Revolution in english literature

The relation between art, literature and history is a complex one. The way in which broad historical processes affect art and literature is not a direct one. The poets and writers of England and other lands did not necessarily set out to express political ideas in a conscious way, though some did. The processes we are dealing with here are far more subtle and indirect. They do not express themselves as a conscious decision or trend, but rather a certain mood. However, unconsciously, or at best semi-consciously, poets and writers can and do reflect the general trends in society" From 1908 to 1914 there was a remarkably productive period of innovation and experiment as novelists and poets undertook, in anthologies and magazines, to challenge the literary conventions not just of the recent past but of the entire post-Romantic era. For a brief moment, London, which up to that point had been culturally one of the dullest of the European capitals, boasted an avant-garde to rival those of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, even if its leading personality, Ezra Pound, and many of its most notable figures were American. Literature and Revolution is a classic work of literary criticism from the Marxist standpoint written by Leon Trotsky in 1924. By discussing the various literary trends that were around in Russia between the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 Trotsky analyzed the concrete forces in society, both progressive as well as reactionary, that helped shape the consciousness of writers at the time. Although many authors had entered into a new millennium writers seemed to find greater imaginative stimulus in the past than in the present and the future. The present book offers the general reader help of every kind in the understanding of classical literature. More than a book of authors and titles this work illumines the faded images of mythological and historical figures as well as providing information on general topics such as genre theatre politics religion the transmission of texts through the renaissance and such intimate mysteries as meter.