Ideological Breakthrough And Artistic Dilemma:The Study On The Anti-tradition Thought Of Osbert Sitwell

Osbert Sitwell(1892-1969)is a famous modern British writer and art critic.He lived at the turn of the century,when the conservative ideas of the Victorian era were still present in British society.The siege of the old ideas inspired a new generation of young people to rebel against them,and Osbert acted in many ways to rebel against and break away from traditional authority.Based on the close reading of Osbert’s literary works,and combined with the reality of his life,I would like to comb the specific manifestations of Osbert’s unconventional performance,and analyze his anti-tradition concept in this paper.Western anti-tradition thought has a deep historical accumulation,and it was born out of the awakening of subject consciousness and the emancipation of thought.Osbert was in a period of social transition when old and new ideas were in fierce conflict.His unique personal experience,combined with the influence of the British elite cultural circle,led him to develop a strong sense of rebellion.Guided by this consciousness,Osbert’s moral,political and aesthetic discourses were a comprehensive attack on the dominant social discourse of the time.In his subversion of authority,it is easy to see his active pursuit of human nature and artistic freedom.Osbert draws on elements of modernist painting and transposes avant-garde visual art into his fiction.In addition,he expands the scope of traditional techniques through innovative experiments with irony,parody,absurdity and symbolism.However,Osbert’s anti-traditionalism is not a complete destruction of the old.While breaking away from the established rules,his reconstructed ideology is also close to the pulse of society.Such humanistic care consciousness and humanitarian tendency make him keep realistic creation methods in his works,thus falling into an artistic dilemma.Osbert’s duality of tradition and modernity,to a certain extent,represents the literary perplexity faced by intellectuals in the period of cultural transformation,which is of universal significance.Moreover,This radical anti-traditional thought were a strong stimulus to the writers at that time,which encouraged them to constantly break through and innovate the tradition.Osbert’s anti-tradition thought still has an indelible influence heretofore,which urges us to re-examine and reflect on the tradition.It still has profound practical significance.