"Angry young people" , or "Angry young people" ( Eng. Angry young men ), - the designation of a group of writers of a critical direction in British literature, established in the 1950s [1] .
Content
Term
This term was first used in a review of John Osborne 's play “ Look Back in Anger ” ( 1956 ) and extended to the whole group of English prose writers and playwrights who raised similar themes in their work in the same period. It is believed that the term goes back to the title of Angry young man’s autobiography of Leslie Paul , published in 1951 .
Creative Features
The main theme of the work of “angry young people” was the protest of the hero - usually from the working or middle class - against the surrounding reality of the 1950s in the UK.
So, the main character "Look Back in Anger" Jimmy Porter saw the world like this:
Everyone is indifferent. Everyone is in a state of rapturous laziness. I’ll soon be stunned by you. I'm sure you set your goal to drive me crazy. Oh my god, how I want at least some kind of spiritual uplift, even quite a bit. Just hear a warm, soulful voice - “Lord! I'm alive! ”There is a thought - let's play a little? Let's pretend that we are human beings and really live. Why not laugh around for a laugh? Pretend we're human. [2]
Often, the authors gave the protest a social, "left" character, demonstrating that it was directed against "bourgeois" social values [1] . The leaders of this literary direction are the already mentioned John Osborne and Kingsley Amis [3] . In addition to them, John Brain , John Wayne and other authors are counted among the "angry".
Artwork
The following works of “angry young people” are best known:
- Look back in anger - a play by J. Osborne
- “Taste of Honey” - a play by Shila Delaney
- “The Comedian” - a play by J. Osborne
- "The Way Up" and the continuation of "Life Above" - John Brain's novels
Angry Young People in Cinema
The literary movement of “angry young people” has generated a response in the cinema, where a number of directors and screenwriters have created films on the same topics as “angry” writers, mostly based on their literary works. Such paintings include Jack Clayton 's Way Up , Taste of Honey , Tony Richardson 's Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner , Lindsay Anderson, and Such Is a Sporting Life and others.
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Angry young people - article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia . [ specify link ]
- ↑ J. Osborne. Take a look in anger. Per. D.Urnov. Moscow, publishing house "Art", 1978
- ↑ Fargis, Paul. The New York Public Library Desk Reference - 3rd Edition. - Macmillan General Reference, 1998 .-- P. 261-262. - ISBN 0-02-862169-7 .