A SHORT HISTORY

OF ENGLISH
LITERATURE
THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD (THE
EARLIEST TIME – 1066)
Social Background:- the making of England; the
invasion of Roman Empire in the 4th AD; the attacks
of Vikings etc.
Literature:- Beowulf, the earliest literature, the
national epic of the Anglo-Saxon,one of the striking
features- the use of alliteration.
Epic – A long narrative poem in elevated style
presenting characters of high position in a series of
adventures which form an organic whole. The
earliest epic: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.
Alliteration – In an alliterative verse,
certain accented words in a line begin
with the same consonant sound.
 THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD
(1066 – 15TH CENTURY)
Social Background:- the Norman Conquest under
William, Duke of Normandy, the battle of Hasting in
1066; the mark of establishment of feudalism.
Literature:- Langland; English Ballad; Romance;
Chaucer.
Langland – Piers the Plowman and allegory.
Allegory – A form of extended metaphor in which
objects, persons and actions in a narrative are
equated with the meanings that lie outside the
narrative itself.
Ballad – The most important department of English
folk literature: a story told in song.
Romance – The most prevailing kind of literature
in feudal England; a long composition sometimes
in verse,sometimes in prose,describing the life
and adventures of a noble hero.
Chaucer – The founder of English poetry; the
father of English poetry; Introduction of the
rhymed stanza of various types in poetry; the first
great poet who wrote in the English literature.
The Canterbury Tales – A picture of the 14th
century England; beginning with a general
prologue; with the influence of Boccaccio’s
Decameron.
 ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
(15TH AND 16TH CENTURY)
Social Background:- Hundred Years War and Civil Wars;
the weakening of nobility and the rising bourgeoisie; the
new monarchy; the Reformation and the weakening of the
power of church; enclosure movement and commercial
expansion.
Literature:- Renaissance; Humanism; Thomas More;
Edmund Spencer; Francis Bacon; Drama.
Renaissance – The Renaissance marks the translation
from the medieval to the modern world; it means rebirth or
revival of letters; it is a historical period. Two striking
features of this movement are the thirsting curiosity for the
classical literature and the keen interest in the activities of
humanity.
Humanism – keynote of the Renaissance;
emphasis on the dignity of human beings and the
importance of the present life.
Thomas More and his Utopia.
Edmund Spencer and his The Faerie Queene;
his reputation known as ‘the poets’ poet’.
Francis Bacon – the first English essayist,
famous for his Essays.
Drama – The highest glory of the English
Renaissance with Shakespeare, Christopher
Marlowe and Ben Jonson.
Christopher Marlowe – the most gifted of the
University Wits, Doctor Faustus, blank verse
first used in his drama.
Ben Jonson – his praise of Shakespeare, Volpone.
Soul of the Age.
The applause I delight!
The wonder of our stage!
-------------------
To whom all scenes of
Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age,
But for all time!
Shakespeare – his life – born in 1564 in Stratford on
Avon and died in 1616, his work – 38 plays, 154
sonnets and 2 long poems, his status.
Years of experiments/apprenticeship (mainly history plays).
Henry VI
Richard III
The taming of the shrew.
Years of great comedies and mature historical plays.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Merchant of Venice
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
Years of great tragedies and dark comedies.
Hamlet
Othello
King Lear
Macbeth
Years of romantic tragic comedies.
Cymbeline
The Winter’s Tale
The Tempest
Sonnet – A poem in a fourteen lines with a rhyme
scheme.
Rhyme Scheme of Shakespearean Sonnet –
abab cdcd efef gg.
THE PERIOD 0F REVOLUTION AND
RESTORATION (THE 17TH CENTURY)
Social Background:- the clash between the king and
parliament; the civil war between 1642 – 1649; Charles
Ist was executed in 1649; the decline of Cromwell’s
Commonwealth and the compromise with the feudal
remnants.
Literature:- John Milton: John Bunyan: John Dryden:
Metaphysical Poets
Milton:- a revolutionary poet, political both in life and his
art; Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson
Agonists.
Bunyan:- The Pilgrim’s Progress, a religious allegory,
the spiritual pilgrimage of Christian.
Dryden:- the most distinguished literary figure of the
Restoration Period; use of heroic couplet in his
writing.
Heroic Couplet – two successive lines of verse, equal
in length and with rhyme.
Metaphysical School of Poetry:- break away from the
convention, simple diction, common speech words
and cadences, actual life imagery argument with
poets beloved, with God or with himself; John Donne
and Andrew Marvell.
John Donne – leading figure of the Metaphysical
School of Poetry, his conceit.
Andrew Marvell – To His Coy Mistress
THE PERIOD OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND
CLASSICISM (THE 18TH CENTURY)
Social Background:- the age of enlightenment or the age of
reason, a progressive intellectual movement to enlighten the
whole world with the light of modern philosophical and
artistic idea, to celebrate reason, equality and science.
Literature:- the school of Classicism, the rise of modern
novel; Sentimentalism; Pre-Romanticism, Sheridan’s drama.
Classicism – All forms of literature should be modeled after
the classical works of the ancient Greek and Roman writers,
controlled by some fixed laws and rules; artistic ideals
should be order; logic, restrained emotion and accuracy;
Addison, Steele and Pope as representative.
Steele and The Tatler ; Addison and The Spectator.
Pope – the most important representative of classical
poetry, so perfect in heroic couplet that no one has bee
able to approach him.
Modern Novel:- the mid-century predominated by a new
realistic novel, Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett
and Sterne are representatives ; description of
adventures.
Defoe and Robinson Crusoe; Richardson and Pamela;
Sterne and Tristram Shandy; Swift and Gulliver’s
Travel; Fielding and Tom Jones; Smollett and Roderick
Random.
Sentimentalism:- By the mid of the 18th century,
Sentimentalism came into being as a result of a bitter
discontent among the enlightened people with social
reality. Dissatisfied with reason, Sentimentalists turned to
sentiment, to the human heart.
Thomas Gray and Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard.
Pre-Romanticism:- the later half of the 18th century: a
strong protest against the bondage of Classicism, a
recognition of the claims of passion and emotion; William
Blake and Robert Burns as representatives.
William Blake – The poems from The Songs of
Innocence indicate the conditions which make religion a
consolation, a prospect of illusory happiness and the
poems from The Songs of Experience reveal the true
nature of religion which brings misery to the poor children.
Robert Burns – remembered mainly for his songs written
in the Scottish dialect.
Sheridan:- the only important English dramatist in the 18th
century; The Rivals and The School for Scandal, the
true classics in English comedy.
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD (THE TURN OF THE
18TH AND 19TH CENTURY)
Social Background:- two important revolutions – the French
Revolution of 1789 – 1794 and the English Industrial
Revolution.
Literature:- The Romantic Period is an age of poetry;
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats are the
major Romantic poets; prose writers and novelists.
Romanticism:- It designates a literary and philosophical
theory which tends to see the individual as the very centre
of all life and all experience. It also places the individual at
the centre of art, making literature most valuable as an
expression of his or her unique feelings and particular
attitudes. Nature is not only the major source of poetic
imagery, but also provides the dominant subject matter:
Romantics also tend to be nationalistic.
Lake Poets – The poets Wordsworth, Coleridge and
Southey lived I the Lake district. They traversed the same
path in politics and in poetry first inspired by French
Revolution, later changed into conservative.
Wordsworth – his definition of poetry, “Poetry is the
spontaneous overflow of the powerful feelings” and poetry
originates, from “emotion recollected in tranquility”: a
nature poet; working in collaboration with Coleridge in
Lyrical Ballads.
Coleridge – Kubla Khan, Christabel and The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner.
Byron – Don Juan, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
Shelley – Prometheus Unbound, Ode to the West Wind.
Keats – his mature and important odes, Ode to a
Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Prose Writers – Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, Thomas de
Quincey and his Confessions of an English Opium-
Eater, Charles Lamb and his Essays of Elia.
Jane Austen – Love and marriage as the major
themes of her novels; Pride and Prejudice, Sense
and Sensibility etc.
Walter Scott – a romantic historical novelist,
Ivanhoe.
CRITICAL REALISTIC PERIOD (THE MID
AND LATE 19TH CENTURY)
Social Background:- the struggle between workless and
capitalists; the Chartist Movement; the Victorian morality.
Literature:- Fiction is the highest achievement with
Dickens as its representative.
Critical Realism – sticking to the faithful representation of
the 18th century realist novel to the critical realists carried
their duty forward to the criticism of the society and the
defense of the mass. They were all concerned about the
fate of the common people. Their truthful picture of
people’s life and bitter and strong criticism of the society
had done much in awakening the public consciousness to
the social problem and in the actual improvement of
society.
Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist about the dehumanizing
work – house system and the dark criminal under world
life; David Copperfield concerned about the debtor’s
prison; A Tale of Two Cities about French Revolution; As
a master story-teller, character – portrayal is the most
distinguishing feature of his works.
Thackeray – Vanity Fair subtitled a novel without hero, a
description of the evils of the upper society.
Bronte – Charlotte Bronte and her Jane Eyre the struggle
for basic rights and equality; Emily Bronte and her
Wuthering Heights, the passionate love.
George Eliot and her Mill on the Floss.
Poets – Tennyson and Browning: Tennyson is the most
representative, if not the greatest Victorian poet; In
Memoriam, The Idylls of the King: Browning as the most
original poet of his time, his name is often associated with
the term ‘dramatic monologue’.
Dramatic Monologue – In a dramatic moment or
crisis, the characters are made to talk about the lives,
and about their minds and hearts. In listening to those
one-sided talks, readers can form their own opinions
and judgments about the speaker’s personality and
about what has really happened.
Literary trends at the end of the 19th century –
Naturalism; Neo-Romanticism, Aestheticism; Thomas
Hardy.
Naturalism – Literature must be true to life and exactly
reproduce real life, including all the details without any
selection. Naturalists usually write abut the lives of the
poor and oppressed, or the ‘slum life’.
Neo-Romanticism – Dissatisfied with the drab and ugly
social reality and yet trying to avoid the positive solution
of the acute social contradictions, the writers laid
emphasis on the invention of exciting adventures and
fascinating stories. They led the novel back to story-
telling and romance: Robert Stevenson was a
representative with Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde.
Aestheticism – Theory of Art for Art’s Sake, art should
serve no religious, moral or social end, nor any end
except itself; Oscar Wilde and Walter Peter.
Hardy – Wessex Novels, novels about characters and
environment, the description of vicissitudes of people
who live in an agricultural setting menaced by he forces
of invading capitalism, The Return of the Native, The
Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles,
Jude the Obscure; Hardy is often regarded as a
transitional writer.
 THE MODERN PERIOD
(THE 20TH CENTURY)
Social Background:- the gap between the rich
and the poor; the postwar economic dislocation
and spiritual disillusion, the rise of all kinds of
philosophical ideas – Karl Marx’s Scientific
Socialism, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution,
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's Pessimism.
Literature:- Modernism rises out of skepticism
and disillusion of capitalism, takes the irrational
philosophy and the theory of psychoanalysis as
its theoretical base.
Realistic Novels in the 20th Century – the continuation of the
Victorian tradition; the outstanding figures are John
Galsworthy, H.G Wells and Arnold Bennett; with in the
strong swing of leftism. In the 1930s, novelists began to turn
their attention to the urgent social problems; In the mid-
1950s and early 1960s there appeared The Angry
Youngman, launching a bitter protest against the out moved
social and political values in their society, Kingsley Amis is
the most important.
Modernism in Fiction – The first three decades of this
century were golden years of the modernist novels; the
theory of the Freudian and Jungian, psychoanalysis played
an important role; D.H Lawrence traced the psychological
activities in his works Sons and Lovers, Women in Love,
Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Stream of Consciousness School of Novel – James Joyce,
Virginia Woolf.
Drama in 20th Century – Bernard Shaw is
considered to be the best- known English dramatist
since Shakespeare. His plays are inspired by social
criticism, John Galsworthy carried on this tradition
of social criticism; The Irish Movement.
Modernism in Drama – the working classes drama
and The Theatre of Absurd, John Osborne and
The Angry Youngman, Samuel Beckett and
Waiting for Godot.
Modernism in Poetry – a revolution against the
conventional ideas and forms of the Victorian
poetry, the poems of Eliot and Yeats, the rise of
modern poetry.
THANK YOU

Prepared By,
RINO SUSAN JOHN