- •Literature of the Middle Ages
- •1. Anglo-Saxon Period
- •1.1 Old English Poems
- •1.2 Old English Lyrics
- •1.3 Old English Prose.
- •2. Anglo-Norman Period
- •2.1 Middle English Poems. G. Chaucer.
- •2.2 First English Plays: drama, comedy, interlude.
- •Literature of the Renaissance
- •1. Poetry and prose: t.Wyatt, e.Surrey, e.Spencer, Ch.Marlowe etc.
- •2. Drama: w.Shakespear.
- •1. Poetry and prose: t.Wyatt, e.Surrey, e.Spencer, Ch.Marlowe etc.
- •2. Drama: w.Shakespear.
- •Literature of the Enlightenment
- •2. English Satire: j.Swift.
- •3. Novelists: t.Jones, h.Fielding, t.Smollet, l.Stern, o.Goldsmith.
- •Romanticism
- •1. Conservatives (the older ones) “The Lake Poets”
- •2. Progressive revolutionary romanticists.
- •1. Conservatives (the older ones) “The Lake Poets”
- •English literature of the 19th century Early Victorian literature: the age of the novel
- •2.1 Jane Austen
- •2.2 Charles John Huffam Dickens
- •2.3 William Makepeace Thackeray
- •2.4 Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
- •2.5 Brontë
- •English literature of the 2nd half of the 19th century
- •1.1 George Eliot
- •1.2 George Meredith
- •1.3 Thomas Hardy
- •1.4 Lord Alfred Tennyson
- •1.5 Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- •1.6 Algernon Charles Swinburne
- •Aestheticism. Neoromanticism. Realism.
- •2. Oscar Wild and his Programme.
- •3. Neoromanticism
- •3.1 Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
- •3.2 Joseph Conrad
- •3.3 (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
- •4. Realism
- •4.1 Herbert George Wells
- •4.2 John Galsworthy
- •English literature of the first half of the 20th century modernism
- •1.1 James Augustine Aloysius Joyce
- •1.2 David Herbert Lawrence
- •1.3 Virginia Woolf
- •1. 4 Aldous Leonard Huxley
- •1.5 Thomas Stearns Eliot
- •2. The 20th –century drama: George Bernard Shaw
- •Literature between the two world wars
- •1.2 Evelyn Waugh
- •1.3 Sean o' Casey
- •1.4 John Boynton Priestley
- •1.1 John James Osborne
- •1.2 Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Shelagh Delaney, Arnold Wesker, James Aldridge
- •2. Novelists.
- •2.1 Henry Graham Greene
- •2.2 Charles Percy Snow
- •3. New literary Trends. Working-class novel.
- •3.1 Alan Sillitoe
- •1.1 Sir William Gerald Golding
- •1.2 Colin Henry Wilson
- •1.3 Dame Jean Iris Murdoch
- •1.4 Margaret Drabble
- •2. Postmodernism
2. Drama: w.Shakespear.
The most outstanding dramatist of the period is justifiably considered to be W. Shakespeare (1564-1616). Little is known about Shakespeare’s life. We only know that he had a family in his home town, became an actor and came to London before 1589, and spent most of his life in London. His success as a playwright enabled him to retire to Stratford, where he died and was buried in the local church as a wealthy and a much respected citizen. His plays show a great understanding of human activities of all kinds. In them, he very skillfully uses many different literary styles to express a wide range of emotions. Shakespeare’s plays were popular not only with aristocrats, intellectuals and monarchs but also with ordinary people. There was something in them for everyone. The plays are usually described as comedies, tragedies and histories but this is an oversimplification as many of them do not fall neatly into any one category. Shakespeare spent most of his career in London as an actor, playwright, and manager of the Globe Theatre, the theatre, where many of his great plays were first performed. Shakespeare himself acted at the Globe. It burned and was rebuilt shortly before Shakespeare’s death, and was finally pulled down in the middle of the 17th century. Shakespeare’s poems, especially his sonnets, show his extraordinary powers of expression and his depth of emotional understanding. His work has had a great influence on English and many familiar sayings and quotations come from his works, many of his expressions have become part of the language. He is the author of 2 poems, 37 plays, and 154 sonnets.
Shakespeare’s creative work is traditionally divided into 3 periods differing in genres and dominant mood:
1) The 1st (1590-1600) was marked by the optimism and cheerfulness. In this decade he produced 9 out of 10 his historical chronicles (plays written on subjects from national history) form another group of plays. They are “King Henry VI”, Parts I, II and III, “The Tragedy of King Richard III”, “The Life and Death of King John”, his sonnets and most of his comedies, and among them “The 12th Night”, “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, “The Comedy of Errors”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “Much Ado About Nothing”, “The Taming of the Shrew”, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”. The drama “The Merchant of Venice” and the two early tragedies “Romeo and Juliet”, “Julius Caesar” show a change in the playwright’s understanding of life, whose approach to reality becomes more pessimistic.
2) (1601-1608) Main works “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark”, “Macbeth”, “Othello”, “King Lear”. Like his historical chronicles they are based on the same historical material so Shakespeare never converted the plot himself. The main difference between a chronicle and a tragedy is that in chronicles he centered attention at main political and historical events that took place during a reign of some king and traced the main processes that were under way then. While in the tragedies he posed mostly moral universal problems of human relations. His contribution to the art of tragedy lies in the fact that besides the outer conflict that any tragedy had been always based on, he introduced the so-called “inner conflict” which presented no less interest. Tragedy presents events caused by the conflict between the protagonist and some outer antagonistic force which may be embodied by one man or a group of people or Destiny. Shakespeare showed the discord in the heart, soul, mind of the main character, the struggle between Good and Evil inside the protagonist. His tragedies are very psychological: “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” is a tragedy of mind, “Macbeth” is a tragedy of extreme vanity, “Othello” is a tragedy of deceived faith, “King Lear” is the tragedy of false grandeur. Shakespeare touched upon the moral problems of the universal importance: honesty, cruelty, love, vanity and so on. That is why his tragedies are of great interest to every new generation.
3) (1609-1616) The plays of the period are different from anything written by Shakespeare before. He still touches upon important social and moral problems, but now he suggests utopian solutions to them. He introduces romantic and fantastic elements which have a decisive role in his plays. Due to these peculiarities the works of this period such as “Tempest”, “The Winter’s Tale” are called romantic dramas.
The Decline of the Renaissance (1603-1649)
After Elizabeth I’s death the Stuarts became the rulers of England. At the very beginning of the Stuart`s reign, the religious balance between Anglicans and Puritans was lost. There were several clashes between King Charles and the Parliamentary forces. In 1642 the King was defeated, tried, found guilty in treason, and executed in 1649. England was declared a commonwealth under the jurisdiction of Parliament.
During this period a group of metaphysical poets, led by John Donne appeared. Their poetry was marked by such things as: intense feeling combined with ingenious thought; elaborate, witty images; an interest in mathematics, science and geography; an overriding interest in the soul; and direct, colloquial expression even in sonnets and lyrics.
Apart from John Donne, other metaphysical poets include Henry King, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Abraham Cowley, Andrew Marvell and Henry Vaughan.
Drama continued to develop. Drama remained a popular form of entertainment until the Puritan government closed all playhouses in 1649.
Lecture 3