The English novel—realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long.
The novels of Charles Dickens, full with drama, humor, of vivid characters and complicated plot.
William Makepeace Thackeray is best known for Vanity Fair, satirizes hypocrisy and greed.
Emily Brontë's single novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) was concerned with ethical conflicts and social problems.
George Meredith produced comic novels noted for their psychological perception.
Anthony Trollope was famous for sequences of related novels that explore social and political life in England.
Nonfiction - Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle.
Poetry – Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Plot of a story –series of related events moving from a problem to solution. Exposition, climax, resolution (close&open), suspense, foreshadowing.
Conflict – struggle between opposing forces. Internal – within character. External – between 2 characters/character & natural force.
Characters – active figures. Directdirectly tells character’s personalization. Indirect–describes the character through their physical description through the character words, thoughts & actions. Round –fully developed, a wide & complex range of traits, contradictory actions, difficult to predict. Flat – ½ superficial traits, not fully. Static – don’t change during the story. Dynamic – change as result of the events of a story.
Setting –description of place & time of the story.
Major theme –an idea that the writer repeats in work making it the most significant idea in literary work – central idea. Through feelings of main ch-r, through thought & conservations for dif.ch-r, actions & events.
Civil Peace: Nothing puzzles God. Happy survival. Happy for what he has. His optimism through the whole story, through his whole life. Positive thinking, tries to continue to work for making their life and family better.
Anglo-Saxon Period.Angles, Saxons and Jutes
The earliest works in English Literature: Beowulf (pagan poetry), Caedmon and Cynewulf (religious poetry), Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great (prose). Anglo-Saxon literature, that is, the Old English literature is almost exclusively a verse literature in oral form.
Epic –a long poem about the actions of great men & women/a nations history.
Middle Ages.
Geoffrey Chaucerbrought together Old English & French Influences and forced from them a powerful & individual language. Forerunner of Humanism, the first realistic writer, Father of English poetry, Master of the English language. His masterpiece is “The Canterbury Tales”. He was a genius person who united the various strength of medieval European literature. “The Canterbury Tales” – collection of tales told by pilgrims on their way to tomb of the Saint Thomas Becket (important religious figure). Here pilgrims told about emerge as a vivid personality in his/her own right. Religious, satiric, humorous themes. The Romaunt of the Rose, The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The General Prologue.
Medieval Romance – knight adventures. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a verse romance derived from Celtic legend.
Thomas Malory –prose writer of Middle English Literature. His masterpiece is Death of Arthur. The central concern is with the adventures of Arthur and his famous Knights of the Round Table. It was written in a time of transition when the feudal order was dying. This book have a strong influence on English literature.
William Langland.Piers the Plowman. The poem describes a series of wonderful dreams the author dreamed. Through these dreams, we can see a picture of the life in the feudal England.
Everyman:the most significant morality play in Middle Ages. It deals with human struggle between virtue and vice. Hero, an ordinary man, meets characters who symbolize abstract values and qualities. Middle Ages are widely known for their religious background. Such morality plays were often sponsored by church, as part of religious service. The aim of morality play is to dramatize an incident. The aim of such play is to teach a moral lesson.
Renaissance Period (Elizabethan) –flowering of literary, artistic & development that began in Italy in the XIV century. Italy: Dante, Francesco Petrarca, Leonardo da Vinci.
Key ch-s:religious devotion of MA > new interest in the human place on Earth > humanities development > invention of printing > local languages in education (Latin>local).
Achievements:cultural energy: architecture, new hymns, painting, sculptures, growth of educational institutions.
Poetry.Lyric (experience of author) - feelings of single speaker, not a full story. Narrative – poems.
Sonnet –love poem (lover sufferings & hopes, love relationship), with a certain number of lines (14), certain meter, certain rhyme scheme. Astrophelle and Stella by Philipp Sydney.
Elegy –formal song/lamen/poem that mourns someone’s death.
Ode –long lyric poem that praises something, talks about why the thing is awesome/inspiring, written in an elevated style.
Edmund Spenser.Intricate verse with rich imagination, many sonnets. “The Faerie Queene” is an imaginative epic/long heroic poem dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.
Christopher Marlowe –gifted, lyric poet. Helped to popularize pastoral verse which idealizes the rustic simplicity of rural life in poem The passionate Shepherd to His Love. Tamburlane – thirst for power, The Jew of Malta – greed for riches, Dr. Faustus – thirst for knowledge. 7 deadly sins: pride, covetousness (greed), envy, wrath, gluttony, sloth, lechery (lust). He represents the spirit of the Renaissance, with its rejection of the God-centered universe, and its embrace of human possibility. He resolves, in full Renaissance spirit, to accept no limits, traditions, or authorities in his quest for knowledge, wealth, and power.
William Shakespearebrought the Elizabethan sonnet to new height, changed the pattern & rhyme, scheme. 37 plays. Played at Elizabeth’s court. deep understanding of human nature. Popular because of eloquent language, depth, complexity of the plays.
Tragedy – a play in which disaster befalls on a hero/heroine. Shakespeare's tragedies are associated with a period of gloom and sorrow in his life. He wrote 11 tragedies. Main tragedies are: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Express dissatisfaction with life, the struggle and conflicts between good and evil, between justice and injustice.
Comedy –play in which humorous situation leads to happy resolution. In Sh.comedies the heroes/heroines were sons and daughters of the Renaissance, they trust not in God or King but in themselves. World of youth, dreams, laughter. Appearance of clowns. Put women at a prominent place, they are witty, bold, loving, laughing and faithful. Produced 16 comedies. Main comedies are: Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, and The Twelfth Night.
Prose.English tr-n of the Bible be King James.
Puritan literature (Revolution Period).Puritans - Christian ppl's aim was to purify the original views of religion. Literature expressed sadness, pessimism.
John Milton, John Bunyan –puritan writers.
J.M. –puritan writer, united the strings of the Renaissance & Reformation in his works. “Paradise Lost”, reflects M’s humanistic love & his puritan devotion to God.
John Bunyan –prose writer of the Puritan Age. His masterpiece is The pilgrim’s progress. Religious man’s search for salvation, Christian. City of Destruction, Slough of Despond, Mount Sinai, Wicket Gate, House of the Interpreter, Cross and Sepulchre, Valley of Humiliation, Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, River of God, Doubting Castle, The Delectable Mountains, The Enchanted Ground, The Land of Beulah, The River of Death, The Celestial City, The Pillar of Salt, Hill Difficulty, House Beautiful, Hill Lucre.
Ben Johnson, John Donne –cavalier poetry.
B.J. –poet, encouraged all good disciplines, virtues and supreme state of men. Believed that a person couldn’t be a good poet without being a good man.
J.D. –poet and founder of Metaphysical poetry. Love poems "Valediction forbidding mourning”
Metaphysical poetry –replace the old beliefs with new philosophies, new sciences, new world and new poetry. The works are characterized by mysticism, the poems are highly intellectualized with strange imagery and complicated thought. The themes: love, existence, religion and life.
George Herbert – "the saint of the Metaphysical School". His chief work is a collection The Temple, which includes 160 short poems.
Restoration (Years of Dryden’s Death).Dryden – poet laureate. Satirical poems MacFlecknoe, unflattering portraits of real people of his time, employ lofty heroic language & make fun of their heroes > mock-heroic poems/mock epics. Celebratory poems enlightening spirits prays the achievements of humanity, A song for Saint Cecilia’s Day, an ode in honour of music.
Age of Pope and Swift.Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.
AP’s poetry – neo-classical style, exhibiting wit, elegance & moderation. His mock heroic poem “The rape of the lock” satirizes the absurdities of a war between the genders. AP was also a great literary critic. “Essay on criticism”. At that time the heroic couplet style was a moderately new genre of poetry.
Poet and satirist JS in his great satires presents the older view that human nature is deeply flowed with intellectual & moral limitations. His masterpiece is Gulliver's Travels. But JS is less well known for his poetry.
Pre-Romantic.
William Blake – great English poet. “Songs of Innocence” – his main literary work, collection of poems. Ironic tone, sharp criticism of the society of Blake’s time. Celebrates children and their unadulterated enjoyment of the world around them.
Robert Burns – poet and lyricist. Style is marked by spontaneity, directness, and sincerity. Burns's poetry with knowledge of Classical, Biblical, and English literature. His themes: republicanism and Radicalism.
They provided literature with new themes.A new interest towards the poor and the children. Satire and realism were replaced by sentimentalism and imagination. The poets were melancholic and seek for loneliness.
Classicism X Romanticism:
Source of inspiration:
Classical Greek & Roman Literature, scientific observation of world & logic;
The literature of Middle Ages, examination of the inner world, imagination as the main source.
Interests:
Science technology, elegance refinement, pragmatic attitude;
The mysterious & supernatural, folk traditions, idealistic attitude.
Social concerns:
Stability & harmony in society, the aristocracy, nature should be controlled by humans;
Radical change in society, common people, nature should be untainted.
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are the major Romantic poets and the first generation of Romantics. They helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (collection of poems). WW in his preface to Lyrical Ballads explained the new poetic principles.
George Gordon Byron achieved success after publishing Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a long poem about a wandering of a character. Much of his work reflects the Romantic style. Such Byronic heroes & heroines became a common feature of literature of the Romantic Age. Don Juan – a satiric poem.
John Keats – an English Romantic. The poetry is characterized by sensual imagery. A master of lyrical poetry. Poems based on creativity. His works like Ode on a Grecian Urn & The face of Hyperion.
Percy Shelley – politically radical poet. In poems such as Song to the men of England he urged English lower classes to rebel.
Mary Shelley – novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist. Best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein, about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.
Romantic poets, because of their theories of literature and life, were drawn to lyric poetry; they even developed a new form of ode.
The Victorian Era’s social and cultural context.
Family: strict & repressive upbringing, evere discipline, unemotional parents, “taboo” subjects. Religion: weak authority of English church, poor attendance of parishioners, Church of England no longer seemed to offer solutions for everyday problems, Charles Parwin’s “The Origin of Species” publication lead to controversy.
Leisure: leisure activities began to grow in towns, Cricket, football, swimming pools, libraries, pubs. Characters are city people.
Women: the worst position of women that it had ever been, although there was a Queen on the throne. Wives in Victorian families were regarded as just part of their husband’s property. Florence Nightingale wrote about it. At the end of the century some progress has been made towards the establishment of the right of women to be educated.
Education: the factory act made employers provide education for young workers, compulsory attendance to primary school.
The main genre in English Literature in the Victorian Era.
Novel, nonfiction, poetry.
The English novel—realistic, thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long.
The novels of Charles Dickens, full with drama, humor, of vivid characters and complicated plot.
William Makepeace Thackeray is best known for Vanity Fair, satirizes hypocrisy and greed.
Emily Brontë's single novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) was concerned with ethical conflicts and social problems.
George Meredith produced comic novels noted for their psychological perception.
Anthony Trollope was famous for sequences of related novels that explore social and political life in England.
Nonfiction - Thomas Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle.
Poetry – Alfred, Lord Tennyson
