Lecture 1---Victorian Poets (I)

Medieval English Literature
1、 时间界定：From 1066 up to the mid-14th century. 时间界定：From mid2、 文学分类：民间通俗文学； 骑士浪漫诗; 骑士浪漫诗; 民歌； A. Popular folk literature also occupies an important place in this period； period； B. Romance which uses narrative verse or prose to sing knightly adventures or other heroic deeds is a popular literary form in the medieval period .e.g. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight C. Popular ballad occupies an important position.
The hero, Beowulf, is a seemingly invincible person with all the extraordinary traits required of a hero. He is able to use his super-human physical strength and courage to put his people before himself.
3 、Main writers and their works: Geoffrey Chaucer 杰弗里·乔叟 The 杰弗里· 坎特伯雷故事集》 Canterbury Tales 《坎特伯雷故事集》 William Langland威廉·朗格兰 Piers the Langland威廉· 农夫皮尔斯》 Plowman《农夫皮尔斯》 Thomas Malory 马洛里 ish Literature

20th Century British LiteratureLecture 9Modernist Poetry1. 20th Century British Poetry: An Outline1.1 Georgian PoetryA. Tradition formed by Thomas Hardy and A. E. HousmanThomas Hardy: canon of English poetry; philosophical poetTwo features—uniformity of his poems (impossible to trace any kind of development, any growth or decline in power, any change in subject-matter, technique or even the emotional tone from the beginning to the end of his poetic career); Variety (various genres of poems like lyrics, love-songs, ballads, sonnets, and blank verse on various themes; verse-forms, rhythms, and rhyme-scheme varying from poem to poem and from genre to genre).Influence on W.H.Auden and Philip Larkin and others in threefold fashion:delicacy of his observations of the natural world; capability to state straight into the duplicities of human passion; philosophical scope of his mind.Ideas: --Nature is never inert: we remain part of nature and it part of us.--He refused the comforts of religious belief.--He is obsessed with the instability and transience of all humanemotions and human life—and thus pessimism.1. 20th Century British Poetry: An OutlineA. E. Housman (1859-1936): classical poet and scholar—narrow, profound, isolated, brooding (meditative), and on occasion ferocious.Both of them are conservative in artistic form buttry to innovate in content.B. War Poets:Robert BlookWelfred IrvingSegfred SasoonConservative in form while dealing with theevents and the war of their time, and thusdemonstrating kind of modernity.C. Rise of Modernist Poetry1- French Symbolists (1870s-1890s):Arthur Rimbaud, Stephane Mallame, etc.(1) By writing against realism and naturalism as well as theobjectivity and technical conservatism, they aimed for a poetry ofsuggestion rather than of direct statement, evoking subjectivemoods through the use of private symbols while avoiding thedescription of the external reality or the expression of opinion.(2) They were interested in musical properties of languageand believed that sound had mystical affinities with other senses(eg. synaesthesia).(3) Influential innovations include free verse and the prose poem.2- Imagists (1912-17) : Ezra Pound, T. E. Hulme, H.D., Amy Lowell, etc—•They rejected most 19th century poetry as cloudy verbiage (meaningless language);•They aimed at a clarity and exactness in a short lyric poem, and emphasized concision and directness; •They preferred looser cadences to traditional regular rhythms.e.g. Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”The apparition of these in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.1.2 Modernist Age (1920s)T. S. Eliot as the leading figure--modern poetry is experimental;--challenging and rebellious against conventions in both form and content;--an intellectual sophistication that the Victorian poetry lacked was introduced into the poetry from metaphysical poetry. (nature and emotions replaced with intellectuality)--Poet’s role changed from Wordsworth’s emphasis on direct involvement with the author’s feelings in poetic composition to a particular medium in which impressions and experiences are arranged in special ways. Thus meaning becomes symbolic and open to various interpretation.1. 3. Auden’s Generation (1930s)1.3.1 Major figures: W. H. Auden (1907-1973), Stephen Spender, C. Day Lewis, MacNeice.They accepted their creating ideas from Thomas Hardy instead of T. S. Eliot.1.3.2 Themes: Before 1939--1) Ideology: reflecting the political upheaval of the 1930s; sympathetic to the leftist movement and interested in Marxism; anti-fascism; critical against the bourgeois society and focusing on the breakdown of English capitalist society. 2) psychological problems. After 1939—his poetry became more personal and religious.1.3.3. Form: They accepted conventional form with occasional innovations in rhythm and rhyme.1.4 Apocalyptical Poetry(Also New Romanticism, late 1930s and early 1940s)1.4.1 Major figures: Henry Trist, J. F. Hendley, G.S. Frizer, W. S. Graham, Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) They shared little in artistry but shared similar attitude to poetry: romantic, self-expressing; experimental in poetic form and trying to following poetic conventions, esp. romanticism.3.4 Apocalyptical Poetry(Also New Romanticism, late 1930s and early 1940s)1.4.2 Dylan Thomas: received two traditions: romanticism and modernism, so both romanticist and a mystical symbolist.Romanticism leads to his sharp imagery and natural beauty; Modernism, esp. symbolism, leads to his mystical touch and elements of surrealism and personal fantasy.Linguistic genius: good at using poetic diction and imagery. This allows him to be good at expressing his personal feelings in fresh warm and exuberant language.1.5 The Movement Poetry (1950s)A revival of realism in poetry, named after a comment upon a book of poetry New Lines (1956).1.5.1 Major Figures: Kingsley Amis, Elizabeth Jennings, Tom Gunn, and Philip Larkin--Refusing modern poetry and opposed to romanticism while advocating reason, irony and conventional poetic form;--characterized by irony, understatement, and a witty and mocking tone, which were employed to dissolve the serious themes or strong and emotional rhetoric vein of Apocalyptical poetry and modernist poetry.--traced British Poetry to Chaucer, Wordsworth and Hardy instead of Eliot and Pound.1.5.2 Philip Larkin (1922-1985)--the most influential after Auden;--addressing everyday British life in plain, straightforward language and often in traditional forms;--avoiding sentimentality and high-sounding words, but adopting a cool and restricted attitude to the subjects described in his poetry;--Good at turning ordinary things into poetry and reveal some simple truth people usually fail to see in daily life.2. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)2.1 Literary Career：(1) 1st period (1800s-1900):--following romantic tradition of Spenser, Shelly and Blake; also influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite style;--writing poems of “impersonal beauty” and creating an dream-like effect;--themes: spiritual live and frustratons and uncertainty about the world;--seeking to transform Irish folk-lore into poetry.e. g. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”—a strong and urgent desire for peace in original and fresh language, evocative images and musical properties.2nd Period (1900-1920):--t rying to “carry the normal, passionate, reasoning self” into his poetry;--showing his concern for the fate of his people and the future of the world, but never pessimistic for he believed that history was circular and death brought birth.e.g. “The Second Coming”3rd Period (1920-1939): a mature poet--learning to reconcile the conflict between life and art, the real and the ideal to develop a unity between the two.--emphasizing the harmonious coexistence of the eternal opposites of objectivity and subjectivity, art and life, and soul and body.--mythology, symbolism and philosophy much used.Eg. “Sailing to Byzantium” (1927): In this poem, Yeats faced pld age with a courage that comes out of intellectual wisdom: “An aged man is but a paltry thing,…” bu t aging is also a sign of maturity, where spiritual freedom grows from.3. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)“an Anglo Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and royalist in politics”3.1 Ideology: After initial disillusionment with world politics after the WWI, he turned to religion as a possible solution to the spiritual crisis of modern man.3.2 His essays are influential: 1) favored Donne over Milton; 2) Replaced Tennyson with Hopkins in the 19th century canon; 3) helped to establish the influential New Criticism movement (close analysis of the text itself instead of the background information about the text or the author).3.3 Poetic Views:•Poetry is not “the expression of personality, but an escape from personality”—Impersonal theory opposite to Wor dsworth’s advocacy about good poetry.2) Poetry should bear the historical sense of literature, or take a historical stand.3) He opposed the separation of feelings from intellectuality.4) Objective correlative (客观对应物)：a group of objects, a situation or a series of events can be used as a formula to express particular feelings, which should also be evocative.5) Art is to impose the readers a trustworthy order so as to lead them to a harmonious and steady state. L iterary criticism is to promote the understanding of literary works. The poet’s greatest social responsibility is to defend his native language.。

For other Irish and Scottish authors, see Irish Literature; Scottish Literature.
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Ancient Literature
Compared to the long history of Europe, GB has a relatively short one.
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Evaluation Criteria & Grading
Physical attendance and class participation 15%
Assignments and quizzes 15%
1. Failure to read or watch the assigned texts before class can constitute reasons for failing the course. Missing one text is equal to 1/2 absence; three absences means failing the course.
culture in which it is written.
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Other approaches
Marxist/sociological criticism Psychoanalytical criticism Feminist/gender criticism Mythic and archetypal criticism Reader-response criticism Formalist /new criticism Structuralism

Women novels
Women’s traditional place Industrial revolution -- independence in economy -- political independence -- French revolution: liberty, equality, fraternity Women’s Liberation Movement -- women’s voice to be heard Reality in literary sphere for men and women
Related links http://www.helsinke.fi/kasv/nokol/ dickens.html /victoria n/dickens/dickensov.html /wiki/Charles _Dickens
The Victorian Period Chronologically coincided with the reign of Queen Victoria(1837-1901) 3 periods(1832-1902)
The Early Victorian Age (1832-1854) The Mid-Victorian Age (1855-1879) The Late Victorian Age (1880-1902)
Contents 1. The Victorian Period 2. Features of Victorian literature 3. Novels -Critical realism -Women novels 3. Poetry
Significant events in Victorian period The Early Victorian Age: 1832: Reform Bill/Act: political power the decaying aristocrats the middle-class industrial capitalists