• Modernism
• World Wars I and II
• Colonialism and Post-colonialism

Discussion Questions:
1011:

• In what ways, according to the editors, did modernity disrupt the old order?
• Explain the significance of Sigmund Freud.
• Explain the significance of  Friedrich Nietzsche.

1012:

• Describe the ways in which the position of women changed during the early Modern period.

1013:

• What is the British Commonwealth?

1016:

• Describe the aftermath of World War II for the British Empire.

• Describe the imagist movement.

1027:

• Explain: "Reality and its truth had gone inward" (1027).

1028:

• What does stream of consciousness involve?

1033:

• Describe the Theater of the Absurd.

• According to the editors, how did the aestheticism movement alienate the modern artists from society?

1010:

• Explain the significance of the Education Act of 1870.
• What is stoicism?

• Explain T. S. Eliot's argument in "Tradition and the Individual Talent."

• What are the characteristics of the Edwardian and Georgian periods?

• When did the Irish Free State achieve independence?

• What did "colonization in reverse" involve?

1017:

• Describe the significance, according to the editors, of Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech of 1968.

• Describe the role of the IRA in British politics.

• Explain T. S. Eliot's role in the "modernist revolution."

• Describe the New Apocalypse.
• Describe "The Movement."

• Describe the writings of the post-colonial poets.

• Describe the three periods of the twentieth-century novel.

• Explain: "Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake were influential but unrepeatable" (1029).

• Explain the "fear that the postmodern novelist was condemned to a disabled career of parroting old stuff" (1030).

• Explain the stance of post-colonial novelists.

• Where did the century's first major theatrical movement originate?

• Describe the innovations of Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard.