Factors affected 20th century novel

Aja’eb Sa’adNoura Al-enaze

Rada KhedrSamah Atta AllahSamaher Ahmad

Sara AhmadSeham Kadumi

Shrooq Mohammad

During the 20th century, many events were happening in the world. Each one contributes to the writings of Novelists.

What is these factors?

DateThe late of 19th and early 20th centuries,

mainly in Europe and North America.

Modernism introduced a new kind of narration to the novel, one that would change the entire soul of novel writing.

The novelists have a conscious desire to change traditional ways of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time.

Date28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918(4 years, 3 months and 2 weeks)

LocationEurope, Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, China, Indian Ocean,

and off the coast of South and North America

The war was a common theme shared by many novelists, including the social changes caused by the war.

Many popular novels simply included pre-war plots about spies or romantic encounters onto a wartime setting.

"the history of humanity's changing attitudes toward space and time ... the history of our growing understanding of the universe and the

position of our species in that universe.”

Robert Scholes.

science fiction developed and boomed in the 20th century, as the deep integration of science and inventions into daily life encouraged a

greater interest in literature that explores the relationship between technology, society, and the individual.

The Industrial Revolution

The rapid industrial growth that began in Great Britain during the middle of the eighteenth century and extended into the United States

for the next 150 years provided a wide range of material for many nineteenth-century writers.

Charles Dickens's realistic and ironic depictions of industrial towns in Hard Times (1854), underscored the deleterious affects of urbanization on the working class. Works by Benjamin Disraeli, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontë sisters, and W. M. Thackeray also presented accurate accounts

of the industrialisation.

Christianity, encompassing the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant faiths, asserted a tremendous influence on the literature of

the twentieth century.

at the beginning of the twentieth century, literature challenged those beliefs and placed religion behind such scientific, political and

psychological theories.

There are examples of novelists who have spoken out directly against religious orthodoxies in their works such as:

E.M. Forster, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.

Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) 

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

James Joyce (1882-1941)

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

In conclusion, the twentieth-century novels are influenced by the changes in beliefs and political ideas after the events

of the WWI and the disappearance of the British Empire.