{The History of Western Literature [continued (5)]}[6th February 1991]

[Redbook8:233][19910206:1545e]{The History of Western Literature [continued (5)]}[6th February 1991]

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[continued]

[Extract from ‘The History of Western Literature’ ‘Major literary periods and trends’ ‘THE 20TH CENTURY’ ]

‘The international and experimental period of Western literature in the 1910s and the 1920s was important not only for the great works it produced but also because it set a pattern for the future. What was clearly revealed in the major works of the period was an increasing sense of crisis and urgency, doubts as to the 19^th century’s faith in the psychological stability of the individual personality, and a deep questioning of all philosophical or religious solutions to human problems. In the 1930s these qualities of 20^th-century thought were not abandoned but, rather, were expanded into a political context, as writers divided into those supporting a political commitment in their writing and those reacting conservatively against such a domination of art by politics. Not did World war II resolve the debate concerning political commitment – issues similar to those that exercised major creative imaginations of the 1930s were still very much alive during the last quarter of the [20^th] century.’

*

*[Encyclopaedia Britannica 23: 229]

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