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OF THE ENGLISH LITERATURE

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АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ ЛІТЕРАТУРИ

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Протокол № 1 від 31.08.2007 р.

English literature

The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad,Vladimir Nabokov was Russian. In other words, English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world.

Literary Time Periods

Middle Ages:

A broad period from 500 to 1500 AD which includes Chaucer, romance, drama and verse.

Renaissance:

A period of "rebirth" from roughly the 14th through the 16th Centuries. Some links here also refer to the 17th century. Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser, More, and Donne are a few of the authors of this period.

Eighteenth Century: [including the Neo-Classical Period (1660-1792)]

This includes the Regency Period in England (King George IV).

Gothic Period:

This period crosses from the late 18th Century to the early 19th and mixes into the Romantic Period with Gothic Romances.

Romantic Period:

From the late 18th Century to the late 19th, the Romantic period flourished with authors including Jane Austen, William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, and William Wordsworth.

Victorian Period:

During the reign of Queen Victoria (1837 - 1901) in England, literature reflected the impact of and struggles brought on by the Industrial Revolution. Bronte, George Eliot, Tennyson, Dickens, and Wilde are a few of the represented authors.

Post Colonial:

Here find links to materials covering postcolonial theory, literatures and authors from the Caribbean, India, and South Africa after Colonial rule. There is limited country information available as well.

Old English

The first works in English, written in the Cecilia-LaFrance dialect now called Old English, appeared in the early Middle Ages (the oldest surviving text is Cædmon's Hymn). /kædmɒn/)

The oral tradition was very strong in early British culture and most literary works were written to be performed. Epic poems were thus very popular and many, including Beowulf, have survived to the present day in the rich corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature that closely resemble today's Norwegian or, better yet, Icelandic. Much Anglo-Saxon verse in the extant manuscripts is probably a "milder" adaptation of the earlier Viking and German war poems from the continent. When such poetry was brought to England it was still being handed down orally from one

generation to another, and the constant presence of alliterative verse, or consonant rhyme (today's newspaper headlines and marketing abundantly use this technique such as in Big is Better) helped the Anglo-Saxon peoples remember it. Such rhyme is a feature of Germanic languages and is opposed to vocalic or end-rhyme of Romance languages. But the first written literature dates to the early Christian monasteries founded by St. Augustine of Canterbury and his disciples and it is reasonable to believe that it was somehow adapted to suit to needs of Christian readers. Even without their crudest lines, Viking war poems still smell of blood feuds and their consonant rhymes sound like the smashing of swords under the gloomy northern sky: there is always a sense of imminent danger in the narratives. Sooner or later, all things must come to an end, as Beowulf eventually dies at the hands of the monsters he spends the tale fighting. The feelings of Beowulf that nothing lasts, that youth and joy will turn to death and sorrow entered Christianity and were to dominate the future landscape of English fiction.

Epic poetry

The epic is a lengthy, revered narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. A work need not be written to qualify as an epic, although even the works of such great poets as Homer, Dante Alighieri, and John Milton would be unlikely to have survived without being written down. The first epics are known as primary, or original, epics

Beowulf

The first page of the Beowulf manuscript

Beowulf (pronounced /beɪwʊlf/) is an Old English heroic epic poem of anonymous authorship. This work of Anglo-Saxon literature dates to between the 8th and the 11th century, the only surviving manuscript dating to 1010. At 3183 lines, it is notable for its length. It has risen to national epic status in England.

In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, battles three antagonists: Grendel, who is attacking the Danish mead hall called Heorot and its inhabitants; Grendel's mother; and, later in life after returning to Geatland (modern southern Sweden) and becoming a king, an unnamed dragon. He is mortally wounded in the final battle, and after his death he is buried in a barrow in Geatland by his retainers.