YEAR

LITERATURE

HISTORY AND SOCIETY



1776

U. S. Constitution

1789

French Revolution

1792

Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women


1812

U. S. War with Britain

1815

Napoleon, Waterloo

1824

Beethoven, Ninth Symphony



1848

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto

Revolutions across Europe

1859

Darwin, Origin of Species


1861


Russian serfs freed; Civil War in the U. S.

1867

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

1869

J. S. Mills, On the Subjection of Women

Susan B. Anthony and suffrage movement

1871

Germany unified as a nation

1879 


Wilhelm Wundt, lab in psychology in Leipzig

1882 

Nietzsche: "God is dead" (Gay Science)

Chinese Exclusion Act in the U. S.

1885


Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler construct first motor car

1887

Sherlock Holmes debuts with A Study in Scarlet

Roentgen discovers X-rays. Pocket camera produced by Kodak. Oscar Wilde imprisoned for homosexuality.

1888

Jack the Ripper kills 5 prostitutes in London

1895

Freud and Breuer work on Studies on Hysteria 

1898

wireless telegram

1901


Queen Victoria dies

1902

Boer War ends

1903

Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk

1912

Jung, Psychology of Unconscious

Titanic sinks

1914


Great War/WWI begins

1915

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity

1916

Britain's Mesopotamia campaign; Easter Uprising in Ireland

1917

Kafka's Metamorphosis

Russian Revolution; U. S. enters WWI

1918


Female suffrage in U. K.; End of WWI

1919


Female suffrage in U. S.

1920

Prohibition in U.S.; Hitler forms Nazi Party; Britain occupies Palestine

1921


Mussolini founds National Fascist Party

1922

Gide finishes The Counterfeiters; Joyce, Ulysses

Fascist dictator Mussolini made prime minister of Italy (until 1943)

1923


coup attempt by Hitler




1925


1927

Hesse, Steppenwolf

Stalin comes to power

1931


Great Depression

1932


Union of Fascists formed in the U. K.

1933


Nazi party comes to power in Germany




1935


Nürnberger race laws; Italian invasion of Ethiopia

1936

Spanish Civil War begins

1938


Reichskristallnacht (looting of Jewish shops)

1939


invasion of Czecholslovakia and Poland; Jews deported to ghettos; Britain declares war on Germany; Fascist dictator Franco wins Spanish Civil War




1941

Brecht's Mother Courage performed in Zurich

Pearl Harbor

1945


Bombing of Hiroshima; end of WWII

1949


East Germany founded

1961


Berlin Wall built

1968


Russians invade Prague (Iron Curtain); Student protests in Berkeley, Paris, and around the world

1984

Milan Kundera, Unbearable Lightness of Being

Reagan escalates Cold War in second term

1989


Berlin Wall falls; Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia




Broad Social Events:

 - 19th century/1800s: Industrialization, move the city, expansion of Western empires, and nationalism (founding of Germany and Italy)


- Early 20th century/1900s: the birth of the metropolis, growing labor unrest, WWI and II, and totalitarian dictatorships


Modernism(s) = ca. 1910-1930 : 

Any of various movements in art, architecture, literature, etc., generally characterized by a deliberate break with classical and traditional forms or methods of expression; the work or ideas of the adherents of such a movement.  In early use usually contemptuous. Now often used spec. with reference to the early 20th cent., esp. in the visual arts. (OED #4)

Overview: Existentialism    Expressionism    Fascism


Existentialism

- WWII ended the international exchange of artistic, scientific ideas that marked the 1920s. Across Europe, the intelligentsia were brutally persecuted (see Fascism below and 1920-1940 in Timeline, above).

-  Post-WWII French intellectual movement with 19th-century roots

- Cross reference Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Nietzsche (1844-1900 [“God is dead”]) with Camus (The Stranger), and Sartre (1905-80 [“Hell is other people”])

- Set of philosophical ideals that emphasizes the existence of the human being, the lack of meaning and purpose in life, and the solitude of human existence.

- Maintains that existence precedes essence.

- The human being has no essence, no essential self, and is no more that what he is. He is only the sum of life is so far he has created and achieved for himself.

- Existentialism = existence precedes essence.


- Good and evil do not exist, only existence. Humans are a product of situations of their own making.


- Symbolized the isolated individual and his abandonment.

- Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1948-49): “Nothing to be done.”



Expressionism (follow this link to Dadaism and Surrealism Page,

which makes mention of Futurism)


Fascism (courtesy of OED)


[ad. It. Fascista, formed as prec.: see -IST.]

One of a body of Italian nationalists, which was organized in 1919 to oppose communism in Italy, and, as the partito nazionale fascista, under the leadership of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), controlled that country from 1922 to 1943; also transf. applied to the members of similar organizations in other countries. Also, a person having Fascist sympathies or convictions; (loosely) a person of right-wing authoritarian [= "Favourable to the principle of authority as opposed to that of individual freedom"] views. Hence as adj., of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Fascism or Fascists.
 

    Hence {smm}fasci{sm}zation, {smm}fascisti{sm}zation, the action or process of making Fascist. Also {sm}fascistize v. trans.

Crimes of Fascism:

- the European (present-day Italy, Germany, France, Netherlands, Czech republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Belgium) Holocaust:

- death of 6 million Jews and tens of thousands of gypsies, homosexuals, and members of Communist parties


- Mass imprisonments of Stalinist regime



Other Characteristics of Fascism:

- can be traced to middle classes of Europe, economic/cultural breakdown after WWI

- hyper-nationalism, jingoism, and the celebration of militarism

- mass imprisonments and arrests of people without due process

-  the cult of personality

- the impulse to exclude groups of people from universal rights


Sources:

Adorno, Theodor, et al. The Authoritarian Personality. New York, 1950.

Larsen, Stein U., Bernt Hagtvet, and Jan P. Myklebust. Who Were the Fascists? Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1980.