Namangan davlat universiteti ingliz filologiyasi fakulteti amaliy ingliz tili kafedrasi

12-Mavzu. 
Literature of the XX century. 
The 19
th
century in England gave rise to a rapid growth of social contradictions. These
contradictions found their reflection in literature , too. The representatives of the first trend
continued the realistic traditions of their predecessors. It was represented by such writers
as George Eliot , George Meredith , Samuel Butler , Thomas Hardy. These novelists gave a
truthful picture of contemporary society. 
The writers of the second trend by way of protest against severe reality tried to
lead the reader away from life into the world of dreams and fantasy , into the realm of
beauty. The decadent art , appreciated the outer from of art more than the content. 
The writers saw the vices of the bourgeois world , and in some of their works we
find a truthful and critical description of contemporary life , on the whole their inner world
lacks depth. 
The decadent writers created their own cult of beauty and proclaimed the theory of
“ pure art ” ; their motto was “ art for art’s sake ”.
The end of the 19
th
century also created writers who were interested in human
society as a whole , and a new type of writer who was preoccupied with the future of
mankind.
THOMAS HARDY

( 1840 – 1928 ) . 
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840, in southwestern England , western Dorsetshire. At
the age of fifteen Hardy began to study architecture , and in 1861 he went to London to
begin a career. There he tried poetry , then a career as an actor , and finally decided to
write fiction. 
Hardy aimed his fiction at serial publication in magazines , where it would most
quickly pay the bills. Not forgetting an earlier dream , he resolved to keep his tales “ as
near to poetry in their subject as the conditions would allow ” . His first success , “ Far
from thee Madding Crowd ” , was followed by “ The Return of the Native ” , “ The Mayor
of Casterbridge ” , and “ Tess of the D’Urbervilles ” .
In 1874 he married and in 1885 built a remote country home in Dorset. From 1877
on he spent three to four months a year in fashionable society , while the rest of the time
he lived in the country.
In 1895 his “ Jude the Obscure ” was so bitterly criticized , that Hardy decided to
stop writing novels altogether and returned to an earlier dream. In 1898 he published his
first volume of poetry. Over the next twenty – nine years Hardly completed over 900 lyrics.
His verse was utterly independent of the taste of his day. He used to say : “ My poetry
was revolutionary in the sense that I meant to avoid the jeweled line. … ” 
Thomas Hardy has been called the last of the great Victorians. He died in 1928.
His ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey , but , because of his lasting relationship with
his home district , his heart is buried in Wessex.