English (Secondary) Tema 57 (BOE 1993) PDF

# Inglés (Secundaria), Tema 57 (BOE 1993) ## Ecoem Formación - Curso 2023/2024 ## 57 EL REINO UNIDO EN EL PERÍODO DE ENTREGUERRAS Y DURANTE LA SEGUNDA GUERRA MUNDIAL. AUTORES LITERARIOS REPRESENTATIVOS. ## A. READER ### 1. INTRODUCTION. ### 2. THE UNITED KINGDOM BETWEEN THE WARS. - 2.1. Politica...

# Inglés (Secundaria), Tema 57 (BOE 1993) ## Ecoem Formación - Curso 2023/2024 ## 57 EL REINO UNIDO EN EL PERÍODO DE ENTREGUERRAS Y DURANTE LA SEGUNDA GUERRA MUNDIAL. AUTORES LITERARIOS REPRESENTATIVOS. ## A. READER ### 1. INTRODUCTION. ### 2. THE UNITED KINGDOM BETWEEN THE WARS. - 2.1. Political background. - 2.2. Consequences of the Great War. - 2.3. The rise of Baldwin. - 2.4. The Great Depression and its aftermath. - 2.5. The abdication crisis. - 2.6. Administration of the British Empire. - 2.7. Foreign policy and appeasement. ### 3. WORLD WAR II. ### 4. THE MOST REPRESENTATIVE WRITERS OF THE PERIOD. #### 4.1. The novel: general features. - 4.1.1. D. H. Lawrence. - 4.1.2. Virginia Woolf. - 4.1.3. Graham Greene. #### 4.2. Poetry. - 4.2.1. W. B. Yeats. - 4.2.2. T. S. Eliot. - 4.2.3. W. H. Auden. #### 4.3. Playwrights. ### 5. DIDACTIC TRANSPOSITION. ### 6. CONCLUSION. ## B. REFERENCES ### 7. LEGISLATIVE REFERENCES. - Decree 102/2023 - Decree 103/2023 - Order of May 30, 2023 - Order of May 30, 2023 ### 8. BIBLIOGRAPHY - Sampson, G., 1970. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. - Abrams, Donaldson... Y OTROS. (Ed.), 1979. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. - Roger Gower, 1990. Past into Present. ### 9. WEBLIOGRAPHY. - http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/alevel/modern_british_britainbetweenwars.shtml. - http://www.great-britain.co.uk/history/1918.39.htm. - http://www.fashion-era.com/1920s_life_between_the_wars.htm. - http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/learning_modules/history/04.TU.04/. - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/britain/cen_econ_wars.shtml. ## C. SUMMARY / CONCEPT MAP ### 10. SAMPLE SUMMARY. The period between the two World Wars saw some of the greatest changes in the history of the United Kingdom. It was characterized by recurrent instability in the economy, politics and in the society. To a great extent, the Great War or World War I was responsible for these developments but one should not forget that some of the pre-war events indicated the necessity of change: the rise of socialism, the Easter Uprising in Ireland which reflected the level of discontent there, the emancipation of women and industrialized cities showing further strengthening of the middle class. - In the following paragraphs the variety of factors, which influenced British history in the period between the wars, will be described and the economic, political, and social developments will be explained. In the second part of the paper, the main literary trends of the period and their most representative authors like Virginia Woolf or Thomas Stearns Eliot will be presented. ### 11. CONCEPT MAP. The attached concept map describes the main points of the document, including its structure and the key figures discussed. ## The United Kingdom between the Wars. - **Politics**: The new Labour Party was successful in replacing the Liberal Party in importance - it created numerous governments and entered many coalitions. Women got limited and later complete voting rights as a result of their struggle earlier in the century and sacrifice during World War I. The first post-war Prime Minister Lloyd George was worried about foreign affairs basically although unemployment insurance was established and railroads reorganized. At the same time, on Dec. 6th 1921 after prolonged negotiations Ireland was divided into two and the British government and the Irish rebels signed a treaty allowing the establishment of what was a dominion government in Dublin. Lloyd George’s coalition government ended over disagreements about Ireland and foreign policy and he was replaced briefly by Bonar Law and then by Stanley Baldwin (Cons.). Baldwin's long period of government was characterized by three stages: The first (1923-4) was a period of high unemployment and foreign debts. During the second phase (1924-1929) there was a general strike and pensions were extended; finally during the third phase (1935-37) there were problems with the monarchy when King Edward VIII had to abdicate due to his relationship with an American woman. - **Society and economy**: The war changed the position of women, bringing political, and to some extent economic and social, emancipation. With the outbreak of war the woman’s suffrage movement had turned its attention wholeheartedly to the military effort. Large numbers of women were employed by the ministry of munitions. However, the main worry of the inter-war governments was the economy. It suffered long periods of recession (initiated in shipbuilding and textile industries) like in the first half of the 1920s (the miners' strike in 1921) and the Great Depression in the first half of 1930s. Britain moved from the position of a creditor to that of a debtor nation. The industries of the Industrial Revolution, such as coal mining, textile production, and shipbuilding were now either weakened or redundant. The Japanese had usurped the textile export market. Coal was superseded by other forms of energy. The economic centre of England was shifting from north to south since London was growing enormously and was becoming even more of a business centre. The Great Depression during the post-war period of reconstruction became a pre-war world of deep depression, racism and violence: during this time bankers would only lend gold to Britain if domestic expenditures (such as unemployment payment) were cut so the Conservatives entered into a coalition with the Labour politician MacDonald as Prime Minister till 1935 (MacDonald was thereafter considered a traitor by Labour). - **An additional crisis came internationally, when Britain, like the rest of Europe, had to face strengthened expansionist Germany.** Baldwin's successor (1937), Neville Chamberlain formulated a policy of accommodation with Germany and Italy, known as appeasement and which had disastrous consequences in the sense that Hitler was able to force all his demands on the European leaders. Finally, he started the Second World War by attacking Poland in September 1939. ## World War II The first stage of the war, when the UK was not involved directly is known as the phony war. It included a failure of the naval blockade of Germany in Norway in 1940, which caused the resignation of Chamberlain and the accession of Winston Churchill, who from then on personally directed the war effort. The second phase, the heroic stage started when Germany started the Battle of Britain. Through August and September 1940 the fate of the nation depended upon 800 fighter airplanes, and upon Churchill’s resolution in the terrific bombardment. In the last six months of 1940 some 23,000 civilians were killed but the UK did not surrender. Many cities suffered destruction, including the famous Coventry cathedral. During the third stage USA entered the war and Russia was attacked by Germany. Britain formed The Grand Alliance together with these two countries, China and France to fight the fascist regimes on many fronts all over the world and to establish the new world order after the final victory. It came on May 8, 1945 in Berlin and a ew months later in Asia. - **During the war the British society had to suffer many sacrifices and typical wartime austerity.** An interesting and important aspect of the Second World War is represented by the so-called Home Front, the phenomenon of women joining the work force in jobs that the men now fighting overseas used to occupy. No elections were held because of the war. Many of the British dominions contributed a great deal to the struggle against Germany, Italy and Japan and in this way, they strengthened their claims for independence. ## The Most Representative Writers of the Period. The literary production of the period was often influenced by the consequences f the First World War and the perplexing reality of the UK in the 20s and 30s. The most representative works can be classified in the following groups, for the purpose of the present analysis: 1. **Works pessimistic in their mood as a reflection of what World War I revealed about contemporary reality, and those influenced by the gloomy period of the Great Depression and an imminent new war (often young writers)**. 2. **Works of authors who started their career much earlier and were so not much influenced by the pessimistic mood of younger generation.** 3. **Modernist work, whose purposes were varied but which had the common feature of experimenting with the form. ** - **The writers belonging to the first group, found their most eminent representatives in Aldous Huxley with his most famous work *Brave New World*. (1932).** It is an example of an anti-utopian novel, in which the author presents an imaginary future society full of negative traits. **One of the most critical novels of the period came from Graham Greene, who otherwise wrote different types of stories, centred on action, political intrigues and thriller-like plots, but in *Brighton Rock* he disclosed the violence, conflict and decay, which existed in Britain between the wars.** - **The writers of the older generation took interest in other aspects of their contemporary world. E. M. Forster wrote his famous novel *Passage to India* in the 20s, centred on the complicated issue of the cohabitation of the British and the natives in the colonial India. The post-war period actually saw how class differences began to blur, and this issue was the theme of a series of novels written at that time by another veteran writer Ford Maddox, and gathered later in the collection entitled *Parade's End*. Another writer who became famous before World War I but continued writing in the period in question is D. H. Lawrence, who wrote *Women in Love* at that time, in which he continued analysing male-female relationships. **Four periods can be distinguished in Lawrence’s works: a first period when Lawrence records his early life in *Sons and Lovers*, a second period based on emotional inner states as in *The Rainbow*, a third period in which the author’s numerous trips and fascination with authoritarianism were reflected in his novels such as *Kangaroo* and a fourth period when he returns to sexual themes in *Lady Chatterley’s Lover*. - **Modernism**: A period of change and revision of values like the 20s and 30s in the UK led in a natural way to experimentation with the form of literary works. **One of the most representative novelists in this sense is Virginia Woolf. She was the centre of the so-called Bloomsbury Group of young writers.** Most of her novels apply the technique of the flow of consciousness by which the writer can analyse for a moment “an ordinary mind on an ordinary day" and the most famous titles are *Jacob’s Room*, *Mrs Dalloway*, *To the Lighthouse*, *Orlando*, *The Waves* and *Between the Acts*. **James Joyce shared Virginia Woolf’s concern to examine her characters’ inner life. ** ## With respect to poetry its leader was T. S. Eliot, but other authors such as the Irish W. B. Yeats who wrote about Irish traditions as in *An Irish Airman Foresees His Death* or W. H. Auden who wrote about political events and their effect on private lives as in *The Orators*.** T. S. Eliot’s major works belong to the period between the wars and during World War II. Soon after the war, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature (1948). His experiments in diction, style, and versification revitalized English poetry (verse based on rhythms of contemporary speech) and in a series of critical essays he shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones. With the publication in 1922 of his poem *The Waste Land*, Eliot won an international reputation. **The *Waste Land* expresses with great power the disenchantment, disillusionment, and disgust of the post-war period. The poem’s style is highly complex, erudite, and allusive, and the poet provided notes and references to explain the work's many quotations and allusions.** - **While The *Waste Land* is Eliot’s most famous poem, his masterpiece is *The Four Quartets*, which was issued as a book in 1943, though each “quartet” is a complete poem, written separately in the 1940s.** Each of the poems was self-contained; but when published together they were seen to make up a single work, in which themes and images recurred and were developed in a musical manner and brought to a final resolution. **This work made a deep impression on the reading public, and even those who were unable to accept the poems’ Christian beliefs, recognized the intellectual integrity with which Eliot pursued his high theme, the originality of the form he had devised, and the technical mastery of his verse. It was one of the most distinctive examples of how the theme of war could be handled in literature and it was this collection which most contributed to Eliot’s winning the Nobel Prize.** - **Eliot not only wrote poetry but also plays, which, however, are considered of lower quality than his poems. The exception here is *The Murder in the Cathedral*. Other relevant playwrights of the period were W. Somerset Maugham** who wrote about the middle-class attitudes to love and money such as in *The Circle* and *The Constant Wife* or **the poet W. H. Auden** who contributed to several plays together with **the novelist Christopher Isherwood** like *The Dog Beneath the Skin*. ## DIDACTIC TRANSPOSITION. On the one hand, the period under consideration in this topic is no doubt an endless source of historical events as well as socio-cultural contents that can be very useful not only to learn British and European history and culture through CLIL activities in Secondary Education, but also to teach values such as tolerance towards the different and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. On the other hand, we can also make use of some literary excerpts, authentic or adapted by ourselves, of the authors under study in this topic to show examples of world-wide recognised British literature. ## CONCLUSION. The impact of the two world wars on the position of the UK worldwide was negative both in the short and in the long term. After the First World War, Britain had to give more autonomy to most of its English-speaking colonies and territories. After the Second World War, and despite the fact that it formed part of the group of four allied powers, which decided the shape of the world for the second half of the century (conferences in Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam), the UK saw its real power weakened. Already during the war it depended greatly on the political and military support of the USA, which later became one of the two superpowers, confronting Russia and relegating Britain to a secondary position. The literary production of the period continued the trends which started earlier and which meant new themes and new forms. Some of the authors won international recognition and their works served as a step towards the even more eclectic and avant-garde works in the second-half of the century.