A Brief History of 20th Century Western Literature

Author: Li Mingbin, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-06-01
Features: The content of this book is divided into four volumes based on a four-stage chronological period. Volume I covers 1900-1918, i.e., literature from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the World War I; the second volume covers 1919-1938, i.e., literature between the two World Wars; the third volume covers 1939-1960, including literature during World War II and the post-war period; and the fourth volume covers literature from 1960 to the 1990s. The scope of the book has greatly exceeded the original plan and is now suitable only for graduate students, not for undergraduate teaching purposes. This has prompted us to consider condensing the content, revising it into a textbook suitable for undergraduate university courses, and compiling it into a single volume, with a new title, A Concise History of 20th-Century European and American Literature. Therefore, this (single-volume) book is adapted from the previously published four-volume edition. However, it is not simply a and reduction of the original content, but rather a thorough rewrite. Most of the content has been rewritten by the original sub-editors, while only a small portion has been compressed based on the original material. The principle we followed is "clear context, highlighted key points." Specifically, we merged the historical periods, combining the original four smaller segments into two major historical periods divided by World War II, which are presented as two parts in the book (Volume I and Volume II). The reason for doing this is that while the original periods are clear and reasonable from the perspective of social development, the literary development process within relatively short periods does not show distinct stages. On the other hand, if the literature of this century is divided into the upper and lower halves of the century for comparison, the changes and differences become more apparent.