Restoration 1660 – 1702 Fire, plague, first novels18th Century 1702 – 1798 Enlightenment/Reason, non-fictionRomantic 1798 – 1832 Anti-Enlightenment, Lyrical BalladsVictorian 1832 – 1914 First Reform Law, Scott’s death20th Century 1914 > Anything goes, Modernism, wars
Anglo Saxon (450-1066)Beowulf:
British epic about what makes a good warrior, king, Anglo-Saxon values, good and evilHistorical Beowulf ~500 AD, told ~800, written ~1000 in Old English/Anglo-SaxonAll translations from same source document
Bede: 673-735 History of the English Church and People (Caedmon of Whitby)Alfred: d.899 King committed to writing in vernacular versus Latin
Medieval (1066-1485)Chretien d’Troyes: late 12th century, Arthurian Romances (Yvain), FrenchLion in Winter: modern play about Henry II and his family in 1185, eve of crusadesChaucer: d.1400, Canterbury Tales, Middle English, frame story was to contain 120 tales (Prologue, Knight’s, Pardoner’s, Reeve’s, Wife of Bath’s) Malory: d.1471, Morte d’Arthur, collected stories of Arthurian legend, PROSE!, sets forth English stance on chivalry, national character
Renaissance (1485-1660)
Henry VII – VIII, Edward, MaryColumbus, CabotThomas More (Man for All Seasons, Utopia)Luther, Reformation, Church of EnglandSonnets introduced
Elizabethan (1558-1603)Jacobean (1603-1649) reigns of James I and Charles IPuritan (1649-1660) English civil war resulted in Cromwell as a military dictator)
Elizabethan (1558-1603)
Spenser – Fairie QueenMarlowe – Playwright, FaustSydney – Sonneteer, Defense of Poesy, Astrophel and StellaShakespeareFrancis Bacon – Novum Organum, Of Studies
Jacobean (1603-1648)John Donne
Early period: conceits, love poems, To a FleaMiddle period: to his wife, compass conceitLate period: metaphysical, Death Be Not Proud, No Man Is an Island, Ask Not for Whom the Bell Rings
Herbert – Metaphysical poetAndrew Marvell – between metaphysical poets and cavaliersTribe of Ben (Jonson)
Cavalier poets: Suckling, Lovelace, Vaughan
Puritans (1648-1660)John Milton: goes blind, VERY IMPORTANT
Paradise Lost: English Epic
John BunyanPilgrim’s Progress: Vanity Fair
Restoration/18th Century
• Not a lot of fiction, poetry or drama• Age of science: i.e., Newton• Technology: Watt (steam engine) > coal• Age of political science: Locke, Hobbs• Age of history: Gibbon• Biography, dictionary, magazines, philosophy• Age of wit, satire, descriptions of real things,
ideas
Restoration/18th Century
John Dryden: Critic : An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (re: Shakespeare)Poet: Mac Flecknoe: Scathing lampoon of contemporary poet; Song for St. Cecelia’s Day
Samuel Pepys: Diarist of 17th Century London, in codeDaniel Defoe: Pen for hire
Journal of the Plague YearsRobinson CrusoeMoll Flanders
Addison & Steele: first magazinesAlexander Pope: everything in heroic couplets
Rape of the Lock (mock epic)Epigrams (hope springs eternal, a little learning is a dangerous thing, to err is human, to forgive divine, fools rush in where angels fear to tread)
Restoration/18th Century
Samuel Johnson: first dictionary, critic, lexicographer, witJames Boswell: first great biographerThomas Grey: poet (Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard)
Restoration/18th Century
Transitional FiguresRobert Burns: National poet of Scotland
To a MouseAuld Lang SyneSweet Afton
William Blake: Poet, printer, artist, print-makerPoems of Innocence and ExperienceDante’s Divine ComedyMilton’s Paradise Lost
Romantic Period (1798-1832)
Begins with Lyrical BalladsGothic novels pre-dateReaction against rationality of EnlightenmentPassion, nature, supernatural, radicalism, REVOLUTIONEnds with First Reform Bill, death of Scott, ascendency of Victoria
Romantic PoetsFirst Generation
William Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads!Tintern AbbeyI Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Samuel Coleridge: Lyrical BalladsRime of the Ancient MarinerKubla Khan
Romantic PoetsSecond Generation
Lord ByronAfter Swimming from Sestos to Abydos, She Walks in Beauty, Childe Harold, Don Juan
Percy Shelley: politically radical, communes, free love, married Mary, died young and mysteriously
Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, England in 1819
John Keats: died very young, very promisingOn first Looking into Chapman’s Homer, Bright Star, The Eve of St. Agnes, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn
Romantic Novelists• Walter Scott: started out as a poet, felt he could not
be more successful than Byron. Practically invents historical fiction– Ivanhoe– Waverly– Rob Roy
• Jane Austen: Comedic novels about class issues/marriage– Pride and Prejudice– Sense and Sensibility– Persuasion– Northanger Abby– Mansfield Park
• Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Victorian PoetsAlfred, Lord Tennyson: poet laureate after Wordsworth
Lady of Shalott, Idylls of the King, Ulysses, Charge of the Light Brigade, In MemoriamRobert Browning: dramatic monologues (My Last Duchess)Matthew Arnold: also a critic (Dover Beach)Thomas Hardy: also a novelist (The Man He Killed, Are You Digging on My Grave?)Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese
Victorian NovelistsCharles Dickens: serialized novels, extremely popular (Great Expectations, Christmas Carol, Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist)William Thackeray: Rival to Dickens (Vanity Fair)Charlotte Bronte: Wuthering HeightsEmily Bronte: Jane EyreRobert Louis Stevenson: Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Dr. Jeckel and Mr. HydeThomas Hardy: (Three Strangers) Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Return of the Native, Far from the Madding CrowdGeorge Eliot: (Woman) Mill on the Floss, Silas MarnerRudyard Kipling: Kim, Just So Stories, Jungle BookW.H. Hudson: How Green Were My ValleysJoseph Conrad: (The Lagoon) Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim
Victorian (Other)Gilbert and Sullivan: operettas (Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore)Lewis Carroll: children’s trippy fantasy/logic fiction (Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, The Jabberwocky)Oscar Wilde: playwright (Importance of Being Ernest), novelist (Portrait of Dorian Grey), short stories (The Canterville Ghost)
20th CenturyGeorge Bernard Shaw: deep comedic plays (Pygmalion, Man and Superman, Major Barbara)George Orwell: dystopian social criticism (1984, Animal Farm)Virginia Woolf: Bloomsbury Group: Mrs. DalowayE.M. Forster: Passage to India, Room with a ViewJames Joyce: Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as A young Man, Ulysses, Finnegan’s WakeSaki: short stories (The Interlopers, Schartz-Metterklume Method)
