A Survey of British Literature
I. Early and Medieval Literature (Unit 2)
1. three conquests
2. the medieval period: 476 A. D—the 15th century
3. Anglo-Saxon Period (449-1066):
--oral traditions;
--“Beowulf”: the national epic
--Caedmon: the first known English religious poet
4. Anglo-Norman Period (1066-15th century):
--Popularity of romancens;
--Chaucer: the father of English poetry;
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-Ballads developed;
5. “Beowulf”
--longest; an epic; features (Pagan and Christian coloring; kenning; metaphor)
6. Romance
--Definition: It is a narrative ver of pro singing knightly adventures or other heroic deeds. Romances are popular in the medieval period.
--“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”
7. Geoffrey Chaucer
--the father of English literature/poetry;
--The Canterbury Tales: a double fiction; the Wife of Bath‟s prologue; The Wife of Bath‟s Tale;
heroic couplet)
8. Ballad:
--Definition:A story told in song, usually in four line stanzas, with the 2nd and the 4th lines rhymed.
--Robin Hood Ballads.
9. Appreciation:
--from “Beowulf”
--from “The Canterbury Tales”
II. The Renaissance (Unit 3, Unit 4, Unit 5,Unit 6)
1.three discoveries
2.Renaissance
--a thristing curiosity for classical literature;
--a keen interest in life and human activities.
3.Humanism
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-individualism; the joy of the prent life; reason; the affirmation of lf-worth
--Humanism emphasizes the dignity of human beings and the importance of the prent life.
Humanists voiced their beliefs that man was the center of the univer and man did not only have the right to enjoy the beauty of the prent life, but had the ability to perfect himlf and to perform wonders.
4.Sonnet:
--Definition: It is a poem of 14 lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure; it express a single idea or theme. (Thomas Wyatt first introduced it to England)
5.Shakespearean sonnet:
--Definition: A Shakespearean sonnet consists of three four-line stanzas (called quatrains) and a final couplet compod in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.
6.Blank ver: having a regular meter, but no rhyme. (Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey)
7.Spenrian stanza:
--Definition: Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'Alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme of the lines is "ababbcbcc."
8.Appreciation:
--Edmund Spenr and “The Faerie Queene”(written in blank ver)
--Thomas More and “Utopia”
--Christopher Marlowe‟s Dr. Faustus(Appreication);Tamburlaine;The Jew of Malta; The Passionate Shepherd to His Love;
--Sonnet 18by Shakespeare (“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer‟s Day”): time, mortality, immortality
9.The first English essayist: Francis Bacon (“Of Studies”)
10.Elizabethan theatre—the golden age of English drama;
11.Shakespearean comedies: As You Like It; The Merchant of Venice; A Midsummer Night‘s Dream;
Much Ado About Nothing; Twelfth Night
12.Shakespearean tragedies: Macbeth; King Lear; Hamlet; Othello
13.Shakespearean comedies:
--Features: clowns, rvants, jesters, fools; dramatic irony; mistaken identity, cross-dressing;
--Patterns: The Green World Pattern (Sample: A Mid-summer Night’s Dream)
19. Shakespearean tragedies:
--Features: characters; structure; soliloquy; traveling; the role of fate/chance
20. Appreciation:
--“To be, or not to be” (from Hamlet) (Hamlet‟s dilemma)
--“Tommorrow, tomorrow,…”(from Macbeth) (Mabeth is tired of the world; bored with life;
metaphors:)
III. The Period of Revolution and Restoration (the 17th century) (Unit 7)
1.17th: the beginning of modern England;
2.Cavalier poets:
--Reflected the royalist values;
--Themes: beauty, love, loyalty, morality;
--Style: Direct, short, frankly erotic
--Motto:“Carpe Diem”“Seize the Day”
--Robert Herrick, Ben Johnson, Rochard Lovelace, etc;
--Appreciation: “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” (Herrick; “to ize the day”)
3.Metaphysical school:
--the founder of the Metaphysical school: John Donne
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-conceit: an extended metahpor involving dramatic contrasts or far-fetched comparisons;
--John Donne‟s love poems: “The Flea”;“V alediction: Forbidden Mourning” (Appreciation) --Andrew Marvell: “To His Coy Mistress”
4.Puritan writers:
--John Bunyanh: “The Pilgrim‟s Progress” (a religious allegory)
--John Milton: “Paradi Lost”(bad on The Old Testament) (…Paradi Regained”; “Samson Agonistes”) (Appreciation)
IV. The 18th Century Literature—The Age of Enlightenment (Unit 8 and Unit 9)
1.18th century: the golden age of English novels
2.Enlightenment
--an intellectual movement in Europe in the 18th century;
--Reason as the guiding principle for thinking and action;
--the belief in eternal truth, eternal justice, natural equality ;
--a continuation of Renaissance;
(Belief in the possibility of human perfection through education).
3.Neo-classicism:
--A revival of classical standards of order, harmony, balance, simplicity and restrained
emotion in literature in the 18th century.
--Alexander Pope
4.“Essay on Criticism” by Alexander Pope
--a manifesto of neoclassicism;
--Appreciation: “A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing…”(learning as mountain climbing;
inadequate learning may impair a balanced apprecation of a poem).
5.Realistic novels:
--Jonathan Swift;Gulliver’s Travels; A Modest Proposal; A Tale of a Tub; The Battle of the Books;
--Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe;(Appreciation)
--Henry Fielding: Tom Jones; Joph Andrews; Jonathan Wilde the Great;
6. Sentimentalism
--the middle and later decades of the 18th c.;
--definition: passion over reason, personal instincts over social duties; the return of the patriarchal times; lamenting over the destructive effects of industrialization
--Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Gray, etc.
7. The Graveyard School
--subjects, style;
--Thomas Gray‟s “Elegy written in a country churchyard”: structure; theme; (Appreciation)
8. Pre-romanticism:
--the latter half ot the 18th century;
--Robert Burns: “Auld Lyne Syne”; “A Red, Red Ro”
--William Blake: “Songs of Innocence” “Songs of Experience”; “The Lamb”, “The Tyger”;
9. Richard Bringsley Sheridan: The School for Scandal; The Rivals;
10. Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield; She Stoops to Conquer
V. The Romantic Period (1789-1832) (Unit 10 , Unit 11 and Unit 12)
1.The Romantic period: an age of poetry
2.Romanticism:
--Manifesto of British Romanticism: Lyrical Ballads: co-published by Wordsworth and Coleridge
--Features: individual as the center of all life and experience; from the outer world to the inner
world; Passion; imagination ; Nature; pastoral; past ; Individual freedom; simple and spontaneous expression; symbolic prentations; fantastic elements;
3.English Romantic Poets
--Lake Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey
--The Satanic Poets: Byron; Shelley; Keats
--Lyrical Ballads: the manifesto of the English Movement;
4.William Wordsworth
--“a worshipper of nature”;
--nature and country poems: “I Wanderered Lonely as a Cloud”; “The World is Too Much with us”; “Tintern Abbey”; “To a Butterfly” “The Solitary Reaper”; “Lucy Poems”;
--theories on poetry; “Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its orgin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
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-W ordsworth‟s view of nature: critique of materialism; a source of mental cleanliness; the guardian of the heart; the beneficial influence of nature;
--Appreciation: “I Wanderered Lonely as a Cloud”; “Tintern Abbey”;
5.Samuel Taylor Coleridge:“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
6. George Gordon Byron:
--Byronic Hero: an idealid but flawed anti-hero created by Byron; love of freedom, hatred of tyranny, passionate, rebellious, chivalrous, arrogant, cynical, individualistic, isolated, single-handedly, melancholy
--major poems by Byron: “Childe Harold‟s Pilgrimage”(Byronic Hero); “Don Juan”; “She Walks in Beauty”; “The Isles of Greece” (Appreciation)
7. Percy Bysshe Shelley:
--Plato‟s influence; pantheism
--“Prometheus Unbound”; “Ode to the West Wind”“Prometheus Unbound”; “Ode to a Skylark”;
“Queen Mab”; “A Defen of Poetry”;
-- Appreciation : “Ode to the West Wind”: themes of death and rebirth; destruction and regeneration;
8. John Keats
-- “Ode on a Grecian Urn”; “Ode to a Nightingale”; “Ode to Autumn”; “Endymion”; “Isabella”
--Appreciation: “Ode on a Greican Urn”: the powers and limitations of art
VI The Victorian Literature (1832-1901) (Unit 13 and Unit 14)
1. Authors and Works
--William Makepeace Thackray: Vanity Fair
--George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss; Silas Marner; Middlemarch; Adam Bede
--Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice: Emma; Sen and Sensibility; Mansfield Park
--Thomas Hardy: Far from the Madding Crowd; Tess of the D’Urbervilles; Jude the Obscure; The Return of the Native; The Mayor of Casterbridge
--Charlotte Bronte:Jane Eyre; Shirley;
--Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
--Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest; A Woman of No Importance
--Walter Scott: Ivanhoe;
1.Bronte Sisters and the Female Gothic Tradition:
--Female Gothic refers to the tradition of Gothic writing by women . . . that reprents the female experience within domesticity as one of imprisonment, claustrophobia and terror.
2.Appreciation:
--Jane Eyre by Charolotte Bronte;
--Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte;
3.Naturalism
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-Definition:Heredity and social environment as the sha ping forces of one‟s character; to determine "scientifically" the underlying forces influencing the actions of the characters.
pessimism; fatalism; detached perspective;
--Appreciation: “Tess of D‟Urbervilles” by Thomas Hardy
4.Aestheticism
--Oscar Wilde
4. Charles Dickens:
--Oliver Twist; David Copperfield; A Tale of Two Cities; Hard Times; Great Expectations; The Pickwick Papers; Little Dorrit
5. Poets
--Alfred Tennyson: “Break, Break, Break”
--Robert Browning: “My Last Duchess” (dramatic monologue)
--Mathew Arnold: “Dover Beach” (Appreciation)
6.Thomas Hardy
--“Shakespeare of the English novel.”
--novels of character and environment: Far from the Madding Crowd; Tess of the D’Urbervilles;
Jude the Obscure
--fatalism;
--naturalistic tendencies;
7. George Bernard Shaw
--the greatest Irish dramatist in the 20th c.
--a member of the Fabian society; reformist ideas
--Plays: Mrs. Warren’s Profession; Major Barbara
8. John Galsworthy
--The Forsyte Saga: The Man of Property, In Chancery, and To Let.
--Analysis: The Man of Property
VII. The Modern Period (Unit 15)
1. Modernism:
--theorectical basis;
--innovative forms;
--thematic concerns;
3. Steam of consciousness novel:
--Bergson‟s theory of ps ychological time;
--Definition:The style of writing that attempts to imitate the natural flow of a character‟s thoughts, feelings, reflections, memories, and mental images as the character experiences them.
--Virginia Woolf and James Joyce
4. Virginia Woolf
--“Modern Fiction” (attacked the traditional way of novel-writing)
--Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthou; The Waves
--Mrs. Dalloway: appreciation
5. James Joyce
