Britain after WW2

Question 1

Characteristics of Britain after WW2?

Answer 1

• Marshall Aid Programme
• better standard of living than ever before:
  ○ full employment
  ○ wages upped by 30%
  ○ housing programmes
  ○ free medical care and education
• 1956: the Suez Crisis - the end of the British colonialism (nation’s confidence shooked)

Question 2

Look Back in Anger
- author + info

Answer 2

John Osborne
- Jimmy Porter – Rebel without a Cause
- a new prototype of a hero – insecure and unstable inside and discontented and aggressive outside

• criticizes the authority of what he identifies as Establishment values
• does not protest to change the society but rather because he was not accepted into it
• the message: the hopelessness, frustration, disillusionment and disappointment of the young British post-war generation

Question 3

A significant development in the 1950s British drama?

Answer 3

Theatre of the Absurd

Question 4

Lucky Jim
- author + info

Answer 4

Kingsley Amis
- a comic novel

• satirizes the high-brow academic environment of an unnamed provincial redbrick university through the eyes of its protagonist, Jim Dixon
• he is an anti-hero of a romantic comedy

Question 5

Angry Young Men (characteristics + authors)?

Answer 5

• 1950s - the atmosphere of discontent in whole British society
• provincial, “redbrick universities” → scholarships for lower-class citizens (education)
• the system wasn’t ready for educated lower-class citizens

John Osborne, Kingsley Amis, John Wain, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe

Question 6

Hurry on Down

Answer 6

John Wain

Question 7

Room at the Top

Answer 7

John Braine

Question 8

Who was the founder of the campus novel?

Answer 8

Kingsley Amis

Question 9

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
- author + info

Answer 9

Alan Sillitoe
- working-class protagonist, environment, lifestyle, values and language

Question 10

Eating People Is Wrong

Answer 10

Malcolm Bradbury
- the campus novel

Question 11

Changing Places

Answer 11

David Lodge
- the campus novel

Question 12

The Less Deceived

Answer 12

Philip Larkin
- ordinary, clear, colloquial style

Question 13

Lord of the Flies
- author + info

Answer 13

William Golding
- explore moral dilemmas at the centre of human existence; characters in extreme situations

Question 14

Characteristics of The Movement

Answer 14

• anti-romantic and ironic
• revival of the importance of form

Question 15

The Lonely Londoners
- author + info

Answer 15

Samuel Selvon
- he pioneered the use of Caribbean Creole dialect for other than merely comic effects
- creole (= a person of mixed European and black descent) narrator Moses

Question 16

“creolization” of the British novel

Answer 16

= the mixing of cultures that produces a new culture
- in the 1950s - beginning of the multiethnical and multicultural England

Question 17

Under the Net and A Severed Head

Answer 17

Iris Murdoch

Question 18

Moses Ascending and Moses Migrating

Answer 18

Samuel Selvon

Question 19

The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows

Answer 19

Philip Larkin