British Literature History

The History of British Literature

• British Literature has eight periods.
• The first period of British Literature is Old English Literature.
• "Beowulf" is the first surviving epic in English.
• William Shakespeare was known as the Bard of Avon.
• A Shakespearean sonnet consists of fourteen lines.
• The Elizabethan period is considered the golden age of English drama.
• Logopoeia occurs when mixing different vocabulary layers/levels in a text.
• Elegies are short lyrical poems evoking the Anglo-Saxon sense of harsh circumstances and sadness.
• A main feature of English Romanticism is a return to the past.
• Beowulf has 3182 verses.
• French literature significantly influenced native English forms/themes in Middle English literature.
• There are two trends in lyrical poetry during the 17th-century period.
• Humanism describes the cultural/literary movement that spread through Western Europe in the 14th/15th centuries.
• Comedy of Manners is the new kind of comedy during the Restoration and 18th century.
• The Romantic period began in 1798.
• "The Canterbury Tales" contains 24 stories.
• "The Canterbury Tales" is one of Chaucer's most popular works.
• William Shakespeare was recognized as the greatest dramatist of the Elizabethan Period (1485-1603).
• Conflict is a prevalent problem the story's characters face.
• 20th-century prose focused on lonely individualism, known as Decadent
• Charles II was King during the Restoration period.
• Shakespeare's Sonnets include 154 poems.
• The novel became a popular writing form for the first time during the 18th century.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth were the Lake Poets.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth published "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798.

American Literature History

• John Smith is considered the first American writer.
• "A True Relation of Virginia" is the first American book written in English.
• Writers who explored new topics helping shape American literary tradition were called Redskins.
• Writers who adopted the English style were called Pale faces.
• Colonial Period writing was influenced by religious persuasion, specifically The Puritans.
• Thomas Jefferson is the main author of the Declaration of Independence of the US.
• The Declaration of Independence was a great document during the Revolutionary period.
• The movement before American Realism is known as Romanticism.
• Transcendentalism is a literary movement rejected common spirituality and materialism.
• Washington Irving was America's first professional writer and the founder of the short story in the USA.
• Walt Whitman is the father of Free verse, which has no metrical pattern or rhyme.
• Romanticism rejected the Industrial Revolution, emphasizing the individual and nature.
• Mark Twain is the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
• "The Old Man and the Sea" was published in 1952.
• The rise of Naturalism occurred in the 1890s.
• American literary history began at the Colonialism age.
• Native Americans shared their literature through word of mouth.
• Leaves of Grass is the name of Whitman's great book of poetry.
• Walt Whitman wrote "O Captain! My Captain", a poem about President Abraham Lincoln's assassination.
• Jack London wrote the novel "The Call of the Wild".
• Ernest Hemingway earned a Nobel Prize for literature with "The Old Man and the Sea".
• The Knickerbockers were writers who contributed to The Knickerbocker, a magazine published in New York.
• Emily Dickinson's poem "Because I could not stop for Death" was published in 1890.

Works Analysis

• In "A Red Red Rose" by Robert Burns, "while the sands o' life shall run" means "while I'm still alive", using hourglass as metaphor.
• The speaker expresses that this love will endure until all human life has ended.
• The speaker wants to say with “rock melt with the sun” and “all the seas are going dry” is that his love is forever and cannot be changed by any power of nature.
• In Emily Dickinson's "I could not stop for death" Dickinson is talking about the different stages of her life or seeing her ownlife flash before her eyes.
• Children at recess symbolize beginning of her childhood, grazing grain maturity/adulthood, while the setting sun symbolizes writer's final years.
• The poem ‘Daffodils’ by William Wordsworth uses personification.
• The lines "When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze" make things, ideas or animals do something only humans do.The above lines are personification of the flowers..
• There is hyperbole or an exaggerated statement. “When all at once I saw a crowd” and the poet has uses the world crowd to mean a lot of daffodils.
• William Wordsworth's "Daffodils" was inspired by a walk with his sister Dorothy, praising the beauty of many daffodils dancing.
• The Poem’s Theme: beautiful memories can cheer one in later times through imagination.
• "Romeo and Juliet" setting is Verona, Italy, during the Renaissance, including External conflict and Internal conflict.
• External Conflict: Montagues and Capulets. Internal: Romeo and Juliet against all odds hope to live in harmony with parent’s acceptance.
• "Romeo and Juliet" is a play about Love is naturally the dominant and most important theme.
• The play focuses on romantic love, intense passion that springs at first sight between Romeo and Juliet.
• Love is a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions.
• The central topic of the "Because I could not stop for death" poem is death's inevitability and the poet's calm acceptance.
• Dickinson projects belief in the Christian afterlife/eternity, doesn't fear death, and her heart is pleased to have such a gentlemanly person.
• "The Gift of the Magi" teaches about the irony of both selling treasures to buy gifts, realizing the greater gift of sacrificial love.
• Lesson from The Gift of the Magi: their love for each other is worth more than possessions money can buy.
• Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death,” employs personification to portrays death as a close friend or perhaps even a gentleman suitor.
• The speaker welcomes death and presents a tone of comfort.
• Setting/Conflict of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain set in 1840s/19th century in a fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri including -External and Internal Conflict.
• External: Tom/Huck struggle with Injun Joe, Internal: Tom, struggling whether to speak about what happened.
• During “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” climax Huck overhears Injun Joe's plans.
• In the climax of the novel as well, Back in cave, Tom desperately looking for a way out of the cave and spots Injun Joe.