Historical Context Flashcards
Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ambrose Bierce
- The American Civil War (1861-1865)
- Realist Literature
Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion
Thomas Hardy
- Napoleonic Wars. there was panick that the french might attack the south of england thus an anglo german legion also called the York Hussars were posted there over various strategic points
- during the reign of King George III
- reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet; A divinity…hedged kings which references “There’s such divinity doth hedge a King”- a king is appointed by God and is shielded by divine protection.
- reference to Cleopatra’s lack of courage at the sight of Julius Caesar’s troops, fled with her ships and thus having Antony to follow her- causing them to lose the battle and his honor
- Biblical reference to an episode when God sent ‘a destroying angel’ to destroy the Assyrians in the night.
- follows common trope of girls meeting soldiers and having it seldom end well
- Victorian Realist literature with Romantic influence
The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
Edith Wharton
- written during the naturalist/realist period using gothic and romantic themes
- highlights class hierarchy of the victorian age and how devoted servants had to be to their masters
- written during the US Gilded age characterised by social changes and technological innovations
- as well as the aristocratic era characterised by growing corruption
Gabriel-Earnest
Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
- written in the Edwardian era during WW1, a time of great prosperity and technological advancements
- Edwardian writers exposed, mocked and criticised social structures of bias and discrimination
The Doll’s House
Katherine Mansfield
written post ww1during the modern era of literature. this era was characterised by heavy symbolism which is exemplified in Mansfield’s story.
Warning to the Curious
M.R. James
- written during the Modernist era of literature a few years after the WWI.
- horror story with realist undertones
- story embodies war-time anxiety that engulfed England after the so called Great War.
- references wars such as the war of 1870- fought between France and Prussia which resulted in Prussian victory and the unification of Germany, a strong and possibly aggressive new power which caused a fear of invasion and the 1879 South African War or the war of Boers.
- references to christianity such as ‘Christian moved across the Valley’ alluding to the Christian allegory written by John Buyan called the ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’, which is a parable of the soul’s journey through life and the Paschal Moon which is used to calculated the date of Easter and signifies Rebirth.
Death in the Woods
Sherwood Anderson
- although Anderson wrote Death in the Woods in a modernist era of literature it demonstrates many hallmarks of the realist movement whose goal is to faithfully and accurately represent reality. its characters are ordinary people engaged in plausible activities and the language is colloquial. realism confines itself to objectivity as a way of capturing versimilitude, although by exploring the narrator’s internnal thoughts, Anderon achieves a form of psychological realism. however it can be said it more squarely falls into the realm of naturalism. inspired by the work of Charles Darwin, naturalism is both a philosophical position and a literary movement. develops the belief that humans are animals; merely of a higher order. in this worldview, humans are governed by instinct instead of morality. the story of mrs. grimes is a classically naturalist tale, reduced to the biological task of the feeder and a wordless beast herself. moreover this piece has elements of modernism such as the stress on symbolism for example: circles, the grotesque, the dogs or the woman herself.
- Anderson first introduced his understanding the Grotesque in his ‘the book of the grotesque’ the opening story of his collection, ‘Winesburg, Ohio’. used the term to create isolated, misunderstood people who become fixated on a particular way of thinking or behaving. he did this to often describe a certain character kind of character whom he felt had proliferated in the increasingly industrialised America of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries
- the way the unnamed author is haunted by a memory from his childhood and tries to string together an enigmatic, comprehensive understanding of it by constantly revisiting it, Sherwood Anderson too revisited the story for nearly 17 years before finally publishing it at 1933.
- His first sketch was the scene of dogs encircling the corpse of a deadwoman carrying food, on the flipside of a ten page type written fragment for the Winesbury, Ohio collection. he made various similar drafts and sketches between those 17 years
- Anderson himself spent time working on the farm of a German as a labourer and he too had a strange encounter with a pack of dogs on a winter night in a forest.
- the character of mrs. grimes was based on Anderson’s own hardworking, silent mother
- the ways an author processes disjointed but powerful personal experiences is exemplified in the story.
The Black Ball
Ralph Ellison
- written during 20th century African-American literature, during the civil rights movement era
- focalises the African-American experience in segregated 1930s southern US states.
The Axe
Penelope Fitzgerald
- the historical background of 1970s England is that of economic regression. many people lost their jobs and unemployment rates were rampant
- The Axe mirrors this cause while most characters remain unaffected, few lives remain altered forever.
The Plantation
Ovo Adagha
- published during the post-modern era
- oil was first discovered in Nigeria in 1956 and is found to hold a little over 2% of the world’s reserves. in the approximate half century and the writing of this story , oil had become and remains a major contributor to the country’s economy. however, it has also become a source of conflict- the economic benefits hae not been shared across the country, with some amassing huge wealth while much of the population lives in poverty. this background is clearly relevant to Adagha’s story, which focuses on rural Nigeria who have enjoyed no share in the country’s oil wealth. exemplifies the individualism and lack of community concern that has characterised the country’s oil industry
Haywards Heath
Aminatta Forna
post-modernist literature
Paper Menagerie
Ken Liu
written in the postmoderninst era, with a background of how ethnic racial identities are treated in suburban America.
two major events are referred to in the story, the first is the Great Famine(1958-1962. The Great Famine was a man made famine and is estimated to have claimed over 30 million lives, however there is nodeath-by-starvation counts and these are only estimates because the government covered up the deaths.
Chairman Mao Zedong, the autocratic leader of the Chinese Communist Party, was enthusiastic about increasing crop yields. his subordinates who were afraid to disappoint him, lied and inflated crop yield estimates.
As a result, the amount of food taken from the Chinese peasant farming communes for use in the city was based on wildly inflated estimates of crop yieldsand the peasants were not left with enough to eat.
the second event mentioned is the Cultural Revolution(1966-1976). Chairman Mao Zedong inaugurated the cultural revolution to remove lingering capitalist and bourgeoisie tendencies from Communist China. During the subsequent purges, people merely accused for these tendencies were abused imprisoned and sometimes executed.
Stability
Philip K. Dick
Modernist Literature
The Tower
Marghanita Laski
Modernist literature with several gothic elements.
during the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s to the 1980s young women were living lives of rapid social and cultural change -these changes made them question the conditions of their lives and their relationships with men, other women and children. the movement sought equal rights, oppurtunities and greater personal freedom for women. it is recognised as the second wave of feminism.
When It Happens
Margaret Atwood
Mrs Burridge had been referenced to live through two major events- the first one being The Great Depression. Occured during the early years of Mrs. Burridge, brought about by a stock market crash. this caused many important institutions to fail, resulting in widespread poverty and food shortages. jobs became difficult to find, if not impossible, because of this many people lost their trust in banks and the stock market. they often made themselves as self sustainable as possible to shiel themselves from similar future events.
the second event she lived through was the second world war. those who survived through these trying times became sceptical of media due to the propaganda it produced suring the war.
the third event which is however, not mentioned but hinted towards is the Cold War. this war was centered around a nuclear weapons standoff between the Western capitalists and the Eastern Communists. this caused much anxiety around the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Mrs. Burridge’s worries echoed common fears during the time this story was written- 1969
