Лекция по английской литературе John Galsworthy

John Galsworthy (1867-1933)

John Galsworthy is one of the outstanding representatives. He was a novelist, dramatist, short-story writer and essayist. He created brilliant realistic pictures of life and typical characters.

John was born in a well-to-do family in Stirrey. His father was a rich lawyer, and he wanted his son to follow the career. John got his first education at home. At the age of fourteen he was sent to Harrow school, a very old and famous public school for boys. At Harrow Galsworthy distinguished himself as an excellent student. After Harrow he studied at Oxford but he did not find his studies in law exciting.

He received an honours degree in law in 1889. But very soon he gave up law for literature.

His first notable work was The Island of Pharisees. Galsworthy gave this name to the English privileged classes. This word is used speaking about self-righteous hypocritical persons.

However he gained popularity only after the publication of The Man of Property – the first part of The Forsyte Saga.

The Forsyte Saga is a great panorama of English life, covering nearly fifty years. It is a family chronicle. The most interesting character is “the man of property”, Soames Forsyte, the typical bourgeois to whom everything is a matter of proprietorship – not only money, and houses, and position, but also works of art, and human hearts and feelings.

The Forsytes estimate people in the same way as they estimate things. A man who can make a great deal of money is a person of importance, deeply respected by the Forsytes.

Egoism, snobbery, contempt for everything “foreign”, a sense of property and money-worship – these are the most characteristic features of the Forsytes. The collision between the sense of property and money-worship, on the one hand, and true love and a keen sense of beauty, on the other, is the main theme of the novel.

It took Galsworthy 22 years to accomplish this monumental work. For The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.

Galsworthy’s mastery lies in his realistic depiction of life and characters and exciting plots.

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