OPOSICIONES SECUNDARIA INGLÉS ANDALUCÍA 2018

UNIT 58

POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND

IRELAND SINCE 1945. PRESENCE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION.
LITERARY BACKGROUND.

1. INTRODUCTION.

2. A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND IRELAND SINCE 1945.

2.1. During the World War II (1939-1945).

2.2. After the World War II (1945-onwards).
2.2.1. The United Kingdom: England, Scotland and Wales.
2.2.1.1. The 1940s.
2.2.1.2. The 1950s and 1960s.
2.2.1.3. The 1970s and 1980s.
2.2.1.4. The 1990s and early twenty-first century.
2.2.2. Ireland.
2.2.2.1 Before the 1940s.
2.2.2.2 The 1940s.
2.2.2.3 The 1950s and 1960s.
2.2.2.4. .The 1970s and 1980s.
2.2.2.5. The 1990s and early twenty-first century.

3. A LITERARY BACKGROUND: THE XXth and XXIst-CENTURY LITERATURE.

3.1. Main literary forms: main authors.
3.1.1. Poetry.
3.1.2. Drama.
3.1.3. Prose.

4. MAIN EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS.

5. CONCLUSION.

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
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1. INTRODUCTION.

The present unit, Unit 58, aims to provide a useful introduction to the political, social and
economic development in the United Kingdom and Ireland since 1945 up to the present day, and
we shall also examine their presence in the European Union. With this background in mind we aim
at reviewing the literary background of the time and, therefore, the life, works and style of the most
representative authors in this period. Actually, we shall analyse how these authors reflected the
prevailing ideologies of the day in the literature of the time which is an account of literary activity
in which social, economic, cultural and political allegiances are placed very much to the fore.

This is reflected in the organization of the unit, devoted to establish the link between the literary
activity and the main social, economic and political changes which took place after the WWII up to
the present-day situation in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is worth noting that we do not try to
establish a clear-cut division of time (1950s, 1960s, 1970s) or powers (political, social, economic)
in our study as, sometimes, events are linked to each other so closely that we cannot draw a sharp
line between them. Yet, we try to offer an overall view of the development of these two countries in
terms of time (since we examine their history through decades) and powers (since political, social
and economic events are interconnected).

We shall provide a literary background of the period which ranges from 1945 to the present day
with the aim of going further into the 20th and 21st-century literature and, therefore, into the most
representative authors and their masterpieces within the three main literary forms: poetry, drama
and prose. Therefore, we shall approach 1) the three main literary forms in terms of main literary
features of the period and most representative authors. Thus we shall review within (a) poetry,
Dylan Thomas (1914-1955), Hugh DcDiarmid (1892- 1978), writing about Lowland Scots dialects,
Patrick Kavanagh (1905-1967) on Ireland, Philip Larkin (1922-1985), Ted Hughes (1930-1999),
Geoffrey Hill (1932-), Tony Harrison (1937-), and Seamus Heanye (1939-); regarding (b) drama,
we shall approach the most representative figures in this field, thus Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956),
Samuel Becket (1906-1989), John James Osborne (1929-1994), and Harold Pinter (1930-); and
finally, within (c) prose we shall concentrate on William Golding (1911- 1993), as representing the
evil of society and man’s most primitive instincts; Graham Greene (1904-), as the
imaginative exploration of characters; George Orwell (1903- 1950) as the typical product of the
inter-war and WWII years; and J.R.R. Tolkien, as the most representative figure of the XXIst
century with his science fiction novels.in terms of main features and most representative authors.

2. A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND IRELAND SINCE 1945 AND
THEIR PRESENCE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION.

2.1. During the World War II (1939-1945).

The WWII was the outcome of Hitler’s plans to dominate Europe. Actually, when Britain
declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939 (two days after Hitler’s armies had invaded
Poland), France and Stalin also took advantage of the situation to attack Finland; Britain then
prepared for total war.Yet, Hitler’s legions occupied Denmark and then brushed aside a Franco-
British force sent to help Norway, and soon German forces controlled France, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway and Romania, leaving Britain alone in the West to
face the Nazi hordes.

The Royal Navy destroyed the French fleet anchored at Oran in North Africa after France formed
a Vichy government under Marshal Petain. In the Atlantic, German U-boats were destroying
thousands of allied shipping, but Britain waited patiently for the situation to change. Actually, Hitler
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expected Britain to come to terms, but Churchill’s rejected it. As a result, Hitler planned to destroy
the Royal Air Force on an invasion of England since the English coast was only a few minutes
away from conquered France. In fact, the Battle of Britain began in July 10,1940, with an attack of
German bombers on England, and all that stood between the German armies and the planned
invasion of Britain was the Fighter Command of the Royal Air Force.

Hitler attacked London by air, concentrating mainly on airfields and radar installations, but the
German pilots lost their way and missed their intended targets. Then, when British planes
bombed Berlin to retaliate for bombs dropped on London, Hitler was determined to take
revenge but he miscalculated the resilience of the Royal Air Force. So, on ordering the
Luftwaffe to destroy London, he made a grave error. The British Air Force used a secret new
weapon: the Radar, which gave them a decided advantage over incoming German airplanes.

So, the RAF fought on in what was a war of attrition in the air. Eventually, after many losses Hitler
postponed the invasion of Britain on September 17, 1940 and turned his attention to Russia. In
June 1941, Hitler delayed his assault on Russia since he feared a British attack against his
flank from Greece. Next, in September 1940, German boats sank 160,000 tons of British shipping
after a total blockade of the British Isles.

This is the reason why President Roosevelt came to the aid of the beleaguered island nation
despite that fact that America was neutral in the war and still at peace with Europe. Then he
ordered his fleet to sink German submarines on sight and in November, British ships destroyed the
Italian fleet at Taranto, which helped the Royal Navy manage to keep control of the
Mediterranean throughout the war. Yet, on December 7, 1941 Japan, which had concluded a pact
with the Axis powers in order to fulfill her designs on the Pacific three months before, attacked
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and, almost at once, Roosevelt directed organization of
the Nation’s manpower and resources for global war.

Four days later (December 11) Germany’s and Italy’s declarations of war against the United States
brought the nation irrevocably into the war. Japanese forces then captured the British possessions
of Malaya, Burma, Hong Kong and Singapore, the great symbol of the British Empire, and then
advanced practically unopposed to the borders of India in the West and Australia in the South.
Roosevelt then became the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and felt that the future
peace of the world would depend upon relations between the United States and Russia. So, he
devoted much thought to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped, international
difficulties could be settled.

He moved to create a great alliance against the Axis powers through “The Declaration of the
United Nations” on January 1, 1942, in which all nations fighting the Axis agreed not to make a
separate peace and pledged themselves to a peacekeeping organization (now the United
Nations) on victory. The United States and its allies invaded North Africa in November 1942 and
Sicily and Italy in 1943. The D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches in France on June
6, 1944, were followed by the allied invasion of Germany six months later. By April 1945
victory in Europe was certain and on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered. The War in Europe
came to an end on May 8, 1945, but the War in the Pacific ended four months later, on August
14, 1945, when Japan surrendered after the American Airforce dropped atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

2.2. After the World War II (1945-onwards).

Generally speaking, the post-war years brought about a general feeling for change. British
population was resentful of unemployment, asked for the nation’s post-war restructuring, and did
not trust the Conservative government any more since they failed to tackle the enormous political,
social and economic problems. Thus, at a political level, the end of the Second World War brought
a new Labour government and the desire for independence on behalf of almost all of Britain’s
colonies (India and Pakistan) though most retained ties with Britain through the Commonwealth; at
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a social level, countless thousands of returning soldiers and sailors wanted a turn-around in the
status quo and the government promoted the expansion of the welfare state including the
establishment of a National Health Service.

Moreover, despite the fact that Britain’s political and economic history has been somewhat mixed
in the latter half of the twentieth century, in some areas, the country and its population have
continued to lead the world. Actually, the 1960s witnessed modern Britain through the eyes of a
more permissive society, increased consumer confidence, radical political protest and a
blossoming of popular music which spread across the world; at economic levels, Britain’s
economic position relative to many other industrialised countries continued to decline, although
external trade remained extremely important to the country (signified by the entering of the
European Community in 1973).

2.2.1. The United Kingdom: England, Scotland and Wales.

2.2.1.1. The 1940s.

Actually, although Great Britain emerged from the Second World War deeply in debt to the
Americans, with rebuilding after the war and aspirations for social reform to be funded, it still
remained a power with her Imperial interests. As a result, Winston Churchill found himself as a
member of the opposition when the election of 1945 returned the Labour Party to power with a
huge majority under the figure of Clement Attlee (ruling 1945-51). The new government began the
reconstruction of the nation, one of the greatest changes in Britain’s long history. In fact, the
Labour Government struggled heroically to solve problems by improving standards of living,
moving to a mixed economy, closing the trade gap, maintaining its armed forces in sufficient
strength to meet a new threat from Communist Russia, and keeping of its overseas bases. Also,
the Government had put forward proposals for postwar social security, such as taking on an
emergency welfare responsibility which provided milk for babies; orange juice and cod-liver oil for
children.

For instance, regarding social changes, the Labour Government put the Beverage Plan into full
operation, that is, the creation of a Welfare State which included the creation of a National School
Lunch Act (June, 1946) and the National Health Service (1948) to prove free medical treatment for
all, to maternity and child welfare services, and nationwide care available for the injured and
seriously ill. Also, another change was to take the central control of the economy, that is, the
control of industry and public utilities, the nationalization of the Bank of England (1946), the coal
industry, electricity and gas, air transport, along with road, rail and waterways. This control was
achieved, but under terribly adverse economic conditions since another crisis occurred in 1947.

Actually, the strong financial measures which were imposed to meet the enormous war debt
caused undue hardship became worse when the worst winters on record (monstrous gales and
floods wiped out farms and destroyed agricultural products). As a result, fuel shortage severely
curtailed exports, food was still severely rationed, and in 1948 even bread and potatoes were
rationed by the Bread Unit. Yet, in 1947, the United States introduced the Marshall Plan to help the
European Economy recover and, in fact, it was a relief for Great Britain who started to export
goods. During those days there was a revival of the spirit encouraged by the introduction of the
Land-Rover to world markets (1948), the promotion of the private sector, especially the building of
hydro-electric schemes in the undeveloped areas of Scotland and Wales, and business with
the USA in ferrying supplies (the famous “Airlift”). By 1950, the period of rationing began to fade
out, though not until 1954 was meat rationing abolished.
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2.2.1.2. The 1950s and 1960s.

In 1951, the Conservative Party was returned to power with a small majority. under the figure of the
aging Winston Churchill between 1951 and 1955, and later on by Anthony Eden (1955-
1957), Harold MacMillan (1957- 1963), and Alec Douglas-Home (1963- 1964). Under this
government, economic prospects changed and payments deficit had become a surplus since
Britain’s pre-war industrial strength was severely weakened. The Nation and the
Commonwealth mourned the death of King George VI, who along with his queen Elizabeth, had
done much to bring back dignity and honor to the monarchy. Yet there was a mood of optimism that
received an another upturn with the coronation of the young queen Elizabeth1 (1952).

Coinciding with the accession of Elizabeth to the throne, politically speaking, British forces formed
part of the Commonwealth Division deployed alongside American forces in Korea to try to stop
Communist North Korea taking over the South; and also, Britain’s first atomic bomb was tested,
joining then to the US and the USSR as a nuclear power.

By 1954, Britain was engaged in the ambitious plan to rebuild its war-damaged cities. So, the
Conservative Government embarked on a huge housing program to replace the bomb damage,
homelessness and dereliction in British cities, and also on Britain’s first fluoridation of
community drinking water (November, 1955). In fact, the later 50’s and early 60’s resulted in a
boom time for Britain with increasing prosperity, new technology, rising wages and a
manageable economy, for instance, the full-scale use of nuclear fuel to produce electricity
(August, 1956), the era in transatlantic passenger service (October, 1957) , when two De
Havilland Comet lV's completed the journey from Britain to the US in under six hours.

Yet, the late 50’s are also known because of a significant turning point in post-war British foreign
policy, the Suez Crisis (1956). It refers to the British decision to join with France and Israel in a
military intervention to attempt to prevent General Nasser from nationalising the Suez Canal.
Nasser was promoting Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East and had become an increasing
source of irritation to the British and the French. So, on 31 October 1956, there was an Anglo-
French assault upon Egypt, which provoked a furious response from the USA. President
Eisenhower condemned the attack, which forced the British government to withdraw and, also,
angered the French.

This event would further reveal Britain’s growing dependence on the support of the United States
when the Treaty of Rome (1957) was signed by six European countries (France, the Federal
Republic of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands). This treaty established the
so-called European Economic Community (EEC) or the Common Market, which sought to abolish
tariffs and trade restrictions between member countries. The dilemma for Britain lay in the fact that
it retained considerable extra-European trading links and a strong relationship with the United
States, so it stayed out mainly to protect its relationship with Commonwealth countries (its
sources of cheap food). It must be borne in mind that Britain had declined to attend the Council of
Europe (May, 1949) the same year that NATO was organized, and also stayed out of the European
Coal and Steel Community established by Germany and France in 1950.

In response, in 1959, Britain set up a rival organization, the European Free Trade Association
(EFTA), which consisted of seven members, including the Scandinavian countries and
Switzerland. Yet, Harold Macmillan decided that Britain’s best interests lay in joining the EEC, but
after two attempts to join the EEC in 1963 and 1967 (McDowall, 1995:173) , both
applications were vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle, since he was suspicious of the
close cooperation between Britain and the USA.

Therefore, the 1960s are remembered as an age of economic affluence and continued full
employment, where the standard of living improved steadily throughout the decade, as the
global economy enjoyed boom conditions. In general, entry into Europe was a process the
country had long been preparing for since the end of World War II. In fact, between 1945 and
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1968, over 500 million people in former British dependencies became self-governing, most
becoming members of the British Commonwealth.

The list included India, Pakistan, Burma, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), the West Indies (which formed a
federation in January, 1957), Ghana, the Gold Coast, Singapore and Cyprus. These countries were
followed by Uganda, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Tanganyika (1962), Kenya (1963), Malta
(1964) the Gambia and the Maldives (1965); Botswana, Lesotho, and Guyana (1966); Mauritius
and Swaziland (1968). Nations that left the Commonwealth were Eire (the Irish Republic
1949), South Africa (1961) and Palestine (where the new state of Israel had been formed in 1948).

During the late 1960s, the change from the thirteen-year-Conservative period to the six-year-
Labour one under Harold Wilson (1964- 1970) made the British economy, however, continue to
decline in relative terms (especially heavy industry) and, by the end of this period, there was
widespread pessimism about Britain’s stagnant’ economic performance. It extremely ironic that one
of her most loyal allies in the war, her former colony of Australia, was partly responsible for the
great decline in Britain’s steel industry since it expanded into the Japanese steel industry, making
her an industrial superpower. As a result, Britain was forced to devalue the pound in an attempt to
check inflation and improve the trade deficit by the end of the decade (1967).

2.2.1.3. .The 1970s and 1980s.

Then following the election of a Conservative government in 1970, Prime Minister Edward Heath
(1970-1974) re-opened negotiations with the EEC despite the French opposition to Britain’s
integration in the Common Market, and, in 1973, Britain became a member of the Community,
along with the Irish Republic and Denmark. Later on, the drive for deeper integration continued
under John Major’s service and in 1993 the Parliament eventually passed the Maastricht Treaty.
This treaty resulted in the transformation of the EEC to the European Union (EU) and promoted
closer economic and political union through the establishment of a European currency and
central bank, and harmonisation of defence, foreign and social policies.

During these two decades, Britain was ruled alternatively by the Conservative and Labour Party,
thus by the Conservative Edward Heath (1970-74), the Labour Harold Wilson (1974-76) and
James Callaghan (1976-79) , and the Conservative Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990), best known as
the Iron Maid.

The period was, in fact, one of increasing unrest and discontent, as the economy continued to
decline, and inflation seemed, at times, to be spiralling out of control. Yet, during the 1970s
Britain’s economy improved since great expansion of the oil fields took place to such extent that in
1979, the country’s oil production exceeded its imports for the first time. Also, Britain’s ports
adapted to the new container vessels, spelling the end for such great traditional ports as
Liverpool, Glasgow and East London.

It must be born in mind that over the summer of 1968, a civil rights movement established itself in
Northern Ireland which led to the deployment of British troops on peacekeeping duties (1969),
escalation of violence and widespread rioting (1971), and what is known as ‘Bloody
Sunday’ (1972). Eventually, the Northern Ireland Government resigned after prime minister
Edward Heath announced the commencement of direct rule from Westminster, and in 1973, at the
Sunningdale Conference, representatives from Britain, the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland
agreed that the constitutional status of the North should only be changed with the consent of
the majority of the people. Yet, it was not until 1985 that further developments were evident.

At home, by the end of the summer of 1976, the economy had become so weakened that the
Labour Government was forced to seek a loan from the International Monetary Fund. This was
accompanied by harsh conditions which included deep cuts in public spending. In March, 1979
Prime Minister Callaghan lost a vote of confidence by one vote in the House of Commons and
Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher became the nation’s first woman Prime Minister (1979-
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1990) in May, best known as the Iron Lady.

Her promises to cut income taxes, scale down social services and reduce the role of the state in
daily life had wide appeal and gave her a large majority. During her period in office, her style of
leadership and the policies she promoted came to be known as Thatcherism. Thatcher then
encompassed her policies of strengthening the powers of central government (trades unions and
local government) and the active promotion of individualism and private enterprise. Hence she
systematically undermined trade union power, especially during the 1984-85 coal miners’ strike,
and control of local government power, which was eroded by the abolition of certain
metropolitan councils (the Greater London Council in 1986) and the introduction of the
controversial community charge (or ‘Poll Tax’ in 1989).

Mrs. Thatcher continued her policies of tight economic control, the privatization of industry and
dismantling of the Welfare State. Her government also privatised previously nationalised
industries such as British Gas, British Telecom, the Water Authorities, British Airways and the
electricity industry since the government hoped to promote consumer culture and individualism and
to create a new class of British shareholders. The 1980’s indeed, despite riots in the deprived
areas of some of England’s biggest cities, and continued IRA terrorist attacks, were a decade of
prosperity, except for many immigrants from the West Indies and some African states, who
were at the bottom of the social scale.

Yet, the general feeling of optimism started to disappear due to two events: first, when the Iron
Lady imposed the “Poll Tax” (1989), an attempt to reform local government and finance by
replacing household rates, which caused unrest and street demonstrations; and second, her
decision to send British land and sea forces into the Gulf to participate in the United Nations multi-
national task against the government of Iraq. The government was then mainly split by the
question of integration into Europe, with some prominent members disagreeing with the
purchase of the Westland Helicopter by Americans rather then Europeans.

So, for many, Thatcher fell from power in 1990 as a result of cabinet splits over the issue of
Europe, London Poll Tax Riots and her autocratic style as Prime Minister. The economy
experienced a boom in the late 1980s but was followed, after she left office, by a severe
economic recession and high unemployment. For most, it was apparent that Britain was
beginning to come to terms with the loss of much of its heavy industry and the increasing reliance
on finance, communications, oil, insurance, tour ism, accounting and other service industries.
Actually, during the 1970s and 1980s Britain retained their lead in the development of many
promising development in science and culture.

2.2.1.4. The 1990s and early twenty-first century.

The 1990s and early twenty-first century coincide with a Conservative and Labour Government
under the rule of John Major and Tony Blair, respectively. First of all, we shall deal with John Major
as prime minister (1990-97), who was committed to keep ‘Thatcherism’ alive and, hence, his
administration is likely to be remembered at least as much for its failures. Yet, he
successfully steered the government through conflict in the Gulf , negotiated an opt-out for
Britain at the later stages of the European Monetary Union (December, 1991), and rejected the
social chapter at the Maastricht Summit meeting of the European Council.

On 16 September 1992 the stock market underwent a crisis known as ‘Black Wednesday’, and
Britain was forced to pull out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Next year, he signed the
Downing Street Declaration with the Irish Taoiseach (December 1993), committing Britain and
Ireland to seeking a joint solution to the Northern Irish problem. In addition, the winds of change
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were blowing strong since many Conservative M.P.’s were in open rebellion over Europe. They
were told to support Major’s European policy or bring down the government.

Regarding Britain’s presence in the European Union, after much diplomatic insight, Britain and
Ireland formally entered the EU in January 1993. On the one hand, Ireland showed enthusiastic
about being a member of Europe since it obtained a great economic benefit whereas Britain still
showed hostility on the fact of being governed by the Common Market. Nevertheless, the
economic and political relationship with Europe remained a divisive issue in the government. In
fact, important controversies are still evident nowadays, regarding world trade, agricultural and
fishery policy, audiovisual trade barriers, and more recently, the attitude towards the conflict of Iraq.

At home, leading Tories feared that British industry would be subject to European regulations in
working conditions and labor relations and, therefore, hundreds of Tory candidates were in open
rebellion over Major’s fence straddling on Europe. Finally, despite the fact that the economy was
recovering and inflation was low (due to the sale of tens of thousands of public housing at bargain
prices) and the lowest unemployment in Europe, Labour won a landslide victory in 1997. Tony
Blair was thus able to inherit an economy free from the dreaded British disease regarding militant
trade unions, over-regulation, and vacillating government policies.

Tony Blair then became prime minister in May 1997 (up to nowadays) and the generally
favourable economic conditions inherited from the previous administration helped to ensure that
the Government did not experience the economic difficulties which had challenged previous
Labour administrations. As a result of manifesto promises (and subsequent referenda) both
Scotland and Wales were granted forms of administrative and political devolution as the
millennium closed. Yet, the most important events under the Labour Government are the
question of Scotland and Wales’ assembly independence (1997), the peace negotiations in
Northern Ireland (1998), the question of the House of Lords (1999), the conflict over Kosovo
(1999), and the conflict of Iraq (2004).

First, the question of Scotland and Wales namely lies on the search for independence, that is,
asking for their own Assembly. On the one hand, Scotland, though very much a minority party
represented by the Scottish National Party (SNP), still suffered from the stigma attached to the
very idea of nationalism during war years. So the SNP begun to build its organizational skills and
work on political strategy; similarly, this intense activity was also carried out in Wales by members
of the Party of Wales (Plaid Cymru). In both cases, discontent in both areas of Britain led to a
feverish proliferation of committees soon at work in Westminster looking at further measures of
devolution for Scotland and Wales.

Tracing back in history, the first published proposals to devolve the Scottish assembly
(November, 1975) were refused, and therefore sovereignty was still retained in Westminster. Still,
prospects for passage looked good, and the Labour Party, fearing loss of support in Scotland to
the SNP, was also deeply divided on the question and the extent of devolution (1979) and actively
campaigned for passage of the devolution bill. Yet, eighteen years later, a tragic event, Lady Di’s
death in September 1997 made results be reversed and, four days after Lady Diana’s funeral, the
referendum resulted in the decision to give back a Parliament to Scotland.

This decision gave Scotland an Assembly with tax- levying powers, unlike the much weaker ones
that the Welsh obtained as the result of their own successful referendum. The Scots were given
the broad authority to legislate in a host of sectors, though Westminster has the right to withhold
many powers, for instance, constitutional matters, foreign policy, defense, and national security,
border controls, monetary and fiscal matters, common markets for goods and services,
employment law, and social security. In general, the decision to approve separate assemblies for
Wales and Scotland may prove to be one of the most important events in their long histories since
in the councils of Europe, three equal voices would be heard instead of one, sharing a unique
British heritage where each country is proud of its own distinctiveness as cultural and political
units.
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Yet, though the problems of devolution for Wales and Scotland were settled quite amicably, the
Irish question did not follow the same road. From 1998 onwards the Government established
peace negotiations in Northern Ireland, hence the so-called Good Friday agreement (1998),
which resulted from negotiations between representatives of a broad cross-section of political
groups in Northern Ireland. Note that the constitution of the Irish Republic was to be altered to
renounce its territorial claim to Northern Ireland.

2.2.2. Ireland.

2.2.2.1. Before the 1940s.

Tracing back in history, it must be borne in mind that in the spring of 1921 under the
Government of Ireland Act, and Northern Ireland came into being. Since then both Nationalist and
Sinn Fein MPs refused to attend but George V’s appeal was heard: the IRA, now facing the regular
British Army operating across country had suffered a number of serious reverses; and Lloyd
George, confronted with many other problems at home and abroad was eager to make agreement.

The IRA asked for an agreement in July 1921 and, after protracted negotiations at Downing Street,
an Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on 6th December 1921. Then the 26 counties would become a
Dominion called the Irish Free State. This was an independent dominion of the British crown with
full internal self-government rights which partitioned from Northern Ireland, by means of which this
latter remained part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

Then a special Constabulary was established between the years 1920 and 1921 to counter the
threat of the IRA.

Moreover, in Belfast, after a meeting of ‘Protestant and Unionist’ workers on 21 July, Catholics
were driven out of the shipyards and in the ensuing weeks out of many other places of
employment in the city. Ferocious conflict followed and outnumbered Catholics were generally the
losers in this intercommunal warfare. The Dublin parliament ratified the treaty despite the
opposition of De Valera and others and, in just one week there seemed to be no prospect of an
end to the conflict as the War of Independence edged into Ulster.

Other events followed such as riots, campaigns and conflicts between the police and IRA, who
defended Catholic ghettos in Belfast and Derry; the Civil War between 1922 and 1923; the same
year the Irish Free State joins the League of Nations (1923); De Valera enters parliament at the
head of the new Fianna Fail party (1927); the economic crisis between 1929 and 1932, caused by
the First World War, which had brought about traumatic changes in world trading conditions.

For instance, the Northern Ireland’s helpless effort to sell goods abroad; the Wall Street Crash of
October 1929, which affected Belfast since it depended on export industries and was hard hit by
the contraction of world trade; the reduction of employees due to the unemployment of insured
workforce; an attempt for a Protestant Parliament where Catholics made up around one third of the
inhabitants of Northern Ireland, and their representatives were certain always to be in opposition.

Also, the 1932 riots, a rare occasion when Protestants and Catholics campaigned together, went
on strike and organised protest marches to demand improved assistance; and the Sectarian
conflict between 1932 and 1935, which brought together in solidarity the working-class of
Catholics and Protestants. Also, De Valera became head of government (1932) and, in an
attempt to slow down these economic difficulties, he introduced various measures to eliminate
British influence in the Irish Free State.

In 1937 a new constitution is approved and the Irish Free State is substituted by Eire (Gaelic for
Ireland), which is proclaimed as a sovereign, independent, democratic state. Next year, Douglas
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Hyde became first president of Eire (1938), and De Valera continued as prime minister. After the
outbreak of World War II (1939), Eire remained neutral, though many Irish citizens join the Allied
forces. In addition, there was a period of inaction between 1939 and 1940, where cabinet meetings
were infrequent and brief, and the average age of ministers was high in the eve of the war.

2.2.2.2. The 1940s.

Broadly speaking, the outcome of the Second World War was the common decline of the
traditional empires and their replacement by a new form of global political division. Also, the Cold
War system was the final form of politically divided globalisation and the radical change was
therefore that during the Cold War, a more or less united West dominated global economy, culture
and politics.

Particularly in Ireland, the Second World War underlined the experiences of the two parts of
Ireland, which were sharply different, and as a result, the south remained neutral and free from
attack, while the north suffered severely during the 1941 Blitz. Attempts by nationalists to get rid of
partition aroused little sympathy in a world made anxious by the Cold War. Meanwhile welfare
reforms greatly improved the quality of life. Moreover, De Valera lost the elections in 1948 and Eire
suffered great economic difficulties. The same year John Costello became prime minister and
Dublin parliament passed the Republic of Ireland Bill. Next year, Eire became the Republic of
Ireland (1949) and as a result, Ireland leaves the British Commonwealth.

2.2.2.3. The 1950s and 1960s.

Still in the 1950s and 1960s, following McDowall (1995:175), “many people in Northern
Ireland considered that their system was unfair. It was a self-governing province, but its
government was controlled by the Protestants, who feared the Catholics and kept them out of
responsible positions. Many catholics were even unable to vote.” Winds of change appeared when
in 1955 Ireland declined to join NATO (because Northern Ireland was part of United Kingdom)
and joined the United Nations.

De Valera reappeared in the political field as prime minister in 1957 by affirming that the unity of
Ireland cannot be achieved by force. This speech led him directly to the presidence of the Republic
of Ireland in 1959. Helped by Brian Faulkner as Minister of Commerce (1963–69), and Minister of
Development (1969–71), De Valera succeeded in keeping the balance in the Republic of Ireland,
that is, by ruling a period of peace and conflict.

In March 1963, Terence O’Neill’s elevation to the premiership of Northern Ireland, succeeding
Brookeborough, marked the beginning of a new era in local politics. In the spirit of the times and in
tune with the ecumenical movement, O’Neill also sought to hold out a hand of
reconciliation to Catholics in Northern Ireland and to the Republic of Ireland.

Actually, the anti-Catholic policies of the Ulster government led to civil rights protests in 1968, and
the marches soon led to counter-marches. Inevitably, violence continued.

On the other hand, in the 1960s there were many changes in social terms. For instance, the
feminist movement achieved much in the UK and Ireland; women’s voting rights were, by that time,
the same as men’s, and antidiscriminatory legislation was introduced; a lso, though abortion
was le galized in UK, in Ireland it is still illegal; moreover, divorce rates increased in the UK
whereas in Ireland were less pronounced; and within religion, Irela nd kept itself as a strongly
Catholic country whereas the protestant Anglican Church struggled to maintain its place in
modern society.
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In economic terms, the rising of Ireland’s population since the WWII resulted in an increase of
urban and industrialized cities. Actually, the first stimulus of this process was the Industrial
Development Act (1958), which provided aid for industrial increase. The boom was to be really
noticed in next decade by Ireland’s entry to the Common Market (1973).

2.2.2.4. The 1970s and 1980s.

As violence continued in the early 1970s, internment without trial began (1971), followed by
widespread rioting, with bomb attacks and shootings by republicans, which the British army tried to
prevent. Thirteen demonstrators were shot dead by British troops on 30 January 1972 on what
would become known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. This was followed by the I.R.A. bombing campaigns in
England (London, Warrington, Brighton). As a result, “the Northern Ireland government was
removed and was replaced with direct rule from London”

Also, in 1973 the Irish Republic started to become a modern society due to its introduction into the
European Economic Community.

Yet, violence in Northern Ireland intensified. The I.R.A. was active again in the form of unionist
paramilitary groups and continued its attacks.The Ulster problem, then, resisted all attempts to find
a solu tion, either peaceful or violent and, therefore, relations between Ireland and Britain were
strained.

In the early 1980s Ireland faces severe economic problems, with rising debt and unemployment.
Yet, it was not until 1985 that further developments were evident, when Britain and Ireland made a
formal agreement at Hillsborough that they would exchange views on Northern Ireland regularly. In
fact, the Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed (1985), providing for increased cross border co-
operation and greater consultation between the British and Irish governments.

2.2.2.5. The 1990s and early twenty-first century.

The late 1990s saw an increasing number of Catholic population above all among young people

The province was then locked into a circle of violence and revenge, and although Sinn Fein, the
political wing of the Catholic I.R.A. showed himself willing to negotiate, it is still difficult to see how
the bloodshed can be stopped. Many events took place during the 1990s, thus, following
the election of Mary Robinson as the first woman president of Ireland (1990), Eire signs the Treaty
on European Union at Maastricht (1991), by means of which Ireland receives a guarantee that its
strict abortion law will not be affected.

In 1993 talks between the Irish and British prime ministers open a possibility to all parties on future
peace in Northern Ireland if violence is renounced. Meanwhile, divorce is legalized in Ireland
under certain circumstances, though the law is opposed by the Roman Catholic church. Next year
(1998), the strength of Blair’s electoral mandate gave him the leverage and confidence to
add momentum to the Northern Ireland peace process, resulting in the Good Friday Agreement
(April 1998). This, however, should be seen in the context of a set of UK- wide constitutional
reforms that saw power devolved to Scotland and Wales as well as Northern Ireland. Yet, in 2001
Irish voters rejected the Nice Treaty proposed by the 15 EU member states so as to expand to
include a dozen applicant countries from eastern Europe.

On 30 April 2001, the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs gave a speech on the future of Ireland
within Europe and the European Union. He said that Ireland had become an example of the
strength of the European idea and European integration since no less than 30 years ago it was
the poorest country in the European Community. He added that Irish products were
successfully exported within the European common market and throughout the world and that
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Ireland was at that moment a modern, forward- looking country with a booming economy. Actually,
the impressive rise of Ireland from an agricultural to a modern, knowledge-based society is a
success story of European structural assistance, which made excellent use of the opportunities the
EU offered, for instance, the replacement of the punt by the Euro in 2002 or the re-election of
Fianna Fail's Bertie Ahern as prime minister (taoiseach) in a continuing coalition on assuming
six-month presidency of EU.

Both, Ireland and Europe have profited greatly from each other in Europe and Ireland proved an
important, indispensable partner. Nowadays, the European Union is currently undergoing what
may be the most profound change in its history since it has gone through its biggest
enlargement. It is worth remembering that on 1 May 2004 this year Ireland has hosted
ceremonies to welcome those EUs 10 new member states mentioned as the holder of EU
presidency. Formerly made up by 15 member states, for instance, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy,
Luxembourgh, Low Countries (1958), Denmark, Ireland and Great Britain (1973), Greece (1981),
Spain and Portugal (1986), Austria, Finland and Sweden (1995), the EU has recently been
extended to ten more, thus, Chzeck Republic, Hungary, Polland, Chipre, Bulgaria,
Eslovaquia, Letonia, Lituania and Rumania (2004). So, it has redefined its position in the
increasingly globalised multipolar world of the twenty-first century.

In fact, the practical conditions for enlargement and simultaneously launched the necessary
process of further deepening the EU were the common agreement on the Intergovernmental
Conference 2004 at a summit in Nice. It is the right balance between enlargement and
deepening that has always been the magic formula for successful development in Europe. And the
fact that Nice managed to preserve the balance between these two vital pillars of European
progress despite an extremely difficult negotiating situation, is a success. The decision to
introduce greater flexibility into the concept of enhanced cooperation in the EU is a step ahead

3. A LITERARY BACKGROUND: THE 20th and 21st-CENTURY LITERATURE.

The uncertainty of the War- and post-War years is reflected in the concern of many novelists about
the disintegration of society, and their lack of positive optimism, while the frequency with
which violence and sadism appear as themes is not surprising in a world grown accustomed to
the thought of genocide, global conflict, and nuclear destruction” Even nowadays, at the turn of
century, globalisation, uncertainty and the question of terrorism are often reflected in literature as
well as the positive development of Europe under the strong ties of the EU.

Therefore, we shall approach 20th and 21st-century literature by examining (1) the three main
literary forms in terms of main literary features of the period and most representative authors.
Actually, since there is a great amount of poets since 1945 to nowadays, we shall namely focus on
the most representative ones in terms of themes and main works. Further details on their lives will
be not mentioned unless necessary.

3.1. Main literary forms: main authors.

3.2.1. Poetry.

The period of the War produced much poetry and therefore, common themes were boredom,
frustration of Service life, horror and tragedy, the waste, the appreciation of friendship, a deep
understanding of the English landscape, and the possibility of violent death. Also, contemporary
poetry, in accordance to present events, deals with the importance of union against terrorism,
individuals and the advances of modern society, such as new technologies, average standard of
living, love and death, and modern facilities, among others.
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Poetry has become a minority taste. The only true poets who have approached popularity between
John Betjeman and Seamus Heaney have been Larkin,Hughes (and, posthumously, his wife Sylvia
Plath), and Tony Harrison.

Actually, there is a great amount of poets since 1945 to nowadays, but we shall namely focus on
the most representative ones in terms of themes and main works.

A) DYLAN THOMAS
Dylan Thomas (1914-1955) was born in Swansea, Glamorganshire (Wales). He was educated at
Swansea Grammar School and became well-known for his neurotic personality, obscure
poetry and amusing plays and prose. In the 1930s he worked as a reporter and as a free-lance
writer, and Thomas’ poems first appeared in the Sunday Referee in a feature column called the
“Poets’ Corner,” where he won a prize for the second of seven poems called “The Force that
through the Grass Fuse Drives the Flower.” By then, he published his first book, a volume of
poetry called Eighteen Poems (1934) as a result of this prize. In the same year he published a
prose work, Notebooks (1934).

This work was followed by Twenty -five Poems (1936), a period of poverty in England and Wales,
and his marriage to Caitlin Macnamara (1937). Then he began to concentrate on prose, with
such works as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog (1940), The Doctor and the Devils (1953),
Quite Early One Morning (1954), A Child's Christmas in Wales (1954), Under Milkwood (1954),
A Prospect of the Sea (1955), Adventures in the Skin Trade, and Other Stories (1955), Letters to
Vernon Watkins (1957), The Beach of Falesá (1964), Collected Prose (1969), and Early Prose
Writings 1971).

During the war, he worked with a documentary film unit, and published many short stories, wrote
film scripts, broadcast storie s and talks. Moreover, he did a serie s of lecture tours in the United
States and wrote Under Milk Wood (1954), the radio play for voices. In 1949, he began frequent
visits to the US, touring colleges to read poetry. In 1950 Thomas first visited America and had
reading tours in the United States, which did much to popularize his poetry.

Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination: he was
flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work
aloud with tremendous depth of feeling. He became a legendary figure, both for his work and the
boisterousness of his life. He was Welsh and his voice brought many to enjoy poetry through
his readings, he also used words not just for the denotation or connotation meaning, but also
for the sound of the word and the meaning that sound creates. The key to Dylan Thomas is
reading him aloud, slowly, hitting every vowel and consonant, and worrying about what it all means
later.

So, during his fourth lecture tour of the United States in 1953, he had a particularly long drinking
bout in New York City after his thirty-ninth birthday. As a result, he collapsed in his New York hotel
and died from alcoholism on November 9th at St Vincents Hospital, in the same year in which he
received the Foyle Prize. Then his body was sent back to Laugharne, Wales, where his grave is
marked by a simple wooden cross.

B) PHILIP LARKIN

Philip Larkin (1922-1985), is one of the best known post-war English poets. His reputation
is assured by works such as Collected Poems (1988), which has many of the best poems of its
time. “The title of the slim volume that made his name, The Less Deceived (1955), inverts a
phrase from Shakespeare, ‘I was the more deceived’. Not to be deceived was one of Larkin’s chief
aims in a life in which he protected himself. His father, who had a bust of Adolf Hitler on his
matlepiece, was Town Clerk of Coventry, destroyed by German bombs while young Larking was at
Oxford. He hid a wounded Romantic temperament behind a mask of irony, and became known as
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an anti-romantic, thanks to poems of disgust and despair, such as Annus Mirabilis, ‘This Be the
Verse’,‘The Old Fools’ and ‘Aubade’

Among his values, we may mention “ordinary collective institutions –marriage, seaside holidays,
British trains, ‘Show Saturday’, hotels, churches, Remembrance Day,- but he is outside them all.
Larkin’s own reputation, established early and not fading, was contested by those who disliked
his grouchy anti- modernism, xenophobia and attitudes to sex. An ironic connoisseur of the boring
and the banal, Larking was more modernist, cultivated and literary than he pretended; his poems
are intensely if quietly allusive. He was an inveterate.

C)TED HUGHES

Ted Hughes (1930-1999) “did not share Larking’s interest in human beings, nor his horrified
urbanity. The Hawk in the Rain (1957) contains memorable poems about birds and fish, such as
‘Hawk Roosting’ and ‘Pike’, based on boyhood experience of fishing and shooting in his native
Yorkshire. He fills these poems with the animals’ physical presence, endowing their natural
strength with mythic power. These taut muscular poems are his best. The anthropology he read
at Cambridge enabled him to systematize his approach in Crow (1970), an invented primitive
creation cycle which glorifies a brutal life-force. His life was darkened by the suicide in 1963 of his
wife Sylvia Plath, the American poet. Before he died in 1999, he released in Birthday Letters
(1999) poems which concern that time”

D)GEOFFREY HILL

Geoffrey Hill (1932-) was a teacher in universities in England and latterly the US. He is concerned
with the public responsibility of poetry towards historical human suffering, injustice and martyrdom.
His meditated verse has the tight verbal concentration, melody and intelligence of Eliot, Pound
and early Auden, adroitly using a variety of verse- forms and fictional modes. He is agonized,
intense, ironical, scornful. Condensation and allusiveness lend his work a daunting aspect,
softened in his more narrative later sequences. His most approachable volume is Mercian
Hymns (1971), a sequence of memories of his West Midlands boyhood, figured in a series of
imaginary Anglo-Saxon prose poems about Offa, the 8th-century king of Mercia and England. Its
serious play domesticates and makes intimate the ancient and modern history of
England” (Alexander, 2000:373). Among other works we include For the Unfallen (1959),
Tenebrae (1978), The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy (1983), and The Triumph of
Love (1998).

E) TONY HARRISON

Tony Harrison (1937-), on the other hand, was a public poet, “writing a clanking pentameter line
with punchy rhymes. His degree was in classics, but he also learned from stand-up comics in
Leeds about pace, timing and delivery. He has written, translated and adapted a number of
theatrical and operatic scripts for international companies. This theatrical extroversion lends a
performative impact to his own verse, which shows a bleakly Gothic range of emotions and a
proclaimed and campaigning commitment to the Northern working class. His upbringing
contributes richly to his idiom, which is often vulgar in the good sense of the word. Alienation from
family by education is rawly recorded in telling poems to his parents in The School of Eloquence
(1978).” Yet, his most spectacular work was V (1985), which became famous when it was made
into a television film. The title v. Is short for versus, Latin ‘against’, as used in football fixtures such
as ‘Leeds v. Newcastle’; it also means ‘verse’. It is one of several letters sprayed on his parents’
gravestone by skinheads after a Leeds United defeat. The poem dramatizes personal and cultural
conflicts, giving poetry a rare public hearing. A less socially committed poem, more finely
expressive of Harrison’s relished gloom, is A Kumquat for John Keats.” Among other works, we
highlight The Mysteries (1985) and The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus (1990).
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F)SEAMUS HEANEY
Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize in 1997. Heaney considers himself no longer British, but
Irish. He was born into a rural Catholic family in Protestant Northern Ireland. Poems written out of
the experience of his own people can reflect this, as in ‘Requiem for the Croppies’ or ‘The Ministry
of Fear’, but he is not simply partisan. The Loyalist-Republican conflict in the North brought
Ulster writing to wider notice. Heaney has taken an Irish passport and lives in the Republic. His
voice is Irish, as are most of his subjects. But he writes in English, and, like many in Ireland, he
partook in the everyday culture of the English-speaking Brit ish Isles. His poems mention London’s
Promenade Concerts, BBC radio’s Shipping Forecast- and British army checkpoints in Northern
Ireland. He was a popular Professor of Poetry at Oxford and has for two decades been the most
widely-read poet in Britain.”

Early poems re-creating sights, sounds and events of his childhood won him many readers; he
writes well of his farming family, from whom his education at Queen’s College, Belfast, did not
separate him, and he still makes his living from the land metaphoric ally. Where his fathers dug
with spades, he digs with his pen, uncovering layers of Irish history, Gaelic, Viking and the pre-
historic. He has extended his range to politics and literary ancestry without losing his way with
language; for him words are also things. Despite the Troubles, to which he attends, he is never
merely political. The memorable poem ‘Punishment’, likening a sacrificial body found in a Danish
bog to a victim of Republican punishment squads, echoes also to cast stones and numbered
bones from the Gospels.

Modern poets in English are more discreet with their literary allusions than the modernists,
and gentler on their readers. Heaney has always learned from other writers. The volume Seeing
Things (1991) deals with the death of parents, marital love and the birth of children. It is much
concerned with the validity of the visionary in reaching towards life after death. It is striking that
Heaney, with other leading Anglo poets, Geoffrey Hill, the Australian Les Murray and the West
Indian Derek Walcott, looks towards the realities of metaphysics, of religion, of presence. In
defending the possibilities of the sacred, the poets are quite opposed to the scepticism of Franco-
American literary theorists who have much affected the academic climate in which literature is
often studied.”

Among other works, we may include Eleven Poems (1965), Death of a Naturalist (1966), Door
into the Dark (1969), North (1975), Field Work (1979), Station Island (1980), The Haw Lantem
(1987), The Spirit Level (1996), and Beowulf (1999) (Armitage & Crawford (1998).

A generation of post-Marxist intellectuals came to the fore in France after 1968, sceptical
towards metaphysics and the possibility of meaning in language. Their competing discourses
–political, psychological and philosophical: far too complex to be briefly summarized- belong to a
chapter in the history of criticism rather than of literature. They have, however, influenced
American and to an extent British academic criticism into trying to cleanse its language of any
intimations of the immortal or of the divine. This push towards provisionality and indeterminacy is
linked with what is often called postmodernism” (Alexander, 2000:374-375).

3.2.2. Drama.

A)BERTOLT BRECHT

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) was an English dramatist who seemed to have nothing in common with
the leading foreign writers whose influence suddenly made itself felt in the early 1950’s. Brecht
showed “his uncompromising views on production, his use of songs and music, his humanitarian
communism, and his insistence on the alienation of the audience and the actor from the character
even as he projects the play into the midst of the onlookers.
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B) SAMUEL BECKETT

After Brecht, the most important influence was Samuel Becket (1906-1989) , formerly James
Joyce’s secretary, who wrote in French. Following Alexander (2000:360), “he had the career of an
Irish exile. A Protestant, he was educated at Wilde’s old school and lectured in philosophy at
Trinity College, Dublin. He left for Paris, still hostess to international modernism wrote on Proust
and became Joyce’s disciple. After the war he wrote three novels –in French rather than his native
language, in order to write ‘without style ’.” In 1952 he wrote Waiting for Godot, a static
representation without structure or development, using only meandering, seemingly incoherent
dialogue to suggest despair of a society which was destroying itself and of mankind unsuspectingly
surrendering its natural liberties. Other dramatic devices of Beckett are Endgame (1955) and
Krapp’s Last Tape (1958).

In Beckett’s plays, “the audience has to make sense of a verbal and visual text as spare as an
Imagist poem and as basic as a music -hall sketch. By letting in audience imagination,
Beckett made extremist minority art immediate, involving, universal. Hie warly tragicomic novels
appeal to intellectuals. But another early work, a tribute to the silent film comedian Buster Keaton,
was the route to the music -hall solutio n Eliot had tried and abandoned” (Alexander, 2000).
Beckett’s later works reduced the dramatic elements: the number of actors, of their movements, of
their moving parts, of their words. Words achieved a stage role they had not had for centuries.
Often recycling topic and words Beckett achieves an intense effect by his soliloquy and its new
meaning.

Harold Pinter (1930-) was, following Alexander (2000:364), “the son of a tailor in the East of
London , learned from Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd. His verbal surface has a peeling
realistic veneer, each character being identified by a memorable trick of speech; but the characters’
relation to what is ordinarily taken as real life is tenuous and oblique.” He conveys the
rambling ambiguities and silences of everyday conversation with an amazing authenticity
that is obviously much influenced by Beckett, and uses them to build up the sense of menace
and scarcely restrained violence which characterize The Birthday Party 81958), The Dumb
Waiter (1960), and The Caretaker (1960).

The plays are quite short and set in an enclosed , claustrophobic space; the characters are
always in doubt about their function, and in fear of someone or something ‘outside’. More recently
Pinter has written on a larger scale and in a less restricted way, for instance in A Night Out (1961)
and The Homecoming (1969), but he still prefers the shorter play, as in Silence (1969), and the
drama of unidentified menace, such as Old Times (1971). Among Pinter’s many achievements, he
has demostrated how plays for radio and television can be adapted to suit the stage, and that the
so-called legitimate drama can gain much from the techniques necessitated by other media.

3.2.3. Prose.
In prose “many of the younger generation of writers are involved int he new psychological
problems arising from the bizarre and contradictory nature of an affluent society which is
discontented with itself, and yet is interested chiefly in retaining or acquiring material comforts. A
mixture of realism, cynicism, dark comedy, shrewd comment, and satire is used to express their
search for stability and basic values. Stark individualism is often the essence of characterization;
novelists are not infrequently interested in the individual’s flight from an environment with which he
cannot cope, or his attempts to find satisfaction by abandoning selfishness for love, service, and
even sacrifice.

The future is rarely clear; happiness is often the discovery of some small assurance amid an
uncertain and even incomprehensible environment. Because of technological advances, space
exploration, and the threat of nuclear and germ warfare, there has been a tremendous increase in
science fiction –novels about the future on other planets, or on an earth catastrophically altered.” In
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fact, “the contemporary English novel has been affected to an inestimable extent by three entirely
new influences.” Thus, “never before have novels from the U.S.A. been so widely read. Many of
these have been characterized by detailed realism, lack of reticence, brutality, disillusion,
and criticism of the national and international scene; they have dealt in a penetrating manner iwth
the frustrations and emotional storms largely caused by urban-commercial life.”

A)WILLIAM GOLDING

William Gerald Golding (1911-1993), deals with man’s instinct to destroy what is good, whether it
is material or spiritual. Treating of cruelty, selfishness, and the yearning after power, he puts his
viewpoint very clearly –evil is apparent everywhere, and is with difficulty held at bay, and good is
almost impossible to achieve. Each of his novels is a unique fable for the times in which symbolism
plays an overridingly important part. Nevertheless, they are convincingly realistic, and his
characters are feasible, even thought they are forced by unnatural circumstances into unnatural
situations.

His best-known novel is Lord of the Flies (1954), in which civilization is shown to be a mere veneer
that cracks and splinters under the slightest pressure, but The Inheritors (1955) most effectively
illustrates his view that innocence, good, happiness were instinctive before Homo spaiens
developed, and with him and all- destructive urge to evil. Pincher Martin (1956) with its brilliantly
conceived plot, Free Fall (1959), and The Scorpion God (1971) are studies of individuals who
deliberately reject heaven and, as all humans must, sink satisfied into hell. The Spire (1964),
however, shows man apparently achieving something that is good; yet everthing connected with it
is evil. The reader is left to wornder whether mankind can ever attain or create anything that is
wholly good.” Goldwing is not a simple moral fabulist like Lewis or Tolkien. His allegories are
embedded in temporal as well as physical settings, and are written in a precise, dense and
ambitious way on the search of moral sense.

B) GAHAM GREENE
Graham Greene (1904-) is probably the best-known novelist of the period because he worked
imaginatively on the exploration of his characters. Following Albert (1990:565-
566), “he has written a considerable number of novels which, while popular, have none the less
pleased the critics because of the tautness of their construction and their imaginative
exploration of character. Whatever he writes seems to be topical, not just in subject-matter and
location but in the emotions stimulated, for Greene has the gift of evoking the atmosphere of a
period as well as giving an accurate depiction of the surroundings.”

“The world is brutal and humourless; in it his characters pursue or are pursued. Usually they are
insignificant people with a little authority who are forced to make a choice and to suffer the pangs
of indecision and conscience. Greene’s Roman Catholicism has encouraged him to see action
as a series of moral dilemmas; he depicts not right and wrong but fundamental good and
fundamental evil; his characters seek after evil sometimes on principle and sometimes from
lack of initiative to do otherwise, and in doing so they acknowledge the reverse of evil. By
accepting the Devil they believe in God. The settings of hisnovels range from West Africa to Cuba,
England to Viet Nam; by selecting significant details he sketches in a background that looks
authentic and then, by symbolic touches, draws one’s attention to matters of special importance.”

“The most noteworthy of Greene’s novels are It’s a Battlefield (1934), England Made Me (1935),
Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), The En d
of the Affair (1951), The Quiet American (1955), A Burnt-Out Case (1961), The Comedians
(1966), and Travels with My Aunt (1969). Graham Greene’s short stories have become
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increasingly popular; recent collections are May We Borrow Your Husband? (1967) and Shades of
Greene (1976). He has also written what he calls ‘entertainments.’ These are stories of crime and
retribution, but they too are concerned with moral difficulties bedevilling people in a confused and
violent world. The best of these books are A Gun for Sale (1936), The Ministry of Fear (1943), The
Third Man (1950), and a satire on contemporary spy novels, Our Man in Havana 1958).”

C)GEORGE ORWELL
George Orwell (1903-1950), whose real name was Eric Hugh Blair, represents the typical
product of the inter-war and WWII years. His proletarian sympathies and his contempt for the
upper-middle -class society from which he sprang were shown in the sardonic Keep the Aspidistra
Flying (1936). Yet there was a love-hate attitude towards the idea of Empire and the White Man’s
Burden in Burmese Days (1934); and in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), a picture of squalor and
hopelessness during the Great Depression, he seemed to despise the very type he represented,
the left-wing intellectual striving to identify himself with the victims.”

“It was only after the Second World War that Orwell became a figure of outstanding importance,
and then it was because of Animal Farm (1945), an expression of his own disillusion and the
humoristic way of depicting the horror lived in the Nazi’s concentration camps. This was a
closely knit allegory on the degeneration of communist ideals into dictatorship, expressed in an
incisive, witty, deceptively simple style reminiscent of Voltaire. Utterly different was Nineteen
Eighty -Four (1949), a terrifying prognostication of the hatred, cruelty, fear, loss of individuality, and
lack of human love that the future would bring. The common man whom Orwell admired was
reduced to a political and social nonentity; human dignity and decency were dead because of mass
apathy and tolerance of evil.”

D) J.R. TOLKIEN

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) is best known for his worldwide famous science
fiction novels, recently taken into the big screen by Hollywood’s superproduction ‘The
Lord of the Rings’. Since he found nothing interesting about the present and near future reality, he
invented his own fantasy worlds. Following Albert (1990:578), “he was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon
and then of Language and Literature at Oxford from 1925 to 1959, whose novels became
something of a cult, especially among intellectuals. The Hobbit (1937), ostensibly a children’s
book, and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) present a world that is an amalgam of fairy lore, Norse
mythology, epic, and Arthurian legends. Tolkien himself claimed no seriousness for this work, but
one finds it difficult to believe him when one considers its length, and the care bestowed on
interweaving its complex stories. The language too was specially created to suit the characters,
very much the brain-child of an expert philologist.”

4. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING.

Literature, and therefore, literary language is one of the most salient aspects of educational activity.
In classrooms all kinds of literary language (poetry, drama, prose –novel, short story, minor fiction-,
periodicals) either spoken or written, is going on for most of the time. Yet, handling literary
productions in the past makes relevant the analysis of literature in the twentieth and twenty-first
century in Great Britain and Ireland in this unit. Yet, what do students know about the literature in
this period? At this point it makes sense to examine the historical background of Great Britain
and Ireland up to the present day so as to provide an appropriate context for these poets,
dramatists and novelists in our students’ background knowledge and check what they know about
them.
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Since literature may be approached in linguistic terms, regarding form and function
(morphology, lexis, structure, form) and also from a cross-curricular perspective (Sociology,
History, English, French, Spanish Language and Literature), Spanish students are expected to
know about the history of Britain and Ireland and its influence in the world , as well as their
integration in the EU. In addition, one of the objectives of teaching the English language is to
provide good models of almost any kind of literary productions for future studies.

Currently, action research groups attempt to bring about change in classroom learning and
teaching through a focus on literary production under two premises. First, because they believe
learning is an integral aspect of any form of activity and second, because education at all levels
must be conceived in terms of literature and history. The basis for these assumptions is to be found
in an attempt, through the use of historical events, to develop understanding of students’ shared
but diverse social and physical environment.

Learning involves a process of transformation of participation itself which has far reaching
implications on the role of the teacher in the teaching- learning relationship. This means that
literary productions are an analytic tool and that teachers need to identify the potential
contributions and potential limitations of them before we can make good use of genre
techniques: the stream of consciousness, the kaleidoscopic point of view, and the presentation of
different scenes, among others. We must bear in mind that most students will continue their
studies at university and there, they will have to handle successfully all kind of genres,
especially poetry, drama and fiction ones within our current framework.

Moreover, today’s new technologies (the Internet, DVD, videocamera) and the media (TV,
radio, cinema) may provide a new direction to language teaching as they set more appropriate
context for students to experience the target culture. Present-day approaches deal with a
communicative competence model in which first, there is an emphasis on significance over form,
and secondly, motivation and involvement are enhanced by means of new technologies and the
media. Hence literary productions and the history of the period may be approched in terms of films
and drama representations in class, among others, and in this case, by means of books (novels:
historical, terror, descriptive) and drama (opera, comedies, plays), among others.

But how do twentieth and twenty-first-century British and Irish literature tie in with the new
curriculum? Spanish students are expected to know about the British and Irish culture and its
presence in Europe since students are required to know about the world culture and history. The
success partly lies in the way literary works become real to the users. Some of this motivational
force is brought about by intervening in authentic communicative events. Otherwise, we have to
recreate as much as possible the whole cultural environment in the classroom by means of
novels, short stories, documentaries, history books, or their family’s stories.

5. CONCLUSION.

On reviewing the issue of Unit 58, the political, social and economic development in the United
Kingdom and Ireland since 1945 up to the present day, we have also examined their presence in
the European Union. This introduction is aimed at reviewing the literary background of the time
and, therefore, the life, works and style of the most representative authors in this period. Hence we
have started by presenting the main events occurred during and after the World War II
(1941-1945) up to the present-day in Great Britain and Ireland in political, social and
economic terms.
OPOSICIONES SECUNDARIA INGLÉS ANDALUCÍA 2018

This historical background has provided the basis for a better understanding of the literary
background in the XXth and XXIst-century main authors and works. On reviewing each genre, we
have got closer to how those writers reflected the time in which they were living. Some of them
chose a real approach (Dylan Thomas, Hugh DcDiarmid, Bertolt Brecht, William Goldwing);
others, a humoristic approach to the WWII horror (George Orwell); and others, a different
perspective of reality through the world of fantasy or science fiction (J.R.R. Tolkien), as a way of
avoiding the cruel reality.

In Chapter 4 we have established a link between this historical and literary background with the
main educational implications in language teaching regarding the introduction of this issue in the
classroom setting and how to make our students aware of how much they know about the modern
history of Great Britain and Ireland. At this point, we hope to offer fruitful conclusions on this
presentation, and we shall close it by presenting all the bibliographical references used in its
elaboration for further references.

So far, we have attempted to provide the reader in this presentation with a historical, literary and
cultural background on the vast amount of literature productions in the twentieth and twenty-
first-century literature in modern Great Britain and Ireland. This information is relevant for
language learners, even ESO and Bachillerato students, who do not automatically establish
similiarities between British, Irish and Spanish social reality. So, learners need to have these
associations brought to their attention in cross-curricular settings through the media . As we have
seen, understanding how literature reflects the main historical events of a country is important to
students, who are expected to be aware of the richness of English and Irish literature in all
English-speaking countries.

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Armitage, S. And R. Crawford (eds). 1998. The Penguin Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland
since
1945. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Albert, Edward. 1990. A History of English Literature. Walton-on-Thames. Nelson. 5th editio n
(Revised by J.A. Stone).

B.O.E. 2004. Consejería de Educación y Cultura. Decreto N.º 116/2004, de 23 de enero. Currículo
de la
Educación Secundaria Obligatoria en la Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia.

B.O.E. 2004. Consejería de Educación y Cult ura. Decreto N.º 117/2004, de 23 de enero.
Currículo de
Bachillerato en la Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia.

Cook, C. and J. Paxton. 2001. European Political Facts of the Twentieth Century. Palgrave.

Council of Europe (1998) Modern Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. A Common

European
Framework of reference.
Drabble, Margaret (ed.). 1995. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. New York,
Oxford
University Press,
Magnusson, M., and Goring, R. (eds.). 1990. Cambridge Biographical Diction ary. New York:
Cambridge
OPOSICIONES SECUNDARIA INGLÉS ANDALUCÍA 2018
University Press.

Palmer, R. 1980. Historia Contemporánea, Akal ed., Madrid.

Sanders, A. 1996. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Oxford University Press. Rogers,
P. 1987. The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature. Oxford University Press.

Speck, W.A. 1998. Literature and Society in Eighteenth-Century England: Ideology Politics and
Culture
1680-1820. Book Reviews.

Thoorens, Léon. 1969. Panorama de las literaturas Daimon: Inglaterra y América del Norte.
Gra n
Bretaña y Estados Unidos de América. Ediciones Daimon.

van Ek, J.A., and J.L.M. Trim, 2001. Vantage. Council of Europe. Cambridge University Press.

Other sources:

Enciclopedia Larousse 2000. 2000. Editorial Planeta.

Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century. 1999. Detroit, St. James.