The setting of 20th century Literature

The Setting of 20th century Literature

The 20th century opened with great hope but also with some apprehension, for the new century marked the final approach to a new millennium. For many, humankind was entering upon an unprecedented era. H.G. Wells’s utopian studies, the aptly titled Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901) and A Modern Utopia (1905), both captured and qualified this optimistic mood and gave expression to a common conviction that science and technology would transform the world in the century ahead.

This age is full of experimentation and it is discussed in different genres. The literary canon of 20th and 21st century foregrounds an aesthetic shift which is more transitional; experimental, more anxious, more liberal and self-interrogating too. The lines from Sunita Sinha‟s book mark the spirit of both the centuries: “The two world wars, the social and political upheavals, the consolidation and expansion of multinational capitalism, the emergence of the informational age, the struggle of post-colonial voices after the end of the British Empire and the changing configuration of a new multicultural population have led to a restructuring in the sphere of literary studies.” Presence of a great range of styles, and approaches led the writers to redefine the specific boundaries of literature. 

Highlights of 20th century Literature

In pre-world war era, mostly writers remained loyal to the trends of Victorian age. Darwin‟s Origin of Species (1859) led the world towards mourning over the loss of God. But a change could be noticed with H.G.Well‟s Utopian Study of A Modern Utopia that captured optimistic mood and gave an expression that science and technology would transform the world. Meanwhile, Aesthetic Movement gained popularity due to its being in favour of Catholicism and mysticism. Aesthetes believed in the idea that the art is useless if it is in commitment with the ideas of morality and standard of conduct. For them “art for art‟s sake” has been the motto of the movement. 

Virginia Woolf coined “Stream of Consciousness” to let the readers have a look in the psyche of her characters. This term denotes an endless flow of consciousness and it means that consciousness includes the entire area of mind from illogical, pre-conscious and pre-speech level to rational and conscious speech level, including thoughts, memories, associations and reflections. There are many other terms linked with the stream of consciousness novel like “interior monologues”, 

“stream of thoughts”, all denoting that the subject matter of this kind of novel is the inner psyche of man. „Stream-of-consciousness‟ technique in a novel is better known as expressionistic technique in drama. 

Dystopian Literature

Dystopian literature is a form of speculative fiction that began as a response to utopian literature. A dystopia is an imagined community or society that is dehumanizing and frightening. A dystopia is an antonym of a utopia, which is a perfect society. 

Dystopian novels that have a didactic message often explore themes like anarchism, oppression, and mass poverty. Margaret Atwood, one of literature’s most celebrated authors of dystopian fiction, thinks about it like this: “If you’re interested in writing speculative fiction, one way to generate a plot is to take an idea from current society and move it a little further down the road. Even if humans are short-term thinkers, fiction can anticipate and extrapolate into multiple versions of the future.”

Example:

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel  by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England, in a strongly patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state, known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. The central character and narrator is a woman named Offred, one of the group known as "handmaids", who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "commanders" — the ruling class of men in Gilead.

The novel explores themes of subjugated women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, and the various means by which they resist and attempt to gain individuality and independence. The novel's title echoes the component parts of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, which is a series of connected stories (such as "The Merchant's Tale" and "The Parson's Tale").It is also an allusion to the tradition of fairy tales where the central character tells their story.

Fantasy Literature

Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy literature may be directed at both children and adults.

Fantasy is a subgenre of speculative fiction and is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes, respectively, though these genres overlap. Historically, most works of fantasy were written, however, since the 1960s, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music and art.

Lewis’s fantasy oeuvre is dominated by the success of his Chronicles of Narnia, seven volumes aimed at young readers that were published annually from 1950 to 1956. But his novel Till We Have Faces (1956), which transposes the myth of Cupid and Psyche to an ancient barbarian kingdom, is also worth mentioning. In it, Psyche’s older sister, the ugly Orual, vents her wrath at the gods before coming to understand the nature of their presence in all human lives.

 The world of Narnia – which is accessible only to certain children, like the Pevensie siblings in the volumes that were published first – is presented as a shimmering blend of enchanting traditions. Talking animals, creatures from both mythology and folklore, diverse peoples and societies waiting for the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve to bring peace and prosperity back under the rule of the lion Aslan. The seven volumes provide a complete history of Narnia, from the world’s creation, recounted in the next-to-last volume published, The Magician’s Nephew (1955), to its Last Judgment, in The Last Battle (1956).

Sci-fi

Science fiction (sometimes shortened to sci-fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. It has been called the "literature of ideas", and it often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations.

Many books in literature to define science fiction but i would like define with Bollywood movie and one text also, 

Action Replayy is a 2010 Indian Hindi-language science-fiction romantic comedy film directed by Vipul Amrutlal Shah and starring Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. Aditya Roy Kapur, Neha Dhupia, Rannvijay Singh, Om Puri, Kirron Kher and Rajpal Yadav play supporting roles in the film. The plot is inspired by the 1985 film Back to the Future.Director Vipul Amrutlal Shah however insists that it is an adaptation of a Gujarati play of the same name and of H. G. Wells' 1895 novel The Time Machine.

The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device.

Utilizing a frame story set in then-present Victorian England, Wells' text focuses on a recount of the otherwise anonymous Time Traveller's journey into the far future. A work of future history and speculative evolution, Time Machine is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells' era, which he projects as giving rise to two separate human species: the fair, childlike Eloi, and the savage, simian Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and lower classes respectively.