LITERARY FEATURES OF THE AGE
1. Decline of Poetry. For almost the first time in the history of English literature the poetical product must be relegated to a subordinate position. Much verse, some of great charm and considerable power, has been written, but very little of real outstanding literary importance. It is this decided decline in the poetical spirit that must make the period take an inferior place in our literary history. Even the Great War failed to produce a poet who might proclaim its ideals as Wordsworth did those of the French Revolution. One is reluctantly driven to conclude that the divine poetical impulse was not there.
2. The Domination of the Novel. Comparatively late in its appearance, the novel has now become the most prominent of the literary forms. The output is enormous, the general level quite high, and the scope of its subject almost all-embracing. The growth of the popular press, including the cheap magazine specializing in the production of fiction, the cheapening of books and journals, the increasing use of shorthand and the typewriter, all combine to add to the torrent of fiction.
3. Modern “Realism.” The tendency of the time is to avoid sentiment, and to look upon life critically and even cynically. There is a supercilious attitude toward enthusiasm, which is banned as being “Victorian,” a word which has assumed a derogatory meaning. In the domain of fiction this feeling is the strongest. Victorian convention is anathema; all subjects are explored, and handled with a frankness that would have horrified the moralists of the earlier age. A particularly strong school of novelists is interested in social subjects, and is affected with the prevailing economic unrest.
4. Foreign Influences. In other countries the same tendency toward realism is apparent, and has helped the movement in England. In Europe there were two geniuses of international importance, and both of them were fired with revolutionary social ideals: Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), the Norse dramatist, and Leo Tolstoï (1828–1910), the Russian novelist. The influence of Ibsen went right to the roots of English drama, and the works of Tolstoï awoke English readers to the importance of Russian fiction, which is strongly realistic. French novelists of the realistic school, such as Émile Zola (1840–1902), had their share in the development of the English novel.
5. The Celtic Revival. The revival of Irish literature is of much interest. It began in the effort of a group of writers to preserve and reanimate Irish sentiment and (to a certain extent) the Irish language. It has affected all branches of literature: it has affected poetry, producing poems such as those of Mr. Yeats; it has created a type of drama, and a theater in which to act it; its dramatists include Mr. Synge, Lady Gregory, and (partly) Mr. Shaw; it has added a novelist of importance in George Moore; and it has a worthy example of a man of letters in George Russell, whose nom de plume is “A. E.”