Professional Documents
Culture Documents
II History of English Literature
II History of English Literature
Caedmon (poet)
– The Genesis
– Exodus
– Daniel
– Three shorter poems often considered as one under the title ‘Christ
and Satan’
Cynewulf(poet)
Four poems contain the signature of Cynewulf in runic characters:
• Juliana
• Elene
• Christ and
• The Fates of Apostles
• By 1368, King Edward III had made Chaucer one of his esquires.
• The death of the queen in 1369, served to strengthen Philippa’s
position and subsequently Chaucer’s as well.
• From 1370 to 1373, Chaucer went abroad again and fulfilled
diplomatic missions in Florence and Genoa, helping establish an
English port in Genoa.
• Chaucer familiarized himself with the work of Italian poets Dante and
Petrarch.
• He was rewarded for his diplomatic activities with an appointment as
Comptroller of Customs, a lucrative position.
• Philippa and Chaucer were also granted generous pensions by John of
Gaunt, the First duke of Lancaster.
• In 1377 and 1388, Chaucer was on a diplomatic mission with the
objective of finding a French wife for Richard II and securing military
aid in Italy.
Geoffrey Chaucer (4)
• An ABC
• The complaint of mass
• The complaint to his lady
• The complaint of Venus
• Fortune
• Truth
• The birth and rise of Arthur: “From the Marriage of King Uther unto King Arthur
that Reigned After Him and Did Many Battles”
• King Arthur's war against the Romans: “The Noble Tale Between King Arthur and
Lucius the Emperor of Rome”
• The book of Lancelot: “The Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lac”
• The book of Gareth (brother of Gawain): “The Tale of Sir Gareth”
• Tristan and Isolde: “The Book of Sir Tristrams de Lyons”
• The Quest for the Holy Grail: “The Noble Tale of the Sangreal”
• The affair between Lancelot and Guinevere: “Sir Launcelot and Queen Gwynevere”
• The breaking of the Knights of the Round Table and the death of Arthur: “Le Morte
D'Arthur”
• Most of the events in the book take place in Britain and France in the latter half of
the 5th century. In some parts, the story ventures farther afield, to Rome and
Sarras (near Babylon), and recalls Biblical tales from the ancient Near East.
Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516)
• Sir Thomas More coined the word Utopia in 1516.
• Written as an act of the Humanist movement.
• More’s Utopia is the story of an imaginary island society.
• Utopia means nowhere in Greek.
• More’s story of Utopia is told by Raphael Hythloday.
• Hythloday in Greek means "talker of nonsense.“
• Originally written in Latin.
• It was translated into English by Ralph Robinson in 1551.
The Summoning of Everyman
(1509 – 1519)
Works
– Astrophel and Stella
– Arcadia
– Apology for poetry
• The author of
– Euphues (1578)
– Compaspe (1581 ),
– Sapho and Phao (1584),
– Endymion (1591 ), and
– Midas (1 592)
• These play s are mythological and pastoral and are nearer to the
Masque (court spectacles intended to satisfy the love of
• glitter and novelty ) rather than to the narrative drama of Marlowe.
• They are written in prose intermingled with verse.
• Though the verse is simple and charming prose is marred by
exaggeration, a characteristic of Euphuism.
John Lyly
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William Shakespeare (1564 -1616)
• The greatest poet and dramatist in English
literature
• Playwright, actor and shareholder in an acting
company
• He wrote
– 37 plays
– 154 sonnets
– 2 long narrative poem and
– 3 poems
• The span of his literary works begins with 1588 and
ends about 1612.
Tragedies:
• Hamlet
• Othello
• King Lear
• Macbeth
Comedies:
– The Midsummer Night’s Dream
– The Merchant of Venice
– As You Like it
– Twelfth Night
• The Royal Court, the Inns of Court and the Houses of the
Nobility
• Members of the royal family did not attend the playhouses, and
so Shakespeare and the Chamberlain’s Men and later, the King’s
Men would, on occasion, be requested to perform at court.
• The main London residence of the Monarch was at Whitehall
during the reigns of both Elizabeth I and James I.
• But the court was constituted wherever the monarch happened
to be staying.
The Royal Court, the Inns of Court and the Houses of the Nobility
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Not to be too ambitious
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Not to be too emotional/ jealous
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Not to Postpone
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Synopsis of the Plays of Shakespeare
• SRC_Shakespeare_Synopses.pdf
Critics on Shakespeare and his Works
Ben Johnson on Shakespeare
• 1630:
– "I remember the players have often mentioned it
as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing,
whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line.
My answer hath been, 'Would he had blotted a
thousand,' which they thought a malevolent
speech. I had not told posterity this but for their
ignorance, who chose that circumstance to
commend their friend by wherein he most faulted;
and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the
man, and do honor his memory on this side
idolatry as much as any…
John Milton on William Shakespeare
"To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all
Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most
comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present
to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he
describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those
who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater
commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the
spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found
her there."
~ Essay on Dramatic Poesy
Thomas Rhymer on William Shakespeare
"From Poetica Brittanici (1700).
Cobb provides an example of the diffusion of Jonson's concept of Shakespeare as the
"child of nature."
Other Shakespearean Critics
• Shakespeare's Critics.docx
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Jacobean Period (1603-1625)
Historical Context
Jacobean Period (1603-1625)
Historical Context (1)
• England and Scotland shared the
same monarchy
• Death of Elizabeth I in 1603
• Elizabeth I was succeeded by James
Stuart in 1603
• James I inherited from his father the
medieval idea of the “divine right” of
the kings.
Jacobean Period (1603-1625)
Historical Context (2)
Cavalier Poetry
The Cavalier and the
metaphysical Poetic Traditions
“If they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits,
they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if the
conceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage.
To write on their plan, it was at least necessary to read and
think, No man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor assume to
dignity of a writer, by descriptions copied from descriptions, by
imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery ,
and volubility of syllables.”
Dryden said of John Donne
‘Jack Donne’
Donne’s Works
• John Donne’s works are noted for their strong,
sensual style.
• His works include
– sonnets,
– love poems,
– religious poems,
– Latin translations,
– epigrams,
– elegies,
– songs,
– satires and
– sermons.
Personal life of John Donne
• John Donne spent much of the money he inherited during
and after his education on womanizing, literature, pastimes,
and travel.
• In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, with whom he
had twelve children.
• The plays which he wrote in collaboration with Francis Beaumont are the comedies
such as
– The Scornful Ladie and The Knight of the Burning Pestle
– (tragi-comedies) Philaster
– (pure tragedies) The Maides Tragedy and A King and no King.
– The Knight of the Burning Pestle (Comedy)
– Philaster and The Maides Tragedy
• Individual Tragedies
– The Tragedies of Vanentinian,
– The Tragedie of Bonduca
– The Loy al Subject
– The Humorous Lieutenant
• Individual Comedies
– Monsieur Thomas
– The Wild Goose Chase
Philip Massinger (1583-1640)
• collaboration with other dramatists, particularly
John Fletcher.
• Massinger's best-known plays are A New Way to Pay Old
Debts, a comedy written in 1621 or 1622, and The Roman
Actor, a tragedy written in 1626.
• A New Way to Pay Old Debts relies heavily on
Thomas Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One (1608).
– Its chief character, however, is closely modeled on the notorious
Sir Giles Mompesson, an extortioner convicted in 1621.
– Massinger's character, called Sir Giles Overreach, is driven to
insanity when he is outsmarted by his nephew Frank Wellborn,
whose property he has acquired by devious means.
• The Roman Actor, which Massinger
considered his finest work, is based on the life
of the Roman emperor Domitian, who was
murdered in A.D. 96.
John Ford (1586-1639)
• John Ford, who was the contemporary of Massinger,
collaborated with various dramatists.
• He was a true poet, but a fatalist, melancholy and gloomy
person.
• Besides the historical play , Perkin Warbeck, he wrote The
Lover’s Melancholy, ‘Tis Pity Shee’s a Whore, The Broken
Heart and Love’s Sacrifice, all of which show a skilful
handling of emotions and grace of style.
• His decadent attitude is seen in the delight he takes in
depicting suffering, but he occupies a high place as an
artist.
James Shirley (1596-1666)
• James Shirley , who as Lamb called him, ‘the last of a
great race’, though a prolific writer, shows no
• originality .
• His best comedies are The Traytor, The Cardinall, The
Wedding, Changes, Hyde Park, The Gamester and The
Lady of Pleasure, which realistically represent the
contemporary manners, modes and
• literary styles.
• He also wrote tragi-comedies or romantic comedies, such
as Young Admirall, The Opportunitie, and The Imposture.
Restoration Period (1660-1700)
• This period marks the British king's restoration to the throne after a
long period of Puritan domination in England
• Its symptoms include the dominance of French and Classical
influences on poetry and drama
• Sample writers include
– John Dryden,
– John Lock,
– Sir William Temple,
– Samuel Pepys, and
– Aphra Behn in England
William Wycherley:
– Love in a Wood (1697)
– The Gentleman Dancing Master (1673)
George Etherege:
• The Comical Revenge or, Love in a Tub (1664)
• She Would If She Could (1668)
• The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter (1676)
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Jacobean Prose
Francis Bacon (1561 -628)
• Bacon belongs both to the Elizabethan and
Jacobean periods.
• As a prose-writer he is the master of the
aphoristic style.
• He has the knack of compressing his wisdom in
epigrams which contain the quintessence of his
rich experience of life in a most concentrated
form.
• His style is clear, lucid but terse (brief).
Essays (1597)
• Bacon is best-known for his Essays
• It contains views about the art of managing
men and getting on successfully in life.
• They may be considered as a kind of manual
for statesmen and princes.
• The tone of the essay is that of a worldly man
who wants to secure material success and
prosperity .
• That is why their moral standard is not high.
Works of Bacon
• Henry VII (1622)
– first piece of scientific history in the English
language
• The Advancement of Learning (1605)
– a brilliant popular ex position of the cause of
scientific investigation.
• New Atlantis (1627)
• an incomplete utopian novel
Robert Burton (1577 -1640)
• The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
– An analysis of human melancholy , described its
effect and prescribed its cure.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)
• the first deliberate sty list in the English
language
• Being a physician with a flair for writing, he
wrote Religio Medici (1642) in which he set
down his beliefs and thoughts, the religion of
the medical man.
• His other important prose work is Hydriotaphia
or The Urn Burial (1658)
– Meditation on time and antiquity
The Prince (1513)/
Social Contract (1762)
• Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513)
• Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762)
– social contract concerns the origin of society and
the legitimacy of the authority of the state over
the individual
– Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals
have consented, either explicitly or implicitly, to surrender
some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the
ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in
exchange for protection of their remaining rights
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651)
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651)
• Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common-
Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil—commonly referred to as
Leviathan—
• It is a book written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651
• Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan
• The Leviathan of the Book of Job – means a powerful monster
• Political philosophy
• Leviathan argues for a social contract and rule by an
absolute sovereign
• Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of
nature (the war of all against all) could only be avoided by
strong, undivided government
John Dryden
(1631 –1700)
John Dryden
• influential English poet, literary critic,
translator, and playwright
• dominated the literary life of Restoration
England to such a point that the period came
to be known in literary circles as the Age of
Dryden
• Walter Scott called him "Glorious John."
• He was made Poet Laureate in 1668.
Heroique Stanzas (1658)
• At Cromwell’s funeral on 23 November 1658
Dryden processed with the Puritan poets John
Milton and Andrew Marvell.
• Shortly thereafter he published his first
important poem, Heroique Stanzas (1658), a
eulogy on Cromwell’s death which is cautious
and prudent in its emotional display.
Astraea Redux
• In 1660 Dryden celebrated the Restoration of
the monarchy and the return of Charles II with
Astraea Redux, an authentic royalist
panegyric.
• In this work the interregnum is illustrated as a
time of anarchy, and Charles is seen as the
restorer of peace and order.
Two more panegyrics…
• Along with Astraea Redux, Dryden welcomed the
new regime with two more panegyrics; To His Sacred
Majesty: A Panegyric on his Coronation (1662), and
To My Lord Chancellor (1662).
• These poems suggest that Dryden was looking to
court a possible patron, but he was to instead make
a living in writing for publishers, not for the
aristocracy, and thus ultimately for the reading
public. These, and his other nondramatic poems, are
occasional—that is, they celebrate public events.
Marriage…
• religious poems
• Religio Laici (1682), written from the position
of a member of the Church of England
Dryden introduced the word biography
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Enlightenment
“Cogito ergo sum’
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John Locke (1632-1704)
• English Philosopher
• Locke was an opponent of Platonic idealism.
• Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
• Locke's two Treatises on Government (1690), in
which he stated that the authority of the governor
is derived from the always revocable consent of
the governed and that the people's welfare is the
only proper object of that authority.
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David Hume (1711-1776)
• Scottish philosopher
• An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding (1748)
George Berkeley (1685–1753)
• Age of Enlightenment
• Age of Reason
• Age of Sensibility
• A rational and scientific approach to
religious, social, political, and economic
issues
• Promoted a secular view of the world and a
general sense of progress and perfectibility
Daniel Defoe:
– A True –born English man
– Robinson Crusoe
– Roxana
Henry Fielding:
– Joseph Andrews
– Tom Jones
– Amelia
• – First lexicographer.
• Johnson produces alone over 9 years with the help of 5
runners
• French employ 40 men who spent 40 years to produce.
• Johnson provides definition, pronunciation, diction and
illustrates the word from literature
• Dictionary—43,000 definitions and 110,000 citations
• Publication and Canals
• Quotations from John Dryden, William Shakespeare,
John Milton’s literary works
Rasselas (1759)
• In the spring of 1759, he wrote a short novel,
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
• The moral is that “human life is everywhere a
state in which much is to be endured, and little
to be enjoyed”
• It is reminiscent of Swift (as well as of his
contemporary the French writer Voltaire in his
tale Candide) in its perception of the vanity of
human wishes.
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
• James Boswell, the Scotsman befriended Dr.
Johnson and eventually authored the greatest
biography ever written.
• His curiously lovable and upright personality,
along with his intellectual preeminence and
idiosyncrasies, have been preserved in the most
famous of English biographies, the Life of Samuel
Johnson (1791), by James Boswell, a Scottish
writer with an appetite for literary celebrities.
Preface to Shakespeare (1765)
• Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare was published in 1765 is a
comment on the argument over the ancients and moderns.
• Johnson forwards his criticism with moral consideration and
prescribes imitation which is closer to truth, reality and to
the right.
• Imitation has to be of general nature rather than particular.
• The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but
the species.
• Johnson restrains the "wild strain of imagination", but his
moral concerns are principally important.
Lives of the Most Eminent English
Poets (1779–81)
• Lives of the Most Eminent English
Poets (1779–81), alternatively known by the
shorter title Lives of the Poets,
• It comprises of short biographies and critical
appraisals of 52 poets, who lived during the
eighteenth century.
• These were arranged, approximately, by date
of death.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728 –1774)
• Johnson's friend
• Irish
• His novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) begins with
dry humor but passes quickly into tearful calamity.
• His poem The Deserted Village (1770) is in form
reminiscent of Pope, but in the tenderness of its
sympathy for the lower classes it foreshadows the
romantic age.
• She Stoops to Conquer (1773)
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751 –1816)
• orator and political figure, was also a writer of comedies of
manners that lampooned social affectations and
pretentiousness.
• Irish satirist, and playwright
• His masterpiece, The School for Scandal (1777), features
malicious gossips with such revealing names as Sir Benjamin
Backbite, Lady Sneerwell, and Mrs. Candour.
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Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
• Swift’s satirical masterpiece.
• Part I tells of Gulliver’s shipwreck on the
island of Lilliput, an island inhabited by
diminutive beings whose controversies,
traditions and wars seem so trivial and petty
that their English equivalents are
correspondingly made to look silly by
reflection.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
• Part II takes Gulliver to Brobdingnag, whose
gigantic inhabitants question Gulliver about
his homeland, and English practices again look
ludicrous and pretentious when defended by a
virtual human midget. Hearing Gulliver’s
account of recent English history, the king of
Brobdingnag concludes that the natives of
England are a ‘pernicious race of little odious
vermin’.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
• In Part III the satire is more direct, for Gulliver visits Laputa, where the learned
are abstracted from the realm of common sense. Indeed they have to be
attended by ‘flappers’.
• A flapper is a servant equipped with ‘a blown bladder fastened like a flail to the
end of a short stick’.
• With this instrument the mouth or ears of a Laputan can be flapped and in this
way his mind can be brought to bear on the conversation he is supposed to be
conducting.
• The flapper must also attend his master on his walks to prevent him from
falling down a precipice or bumping into a post while wrapped in cogitation.
• Laputa is a flying island from which the long can brutally suppress potential
rebellion in his dominion beneath. Thus England’s oppression of Ireland is
again under condemnation.
• At Lagado, capital of the continent below (Balnibarbi), scientists are occupied
in absurd experiments like curing colic by inserting a bellows up the anus.
Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
• The intensest satire comes in Part IV. Gulliver
visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, virtuous
beings with the bodies of horses, who cherish
their power of reason and are wholly
governed by it. They have at their disposal a
filthy race of man-shaped beasts called
Yahoos. On his return home, Gulliver finds it
impossible to stomach fellow Yahoos again:
even his wife stinks of Yahoohood.
A Journal to Stella (1766)
• A Journal to Stella is a work by Jonathan Swift
first partly published posthumously in 1766.
• It consists of 65 letters to his friend,
Esther Johnson, whom he called Stella and
whom he may have secretly married.
• were written between 1710 and 1713, from
various locations in England, and though clearly
intended for Stella's eyes were sometimes
addressed to her companion Rebecca Dingley.
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The Tale of a Tub (1704)
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Childhood experiences
• In Defoe’s early life, he experienced some of the
most unusual occurrences in English history: in
1665, 70,000 were killed by the Great Plague of
London, and next year, the Great Fire of London left
standing only Defoe’s and two other houses in his
neighbourhood.
• In 1667, when he was probably about seven, a
Dutch fleet sailed up the Medway via the River
Thames and attacked the town of Chatham in the
raid on the Medway.
Works of Daniel Defoe
• Defoe’s first notable publication was An Essay
upon Projects, a series of proposals for social
and economic improvement, published in
1697.
• His most successful poem, The True-Born
Englishman (1701), defended the king against
the perceived xenophobia of his enemies,
satirizing the English claim to racial purity.
Works of Daniel Defoe
• In 1701, Defoe presented the Legion’s
Memorial to the Speaker of the House of
Commons, later his employer Robert Harley,
flanked by a guard of sixteen gentlemen of
quality.
• It demanded the release of the Kentish
petitioners, who had asked Parliament to
support the king in an imminent war against
France.
The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters
• The death of William III in 1702 once again created a political upheaval,
as the king was replaced by Queen Anne who immediately began her
offensive against Nonconformists.
• Defoe was a natural target, and his pamphleteering and political
activities resulted in his arrest and placement in a pillory on 31 July 1703,
principally on account of his December 1702 pamphlet entitled The
Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of
the Church, purporting to argue for their extermination.
– In it, he ruthlessly satirised both the High church Tories and those Dissenters
who hypocritically practised so-called “occasional conformity”, such as his Stoke
Newington neighbour Sir Thomas Abney.
– It was published anonymously, but the true authorship was quickly discovered
and Defoe was arrested.
Works of Daniel Defoe
• In 1704, he set up his periodical A Review of
the Affairs of France which supported the
Harley Ministry, chronicling the events of the
War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1714).
• The Review ran three times a week without
interruption until 1713.
The History of the Union of Great Britain
• Moll Flanders and Defoe’s final novel Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress
(1724) are examples of the remarkable way in which Defoe seems to
inhabit his fictional characters (yet “drawn from life”), not least in that
they are women.
• Roxanna narrates the moral and spiritual decline of a high society
courtesan.
Romantic Age [1785-1830]
Lord Byron:
– Child Harold’s Pilgrimage
– House of Idleness
– Cain
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Important Works
Mercy Bysshe Shelly:
– Ode to the West Wind
– Prometheus Unbound
John Keats:
– Isabella
– Hyperion
– Lamia
– Ode to Nightingale
Jane Austen:
– Pride and Prejudice
– Emma
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Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”
• Stevenson had long been intrigued by the idea of how personalities can
affect a human and how to incorporate the interplay of good and evil into a
story
• Gabriel John Utterson and his cousin Richard Enfield reach the door of a
large house on their weekly walk. Enfield tells Utterson that months ago he
saw a sinister-looking man named Edward Hyde trample a young girl after
accidentally bumping into her. Enfield forced Hyde to pay £100 to avoid a
scandal.
• Hyde brought them to this door and provided a cheque signed by a
reputable gentleman (later revealed to be Doctor Henry Jekyll, a friend and
client of Utterson). Utterson is disturbed because Jekyll recently changed
his will to make Hyde the sole beneficiary. Utterson fears that Hyde is
blackmailing Jekyll. When Utterson tries to discuss Hyde with Jekyll, Jekyll
turns pale and asks that Hyde be left alone.
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Realism (1830–1900)
• A loose term that can refer to any work that aims at honest
portrayal over sensationalism, exaggeration, or melodrama.
• Technically, realism refers to a late-19thcentury literary
movement—primarily French, English, and American—that
aimed at accurate detailed portrayal of ordinary,
contemporary life.
• Many of the 19th century’s greatest novelists, such as
– Honoré de Balzac,
– Charles Dickens,
– George Eliot,
– Gustave Flaubert, and
– Leo Tolstoy, are classified as realists.
– Naturalism can be seen as an intensification of realism.
Bertha Mason
– Bertha is locked in the attic at Thornfield
– Starts the bedroom fire, and eventually burns the house
down
– Kills herself in the house fire
– Exotic, sensual personification of the Orient