Moments that shook the world

2015 anniversaries 

2015 has been full of anniversaries – ways of remembering key events that shaped the course of history:

• 800 years ago this year, English King John was compelled to sign the Magna Carta, establishing that even a monarch was subject to the rule of law
• It is 200 years since the British victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo
• 100 years ago was the desperate defeat of Allied forces in the Dardanelles campaign, during the First World War
• It is 70 years since the declaration of Victory in Europe, marking the defeat and downfall of the Nazi domination of Western Europe – the liberation of their concentration camps helped others see the evils of the regime in all its grisly reality
• It is 25 years since East Germans flooded through the Berlin Wall and it fell, the symbol of division and communist oppression. That same year Nelson Mandela was freed from incarceration 
• Only 10 years ago London was rocked by the efforts of four suicide bombers which left 700 people injured or killed

Why do we memorialise these events? Because they are an anchor as life passes; they remind us of how we lived, what kind of people we were when the event happened.

Many situations in the list above commemorate the overthrow of oppression and control – the impulse of the human spirit for freedom. Events such as the end of war and liberation of Auschwitz altered the way people thought about themselves.

Perspective shifts and the arts

The Elephant Celebes by Max Ernst

It is these shifts in perspective which the arts pick up on. Just as modernist painters reflected the sense of moral disintegration in the aftermath of the First World War, so authors and poets channeled the angst or optimism of the era into their works:

• For example, the looming danger of George Orwell’s novel 1984 picked up on the very real oppression of Stalin when he attempted to blockade West Berlin in1948 (the year in which Orwell wrote his book).

If you are studying literature it is expected that you will understand how events provided a context against which writers created their texts. Indeed, examiners will award 25% of your marks in A Level English Literature on the basis of your ability to:

Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are written and received. 

The World of the Twentieth Century

www.crossref-it.info already has lots of background material to help you make sense of literature up to the end of the Victorian era. Now it has just introduced a new section on site about ‘The World of the Twentieth Century’. Available are eight new articles focusing on key events between 1900 and 2000, such as:

• the two World Wars, the Cold War and conflict in Ireland
• The reshaping of the economy after the Wall Street Crash 
• The shift of power and territory according to ideology in post-war Europe and Palestine 
• The change in society as a result of immigration and integration.

Texts such as The Great Gatsby, The Handmaid’s Tale and Wide Sargasso Sea make better sense when you can place the worlds they depict against the reality which their respective authors faced.

There will be more to come, so keep looking out for updates!