branched out into different professions
• Race


  Influx of immigrants post war to compensate for a labour shortage

  Many faced discrimination, increase in racial violence in 1960s

  Still discrimination but in C21st later generations increasingly celebrate our multicultural, cosmopolitan society.
• Previously marginalised voices


  - Feminism inspired female writers to foreground their gender experience

  - Formerly colonised people reclaimed their own histories and identities

  -Writers from working-class backgrounds widened the thematic and linguistic range of literature

  - A more liberal cultural climate gave greater freedom in the representation of sexuality and sexual orientation.
• Feminism


  - sexual revolution of 1960s and feminist campaigning resulted in writers representing sexuality more explicitly in their writing

  - Female writers examined the contradiction between increased personal/professional opportunities for women and conventional expectations.
• Postcolonial writing


  - strongly critical of the imperialist values and the oppression of native peoples

  - Reflects a sense of duality - feeling torn between their homeland and the site of their displacement. British society often described in a cold way in comparison to warm, affectionate portrayals
• Regional writing


  - often contacts local dialects, challenging the way in which much of the literary canon is predominantly written in RP.

  - Irish literature - complex relationship to Britain.

  -There are concerns with establishing national identity and reclaiming and revising traditional cultural values
• Working Class fiction


  Typically have:

  -characters who rage against social hierarchies

  - use of colloquial, idiomatic language to represent the voice of working class characters and challenge traditional literary expression.

  -Feelings of disappointment and disillusionment associated with the 1980s-Thatcherite policies

  -'Angry young men' - provided with education from welfare state but continues to be oppressed for this reason.

  -1970s- angry young men sought to maintain their idealism despite the economic downturn - that meant there was a decline in postwar optimism for radical social change.
• Homosexuality


  - writers often used experimental stylistic techniques and foreground explicit and deliberately shocking subject matter, raging against the prejudice that homosexuals had historically experienced.
• Reactions to war and genocide

  - need to 'bear witness'

  - WW2 led to a questioning of human nature and man's capacity for evil

  -often pervaded by a sense of anxiety over the possibility of imminent disaster a nuclear annihilation
• Existentialism


  - a movement in philosophy and literature that emphasises individual existence, freedom and choice

  -based on the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe

  -focuses on the question of human existence, and that there is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence.

  -as there is no God or any other transcendent force, the only way to counter this nothingness is by embracing existence

  -the two World Wars are often said to have caused a rise in this, due to the scale of violence and evil that occurred which people struggle to make sense of.
• Settings


  -trend of locating novels in urban landscapes

  -the impersonality of these locations serves as an effective backdrop to writers seeking to portray feelings of social/cultural alienation, divides within society and the frenetic pace of modern life

  -some writers have included idealised pastoral landscapes to their work, presenting nature as being a benign force, seeking to reconnect with earlier traditions and to escape the complex modern world
• Englishness


  - some look back nostalgically on a vision of Englishness associated with the pastoral rural world and traditional community rituals, and view the contemporary urban, industrialised England with disillusionment.

  -the rise of multiculturalism has led to migrant writers providing an outsider perspective on 'Englishness' and seeking to assert their own values
• Magic realism


  - involves the reshaping and manipulation of conventional literary realism to accommodate fantasy, myth, fairy-tale and other non-canonical generic forms

  -used by writers who want to transcend the constraints pf a traditional narrative strategy as part of a challenge to the established literary canon, especially from postcolonial or feminist perspectives