- •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. English Satire: j.Swift.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Anglo-Irish satirist and political pamphleteer is considered to be one of the greatest masters of English prose. His many pamphlets, prose, letters, and poetry were all marked by highly effective and economical language.
His first book was connected with the battle. William Temple, the diplomat and writer for whom J. Swift worked as a secretary, ordered him to write a pamphlet “The Book of Battles”, a discussion between the representatives of the classical and Modern trends in literature. Later J. Swift got a post of a minister in the Catholic Church in one of the villages and published his books anonymously.
Esther Johnson (Stella) was his beloved who inspired him to produce the best love letters in the world.
J. Swift got mixed in all kinds of political, social and religious events. He wrote “Tale of a Tub” (сказка о бочке) – an allegory dealing with the problem of religious argument. The idea of a ‘tub’ – empty vessels make the greatest sounds. On the surface it is a story of three brothers arguing over their father’s last will. Before his death Father (Christianity) leaves his coat to his sons Peter (Catholic), Martin (Protestant) and Jack (Puritan) and forbids changing anything in it. For 7 years they kept it safe and then they decided to change it because it seemed out of date to them. In his work Swift satirizes religious doctrine.
Swift moves to London and gets involved in politics, publishes a lot of pamphlets. His satires have one very interesting peculiarity: if you don’t understand the message, you can take it for the opposite. “A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture”. Message: for the Irish to boycott English goods, English money. The situation in Ireland was dramatic. Swift was the witness of the 1st wave of Irish immigration. “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of the Poor to Be a Burden to Their Parents of the Country or for Making Them Beneficial to the Public” (1729). The pamphlet is outrageous. He tried to save the whole Irish nation.
“Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver” , first a sergeant and then a captain of several ships became his best masterpiece. It was published anonymously in 1726; it met with instant success. Swift's satire was originally intended as an allegorical and acidic attack on the vanity and hypocrisy of contemporary courts, statesmen, and political parties, but in the writing of his book, which is presumed to have taken more than six years, he incorporated his ripest reflections on human society. Gulliver's Travels is, therefore, a savagely bitter work, mocking all humankind. Nonetheless, it is so imaginatively, wittily, and simply written that it became and has remained a favorite children's book.
Swift's last years, after the death of Stella, were overshadowed by a growing loneliness and dread of insanity. He suffered frequent attacks of vertigo (головокружение), and a period of mental decay ended with his death on October 19, 1745. He was buried in his own cathedral beside the coffin of Stella. His epitaph, written by him in Latin, reads "Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift, D.D., dean of this cathedral, where burning indignation can no longer lacerate (причинять боль) his heart. Go, traveler, and imitate if you can a man who was an undaunted (бесстрашный)champion of liberty."