英国文学史Part one: Early and Medieval English LiteratureChapter 1 The Making of England1. The early inhabitants in the island now we call England were Britons,a tribe of Gelts.2. In 55 ., Britain was invaded by Julius Caesar.The Roman occupation lasted for about 400 years.It was also during the Roman role that Christianity was introduced to Britain.And in 410 ., all the Roman troops went back to the continent and never returned.3. The English ConquestAt the same time Britain was invaded by swarms of pirates( 海盗). They were three tribes from Northern Europe: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes.And by the 7th century these small kingdoms were combined into a United Kingdom called England, or, the land of Angles.And the three dialects spoken by them naturally grew into a single language called Anglo-Saxon, or Old English.4. The Social Condition of the Anglo-SaxonTherefore, the Anglo-Saxon period witnessed a transition from tribalsociety to feudalism.5. Anglo-Saxon Religious Belief and Its InfluenceThe Anglo-Saxons were Christianized in the seventh century.Chapter 2 Beowulf1. Anglo-Saxon PoetryBut there is one long poem of over 3,000 lines. It is Beowulf, the national epic of the English people. Grendel is a monster described in Beowulf.3. Analysis of Its ContentBeowulf is a folk lengend brought to England by Anglo-Saxons from their continental homes. It had been passed from mouth to mouth for hundreds of years before it was written down in the tenth century.4. Features of BeowulfThe most striking feature in its poetical form is the use of alliteration, metaphors and understatements.Chapter 3 Feudal England1) The Norman Conquest2. The Norman ConquestThe French-speaking Normans under Duke William came in 1066. After defeating the English at Hastings, William was crowned as King of England.The Norman Conquest marks the establishment of feudalism in England.3. The Influence of the Norman Conquest on the English LanguageBy the end of the fourteenth century, when Normans and English intermingled, English was once more the dominant speech in the country.3) The Romance1. The Content of the RomanceThe most prevailing kind of literature in feudal England was the romance.4. Malory ’s Le Morte D ’ArthurThe adventures of the Knights of the Round Table at Arthur ’s courtChapter 5 The English Ballads2. The BalladsThe most important department of English folk literature is the ballad.A ballad is a story told in song, usually in 4-line stanzas, with the secondand fourth lines rhymed.Of paramount importance are the ballads of Robin Hood.3. The Robin Hood BalladsChapter 6 Chaucer1. LifeGeoffrey Chaucer, the founder/father of English poetry.3. Troilus and CriseydeTroilus and Criseyde is Chaucer’s longest complete poem and his greatest artistic achievement.But the poet shows some sympathy for her, hitting that her fault springsfrom weakness rather than baseness of character.4. The Canterbury TalesThe Canterbury Tales is Chaucer ’s masterpiece and one of the monumental works in English literature.6. His LanguageChaucer’s language, now called Middle English, is vivid and exact.Chaucer’s contribution to English poetry lies chiefly in the fact thathe introduced from France the rhymed stanza of various types, especiallythe rhymed couplet of 5 accents in iambic meter (the “the heroic couplet ”)to English poetry, instead of the old Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse.The spoken English of the time consisted of several dialects, and Chaucerdid much in making dialect of London the standard for the modern English speech.Part Two: The English RenaissanceChapter 1 Old England in Transition1. The New MonarchyThe century and a half following the death of Chaucer was full of great changes.And Henry 7, taking advantage of this situation, founded the Tudor dynasty,a centralized monarchy of a totally new type, which met the needs of therising bourgeoisie and so won its support.2. The ReformationProtestantismThe bloody religious persecution came to a stop after the church settlementof Queen Elizabeth.3. The English BibleWilliam TyndallThen appeared the Authorized Version, which was made in 1611 under the auspices of James I and so was sometimes called the King James Bible.The result is a monument of English language and English literature.The standard modern English has been fixed and confirmed.4. The Enclosure Movement5. The Commercial ExpansionChapter 2 More1. LifeThomas More2. UtopiaUtopia is More ’s masterpiece, written in the form of a conversationbetween More and Hythlody, a returned voyager.The name “Utopia ”comes from two Greek words meaning “no place ”.3. Utopia , Book OneBook One of Utopia is a picture of contemporary England with forcibleexposure of the poverty among the laboring classes.4. Utopia , Book TwoIn Book Twowe have a sketch of an ideal commonwealth in some unknown ocean, where property is held in common and there is no poverty.Chapter 3 The Flowering of English Literature3. Edmund Spenser1) LifeThe Poet ’s Poet of the period was Edmund Spenser.In 1579 he wrote The Shepher’s Calendar, a pastoral poemin twelve books, one for each month of the year.2) The Faerie Queene (masterpiece)Spenser ’s greatest work, The Faerie Queene (published in 1589-1596), isa long poem planned in 12 books, of which he finished only 6.iambic feet Spenserian Stanza4. Francis Bacon (father/founder of English essay)the founder of English English materialist philosophyBacon is also famous for his Essays. When it included 58 essays.Bacon is the first English essayist.Chapter 4 Drama7. The PlaywrightsThere was a group of so-cal led “university wits ”(Lyly, Peele, Marlowe, Greene, Lodge and Nash).Chapter 5 Marlowe1. LifeThe most gifted of the “university wits ”was Christopher Marlowe.2. WorkMarlowe’s best includes three of his plays, Tamburlaine , The Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus.3. Doctor FaustusMarl owe’s masterpiece is The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.5. Marlowe ’s Literary AchievementMarlowe was the greatest of the pioneers of English drama.It is Marlowe who first made blank verse (rhymeless iambic pentameter)the principal instrument of English drama.Chapter 6 Shakespeare1. LifeWilliam Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon.After his death, two of his above-mentioned fellow-actors, Herminge and Condell, collected and published Shakespeare ’s plays in 1623. To this edition, which has been known as the First Folio.4. The Great ComediesA Midsummer Night ’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice , As You Like It and Twelfth Night have been called Shakespeare ’s “great comedies ”.6. The Great TragediesShakespeare created his great tragedies, Hamlet, Othello , King Lear and Macbeth.7. Hamletthe son of the Renaissance9. The Poems1) Venus and Adonis2) The Rape of Lucrece3) Shakespeare’s Sonnets10. Features of Shakespeare ’s DramaShakespeare and the Authorized Version of the English Bible are the two greatest treasuries of the English language.Shakespeare has been universally acknowledged to be the summit of the English Renaissance.Part Three: The Period of the English Bourgeois RevolutionChapter 1 The English Revolution and the Restoration5. The Bourgeois Dictatorship and the Restorationin 1688 Glorious Revolution6. The Religious Cloak of the English RevolutionPuritanism was the religious doctrine of the revolutionary bourgeoisieduring the English Revolution. It preached thrift, sobriety, hard work and unceasing labour in whatever calling one happened to be, but with no extravagant enjoyment of the fruits of labour.Chapter 2 Milton1. Life and WorkParadise Lost , Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes.2. Paradise Lost1) Paradise LostParadise Lost is Milton ’s masterpiece.blank verse.Chapter 3 Bunyan1. LifeThe Pilgrim ’s Progress was published in 1678.2. The Pilgrim ’s Progress1) The Pilgrim ’s Progress is a religious allegory.Chapter 4 Metaphysical Poets and Cavalier Poetsa school of poets called “Metaphysical ”by S amuel Johnson.by mysticism in content and fantasticality in formJohn Donne, the founder of the Metaphysical school of poetry.Chapter 6 Restoration Literature2. John DrydenThe most distinguished literary figure of the Restoration Period was John Dryden.Dryden was the forerunner of the English classical school of literaturein the next century.Part Four: The Eighteenth CenturyChapter 1 The Enlightenment and Classicism in English Literature1. The Enlightenment and 18th Century England2) The Enlightenment in EuropeThe 18th century marked the beginning of an intellectual movementin Europe, known as the Enlightenment, which was, on the whole, an expression of struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism. The enlighteners foughtagainst class inequality, stagnation, prejudices and other survivals of feudalism.3) The English EnlighternersThe representatives of the Enlightenment in English literature were Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, the essayists, and Alexander Pope, the poet.Chapter 2 Addison and Steele1. Steele and The TatlerRichard SreeleIn 1709, he started a paper, The Tatler , to enlighten, as well as to entertain, his fellow coffeehouse-goers.His appeal was made to “coffeehouses, ”that is to say, to the middle classes, for whose enlightenment he stood up.“Issac Bickerstaff ”2. Addison and The SpectatorThe general purpose is “to enliven morality with wit, and to temper witwith morality. ”They ushered in the dawn of modern English novel.Chapter 3 Pope1. LifeAlexander Pope, the most important English poet in the first half of the18th century.3. Workmanship and LimitationPope was an outstanding enlightener and the greatest English poet of the classical school in the first half of the 18th century.Pope is the most important representative of the English classical poery.But he lacker the lyrical gift.Chapter 4 Swift3. Bickersta f f Almanac (1708)Swift wrote his greatest work Gulliver ’s Travels in Ireland.Chapter 5 Defoe and the Rise of the English Novel1. The Rise of the English Novelthe realistic novel: Defoe, Swift, Richardson and FieldingSwift ’s world -famous novel Gulliver ’s Travel sDefoe’s Robinson Crusoe (the forerunner of the English realistic novel) Richardson: Pamela, Clarissa and Sir Charles GrandisonFielding was the real founder of the realistic novel in England.The novel of this period ⋯spoke the truth about life with an uncompromising courage. ”The novelists of this period understood that “the job of a novelist was to tell the truth about life as he saw it. ”(Ibid.)This explains the achievement of the English novel in the 18th century.4. Robinson Crusoe1) Today Defoe is chiefly remembered as the author of Robinson Crusoe, his masterpiece.Chapter 6 RichardsonSamuel RichardsonPamela was, in fact, the first English psycho-analytical novel.After Pamela, Richardson wrote two other novels: Clarissa Harlowe and Sir Charles Grandison .Clarissa is the best of Richardson ’s novel.Chapter 7 Fielding (the father of English novel)1. LifeHis first novel Joseph Andrews was published in 1742.His Jonathan Wild appeared in 1743. It is a powerful political satire.In 1749, he finished his great novel Tom Jones.Amelia was his last novel. It is inferior to Tom Jones, but has meritsof its own.3. Joseph Andrews4. Tom Jones1) The StoryFielding ’s greatest work is The History of Tom Jones , a Foundling . 6. Summary2) Fielding as the Founder of the English Realistic NovelAs a novelist, Fielding is very great. He is the founder of the English realistic novel and sets up the theory of realism in literary creation.He has been rightly called the “father of t he English novel. ”Chapter 10 Johnson1. LifeSamuel Johnson, lexicographer, critic and poet.2. Johnson ’s DictionaryIn 1755 his Dictionary was published.His Dictionary also marked the end of English writers ’reliance on the patronage of noblemen for support.Chapter 13 Sentimentalism and Pre-Romanticism in Poetry1. LifeThomas Gray2. Pre-RomanticismIn the latter half of the 18th century, a new literary movement arose in Europe, called the Romantic Revival.Pre-Romanticism was ushered in by Percy, Macpherson and Chatterton, and represented by Blake and Burns.Chapter 14 Blake1. LifeWilliam Blake2. Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience4. Blake ’s Position in English LiteratureFor these reasons, Blake is called a Pre-Romantic or a forerunner of the Romantic poetry of the 19th century.Chapter 15 Burns1. LifeHis Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect were printed. (masterpiece)The Scots Musical Museum and Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs 2. The Poetry of Burns1) Burns is remembered mainly for his songs written in the Scottish dialecton a variety of subjects.3. Features of Burns ’PoetryBurns is the national poet of Scotland.Part Five: Romanticism in EnglandChapter 1 The Romantic Periodthe Industrial Revolution the French RevolutionAmid these social conflicts romanticism arose as a new literary trend.It prevailed in England during the period 1798-1832.These were the elder generation of romanticists, sometimes called escapist romanticists, including Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, who have alsobeen called the Lake Poets.Active romanticists represented by Byron, Shelley and Keats.The general feature of the works of the romanticists is a dissatisfactionwith the bourgeois society, which finds expression in a revolt against oran escape from the prosaic, sordid daily life, the “prison of the actual ”under capitalism.Poetry, of course, is the best medium to express all these sentiments.The only great novelist in this period was Walter Scott.Scott marked the transition from romanticism to the period of realism which followed it.Chapter 2 WordsworthColeridgeIn 1798 they jointly published the Lyrical Ballads .The publication of the Lyrical Ballads marked the break with theconventional poetical tradition of the 18th century, ., with classicism,and the beginning of Romantic revival in England.The Preface of the Lyrical Ballads served as the manifesto of the English Romantic Movement in poetry.Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey have often been mentioned as the “Lake Poets”because they lived in the Lake District in the northwestern partof England.His deep love for nature runs through such short lyrics as Lines Writtenin Early Spring , To the Cuckoo, I WanderedLonely as a Cloud, My Heart LeapsUp, Intimations of Immortality and Lines Composeda FewMiles Above Tintern Abbey. The last is called his “lyrical hymn of thanks to nature ”.Wordsworth’s poetry is distinguished by the simplicity and purity of his language.Chapter 3 Coleridge and Southey1. ColeridgeColeridge ’s best poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner .Chapter 4 Byron1. LifeChilde Harold ’s PilgrimageHe finished Childe Harold , wrote his masterpiece Don Juan.2. Childe Harold ’s PilgrimageThis long poem contains four cantos. It is written in the Soenserianstanza.3. Don JuanByron remains one of the most popular English poets both at home and abroad.Chapter 5 Shelley4. Promethus UnboundShelley ’s masterpiece is Promethus Unbound, a lyrical drama in 4 acts.6. Lyrics on Nature and LoveOde to the West WindChapter 6 Keats2. Long PoemsKeats wrote five long poems: Endymion, Isabella , The Eve of St. Agnes , Lamia and Hyperion .5) The unfinished long epic Hyperion has been regarded as Keat ’s greatest achievement in poetry.3. Short Poems1) His leading principle is: “Beauty in truth, truth in beauty. ”3) Ode to Autumn , Ode on Melancholy , Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a NightingaleChapter 10 Scott2. His Historical NovelsScott has been universally regarded as the founder and great master ofthe historical novel.According to the subjet-matter, the group on the history of Scotland, thegroup on English history and the group on the history of European countries.In fact, Scott ’s literary career marks the transition from romanticismto realism in English literature of the 19th century.Part Six: English Critical RealismChapter 2 DickensCharles Dickens critical realismDickens: Pickwick Papers , American Notes , Martin Chuzzlewit and Oliver Twist4) Dickens has often been compared Shakespeare for creative force and range of invention. “He and Shakespeare are the two unique popular classics that England has given to the world, and they are alike in being remembered notfor one masterpiece but for creative world. ”David CopperfieldChapter 3 Thackeray2. Vanity Fair : A Novel Without a HeroVanity Fair is Thackeray ’s masterpiece. characters: Amelia Sedley and Rebecca (Becky) SharpThackeray can be placed on the same level as Dickens, as one of the greatest critical realists of 19th-century Europe.Chapter 4 Some Women Novelists1. Jane Austen (1775-1817)She herself compared her work to a fine engraving madeupon a little pieceof ivory only two inches square.Jane Austen wrote 6 novels: Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice , Mansfield Park , Emma and Persuasion.2. The Bronte SistersCharlotte ’s maiden attempt at prose writing, the novel Professor , was rejected by the publisher, but her next novel Jane Eyre, appearing in 1847, brought her fame and placed her in the ranks of the foremost English realistic writers. Emily ’s novel Wuthering Heights appeared in 1847.Anne: Agnes Grey4. George EliotMary Ann Evansthree remarkable novels: AdamBede, The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner 3) Silas Marner: Critical realism was the main current of English literaturein the middle of the 19th century.Part Seven: Prose-Writers and Poets of the Mid and Late 19th CenturyChapter 1 Carlylethe Victorian AgeChapter 3 Tennysonthe Victorian Age prose especially the novel1. Tennyson ’s Life and CareerAlfred Tennyson, the most important poet of the Victorian Age.In the same year (1850) he was appointed poet laureate in succession to Wordsworth.Chapter 7 Literary Trends at the End of the Century1. NaturalismNaturalism is a literary trend prevailing in Europe, especially in Franceand Germany, in the second half of the 19th century.2. Neo-RomanticismStevenson was a representative of neo-romanticism in English literature.Treasure Island (masterpiece)3. AestheticismAestheticism began to prevail in Europe at the middle of the 19th century.The theory of “art for art ’s sake ”was first put forward by the Frenchpoet Theophile Gautier.The two most important representatives of aestheticists in Englishliterature are Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.2) Oscar Wilde dramatistLady Windermere’s Fan, 1893; A Woman of No Importance , 1894; An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest , 1895The Importance of Being Earnest is his masterpiece in drama.Part Eight: Twentieth Century English Literature(Modernism)Chapter 2 English Novel of Early 20th Century3. Henry JamesHe is regarded as the forerunner of the “stream of consciousness ”literature in the 20th century.Chapter 3 Hardy1. Life and WorkAmong his famous novels, Tess of the D’Urbervillies and Jude the Obscure.2. Tess of the D ’Urbervilliescharacters: Tess, Alec D ’Urbervillies and Angel ClareChapter 6 Bernard ShawChapter 8 Modernism in Poetry1. ImagismEzra PoundThe two most important English poets of the first half of 20th centuryare W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot.2. W. B. YeatsThe Wild Swans at Coole , Michael Robartes and the Dancer , The Tower and The Winding StairT. S. Eliot has referred to Yeats as “the greatest poet of ourage-certainly the greatest in this . English) language. ”3. T. S. EliotThe Waste Land (1922) is dignifying the emergence of Modernism.T. S. Eliot was a leader of the modernist movement in English poetry anda great innovator of verse technique. He profoundly influenced 20th-century English poetry between World Wars 1 and 2.Chapter 9 The Psychological Fiction1. D. H. LawrenceSons and Lovers (1913) , the first of Lawrence ’s important novel s, islargely autobiographical.This shows the influence of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, especiallythat of the “Oedipus complex. ”The Rainbow, Women in Love and Lady Chatterley ’s Lover3. James JoyceUlysses (1922)June 16, 1904character: Leopold BloomJames Joyce was one of the most original novelists of the 20th century.His masterpiece Ulysses has been called “a modern prose epic ”.His admirers have praised him as “second only to Shakespeare in hismastery of the English language. ”4. Virginia Woolf“high-brows ”the Bloomsbury GroupVirginia Wolf ’s first two novels, The Voyage Out and Night and Day .Jacob’s Room, Mrs. Dalloway , To the Lighthouse and Orlando PartNine: Poets and Novelists Who Wrote both before and after the Second WorldWarChapter 5 E. M. ForsterEdward Morgan Forster the Bloomsbury Groupfour novels: WhereAngels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Roomwitha View and Howards EndA Passage to India , published in 1924, is Forster ’s masterpiece . In 1927, Forster published a book on the theory of fiction, Aspects of the Novel .Chapter 10 William GoldingWilliam Gerald GoldingHis first novel Lord of the FliesChapter 11 Doris LessingGolden Notebook。
