For decades the eighteen-nineties have been obscured by a series of partial interpretations, often implying a ‘go to the dogs’ feeling that was thought to pervade European ‘civilized’ society in the years around 1900. These evaluations now, as we ourselves stand at the turn of the century and look back, appear distinctly simplistic. No longer dismissed as merely transitional between the Victorian and the Modern, the nineties have now come to be recognised as a unique period—a period of serious engagement between literature and sister arts, native and foreign traditions, one art movement and another, art and life. Through an examination of the critical and creative writings of the period, this book seeks to bring out the significance of the strategies of assimilation that were adopted at different levels. The interweaving of threads has been explained in terms of the writers’ engagement with and reaction to, the general intellectual changes in the later part of the nineteenth century. Instead of focusing on individual writers, it attempts to isolate and identify some critical principles that emerged out of the synthesizing process and which greatly influenced the course of literature in the early twentieth century. This book will prove useful to the students of English Literature for understanding the nature of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century literature.
There are no reviews yet.