English literature

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The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, or literature composed in English by writers who are not necessarily from England. Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian. In academia, the term often labels departments and programs practicing English studies. This new label was necessary not only because all of England's former colonies have developed literatures of their own, but also because each speak their variety of English. In other words English literature is as diverse as the Englishes that are spoken around the world.

1 History
2 See also
3 External links

History

Pre-modern (medieval)

Because the Welsh and Roman heritage was almost entirely erased by the invasion of low German and then Scandinavian populations it is only in the early middle ages that appear the first works of English literature, and it is written in the Anglo-Saxon dialects (the oldest surviving text in a language considered "English" is Caedmon's Hymn). The oral tradition was very strong in early British culture and most literary works were written to be performed. Epic poems were thus very popular, but only one, Beowulf, has survived to the present day.

These are languages that closely resemble today's Norwegian or, better yet, Icelandic, though much Anglo-Saxon verse in the extant manuscripts is probably a "milder" adaptation of the earlier Viking and German 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 alliteration, or consonant rhyme (today's newspaper headlines and marketing abundantly uses this technique such as in Big is Better) helped the Anglo-saxon peoples 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. Even without their crudest lines, Viking war poems still smell of blood feuds and their consonant rhymes sound like the smashing of swords under the gloomy northern sky: there is always a sense of imminent danger in the narratives. Sooner or later, all things must come to an end, as Beowulf eventually dies at the hands of the huge monster he spends his life fighting. The feelings of Beowulf that nothing lasts, that youth and joy will turn to death and sorrow entered Christian ism and were to dominate the future landscape of English fiction. The "ubi sunt" theme is, for example, recurrent in Hamlet ("Alas, pook Yorik"), not to mention much Jacobean poetry. With the exception of the relatively light-hearted and optimistic Restoration and the Augustan Age, melancholia and angst remain a favorite theme with English-speaking writers, through the Gothic novel and Pre-romanticism to the birth of modern romantic sensibility. When William the Conqueror makes England a part of the Anglo-Norman realm in 1066 bringing Norman, Old English poetry continues to be read and its language widely spoken. It was not until the early 13th century when Albion becomes independent and severs its relations to France that the language really changes. As the Normans are assimilated into mainstream culture, their French penetrates the lower orders of society changing much of the grammar and lexicon of Old English. Though it does not become a Romance language, Chaucer's English is much closer to present-day English than the language that people spoke a century before. The average English speaker cannot read Chaucer (Middle English) without difficulty but can nonethless grasp the gist of the story, while he needs to read Beowulf in modern English.

In the late medieval period (1200–1500), the ideals of courtly love entered England and authors began to write romances, either in verse or prose. Especially popular were tales of King Arthur and his court. The poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows many of the key features of literature at this time: a setting in the legendary time of King Arthur, an emphasis on chivalry and knightly behavior, and religious overtones.

English drama at this time was overtly religious. Mystery plays were enacted in cities and towns to celebrate major holidays, and the less formal mummers plays also conveyed Christian themes.

England's first great author, Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 -1400), wrote in Middle English. His most famous work is The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories in a variety of genres, ostensibly told by a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. Remarkably, they are from all walks of life, which is reflected as much in the language they use as in the content of their stories. But, though Chaucer is most certainly an English author, he was inspired by literary developments taking place elsewhere in Europe, especially in Italy. Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales are quite indebted to Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. The Renaissance was making its way to Britain.

See Medieval literature

Early modern (renaissance)

See English Renaissance

Following the introduction of a printing press into England by William Caxton in 1476, vernacular literature flourished. The Reformation inspired the production of vernacular liturgy which led to the Book of Common Prayer, a lasting influence on literary English language.

Elizabethan literature

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 theater, which was then beginning to evolve apart from the old mystery and myracle 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 na 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 Renaissance Italy (embodied by Niccolò Machiavelli's [[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 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, King Lear, Macbeth, All's Well That Ends Well, Anthony and Cleopatra. and The Tempest. 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 for 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 heros may have something of Marlowe himself, whose untimely 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.

Jacobean literature

After Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson was the leading literary figure of the Jacobean era. However, Jonson's aesthetics harks back to the middle ages rather than than to the Tudor Era: his characters embody the theory of humors. According to that, the universe is made of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire and behavioral differences result as a prevalence of one element over the other three (this was the guiding principle for doctors too). This leads Jonson to exemplify such differences to the point of creating types, or clichés, while Shakespeare had already abandoned such theory in favor of modern psychology. But 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 meeting its reward.

Others who followed Jonson's style include Beaumont and Fletcher, who, though not as talented as Shakespeare, wrote notheless a brilliant comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a mockery of the rising middle class and especially of those nouveau 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 illitterate son play a leading role in a drama. He becomes a knight errant wearing, most appropriately, a burning pestle on his shield. Seeking to win a princess's heart, the young man is ridiculed much in the way Don Quixote will be in this future novel. 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 some of his great poetry.

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 one of the greatest literary works of all times. This project was headed by James I himself, who supervised the work of forty-seven scholars. Although a more faithful translation was made in 1970, and many after that, none has ever equalled the poetry of King James's, whose meter is made to mimic the original Hebrew verse.

Besides Shakespeare, whose figure towers the early 1600s, 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 one of Donne's Songs and Sonnets, the points of a compass represent two lovers, the woman who is home, waiting, being the center, 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 center of the universe. But their poetry already points the way to the era of mysticism that was to see the closure of theaters and the puritanism that was to follow.

Caroline literature

The Cavalier poets were notable at this period.

Literature of the Commonwealth and Protectorate

Milton's Paradise Lost tells a story of pride and rebellion

John Milton, the author of the religious epic Paradise Lost, and Andrew Marvell were active in the turbulent years of the mid-17th century.

Diarists John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys depicted the cultural scene of the times.

Restoration literature

The re-opening of the theatres provided stages for Restoration comedy with its satirical views of the new nobility and rising bourgeoisie. The mobility of society following the social upheavals of the previous generation provided material for comedy of manners.

Aphra Behn, a novelist and playwright, was the first professional woman writer.

John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, a religious allegory, remains one of the most widely-read works from this period.

Augustan literature

The early 18th century is known as the Augustan Age of English literature. The poetry of the time was highly formal, as exemplified by the works of Alexander Pope.

The English novel did not become a popular form until the 18th century; many works, however, claim a place as the first novel in English. Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) is one popular candidate for this honor. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the novel form was well-established by such authors as Henry Fielding, Laurence Stern, and Samuel Richardson, who perfected the epistolary novel. Richardson's work was moralistic, while Fielding and Stern took a more comic approach.

Age of Sensibility

Romanticism

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice continues to inspire writers, film-makers, audiences and readers

The changing landscape of the England 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 pour 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 Poets brought 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 impressing Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, a tragic ballad about a demon that first kills and then posseses a group of sailors on a boat headed for the south seas. Coleridge and Wordworth, 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 (for eg. in "The Idiot Boy"), or the beauty of the Lake District that largely inspired his production (as in "Tintern Abbey"). The "Second generation" of Romantic Poets includes Lord Byron, Percy Bysse Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats. Byron, however, is still influenced by 18th-century satirists and is 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 English society. Despite Childe Harold's success on his return to England, accompanied by the pubblication of The Giaour and 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 Shelley, his wife Mary, with his secretary John Polidori on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1816. Although his is just a short story, Polidori must be credited for introducing The Vampire to English literature. Shelley, like Mary, had much in common with Byron: he was an aristocrat from a famous and ancient family, had embraced atheism and free-thinking and, like him, was fleeing from England because of his sex scandals. Shelley had been expelled from college for openly declaring his atheism, and from England for supporting Irish independence. He had married a 16-year-old girl, Harriet Westbrook whom he had abandoned soon after for Mary (Harriet took her own life after that). Harriet did not embrace his ideals of free love and anarchism, and was not as educated as to contribute to literary debate. Mary was different: the daughter of philosopher and revolutionary William Godwin, she shared his ideals, was a poetess, and a feminist like her late mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's best work was theOde to the West Wind. Despite his apparent refuse to believe in God, this poem is considered a homage to pantheism, the recognition of a spiritual presence in nature. Mary Shelley did not go down in history for her poetry, but for giving birth to science fiction: the plot for the novel is said to have come from a nightmare during a stormy night on the lake Geneva. 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. Frankestein'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 his desperation that results from social exclusion turns him into a killing machine that eventually murders his own maker. Probably John Keats does 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). And 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 will inspire Walter Pater's and then Oscar Wilde's belief in the absolute value of art as independent from ethics. Jane Austen 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 money.

Victorian literature

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.

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 Thackery; the realist novels of George Eliot; and Anthony Trollope's insightful portrayals of the lives of the landowning and professional classes.

An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the coutryside may be seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy and others.

Leading poetic figures of the Victorian era included Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Literature for children was published during the Victorian period, some of which has become globally well-known, such as the work of Lewis Carroll who was a proponent of nonsense verse, as was Edward Lear.

Edwardian literature

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, often based on his experiences of British ruled India. Kipling was closely associated with imperialism and this has damaged his reputation in more recent times.

Georgian literature

The Georgian poets maintained a conservative approach to poetry.

The experiences of the First World War were reflected in the work of war poets such as Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Edmund Blunden and Siegfried Sassoon. Many writers turned away from patriotic and imperialist themes as a result of the war, notably Kipling.

Modernist literature

Nineteen Eighty-Four: George Orwell's novel gave a by-word for totalitarian society to the English language

Important novelists between the two World Wars included D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, a member of the Bloomsbury group. Besides the Bloomsbury group, the Sitwells also gathered a literary and artistic clique, if less influential.

H. G. Wells was a pioneer of science fiction. George Orwell's critique of totalitarianism has lent the word Orwellian to the English language. Aldous Huxley's dystopian Brave New World and J. G. Ballard are precursors of the cyberpunk movement.

W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin are important poets.

Other notable writers include Muriel Spark, Daphne du Maurier, Margaret Drabble, Iris Murdoch, Kingsley Amis, Graham Greene and G. K. Chesterton

Writers of popular literature include P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie.

Post-Modern literature

John Fowles and Julian Barnes are examples of Postmodern literature in English.

External links

Norton Anthology of English Literature
A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism and Philology Ed. José Ángel García Landa, (University of Zaragoza, Spain)
Groves of Academe A Literary Theory and Criticism discussion board
Burgess, Anthony, English Literature. Burnt Mill, Longman, 1958.
Williams, Raymond Culture and Society. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1958.

Categories: English literature