Huxley, Aldous. (1894 - 1963).
W o r k
- well-read and self-consciously literary: in his titles uses phrases of Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, and others
- author of satirical pictures of the self-conscious pursuit of modernity on the part of his characters
Crome Yellow (1921):
- concerned with a scientific future in which "impersonal generation will take the place of Nature's hideous system"
Antic Hay (1923)
Those Barren Leaves (1925)
Point Counter Point (1928):
- attempts a "musicalization of fiction"
<=> an analogy with musical counterpoint: offers glimpses of diverse experience seemingly observed simultaneously
- counterpoint = a harmony between two or more different voices
Brave New World (1932):
- his Dystopian masterpiece
- challenges scientific optimism about the future
- claims that individual freedom is rooted in literature and religion
- conclusion: the character of Savage chooses the precarious freedom of being unhappy rather than to comply to the controlled and sterile scientific world
Eyeless in Gaza (1936):
- his formally most experimental novel
- employes difficult unchronological shifts in time and perspective
Quote
"We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been good for truth, of course. But it's been good for happiness."
From Brave New World (1932).
Basics
(Photo: Britannica).
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Author
Aldous Leonard Huxley. (1894 - 1963). British. -
Work
Novelist. Author of Brave New World (1932). -
Genres
Modern novel. Science Fiction. Dystopia.
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.