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    A brief survey of the British literature through time with its important features, trends, works and authors along with the literary and socio-political background. Very helpful for the students of literature indeed.

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    A brief survey of the British literature through time with its important features, trends, works and authors along with the literary and socio-political background. Very helpful for the students of literature indeed.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    2K views4 pages

    British Literature Through Time

    Uploaded by

    amorenaz
    A brief survey of the British literature through time with its important features, trends, works and authors along with the literary and socio-political background. Very helpful for the students of literature indeed.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 4

    British Literature through Time

    The Old English/Anglo-Saxon The Middle English Period: The Renaissance The Neoclassical Period:
    Period: (Medieval Period) Years: 1485-1660 Years: 1660-1798
    Years: 449-1066 Years: 1066-1485 (roughly) The Elizabethan: 1586-1603
    Jacobean Period: 1603-1625
    Content: Content: Content: Content:

    strong belief in fate plays that instruct the illiterate world view shifts from religion and emphasis on reason and logic
    juxtaposition of church and pagan masses in morals and religion after life to one stressing the stresses harmony, stability, wisdom
    worlds chivalric code of honor/romances human life on earth Locke: a social contract exists
    admiration of heroic warriors who religious devotion popular theme: development of between the government and the
    prevail in battle human potential people. The government governs
    express religious faith and give Style/Genres: popular theme: many aspects of guaranteeing “natural rights” of life,
    moral instruction through literature love explored liberty, and property
    oral tradition continues unrequited love, constant love,
    Style/Genres: folk ballads timeless love, courtly love, love Style/Genres:
    mystery and miracle plays subject to change
    oral tradition of literature morality plays satire
    poetry dominant genre Stock epithets, kennings, frame Style/Genres: poetry
    unique verse form stories moral tales…etc. essays
     caesura poetry: letters, diaries, biographies
     alliteration Effect: the sonnet novels
     repetition metaphysical poetry
     four-beat rhythm church instructs its people through elaborate and unexpected Effect:
    the morality and miracle plays metaphors called conceits
    Effect: an illiterate population is able to drama: emphasis on the individual
    hear and see the literature written in verse belief that humanity is basically evil
    Christianity helps literacy to spread supported by royalty approach to life: “the world as it
    introduces Roman alphabet to Historical Context: tragedies, comedies, histories should be”
    Britain
    oral tradition helps unite diverse Crusades bring the development of Effect: Historical Context:
    peoples and their myths a money economy for the first time
    in Britain commoners welcomed at some play 50% of males are functionally

    1
    trading increases dramatically as a productions (like ones at the Globe) literate (a dramatic rise)

    Page
    result of the Crusades while conservatives try to close the Fenced enclosures of land cause

    Rozi Khan Department of English GPGJC Swat, KPK [E-mail: rozikhan782@hotmail.com]


    British Literature through Time

    Historical Context: William the Conqueror crowned theaters on grounds that they demise of traditional village life
    king in 1066 promote brazen behaviors Factories begin to spring up as
    life centered around ancestral tribes Henry III crowned king in 1154 not all middle-class embrace the industrial revolution begins
    or clans that ruled themselves brings a judicial system, royal metaphysical poets and their Impoverished masses begin to grow
    at first the people were warriors courts, juries, and chivalry to Britain abstract conceits as farming life declines and
    from invading outlying areas: factories build
    Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Danes A Sampling of Key Literature & Historical Context: Coffee houses—where educated
    later they were agricultural Authors: men spend evenings with literary
    War of Roses ends in 1485 and and political associates
    A Sampling of Key Literature & Sir Gawain and the Green Knight political stability arrives
    Authors: Pearl, Printing press helps stabilize English A Sampling of Key Literature &
    Doomsday Book as a language and allows more Authors:
    Beowulf L’Morte de Arthur people to read a variety of
    The Venerable Bede Geoffrey Chaucer literature Alexander Pope
    Exeter Book Economy changes from farm-based Daniel Defoe
    to one of international trade Jonathan Swift,
    Samuel Johnson
    A Sampling of Key Literature & John Bunyan
    Authors: John Milton

    William Shakespeare
    Thomas Wyatt
    Ben Jonson
    Cavalier Poets
    Metaphysical Poets
    John Donne
    Christopher Marlowe
    Andrew Marvell
    Robert Herrick
    Katherine Phillips

    2
    Page
    Rozi Khan Department of English GPGJC Swat, KPK [E-mail: rozikhan782@hotmail.com]
    British Literature through Time

    The Romantic Period The Victorian Period Modern/Post Modern Period of Contemporary Period of Literature
    Years: 1798 – 1832 Years: 1832-1900 Literature (Post Modern Period Continued)
    Years: 1900-1980 1980-Present
    Content: Content: Content: Content:

    human knowledge consists of conflict between those in power lonely individual fighting to find concern with connections between
    impressions and ideas formed in the and the common masses of laborers peace and comfort in a world that people
    individual’s mind and the poor has lost its absolute values and exploring interpretations of the past
    introduction of Gothic elements and shocking life of sweatshops and traditions open-mindedness and courage that
    terror/horror stories and novels urban poor is highlighted in man is nothing except what he comes from being an outsider
    in nature one can find comfort and literature to insist on reforms makes of himself escaping those ways of living that
    peace that the man-made country versus city life a belief in situational ethics-no blinds and dulls the human spirit
    urbanized towns and factory sexual discretion (or lack of it) absolute values. Decisions are
    environments cannot offer strained coincidences based on the situation one is Genres/Styles:
    romantic triangles involved in at the moment
    Style/Genres: heroines in physical danger mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; all genres represented
    aristocratic villains blurs lines of reality for reader fictional confessional/diaries
    poetry misdirected letters loss of the hero in literature 50% of contemporary fiction is
     lyrical ballads bigamous marriages destruction made possible by written in the first person
     Biographia Literaria technology narratives: both fiction and
    Genres/Styles: nonfiction
    Effects: Genres/Styles:  emotion-provoking
    novel becomes popular for first  humorous irony
    evil attributed to society not to time; mass produced for the first poetry: free verse  storytelling emphasized
    human nature time epiphanies begin to appear in  autobiographical essays
    human beings are basically good  bildungsroman literature  mixing of fantasy with
    movement of protest: a desire for  political novels speeches nonfiction; blurs lines of reality
    personal freedom  detective novels (Sherlock memoir for reader
    children seen as hapless victims of Holmes) novels
    poverty and exploitation  serialized novels (Charles stream of consciousness Effect:
    Dickens)  detached, unemotional,
    elegies humorless too early to tell

    3
    poetry: easier to understand  present tense

    Page
     dramatic monologues  magic realism

    Rozi Khan Department of English GPGJC Swat, KPK [E-mail: rozikhan782@hotmail.com]


    British Literature through Time

    Historical Context: drama: comedies of manners Historical Context:


    magazines offer stories to the Effect:
    Napoleon rises to power in France masses a world growing smaller due to ease
    and opposes England militarily and approach to life: of communications between
    economically Effect: “Seize life for the moment and get societies
    gas lamps developed all you can out of it.” a world launching a new beginning
    Tory philosophy that government literature begins to reach the of a century and a millennium
    should not interfere with private masses Historical Context: media culture interprets values and
    enterprise events for individuals
    middle class gains representation in Historical Context: British Empire loses 1 million
    the British parliament soldiers to World War I Key Literature/Authors:
    railroads begin to run paper becomes cheap; magazines Winston Churchill leads Britain
    and novels cheap to mass produce through WW II, and the Germans  Seamus Heaney
    Key Literature/Authors: unprecedented growth of industry bomb England directly  Doris Lessing
    and business in Britain British colonies demand  Louis de Bernieres
    Novelists unparalleled dominance of nations, independence  Kazuo Ishiguro
     Jane Austen economies and trade abroad  Tom Stoppard
     Mary Shelley Key Literature/Authors:  John Le Carre
    Key Literature/Authors:  Ken Follett
    Poets James Joyce
     Robert Burns  Charles Dickens Joseph Conrad
     William Blake  Thomas Hardy D.H. Lawrence
     William Wordsworth  Rudyard Kipling Graham Greene
     Samuel Taylor Coleridge  Robert Louis Stevenson Dylan Thomas
     Lord Byron  George Eliot Nadine Gordimer
     Percy Shelley  Oscar Wilde George Orwell
     John Keats  Alfred Lord Tennyson William Butler Yeats
     Charles Darwin Bernard Shaw
     Charlotte Bronte
     Robert Browning

    4
    Page
    Rozi Khan Department of English GPGJC Swat, KPK [E-mail: rozikhan782@hotmail.com]

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