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AN - Anglická literatúra (Bc.) (literatura-bc.doc)

1. Critical approaches to the study of literature

A number of critical theories or approaches for the understanding and interpreting literature are available. Many of them have been developed during the 20th century to create a discipline of literary studies comparable with other sciences. Critical approaches (theories) aim to answer questions like:

What is literature?

What does it do?

How does it get its idea across?

How valuable was literature in the past and in the present time?

To what degree is literature an art and when it is the instrument of imparting knowledge?

What can it contribute to history?

How is literature used or misused?

Criticism is concerned not only with reading and interpreting but also establishing theoretical understanding.

Since 1920s and 1930s various approaches provide divergent ways to study literature and literary problems. They reflect major tendencies and it is to say that not every approach is appropriate for every work.

There are 5 Reference points in literary and critical theory:

1. language and the mechanics of literary language
2. the work itself
3. society an the historical background
4. the author
5. the reader

Most schools of literary and critical theory can be defined by their attitude to one or all of these factors.

Literary Theories and Critical Approaches

Moral / Intelectual

- as old as literature itself, it will be valuable al song as readers expect literature to be applicable to their own lives

- it is based on tradition, religion & philosophy

- there are archetypes

- medium to transform ideas in moral lessons

- What does the work contain? How strongly does the work bring forth its ideas? What applications does the idea have to the characters and situations?

Topical / Historical

- it deals with background knowledge rather than with literature itself

- When was the work written? What were the circumstances?

- What major issues does it deal with? How does it fit into the author’s career?

- New Historicism = justifies the introduction of historical knowledge by integrating it with the understanding of particular texts. It represents an integration of knowledge and interpretation

New Critical / Formalist

- it began in the 1930s and 1940s

- it has been dominant in literary studies to the degree that New Criticism focuses upon literary texts as formal works of art

- they avoid direct contact with the text

- the inspiration was the French practice of explication de texte = a method that emphasizes detailed examination and explanation of the text

- it is best in the formal analysis of smaller units such as poems or short passages

- What specifically does a work say?

- it has been criticized for stressing the texts alone fails to deal with literary value

- the text is independent from any other context

- lit. works have their own identity not depend on society or history

Structuralist

- the principle stems from the attempt to find relationships and connections among elements that appear to be separate

- the main character stresses that he/she is an active protagonist who undergoes a test

- it determinates that some protagonists are active or submissive; that they pass or fail their tests

- it makes great use of linguistics

Feminist criticism

- based on the idea that most literature presents a masculine – patriarchal view in which the role of women is negated or minimized

- it became established in the late 1960s

- it is more dynamic that any other literary or critical theory

- feminist critics can write form any other approach under the general umbrella of Feminist Criticism

- the feminist view attempts to show that writers of traditional lit. have ignored women and have prejudiced views of them, to stimulate the creation of a critical milieu, to recover the works of women writers

- it focuses on questions like how important are the female characters? Are they credited with their won existence and own character? How are they treated in relationships with men?

Economic Determinist/ Marxist

- bases its outlook on the philosophy and principles of K.Marx and F.Engels

- they believe that literature can only be understood by being viewed in context with history and society

- in any age humans work to an ideology, a superstructure of ideas

- the bourgeoisie are distinct from the proletariat

- Marxist criticism is anti-Formalist and relatively little interested in linguistics

- there is an economic perspective: What is the economic status of the characters? What happens to them as a result of this status? What do they do against the economic and political situation?

Psychological / Psychoanalytic / Sociological

- based on the psychodynamic theory established by Sigmund Freud

- a new key to the understanding of character by claiming that behaviour is caused by hidden and unconscious motives

- critics treat lit. somewhat like  information about patients in therapy

- How purposeful is this information with regard to the character’s psychological condition? How much is important in analyzing and understanding the character?

- What are the particular life experiences? Was the author’s life happy or miserable?

Archetypal / Symbolic / Mythic

- it supports the claim that the very best literature is grounded in archetypal patterns

- it sprang form 2 sources: the School of Comparative Anthropology at Cambridge and the book which came to symbolize some of its views – Fraser’s The Golden Bough

- it derived form the work of the Swiss psychoanalyst C.Jung, presupposes that human life is built up out of patterns – archetypes that are similar throughout various cultures and historical times

- How does an individual story fit into an of the archetypal patterns? What truths adios these correlations provide? How closely does the work fit the archetype? What variations can be seen?

- some of the major myths in literature that have been delineated are the death-rebirth cycle, the search for healing and regeneration, the Promethean rebel-her saga, the defeat of the monster myth, the Frankenstein myth, the Faustian myth

Deconstructionist

- it was developed by the French critic J.Derrida

- in the 1970s and 1980s it became a major but also controversial mode of criticism

- it produces a type of analysis that stresses ambiguity and contradiction

- a major principle of deconsturctivism is that Western thought has been logocentric

- their point of view is that there is no central truth because circumstances and time are changeable and arbitrary

- this analysis leads to the declaration “all interpretation is misinterpretation”

- they attack on correct, privileged or accepted readings; there is the theory of “linguistic instability”

Reader – Response

- it is rooted in phenomenology – the phenomenological idea of knowledge is that reality is to be found not in the external world itself but rather in the mental perception of the externals

- phenomenology was developed by M.Heidegger in Germany, but it is often shorthand for the Geneva School of critics

- the phenomenological concept, the reader-response theory holds that the reader is a necessary third party in the author-text-reader relationships that constitutes the literary work.

- What does the work mean to me, in my present intellectual an moral makeup? What particular aspects of my life can help me understand the work?

This theory is open, it permits readers to bring their own personal reactions to literature but it also aims to increase the discipline and skills of readers

PERIODS AND MOVEMENTS

GLOSSARY

2. Old English Literature

Anglo-Saxon literature

Anglo-Saxon is the name given to the people and sometimes the Old English language after the colonisation of Britain in the fifth century AD by tribes of Germanic origin: the Angles (who conquered the north), the Saxons (who conquered the south) and the Jutes (who conquered the southeast).

- 5th century great migration: also Romans (brought Christianity) and Scandinavians

The Celts:

- migrated to Britain from central and western Europe about 1000 BC.

- their language belonged to the Indo-European family (survived in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and Cornwall)

- division of their language:

a. Galic - nowadays Scottish, Irish

b. Britonic - now represented by Welsh, Britton, Cornish

The development of English language:

- old English (inflected)

- middle English

- modern English (analytic)

Old English

- spoken in very different dialects until 1066, when England was invaded by William the Conqueror & the Normans, who were descended from Scandinavian adventurers. It was a heavily inflected language, that is, the words changed form to indicate person, number, tense, case, & mood, & its vocabulary was almost entirely Germanic. After conversion to Christianity became more general in the 7th century, some of the Old English poems, until then passed on only orally, were written down, and probably modified, by monks. Only about 30 000 lines of these poems have survived. For about 500 years, almost all Old English verse had the following characteristics:

1. each line - made up of 2 half-lines, separated by a caesura (a pause) and joined by alliteration;
2. each half-line consisted of two 'feet' (a 'foot' contains a number of unstressed syllables and a stressed syllable);
3. the alliteration linking the two half-lines fell on the stressed syllables (at least one of the main stresses in the first half-line began with the same consonant sound as the first main stress in the second half-line);
4. words beginning with the same consonant had the same sound and therefore alliterated (unlike in modern English);
5. a word beginning with a vowel was regarded as 'alliterating' with any other word beginning with a vowel even if that vowel sound was not the same.

Literary scene

Genres:

1. Narrative secular poetry

2. Lyrical secular poetry

3. Shorter poetical works (riddles, charms ...)

4. Religious poetry (Seadmon, Sinewulf)

5. Works written in Latin (Wenerable Bede)

6. Old English prose (Alfred the Great)

1. Narrative secular poetry:

   Beowulf

  The Battle of Maldon

   The battle of Finsberg

* there are heroic deeds and it has also a plot

Beowulf:

- the oldest narrative poem, written in 8th cent. (also an epic poem)

- passed orally

- 1st written version found in 10th cent.

- composed for hearing not for reading (there is repetition of certain words to remember it easily)

- through the poem, we get to know many things about the Anglo-Saxon habits

- Beowulf was a young strong man who kills the monster (= Grendell); the story ends with the funeral of this hero

The Battle of MALDoN:

- the greatest battle poem in English (that really happened in the year 991)  

- It is an Anglo-Saxon (Old English) poem by an unknown poet. It describes a battle between the English and Viking warriors from Denmark in AD 991 at Maldon in Essex on the River Blackwater, then called the River Pantan.

The Danish invaders are on the island of Northey at the mouth of the river waiting for the tide to go out. Byrhtnoth, the earl of Essex, is at the head of the English warriors on the mainland. A messenger from the Danes offers peace if they pay a sum of money. Byrhtnoth, however, rejects the offer. Then the tide begins to go out and Byrhtnoth, far too confident, is tricked into letting the enemy cross to the mainland.

2. Lyrical secular poetry:

- sentimental:

  The Sea Farer (reflects hardness of the sea - weather, storm etc.)

  The Wanderer

  Wife’s complaint

  Lover's Message (loss of beloved person)

3. Shorter poetical works:

- pagan tradition believed in magic forces; therefore they wrote: charms (zaklínadlá), riddles (hádanky), gnomic verses (ľudové múdrosti)

4. Religious poetry:

caedmon

– 1st who wrote religious poetry, very humble and modest man

- a legend says that there was a festival where all people should sing a song which would worship God; because Seadmon was too humble thinking that he is unable to sing went away of the festival; in dream God asked him to sing for him - so the Hymn of creation was written

  A Hymn of Creation (1670)

cynewulf

  St. Helene

  The Fates of the Apostles

  Christ

  Life of St. Juliana

  The Dream of the Root (drevo na ktorom zomrel Ježiš)

* not known whether it was written really by him

5. Works written in Latin:

Venerable Bede - a monk and scholar    The Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Alcuin

Aldhelm

6. Old English prose:

Alfred the Great

- was the most prominent king of Wessex

- during his reign was the revival of education (colleges, he taught people write and read)

- supporter of culture / education

- made several translations (eg. works of Augustin)

  Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

        - list of historical events → the diary from 9th - 11th cent

        - great literary value

OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE

        The Old English period extends from about 450 to 1066, the year of the Norman-French conquest of England. The Germanic tribes from Europe who overran England in the 5th century, after the Roman withdrawal, brought with them the Old English language, which is the basis of Modern English. They brought also a specific poetic tradition, the formal character of which remained surprisingly constant until the termination of their rule by the Norman-French invaders six centuries later.
        The Old English language, also called Anglo-Saxon, was the earliest form of English. It does not change suddenly so it’s difficult to give exact dates for the rise and development of a language, but perhaps we can say that Old English was spoken from about A.D. 600 to about 1100. The old language cannot be read now except by those who have made a special study of it.

        Much of Old English poetry was probably intended to be chanted, with harp accompaniment, by the Anglo-Saxon scope, or bard. Often bold and strong, but also mournful and elegiac in spirit, this poetry emphasises the sorrow and ultimate futility of life and the helplessness of humans before the power of fate. Almost all this poetry is composed without rhyme, in a characteristic line, or verse, of four stressed syllables alternating with an indeterminate number of unstressed ones. This line strikes strangely on ears habituated to the usual modern pattern, in which the rhythmical unit, or foot, theoretically consists of a constant number (either one or two) of unaccented syllables that always precede or follow any stressed syllable.

The oldest and greatest monument of the Old English period is the poem Beowulf, an old Germanic legend, which belongs to the seventh century.  It is a story of about 3000 lines and it is the first English epic. It’s preserved in the well-known Cotton Manuscript. The name of its author is unknown.

Beowulf is about a brave young man, Beowulf, from southern Sweden, who goes to help Hrothgar, King of the Danes, because he’s in trouble. His great hall Heorot is visited at night by a terrible creature, Grendel, which lives in a lake and comes to kill and eat Hrothgar´s men. One night Beowulf waits secretly for it, attacks it and in a fierce fight pulls its arm off. It manages to reach the lake again, but dies there. Then its mother comes to the hall in search of revenge and attacks begin again. Beowulf follows her to the bottom of the lake and kills her there.

In later days, Beowulf, now king of his people, has to defend his country against a fire-breathing creature. He kills the animal but is badly wounded in the fight and dies. The poem ends with a sorrowful description of Beowulf’s funeral fire.

Beowulf has its own value and its own special place in the Old English literature. It gives us and interesting picture of life in those old days. It tells of fierce fights and brave deeds, of the speeches of the leader and the sufferings of his men. It describes their life in the hall, the fights that they had to fight, their ships and travels. They had a hard life on land and sea, they did not enjoy it much, but they managed it well.

The kind of verse in Beowulf is kind of interesting. Each half line has two main beats. There is no rhyme. Each half-line is joined to the other by structural alliteration – the use of syllables beginning with similar sounds in two or three of the stresses in each line. (haeleth/hiofende/hlaford). Structural alliteration is another unfamiliar but equally striking feature in the formal character of Old English poetry.

        Things are described indirectly and in combinations of words. For example a ship is not only a ship – it is a sea-boat, a sea-wood. Even the sea itself may be called the waves, the sea-streams, or the ocean-way. Often several of these words are used at the same time. This changes a plain statement into something more colourful, but such descriptions take a lot of time and the action moves slowly. In Old English poetry descriptions of sad events or cruel situations are commoner and in better writing than those of happiness.

        The Old Germanic virtue of mutual loyalty between leader and followers is evoked effectively and touchingly in the aged Beowulf's sacrifice of his life and in the reproaches heaped on the retainers who desert him in this climactic battle. The extraordinary artistry with which fragments of other heroic tales are incorporated to illumine the main action, and with which the whole plot is reduced to symmetry, has only recently been fully recognised.
        Another feature of Beowulf is the weakening of the sense of the ultimate power of arbitrary fate. The injection of the Christian idea of dependence on a just God is evident. That feature is typical of other Old English literature, for monastic copyists preserved almost all of what survives. Most of it was actually composed by religious writers after the early conversion of the people from their faith in the older Germanic divinities.

        But besides Beowulf there are many other Old English poems, too. Among them are Genesis A and Genesis B written by an unknown author. The second of these, which is short, is concerned with the beginnings of the world and the fall of the angels. The poet has here thoroughly enjoyed describing God’s punishment of Satan and the place of punishment for evil in Hell. On the contrary, most of the long Genesis A is a little bit dull, it’s in fact the old history taken from the Bible and put into Old English verse.

        Other poems taken straight form the Bible are The Exodus, which describes how the Israelites left Egypt and Daniel. Another poem, Christ and Satan, deals with events in Christ’s life.

        We know the names of two Old English poets – CAEDMON and CYNEWULF.  

Almost nothing now remains which are certainly Caedmon´s works. He was a poor countryman who used to stay apart when his fellows sang songs to God, for Caedmon was uneducated and could not sing. One night an angle appeared to him in a dream and told him to sing God’s praise. When he woke, he was able to sing and part of one of his songs remains.

        Cynewulf almost certainly wrote four poems – Juliana, The Fates of the Apostles, Christ and Elene. The last of these seems to have been written just before Cynewulf´s death. Cynewulf´s poems are religious and were probably written in the second half of the eight century.

Other Old English poems are Andreas and Guthlac. The second of these is in two parts and may have been written by two men. It’s about a holy man who was tempted in the desert. One of the better ones is a late poem called The Battle of Maldon. This battle was fought against the Danes in 991 and probably the poem was written soon after that.

Another poem is The Dream of the Rood – this is among the best of all Old English poems.

Old English lyrics include Deor’s Complaint, The Husband’s Message, The Wanderer and

The Wife’s Complaint.

        In general it is fairly safe to say that Old English prose came later than Old English verse, but there was some early prose. The oldest Laws were written at the beginning of the seventh century. These Laws were not literature and better sentences were written towards the end of the seventh century.

        The most interesting piece of prose is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, an early history of the country. There are several chronicles belonging to different cities. A great influence of this work had KING ALFRED THE GREAT (849-901). He probably brought the different writings into some kind of order. He also translated a number of Latin books into Old English, so that his people could read them. He translated the Ecclesiastical History of England written in Latin by Venerable Bede. He brought back learning to England and improved the education of his people.

        Another important writer of prose was AELFRIC. His works, such as the Homilies (990-994) and Lives of Saints (993-996), were mostly religious. He wrote out in Old English the meaning of the first seven books of the Bible. He also uses alliteration to join his sentences together. His prose style is the best in Old English.

3. Middle English literature

- as in most of the Europe, the social structure in England was feudal

- power radiated from the king, through his noblemen to his subjects

- the land was divided into large agricultural estates, owned by the king and the nobility, providing the Crown with money, material and men when it had wars to fight

- each level of society had its rights and privileges, each its duties and obligations.

- the system was broadly accepted as right and proper.

1066:

Feudal society was divided into:

1. king - court consisting of nobility and aristocracy; spoke French

2. scholars and clergy - spoke Latin

3. peasants, serves - spoke middle English

Events that influenced the middle ages:

- Black death (1348 - 1349) - plague

- Hundred years war (1337 - 1453) - a war with French

- high taxation

- War of the Roses (1455 - 1485) - accession of Tudor dynasty - York’s and Lancaster’s

- invention of printing in 1474 done by William Caxton - a merchant who brought invention of printing to Britain from Europe = this means education (since then – modern English)

- universities: Oxford (12th cent.), Cambridge (13th cent.)

Middle English

- a term used to describe the language that came into the century or so after the Norman Conquest (1066) & lasted until about 1500. During those years, the inflectional system of Old English was weakened and a large number of words were introduced from France. The language consisted of a number of regional dialects, rather than a standardized language, each with its own peculiarities of sound & spelling.

Some dialects:

a. The Midland dialect - the dialect of the educated classes of London and of Chaucer, and the ancestor of our own standard speech.

b. dialect spoken in the west of England (original dialect of Piers Plowman by William Langland)

c. the northwest (as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by an unknown writer)

Literary scene

- Middle English literature had greater immediacy, & its characters were more human and sympathetic than the idealized heroes of Old English.

14th century literature:

- language is becoming national

- English occurs in literature

- there is reformation

- the most important is John Wickliffe: is against the secular power of church; contributed to the translation of the Bible into English

Verse:

- rhyming verse in which stressed syllables alternated with unstressed syllables, adapted from the French, or, like Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,

- alliterative verse - descended from Old English

- rhyming couplets (pairs of lines which rhyme), each line containing five main stressed syllables (a metre known as 'iambic pentameter'), eg. The Canterbury Tales

*Before Chaucer, the number of main stressed syllables in a line was more often four.

Several influences:

a. church influence - dogmatism, education, ideal of the perfect knight & ideal of perfect Christian

b. foreign, Latin influence - works written in Latin

Genres:

1. poetry:

a. religious (Brut)

b. secular (Langland’s Piers Plowman)

c. Scottish poetry (mostly ballads)

2. dramatic texts  -  mystery plays, miracle plays, morality plays (Everyman)

3. narrative texts (prose) -  Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Malory

POETRY

Secular poetry

Unknown authors wrote:

 Perl (Perl is a girl who died, she comes to her father and tells him that she is happy and he doesn‘t have to be sad)

 Patience

 Purity - about king Arthur’s knights (about his moral values and how they are tested):

 Sir Gavain

 The Green Knight

Scottish poetry

- in Scotland poetry is flavourishing

- some authors: Robert Herrison, William Danbar (The Dance of the 7 Deadly Sins)

- ballads with various themes were very popular

Division of ballads according to their themes:

1. Tragic: eg. The Two Sisters - about tragical consequences of hatred and jealousy

(about the sister who killed another because of the boyfriend)

2. Historical/pseudo historical:

- about events that happened or they are somehow completed by the imagination

3. Chevi-chace:  from the Scottish-English border = Northern Thumbria

4. the Robin Hood Ballads:  describing adventures of the outcast

drama

- has very little in common with classical Greek drama

- it comes from literature overbased on Bible

- by the end of 13th cent.: miracles, mysteries (played on carriages)

- didactic and morality plays introduced:

Second SHEPPARD’S play (seconda pastorum) - good/evil

Everyman - about a man who dies, he cannot take anything with only his good deeds

Narrative texts (PROSE)

= represented by:

a. Thomas Malory

b. Geofrey Chaucer

Sir Thomas Malory

- a member of the parliament, later charged with many crimes = had to go to prison

- in prison wrote =   Le Morte D'Arthur: a prose collection of versions of the legends of King Arthur, translated from the French

Topics introduced in this prose are:

- kinship (družnosť)

- kingship (oddanosť kráľovi)

- honesty

- how temporary we are - everybody has to die

Geofrey Chaucer

- he traveled a lot, was an MP, had lucrative jobs

- the father of English poetry: the first who started to write in English

Foreign influences:

a. French: translated Roman de la Rose,  

b. Italian: Petrarch, Boccaccio (were still alive during Chaucer's life), Dante

c. Latin: Vergil, Ovid

- the best was at writing narrative poems:

  the Book of Duchess - an elegy (story of a man who morns for a dead woman)

  the House of Fame - unfinished

  the Parliament of Fowls - a delightful Bird and Beast poem in celebration of St Valentine's Day.

  Troilus and Criseyde - the first psychological novel

//about Criseyde, a widow, who loves her freedom and that is why she refuses Troilus; Pandarus (Troiluse's friend and Criseyde’s uncle) puts them together

  the Legend of Good Woman - ordered by Queen Anne in order to defend women

  the Canterbury Tales (masterpiece):

- it offers a rich gallery of characters, wide range of attitudes

- a realistic picture of that age

- The Canterbury Tales, begun in 1386, consists of stories told by some of the thirty pilgrims who set off from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, to visit the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury murdered in his own cathedral in 1170. The aim was to tell four stories each: two on the way, two on the way back. The teller of the best story would be given a free dinner by the cheerful host of the Tabard. In fact, the collection is incomplete and only twenty-four stories are told (including two by Chaucer)

Chaucer’s works can be divided also according to periods into:

a. French: more romantic with love as the main topic

b. Italian: more realistic (eg. the Parliament of Fowls)

c. English: (eg. the Canterbury Tales)

MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE

1. lasted from 1066 – 1458
2. extensive influence of French literature on native English forms and themes

The Norman conquest of England in 1066 traditionally signifies the beginning of 200 years of the domination of French in English letters. French cultural dominance, moreover, was general in Europe at this time. French language and culture replaced English in polite court society and had lasting effects on English culture. But the native tradition survived, although little 13th-century, and even less 12th-century, vernacular literature is extant, since most of it was transmitted orally. Anglo-Saxon fragmented into several dialects and gradually evolved into Middle English, which, despite an admixture of French, is unquestionably English.

From the Norman-French conquest of England in 1066 to the late 14th century French largely replaced English in ordinary literary compositions and Latin maintained its role as a language of liturgical works.

By the 14th century, when English again became the chosen language of the ruling classes, it had lost much of its old English inflectional system. It had undergone curtain phonetic changes and it had acquired a number of foreign words – mainly French ad Latin once.

Various dialects of Middle English spoken in the 14th century were similar to modern English and can be red without serious difficulties. French and Latin influenced Middle English mainly in the southern part.

Middle Ages was a period of wars, deceases, crusades and Christianity. The social structure of Middle Ages was organised around the system of feudalism. This meant that the country wasn’t ruled by the king, but by individual lords and barons. They declared their own justice. They minted their own money. They had the right to decide about taxes and tolls. They also demanded military service form their vassals. They’ve got land from him and on the other hand he had to protect his vassals.

Literature covered the period between 11th and 15th century and produced mainly religious and secular works. It repeated topics form Bible and Antique. The main characters were clerics, knights and kings – higher upper class. Works produced legends, poems, narratives, epics and heroic novels.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

The period of great transition from French as the language of literature to English lasted between 1100 and about 1450 to 1500. In The fourteenth century a new form of English was used. The language of this period is referred to as Middle English. It was in fact Old English enriched by thousands of French words. And it is into this period that the writing of GEOFFREY CHAUCER falls.

Born (about *1340) and died (†1400) in London, buried in Westminster Abbey as the first poet in the part which has been known as Poet’s Corner since the late 16th century, GEOFFREY CHAUCER was the greatest poet of the Middle Ages and the most outstanding English writer before Shakespeare.

        Chaucer is often called “the father of English poetry”, although there were many English poets before him, because his using of English at the time when much court poetry was still written in Anglo-Norman (French) or Latin made a great contribution to the development of English Literature.

        Chaucer was the son of a wealthy vintner in London. He was well educated. He most probably went to St. Paul’s School and then, at the age of 17, when he became a page in the household of the wife of Lionel, third son of King Edward III, his education not only continued, but was intensified.

        In 1386 Chaucer was elected Member of Parliament. He was also a courtier, a soldier and a scholar interested in astronomy, mathematics, medicine, psychology and other natural sciences. His hobby was reading, he is said to have been able to quote from almost every book in the bible. He spoke Latin and studied French and Italian poetry. He travelled and made good use of his eyes – the people whom he describes are just like living people.

        It is much easier to read Chaucer than to read anything written in Old English for the language had changed a great deal in the seven hundred years since the time of Beowulf.

        In The Canterbury Tales (about 1387 to 1400), the greatest work of Chaucer (total altogether about 17000 lines, about half of Chaucer’s literary production), there are five main beats in each line and the rhyme has taken the place of Old English alliteration.

        The Canterbury Tales is a complex of vivid tales, unique for its realism, humour and variety. Chaucer created here an image of the English society of the 14th century. People from various parts of England and of all social groups are presented here.

        Chaucer’s tales take place in spring, the words are dynamic, the people long to go on a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage combines vacations, travel and a spiritual renewal.

Spring symbolises rebirth and fresh beginnings and therefore Chaucer chose spring as an opening to his tales

The way the people, the characters look like and the way they are dressed is extremely important in tales as they reveal the real character of a person.

The book opens with the General Prologue in which Chaucer gives a description on each of his pilgrims that appear in it. Together their characters give us a broad view of      a human nature ad a good insight into the life of medieval England.

        In the 14th century, going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint became a popular activity. It enabled people to meet socially and gave them a good excuse for travel. Chaucer uses one such      a pilgrimage as the setting for his Canterbury Tales. He brings together thirty pilgrims; all from varied occupations and walks of life. They meet at the Tabard Inn at Southwark, on the other side of the Thames from London, to set off on a pilgrimage to Canterbury to the shrine of the martyr Saint Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered in the cathedral. Before they start in the morning, the innkeeper suggests that they all take a part in a story-telling contest in order to make the journey pass more quickly. The prize for the best storyteller will be a supper at the Tabard Inn, paid for by all the rest of the group.

So, each of the pilgrims tells a tale on the way to Canterbury. The tales, such as The Knight’s Tale, The Cook’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, The Student’s Tale, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, The Monk’s Tale and others, reveal much about the teller’s character, his interests and the way of life. They are told in the style peculiar to the social group the teller belongs to.

        There are more then twenty of these stories, mostly in verse, and in the stories we get to know the pilgrims themselves. Most of them, like the Merchant, the Lawyer, the Sailor, the Doctor, the Ploughman and the poor Scholar are ordinary people, but each of them can be recognized as a real person with his or her own character.

        Then there is the Knight who is the highest in social rank and demonstrates the courtesy and nobility that is to be expected of his high breeding.

        The religion is represented by the Friar, the honest Parson, as well as by the Prioress and the Monk.

        Some of the pilgrims are involved in business such as the Merchant or the Wife of Bath, on of the most enjoyable characters. She is a vigorous, talkative, earthy character who spends more time introducing her tale than actually telling it. By the time she tells her story we know her as a woman of very strong opinions who believes firmly in marriage (she has had five husbands, one after the other) and equally firmly in the need to manage her husbands, and at least all men, very strictly.

        Chaucer’s skill in developing the treatment of his characters in depth is very impressive. Some of the pilgrims, like the Knight, are straightforward in their behaviour and attitudes. Others are more complex and not quite always what they at first may seem. Chaucer enjoys showing up deceit and hypocrisy in human behaviour. Consider the Monk, for example, who is too keen on enjoying all the luxuries of life. Chaucer’s realism influenced future developments in English literature, with the increasing interest in depicting individual characters.

        Chaucer’s masterpiece The Canterbury Tales is one of the best poetic works in English.

In 1359, Chaucer fought in France, in 1372 and 1378 he conducted diplomatic missions to Italy and both countries became a strong influence on his poetry. Of Chaucer’s poems, the most important are probably Troilus and Criseyde (about 1375-1385), where the influence of Boccaccio´s poems becomes apparent, and The Legend of Good Women (1385-1386). The former of these is about the love of the two young people. Shakespeare later wrote a play on the same subject, but his Cressida is less attractive than Chaucer’s.

        Other Chaucer’s best-known poems are: The House of Fame (1372-80), The Parliament of Fowls (1380-86) and The Book of the Duchess (1370) – devoted to Chaucer’s first wife, the lady Blanche, duchess of Lancaster, with the central figure duke John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Henry IV., which was Chaucer’s best patron and a lifelong friend and later became his brother-in-law.

        There is a little agreement among Chaucer’s biographers about some of the periods in his life and the dates when his poems were written. There is even no evidence to prove the year of his birth, the only fact which can be taken for certain is that it was before 1346.

OTHER MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE

        Several poems in early Middle English are extant. The Orrmulum (1200), a verse translation of parts of the Gospels, is of linguistic and prosodic rather than literary interest. Of approximately the same date, The Owl and the Nightingale is the first example in English of the débat, a popular continental form; in the poem, the owl, strictly monastic and didactic, and the nightingale, a free and amorous secular spirit, charmingly debate the virtues of their respective ways of life.

        The old alliterative line was still in use in Chaucer's time, though not by him.        

The Vision of Piers the Ploughman, mostly by WILLIAM LANGLAND, is a poem in this verse. It was written by a poor man to describe the sorrows of the poor. It looks a lot older than Chaucer's rhymed verse, though the two men lived at the same time. Langland sadly tells, as in a dream, how most people prefer the false treasures of this world to the treasures of heaven. The characters in the poem are not as real as Chaucer's.

There are also many works of art written by ANONYMOUS WRITERS because the literary work was in the centre of attention, not the author.

One of them is The Story of Gawain and the Green Knight. The alliterative metre was used in several other poems, including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Like others of these legendary stories, it tells stories about courage, adventures and struggles against enemies and, as a medieval hero. Sir Gawain finishes all the stories with glory and honour.

Probably the same author wrote the poems Pearl and Patience.

Pearl was the name of the poet’s daughter who died at the age of two but he feels comforted when he sees her in heaven in his dream.

Patience is a story based on Biblical scenes. It tells the story of Jonah, who was thrown into the sea and swallowed by an immense creature of the sea, which carried him to the places where God whished him to go.

        A good deal of Middle English prose is religious. The Ancren Riwle teaches proper rules of life for anchoresses (religious women) how they ought to dress, what work they may do, when they ought not to speak, and so on. It was probably written in the thirteenth century.

Another work, The Form of Perfect Living, was written by RICHARD ROLLE with the same sort of aim. His prose style has been highly praised, and his work is important in the history of our prose.

JOHN WYCLIFFE

Wycliffe was the most important medieval poet. He was a priest who attacked many of the religious ideas of his time. He was at Oxford, but had to leave because his attacks on the Church could no longer be bore. One of his beliefs was that anyone who wanted to read the Bible ought to be allowed to do so. This could not be done by uneducated people because they didn’t understand Latin, so Wycliffe arranged the Bible translation and he himself translated a part of it. Some parts had indeed been put into Old English long ago, but Wycliffe arranged the production of the whole Bible in English. There were two translations (1382 and 1388), of which the second is the better. It is surprising that Wycliffe was not burnt alive for his attacks on religious practices. After he was dead and buried, his bones were dug up again and thrown into a stream which flows into the River Avon.

THOMAS MALORY

An important Middle English prose work, Morte D'Arthur [Arthur's Death], was written by

SIR THOMAS MALORY. Even for the violent years just before and during the Wars of the Roses, Malory was a violent character. He was several times in prison, and it has been suggested that he wrote at least part of Morte D' Arthur there to pass the time. Malory wrote eight separate tales of King Arthur and his knights but when Caxton (set up the first English printing press in 1476-7) printed the book in 1485 (after Malory's death) he joined them into one long story. Caxton's was the only copy of Malory's work until a handwritten copy of it was found in Winchester College (1933).

MALORY also wrote about King Arthur and his knights – this topic attracted many writers – we are not sure, but maybe he is a real historical personality. The stories of Arthur and his knights have attracted many British and other writers. Arthur is a shadowy figure of the past, but probably really lived. Many tales gathered round him and his knights. One of the main subjects was the search for the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper (known as The Holy Grail). Another subject was Arthur's battles against his enemies, including the Romans. Malory's fine prose can tell a direct story well, but can also express deep feelings in musical sentences.

MIDDLE ENGLISH DRAMA

The first English plays told religious stories and were performed in or near the churches. Many events of religious history were suitable subjects for drama. These early plays, called Miracle or Mystery Plays, are in four main groups, according to the city where they were acted: Chester, Coventry, York and Wakefield. The topics of them were Biblical events: the disobedience of Adam and Eve; Noah and the great flood; Abraham and Isaac; events in the life of Christ; and so on. But people who matched the plays destroyed the graves near by the churches by accidents – because there were a lot of people. Sp the place of performance had to move out of the church and cemetery further into the streets.

Miracles (Mystery plays) were acted by people of the town on a kind of stage on wheels called a pageant. This was moved to different parts of the town, so that a play shown in one place could then be shown in another. Often several Miracle Plays were being performed at the same time in different places.

With the process of secularisation common life topics were included into the drama to make it more attractive for the audience.

Although the Miracles were serious and religious in intention, English comedy was born in them. There was a natural tendency for the characters in the play to become recognizably human in their behaviour. The characters of Miracle plays had the tendency to have certain recognisable human features – they acted as human beings. However serious the main story might be, neither actors nor audience could resist the temptation to enjoy the possibilities of a situation such as that in which Noah's wife needs a great deal of persuasion to make her go on board the ark.

Other plays, in some respects not very different from the Miracles, were the Morality Plays.

The characters in these were not people such as Adam and Eve or Noah, they were virtues (such as Truth) or bad qualities (such as Greed or Revenge) which walked and talked. For this reason we find these plays duller today, but this does not mean that the original audiences found them dull. The plays presented moral truths in a new and effective way.

One of the best-known fifteenth-century Moralities is Everyman which was translated from the Dutch. It is the story of the end of Everyman's life, when Death calls him away from the world.  Among the characters are Beauty, Knowledge, Strength, and Good Deeds. When Everyman has to go to face Death, all his friends leave him except Good Deeds. It deals with the question to choose good, godly life over bad life.

Another kind of plays, the Interlude (not only religious - but also secular), were popular in the 15th and 16th century.

The origin of this name is uncertain; perhaps the Interludes were played between the acts of long Moralities (it were brief sketches); perhaps in the middle of meals; or perhaps the name means a play by two or three performers. They are often funny, and were performed away from churches, in colleges or rich men's houses or gardens. One of them is The Four P' s. In one part of this play, a prize is offered for the greatest lie; and it is won by a man who' says that he never saw and never knew any woman out of patience. The writers of these early plays are unknown until we come to the beginning of the sixteenth century.

JOHN HEYWOOD wrote The FourP's (printed about 1545) and The Play of the Weather (1533), in which Jupiter, the King of the Gods, asks various people what kind of weather ought to be supplied. Heywood wrote other Interludes and was alive in Shakespeare’s time.

Also there were MASKS - short plays, usually like images, acted out without speech (pantomime + music)

4. Development of drama

The whole development of drama was a dynamic story.

The first English plays told religious stories and were performed in or near the churches. Many events of religious history were suitable subjects for drama. These early plays, called Miracle or Mystery Plays, are in four main groups, according to the city where they were acted: Chester, Coventry, York and Wakefield. The topics of them were Biblical events: the disobedience of Adam and Eve; Noah and the great flood; Abraham and Isaac; events in the life of Christ; and so on. But people who matched the plays destroyed the graves near by the churches by accidents – because there were a lot of people. Sp the place of performance had to move out of the church and cemetery further into the streets.

Miracles (Mystery plays) were acted by people of the town on a kind of stage on wheels called a pageant. This was moved to different parts of the town, so that a play shown in one place could then be shown in another. Often several Miracle Plays were being performed at the same time in different places.

With the process of secularisation common life topics were included into the drama to make it more attractive for the audience.

Although the Miracles were serious and religious in intention, English comedy was born in them. There was a natural tendency for the characters in the play to become recognizably human in their behaviour. The characters of Miracle plays had the tendency to have certain recognisable human features – they acted as human beings. However serious the main story might be, neither actors nor audience could resist the temptation to enjoy the possibilities of a situation such as that in which Noah's wife needs a great deal of persuasion to make her go on board the ark.

Other plays, in some respects not very different from the Miracles, were the Morality Plays.

The characters in these were not people such as Adam and Eve or Noah, they were virtues (such as Truth) or bad qualities (such as Greed or Revenge) which walked and talked. For this reason we find these plays duller today, but this does not mean that the original audiences found them dull. The plays presented moral truths in a new and effective way.

One of the best-known fifteenth-century Moralities is Everyman which was translated from the Dutch. It is the story of the end of Everyman's life, when Death calls him away from the world.  Among the characters are Beauty, Knowledge, Strength, and Good Deeds. When Everyman has to go to face Death, all his friends leave him except Good Deeds. It deals with the question to choose good, godly life over bad life.

Another kind of plays, the Interlude (not only religious - but also secular), were popular in the 15th and 16th century.

The origin of this name is uncertain; perhaps the Interludes were played between the acts of long Moralities (it were brief sketches); perhaps in the middle of meals; or perhaps the name means a play by two or three performers. They are often funny, and were performed away from churches, in colleges or rich men's houses or gardens. One of them is The Four P' s. In one part of this play, a prize is offered for the greatest lie; and it is won by a man who' says that he never saw and never knew any woman out of patience. The writers of these early plays are unknown until we come to the beginning of the sixteenth century.

JOHN HEYWOOD wrote The FourP's (printed about 1545) and The Play of the Weather (1533), in which Jupiter, the King of the Gods, asks various people what kind of weather ought to be supplied. Heywood wrote other Interludes and was alive in Shakespeare’s time.

Also there were MASKS - short plays, usually like images, acted out without speech (pantomime + music)

DRAMA – 16th century – Renaissance

Drama is the most important genre in English literature and especially in the period of Renaissance where its great development can be seen. Generally speaking comedies are considered to be better constructed that tragedies.

In renaissance  SHAKESPEARE

3. to enjoy this live, not the life after death
4. courageous enough to show that there is beauty in this life
5. to make a harmony between religion and secular life
6. the renaissance drama was undidactical, it has secular theme and conflicts between characters, non-allegorical, played in streets, squares and houses
7. renaissance drama was written in blank verse or prose.
8. Italy - Boccaccio, Alighieri
9. Britain  Elizabethan drama (very democratic, progressive, all kind of people)

Charakteristics:

1. drama was the most popular genre in English literature
2. Queen Elizabeth: the patron of drama writers
3. in medieval drama were miracles and mystery plays
4. renaissance drama – undidactical, it has secular theme and conflicts between characters, non-allegorical, played in streets, squares and houses

The three most important in London: The Globe, The Fortune, The Swan

The Globe – was a roofless theatre and so plays were played by the daylight, there was communication between the audience and the actors. Actors were only men and played also women roles.

Renaissance drama was written in blank verse or prose.

There were some interludes (short nonallegorical plays) – had secular character/themes; some think that were played during breaks.

Elizabethan theatres = two kinds:  Outdoor or „public“ / Indoor or „private“

Outdoor or Public playhouses

-     Varying shapes

1. Had a „yard“ where the „groundlings“ were – un-roofed space, surrounding the stage on three sides, enclosed by three tiers of roofed „galleries“.
2. A „tiring house“ at the rear of the raised platform – where the actors would wait and change.
3. The stage was roofed – called „the heavens“ – supported by columns
4. Traps in the floor, for fire, smoke and other effects
5. Two playing levels – upper and lower - audience may sat on 2nd level

Indoor or Private Theatres

1. smaller, roofed
2. Performances were also shown in winter
3. 1576 – Blackfriar´s – a former monastery – was the first one
4. By 1642, there were six private theatres in London
5. Private theatre rose in popularity from 1610 to 1642 and were used only during the five warm months

NICHOLAS UDALL

He is called the father of English comedy, especially with his comedy

Ralph Roister Doister – the first English comedy. It contains the kind of humour which can be found among the country people.

Similar to this is another drama Gammer Gurton´s Needle (1566) - in rough verse. Its plot is about the loss and the finding o a needle with which Gammer Gurton makes the clothes. Quarrels, drinking and broken heads are important part of the drama.

The first English tragedy was Gorboduc - told in blank verse,1564 by Norton + Sackville.

DRAMA - 18th Century - Enlightenment

18th century:

- Enlightenment (rationalism)

- the Licensing Act (from 1737 – 1960) = nothing critical could be played; censorship

- in lit. importance of the development of the novel

Drama:

- from 1642 – theatres were closed

- 1660 = theatres reopened

- shift to dif. genres

- in England = parliamentary control of the monarchy (restoration of the monarchy)

- audience: upper-class + aristocracy

- Shakespeare was played – often changed, accompanied by music

- when Charles II. became king in 1660 the theatres opened again and new dramatists appeared:

Between 1707 and 1737 drama went into critical decline although the theatre was still very active and popular. But it was because the middle classes were turning to journals, newspapers and the developing of fictional prose to find discussion, entertainment and reinforcement of their values and beliefs.

There was the development of new types of comedy:

1. sentimental comedy = the story is seldom comic (influence of the age of reason)
2. domestic tragedy = a pathetic, rigid moral codex often unintentionally comic; too big stress on patheticism
3. drama of sensibility = a mixed form - the reduction of the comic in the sentimental comedy and the reduction of tragic in the domestic comedy
4. burlesque - a literary work, especially drama, which  makes its subject ridiculous through exaggeration. Frequently a burlesque imitates and makes fun of a literary work.
5. farce - a play intended to provoke roars of laughter through exaggerated physical actions, absurd situations,… The plot is usually complicated - the action moves quickly. Sexual jokes and mistaken identities are often the themes of farce
6. satire- a fictional text intended to criticize certain conditions, events or people by making them appear ridiculous. Irony (and sarcasm) are important elements of satire.
7. historical drama
8. melodrama  - use of sentimentalism and sensationalism; it’s characters usually display strong emotions

John Gay

  Beggar’s Opera

- a melodrama

- about New Gate = the biggest prison

- very strong irony, political satire hidden in the text

R. B. Sheridan

- Irish origin

- his characters love scandal and gossip

  the Ribons - about Mrs. Maloprop = mixes words, talks nuisance

  The School for Scandal (revival of the com. of manners)

  The Critic - the satire of drama

W. Congreve

  THE OLD BACHELOR

  LOVE FOR LOVE - most popular and best liked play

John Dryden

- he was a dramatist+ translator + critic

- during the Civil War sympathized with the puritans

  The Conquest of Granada

- historical play

- loud lang. and good lirics

  All for Love (based on Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra)

- written in blank verse+ also in a neoclassical = very formal way

- less realistic then Shakespeare’s play

- didn’t used the everyday – spoken language; poetic diction – often elevated

  Don Sebastian

  Aurenzebe

  Essay on Dramatic Poesis (a major critic)

- compared English and French drama and defended the use rhyme in drama and priced W. Shakespeare

= verse satire:

  Absolon and Achitaphel

  Macflecknoe

5. ELISABETHAN DRAMA (Shakespeare and his contemporaries)

Elizabethan Era and Theatre

The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. It was the height of the English Renaissance, and saw the flowering of English literature and poetry. This was also the time during which Elizabethan theatre flourished and William Shakespeare, among others, composed plays that broke away from England's past style of plays and theatre. It was an age of expansion and exploration abroad, while at home the Protestant Reformation became entrenched in the national mindset. European wars brought an influx of continental refugees into England, exposing the Englishman to new cultures. In trade, might, and art, England established an envious preeminence. At this time, London was the heart of England, reflecting all the vibrant qualities of the Elizabethan Age. This atmosphere made London a leading center of culture as well as commerce. Its dramatists and poets were among the leading literary artists of the day. Theatre had an unsavory reputation. London authorities refused to allow plays within the city, so theatres opened across the Thames in Southwark, outside the authority of the city administration. In this heady environment, Shakespeare lived and wrote. One of the most successful was also Christopher Marlowe, who many contemporaries considered Shakespeare's superior. Marlowe's career, however, was cut short at a comparatively young age when he died in a tavern fight in Deptford, the victim of a knife in the eye.

The first proper theatre as we know it was the Theatre, built at Shoreditch in 1576. Before this time plays were performed in the courtyard of inns, or sometimes, in the houses of noblemen. After the Theatre, further open air playhouses opened in the London area, including the Rose (1587), and the Hope (1613). The most famous playhouse was the Globe (1599) built by the company in which Shakespeare had a stake. Shakespeare’s group was called Lord Chamberlains Men. The Globe was only in use until 1613, when a canon fired during a performance of Henry VIII caught the roof on fire and the building burned to the ground. The site of the theatre was rediscovered in the 20th century and a reconstruction built near the spot.

There were 2 kinds of play houses – private (were smaller roofed houses in which the wealthier audience go to watch plays) and public houses. Public theatre was usually round or square or octagonal wooden structure. It could accommodate between 2000 – 5000 people. Sitting in audience depended on the wealth on social status, each person had to pay 1 penny. Richer people usually paid more, and then they were seated in galleries, so they were protected from dust and dirt. Poorer people were called the groundlings, they stood in the yard, surrounding the stage. Public theatre can be called outdoor and private called indoor theatre. Both of them had yards for groundlings. Tiring house is place where actors change clothes and wait for their performance. The stage was roofed, it was called the heavens and it was supported by columns. Flying was special effect used – it used cranes and ropes to make flying possible. In ground were special makers for fire, smoke and so on. There were usually 2 doors, which represented different locations – France, England.

Private theatres were smaller but they did show even in winter. First private theatre was called Black friars. By time of Shakespeare actors had achieved satisfactory level of financial and social stability. Most of troops worked in sharing plan which means that risks and profits were shared. Troops were democratic and self-governing. Some of them own theatre building and they were known as house holders. When it was necessary they hired so called hirelings for more salary.

Theatre performances were held in the afternoon, because, of course, there was no artificial lighting. Women attended plays, though often the prosperous woman would wear a mask to disguise her identity. Further, no women performed in the plays. Female roles were generally performed by young boys.

DRAMA – 16th century – Renaissance

Drama is the most important genre in English literature and especially in the period of Renaissance where its great development can be seen. Generally speaking comedies are considered to be better constructed that tragedies.

In renaissance  SHAKESPEARE

10. to enjoy this live, not the life after death
11. courageous enough to show that there is beauty in this life
12. to make a harmony between religion and secular life
13. the renaissance drama was undidactical, it has secular theme and conflicts between characters, non-allegorical, played in streets, squares and houses
14. renaissance drama was written in blank verse or prose.
15. Italy - Boccaccio, Alighieri
16. Britain  Elizabethan drama (very democratic, progressive, all kind of people)

Charakteristics:

5. drama was the most popular genre in English literature
6. Queen Elizabeth: the patron of drama writers
7. in medieval drama were miracles and mystery plays
8. renaissance drama – undidactical, it has secular theme and conflicts between characters, non-allegorical, played in streets, squares and houses

The three most important in London: The Globe, The Fortune, The Swan

The Globe – was a roofless theatre and so plays were played by the daylight, there was communication between the audience and the actors. Actors were only men and played also women roles.

Renaissance drama was written in blank verse or prose.

There were some interludes (short nonallegorical plays) – had secular character/themes; some think that were played during breaks.

Elizabethan theatres = two kinds:  Outdoor or „public“ / Indoor or „private“

Outdoor or Public playhouses

-     Varying shapes

6. Had a „yard“ where the „groundlings“ were – un-roofed space, surrounding the stage on three sides, enclosed by three tiers of roofed „galleries“.
7. A „tiring house“ at the rear of the raised platform – where the actors would wait and change.
8. The stage was roofed – called „the heavens“ – supported by columns
9. Traps in the floor, for fire, smoke and other effects
10. Two playing levels – upper and lower - audience may sat on 2nd level

Indoor or Private Theatres

6. smaller, roofed
7. Performances were also shown in winter
8. 1576 – Blackfriar´s – a former monastery – was the first one
9. By 1642, there were six private theatres in London
10. Private theatre rose in popularity from 1610 to 1642 and were used only during the five warm months

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

1.started his career with Historical plays

Henry VI

Richard III - in smooth blank verse

Richard II - more freedom but the rhythm of the blank verse is still strict

2.Comedies

Comedy Of Errors

Taming of the Shrew

Two Gentlemen of Verona

Love´s Labour´s Lost

In this period he also wrote his beautiful lyrical tragedy Romeo & Juliet

3.The last Years of 16th century he created his most famous comedies

Midsummer Night’s Dream

Merchant of Venice

As You Like It

Much Udo About Nothing

All’s Well that Ends Well (dark comedy)

Twelfth Night (perfection of E.comedy)

The Merry Wives of Windsor

King Henry IV (introduced Sir John Falstaff)

Henry V (love of country and spirit of war)

He presented the themes of love, friendship, human harmony and joy of life.

He showed himself the master of dramatic construction,

economy of dramatic means and above all the master of language.

4.His greatest period 1600-1608  most remarkable tragedies

Features:  hero – noble man, moral weakness, hero’s life leading to death, inner and outer conflicts,

                 abnormal conditions of mind (insanity)

Tragic structure: exposition, rising action, falling action, resolution

HAMLET (about sensitivity in the insensitive world)

– contrast, inner monologues, soliloquy, main themes – revenge, family duty, love, “no act will stay without punishment”

OTHELLO (about the paradoxes of good and evil)

– jealousy, sexual one

KING LEAR (about self blindness)

– based on the legend of King Lear of Britain, human suffering

MACBETH (about progress of evil in man and the responsibility and choice)

– tragedy of murder, revenge, supernatural elements – witches

5. Roman Tragedies

Julius Caesar (language and thoughts are about balanced, clear structure)

Coriolanus (concerns the life and death of Casius Marcius Coriolanus)

Anthony and Cleopatra (his love for the Egyptian queen)

6.  Romances belong to the last phase of writing

Cymbeline

The Winter’s Tale

The Tempest (last complete play)

– coloured with the idea of forgiveness, no more violence but beautiful girls

– symbolic, uses magic, mythology, folklore elements

LIFE

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, now widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's prominent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, and Mary Arden. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 26 April 1564. His unknown birthday is traditionally observed on 23 April, St George's Day. This date, which can be traced back to an eighteenth-century scholar's mistake, has proved appealing because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616. He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son. Shakespeare was educated at the King's New School in Stratford, and the school provided him an intensive education in Latin grammar and the classics.

At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. Six months after the marriage, she gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, who was baptised on 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised on 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown

STYLE

Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama. The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—written for actors to declaim rather than speak. Later on Shakespeare began to adapt traditional style to his own purposes, he combined traditional and free style. In the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself

Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse composed in iambic pentameter. In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony. Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry. Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. His style was "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical". In the last part of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length. As Shakespeare’s mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays. In his late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.

INFLUENCE

Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. He expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre. Until Romeo and Juliet, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events, but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds. His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success.

Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, Charles Dickens and American novelist Herman Melville. In Shakespeare's day, English grammar and spelling were less standardised than they are now, and his use of language helped shape modern English.

General description of Shakespeare’s plays

1. Early point of effect
2. several lines of action which might seen independent at the beginning but later they merge (splynú) together, we speak about unity in diversity, best example is King Lear
3. there is a large number of & variety of incidents, mixed emotions as tears & laughter, violence
4. ideas of time &space are used freely, S doesn’t stick in classical unity of time & space, audience has feeling of ongoing action or life behind the scene
5. large number of characters – 30 is quite common, they represent all social levels, they can be poor or rich but they are still individual
6. language also differs from play to play – can be elegant or witty even obscene & its function is to enhance character & his or her actions
7. subjects are taken from different sources – as mythology, history, legends, fiction

Shakespeare’s tragedies

A tragedy = a form of drama in which the protagonist passes through a series of misfortunes towards his or her downfall. According to Aristotle, tragedy centers around a tragic hero who because of his or her tragic flaw suffers a reversal of fortune from happiness to misery. Although his definition of tragedy was influential in English drama, it was Seneca’s emphasis on revenge, murder and carnage that proved more popular to Elizabethan dramatists. The protagonist may be good or evil, but the tragedy that befalls him or her is usually partly of his or her own making.

Shakespeare wrote tragedies from the beginning of his career. One of his earliest plays was the Roman tragedy Titus Andronicus, which he followed a few years later with Romeo and Juliet. However, his most admired tragedies were written in a seven-year period between 1601 and 1608. These include his four major tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, along with Antony & Cleopatra and the lesser-known Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida.

Features of Shakespeare’s tragedies

Shakespeare's tragedies are stories of one person, the "hero" or at most two, to include the "heroine." Only the Love Tragedies (Romeo and Juliet; Antony and Cleopatra) are exceptions to this pattern. In these plays, the heroine is as much at the center of action as the hero.

The story depicts the troubled part of the hero's life which precedes and leads up to his death. It is, in fact, essentially a tale of suffering and calamity, conducting the hero to death.

Shakespeare's the tragic hero is always a noble man who enjoys some status and prosperity in society but possesses some moral weakness or flaw which leads to his downfall. The hero falls unexpectedly from a high place, a place of glory, or honor, or joy. External circumstances such as fate also play a part in the hero's fall. Evil agents often act upon the hero and the forces of good, causing the hero to make wrong decisions. Innocent people always feel the fall in tragedies, as well.

We see a number of human beings placed in certain situations, and from their relationships, certain actions arise. These actions cause other actions, until this series of interconnected deeds leads to complications and an apparently inevitable catastrophe. In Shakespeare, the hero recognizes his own responsibility for the catastrophe which befalls him too late to prevent his death.

The Abnormal Conditions of mind are never introduced as the origin of any deeds of any dramatic moment. Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking has no influence whatsoever on the events that follow it. Macbeth did not murder Duncan because he saw a dagger in the air; he saw a dagger in the air because he was about to murder Duncan. Lear's insanity, like Ophelia's, is not the cause of a tragic conflict, but the result of a tragic conflict.

The Supernatural Elements cannot, in most cases, be explained away as an illusion in the mind of one of the characters. It does contribute to the action, but it's always placed in the closest relation with character.

Tragic structure in the plays

As a Shakespearean tragedy represents a conflict which ends in catastrophe, any such tragedy can be divided into 4 parts:

1. EXPOSITION
2. RISING ACTION
3. FALLING ACTION
4. RESOLUTION

Exposition- Here we are made aware of the general setting, the persons, character traits, problems of the play, the conflicts or potential conflicts. Usually, by the time the second act is completed, we know what the overriding problem of the play is, what the major conflict is and who the players in the conflict are, who our protagonist or tragic hero is, and often what seems to be his tragic flaw is already in place.

Rising action- This second part of the structure deals with a definite beginning, the growth and nature of the conflict. The problem intensifies. Time and a sense of urgency become increasingly important as the speed of the action increases. A sense of inevitability begins to advance as we watch the tragic hero alienating his allies and closest supporters.

Falling action- Reversal of the situation starts taking place. Opposing forces begin to openly resist and to make plans for the removal of the tragic hero, and the hero's power is obviously declining as the opposition's power advances.

Resolution- The opposition reaches its full strength and defeats/destroys the isolated, weakened hero. The hero realizes his own errors but it is too late to fight.

HAMLET

Hamlet is probably the best known of Shakespeare’s works. The full text appeared in 1604.

It is considered as Renaissance psychological drama of a young man, who is hesitating between his will and the family duty. „To be or not to be“ is the centre of Hamlet’s hesitating (inner monologues).

This play is divided into 5 acts and then to scenes. The whole text is written in blank verse-  iambic parameter. Shakespeare’s major technique is contrast. He gives us an opportunity to emphasize a point by contrast. He discuss the problems he faces directly with the audience, in a series of 7 soliloquies (used to reveal character’s thoughts, feelings or motives to the audience, it is a speech delivered by a character alone on stage).  

Hamlet, the son of ex-king of Denmark learns the truth about his dad’s dead from his dad’s ghost. But to make it sure he pretends madness and test the ghost story by having a play. Then the king decides to destroy Hamlet- he sends him to England to have him killed there. But Hamlet returns and makes the play end up in blood of almost the all characters.

OTHELLO

Othello is considered to be a prime example of Aristotelian drama; it focuses upon a very small cast of characters, one of the smallest used in Shakespeare, has few distractions from the main plot arc, and concentrates on just a few themes, like jealousy. AS such, it is one of the most intense and focused plays Shakespeare wrote, and because of its varied themes — racism, love, jealousy and betrayal it has also enjoyed a great amount of popularity from the Jacobean period to the present day.

It was written around the year 1603. The main source for Othello is the novella The Hecatommithi, written in 1565 by the Italian author.

The theme of Othello is sexual jealousy. Othello, a Moor who is honoured Venetian general, marries Desdemona. Iago one of his officers is disappointed at not being promoted. This evil man prepares the plan of revenge. He starts with it in Cyprus where Othelo and his army were sent to defend against a Turkish fleet. He contrives for Cassio, Othello’s lieutenant, to be dismissed from army for being drunk. Then he makes Othello to believe that Desdemona is his lover. Othello becomes very jealous and kills Desdemona. Iago,s wife finds out her husband’s plot and discloses it. In agony Othello kills himself. Iago stubs his wife to daeth and is arrested.

KING LEAR

King Lear is a tragedy, considered one of his greatest works, and is based on the legend of King Lear of Britain.. After the Restoration the play was often modified by theatre practitioners who disliked its nihilistic flavour, but since World War II it has come to be regarded as one of Shakespeare's supreme achievements. The tragedy is particularly noted for its probing observations on the nature of human suffering and kinship on a cosmic scale.

King Lear had three daughters. He decided to divide his kingdom among them and ask them to tell him which one loved him best. Two elder ones said that they love him above all, though it was not true. Cordelia who really loved him but wouldn’t tell a lie told him that she would give half of her heart to him and half to her future husband. The king became very angry and drove her away from home. All too late he recognized his older daughters didn’t speak the truth and left their castle. He wandered about in storm and went mad. Cordelia who had married the king of France came to England with her army to help her father. But both she and Lear, were imprisoned by the sisters and she was put to death. Then King’s heart broke and he died too.

MACBETH

Probably composed in late 1606 or early 1607, Macbeth is the last of Shakespeare's four great tragedies, the others being Hamlet, King Lear and Othello. It is a relatively short play without a major subplot, and it is considered by many scholars to be Shakespeare's darkest work.

Macbeth is another one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, based on Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. It was written around 1605 but was not published in the first Folio until 1623. It tells a story about the fall of the ambitious couple, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Macbeth is the tragic hero, a character who has a fatal (tragic)flaw within himself that he cannot change. He is not a bad person; he is just too ambitious. Macbeth is a story about the murder of a king by his brother, the revenge of a son (Macbeth), three witches who plot against Macbeth, and Macbeth’s rise and fall.

Macbeth is an interesting character to follow. As you read, you can see how he has changed. We first meet Macbeth as a brave soldier and later find him as a murderer who kills everyone who is in his way of the throne. Lady Macbeth is also a well-developed character. She is  ruthless, though she does seem to have some human qualities.

It’s a tragic story about noble and brave Scottish who became a murdering despot. With their double meanings, prophesies of three old witches gave him ground for hope that one day he would become king. He told his wife about his meeting with witches. Lady Macbeth who was even more ambitious than her husband urged him to kill the present king Duncan. Two of the evil prophesies then came true. The third had said that the sons of Banquo, a fellow-soldier, would become kings. So Macbeth and his wife hired murderers to kill Banquo. Because they still didn’t feel safe Macbeth consulted witches again. They told him that he would never be defeated until Birnam Wood came to Duncinan. Although that seem to be unlikely happening it came and all the prophesies of the witches came true.

SHAKESPEARE’S HISTORIES

Traditionally, the plays of William Shake spear have been grouped into three categories: tragedies, comedies, and histories. Histories are normally described as those based on the lives of English kings. The plays that depict older historical figures such as Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Julius Caesar and the legendary King Lear are not usually included in the classification. Macbeth, which is based on a Scottish king, is also normally regarded as a tragedy, not a history.

The source for most of these plays is the well-known Raphael Holinshed's Chronicle of English history. Shakespeare's plays focus on only a small part of the characters' lives and frequently omit significant events for dramatic purposes.

Context

Shakespeare was living under the reign of Elizabeth I, the last monarch of the house of Tudor, and his history plays are often regarded as Tudor propaganda because they show the dangers of civil war and celebrate the founders of the Tudor dynasty. In particular, Richard III depicts the last member of the rival house of York as an evil monster ("that bottled spider, that foul bunchback'd toad"), a depiction disputed by many modern historians, while portraying his usurper, Henry VII in glowing terms. Political bias is also clear in Henry VIII, which ends with an effusive celebration of the birth of Elizabeth. However, Shakespeare's celebration of Tudor order is less important in these plays than the spectacular decline of the medieval world. Moreover, some of Shakespeare's histories -- and notably Richard III - point out that this medieval world came to its end when opportunism and machiavelism infiltrated its politics. By nostalgically evoking the late Middle Ages, these plays described the political and social evolution that had led to the actual methods of Tudor rule, so that it is possible to consider history plays as a biased criticism of their own society. With the shamed return of unvictorious Essex, patriotic enlargements turned sour, and, indeed, English history became a dangerous thing to present upon the stage: it was too easy to find, in any aspect of England’s past, seditious parallels to the present. History from now on had to be remote and foreign – Julius Caesar, Coriolanus…”The War(s) of the Roses" is a phrase used to describe the civil wars in England between the Lancastrian and Yorkist dynasties. Some of the events of these wars were dramatized by Shakespeare in the history plays Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V; Henry VI and Richard III.

There is no evidence that the plays were imagined as a play cycle in Shakespeare's day. However in the 20th and 21st centuries there have been numerous stage performances of:

1. The first tetralogy (Henry VI parts 1 to 3 and Richard III) as a cycle
2. The second tetralogy (Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V) as a cycle (which has also been referred to as the Henriad)
3. The entire eight plays in historical order (the second tetralogy followed by the first tetralogy) as a cycle. Where this full cycle is performed, as by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1964, the name The War[s] of the Roses has often been used for the cycle as a whole

SHAKESPEARE’S CONTEMPORARIES

BENJAMIN JOHNSON

BEN JONSON followed Shakespeare, but was far below him. He wrote 20 plays alone, he was called “Rare Ben Johnson”. Ancient classics had a great influence on him; his characters are walking humours not really human. He believed in the unities of place, time and action.

Johnson was a dramatist, left many poems, plays and prose. Critics see his work as more learned and less inspired than Shakespeare’s. Inspired means showing influence of outside spirits upon the human mind. His best play was Every Man in his Humour (1598). Humour should be understood as a quality, special foolishness, strong feeling in a man. His characters are more humorous and they are not really human. He wrote about 20 plays alone and several with other play writers. His tragedy Sejanus-His Fall was performed at the Globe Theatre and also his comedy Volpone the Fox had great access.

Jonson the best producer of masques at this or any other time. Masques  are dramatical entertainments with dancing and music, which are more important than the characters and story itself. Jonson believed in the classical unities of time, place and action. This means that the plays should take place in 1 location, the action should not cower more than 24 hours and nothing form outside was left into the story. His other plays are for example Every Man out of his Humour, Epicoene or the Silent Woman,

The Alchemist or The Bartholomew Fair.

Johnson wrote also lyrics - To Celia and notes - Timber and Discoveries (1640). For this he is called the father of English literary criticism.

THOMAS KYD

1. a creator of Elizabethan blood tragedy, tragedy of revenge
2. work: The Spanish Tragedy – tragedy of blood; it’s like Shakespeare’s Hamlet ; a ghost appears, demanding revenge; but it appears to the father of a murdered son

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

1. the famous dramatist, also a lyric author
2. his characters go to their aim at any price
3. his violent use of the language was greatly criticised
4. Marlowe has been regarded as a spy, a hooligan, a heretic, and a homosexual
5. also regarded as a "magician", "duellist", "tobacco-user", "counterfeiter", and “rakehell".
6. has been marked as a government spy
7. later he was arrested and murdered
8. his murder was in 1925 specified as an assassination

Marlowe was also a lyric writer – The Passionate Shepherd to His Love  famous “mighty” line is blank verse and much finer poetry

works:

1. Tamburlaine the Great - his first tragedy (splendid blank verse + violence + sound of names)
2. The Jew of Malta – was well received owing to its beauty of sound and rhythm; the hero goes towards his aim in each case
3. Dr. Faust – based on German story about the man who dedicated his soul to a devil because he wanted to own knowledge of the whole world
4. Edward the Second – deals with English history

The Jew of Malta

1. probably written in 1589 or 1590
2. the first recorded performance was in 1592
3. the title character, Barabas the Jew, is a complex character likely to provoke mixed reactions in an audience
4. the plot is an original story of religious conflict, intrigue, and revenge
5. is considered to have been a major influence on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

A Jew Merchant named Barabas is waiting for the news about the return of his ships from the east. His ships savely docked in Malta and Barabas must go to meet governor. Like many other Jews he must give half of his estate to government to pay tribute to the Turks. Barabas protests and the governor Ferneze confiscates all his wealth and turns his house into a convent. Abigail, Jew’s daughter, pretends to convert to Christianity instead to enter the convent. Barabas meets Lodowick and use him for revenge on Ferneze. While planing this he buys a slave named Ithamore. Barabas tells his daughter to get engaged to Lodowick. Lodowick and Abigale’s lover Mathias kill each other in the duel. Bellamira, a prostitute, and her pimp Pilia-Borza decide that they will steal some of Barabas’s gold. Ithamore falls in love with Bellamira. Abigail decices to enter the convent and Barabas decides to poison some rice and sends it to the nuns. Abigail, close to death, confesses her father’s role in Mathias’s and Lodowick’s deaths to Dominican friar Jacomo. Barabas realizes this and pretends that he wants to convert to Christianity and gives all his money to monastery he joins. The slave confesses his master’s crime to Bellamira. She and her pimp confess Brabas’s crimes to governor and after that Bellamira, Pilia-Borza and Ithamore die. Barabas fakes his own death and escapes to find Calymath, turk’s leader. Barabas tells him how best to storm the town. After capturing of Malta, Barabas is made governor. Fearing for his own life and security of his office, Barabas sends for Ferneze. Barabas tells him that he will free the Malta from Turkish rule and kill Calymath in exchange for a large amount of money. Ferneze agrees and Barabas invites Calymath to a feast at his home. During the feast Barabas dies in a cauldron that was prepared for Calymath.

1. Themes: religious hypocrcrisy (Barabas convert from one church to another without self-reproach to gain more Money or estate. Also Abigail convert instead of enter convent), revenge and retribution (revenge is the main problem of the play, Barabas wants to revenge on Ferneze because he took his estate)
2. Motifs: cheat and makebelieve (Barabas lies during all the play he uses other characters to gain more and more Money and estate, he pretends that he converted and later also his own death to make his plano f making Money easier), biblical allusion
3. Symbols: gold and money (gold and money are the most important thing in Barabas’s life and he is able to do everything to make more money, Abigail sales his fathers’s gold and also Bellamira and her pimp want to steal Barabas’s gold to make some money)

Doctor Faustus

1. probably written in 1592
2. the idea (of an individual selling his or her soul to the devil for knowledge) is an old motif in Christian folklore
3. later versions include the long and famous poem Faust by the nineteenth-century Romantic writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
4. the phrase “Faustian bargain” has entered the English lexicon, referring to any deal made for a short-term gain with great costs in the long run

Doctor Faustus, a well-respected German scholar decides that he wants to learn to practice magic. His friends instruct him in the black arts, and he begins his new career as a magician by summoning up Mephastophilis, a devil. Faustus tells the devil to return to his master, Lucifer, with an offer of Faustus’s soul in exchange for thwenty-four years of service from Mephastophilis. Lucifer has accepted Faustus’s offer. Armed with his new powers Faustus begins to travel. He travels through the courts of Europe where he plays tricks. As the twenty-four years of his deal with Lucifer come to a close, Faustus begins to be affraid of his death. On the final night before the expiration, Faustus is overcome by fear. He begs for mercy but it is too late. At midnight, a host of devils appears and carries his soul off to hell. In the morning, the scholars find Faustus’s limbs and decide to hold a funeral for him.

OTHER DRAMATISTS:

JOHN WEBSTER

The White Devil

The Duhcess of Malfi

F.BEAUMONT

J.FLETCHER (worked with Shakespeare)

comedy The Knight of the Burning Pestle

tragedy The Maid´s Tragedy

6. Rennaissance prose and poetry

Renaissance:

- revival of Antic culture, interest for antic writers - a need for translation (Latin, Italian works)

- best-known translator: Sir Thomas North – transl.: Plutarch's Lifes of Noble Greeks and Romans

Humanism:

- started in Italy

- a reaction on old medieval ideas

- interest turned into individuality of human beauty

- the importance of life (not of eternal life after death..)

Renaissance in Britain:

- starts during late 15th cent. (reign of Henry VIII. = had 6 wives; 2 of them were executed)

- “Rebirth of learning” → stimulation, excitement & discovery, but also fear, insecurity…

- the main idea - the link of beauty and good

- many foreign scholars came to Britain and spread new ideas: eg. Erasmus of Rotterdam whose ideas let to raise the Protestantism

- foundation of the church of England: king/queen is the head of the church, priests can marry, simple churches (less icons..)

- the idea of reformation was to change the church as it was at the beginning

- the most important reformation was a new Bible: King James’s Bible (English translation 1611)

- made by about 50 translators but the authorship is assigned to William Tindale and M. Coverdale

- this English /protestant/ translation was very simple and easy to read for all people

Typical features of the period:

- voyages, discoveries (eg. 1492 - Columbus discovers America)

- 17th cent. – 1st pilgrims came to America

Humanism and renaissance can be seen in:

1. philosophy (eg. F. Bacon= Essays = „Be angry, but seem not.“)

2. literature:

a.- prose (T. More)

b.- poetry (T. Wiatt)

c.- drama (Shakespeare)

Elizabethan Era

Queen Elizabeth ruled from 1558-1603, but the great Elizabethan literary age is not considered as beginning until 1579.

The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. It was the height of the English Renaissance, and saw the flowering of English literature and poetry. It was an age of expansion and exploration abroad, while at home the Protestant Reformation became entrenched in the national mindset. European wars brought an influx of continental refugees into England, exposing the Englishman to new cultures. In trade, might, and art, England established an envious preeminence. At this time, London was the heart of England, reflecting all the vibrant qualities of the Elizabethan Age. This atmosphere made London a leading center of culture as well as commerce. Its dramatists and poets were among the leading literary artists of the day.

ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE

1. Also called Renaissance poetry
2. During  Queen Elizabeth´s  reign the poetry flourished
3. Most popular themes were the relationship between men and women and treachery  and hypocrisy of courtly life
4. Lyric poetry was strongly influenced by Italian poets, in particular by Francesco Petrarch

THE SONNET IN THE ENGLISH LITERATURE

Sonnets were introduced by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. His sonnets and sonnets of his contemporaries, like Earl of Surrey, were mainly translations form the Italian and French. Wyatt introduced the sonnet, but it was Earls of Surrey who gave the rhyme, scheme, rhythm and division into quatrains (štvorveršie).

In the following years, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel and many others wrote their sonnets. Majority of them were inspired by the Italian tradition and they treated mainly the poet’s love for women.

In the 17th century sonnet was adopted for other purposes – religious once. John Milton and John Donne produced sonnets and they used them as a meditative poem. The fashion of sonnets went out with the restoration and hardly any sonnets were written between 1670s and the time of William Wordsworth. Later on sonnets came back with the French revolution.

THE FORM OF SONNETS

It was soon after the introduction of the Italian sonnet, when English sonnets began to be developed fully in native form. Poets who produced their sonnets were Sir Philip Sidney, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel and, of course. William Shakespeare.

The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first on to write in this form, but because he became its first and most famous practitioner.

The form consists of 3x4 + couplet (14 lines). A couplet generally introduced an unexpected sharp turn called a Volta. The rhyme scheme was ABAB CDCD EFEF GG – were GG is the couplet.

Sonnets were written in iambic pentameter which means there are 10 syllables in each line and every other syllable is naturally stressed.

Elizabethan poetry

The Elizabethan Age produced a surprising flow of lyrics.

Lyric poetry gives expression to the poet’s own thoughts and feelings, and for this reason we tend to picture the lyric poet as a rather dreamy unpractical person with his thoughts turned inwards.

SIR THOMAS WYATT

Thomas Wyatt is famous for introducing sonnets into English poetry. He translated several works of Petrarch but also edited, produced several of his own. We have few imitations of the works of classical authors mainly Seneca and Horace and also Wyatt experimented with songs, epigrams and satires. Wyatt admired Geoffrey Chaucer and his vocabulary reflects Chaucer’s. His best known poems are those which deal with romantic love.

1. he brought the sonnet to English literature
2. he was influenced by Italian verse forms
3. in form of sonnets he followed the Italian poet Petrarch  14 lines rhyme abba abba 8 + 2 or 3 rhymes in the last six line
4. work: They flee from me (the narrator is in prison)

EARL OF SURREY

1. he also wrote sonnets
2. he introduced the first blank verse in English

Wyatt’s and Surrey’s works are published in compilation work called Songs and Sonnets. TOTTEL´S Songs and Sonnets contained 40 poems by surrey and 96 by Wyatt.

SHAKESPEARE

154 SONNETS 1609

5. specifiy rhyming shceme
6. abab cdcd efe fgg
7. many of them refer to a young man William Herbert, Earl of Southampton

POEMS – Venus and Adinis + Lucrece

+ FIRST FOLIO - this large book contains all his plays except Pericles

DRAYTON – one of the best sonnets of the time were by him

EDMUND SPENCER

8. he started to write pastoral poetry (main characters are shepherds)
9. The Shepherd´s calendar - consisting of 12 books, written in the form of discussions about religion, ponder of  death between shepherds and praise of Queen Elizabeth. He was making experiments in metre and from.
10. The Faerie Queen - unfinished, author’s greatest work, consisting of 6 books, he celebrates the Tudor Monarchy and Elisabeth I. He introduces king Arthur who is an embodiment of nobility; the Queen is personification of fame. King Arthur starts to look for the queen and comes across several adventures and meets moral virtues. In each book another virtue is described. It was in this work that Spenser invented the Spenserian Stanza. Here we can see the wonderful music of the verse, the beauty of the sound.
11. Epithalamion + Prothalamion - marriage songs
12. collection Amoretti – 88 sonnets (1595)

Edmund SpenCer is an important English poet best known for his work “The Fairy Queen” – which celebrates the Tudor Monarchy and Elisabeth I.

Spenser was admired by William Wordsworth, John Keab, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson and many others. The language of his poetry was such as Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”.  His “Epithalamion” is the most admired of its type in English language.

There is a sonnet named after Spenser – the Spenserian sonnet.

Its scheme is ABAB BCBC CDCD EE = Spencerian Stanza. In Spenserian sonnet there does not appear to be a requirement that the initial octave set up a problem which the closing sestet (8+6=14 lines) answers. Instead of it the form is treated as 3 quatrains connected by rhyme and followed by a couplet.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

1. book of sonnets Astrophel and Stella - about a young man who falls in love with a lady Stella who is already married

1. An Apology for Poetry/ The Deffence of - critical essay; he defends poetry as the  work of man is      supposed to remain longer than the creation of nature

BEN JONSON

2. father of literary criticism
3. was the leading figure of the Jacobean Era
4. wrote comedies of humour
5. his medical theory: behavioral differences result from a prevalence of one of the body’s four humours (blood, phlegm, bile, black bile)
6. works: To Celia, Every Man in his Humour, Every Man Out of his Humour
7. comedies: The Alchemist, Volpone the Fox            

GROUP OF METAPHYSICAL POETS

The age that followed, the Jacobean Age was less fresh – more interested in the mind than in heart or eye.

A group of poets, known as the Metaphysical Poets (showing clever tricks of style and unlikely comparisons) wrote verse which was generally less beautiful and less musical. These poets mixed strong feelings with reason.

They formed a loose group of British Lyric poets of the 17th century. They shared interests in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them. The name Metaphysical Poets was given to them by Samuel Johnson.

The poets themselves didn’t form a school or start a movement. Most of them even didn’t know or didn’t read each other.

Their verse appeals to the reader’s intellect rather then to the emotions. Their style can be characterised by wit, subtle argumentations, unusual simile or metaphors.

JOHN DONNE was the greatest metaphysical poet. His works are mostly songs and sonnets. Several Metaphysical Poets, especially John Donne, were influenced by Neo-Platonism. On of its primary ideas is the idea that the perfection of beauty in the beloved acted as a remembrance of perfect beauty in the eternal kingdom.

Elizabethan prose

The prose of this period doubt mainly with translations of Plutarch.

RICHARD HAKLUYT collected and published The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation - at this time there was a great deal of travel and adventure on the sea

THOMAS NORTH and his work The Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans is considered to be a quite important piece of prose. He was one of the best translators & had wide influence on Elizabethan prose.

SAMUEL PURCHAS published the Hakluyt´s papers under the title Purchas his Pilgrims containing

A History of the World in Sea Voyages and Land Travel

A kind of NOVEL began in Elizabethan Age. We are talking here about Elisabethan novels, they re for a little value, only a few people read them. They died out in that period because it didn’t lead to a development of novels.

JOHN LYLY was employed at the court. He used his work as a place to express his ideas in various talks and letters. His style is full of tricks; his sentences are long and complicated. The readers forget about the thoughts behind the lines the focus on the sentence construction. This style of long, complicated sentences was typical for the conversation of ladies of that time and many of these ladies were Lyly´s pupils at the court. Even Queen Elisabeth I. used this style and it was necessary for every girl of a good family to learn this style. He is known for his work Eupheus or the Analogy of Wit – about a young man living in Neapol which is in fact London. The author criticizes here the sickness of London society. The style is filled with tricks and

ROBERT GREEN was also a playwright and novelist; he influenced Shakespeare, especially his work The Winter’s Tale. The main plot of The Winter's Tale is taken from Robert Greene's pastoral romance Pandosto, published in 1590.

THOMAS NASH was an author of independent characters. He is famous for his work The Live of Jacky Hilton, a picaresque novel; a novel of the adventure about a man of bad character. The interest of the adventure is sometimes spoilt by long speeches.

FRANCIS BACON and his work Essays (1517). His Essays are still popular; some of the best-known sayings in English come from here. His prose is important; his sentences were short, sharp and effective. He wrote several books in English and Latin. His work The New Atlantis deals with social ideas in the form of a story. It is a journey to an imaginary island Benasalem. In his work The Advancement of Learning he considers the different ways of advancing knowledge.

THOMAS MORE was a lord chancellor. His work Utopia describes an ideal society based on the idea of communism.

WILLIAM TYNDALE is remembered for his translations of The Old and the New Testament. Because of his beliefs he was burnt. 47 translators were needed to translate the whole Bible and the translations were complete in 1611 with the first authorized Bible translation from Wycliffe.

RESTORATION DRAMA AND PROSE

The closing of the theatres in 1642 meant that no important drama was produced in the years before 1660.In 1660 Charles II became king and the theatres opened again and new dramatists appeared.  The tragic drama of this period was made up mainly of heroic plays.

JOHN DRYDEN

Conquest of Granada

Aurengzebe

Marriage-a-la-Mode (comedy)

All for Love

Don Sebastian

– satire, wrote in excellent rhymed couplets

Absalom and Achitophel

MacFlecknoe

Annus Mirabilis (four-line stanza)

– short poems

The Ode for Saint Cecilia´s Day

Alexander´s Feast

ALEXANDER POPE

8. a follower of Dryden
9. translated Illiad and Odyssey of Homer

Essay of Criticism

The Rape of the Lock

Imitations of Horace

The Dunciad

Essay

THOMAS OTWAY – tragedies Don Carlos + The Orphan + Venice Preserved

SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE – The Man of Mode

7. The age of Milton & Bunyan

Background

After the death of Shakespeare great changes took place in English life and thought. Catholic threat of re-imposing Catholicism on Protestant England by Spain was removed and England began to split into two warring camps. Under Charles I led to Civil War.

Civil War – the split in the country was a threefold one: economic, political, religious. Itself it resolved in a simple issue of 'party' – of Tories and Whigs.

Puritanism – the new men of England who gained wealth inclined to a religious belief very different from the established faith of England. They were mostly Puritans who wanted a purer kind of Christianity that would admit of no toleration, no joy, no colour, no charity and which punished vice in the sternest way.

Puritans followed John Calvin of Geneva, who taught that free will did not exist and that men were predestined from the beginning of time to get to either heaven or hell. People must be made good by a sort of government of holy men. The only pleasure is making money.

Puritans executed the King, declared a republic which soon became a dictatorship under Cromwell. The Old Testament became the book of the law. It did not last and in 1660 saw the restoration of the monarchy and an attempt to get back to the old way. But England can never be the same again and, virtually, in 1660 starts a new era.

Playhouses were closed by Puritans; memories of Elizabethan plays were performed out of sight of the Cromwellian police, in the underground.

Inquisition rules Europe wide (except few countries including Britain).

JOHN MILTON

The second poet after Shakespeare is JOHN MILTON. He lived a pure life believing he had a great purpose to complete

He made the blank verse the regular metre of epic, for example in The Lady of Christ’s

There are three divisions of his works:

1. shorter poems
2. prose
3. greatest poems

His works mainly concerned with church affairs, divorce and freedom.

Poems L´Allegro + Il Penseroso

Masques Comus + Arcades + Lycidas

Best work Aeropagitica, A Speech for Liberty of Unlicensed Printing

The English civil war between Charles I and Parliament(Cromwell) began in 1642 – 1646 and was followed by the second C.W. 1648-51 – during these years Milton worked hard at his pamphlets, supported Cromwell. He wrote his 3 greatest works blind:

- great epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) - 12 books containing hundreds of remarkable thoughts put into musical verse.

- Paradise Regained (1671) is more severe, less splendid

- Samson Agonistes 1671 – a tragedy on the Greek model, describing the last days of Samson

John Milton was an English poet, a polemist, a civil servant for the English Commonwealth. He was one of the greatest poets of the Puritans and the period itself. Therefore we can call it Milton's age.

Due to his hair, which he wore long, and his general delicacy of manner, was known as the "Lady of Christ's“

MILTON  was born into a rich London family, he never had to earn his own living. He had leisure that Shakespeare never had  he could equip with more learning than any poet before him. Studying was very important for him. He had had private tutoring, studied in London, and focused on Latin and Greek which were reflected in his work, in poetry mainly. He was blessed with musical ear (he played the organ). His poems are of audible musicality.

Milton was influenced by moral and religious principles of Puritanism. He decided to give his genius to religious and political purposes, to Puritans. It lasted 20 years. During Commonwealth he wholly gave himself to prose propaganda.

He was a friend of Galileo Galilei who was living in a misery, broken by the inquisition.

He was influenced by Dante Alighieri, Ariosto, The Bible, Homer, Ovid, Virgil, Shakespeare, Spenser.

He influenced William Blake, John Keats, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth.

In February, Milton lost his sight. This prompted him to write the sonnet When I Consider How My Light is Spent.

He began to write poetry in Latin, Italian, and English. One of his earliest works, On the Death of a Fair Infant (1626), was written after his sister Anne Phillips has suffered from a miscarriage.

He studied very hard, he wrote his first psalms at the age of 15, later studied on Christ College in Cambridge where he met American dissident and theologian Roger Williams. At Cambridge he wrote many of his well-known poems – Ode on the morning of Christ nativity, Epitaph on the admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare and the poems L’Allegro, Il Penseroso. After receiving master degree he undertook 6 years of self-directed private studies, wrote ancient and modern works on philosophy, theology, history, politics, literature he spoke 8 languages besides mother tongue.

Milton´s masques Arcades and Comus were composed for noble patrons, and he contributed his pastoral elegy Lycidas to a memorial collection for one of his Cambridge classmates in 1638. Drafts of these poems are preserved in Milton’s poetry notebook, known as the Trinity Manuscript because it is now kept at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Milton’s first foray into polemics was Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England (1641), followed by Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and The Reason of Church Government Urged against Prelaty. With frequent passages of real eloquence lighting up the rough controversial style of the period, and with a wide knowledge of ecclesiastical antiquity, he vigorously attacked the High-church party of the Church of England and their leader, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.

In 1644 he wrote his short tract, Of Education, urging a reform of the national universities.

After having finished education he set off to France and Italy. His journey was cut short 13 months later by the events of civil war in England. He made many friends in intellectual circles, he met famous and influential people. His 1st hand observation of what he saw as superstitious tyranny of Catholicism increased his hatred for absolutist, confessional states. After his return to England he put poetry aside and he started to write anti-Episcopal prose. His unhappy marriage with Mary Powell let him to write few pamphlets arguing the legality and morality of divorce. His unfortunate first marriage led to his works On Divorce in which he cites the Bible for abolishing the existing marriage-laws.

He received very hostile response and this made him write his Aeropaditica in 1644 which is an attack against censorship.

He defended republican principles, represented by Commonwealth, his works from this period can be seen as an explicit defence of the regicide. He published also autobiographical work The Fensio pro Se. In 1659 he published A Treatise of civil power which attacks the concept of a state church. When restoration was about to begin he wrote 2 additions of the work THE READY AND EASY WAY TO ESTABLISHING A FREE COMMONWEALTH - an impassioned and bitter work blaming English people for black sliding of liberty. Upon of restoration in 1660 he went to hiding for the rest of his life.

The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 began a new phase in Milton's work. In Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes Milton shows the end of the godly Commonwealth. His principal work PARADISE LOST was composed by blind Milton between 1658-1664. It reflects his personal despair at the failure of revolution yet there is an ultimate optimism in human potential. Paradise regained and tragedy SAMSON AGONISTES follow. They also follow Milton’s post restoration political situation.

The Garden of Eden allegory reflects Milton's view of England's recent Fall from Grace, while Samson's blindness and captivity – mirroring Milton's own failing sight – is a metaphor for England's blind acceptance of Charles II as king. However, despite the Restoration of the monarchy Milton did not lose his own faith; Samson shows how the loss of national salvation did not necessarily preclude the salvation of the individual, while Paradise Regained expresses Milton's continuing belief in the promise of Christian salvation through Jesus Christ.

His only explicitly political tracts were those published in 1672 OF TRUE RELIGION. Here he requires tolerance in religion, except for Catholics. His unfinished religious manifesto DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA lays out many of his heretical views and it was not discovered and published until 1823. He died in 1674 of a kidney failure.

PARADISE  LOST (1667)

This great religious epic records the greatest event known to the Hebraico-Christian peoples as The Fall of Satan and the consequent Fall of a Man.

For this poem Milton created a new kind of English and a new kind of a blank verse: both artificial. His constructions and even vocabulary veered to Latin rather than Anglo-Saxon English. His sentences are long, like Latin ones, he inverts the order of words. This, to some extent, slowed down the development of English poetry as a natural medium of expression. However, there is no denying magnificence in Milton's style.

Milton received £10 for the copyright he sold to Samuel Simmons.

The story was originally divided into ten books, subsequently they were rearranged into twelve. Each book is preceded by a summary titled "The Argument". The poem follows the epic tradition of starting in medias res  ( in the midst of things), the background story being told in Books V-VI.

The theme, the fall of man, is taken from the Bible. It describes Satan’s revolt against God, which leads to a war in heaven, in which the rebel angels are defeated. Satan then seeks revenge upon God for his expulsion from heaven: After God has created the first humans, Adam and Eve, Satan in the form of a serpent succeeds in tempting Eve. Eve makes Adam eat the forbidden apple and their disobedience, the first sin, is punished by their expulsion from Eden. The story is symbolic. It may be interpreted as a study on religion and ethics, Adam and Eve being man and woman as they live in the world. The action takes place in heaven, on earth, and in hell.

Milton's story contains two arcs: one of Satan (Lucifer) and another of Adam and Eve. Lucifer's story is a homage to the old epics of warfare. It begins in medias res, after Lucifer and the other rebel angels have been defeated and cast down by God into Hell. In Pandæmonium, Lucifer must employ his rhetorical ability to organize his followers; he is aided by his lieutenants Mammon and Beelzebub. At the end of the debate, Satan volunteers himself to poison the newly-created Earth. He braves the dangers of the Abyss alone.

The other story is a fundamentally different, new kind of epic: a domestic one. Adam and Eve are presented for the first time in Christian literature as having a functional relationship while still without sin. They have passions, personalities, and sex. Satan successfully tempts Eve by preying on her vanity and tricking her with rhetoric, and Adam, seeing Eve has sinned, knowingly commits the same sin by also eating of the fruit. In this manner Milton portrays Adam as a heroic figure but also as a deeper sinner than Eve. They again have sex, but with a newfound lust that was previously not present. After realizing their error in consuming the "fruit" from the Tree of Knowledge, they fight. However, Eve's pleas to Adam reconcile them somewhat. Adam goes on a vision journey with an angel where he witnesses the errors of man and the Great Flood, and he is saddened by the sin that they have released through the consumption of the fruit. However, he is also shown hope – the possibility of redemption – through a vision of Jesus Christ. They are then cast out of Eden and an angel adds that one may find "A paradise within thee, happier farr." They now have a more distant relationship with God, who is omnipresent but invisible (unlike the previous tangible Father in the Garden of Eden).

JOHN BUNYAN

Bunyan became a popular preacher as well as a prolific author, though most of his works consist of expanded sermons. Though a Baptist preacher, in theology he was a Puritan. He was no scholar, except of the English Bible, but he knew scripture thoroughly. He was also influenced by Martin Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in the translation of 1575.

John Bunyan set an example of clear, simple expression, especially in The Pilgim´s Progress (has given the English language some names of places, for example Vanity Fair) and The Holy War (allegory).

The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come by John Bunyan (published February, 1678) is arguably the most famous published Christian allegory. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of English literature, has been translated into more than 200 languages, and has never been out of print.

The Pilgrim's Progress is arguably one of the most widely known allegories ever written, and has been extensively translated. Protestant missionaries commonly translated it as the first thing after the Bible.

Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress in two parts, the first of which was published in London in 1678 and the second in 1684. He began the work in his first period of imprisonment, and probably finished it during the second. The earliest edition in which the two parts combined in one volume came in 1728. A third part falsely attributed to Bunyan appeared in 1693, and was reprinted as late as 1852. Its full title is The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come.

Bunyan began the work while in the Bedfordshire county gaol for violations of the Conventicle Act, which prohibited the holding of religious services outside the auspices of the established Church of England.

The English text comprises 108,260 words and is divided into two parts, each reading as a continuous narrative with no chapter divisions. After the first edition of the first part in 1678, an expanded edition, with additions written after Bunyan was freed, appeared in 1679. The Second Part appeared in 1684. There were eleven editions of the first part in John Bunyan's lifetime, published in successive years from 1678 to 1685 and in 1688, and there were two editions of the second part, published in 1684 and 1686.

Two other successful works of Bunyan's are less well-known: The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), an imaginary biography, and The Holy War (1682), an allegory. A third book which reveals Bunyan's inner life and his preparation for his appointed work is Grace Abounding to the chief of sinners (1666). It is a classic example of a spiritual autobiography, and thus is focused on his own spiritual journey; his motive in writing it was plainly to exalt the Christian concept of grace and to comfort those passing through experiences like his own.

The Pilgrim's Progress is, on some accounts, the most widely read book in the English language and has been translated into more languages than any book except the Bible. The charm of the work, which gives it wide appeal, lies in the interest of a story in which the intense imagination of the writer makes characters, incidents, and scenes alike live in the imagination of his readers as things actually known and remembered by themselves, in its touches of tenderness and quaint humour, its bursts of heart-moving eloquence, and its pure, idiomatic English.

The images Bunyan uses in Pilgrim's Progress are but reflections of images from his own world; the strait gate is a version of the wicket gate at Elstow church, the Slough of Despond is a reflection of Squitch Fen, a wet and mossy area near his cottage in Harrowden, the Delectable Mountains are an image of the Chiltern Hills surrounding Bedfordshire. Even his characters, like the Evangelist as influenced by John Gifford, are reflections of real people. This pilgrimage was not only real for Bunyan as he lived it, but his portrait evoked this reality for his readers. Bunyan is not only telling a story and constructing a plot, he is creating a divine composition, in which everything refers to itself. Bunyan creates a figurative representation; a complex and somewhat distorted mirror image of ourselves.

Bunyan wrote about 60 books and tracts, of which The Holy War ranks next to The Pilgrim's Progress in popularity.

The Holy War Made by King Shaddai Upon Diabolus, to Regain the Metropolis of the World, Or, The Losing and Taking Again of the Town of Mansoul is a 1682 novel by John Bunyan. This novel written in the form of an allegory, tells the story of the town "Mansoul." Though this town is perfect and bears the image of Shaddai (Almighty), it is deceived to rebel and throw off his gracious rule, replacing it instead with the rule Diabolus. Though Mansoul has rejected the Kingship of Shaddai, He sends his son Emmanuel to reclaim it. Now there were three esteemed men, who by admitting Diabolus to the city lost their previous authority. The eyes of "Understanding" the mayor are hidden from the light. "Conscience" the recorder has become a madman, at times sinning, and at other times condemning the sin of the city. But worst of all is Lord Willbewill, whose desire has been completely changed from serving his true Lord, to serving Diabolus. With the fall of these three, for Mansoul to turn back to Shaddai of their own will, is impossible. Salvation can come only by the victory of Emmanuel.

The entire story is a masterpiece of Christian literature, describing vividly the process of the fall, conversion, fellowship with Emmanuel, and many more intricate doctrines.

8. the rise of the novel (factors, historical and social context)

LITERATURE (18th – 19th cent.) = the AUGUSTAN AGE = CLASSICISM

Philosophy of enlightenment:

- arose in France

- representatives=

a. F. Bacon - wrote essays - tries to explain/develop an inductive method

b. T. Hobs:

c. J. Locke - tabula rasa: no inanimate ideas

- 1714 – constitutional monarchy was established = king is not the head of the parliament, but the Prime Minister (R. Walpole – the 1st prime minister)

- England from the year 1942 the main colonial power

- education reserved for aristocracy + middle class; lower class had sc. Sunday schools

Literary scene:

- group of journalists: the aim is to educate people

- representatives:  Joseph Edison, Richard steel

- from 1711 to 1712 the Spectator was published= discusses political issues

The rise of the novel

- London – the main town for international trade; money earning became more important (more money more possibilities + more literacy)

- growing popularity of literature among the middle class

- lit. criticism used to form the readers’ opinion

- prose the most accessible form (essays, letters, criticism, novel = main genres)

NOVEL

1. prose (epical) genre
2. many characters who are developing
3. complex literary genre having at least 1 main character
4. plot and subplots
5. clear start and clear end
6. an long and complex fictional narrative text written in prose on some facts
7. contains action

18th CENTURY SOCIAL AND LITERARY CONTEXT

The Enlightment is the name of the period succeeding the Renaissance and followed by Romanticism. The Enlightment believed in the universal authority of Reason.

It favoured toleration and moderation in religion, believed in the rational perfectibility of man. For 18th century England Sense is a better watchword than Reason. Sense embraces practical reason, common sense (common opinion). At first it was related to Sensibility – a capacity for moral feeling. Gradually Sensibility became more aesthetic and sentimental and contrasted with sense.

The importance of knowledge, development, voyages, technics, discovering, researches, science (I.Newton)

It was the period of searching for natural resources like gold and the period of slavery.

The Englishmen were polite, except the social hierarchy and the King – as the power from God.

Literature and art – totally different position to today. In 17th century – privilege of the noble class – patrons, pensions to the artist – pleasing

Growth of the middle class – social changes – industrial revolution – growth of foreign trace

Leisure time of the middle class – London and other towns – assembly halls, concerts, art exhibitions (Waxhall Gardens) – the reading grew

Professionalisation and Commercialisation of art – capitalisation of the book market – in 1695 the Licensing Act was ceased – master printers, booksellers (similar to todays stationers)

Literacy – growing percentage – regional and gender differences – around 1750cca.60% men and 40% women

Circulating libraries – Subscription libraries

Coffee houses (over 500 in London) – centre of exchange of ideas – Journals (main modern topics, to learn something)

Cultural and historical background

Literature addressing the middle class – everyday topics, realistic, new genres – the domestic tragedy, comedy of manners

Enlightment and religion – no contradiction to natural sciences

John Locke – An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) – tabula rasa – empirical knowledge – his influential philosophy – reliable knowledge of the real comes form sense and impressions

David Hume – principle of association

Literature is becoming more of an art which is consumed by much more people – by the middle class not the workers

It was the time of great changes in social hierarchy

1. introduction of mass production – manufactures – workers work for 1 owner
2. trading – new branch in industry – foreign trade
3. money became a trade good
4. London – 1.stock exchange – not only exchanging good but also selling for money
5. manufactories changed into factories – production  with machines
6. new class – bourgeoisie = middle class

THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

Writers around the middle of 18th century did not call their works novel but history, life, journal.

They stressed the element of truth, documentary character.

The “new” genre of the 18th century was the novel the development of which was influenced by some important conditions and factors:

13. growing popularity of reading  literature among the middle class
14. education and educated readers  literary criticism
15. prose  the most accessible form (essays, letters, criticism)

Literary influences:

1. journalism - educate, enlighten the reader
2. parallel art forms - biographies, personal memories
3. letter writing - cultivated art, composed with care
4. travel literature - lively, straightforward style, precise observations
5. the Restoration comedies of manner - intrigues, sparkling conversation, humour, realism, satire
6. the picaresque convention - origins in Spain (picaresque - series of episodes)
7. mock-romance of knight errantry - e.g. Don Quixote de la Mancha - tries to put injustices to right

Other influences:

Puritanism encouraged:

1. a practical attitude to world affairs. When Christianity lost some of its spiritual and emotional force, practical principles began to dominate religious thought. Writers were expected to inform, to be 'useful' and to urge moral behaviour.
2. a belief in the individual conscience (P. followed the 'inner light', the voice of God)
3. a spirit of self-enquiry. The spirit of Puritanism encouraged the development of the 'spiritual autobiography'.
4. a love of truth. Stricter Puritans, opposed the theatre because it put on works of fiction, which they equated with lies. Later Puritans, known as Dissenters, saw art as irrelevant to the serious business of living.

The rise of the middle class:

The movement had begun in Chaucer's time but the big increase in the 17th century. As a result:

1. education was available to more people
2. more leisure time available, particularly for women
3. greater individualism - a belief that one must earn a living by one's own efforts;
4. growing desire to be opened up to new worlds outsider one's immediate existence;
5. greater spiritual and social alienation and a belief that human destiny was uncertain.

Scientific philosophy:

The optimistic philosophy of 'natural philosophers', such as John Locke (1632-1704), was consistent with, and helped lead to, a greater belief in reason at the expense of the imagination. After the Restoration, moderation and religious tolerance replaced passionate religious conviction, and attention was more focused on the social destiny of the individual and the facts and circumstances of the social world.

9. Jonathan swift, Daniel Defoe

Jonathan Swift

- satirical and ironical works

- master of prose – his sentences are logical, clear and well structured

  guliver´s travels

        Lilliput + Brobdingnag + The flying island of Laputa + Houhnhnms

        - mocking satire, socio-political satire, allegory

  a tale of a tub - religious allegorical satire (which religious is better?)

  journal to stella - a document of his personal life

  a modest proposal – Irish tracts – pamphlets for the independence of Ireland

  a short view on the state of ireland

Daniel Defoe

- originated from trade’s man family

- started with businesses; afterward turned to writing

- journalist and pamphleteer

- published political journal = the Review

- his works published in the Journal of the Plague Years

  the review – journal

  robinson crusoe

- message: Not to give up and do the best

- 1st person narration used

- autobiographical form used to make the story more exciting

- the story based on true event  

  moll flanders

- indirect criticism of these times

- Moll – a victim of her times (result of a society) - was forced to do things which were bad cause she wanted to survive – a thief, criminal and prostitute → makes her fortune and achieves respectability

- style – almost documentary (narrator does comment)

- plot – relatively disorganized

- morality – people are often victims of circumstances (don’t judge them!)

  a journal of the plague year

Importance of D. Defoe:

- broke the rules of the classical letters, used 1st person naration

- believed that the future of England is in the hands of the midle class

- started the tradition of the picaresque novel

- presenting true-to-life characters in true-to-life situations

JONATHAN SWIFT (1667 – 1745)

1. he wrote satirical and ironical works
2. he dared to criticise and mock authorities
3. he was a master of prose . his sentences are logical, clear and well constructed
4. he hated the whole mankind
5. his purpose was to show and awaken readers about some ridiculous things in society that need to be criticise
6. he used an inverse view – when he talked about England for example in Gulliver´s Travels – he used irony – there were the small Liliputians and the big problems
7. his works are:

        A Tale of a Tub – a religious allegorical satire

        Journal to Stella – a document of his private life

        A modes proposal – Irish Tracts – Pamphlets for the Independence of Ireland

        Drapier´s Letters

        A Short View on the State of Ireland

His most known work is Gulliver´s Travels from 1726 – it has a semi-fictional form – it is a utopian-satirical travel novel – Swift uses here mocking satire, social-political satire and allegory

GT contains 4 books: Liliput, Brobdingnag, The Flying Island of Laputa and Houyhnhnms – it is a severe attack on the political parties of the time and the religious controversies between different denominations within Christianity

In GT we can see a higher writing style – and we must know (as an all Swift´s works) the social and political background – we must know how to read between the lines

Gulliver does not develop through the story, he is a flat character

DANIEL DEFOE (1660 – 1731)

8. Defoe is interested in portraying true-to-life characters, character development, true-to-life situations
9. Defoe is talking to God and thinking what is this all – the whole life – good for = it is VERY REALISTIC
10. first modern English novel being the prototype of an English Gentleman from the middle class
11. also the prototype of British colonisers – they were very gently, they had a sophisticated way
12. Defoe wrote some travel novels – like A tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-1726) – it was a very popular travel, journey reports – close observation, detailed descriptions, although not visited everything – a lot of information about the actual situation of agriculture, manufactures and trade
13. for an other work – Account of Voyages for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemispheres – 3 volumes – Captain James Cook was Defoe’s model figure
14. Defoe wrote also prose satire  for example The Shortest Way with Dissenters form 1702 – from the perspective of an Anglican priest – disposed protestant non-conformists (dissenters) – to forced labour and hang them – it was an irony on the High Church – Defoe was persecuted
15. from 1704 to 1713 Defoe wrote a journal called The Review
16. to his best known works belong:

Robinson Crusoe (1719) – it was a fable, a symbol – it has become a myth of survival – the novel         ends positively to prove the rightness of Crusoe’s and middle-class mercantile values – ther is also a         diary with dates in it.

Crusoe is a coloniser, who establishes on the island a model of his own society – he is much more human-like than Gulliver – we can see his inner thoughts – he has hi inner life which he comments by his moods and the talking to God – he uses real words – the reality is so at it is – no other intentions as to describe the reality and the adventures as real as possible – there is no criticism – it is a celebration of the middle class – he is an active Christian – he is a prototype of the new energy class – the middle class – he is a deep-believer – he has a very practical attitude to life – he makes u his own living – he is capable to survive – he does something for it

This was based on the philosophy of empirism by Bacon and Lock, who was a founder of liberalism – tabula rasa – everybody has a chance - you have to use it or not

Moll Flanders (1722) – Moll is a victim of her times – first-person narration of a life as a thief, prostitute, incestuous wife – contains much social comment

A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) – historical narrative told by a humble tradesman

10. Samuel Richardson, Tobias Smollett, Lawrence Sterne

epistolary novel, sentimental novel

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EPISTOLARY NOVEL

17. formally a sequence of letters
18. used usually as a novel written in letters form the main character itself
19. editorial fiction – often a preface and an epilogue to the letters
20. writing to the moment – short emotional and time distance between the experience of the figure and the writing down
21. in contrast to the retrospective I-narrator the letter writer does not have an overview of the following actions
22. the I-form is more personal
23. subjective presentation of characters, places and reality
24. shift of focus on external events to psychological processes and differentiated presentation of character – personal interpretation of external facts
25. communication is characterised by personal relationship between the writers of the letters
26. strong orientation on the receiver
27. variety of the number of writers and perspectives (mono and multiperspectives epistolary letter
28. preference of scenic and dramatised narration – describing of scenes
29. small distance between the figures and  the recipients – a big identification potential
30. absence of hierarchically dominant narrator and of a dominant moral authority – each of the writers are equal
31. moral ambiguity in spite of the intention to achieve didactic effect – there might be the intention to give moral lessons but it is on the reader to decide what it is about
32. appreciation of individuality and subjectivity – subjective view and expressions
33. high aesthetic illusion of the figures – how they describe and express themselves in letters
34. maybe one person is writing the letter – just fictional letter writer or there is a different type – correspondence between two persons
35. used for presenting multidimensional view points on the same thing  - one fact described by more letter writers

CHARACTERISTICS OF SENTIMENTAL NOVEL

36. also called the novel of sensibility
37. lasted from mid to late 18th century
38. it celebrates the “cult of sensibility”
39. the person of sentiment was to bring a new range of emotions into literature in the last decades of the 18th century
40. it was fashionable in fiction
41. the most famous novels:         Laurence Sterne - Sentimental Journey (1768)

        Samuel Richardson - Pamela (1740)

42. the term and the literary style originated in medieval romances in which the love and love sufferings of the hero are presented
43. sentimentalism presented a new vision of love and human nature
44. feeling was more important than thinking, passion than reason and pity
45. tenderness and benevolence were placed over social duties

Samuel Richardson

- his novels – written in continuous present

  pamela

- realistic representation of day-to-day behaviour

- contrast between male domination and female restraint and submission and virtue

- the form of letters → internal monologue (other early novels - description from outside)

  clarissa – deeper than Pamela

  sir charles grandison

SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689 – 1762)

46. at this moment the novel was not promoting aristocratic ideals of honour any more but the middle class concept of virtue
47. he wrote letters for his customers – middle class ladies – he knew the inner life of women, what ladies like
48. he initiates a discourse on sexual roles – as relevant today as it was in the 18th century
49. Richardson provides models for the psychological novelists – in-depth psychology – influenced Rousseau, Goethe, James, Joyce – it’s about what is going on in the mind of the main character
50. he tries to present the inner processes and thoughts of a woman as a servant
51. in Pamela hi presented a servant maid with her own character – she could say “NO”
52. the maid changed her social class – she married her land lord – this was an unusual view
53. this was the start of sentimental reason
54. his Pamela was criticised to be very sentimental

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) – called the first modern novel – written in letter form – it is an epistolary novel – realistic representation of day-to-day behaviour – huge success – contrast between male domination and female restraint and submission and virtue – immediately criticised by Fielding as hypocritical (he wrote a burlesque on it called Shanela) – Pamela is a story of a young woman from a lower class, but she is not obeying – great access within the women public

In Pamela – the events are not chronological – she has remarks, inner thoughts, inner life – it is a dramatised narrator – other writers followed his style

Clarissa – major step forward – four letter writers – multiplicity of viewpoints diversity leading to consensus

Sir Charles Grandison (1754) – short of action – dramatic- the continuous present

Tobias Smollett

- influenced by the contemporary taste for satire

- criticized social inequalities

- accused his time of roughness and brutality

- lit. influences – picaresque novel

- 1st person narration (mock autobiography)

- epistolary novel (Pamela)

- omniscient narration (3rd person narration)

  roderic random

  pergerine pickle

  the expedition of humphrey clinker

Lawrence Stern

  the life and opinions of tristam shandy, gentleman

- all rules of the def. of the novel are broken

- 1st person narration → stream of consciousness

- written in humorous way

- Shandy’s life from the very beginning; there are some empty papers in the novel when nothing happened in Shandy’s life (style used in the post-modern lit.)

- without a clear plot – has less important; chaos of time-cales

  a sentimental journey – sentimentalism (betw. classicism and romanticism)

11. the gothic novel (characteristics, representatives)

At the end of the 18th century, sensibility’s value was questioned.

The plot of the Gothic novel takes place in a distant time and place, often Renaissance Italy.

18th century aesthetic theory held that the sublime and the beautiful were juxtaposed.  

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOTHIC NOVEL:

1. Setting  remote, old castles, cloisters, of the with underground labyrinths
2. Time  the plot is set mostly in the “dark” middle ages or in foreign countries in previous centuries
3. Characters  strongly typified “flat” black and white characters, clear contras between demonic evil and idealised figures (threatened virgins, tortured victims)
4. Plot  many mysterious supernatural events, suspense, chasing-haunting of the innocent
5. Narrator  preference of omniscient narrator (the narrator is not involved in the plot, stands back,               view from outside on the characters, has supernatural vices and is privileged)
6. Other factors  ghosts, magic, prophecies, storms, tempest

The Gothic novel challenges the emphasis on reason, control and order:

55. explores the deepest recesses of human psychology (Frankenstein)
56. stresses the macabre, the unusual and fantastic
57. prefers the realities of subjective imagination
58. the worlds depicted represent a clear challenge to the existing order and to rational thought and social organisation
59. the Gothic is a subversive tradition in writing

Best known representatives of the gothic novel:

Horace Walpole - The castle of Otranto

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein

Ann Radcliff – The mysteries of Udolfo

Matthew Lewis – The monk

MARY SHELLEY

MARY SHELLEY is the author of Frankenstein of the modern Prometheus.

Frankenstein believes he has found the secret of creating life - but his creation turns out to be a destructive monster, which no one can control.

It is an epistolary narrative with three narrators - the English Arctic explorer Capt. Walton, the German scientist Victor Frankenstein, and the nameless Creature which Frankenstein creates out of human body-parts by electrical experiment.

60. it is something between a gothic tale and a fable of ideas
61. began as a literary experiment
62. preface written by P.B.Shelley
63. its interest is cultural, moral, philosophical and psychological
64. the sensational contents and moral ideas conveyed in a mechanical style
65. it is a nightmare of alienation
66. main idea - playing God and it’s consequences; being an outcast
67. sentimental critique of victorious intellect to which Shelley and Godwin trusted
68. negative critique of Faustian overconfidence in natural science
69. it influenced later writings of Dickens, the Brontes, Bram Stoker, E.A.Poe

12. jane austen (mental and historical context of the late 18th century)

The changes in the social conditions did not result in the modification of the social hierarchy, but in the criticism of social climbers and luxury. All behavior which was not respecting the rights and duties of the given social class was condemned as luxury - concerning not only clothes or food, but also employment of servants, participation on social events or the reading of books. Luxury was criticized because it was endangering the established social order and was seen as political evil, often also related to corruption.

The commercial people were an important factor. Trade - commerce - was appreciated as positive. Wealth created conditions fro the development of arts and higher standard of civilization. The commerce was a possibility for creative and intellectual growth.

Politeness was one of the most important key-concepts. It strict regulated manners which are based on moral values. The ideal was to please the others and become a respected member of society. The manner of speaking, gestures, choice of conversational topic, the judging others´ manners, interpretation of works of art were all regulated by the principles of politeness. To be competent in politeness one needed to be self-disciplined, the aim was to avoid conflicts, to defer one’s own interests, assume the others´ wishes and desires ad to have a behavior which was refined or polished. Belief in becoming a better person through politeness became more and more a typical feature of a gentleman and a gentlewoman.

Jane Austen and the Bronte Sisters were writing in the period of classicism/romanticism.

All of them concerned with:

a. relationship between man and woman

b. 18th – 19th century England (atmosphere, education, society ...)

c. all were novelists (importance of the development of the novel = 18th cent.; several influences ...)

Jane Austen

1. born into the upper-middle-class family where literature was the chief amusement
2. uneventful life: never got married, never traveled a lot = dedicated herself to writing novels
3. described the middle-class world
4. interested in moral issues = she is a moral idealist
5. emphasizes community in microcosms = describes what people do, how they talk + behave (small world)
6. the search for order in a world marked by chaos (war, class division, loneliness, uncertainty)
7. her heroines - individuals, able to form their own judgments; belong to the middle class; of a good family but with little money; their aim is to get married but not without love
8. her female characters are accomplished with music, all speak French...
9. her young female characters end up marrying a country clergyman or a landed gentleman
10. her comedy of manners accepts the presence or absence of rank, wealth, brains, beauty and masculinity but she palaces goodness, rationality and love above them
11. central concern is with the integrity of a woman’s  affections
12. attention to the development of characters + plot
13. primary theme: the power of women to attract men
14. social advantages/disadvantages of marriage
15. she applied the techniques of the novel to the observation of society microcosm
16. she applies the microscope to human character and motivation
17. she deliberately avoids effect, exaggeration and excess
18. with gentle irony represents universal patterns of behavior
19. a documentation of an aspect of the provincial society of her time
20. economy in dialogue and action

Northanger Abbey

- a burlesque

- satire on gothic novelists

- distanced, slightly ironic observation of the heroine and of love-intrigues

- contrasts day-to-day life with the imagined horrors of Ann Radcliffe´s work on Catherine Morland

Sense and Sensibility

- at first called Elinor (sense and self control) and Marianne (sensibility and impulsiveness)

Pride And Prejudice

- Elizabeth Bennet resists her mother´s pressure and refuses to marry the odious Mr.Collins

- surprising neatness with which commonplace topics are illuminated drom different points of view

Mansfield Park

- not about the education of the heroine Fanny Price - her example educates others

- criticism of the gentry - older order of values is changing

Emma

- designed with economic symmetry

- a clever woman Emma Woodhouse prides herself on her perceptiveness and decides that Harrier Smith is too good to marry a local farmer

Persuasion

- about Anne Eliot who is persuaded to break her engagement with Wentworth

- ladies‘ power to attract a marriage partner

- social + economical advantages/disadvantages of a life-long partner

- gesture and silence develop emotional expressiveness

13. romanticism (the lake poets - w.wordsworth, s.t.coleridge)

The Romantic Period in literature lasted between 1789 and 1832.

English romantic literature is overwhelmingly poetic.

Romantics emphasis on subjective experience - subjectivity of Romantics.

Romanic poetry changed priorities in English literature.

Poetry is about personal experience rather than the public and moral concerns of classical poetry.

Poetry showed the way the general shift to finding meaning in personal rather than collective experience.

Characteristics:

1. prefers feelings
2. inward look to the own soul and imagination
3. celebration of the freedom of nature and human experience
4. attracted to irrational mystical and supernatural world
5. more critical of society and questioning

EARLY ROMANTICS  William Blake

THE LAKE POETS          William Wordsworth

        Samuel Tylor Coleridge

        Robert Southey

THE YOUNGER GENERATION (REVOLUTIONARY POETS)          Georg Gordon Lord Byron

        Percy Bysshe Shelley

        John Keats

THE LAKE POETS

1. they found their themes and ideals in the beauties in nature (in lake district in Cumberland)
2. they lived and worked in Lake District

William Wordsworth

- born in Lake District

- the importance of the impact and influence of nature on the human mind

- nature – symbol of innocence

- his poetry is empirical – records evidence of his senses, looking inward

- celebrates the spirit of the man, living in harmony with his natural environment

- searching for a moment of transcendental insight

- egoistical poetry – based on his own personal observations and experience of life

- he takes the speech of people living in nature

  prelude

  lucy

  matthew

  michael

  intimations of immortality

  Lyrical ballads

        - collaboration with S. T. Coleridge

        - contains Preface        

- gives an explanation of the romantic poetry

- start of Romanticism

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

- his poetry frequently communicates a sense of the mysterious supernatural and extraordinary world  

 (wanted to give the supernatural feeling of everyday reality)

- very imaginative (took opium)

- great master of metaphor

  the rime of the ancient mariner

- written in the form of a medieval ballad

- allegorical and symbolically powerful

- lack of water = represents the dryness of spirit

- the becalmed ship = aimless soul of a man who has sinned and waits redemption

  christabel – also written in medieval ballad form, allegorical

  kubla khan – a fragment – exotic landscape

  frost at midnight – reflexive, personal issues

14. romanticism (g.g. lord byron, p.b. shelley, j. keats)

The Romantic Period in literature lasted between 1789 and 1832.

English romantic literature is overwhelmingly poetic.

Romantics emphasis on subjective experience - subjectivity of Romantics.

Romanic poetry changed priorities in English literature.

Poetry is about personal experience rather than the public and moral concerns of classical poetry.

Poetry showed the way the general shift to finding meaning in personal rather than collective experience.

Characteristics:

6. prefers feelings
7. inward look to the own soul and imagination
8. celebration of the freedom of nature and human experience
9. attracted to irrational mystical and supernatural world
10. more critical of society and questioning

EARLY ROMANTICS  William Blake

THE LAKE POETS          William Wordsworth

        Samuel Tylor Coleridge

        Robert Southey

THE YOUNGER GENERATION (REVOLUTIONARY POETS)          Georg Gordon Lord Byron

        Percy Bysshe Shelley

        John Keats

The younger generation – Revolutionary poets

George Gordon Lord Byron

- involved in 2 issues (women and politics)

- well known for his verse satires

- “Byronic hero” – a melancholy and solitary figure often defeating social conventions

  child harold´s pilgrimage        - partly autobiographical

        - based on his European travels

        - reflection of rebellion spirit and search of spiritual truth

  don juan        - satire, cynicism, amusement

        - about inexperienced young man seduced by a woman

        - picaresque style

  manfred

Percy Bysshe Shelley

- revolutionary and non-conformist

- his poems lacked structure

- stress on individualism

  queen mab

  Ode to the west wind

  the necessity of atheism - pamphlet, questioned to existence of God

  prometheus unbound        - represents archetypal humanity

        - verse drama based on Greek mythology

John Keats

- poetry should be more indirect, communicating through images without presence of the poet

- main theme – the conflict between everyday world and eternity (

- long narrative poems

  endymion

  the fall of hyperion

  ode to a grecian urn

  ode to a nightingale

  ode to autumn

15. Victorian concepts and attitudes (ch. bronte, e. bronte)

During Queen Victoria’s long reign (1837 - 1901) we see a growth in literature, especially fiction  written by DICKENS, THACKERAY, THE BRONTES, GEORGE ELIOT, TROLLOPE, THE HARDINGS.

Poetry was popular, too, especially the poetry of TENNYSON AND THE BROWNINGS.

Many Victorians were influenced very much by thinkers, poets, even novelists.

It was an age experiencing the growth of wealth and power, the pace of industrial and social change and by scientific discoveries.

After about the middle of the queen’s reign, overall confidence was gradually fading and in the last two decades a different atmosphere took on.

Literature developed various special forms - aestheticism, professional entertainment, the revival of drama.

Britain transformed by the Industrial Revolution became the world’s leading imperial power and its most interesting country.

Although literature is never merely history, the novel becomes a moral history of modern life with Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot.

Victorians wrote impressive reports on the London poor, on the factories of Manchester and urban life - but a documentary social realism was not an intention in Victorian fiction.

The reading public was eager to read novels in instalments - serials in magazines.

The novel became a major public entertainment at the same time that books became big business.

The wirter now worked for the public via the publisher.

Victorian confidence in the taste of a middle-class public is impressive.

Literary scene - characteristics:

1. depicting the day-to-day life without conflicts and adventures = without any idealization

(usually on the bases of the author’s own experiences)

2. the hero: from each spheres of the society = ordinary people

(even the outcast ones and those living on the periphery)

3. realistic view of the present

(not interested that much in the past ...)

4. genres: prose, novel

(some of the novels also published in serials in magazines)

Literature can be divided into:

1. prose (Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, the Bronte sisters)

2. poetry (the Brownings, Tenison)

3. drama (Wilde, Show)

VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND

1. Emotional Attitudes

1. optimism
2. anxiety

2. Intellectual Attitudes

1. the Critical Spirit and the Will to Believe
2. Anti-Intellectualism
3. Dogmatis
4. Rigidity

3. Moral Attitudes

1. the Commercial Spirit
2. The Worship of Force
3. Earnestness
4. Enthusiasm
5. Hero-Worship

VICTORIAN CONCEPTS

1. Human values

1. self-renunciation
2. self-sacrifice  sacrifice of own desires for the benefit of others
3. self-improvement  the aim for self-improvement from the moral and intellectual point of view
4. duty          importance of responsibility and duty - highly esteemed, many tasks were

        class and gender specific

2. Standards for men

1. paternalism          duty of men to care for women, children, servants, lower classes demand for respect

        and obedience; the education of the lower lasses with preserving social control over

        it was and important topic of the 19th century

2. gentlemanliness  male ideal based on wealth and moral strength with courteous manners
3. chivalry  chivalric manners especially with women
4. muscular Christianity  ideal of male Christianity which represented strength and zest for action

3. Women concepts

1. angel in the house         idealised presentation of the sacrificing wife and mother who aims for the well-

        being of her family

2. fallen woman  a prostitute or a mother of illegitimate child
3. new woman  after 1880 women demanding access to education, sport, employment, independence

4. Collective self-concepts

1. liberty          political ideal which was seen by the English after the end of 17th century

        as a national concept

2. empire  after 1870 positive component of the British self-perception
3. the white man’s burden          assumed duty of the white to be engaged in the “civilisation”

        of other ethnics

THE NOVELS OF THE BRONTE SISTERS

Their novels are closer to genres of Romantic poetry than to the realism of the mainstream novel, fantasy and family are more relevant to their work than the currents of national history.

- Anne + Emily + Charlotte

- their father (a widower) educated his daughters

- were governesses = were private teachers

- wrote poems (published under male pseudonyms)

- their novels are products of an unusual imagination, novels of emotion = romantic feature

- new way of presentation of the conflict between individuals (romant. + Gothicism + classicism)

Charlotte Bronte

- was a governess = penetrates into her works

  the Professor

  Jane EYre

- an autobiography

- criticism of the system of education  of the Victorian society

- 1st person narration

- uses gothic elements (the mad woman, telepathic vision ...)

  Villette

- has many autobiographic features

  Shirley

Emily Bronte

  Wuthering HeightS

- full of passion

- an allegory of the clash between unearthly forces and ununderstood needs and passions

- Hitcliff = a gipsy accepted by a family as a full integrated person; after his father death he is treated badly

- there are more angles = a frame story

- Wuthering Heights = a symbol of evil

Anne Bronte

  Agness Grey - about her own experiences as a governess

  The Tenant of Valtfel Hall - an observation of her brother’s suicide

16. Charles dickens (Victorian concepts and attitudes, critical realism)

VICTORIAN CONCEPTS

5. Human values

5. self-renunciation
6. self-sacrifice  sacrifice of own desires for the benefit of others
7. self-improvement  the aim for self-improvement from the moral and intellectual point of view
8. duty          importance of responsibility and duty - highly esteemed, many tasks were

        class and gender specific

6. Standards for men

5. paternalism          duty of men to care for women, children, servants, lower classes demand for respect

        and obedience; the education of the lower lasses with preserving social control over

        it was and important topic of the 19th century

6. gentlemanliness  male ideal based on wealth and moral strength with courteous manners
7. chivalry  chivalric manners especially with women
8. muscular Christianity  ideal of male Christianity which represented strength and zest for action

7. Women concepts

4. angel in the house         idealised presentation of the sacrificing wife and mother who aims for the well-

        being of her family

5. fallen woman  a prostitute or a mother of illegitimate child
6. new woman  after 1880 women demanding access to education, sport, employment, independence

8. Collective self-concepts

4. liberty          political ideal which was seen by the English after the end of 17th century

        as a national concept

5. empire  after 1870 positive component of the British self-perception
6. the white man’s burden          assumed duty of the white to be engaged in the “civilisation”

        of other ethnics

VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND

1. Emotional Attitudes

6. optimism
7. anxiety

2. Intellectual Attitudes

8. the Critical Spirit and the Will to Believe
9. Anti-Intellectualism
10. Dogmatis
11. Rigidity

3. Moral Attitudes

12. the Commercial Spirit
13. The Worship of Force
14. Earnestness
15. Enthusiasm
16. Hero-Worship

Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society 'as they were'. In the spirit of general "realism", Realist authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation.

Authors concentrating with social problems: child labor, inequality between rich and poor, etc.

George Eliot's novel Middlemarch stands as a great milestone in the realist tradition. It is a primary example of nineteenth-century realism's role in the naturalization of the burgeoning capitalist marketplace.

Charles Dickens

- the whole family got into debts and everybody had to work

- began his career as a journalist

- invented a new form of narration: from the background

- his char. sometimes one-sided = too good/bad

- uses long sentences, descriptions (paid by pages...)

Dicken´s extraordinary talent was his communicative talent. In his best scenes, his words seem to be actors, gesticulating and performing on their own.

A general comparison shows him as less fine than Jane Austen, less compelling than Richardson in Clarissa, less profound than Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky, less terrible than Flaubert.

Dicken´s vision is peculiar; his cultural traditions are often sentimental or melodramatic.

His women characters are weaker.

  Picquick Papers

- a picture of Victorian society

- there is not one plot + developing char.

  Oliver Twist

- about an innocent boy

- readers are sympathetic with him cause he is poor and the victim of his age

  Great Expectations

- main char. is an exceptional – he develops throughout the novel

  David Copperfield

- autobiographical features

  Marshal Sea

- prison theme

  Nicolas Nicleby

  Hard Times

17. w.m. thackeray (Victorian concepts and attitudes, critical realism)

VICTORIAN CONCEPTS

1. Human values

9. self-renunciation
10. self-sacrifice  sacrifice of own desires for the benefit of others
11. self-improvement  the aim for self-improvement from the moral and intellectual point of view
12. duty          importance of responsibility and duty - highly esteemed, many tasks were

        class and gender specific

2. Standards for men

9. paternalism          duty of men to care for women, children, servants, lower classes demand for respect

        and obedience; the education of the lower lasses with preserving social control over

        it was and important topic of the 19th century

10. gentlemanliness  male ideal based on wealth and moral strength with courteous manners
11. chivalry  chivalric manners especially with women
12. muscular Christianity  ideal of male Christianity which represented strength and zest for action

3. Women concepts

7. angel in the house         idealised presentation of the sacrificing wife and mother who aims for the well-

        being of her family

8. fallen woman  a prostitute or a mother of illegitimate child
9. new woman  after 1880 women demanding access to education, sport, employment, independence

4. Collective self-concepts

7. liberty          political ideal which was seen by the English after the end of 17th century

        as a national concept

8. empire  after 1870 positive component of the British self-perception
9. the white man’s burden          assumed duty of the white to be engaged in the “civilisation”

        of other ethnics

VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND

4. Emotional Attitudes

17. optimism
18. anxiety

5. Intellectual Attitudes

19. the Critical Spirit and the Will to Believe
20. Anti-Intellectualism
21. Dogmatis
22. Rigidity

6. Moral Attitudes

23. the Commercial Spirit
24. The Worship of Force
25. Earnestness
26. Enthusiasm
27. Hero-Worship

Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society 'as they were'. In the spirit of general "realism", Realist authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation.

Authors concentrating with social problems: child labor, inequality between rich and poor, etc.

George Eliot's novel Middlemarch stands as a great milestone in the realist tradition. It is a primary example of nineteenth-century realism's role in the naturalization of the burgeoning capitalist marketplace.

William Makepeace Thackeray

- satiric observation of the middle-class and their interests: mainly materialistic

  The Luck of Barry Lyndon

- a parody of contemporary fiction

  Esmond

- a historical novel

  Vanity Fair  

- subt. A novel without a hero

- snobbery

  The Book of Snobs

18. george eliot (Victorian concepts and attitudes, critical realism)

VICTORIAN CONCEPTS

1. Human values

13. self-renunciation
14. self-sacrifice  sacrifice of own desires for the benefit of others
15. self-improvement  the aim for self-improvement from the moral and intellectual point of view
16. duty          importance of responsibility and duty - highly esteemed, many tasks were

        class and gender specific

2. Standards for men

13. paternalism          duty of men to care for women, children, servants, lower classes demand for respect

        and obedience; the education of the lower lasses with preserving social control over

        it was and important topic of the 19th century

14. gentlemanliness  male ideal based on wealth and moral strength with courteous manners
15. chivalry  chivalric manners especially with women
16. muscular Christianity  ideal of male Christianity which represented strength and zest for action

3. Women concepts

10. angel in the house         idealised presentation of the sacrificing wife and mother who aims for the well-

        being of her family

11. fallen woman  a prostitute or a mother of illegitimate child
12. new woman  after 1880 women demanding access to education, sport, employment, independence

4. Collective self-concepts

10. liberty          political ideal which was seen by the English after the end of 17th century

        as a national concept

11. empire  after 1870 positive component of the British self-perception
12. the white man’s burden          assumed duty of the white to be engaged in the “civilisation”

        of other ethnics

VICTORIAN FRAME OF MIND

7. Emotional Attitudes

28. optimism
29. anxiety

8. Intellectual Attitudes

30. the Critical Spirit and the Will to Believe
31. Anti-Intellectualism
32. Dogmatis
33. Rigidity

9. Moral Attitudes

34. the Commercial Spirit
35. The Worship of Force
36. Earnestness
37. Enthusiasm
38. Hero-Worship

Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society 'as they were'. In the spirit of general "realism", Realist authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation.

Authors concentrating with social problems: child labor, inequality between rich and poor, etc.

George Eliot's novel Middlemarch stands as a great milestone in the realist tradition. It is a primary example of nineteenth-century realism's role in the naturalization of the burgeoning capitalist marketplace.