English literature is the
literature written in the
English language, including literature composed in English by
writers not necessarily from
England; for example,
Robert Burns was Scottish,
James Joyce was Irish,
Joseph Conrad was born in Poland,
Dylan Thomas was Welsh,
Edgar Allan Poewas American,
V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, and
Vladimir Nabokov was Russian, but all are considered important writers in the history of English literature. In other words, English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world. In
academia, the term often labels departments and programmes practising
English studies in secondary and tertiary educational systems. Despite the variety of authors of English literature, the works of
William Shakespeare remain paramount throughout the English-speaking world.
This article primarily deals with some of the literature from
Britain written in English. For literature from specific English-speaking regions, consult the
see also section, bottom of the page.
[edit]Old English
The first works in English, written in
Old English, appeared in the early Middle Ages (the oldest surviving text is
Cædmon's
Hymn). The
oral tradition was very strong in the early
English culture and most literary works were written to be performed.
Epic poems were thus very popular and many, including
Beowulf, have survived to the present day in the rich corpus of
Anglo-Saxon literature that closely resemble today's Icelandic, Norwegian,
North Frisian and the
Northumbrian and
Scots English dialects of modern English. Much Old English verse in the extant manuscripts is probably a "milder" adaptation of the earlier Germanic war poems from the continent. When such poetry was brought to England it was still being handed down orally from one generation to another, and the constant presence of
alliterative verse, or .consonant rhyme (today's newspaper headlines and marketing abundantly use this technique such as in
Big is Better) helped the Anglo-Saxon people remember it. Such rhyme is a feature of
Germanic languages and is opposed to vocalic or end-rhyme of
Romance languages. But the first written literature dates to the early Christian monasteries founded by St.
Augustine of Canterbury and his disciples and it is reasonable to believe that it was somehow adapted to suit to needs of Christian readers.
[edit]Middle English literature
In the 12th century, a new form of English now known as
Middle English evolved. This is the earliest form of English literature which is comprehensible to modern readers and listeners, albeit not easily. Middle English lasts up until the 1470s, when the
Chancery Standard, a form of
London-based English, became widespread and the printing press regularized the language.
Middle English Bible translations, notably
Wyclif's Bible, helped to establish English as a literary language.
The multilingual audience for literature in the 14th century can be illustrated by the example of
John Gower, who wrote in Latin, Middle English and Anglo-Norman.
Since at least the 14th century, poetry in English has been written in Ireland and by Irish writers abroad. The earliest poem in English by a Welsh poet dates from about 1470.
[edit]Renaissance literature
[edit]Early Modern period
[edit]Elizabethan Era
The
Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the field of
drama. The
Italian Renaissance had rediscovered the ancient Greek and Roman theatre, and this was instrumental in the development of the new drama, which was then beginning to evolve apart from the old mystery and
miracle plays of the
Middle Ages. The Italians were particularly inspired by
Seneca (a major tragic playwright and philosopher, the tutor of
Nero) and
Plautus (its comic clichés, especially that of the boasting soldier had a powerful influence on the Renaissance and after). However, the Italian tragedies embraced a principle contrary to Seneca's ethics: showing blood and violence on the stage. In Seneca's plays such scenes were only acted by the characters. But the English playwrights were intrigued by Italian model: a conspicuous community of Italian actors had settled in London and
Giovanni Florio had brought much of the
Italian language and culture to England. It is also true that the Elizabethan Era was a very violent age and that the high incidence of political assassinations in
RenaissanceItaly (embodied by
Niccolò Machiavelli's
The Prince) did little to calm fears of popish plots. As a result, representing that kind of violence on the stage was probably more cathartic for the Elizabethan spectator. Following earlier Elizabethan plays such as
Gorboduc by
Sackville &
Norton and
The Spanish Tragedy by
Kyd that was to provide much material for
Hamlet,
William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a
poet and
playwright as yet unsurpassed. Shakespeare was not a man of letters by profession, and probably had only some grammar school education. He was neither a lawyer, nor an aristocrat as the "university wits" that had monopolised the English stage when he started writing. But he was very gifted and incredibly versatile, and he surpassed "professionals" as
Robert Greene who mocked this "shake-scene" of low origins. Though most dramas met with great success, it is in his later years (marked by the early reign of
James I) that he wrote what have been considered his greatest plays:
Hamlet,
Romeo and Juliet,
Othello,
King Lear,
Macbeth,
Antony and Cleopatra, and
The Tempest, a
tragicomedy that inscribes within the main drama a brilliant pageant to the new king. Shakespeare also popularized the
English sonnet which made significant changes to
Petrarch's model.
The sonnet was introduced into English by
Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. Poems intended to be set to music as songs, such as by
Thomas Campion, became popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in households.
See English Madrigal School. Other important figures in
Elizabethan theatre include
Christopher Marlowe,
Thomas Dekker,
John Fletcher and
Francis Beaumont. Had Marlowe (1564–1593) not been stabbed at twenty-nine in a tavern brawl, says
Anthony Burgess, he might have rivalled, if not equalled Shakespeare himself for his poetic gifts. Remarkably, he was born only a few weeks before Shakespeare and must have known him well. Marlowe's subject matter, though, is different: it focuses more on the moral drama of the renaissance man than any other thing. Marlowe was fascinated and terrified by the new frontiers opened by modern
science. Drawing on German lore, he introduced Dr. Faustus to England, a scientist and magician who is obsessed by the thirst of knowledge and the desire to push man's technological power to its limits. He acquires supernatural gifts that even allow him to go back in time and wed Helen of
Troy, but at the end of his twenty-four years' covenant with the
devil he has to surrender his
soul to him. His dark heroes may have something of Marlowe himself, whose death remains a mystery. He was known for being an atheist, leading a lawless life, keeping many mistresses, consorting with ruffians: living the 'high life' of
London's underworld. But many suspect that this might have been a cover-up for his activities as a secret agent for
Elizabeth I, hinting that the 'accidental stabbing' might have been a premeditated assassination by the enemies of
The Crown. Beaumont and Fletcher are less-known, but it is almost sure that they helped Shakespeare write some of his best dramas, and were quite popular at the time. It is also at this time that the
city comedy genre develops. In the later 16th century English poetry was characterised by elaboration of language and extensive allusion to classical myths. The most important poets of this era include
Edmund Spenser and
Sir Philip Sidney. Elizabeth herself, a product of
Renaissance humanism, produced
occasional poems such as
On Monsieur’s Departure.
[edit]Jacobean literature
After Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist
Ben Jonson was the leading literary figure of the
Jacobean era (The reign of
James I). However, Jonson's aesthetics hark back to the Middle Ages rather than to the Tudor Era: his characters embody the
theory of humours. According to this contemporary medical theory, behavioral differences result from a prevalence of one of the body's four "humours" (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) over the other three; these humours correspond with the four elements of the universe: air, water, fire, and earth. This leads Jonson to exemplify such differences to the point of creating types, or clichés.
Jonson is a master of style, and a brilliant satirist. His Volpone shows how a group of scammers are fooled by a top con-artist, vice being punished by vice, virtue meting out its reward.
Others who followed Jonson's style include
Beaumont and Fletcher, who wrote the brilliant comedy,
The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a mockery of the rising middle class and especially of those nouveaux riches who pretend to dictate literary taste without knowing much literature at all. In the story, a couple of grocers wrangle with professional actors to have their illiterate son play a leading role in a drama. He becomes a knight-errant wearing, appropriately, a burning pestle on his shield. Seeking to win a princess' heart, the young man is ridiculed much in the way
Don Quixote was. One of Beaumont and Fletcher's chief merits was that of realising how feudalism and chivalry had turned into snobbery and make-believe and that new social classes were on the rise.
Another popular style of theatre during Jacobean times was the
revenge play, popularized by
John Webster and
Thomas Kyd.
George Chapman wrote a couple of subtle revenge tragedies, but must be remembered chiefly on account of his famous translation of
Homer, one that had a profound influence on all future English literature, even inspiring
John Keats to write one of his best sonnets.
The
King James Bible, one of the most massive translation projects in the history of English up to this time, was started in 1604 and completed in 1611. It represents the culmination of a tradition of
Bible translation into English that began with the work of
William Tyndale. It became the standard
Bible of the
Church of England, and some consider it one of the greatest literary works of all time. This project was headed by James I himself, who supervised the work of forty-seven scholars. Although many other translations into English have been made, some of which are widely considered more accurate, many aesthetically prefer the King James Bible, whose meter is made to mimic the original Hebrew verse.
Besides Shakespeare, whose figure towers over the early 17th century, the major poets of the early 17th century included
John Donne and the other
Metaphysical poets. Influenced by continental
Baroque, and taking as his subject matter both Christian mysticism and eroticism, metaphysical poetry uses unconventional or "unpoetic" figures, such as a compass or a mosquito, to reach surprise effects. For example, in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", one of Donne's
Songs and Sonnets, the points of a compass represent two lovers, the woman who is home, waiting, being the centre, the farther point being her lover sailing away from her. But the larger the distance, the more the hands of the compass lean to each other: separation makes love grow fonder. The
paradox or the
oxymoron is a constant in this poetry whose fears and anxieties also speak of a world of spiritual certainties shaken by the modern discoveries of geography and science, one that is no longer the centre of the universe. Apart from the metaphysical poetry of Donne, the 17th century is also celebrated for its Baroque poetry. Baroque poetry served the same ends as the art of the period; the Baroque style is lofty, sweeping, epic, and religious. Many of these poets have an overtly Catholic sensibility (namely Richard Crashaw) and wrote poetry for the Catholic counter-Reformation in order to establish a feeling of supremacy and mysticism that would ideally persuade newly emerging Protestant groups back toward Catholicism.
[edit]Caroline and Cromwellian literature
The turbulent years of the mid-17th century, during the reign of
Charles I and the subsequent
Commonwealth and
Protectorate, saw a flourishing of political literature in English.
Pamphlets written by sympathisers of every faction in the
English civil war ran from vicious personal attacks and polemics, through many forms of
propaganda, to high-minded schemes to reform the nation. Of the latter type,
Leviathan by
Thomas Hobbes would prove to be one of the most important works of British
political philosophy. Hobbes's writings are some of the few political works from the era which are still regularly published while
John Bramhall, who was Hobbes's chief critic, is largely forgotten. The period also saw a flourishing of news books, the precursors to the
British newspaper, with journalists such as
Henry Muddiman,
Marchamont Needham, and
John Birkenhead representing the views and activities of the contending parties. The frequent arrests of authors and the suppression of their works, with the consequence of foreign or underground printing, led to the proposal of a licensing system. The
Areopagitica, a political pamphlet by
John Milton, was written in opposition to licensing and is regarded as one of the most eloquent defenses of
press freedom ever written.
Samuel Pepys, took the
diarybeyond mere business transaction notes, into the realm of the personal
Other forms of literature written during this period are usually ascribed political
subtexts, or their authors are grouped along political lines. The
cavalier poets, active mainly before the civil war, owed much to the earlier school of
metaphysical poets. The forced retirement of royalist officials after the execution of Charles I was a good thing in the case of
Izaak Walton, as it gave him time to work on his book
The Compleat Angler. Published in 1653, the book, ostensibly a guide to fishing, is much more: a meditation on life, leisure, and contentment. The two most important poets of
Oliver Cromwell's England were
Andrew Marvell and John Milton, with both producing works praising the new government; such as Marvell's
An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland. Despite their republican beliefs they escaped punishment upon the Restoration of
Charles II, after which Milton wrote some of his greatest poetical works (with any possible political message hidden under
allegory).
Thomas Browne was another writer of the period; a learned man with an extensive library, he wrote prolifically on science, religion, medicine and the esoteric.
[edit]Restoration literature
Restoration literature includes both
Paradise Lost and the
Earl of Rochester's
Sodom, the high spirited sexual comedy of
The Country Wife and the moral wisdom of
Pilgrim's Progress. It saw Locke's
Two Treatises on Government, the founding of the
Royal Society, the experiments of
Robert Boyle and the holy meditations of Boyle, the
hysterical attacks on theatres from
Jeremy Collier, the pioneering of literary criticism from Dryden, and the first newspapers. The official break in literary culture caused by censorship and radically moralist standards under Cromwell's Puritan regime created a gap in literary tradition, allowing a seemingly fresh start for all forms of literature after the Restoration. During the Interregnum, the royalist forces attached to the court of
Charles I went into exile with the twenty-year-old
Charles II. The nobility who travelled with Charles II were therefore lodged for over a decade in the midst of the continent's literary scene. Charles spent his time attending plays in France, and he developed a taste for
Spanish plays. Those nobles living in Holland began to learn about mercantile exchange as well as the tolerant,
rationalistprose debates that circulated in that officially tolerant nation.
The largest and most important poetic form of the era was satire. In general, publication of satire was done anonymously. There were great dangers in being associated with a satire. On the one hand, defamation law was a wide net, and it was difficult for a satirist to avoid prosecution if he were proven to have written a piece that seemed to criticize a noble. On the other hand, wealthy individuals would respond to satire as often as not by having the suspected poet physically attacked by ruffians. John Dryden was set upon for being merely suspected of having written the Satire on Mankind. A consequence of this anonymity is that a great many poems, some of them of merit, are unpublished and largely unknown.
Prose in the Restoration period is dominated by
Christian religious writing, but the Restoration also saw the beginnings of two genres that would dominate later periods:
fiction and journalism. Religious writing often strayed into political and economic writing, just as political and economic writing implied or directly addressed religion. The Restoration was also the time when
John Locke wrote many of his philosophical works. Locke's empiricism was an attempt at understanding the basis of human understanding itself and thereby devising a proper manner for making sound decisions. These same scientific methods led Locke to his three
Treatises on Government, which later inspired the thinkers in the
American Revolution. As with his work on understanding, Locke moves from the most basic units of society toward the more elaborate, and, like Thomas Hobbes, he emphasizes the plastic nature of the social contract. For an age that had seen absolute monarchy overthrown, democracy attempted, democracy corrupted, and limited monarchy restored, only a flexible basis for government could be satisfying. The Restoration moderated most of the more strident sectarian writing, but radicalism persisted after the Restoration. Puritan authors such as
John Milton were forced to retire from public life or adapt, and those
Digger,
Fifth Monarchist,
Leveller,
Quaker, and
Anabaptist authors who had preached against monarchy and who had participated directly in the
regicide of
Charles I were partially suppressed. Consequently, violent writings were forced underground, and many of those who had served in the Interregnum attenuated their positions in the Restoration.
John Bunyan stands out beyond other religious authors of the period. Bunyan's
The Pilgrim's Progress is an
allegory of personal salvation and a guide to the Christian life. Instead of any focus on
eschatology or divine retribution, Bunyan instead writes about how the individual
saint can prevail against the temptations of mind and body that threaten damnation. The book is written in a straightforward narrative and shows influence from both
drama and
biography, and yet it also shows an awareness of the grand allegorical tradition found in
Edmund Spenser. During the Restoration period, the most common manner of getting news would have been a
broadsheet publication. A single, large sheet of paper might have a written, usually partisan, account of an event. However, the period saw the beginnings of the first professional and periodical (meaning that the publication was regular) journalism in England. Journalism develops late, generally around the time of
William of Orange's claiming the throne in 1689. Coincidentally or by design, England began to have newspapers just when William came to court from
Amsterdam, where there were already newspapers being published.
It is impossible to satisfactorily date the beginning of the novel in English. However, long fiction and fictional biographies began to distinguish themselves from other forms in England during the Restoration period. An existing tradition of
Romance fiction in
France and
Spain was popular in England. The "Romance" was considered a feminine form, and women were taxed with reading "novels" as a vice. One of the most significant figures in the rise of the novel in the Restoration period is
Aphra Behn. She was not only the first professional female novelist, but she may be among the first professional novelists of either sex in England. Behn's most famous novel was
Oroonoko in 1688. This was a biography of an entirely fictional African king who had been enslaved in
Suriname. Behn's novels show the influence of
tragedy and her experiences as a dramatist.
As soon as the previous Puritan regime's ban on public stage representations was lifted, the drama recreated itself quickly and abundantly. The most famous plays of the early Restoration period are the unsentimental or "hard" comedies of
John Dryden,
William Wycherley, and
George Etherege, which reflect the atmosphere at Court, and celebrate an aristocratic
macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. After a sharp drop in both quality and quantity in the 1680s, the mid-90s saw a brief second flowering of the drama, especially comedy. Comedies like
William Congreve's
The Way of the World (1700), and
John Vanbrugh's
The Relapse (1696) and
The Provoked Wife(1697) were "softer" and more middle-class in ethos, very different from the aristocratic
extravaganza twenty years earlier, and aimed at a wider audience. The playwrights of the 1690s set out to appeal to more socially mixed audiences with a strong
middle-class element, and to female spectators, for instance by moving the war between the sexes from the arena of intrigue into that of marriage. The focus in comedy is less on young lovers outwitting the older generation, more on marital relations after the wedding bells.
[edit]Augustan literature
The term
Augustan literature derives from authors of the 1720s and 1730s themselves, who responded to a term that
George I of Englandpreferred for himself. While George I meant the title to reflect his might, they instead saw in it a reflection of
Ancient Rome's transition from rough and ready literature to highly political and highly polished literature. Because of the aptness of the metaphor, the period from 1689 – 1750 was called "the Augustan Age" by critics throughout the 18th century (including
Voltaire and
Oliver Goldsmith). The literature of the period is overtly political and thoroughly aware of critical dictates for literature. It is an age of exuberance and scandal, of enormous energy and inventiveness and outrage, that reflected an era when English, Scottish, and Irish people found themselves in the midst of an expanding economy, lowering barriers to education, and the stirrings of the
Industrial Revolution.
The most outstanding poet of the age is
Alexander Pope, but Pope's excellence is partially in his constant battle with other poets, and his serene, seemingly neo-Classical approach to poetry is in competition with highly idiosyncratic verse and strong competition from such poets as
Ambrose Philips. It was during this time that
James Thomson produced his melancholy
The Seasons and
Edward Young wrote
Night Thoughts. It is also the era that saw a serious competition over the proper model for the
pastoral. In criticism, poets struggled with a doctrine of
decorum, of matching proper words with proper sense and of achieving a diction that matched the gravity of a subject. At the same time, the
mock-heroic was at its zenith. Pope's
Rape of the Lock and
The Dunciad are still the greatest mock-heroic poems ever written.
In prose, the earlier part of the period was overshadowed by the development of the English essay.
Joseph Addison and
Richard Steele's
The Spectator established the form of the British periodical essay, inventing the pose of the detached observer of human life who can meditate upon the world without advocating any specific changes in it. However, this was also the time when the English
novel, first emerging in the Restoration, developed into a major art form.
Daniel Defoe turned from
journalism and writing criminal lives for the press to writing fictional criminal lives with
Roxana and
Moll Flanders. He also wrote a fictional treatment of the travels of
Alexander Selkirk called
Robinson Crusoe(1719). The novel would benefit indirectly from a tragedy of the stage, and in mid-century many more authors would begin to write novels.
If Addison and Steele overawed one type of prose, then
Jonathan Swift did another. Swift's prose style is unmannered and direct, with a clarity that few contemporaries matched. He was a profound skeptic about the modern world, but he was similarly profoundly distrustful of nostalgia. He saw in history a record of lies and vanity, and he saw in the present a madness of vanity and lies. Core
Christian values were essential, but these values had to be muscular and assertive and developed by constant rejection of the games of confidence men and their gullies. Swift's
A Tale of a Tub announced his skeptical analysis of the claims of the modern world, and his later prose works, such as his war with Patridge the astrologer, and most of all his derision of pride in
Gulliver's Travels left only the individual in constant fear and humility safe. After his "exile" to
Ireland, Swift reluctantly began defending the Irish people from the predations of
colonialism. His
A Modest Proposal and the Drapier Letters provoked riots and arrests, but Swift, who had no love of Irish
Roman Catholics, was outraged by the abuses and barbarity he saw around him.
Drama in the early part of the period featured the last plays of
John Vanbrugh and
William Congreve, both of whom carried on the Restoration comedy with some alterations. However, the majority of stagings were of lower
farces and much more serious and domestic tragedies.
George Lillo and
Richard Steele both produced highly moral forms of tragedy, where the characters and the concerns of the characters were wholly middle class or working class. This reflected a marked change in the audience for plays, as royal patronage was no longer the important part of theatrical success. Additionally,
Colley Cibber and
John Rich began to battle each other for greater and greater spectacles to present on stage. The figure of
Harlequin was introduced, and
pantomime theatre began to be staged. This "low" comedy was quite popular, and the plays became tertiary to the staging.
Opera also began to be popular in London, and there was significant literary resistance to this Italian incursion. This trend was broken only by a few attempts at a new type of comedy. Pope and
John Arbuthnot and
John Gay attempted a play entitled
Three Hours After Marriage that failed. In 1728, however, John Gay returned to the playhouse with
The Beggar's Opera. Gay's opera was in English and retold the story of
Jack Sheppard and
Jonathan Wild. However, it seemed to be an allegory for
Robert Walpole and the directors of the South Sea Company, and so Gay's follow up opera was banned without performance. The
Licensing Act 1737 brought an abrupt halt to much of the period's drama, as the theatres were once again brought under state control.
An effect of the Licensing Act was to cause more than one aspiring playwright to switch over to writing novels.
Henry Fielding began to write prose satire and novels after his plays could not pass the censors.
Henry Brooke also turned to novels. In the interim,
Samuel Richardson had produced a novel intended to counter the deleterious effects of novels in
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740). Henry Fielding attacked the absurdity of this novel with two of his own works,
Joseph Andrews and
Shamela, and then countered Richardson's
Clarissa with
Tom Jones.
Henry Mackenzie wrote
The Man of Feeling and indirectly began the
sentimental novel.
Laurence Sterne attempted a Swiftian novel with a unique perspective on the impossibility of biography (the model for most novels up to that point) and understanding with
Tristram Shandy, even as his detractor
Tobias Smollett elevated the
picaresque novel with his works. Each of these novels represents a formal and thematic divergence from the others. Each novelist was in dialogue and competition with the others, and, in a sense, the novel established itself as a diverse and open-formed genre in this explosion of creativity. The most lasting effects of the experimentation would be the psychological realism of Richardson, the bemused narrative voice of Fielding, and the sentimentality of Brooke.
[edit]18th century
During the
Age of Sensibility, literature reflected the worldview of the
Age of Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) – a rational and scientific approach to religious, social, political, and economic issues that promoted a secular view of the world and a general sense of progress and perfectibility. Led by the philosophers who were inspired by the discoveries of the previous century (Newton) and the writings of Descartes, Locke and Bacon.
They sought to discover and to act upon universally valid principles governing humanity, nature, and society. They variously attacked spiritual and scientific authority, dogmatism, intolerance, censorship, and economic and social restraints. They considered the state the proper and rational instrument of progress. The extreme rationalism and skepticism of the age led naturally to deism; the same qualities played a part in bringing the later reaction of romanticism. The
Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot epitomized the spirit of the age.
[edit]Romanticism
The changing landscape of Britain brought about by the steam engine has two major outcomes: the boom of
industrialism with the expansion of the city, and the consequent depopulation of the countryside as a result of the
enclosures, or
privatisation of pastures. Most peasants poured into the city to work in the new factories.
This abrupt change is revealed by the change of meaning in five key words: industry (once meaning "creativity"), democracy (once disparagingly used as "
mob rule"), class (from now also used with a social connotation), art (once just meaning "craft"), culture (once only belonging to farming).
But the poor condition of workers, the new class-conflicts and the pollution of the environment causes a reaction to
urbanism and industrialisation prompting poets to rediscover the beauty and value of nature. Mother
earth is seen as the only source of wisdom, the only solution to the ugliness caused by machines.
The superiority of nature and instinct over
civilisation had been preached by
Jean Jacques Rousseau and his message was picked by almost all European poets. The first in
England were the
Lake Poets, a small group of friends including
William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. These early
Romantic Poetsbrought a new emotionalism and introspection, and their emergence is marked by the first romantic Manifesto in English literature, the "Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads". This collection was mostly contributed by Wordsworth, although Coleridge must be credited for his long and impressive
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a tragic ballad about the survival of one sailor through a series of supernatural events on his voyage through the south seas which involves the slaying of an albatross, the death of the rest of the crew, a visit from Death and his mate, Life-in-Death, and the eventual redemption of the Mariner.
Coleridge and Wordsworth, however, understood romanticism in two entirely different ways: while Coleridge sought to make the supernatural "real" (much like sci-fi movies use special effects to make unlikely plots believable), Wordsworth sought to stir the imagination of readers through his down-to-earth characters taken from real life (in "The Idiot Boy", for example), or the beauty of the
Lake District that largely inspired his production (as in "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey").
The "Second generation" of Romantic poets includes
Lord Byron,
Percy Bysshe Shelley and
John Keats. Byron, however, was still influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps the least 'romantic' of the three. His amours with a number of prominent but married ladies was also a way to voice his dissent on the hypocrisy of a high society that was only apparently religious but in fact largely libertine, the same that had derided him for being physically impaired. His first trip to
Europe resulted in the first two cantos of
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a mock-heroic epic of a young man's adventures in Europe but also a sharp satire against London society. Despite
Childe Harold's success on his return to England, accompanied by the publication of
The Corsair his alleged incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh in 1816 actually forced him to leave England for good and seek asylum on the continent. Here he joined Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife Mary, with his secretary
John William Polidori on the shores of
Lake Genevaduring the 'year without a summer' of 1816. Polidori's
The Vampyre was published in 1819, creating the literary
vampire genre. His short story was inspired by the life of Lord Byron and his poem
The Giaour.
One of Percy Shelley's most prominent works is the
Ode to the West Wind. Despite his apparent refusal to believe in
God, this poem is considered a homage to
pantheism, the recognition of a spiritual presence in nature. Shelley's groundbreaking poem
The Masque of Anarchy calls for nonviolence in protest and political action. It is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of
nonviolent protest.
[2] Mahatma Gandhi's passive resistance was influenced and inspired by Shelley's verse, and Gandhi would often quote the poem to vast audiences.
[3]The plot for
Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein is said to have come from a nightmare she had during stormy nights on Lake Geneva in the company of Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori. Her idea of making a body with human parts stolen from different corpses and then animating it with
electricity was perhaps influenced by
Alessandro Volta's invention and
Luigi Galvani's experiments with dead frogs. Frankenstein's chilling tale also suggests modern organ transplants, tissue regeneration, reminding us of the moral issues raised by today's medicine. But the creature of Frankenstein is incredibly romantic as well. Although "the monster" is intelligent, good and loving, he is shunned by everyone because of his ugliness and deformity, and the desperation and envy that result from social exclusion turn him against the very man who created him.
John Keats did not share Byron's and Shelley's extremely revolutionary ideals, but his cult of
pantheism is as important as Shelley's. Keats was in love with the ancient stones of the
Parthenon that Lord Elgin had brought to
England from
Greece, also known as the
Elgin Marbles). He celebrates ancient Greece: the beauty of free, youthful love couples here with that of classical art. Keats's great attention to
art, especially in his
Ode on a Grecian Urn is quite new in romanticism, and it inspired
Walter Pater's and then
Oscar Wilde's belief in the absolute value of art as independent from
aesthetics.
Some rightly think that the most popular novelist of the era was Sir
Walter Scott, whose grand historical romances inspired a generation of painters, composers, and writers throughout Europe. Scott's novel-writing career was launched in 1814 with
Waverley, often called the first
historical novel, and was followed by
Ivanhoe. His popularity in England and further abroad did much to form the modern stereotype of Scottish culture. Other novels by Scott which contributed to the image of him as a Scottish patriot include
Rob Roy.
In retrospect, we now look back to
Jane Austen, who wrote novels about the life of the landed gentry, seen from a woman's point of view, and wryly focused on practical social issues, especially marriage and choosing the right partner in life, with love being above all else. Austen's
Pride and Prejudice would set the model for all Romance Novels to follow. Jane Austen created the ultimate hero and heroine in Darcy and Elizabeth, who must overcome their own stubborn pride and the prejudices they have toward each other, in order to come to a middle ground, where they finally realize their love for one another. Austen's other most notable works include;
Sense and Sensibility,
Mansfield Park,
Persuasion and
Emma. In her novels, Austen brings to light the hardships women faced, who usually did not inherit money, could not work and where their only chance in life depended on the man they married. She brought to light not only the difficulties women faced in her day, but also what was expected of men and of the careers they had to follow. This she does with wit and humour and with endings where all characters, good or bad, receive exactly what they deserve. Poet, painter and printmaker
William Blake is usually included among the English Romanticists, though his visionary work is much different from that of the others discussed in this section.
[edit]Victorian literature
It was in the
Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading form of literature in English. Most writers were now more concerned to meet the tastes of a large middle class reading public than to please aristocratic patrons. The best known works of the era include the emotionally powerful works of the
Brontë sisters; the satire
Vanity Fair by
William Makepeace Thackeray; the realist novels of
George Eliot; and
Anthony Trollope's insightful portrayals of the lives of the landowning and professional classes.
Charles Dickens emerged on the literary scene in the 1830s, confirming the trend for
serial publication. Dickens wrote vividly about
London life and the struggles of the poor, but in a good-humoured fashion which was acceptable to readers of all classes. His early works such as the
Pickwick Papers are masterpieces of comedy. Later his works became darker, without losing his genius for
caricature.
The
Bronte sisters were English writers of the 1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they were first published and were subsequently accepted into the canon of great English literature. They had written compulsively from early childhood and were first published, at their own expense, in 1846 as poets under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The book attracted little attention, selling only two copies. The sisters returned to prose, producing a novel each in the following year. Charlotte's
Jane Eyre, Emily's
Wuthering Heights and Anne's
Agnes Grey were released in 1847.
H. G. Wells invented a number of themes that are now classic in the
science fiction genre.
The War of the Worlds1898, describing an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry, is a seminal depiction of an
alien invasion of Earth.
The Time Machine is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively. The term "
time machine" coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle.
Arthur Conan Doyle's
Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant London-based "consulting detective", famous for his intellectual prowess. Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six
short stories featuring Holmes, from 1880 up to 1907, with a final case in 1914. All but four Conan Doyle stories are narrated by Holmes' friend, assistant, and biographer,
Dr. John H. Watson.
Literature for children developed as a separate genre. Some works become globally well-known, such as those of
Lewis Carroll and
Edward Lear, both of whom used
nonsense verse.
Adventure novels, such as those of
Robert Louis Stevenson, are generally classified as for children. Stevenson's
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, depicts the
dual personality of a kind and intelligent physician who turns into a psychopathic monster after imbibing a drug intended to separate good from evil in a personality. His
Kidnapped is a fast-paced
historical novel set in the aftermath of the '45
Jacobite Rising, and
Treasure Island 1883, is the classic
pirate adventure. At the end of the Victorian Era and leading into the Edwardian Era,
Beatrix Potter was an author and illustrator, best known for her children’s books, which featured animal characters. In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children's book
The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902. Potter eventually went on to published 23 children's books and become a wealthly woman. Her books along with Lewis Carroll’s are read and published to this day.
[edit]English literature since 1900
The major lyric poet of the first decades of the 20th century was
Thomas Hardy. Following the classic novels
Tess of the d'Urbervilles and
Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy then concentrated on poetry after the harsh response to his last novel,
Jude the Obscure. The most widely popular writer of the early years of the 20th century was arguably
Rudyard Kipling, a highly versatile writer of novels, short stories and poems, and to date the youngest ever recipient of the
Nobel Prize for Literature. Kipling's works include
The Jungle Book,
The Man Who Would Be King and
Kim, while his inspirational poem
If— is a national favourite. Like
William Ernest Henley's poem
Invictus that has inspired such people as
Nelson Mandela when he was incarcerated,
[5] If— is a memorable evocation of
Victorian stoicism, regarded as a traditional British virtue.
Erskine Childers'
The Riddle of the Sands 1903, defined the
spy novel. The
Kailyard school of Scottish writers presented an idealised version of society and brought elements of fantasy and folklore back into fashion, notably
J. M. Barrie, creator of
Peter Pan. The 1905 novel
The Scarlet Pimpernel by
Emma Orczy, is a precursor to the "disguised superhero". In 1908,
Kenneth Grahame wrote the children's classic
The Wind in the Willows, while the
Scouts founder
Robert Baden Powell's first book
Scouting for Boys was published.
John Buchan penned the
adventure novel The Thirty-Nine Steps in 1915. Strongly influenced by his Christian faith,
G. K. Chesterton was a prolific and hugely influential writer with a diverse output.
Aldous Huxley's futuristic novel
Brave New World, anticipates developments in
reproductive technology and
sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurism.
[edit]Modernism
The movement known as English literary
modernism grew out of a general sense of disillusionment with
Victorian era attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and objective truth. The movement was greatly influenced by the ideas of
Romanticism,
Karl Marx's political writings, and the psychoanalytic theories of subconscious –
Sigmund Freud. The continental art movements of
Impressionism, and later
Cubism, were also important inspirations for modernist writers.
Other notable writers of this period included
H.D.,
Marianne Moore,
Elizabeth Bishop,
W. H. Auden,
Vladimir Nabokov,
William Carlos Williams,
Ralph Ellison,
Dylan Thomas,
R.S. Thomas and
Graham Greene. However, some of these writers are more closely associated with what has become known as
post-modernism, a term often used to encompass the diverse range of writers who succeeded the modernists.
[edit]Post-modern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War II literature. It is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period (relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc.) and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is difficult to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance of postmodern literature.
Henry Miller,
William S. Burroughs,
Joseph Heller,
Kurt Vonnegut,
Hunter S. Thompson,
Truman Capote,
Thomas Pynchon.
[edit]Post World War II
In
thriller writing,
Ian Fleming created the character
James Bond 007 in January 1952, while on holiday at his Jamaican estate, Goldeneye. Fleming chronicled Bond's adventures in twelve
novels, including
Casino Royale 1953,
Live and Let Die 1954,
Dr. No 1958,
Goldfinger 1959,
Thunderball 1961, and nine
short story works.
Anthony Burgess's
dystopian novel
A Clockwork Orange 1962, displays the prevention of the main character
Alex's exercise of his free will through the use of a
classical conditioning technique. Burgess creates
a new speech in his novel that is the teenage slang of the not-too-distant future.
Roald Dahl rose to prominence with his children's
fantasy novels, often inspired from experiences from his childhood, that are notable for their often unexpected endings, and unsentimental, dark humour. Science fiction novelist
Arthur C. Clarke's
2001: A Space Odyssey, is based on his various short stories, particularly
The Sentinel. Some notable writers in the latter half of the 20th century include
Ayn Rand,
Terry Pratchett,
Douglas Adams,
J. G. Ballard,
Philip Pullman,
Neil Gaiman,
Alan Moore,
William Golding and
Salman Rushdie.
Ian McEwan's
Atonement 2001, refers to the process of forgiving or pardoning a transgression, and alludes to the main characters' search for atonement in interwar England. His 2005 novel
Saturday, follows an especially eventful day in the life of a successful neurosurgeon.
J. K. Rowling's
Harry Potter fantasy series, is a collection of seven fantasy novels that chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard.
[edit]See also
[edit]References
- ^ Oruch, Jack B., "St. Valentine, Chaucer, and Spring in February," Speculum, 56 (1981): 534–65. Oruch's survey of the literature finds no association between Valentine and romance prior to Chaucer. He concludes that Chaucer is likely to be "the original mythmaker in this instance." Colfa.utsa.edu
- ^ http://www.morrissociety.org/JWMS/SP94.10.4.Nichols.pdf
- ^ Thomas Weber, "Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor," Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 28–29.
- ^ David, Deirdre The Cambridge companion to the Victorian novel p.179. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- ^ Elleke Boehmer (2008). Nelson Mandela: a very short introduction. p. 157. Oxford University Press, 2008. "'Invictus', taken on its own, Mandela clearly found his Victorian ethic of self-mastery"
- ^ Beebe, Maurice (Fall 1972). "Ulysses and the Age of Modernism". James Joyce Quarterly (University of Tulsa) 10 (1): p. 176.
- ^ The Cambridge companion to Virginia Woolf. By Sue Roe, Susan Sellers. p.219. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
[edit]External links
फोहोरमैला व्यवस्थापन ऐन, २०६८.jpg)
.jpg)
