Old English Literature 600-1066AD PDF

Old English Literature 600-1066AD ================================= Anglo-Saxon culture, values, writing: heroic epic, lyrical, religious, alliteration, kenning, *Beowulf*, chronicles, etc. ### A-S settlement - [5^th^-6^th^ century]: massive migration of pagan tribes over Europe → Romans wi...

Old English Literature 600-1066AD ================================= Anglo-Saxon culture, values, writing: heroic epic, lyrical, religious, alliteration, kenning, *Beowulf*, chronicles, etc. ### A-S settlement - [5^th^-6^th^ century]: massive migration of pagan tribes over Europe → Romans withdrew to protect Rome - [after 450 AD:] arrival of Germanic tribes from N Germany and Denmark = 1^st^ E culture to produce literature ### A-S constitution - small communities, almost no communication with each other, no central authority - around [650 AD]: Heptarchy = 7 kingdoms occupied by different Germanic tribes living in relatively peaceful atmosphere (boundaries fused and divided again until E became 1 country) - Northern + Midland regions: *Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia* → Angles - South: *Essex* (= Eastern people), *Wessex*, *Sussex* → Saxons - *Kent* → Jutes x Romans with centralistic government, Roman villas ### A-S lifestyle - barbaric, military, agricultural rejection of Roman achievements - life in a village (*ham* = the basic organisational unit) - simple wooden cottages - strong affiliation with the tribal chief → hall for the tribal chief - values: loyalty to the leader, revenge, fatalism, lack of freedom caused by the fact that an individual is a subject to greater forces as gods *('Wyrd'-belief in fate)*, materialism ### A-S religion - pagans = natural religion (gods of wind, birth, trees, \...) - fatalism -- belief in *Wyrd* = fate and doom - world viewed as a dark, sad, isolated → togetherness (being in a village with other people) ### A-S and Christianity - **[597 AD]** *Pope Gregory* *the Great* sends *Augustine* to Kent → King of Kent baptised → Canterbury = seat of English Bishop (until today); arrival of Christianity - quick conversion by [700 AD] -- fate x salvation (popular probably because Christianity offered hope) A-S literature -------------- - early AS used runes for religion x no written literature; folklore (secular) literature disseminated by bards and scopes (by heart, travelled from village to village and told these stories to public by heart) - 1^st^ written literature after Christianisation by monks in monasteries = centres of culture, knowledge, education → pagan stories on paper - ca 30 000 lines in 4 manuscripts: ***Junius*** (Oxford University), ***Vitellius*** (British Library), ***Vercelli*** (Italy), ***Exeter*** (Exeter Cathedral) -- contain poems, riddles, religious texts,... - [600-900 AD:] most areas of English culture (including literature) contain mixed elements of paganism and Christianity → Frank's Casket (7^th^ c.) -- motives from pagan and Christian Mythology ### A-S secular poetry - [Charms], [Proverbs] (rčení) and [riddles] - [Heroic epics]: ***Beowulf*** - [Battle poetry]: ***Battle at Brunanburh*** (c. 937 AD), ***Battle of Maldon*** (c. 1000 AD) - [Elegies]: ***Wife's Lament*, *Husband's Message***, ***The Seafarer***, ***The Wanderer*** -- sad about being alone - mainly [religious literature] by ***Caedmon*** (probably the very earliest known author), ***Cynewulf*** ### A-S centres of culture - [600-1066] -- different kingdoms at the peak of culture - 7^th^ and 8^th^ c. -- Northumbria and Mercia (monks settled there and built monasteries) - 9^th^ c. -- Wessex (King Alfred) #### Northumbria (8^th^ century) - cultured by monks from Hebrides and Ireland - foundation of monasteries and production of beautiful manuscripts - The Ruthwell Cross -- massive stone cross that contains runic transcription of a Christian poem ***The Dream of the Rood*** - ***CAEDMON*** (died c. 700): ***Caedmon's Hymn*** -- Caedmon's School: Old Testament Paraphrases e. g. ***Genesis A, B*** (1^st^ loose translation/paraphrase) - ***Bede VENERABILIS*** (673-735): ***Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum*** (731) -- prose chronicle in Latin that describes history from the A-S invasion till present - Northeast coast in the [late 8^th^ c.] -- Viking raids → Danelaw → cultural decline x [9^th^ c.] King Alfred in Wessex (thanks to him English is spoken in England, not Danish) ### Alfred's importance - military and defensive (a chain of fortresses along the border as the protection from the Danes) - cultural - literary - translations from Latin: ***Bede***'s ***Historia Ecclesiastica***, ***St. Augustine***'s ***Soliloquy*** (samomluva), ***Gregory the Pope***'s ***Pastoral Care*** - initiation of ***Anglo-Saxon Chronicle***: started in 890, from early Christian era till 1150s (Norman conquest) ### Formation of the English nation - Wessex dominant for generations after Alfred's death in 899 - gradually, Wessex absorbed the Danelaw → all kingdoms united into Angeland = Kingdom of England Old English literature -- Anglo-Saxons -------------------------------------- - 1^st^ English culture to produce literary texts - 5^th^-6^th^ century: migration of pagan tribes over Europe - after 450 AD: arrival of Germanic tribes from North Germany and Denmark - **[597 AD:]** arrival of Christianity to England; Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine to Kent → King of Kent baptised → Canterbury = seat of English Bishop ### Literature - 1^st^ written literature after Christianisation -- Christian monks in monasteries wrote pagan stories - 4 manuscripts: ***Junius*** (Oxford), ***Vitellius*** (British Library), ***Vercelli*** (Italy), ***Exeter*** (Exeter Cathedral) - ***The Dream of the Rood*** -- runic transcription of a Christian poem on The Ruthwell Cross - [secular poetry:] - charms, proverbs and riddles - heroic epics: ***Beowulf*** - battle poetry: ***Battle at Brunanburh, Battle of Maldon*** - elegies: ***Wife's Lament, Husband's Message, The Seafarer, The Wanderer*** - ***CAEDMON: Caedmon's Hymn; Genesis A, B*** - ***CYNEWULF*** - ***Bede VENERABILIS: Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum*** - ***King Alfred:*** translations from Latin: ***Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, Gregory the Pope's Pastoral Care, St. Augustine's Soliloquy*** Anglo-Norman Literature ======================= The Conquest, French influence, linguistic situation, genres, features, links of social groups to genres. Norman Conquest --------------- - **[1066:]** Battle of Hastings (Bayeux Tapestry); William the Conqueror - Normans = Scandinavian tribes settled in France, Normandy Social structure ---------------- - England = part of Normandy -- French culture and lifestyle → huge changes in E - rigid feudal and hierarchical system - king = the landowner → ***Doomsday Book*** (1086, 1^st^ economical record) - aristocracy = Norman ### Britain and Early Middle Ages - king and clergy = supreme power over the lives of ordinary people - churches, cathedrals, towns and castles - around : Oxford and Cambridge become the centres of knowledge Trilingual system (1066-1350s) ------------------------------ - ***Robert of Gloucester*** in 1300: *England came into Normandy's hand...only low men speak English* - French -- new official language (court, education, politics), spoken by the upper class; gradually mixing with English → Anglo-Norman language - English -- the illiterate low class (Anglo-Saxons); maintained orally + no written texts → dialects - Latin -- religion Early literature (1066-1300) ---------------------------- - written by Normans in French/Anglo-Norman → new continental [styles, forms and genres] - form: rhyme and metrical poetry replace alliteration - genres: debates, metrical romances and stories, chronicles in verse #### Metrical romances -- cycles (dvorské veršované romány) - influences: chansons de geste (songs of heroic deeds) + Ovid's lyrics; originally secular story in a language different from Latin → spread by bards and scopes - typical content: knight serves his king, proves bravery, meets/saves beautiful lady - romances echo ideals of upper classes: knight, chivalry, adventure, beauty → didactic - [English cycle:] AS history ***King Horn*** (1225-50), ***Havelock*** (late 13^th^ c.) - [Arthurian/British cycle:] Celtic past (Arthur) ***Tristan and Isolda***, ***Sir Gawain and the Green Knight***, ***Lancelot and Elaine*** - [French and Classical cycles:] French and Roman history (Charles the Great and Alexander the Great) #### Debate (spor) - form: fictional discussion of a dilemma from opposite points of view - origin: from ancient Greece and other cultures (Aesop's fables) - popular in Middle Ages - *e.g. **The Owl and the Nightingale*** #### Chronicles in verse - reflection of the need for national history + identity -- based on older chronicles - *e.g. **LAYAMON:** Historia **Brut**onum* (ca. 1200) - the earliest English narrative that celebrates King Arthur -- revival of Celtic and AS legends - name -- mythical king Brutus - 33 000 alliterative lines #### Metrical stories - shorter than metrical romances; characters not necessarily knights ##### Types: 1. [Fable]: *e.g. **Reynard and the Wolf*** (French inspiration: Roman de Renart) 2. [Exemplum] (pl. exempla) -- an example of a story teaching a Christian moral lesson + biblical motives 3. [Fabliau] (pl. fabliaux; veršované humoresky) -- bawdy stories, funny and intimate, about ordinary people and their lives, no idealization 4. [Ballad]: *e.g. **Robin Hood*** -- secular, popular in rural areas 5. [Breton Lay]: *e.g. **Sir Orfeo*** -- originally from Brittany, Celtic features (magic, elves,...), love ### Summary: - Early Medieval Britain (1066-1300) - arrival of a strong feudal system -- supremacy of French - arrival of continental literary and social tastes - metrical romances -- didactic - metrical stories -- not always about knights and proving bravery - debates, chronicles in verse Old English heroic epic (Beowulf) → Middle English chivalric romance (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) Early Medieval literature -- Normans ------------------------------------ - **[1066:]** William the Conqueror led Normans to the victory at the Battle of Hastings, Bayeux Tapestry - Normans = Scandinavian tribes settled in Normandy (France) - trilingual system: French, English, Latin - ***Doomsday Book*** -- 1^st^ economical record ### Early Literature - written by Normans in French/Anglo-Norman - rhyme, metrical poetry + new continental styles, forms and genres #### Metrical romances -- cycles - social ideal: chivalrous knights seeking for love and adventure → didactic for upper classes - English cycle: ***King Horn, Havelock*** - Arthurian/British cycle: ***Tristan and Isolda, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Lancelot and Elaine*** - French and classical cycles: stories from French and Roman history (Charles and Alexander the Great) #### Metrical stories -- shorter, not necessarily about knights #### Chronicles in verse: LAYAMON -- Historia Brutonum #### Debates: The Owl and the Nightingale #### Types: **Fable *(Raynard and the Wolf***), **Fabliaux**, **Exemplum**, **Ballad *(Robin Hood***), **Breton Lay *(Sir Orfeo)*** 3. **[Middle English Literature]** Cultural context, revival of English, alliterative revival, Arthurian legends, G. Chaucer, Langland, Wycliff, Le Morte d'Arthur, etc. 100 Year's War -------------- - England from 1066 = part of Norman kingdom BUT new aristocrats born in Britain → conflict with France = 100 Years' War (1338-1453) → [1450's]: France wins (resistance raised by *Joan of Arc*) - [middle of the 14^th^ century]: change begins ### French x English in 13^th^-14^th^ c. "looting the looters" New aristocracy \* in E + intermarriages + trade → French seen as foreign + E = symbol of national identity → revival of English: growing importance of E thanks to the 1362 address of Parliament by King Edward II in E for the 1^st^ time x completely different E than the one before the conquest ME English ---------- 1. new French words: *money (monai), price (pris), merchant (marchant), etc.* 2. lexical variety reflecting social layers (AS x F): swine x pork, stool x chair, bit x morsel, start x commence, deer x venison *"It is English when it's in the stable, it is French when it gets on the table."* 3. regional difference in spelling → chaos in inflection and declension → dropped Structure of society -------------------- *Early ME*: 3 social classes (aristocracy, knights, peasant) x *Later ME*: cities → trade and guilds → rise of middle classes -- bourgeoisie Church x university ------------------- *Early ME:* church = authority + knowledge x *Late ME:* cities, universities -- Oxford and Cambridge (1200s) → science (logical analysis) x theological dogmatism Catholicism = controlled from Rome x English kings wanted control → archbishop T. Becket murdered (1170) Late medieval prose ------------------- #### John WYCLIFF (1320-1384) - scholar + priest (studied and lectured on logic = science) - realistic attitude to Christianity: simplicity, equality (tithes, pardons), English x ~~Latin~~ for services - started reformation, established a school for priests -- 'poor priests' -- 'Lollards' - initiated the very 1^st^ translation of the whole Bible in England Poetry 1350-1400 ---------------- - literature flourished under Richard II (Ricardian literature) - lyrical poems: ***Cuckoo's Song*** - alliterative dream visions (1370s) -- character fell asleep and had a dream = vision #### John GOWER (1330-1408) - wrote in all 3 languages (Latin, French, English), serious tone, didactic, Christian and critical prose #### Geoffrey CHAUCER (1342-1400) - not a professional writer, only occasional pastime → most works unfinished - general division into 3 stages (travelled and was influenced by the places and their literature): - French influence, e.g. ***The Book of the Duchess*** - Italian influence -- 1370s -- inspired by *Dante*, *Boccaccio*, *Petrarch* -- e.g. ***Troilus and Criseyde*** - English influence -- 1390s -- ***Canterbury** **Tales*** 15^th^ c. -- The End of ME Literature ------------------------------------- - uninventive imitations of G. Chaucer *(Scottish Chaucerians)* - 2 important icons - ***Thomas MALORY (1408-1471)** -- **Morte de Arthur** (1485 -- posthumously)* -- Arthurian legends including his death → symbolic gesture of the Medieval culture coming to an end, published it at a time when England was preparing for Renaissance (end of the War of the Roses, Tudors on throne) as a nostalgic revival; resonance of French in his writing; 1 of the very 1^st^ books to be printed in England by - ***William CAXTON (1415-1422 -- 1492)*** -- 1^st^ printer → language goes through the stage of standardization (spelling, grammar, choice of the printed material → the printer has control over the language and the content, becomes an important figure promoting national identity); printing helped nations define themselves against other nations Arthur's death + print = symbolic end of ME (knights and scribes) Edward III (Plantagenet) in the 14^th^ century produced 2 houses: Yorks 'Richards' x Lancasters 'Henrys' ↓ War of Roses (1455-85) ↓ Tudors (1785-1603)  Late Medieval Literature -- English Revival, Geoffrey Chaucer ------------------------------------------------------------- - 1006: England = a part of Norman kingdom x aristocrats \* in Britain → 100 Years' War (1338-1453) - middle of the 14^th^ century: France wins, change begins - a gradual growing importance of English since 1362 when Kind Edward II addressed Parliament in E - ME English: French words, lexical variety reflecting social layers, regional difference in spelling → dropped inflection and declension ### Late medieval prose - ***John WYCLIFF*** -- \* a school for 'poor priests' = 'Lollards', initiated the 1^st^ translation of Bible in England ### Poetry 1350-1400 - ***Cuckoo's Song*** - ***William LANGLAND: The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman*** - ***John GOWER*** -- didactic, Christian and critical prose - ***Geoffrey CHAUCER*** - French influence: ***The Book of the Duchess*** - Italian influence: ***Troilus and Criseyde*** - English influence: ***Canterbury Tales*** ### 15^th^ century = The End of ME Literature - ***Thomas MALLORY: Morte de Arthur printed by William CAXTON*** -- 1^st^ printer 14^th^ century: Edward III (Plantagenet) produced 2 houses → War of the Roses (Yorks x Lancasters, 1455-85) → Tudors (1485-1603) POPLAWSKI: Medieval English =========================== The church and literature ------------------------- - the oldest OE poetry might be thought of as music -- alliterative, rhythmic patter - before the spread of writing -- AS runic alphabet *futhark* for inscriptions on stone, metal, wood (Ruthwell Cross) - monasteries = the centre of scribal production before the rise of universities - the popular narrative throughout the medieval period = the saint's life (more often celebrates women) as an ethical model - shift from resurrection *(Dream of the Rood)* to the crucifixion (14^th^-15^th^ centuries; plays of the medieval drama -- *the York pageant of the crucifixion*) Wealth and wages ---------------- - chattel derived from the OF means 'property' → cattle once used as a more meaningful kind of money - later used gold (portable) with the imprint of reigning king - gifts (Beowulf) -- war gear and jewellery not only as a payment but also a sign of honour, wealth Men writing about women ----------------------- - most anti-feminist writing in the Middle Ages came from the clergy *(Millet and Wogan-Browne)* - ***Wife of Bath's Tale***: knight from the Court of King Arthur rapes a young girls, and is to be punished by execution but the queen gives him chance to save his life -- he has to find within 1 year an answer to what women want most in the world -- every woman answers differently (money, honour, looks, remarriage, to be discreet and secretive -- untrue, unable because of Ovid's story of Midas); old woman gives him the answer under the condition that he marries her = to be in charge of their husbands and lovers; the knight is not pleased by going to bed with the old women, she offers him that she can become either young and pretty but unfaithful or stay old but good and faithful -- the knight lets her choose = gives her the upper hand, so she rewards him by being young and faithful - opposition by women writers who wrote about misogyny *(French Christine de Pisan: Romance of the Rose)* harlotrie --------- - Medieval English literature = diverse (devout saints, brave warriors, faithful lovers) - writing that offends against morals in some way = harlotrie (fabliau, e.g. *The Millers Tale*) 16-17^th^ century poetry and prose ================================== Cultural context, reformation, humanism, T. More, sonnet, P. Sidney, E. Spenser, W. Raleigh. 16^th^ century -------------- - Tudor dynasty (1485-1603; Henry VIII, Elizabeth I) - relative stability of the foreign image, literary achievement, trade, exploratory and military triumph, arts Defining Renaissance -------------------- - Middle Ages = a sandwich, in the middle between 2 greater ages; sometimes called dark ages - shift in focus on man and earthly existence = rebirth of ancient art and culture in N Italy - why: Greece + Rome = symbols of ideal society, democracy - after [1450s:] discovery of Plato, Aristotle spread over Europe during 15^th^ and 16^th^ centuries (translated, reprinted in local languages) ### Renaissance Expectations and Ideas - idealistic and optimistic view of life + belief that human beings can achieve perfection (absolute knowledge) -- improvement through education - human being living now, not getting ready for afterlife → human = the greatest achievement of God → the beginning of the humanistic tradition ### Renaissance science - Geography -- circumnavigation (F. Drake) - Astronomy -- heliocentrism x geocentrism (G. Bruno, G. Galilei) - Anatomy -- physical universe can be understood and controlled by humans; body -- painters, sculptors Reformation and humanism ------------------------ #### Humanism - cultural and philosophical climate of that time; secular - freedom and reason over dogmatism -- promoted education, freewill, individualism #### Reformation - national spirit + print → translation of bible → national Christianity x Rome (Martin Luther -- people in direct link with God) - Henry VIII (1509-47) -- **** established Church of England ### Renaissance art - ME schematism x renaissance fidelity (telling the truth rather than simplified schematic) Early poetry (1500-1550) ------------------------ Main inspiration = Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), father of ***SONNET:*** - lyrical, 14 lines, 5 iambic feet; cliché theme -- platonic love, women beauty - introduced to England by ***Thomas Wyatt + Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey*** - Italian = 8+6 x E = 4+4+4+2 → rhyme scheme: *abab cdcd efef gg* (E is more limited in rhyming words) Later poetry (1550-1600) ------------------------ - Elizabeth I -- idealised symbol for courtiers, Virgin queen - ***Edmund SPENSER*** (1552-1599) -- ***The Faerie Queene*** (1590, královna víl) - epic stories similar to Arthurian legends - set in a Fairyland (dwarf, dragons and hermits and knights) - Spenserian Stanza: 9 iambic lines with *ababbcbcc* rhyme - ***Sir Philip SIDNEY*** (1554-86) -- ***Astrophel and Stella*** (1591 -- the golden decade of sonnets) - collection of 100 sonnets - triggered a 10-year sonnet fever in 1590s → ***William Shakespeare*** Prose ----- - ***Francis BACON*** (1561-1626) -- ***Advancement of Learning*** (1605) -- new scientific method (experiment) - ***John*** ***LYLY*** (1554-1606) -- ***Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit*** (1578) -- Queen Elizabeth's teacher of rhetoric, lecture on court rhetoric (complex language) - ***King JAMES Bible*** (1604-****) -- complete English translation of the Bible; invited members of different types of Christianity and locked them up for 2 years, they had to prepare a Bible on which all of them could agree → authorised by the King (still used in England today) - ***Thomas MORE*** (1478-1535) -- ***Utopia*** (1516) ***Medieval writers:*** "The metaphor of a butterfly: life here is only a cocoon, and after you die, you become the butterfly in all its beauty." ***Renaissance:*** 'moment culture period', the main focus was on the human being in our life now BUT didn't lose interest in the 'ideals' -- tried to define what it means to be perfect: - sonnets described ideal women and their beauty - John Lyly describes an ideal speech - Bacon describes an ideal scientist - More writes about a perfect community **English Shakespearean sonnet** -- characterizes English Renaissance from both formal and content reasons: hunt for perfection → form: 14 lines (4+4+4+2), rhythm ideally iambic pentameter, rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG (original Italian -- ABBA ABBA CDC CDC), 3 quatrains + 1 couplet at the end (1^st^ stanza introduces an issue, 2^nd^ looks for solution, 3^rd^ solves it, couplet summarizes it); 2 clichés → emotionally injured man suffering from platonic/unrequited love + perfect feminine beauty (textual equivalent of an idealized portrait) x  imperfect language → poets used figurative language, similes (Platonic triangle = connecting realistic objects to create an ideal picture in your imagination) Early 17^th^ century -------------------- #### James I (1603-25) - son of Mary of Scots; opposite of Elizabeth's diplomacy - absolutist politics; underestimated the growing economy and social impact of middle class ### Mannerist pessimism - 17^th^ c. expiration of renaissance optimism -- loss of trust in a man as rational being - mannerist and baroque pessimism -- cult of death, transience, disproportion, nihilism - realistic attitude to life and existence -- temporariness (Hamlet holding a skull), imperfection of ourselves and our society (decadence, corruption,...) Literary situation -- until the 1640s ------------------------------------- - *Globe* burned in 1613, *Shakespeare* died in 1616 - [2 main literary streams:] - continuation of renaissance -- ***Ben JOHNSON*** (more famous than Shakespeare in that time) - departure from renaissance -- x idealism, Petrarchan ornamental language, *Metaphysical poetry* Metaphysical school ------------------- - metaphysical = *rational inquiry into questions beyond human reality* (connection between human physicality and the higher spiritual spheres) #### John DONNE (1572-1631) - 17^th^ c. most original voice - Anglican → student of theology → Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral - [love poetry] -- physical + erotic - [religious poetry] -- metaphysical issues of finite x infinite ### Mid-century crisis #### Charles I (1625-1649) - absolute monarchy (even more strict than his father) - belief: divine rights of kings → conflict with parliament **The Royalists** **Parliamentarians** ------------------------------------- --------------------------- The king + Aristocracy + NXW gentry London and S. bourgeoisie Monarchists Republicans Anglican Church Puritanism ### Civil War 1642-49 INTERREGNUM - Commonwealth of England (1649-53) - Protectorate (1653-59) led by Oliver Cromwell -- Lord Protector ### The Civil War literature #### Cavalier poets - 17^th^ c. equivalent of 16^th^ c. courtier - poets from aristocratic circles = on royal side - last generation of Renaissance hedonistic, courtly life - platonic and unrequited love, ideal lady, etc. - combination of *Johnson's* grandeur and *Donne's* sensuous tone - last generation of writers who idealized the renaissance culture and celebrated body and pleasure: ***Thomas CAREW; John SUCKLING; Robert HERRICK -- Wrinkles***; ***Cherrypit*** #### The Republicans - puritan, didactic, and religious literature ***John MILTON (1608-74)*** - ideal puritan -- great education, serious tone - [early] (until 1638): short poems, everyday topics - [middle] (Republic period, 1640-60): mainly didactic prose (commentaries about political development and the situation, which was heating up, on the side of Republicans) - [late] (after republic, after 1660): ***Paradise Lost*** (1667) -- gave England its own heroic epic - ***Pilgrim's Progress*** (1678) -- Christian allegorical **prose** (NOT a novel because the plot and setting is not realistic!); absolutely crucial for forming new genre = novel (inspired D. Defoe); story about Christian who is unhappy with his current life so he decides to leave home and travel to the City of Light, on his road he goes through different types of places with allegoric names (Vanity Fair, Valley of Despair) which test him on his journey to the City of Light = allegory for the journey for salvation ### Restoration 1660-1680s - 1659 Oliver Cromwell died → Charles II restores to the throne (1660-85) from Versailles - monarchy changes completely -- the king becomes a symbolic figure, the political power now rests in Parliament = parliamentary monarchy **\ ** 16^th^ century: Renaissance --------------------------- - 16^th^ century, Tudor dynasty (Henry VIII, Elizabeth I) - rebirth of ancient art and culture; humanism and reformation → **[1534/5:]** Church of England ### Early poetry 1500-1550 - F. Petrarch -- *sonnet* -- introduced to England by ***Thomas Wyatt + Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey*** - lyrical, 14 lines, 5 iambic feet; Italian 8+6 x English 4+4+4+2 abab cdcd efef gg - platonic love, woman beauty ### Later poetry 1550-1600 - ***Edmund SPENSER: The Faerie Queene** (Spenserian stanza* = 9 iambic lines with ababbcbcc rhyme) - ***Sir Philip SIDNEY: Astrophel and Stella*** ### Prose - ***Francis BACON: Advancement of Learning*** (ideal scientist) - ***Thomas MORE: Utopia*** (ideal community) - ***John LYLY: Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit*** (rhetoric, ideal speech) - ***King James's Bible*** -- complete English translation of the Bible 17^th^ century: Metaphysical poetry, Restoration ------------------------------------------------ - James I: absolutist politics, underestimated the growing economy and social impact of middle class - 1613 -- Globe burned, 1616 -- Shakespeare died; expiration of renaissance optimism - *mannerist and baroque pessimism* -- cult of death, temporariness, disproportion, nihilism, imperfection - 2 literary streams: *continuation of (**Ben JOHNSON**) x departure from Renaissance* (Metaphysical poetry) ### Metaphysical poetry - rational inquiry into questions beyond human reality (human physicality + the higher spiritual spheres) - ***John DONNE*** -- Dean of the St. Paul's Cathedral - [love poetry:] ***To His Mistress Going To Bed*** - [religious poetry] (metaphysical issues): ***Death, Be Not Proud*** - ***G. HERBERT; R. CRASHAW; H. VAUGHAN*** Mid-century crisis: absolute monarchy of Charles I x Parliament **The Royalists** -- Monarchists; Anglican Church **Parliamentarians** -- Republicans; Puritanism --------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- *The king + Aristocracy + NXW gentry* *London and S. bourgeoisie* → revolution + Civil War (1642-49) -- Charles I beheaded in 1649, his son Charles escaped to exile in France Interregnum: Commonwealth of England (1649-53), Protectorate (1653-59) led by Lord Protector O. Cromwell - absolutist monarchy replaced with democratic parliamentary power ### Cavalier poets -- royal side - 17^th^ c. equivalent of 16^th^ c. courtier; last generation idealizing Renaissance, celebrating body and pleasure - ***Robert HERRICK: Wrinkles; Cherrypit*** - ***John SUCKLING; Thomas CAREW*** ### The Republicans -- puritan, didactic, and religious literature - ***John MILTON: Paradise Lost*** -- gave England its own heroic epic - ***John BUNYAN: Pilgrim's Progress*** -- Christian allegorical prose crucial for forming new genre = novel (NOT a novel because the plot and the setting is NOT realistic!) **[Restoration 1660-1680s:]** Charles II restores the throne from Versailles, \* parliamentary monarchy) Origins of Drama ================ Medieval tropes, guilds, cycles, pageants, features of, secular and religious drama, Morality and miracle plays. Medieval drama (1000 AD) ------------------------ - church in Latin → need to teach *gospel* to uneducated people (stained glass telling stories to people in a visual form, etc.) - presentation of biblical scenes by clergy - *tableaux* (= stable) -- biblical scenes, without movement - [from 10^th^ c.]: tropes -- dialogue, music (movement) -- during Xmas, Easter - developed into liturgical plays - the 1^st^ recorded moment in British history when people dress up like sb. else to perform in front of audience - increasing complexity → move to churchyard and market - [1210:] *Pope Innocent III* bans clergy from performing in public - performances on **pageants** (= movable wagons) and scaffolding stages [ ] - moving through the city in prescribed pattern (square), gradually creating chapters of the stories - 2 major genres #### Mystery plays - retell the most mysterious and magical stories from bible (walking on water,...) - censorship -- controlled by the church but performed by guilds (cechy) -- usually connected to them - *Noah and his wife* -- fishers and marines - *Last Supper --* bakers - *Flood* -- shipbuilders and barrel makers - cycles in cathedral cities, e.g. Chester (25; 13^th^ c.), York (48; 14^th^ c.) - mix of seriousness (Bible) and humorous sketches of society (secular content) -- *e.g. Noah almost misses his boat because his wife hasn't finished her make-up yet* #### Other types of plays ##### **Miracula plays** - focus on the lives of saints (Virgin Mary, St. George) ##### **Morality plays** (mainly 15-16^th^ c.) - characters = abstract qualities (vices and virtues) -- actors representing loyalty, loneliness,... - didactic -- focus on people and our free will, human psychology → psychologically complex characters - ***Everyman*** (about a man who is dying, and all his qualities leave him except for his good deed) ##### **Farce** - secular humorous plays ridiculing human faults Elizabethan period (1550-1600) = climax of the English theatre Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama ============================== Professionalization of the theatre, Renaissance and types of play, theatre companies, playwrights, W. Shakespeare, C. Marlowe, University Wits, B. Jonson. ### 16^th^ century drama - reformation → religious plays banned → rise of secular plays - censorship → actor companies (*Lord Admiral's Men, Lord Chamberlain's Men*) ### Censorship - negative connotation, preventing playwright from uncontrolled creativity - nevertheless, if it hadn't been for censorship, we probably wouldn't have known Shakespeare - king and queen introduced it to make it possible for themselves to push out of theatre which was public entertainment; they wanted to have the control over the content to prevent 2 topics: royalty (not to make the play a political tool), religion (channels through which Roman Catholics could influence people) *→ less actor companies, which helped to remove Shakespeare's competition* - established 2 institutions: - Master of Revels ("minister of culture", vrchní radovánek) -- read and controlled the content, decision whether the play is appropriate; *Edmund Tilney*, *Lord Chamberlain* - Royal/Aristocratic patronage -- from aristocratic circles (no one wanted to be on the king's blacklist), guaranteed the companies will do the job as expected + received profit from tickets + also guaranteed the appropriateness + costumes (their old clothing) - every *actor company* (playwright + actors) had to answer to ***Edmund Tilney***, ask for the stamp (authorization) - performance in private houses and public inns - *the courtyard inn* = the predecessor of the 1^st^ permanent theatres First theatres -------------- - the core of the 16^th^ c. London (Queen Elizabeth's rule) with a strict council that banned theatre performances - [1576-77]: James Burbage builds The Theatre in *Shoreditch* (leased a land outside London for 20 years) - [Christmas 1597]: problem because the theatre was built on sb.'s land who didn't want it there → his sons with the help of other people (including Shakespeare) dismantled the theatre and transported it to other area outside London *Southbank* → The Globe (1599) -- home of Lord Chamberlain's Men - typical Elizabethan theatre based on popular bear fighting areas and amphitheatres - circular structure, no roof, galleries - few props, no curtain, actors = men Tragedy ------- #### Tragedy of revenge/blood *x Greek theatre -- the violence doesn't happen in front of audience, it's only mentioned* ***Thomas KYD*** introduced blood and cruelty -- ***Spanish Tragedy*** (1592) ***Christopher MARLOWE*** introduced extreme characters -- ***Dr Faustus*** (1604) POPLAWSKI: Renaissance ====================== Political structures -------------------- - the most discussed was the topic of sovereignty (on what basis was royal authority established) - political obedience and resistance x religion (Catholic x Protestant/Puritan) - Catholic x Elizabethan administrations - Tudors and Stuarts = monarch appointed by the divine rule - opposition by writers *(Francis Bacon:* essay *Of Nobility)* Gender roles and relations -------------------------- - male as superior + debate about the role of women by male authors - some exceptional women with high social status and authority *(Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Sidney)* - the differences between men and women expressed by binary oppositions: reason/passion, knowledge/ignorance, active/passive, superior/inferior, governor/governed - male actors taking female roles - woman in Aristotle's *Generation of Animals* as physically weaker with mental illness + in the *Bible* as a sinner - writings of women were usually linked to faith or mothering roles -- 'private' genres of autobiography destined for their children, spiritual confession, prayer, household government, recipes and remedies, midwifery x exceptions at the end of the century *(Margaret Cavendish, Isabella Whitney, Mary Wroth)* Love and sexuality ------------------ - sexual behaviour discussed only in the terms of marriage - male's body associated with activity, heat and fathering; female's body as a vessel for incubation and birthing the child - in Europe some contemporary writers argued that the female body was an inversion (lesser version) of the male body -- the male genitalia appearing inverted inside the woman - males depicted as the ones who take the reins of courtship (ridiculed by Shakespeare: *As You Like It*, Donne -- 'death' meaning both demise and sexual orgasm) - 'carpe diem' in poetry -- lover attempting to seduce the mistress (ridiculed by Marlowe, Donne, Ralegh) - same-sex relations expressed in much more demonstrative terms in public than today (the opening poems in Shakespeare's *Sonnets*) but still demonised, considered as sodomy Nationhood, race, colonialism and empire ---------------------------------------- - the Portuguese explorations of the coast of Africa -- greater commerce of exotic goods (ivory, gold), enslaving African natives - people from the new-found lands seen as curiosities and lucrative investments (servants' responses to Caliban in *The Tempest*) - the term race used in link to kinship (blood), or individual behaviour, status of birth, religious confession, as well as, skin colour - populations of distant lands seen as savage or primitive, child-like versions of Europeans Classicism and Enlightenment ============================ Features of, reasons for, cultural situation, genres, satire, essay, Pope, Dryden, Steele, Addison, The Tatler, The Spectator, Swift, Dr. Johnson. Social conditions ----------------- - *Charles II*'s Restoration → constitutional democracy economy depending on trade → bourgeoisie \> aristocracy - 1679: 2 wings of Parliament: Whigs (middle working class) x Tories (Conservatives) - writers usually chose to write in favour of 1 of these parties and simultaneously against the other one Classicism → starts with the import of French classicist culture in Restoration ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - fascination by ancient ideals of Greece and Rome (high art, philosophy, science, politics) - true presentation of man and nature (in arts, science) - world as a clockwork mechanism -- precise, accurate (ruled by precise rules of nature and physics + discoveries as Newton's Law of Gravity convinced them it is true), symmetrical, balanced, ordered → art, Classicist gardens Classicism in literature (mainly 1680s-1740s) --------------------------------------------- - imitation of ancient genres -- epic satire - regularity and symmetry -- rhyme (heroic couplets) - sobriety (reaction x Renaissance, for instance its heavy and dark furniture x light, clean rococo design) - formalism -- low and high genres - anyone can become a writer if they practice enough x talent #### Augustan authors (1700s-1740s) - ideal = period of Caesar Augustus (27 BC-14 AD) -- imitations, translations of *Ovid, Virgil,* or *Horace* #### Alexander POPE (1688-1744) - translations of classics: ***Iliad and Odyssey*** - essays: critical prose/verse of personal view; consists of epistles (letter): ***An Essay on Criticism** (1711)* ### **[18th c. Enlightenment]** = new Enlightened age, *A. Pope: "God said, Let Newton be and all was light"* - science = great help to humanity \> theology - rationalist philosopher ***John LOCKE*** -- tabula rasa: mind is an empty box when we are born = man is good; senses are windows through which we percept knowledge = reason improves, corrects faults - discovery of generally valid and unchanging rules → belief in finding [ultimate] solutions to social problems and creation of better society - social ideal: educated, well-mannered men and women living in city in the centre of social and scientific progress *(Dr Johnson: "If you are tired of London, You are tired of life!")* Literature of the Enlightenment ------------------------------- - efficient print technology (more books = lower cost) → reading available → bourgeoisie readers (dominant reading social section dictates what to read) → new styles, *e.g. dailies/weeklies/monthlies (periodicals), novels; political pamphlets* -- authors supported Whigs/Tories - 1^st^ book markets and mobile libraries Rise of JOURNALISM ------------------ #### Joseph ADDISON (1672-1719) + Richard STEELE (1672-1729) - Whigs → bourgeoisie audience - joined to publish a journal called ***The Tatler*** (1709-1911) -- light, entertaining news for ladies + essays improving morals, tastes, ridiculing vices, followed by character sketch = a short story which illustrated the quality described in previous essay (generosity) → helped to teach writers how to create a round character (not flat); 270 issues, 3 issues per week; very easily anticipated the taste of middle class -- mainly Puritans who didn't approve of fiction = a lie = a sin - Steele continued with ***The Spectator*** -- from 1711, daily for 2 years, similar tone + light humour SATIRE ------ - period of moral concerns for man → authors point at vices → crucial to show freedom of society - used mainly by Tory supporters as a criticism of changes -- combines entertainment and instruction - *Horatian* -- light humour, entertains + educates x *Juvenalian* -- serious, dark, no laughter, irony #### Jonathan SWIFT (1667-1745) -- Gulliver's Travels (1726) **[Highlight of Enlightenment]** = knowledge → encyclopaedias *(Denis Diderot)* #### Dr Samuel JOHNSON (1709-1784) -- A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) - England's 1^st^ concise (= monolingual) dictionary with examples from contemporary literature - map + stabilization of 18^th^ century English (1^st^ edition = 40 000 words, 9 years of work) - efficient, cheap print = need for standardization and simplification of spelling 18^th^ century = Enlightenment - optimism about man's rationality and capacity, reliance on science, rationalism -- man can be perfected - literature = didactic, moralistic, satirical - efficient print → new reading public → authors supported Tories (Pope, Swift) x Whigs (Defoe, Addison, Steele) 18^th^ century: Classicism, Enlightenment ----------------------------------------- - constitutional democracy, bourgeoisie \> aristocracy - 1679 \* 2 wings of Parliament: *Tories* (Conservatives) x *Whigs* (middle working class) ### Classicism -- import of French classicist culture in Restoration - fascination by classical cultures of Greece and Rome; true representation of man and nature - accurate, balanced, ordered world ruled by precise rules of nature and physics - literature: regularity + symmetry (heroic couplet), imitation of ancient genres (epic satire), sobriety (x Renaissance), formalism (high/low genres), anyone can become a writer if they practice (x talent) - ***Augustan authors*** -- ideal period of Caesar Augustus (Ovid, Virgil, Horace) - ***Alexander POPE*** -- Tories - translations of classics: ***Iliad and Odyssey*** - critical essays, consist of epistles: ***An Essay on Criticism*** - ***Sound and Sense*** ### Enlightenment - science \> theology - social ideal: educated, well-mannered men and women living in a city - efficient print technology made reading available -- dominant readers from bourgeoisie circles - new styles: *periodicals (dailies, weeklies, monthlies), novels, political pamphlets* - discovery of generally valid and unchanging rules → belief in finding ultimate solutions to problems - ***John LOCKE*** -- *tabula rasa* (man born good, but worsened by society x reason improves, corrects) #### Rise of Journalism -- Whigs - ***Joseph ADDISON + Richard STEELE*** - ***The Tatler*** -- journal, *character sketch* = a short story which illustrated the quality described in a previous essay → *round character* → ***R. STEELE: The Spectator*** #### Satire -- Tories - *Horatian* -- light humour, entertains + educates ***(The Lady's Dressing Room by J. SWFT)*** - *Juvenalian* -- dark, serious, irony ***(A Modest Proposal by J. SWIFT)*** - ***Jonathan SWIFT: Gulliver's Travels*** Highlight of the Enlightenment = knowledge → encyclopaedias *(Denis Diderot)* - ***Dr Samuel JOHNSON: A Dictionary of the English Language*** -- England's 1^st^ concise dictionary The rise of the English Novel ============================= Origins and predecessors of the genre (Sidney, Bunyan), beginnings and early forms of the novel (dairy, picaresque, sentimental, gothic romance, etc.) + authors (D. Defoe, S. Richardson, H. Fielding, Walpole, etc.). - emerged in England in early 1700s - detailed, realistic, plotful, adventurous prose story about ordinary characters (flaws, good and bad qualities because they should remind us of ourselves) described as individuals, not types (flat) 18^th^ century novel -------------------- Roots in: - Middle English novel -- short lyrical [love] story - ME romance -- [adventurous] story in old French, not Latin → CZ *román* x English *novel* - 16^th^-17^th^ century [imaginative] prose: ***Sir Thomas MORE (Utopia), Sir Philip SIDNEY (Arcadia), John BUNYAN (Pilgrim's Progress*** -- provided framework for the novel, character Christian***)*** ### Why was the novel born so late? - early 18^th^ century = Age of reason -- scientific precision → fidelity to reality → realism - objective and detailed picture of the world → novel = "the greatest fake in literature", no other genre of fiction pretends to be not fiction as much as novel ### Reasons why was the novel tardy - **social** -- rise of middle class (good education -- could read, had business, employed other people to do manual work → more time for reading) = new readership - **technological** -- efficient print industry - **cultural** -- MC literary tastes: realistic non-fiction; ordinary life; practical, educational - being a writer is becoming a profession, not only a hobby -- need to know people's taste - *self-reliant* puritan‑minded ordinary people who survive because they are practical, learn how to adapt and draw from their environment → want to read stg. instructive + entertaining + the *fictional story* must be dressed in a jacket of *non-fictional genres* *diary/memoir, letter, guidebook* ### Tastes of the middle-class readers - exciting news (scandals, sea voyages -- *J. Cook*), diaries (typical puritan activity -- could trace their progress in faith), non-fiction (practical reasons) → journalism, reports, moralistic advice #### Daniel DEFOE (1660-1731) ***Robinson Crusoe*** (1719) - 'true' autobiography -- realistic detail, seemed non-fictional - [Robinson] = prototype of the 18^th^ century ideal -- rational, civilised, optimistic, search of faith SENTIMENTAL novel ----------------- - sentimentalism = belief that people are born good because the God creates only good things - man = instinctively moral (Shaftesbury); 1740s -- impact on the novel #### Samuel RICHARDSON (1689-1761) - 1739: published a compilation of letters = epistolary; following the template, you'd write a good letter #### Henry FIELDING (1707-1754) -- **[SATIRICAL NOVEL]**, \* realistic tradition in E literature (x Romanticism) (Pre-)Romanticism: Gothic Novel (should be realistic, ordinary characters) → fiction/romance -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #### Romanticism - emotion \> reason - mysticism \> logic - spirituality \> industrialism, materialism - freedom (free creativity, supportive of French and American revolutions) \> tyranny → 18^th^ c. fascination with a pleasurably terrifying experience evoked through strong negative emotions = experience of **the Sublime** ### Setting - time of day: night, evening - medieval/oriental landscape + remote solitary place, mountains + Catholic countries (Italy, Spain) #### The locale - macabre and gloomy - huge and complex buildings - castle/ruin/house with vaults, towers and dungeons - subterranean passages, sliding panels, secret doors - high ceilings, old stones, chains - bats, spiders, rats, mice, dripping water, smell of mould, howling ### Characters - usually a passion-driven man (hate, revenge) -- does things you wouldn't logically or morally do - lustful, mysterious, deviant, perverse (collects human bodies,...) - the opposite of the Enlightenment educated gentleman who uses reason to solve problems - suffering of an innocent heroine -- inhabits his ruined house, and usually kidnaps a symbol of innocence (a girl), locks her in a cage and tortures her [without any logical reason] (just because they want to) - meant as an attack on corrupted aristocrats, men, monks and clerics ### Plot elements - kidnapping, chases, imprisonment, rape, incest, murder, diabolism, poisoning, torture, blood - presence of ghosts and supernatural objects + mysterious disappearances of people/objects - death/deadly atmosphere -- evil deeds leading to destruction ### Purpose - Romanticism = arousal of (negative) emotions - Gothic novel → pain + suffering + eroticism + mystery → feeling of discomfort, horror, chilling terror - Sublime (x beautiful) -- experience of ominous, uncontrollable (natural) forces ### Modern interpretation - early literary attention to irrational + perverse impulses hiding under the orderly surface of civilized society - female gothic (most of the writers were women) -- critique + subversion of male dominance ### Main writers of the Gothic #### Horace WALPOLE (son of PM Robert Walpole) -- The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story (1764) #### Ann RADCLIFFE -- The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) #### Matthew Gregory LEWIS -- The Monk (1796) #### 19^th^ century Gothic - [UK:] Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Bram Stoker (Dracula) - [USA:] Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe #### 20^th^ century Gothic - crime and horror fiction: Daphne du Maurier, Stephen King, H. P. Lovecraft, I. McEwan - Goth subculture 1720s-1760s: The Birth and rise of the English Novel ---------------------------------------------------- - emerged in England in early 1700s - detailed, realistic, plotful, adventurous, self-reliant ordinary characters with flaws who learn how to adapt and draw from their environment + the fictional story must be dressed in a jacket of non-fictional genres *(diary, memoir, letter, guidebook)* - roots: - ME novel -- short lyrical [love] story - ME romance -- [adventurous] story in old French - 16-17^th^ c. [imaginative] prose *(More's Utopia, Sidney's Arcadia, Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress)* - ***Daniel DEFOE: Robinson Crusoe*** -- 'true' autobiography, Robinson = 18^th^ c. ideal = rational, civilised, optimistic, searching faith - ***Samuel RICHARDSON: Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded*** -- epistolary SENTIMENTAL NOVEL - ***Henry FIELDING*** - ***Shamela*** -- SATIRICAL NOVEL - ***Joseph Andrews*** - ***Tom Jones*** -- PICARESQUE NOVEL (picaro = rogue) Romanticism ----------- - x Enlightenment, e.g. aloneness = positive (Romanticism) x negative (Enlightenment) - new social ideal: *noble savage* = uneducated people living in harmony with nature - romantics saw themselves as superior educated people who were gifted and their purpose was to translate the difficult artistic language to ordinary people - features - emotion \> reason - mysticism \> logic - spirituality \> industrialism, materialism - freedom \> tyranny → gothic novel = the main channel for these aspects in prose ### The Gothic novel/romance - *the Sublime* = a pleasurably terrifying experience - ***Horace WALPOLE: The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story*** - ***Ann RADCLIFFE: The Mysteries of Udolpho*** - ***Mathew Gregory LEWIS: The Monk*** POPLAWSKI: The Restoration and the 18^th^ century ================================================= Aphra Behn: Oroonoko, Or the Royal Slave (1688) ----------------------------------------------- - sometimes considered the earliest novel in the English language - shorter than the typical 19^th^ c. novel - like the 18^th^ c. novels features a narrator sent across the ocean to new colonies, takes place at least in part in a new colonial outpost - connects fictional prose narrative to history (begins by 'I do not pretend', in giving you the history of this royal slave...) - readers are led to believe: there was a noble African prince Oronooko who fell in love with Imoinda (daughter of his foster-father), refused to enter into battle because an old king took Imonida for himself, Oronooko was tricked into a slave ship for Surinam (after landing, he is reunited with Imoinda), organizes the trade btw the English colonists and the natives in Surinam, leads a failed slave uprising, fails in a suicide pact with Imoinda, ends up quartered and shipped in pieces around Surinam as an example to other African slaves - Aphra Behn travelled to Surinam during the Restoration - Oronooko depicted a snoble, good-mannered, educated x savage slave owners (English colonists) - residents of Surinam = as innocent as Adam and Eve before the Fall - strong criticism of the consequences of European settlement in the New World - history (related to the French word story) = 1. true story; 2. record of major events (civil war, beheading of James I) -- royalist POV → ties the novel to news that claims to provide perspective on recent events - royal slave -- a slave of royal lineage (James II); plantation owners -- caricature of the Commons - depiction of Behn's concern for James II - combines several genres -- medieval romance (romantic relationship of Imoinda and Oronooko), epic (Oronooko's refusal to fight his side because of the woman he loves has been treated) Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe (1719) ------------------------------------ - inspired others to write 'Robinsonnades' *(Swiss Family Robinson)* - the government of Chile renamed 2 islands after Robinson Crusoe and Alexander Selkirk (stranded on island, inspired Defoe) to attract tourists - inspired by Locke's theories -- deserted island = new beginning with a clean slate - history in both senses: a story and a record of recent events - life story of a northerner, 3^rd^ son of a German immigrant father and a Yorkshire mother, who leaves home to find his fortune travelling the Atlantic colonial trade routes - 'True Born Englishman' = England has always been composed of immigrants - elder sons had to be educated due to inheritance - defends the middle classes x Behn's focus on royalty - 1651 departure (beginning of interregnum), 1659 shipwreck (before the Restoration), 1687 return to England as a wealthy landowner (before the Glorious Revolution) = positive about the revolution x Behn - religious allegory (leaving my father's comfortable house, wave + thrown new-born on the beach = Jonah in the whale) - Crusoe claims that good is everything useful -- slavery? - recreates the English class system (belief in achieving a religiously tolerant government, change in the class position in the new English colonies) → life in England prior to the Glorious Revolution = deserted island - Bildungsroman -- a process of the growing up of the characters during the story Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels (1726) ----------------------------------------- - Gulliver is out of the country for most of Queen Anne's reign, returns 1714 = Swift's exile under the Tories/changes that the party went through during the period Alexander Pope: Essay on Man (1733) ----------------------------------- - 'hope springs eternal', 'fools rush in', 'little learning is a dangerous thing' - each of its 4 epistles addresses a different aspect of 'the Nature and State of Man' (Universe, Individual, Society, Happiness) - Newtonian physics of ethics: for every bad, there is an equal and opposite good = the whole is balanced - balanced poetic form = heroic couplet (couplets of iambic pentameter) Samuel Richardson: Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1747-48) --------------------------------------------------------------------- - correspondence between Clarissa Harlowe and her friend Anna Howe on the one hand and Robert Lovelace a on the other hand his friend John Belford - after the death of her grandfather, Clarissa inherited his estate (instead of his 3 sons and grandson, her brother James) - her parents arrange marriage with wealthy James Solmes -- she is beaten to accept, eventually escapes with Lovelace who drugs and rapes her - Clarissa loses the will to live, dies; Lovelace dies in Catholic France - writing of Clarissa is direct x Lovelace is ornamental, flowery - Clarissa's independence = not accepted at that time (even women with finances couldn't make choices) - written by [men] - Clarissa's brother = Stuart James II as seen by the Whig opposition Pre-Romanticism =============== Sentimentalism, Pre--Romanticism, Earl of Shaftesbury, W. Blake, R. Burns, graveyard poets, ideals, view of nature, status of rational philosophy. 18^th^ c. = peak of classicism and Enlightenment -- reason, science, objectivism, progress → scientific positivism 1. man = rational + (de)moralized by society 2. nature = explainable organism, universal unchanging laws Sentiment and Nature -------------------- ***Anthony Ashley COOPER, Earl of Shaftsbury** (1671-1713)* - moral sense theory/**[sentimentalism]** = belief that people are born good because the God creates only good things - innate, natural ability to feel moral/immoral (instinct) can be awakened by learning to feel (sentiment) #### James THOMPSON (1700-48) - nature poetry -- nature made by God = good → source of moral Away from rationalism --------------------- #### Graveyard poets -- sad, melancholic tone; issues of human mortality, time, the past ***Thomas GRAY** (1716-1771)*: ***Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard** (1751)* New aesthetic situation → overall fascination with things in their natural state -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - lonely, contemplative, melancholic characters - new social ideal: **noble savage =** village life, rough, ordinary, uneducated, people in their natural state - writing = product of spontaneous force, you gradually learn how to write a poem by translating, imitating old masters; writer -- independent, sensitive, privileged Folklore and medievalism ------------------------ - popularity of regional folklore (closer to natural life) and ME literature (period of great imagination, better morals; ballads) ***Thomas PERCY** (1729-1811): **Relics of Ancient English Poetry** (1765)* -- rewritten poems AS-Charles I period (Civil war); collection of E folklore: ballads, songs... ***James MACPHERSON** (1736-1796): **Fragments of Ancient Poetry** (collected in the Highlands of Scotland)* (1760) -- claimed it was an oral poetry composed by Ossian in 3^rd^ century #### Robert BURNS (1759-1796, Scottish!) - uneducated yet gifted poet -- original, very personal, natural and ordinary lyrical writing - regionalism -- wrote about Scottish people, customs, in dialect → 'the chronicler of Scottish life', bard Pre-Romantic literature ----------------------- - 18^th^ century = peak of Classicism and Enlightenment - new social ideal: *noble savage* = rough, ordinary, uneducated villager, person in a natural state - you gradually learn how to write a poem by imitating old masters ### Sentimentalism & Nature - ***Anthony Ashley COOPER, Earl of Shaftsbury; James THOMPSON*** - ***William BLAKE: Songs of Innocence x Songs of Experience (Nurse's song)*** ### Graveyard poets - ***Thomas GRAY: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard*** ### Folklore & Medievalism - ***Thomas PERCY: Relics of Ancient English Poetry*** - ***James MACPHERSON: Fragments of Ancient Poetry*** - ***Robert BURNS*** -- Scottish, dialect **10.** Romanticism =================== Cultural context, reasons for, philosophical influences; W. Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Lord Byron, P.B. Shelley, M. Shelley, gothic novel, H. Walpole, etc. - aesthetic reaction to Enlightenment (ca 1770-1840) - emphasis on 'self', individual, creativity, naturalness - respect for the infinite, transcendental, mystical, 'beyond reason' - roots in Enlightenment philosophy (J. J. Rousseau) **= nature as a state of uncorrupted morality** - natural man: good/moral, satisfied in his primitive state - new social ideal: uneducated people living in harmony with nature (farmers, peasants) - civilised man -- separation from nature → knowledge + education + social life → greed, envy, materialism → inequality + dissatisfaction Philosophical context -- 18^th^ century variation of the *tabula rasa* view --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***Diderot**:* "Nature has not made us evil. It is bad education, bad models, bad legislation that corrupt us." ***Voltaire:*** "Person is born neither good nor wicked; education, example, government into which he is thrown -- in short, occasion of every kind determines him to virtue or vice." Equality, freedom, revolutions ------------------------------ - people equal → same rights (American T. Paine: essay "Rights of Man", 1791) → attack of old regimes (US and French revolutions) - Napoleon supported by young authors eager for social progress - Romanticism = revolt against classical conservatism, morality and authority Romantic ideals *W. Wordsworth: "Poetry is the overflow of spontaneous feeling."* --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - respect of naturalness, thing as they are (traditional, unpretentious life) -- "the 1^st^ Greenpeace activists" - anti-scientific + anti-rationalist - evocative experience, feeling, subjectivity - mystery, spiritual relationship between man and nature Individualism ------------- - individual freedom + unlimited potential - uneducated people = the freest = cult of a noble savage - aloneness = positive (Romanticism) x negative (Enlightenment) - artists as superior educated people who should translate the difficult language of art into something intelligible for ordinary people The Lake Poets -- decided to live in The Lake District ------------------------------------------------------ #### William Wordsworth (1770-1850) - spiritual, elegy; poetry should be readable by common people - orphaned at 13, walking tour of Europe -- admiration of nature, common people - ***The Prelude*** -- semi-biographical poem #### & Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) - founder of the Romantic aesthetics in England - critic; longer poems about nature (mysterious, full of fantasy), controversial poems - physically unhealthy since childhood + mental issues (bipolar disorder?) treated with opium *Differences Coleridge X Wordsworth* - mysterious nature full of super-natural and happiness x simple objects of nature, imaginative colours - critical, philosophical x poetry = poet's interaction with outside worlds - revised works, sophisticated x made poems "simple", accessible - clinically depressed, addicted to opioids x wasn't addicted - not that national writer x 'English poet' (writes about English people, flowers, birds, lakes,...) *Preface of **Lyrical Ballads [(1798)]*** -- nature, ordinary language, accessible for normal people ### 2^nd^ generation of authors #### Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) - aristocrat who left political career, travelled the world, and died in a battle - philosophical poems about individuals who lived alone + reflections on historical events ***Childe Harold's Pilgrimage*** ***Don Juan Prisoner of Chillon*** #### Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) - expelled from university because he wrote an essay on atheism ***Prometheus Unbound*** #### John Keats (1795-1821) - thought very profoundly about relation of art and life - short meditative and contemplative poems called *'odes'* Romanticism ----------- - x Enlightenment, e.g. aloneness = positive (Romanticism) x negative (Enlightenment) - new social ideal: *noble savage* = uneducated people living in harmony with nature - romantics saw themselves as superior educated people who were gifted and their purpose was to translate the difficult artistic language to ordinary people - features - emotion \> reason - mysticism \> logic - spirituality \> industrialism, materialism - freedom \> tyranny → gothic novel = the main channel for these aspects in prose ### The Lake Poets - ***William WORDSWORTH: Lines Written in Early Spring; Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802*** - ***Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner*** - **[1798:]** the 1^st^ publication of ***Lyrical Ballads*** ### The 2^nd^ generation of authors - ***Lord George Gordon BYRON: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; Don Juan Prisoner of Chillon*** - ***Percy Bysshe SHELLEY: Prometheus Unbound*** - ***John KEATS: The Human Seasons***; short meditative and contemplative poems called *'odes'* ### The Gothic novel/romance - *the Sublime* = a pleasurably terrifying experience - ***Horace WALPOLE: The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story*** - ***Ann RADCLIFFE: The Mysteries of Udolpho*** - ***Mathew Gregory LEWIS: The Monk*** POPLAWSKI: The Romantic Period ============================== William Wordsworth: 'Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798' (1798) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - part of *Lyrical Ballads* - by 1798, W and C began to lose their radical beliefs and became more conservative - relationship between the mind and nature -- stressed the restorative ability of nature - meditative poem that delas with the inner life of the poet -- written on a walking tour around the abbey - W had visited the place 5 years earlier when he came from France and was separated from his lover, Annette Vallon and their daughter - intensely personal examination of his thoughts -- celebrates his rediscovery of the capacity to feel Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility (1811) ----------------------------------------- - epistolary novel, originally *Elinor and Marianne* -- published later when the issue of feminism was discussed (Mary Wollstonecraft -- inspired the character of Marianne Dashwood) - sisters representing the contrasting qualities -- the story told from Elinor's perspective - handsome John Willoughby x shy Edward Ferrars court the sisters - satire on the sensibility of the 1790s and warning about its dangers - Marianne = emotional and sentimental view of the natural world; lover Willoughby -- selfish, left pregnant Eliza Williams, eventually married an heiress for money - Elinor = the importance of restraint and reflection -- she is aware of the dangers of excessive emotion; suffers silently because the man she loves is bound to another (deceitful Lucy Steele who tortures her with details about their engagement) - ends with double marriage -- Elinor + Edward, Marianne + Colonel Brandon (the man she had previously rejected as too old and dull) Lord Bryon: The Giaour (1813) ----------------------------- - oriental tale -- part of *Eastern Tales* - poem about the clash of worldviews between Muslim and Christin and their struggle over the Greece - told through disjointed fragments from different POV - tale of the flight of the Giaour from the court of a Turkish despot Hassan because he had an affair with a slave Leila from Hassan's harem -- Leila was sewn into a sack and drowned (Byron witnessed this traditional Turkish punishment during his travels) - Giaour revenges her by killing Hassan, but he gains no peace, retreats to a monastery, remains alienated, isolated and haunted by Hassan's severed hand - taste for exotic landscape and colour - Islamic misogyny (woman is but dust) x Byron notes that's a vulgar error and misreading Koran - the worst crime = Leila deserted Hassan for a Giaour (non-Muslim) - misogynist East x feminist West Mary Shelley: Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus (1818; revised 1831) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - first published anonymously, later added introduction -- story about a man playing God - Gothic story, medievalism, development of science - similar to William Godwin's style = Shelley's father - written in Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1816 - several embedded narratives -- no omniscient narrator - 1790s: Captain Robert Walton sets out to investigate the secrets of the North Magnetic Pole -- wants to discover the causes of magnetic variation which puzzled mariners and scientists for generations - Luigi Galvani -- animal electricity (activated the muscles of his dead frogs) - crime and guilt -- Rousseau claimed people were born free and virtuous but corrupted by society; Shelley's father similarly claimed that crime was the result of a flawed environment and education - critics as *Anne Mellor* the text is feminist -- male science (Victor) usurps the female role of giving birth 11. Victorian Prose =================== Cultural context, class, empire, scientific achievements, religiousness; major Victorian novelists and tendencies. C. Dickens, G. Eliot, C.+E.+A. Bronte, E. Gaskell, T. Hardy, W.M. Thackeray, H.G. Wells, satire, critical realism, naturalism, R. Stevenson, R. Kipling, etc. Historical and social background -------------------------------- #### Monarchy -- Queen Victoria (1837-1901) + Prince Albert = symbols of British Empire - synonyms of the time: expansion and contrast -- Britain's climax of power and wealth - the greatest territorial expansion -- the greatest empire in the history of world (1/3 of world's land size) - positive public reception (contact + jubilees) #### Territorial expansion -- The Empire - *'the Sun never sets'* British Empire; *population: 8 million (1800) → 458 million (1900)* - controversial ('buy empire goods from home and overseas') - gradually started producing more goods than were able to use → colonisation = a positive process: - obligation to civilize 'less fortunate savages' - belief in being 'destined' to rule the world - need of cheap resources, labour, new markets for growing industry in the UK #### Scientific expansion - **steam engine** (Stevenson) + **cheap way of making steel** (Bessemer) → architectural, infrastructural, industrial growth - inventions → **scientific positivism** = science helps us progress and improve; 'science is good because it always has [benefits]/[positive] consequences for mankind' - 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park -- the British built the largest building ever called *Crystal* *Palace* from glass and steel = pinnacle of Scientific revolution; Britain boasts of its advance #### Railway Expansion - steam in factories and on railway; coal, shipbuilding, [steel]¸ pottery - very fast and relatively cheap import of products + people could very easily travel (\* tourism) #### Urban expansion - 1850's guidebook declared London to be *'the richest and largest, best-lighted and best‑drained city in the world'* - life in cities: 1830 -- agricultural country (4 million, 20%) x 1901 -- urban society (30 million, 75%) - palaces surrounded by suburban slums (disease, hygiene, criminality, prostitution, drug dealing) Life in Victorian Britain ------------------------- #### Religion - rise of industry → urbanisation → criminality → calls for renewed religiousness (promoting Christianity as a way of fighting x decrease of morals in society), *e.g. Oxford Movement (Catholic)* - belief: if religion is accepted by all, crime and poverty will disappear - x scientific expansion: ***Charles DARWIN*** (1809-89) -- Theory of Evolution: man not made in the 6‑day wonder, survival of the fittest = shock to religiousness → **** published ***Origin of Species*** #### Classes and morals - industry → massive rise of middle classes = the new rich *nouveau riche* (agricultural land that was held by upper classes was abandoned) → upper class aspirations (dress, eating, speech, etc.) - middle and upper-middle classes dictate Victorian and moral stereotypes - [literature:] prudishness, conservatism, Neo-puritan values (very restrictive, promoted the idea of hard work, traditional family where husband has the upper hand; words like 'eating', 'trousers' became taboos), stress on family - **the poor** exploited by industrialists because there were no rights protecting the life of the workers (child labour 12-16 hours/day, the poorest lived in the workhouses in exchange of labour, critical of orphans) - life expectancy in the W end of London (upper classes): 60 years x E London: 35 years Victorian prose --------------- - continuation of the 18^th^ century realism (x romanticism) + literature as a mirror of the world as it is = social tool → Victorian novel = mimetic novel of critical realism - religious text, novels - ***Charles DICKENS*** - *'Mr. Popular Sentiment'* -- pathos = evokes pity (wanted to make middle classes feel guilty because he considered them guilty of the poor conditions of the working classes) - ***Pickwick Papers*** -- satire of London upper middle class - ***Oliver Twist*** -- 1^st^ novel, *'Dickensian features'*: focus on London, working class and underclass, child labour, poverty suffering, social indifference and cruelty - ***Bleak House*** - ***Great Expectations*** - ***Dombey and Son*** - ***William Makepeace THACKERAY*** - x Dickens -- makes you laugh by exposing hypocrisy and immoral value system of the middle and upper classes - ***Book of Snobs*** -- compilation of character sketches (17^th^ c., describe 1 aspect of character) - ***Vanity Fair -- a novel without a hero*** -- name from 17^th^ c. Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress - ***BRONTE sisters*** - Angria and Gondal -- inspiration for their literary works, gloomy imaginary universe characterised by situations of loneliness and strong negative emotions - ***Charlotte = Currer BELL: Jane Eyre*** - ***Emily = Ellis BELL: Wuthering Heights*** - ***Anne = Acton BELL: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall*** - ***George ELIOT = Mary Evans*** - great psychology of characters -- progressivism = belief that we have power over our life, we determine it with our choices - ***Adam Bede*** - ***The Mill on the Floss*** - ***Middlemarch*** #### Other types of novel - ***Lewis CAROLL: Alice in Wonderland*** -- fantasy, escapist - ***Robert Louis STEVENSON: Treasure Island*** -- adventure, escapist; - ***Arthur Conan DOYLE: The Return of Sherlock Holmes*** -- crime fiction #### NATURALISM - post-Darwinian science - man = 'caged animal' driven by emotions, with no freedom to change his future - ***Thomas HARDY*** - regional focus on Wessex - rural life x evil city - morality = obstacle that makes you weak (not a shield of safety as earlier) 12. Victorian Poetry ==================== Cultural context, main features of poetry and drama (e.g. post-romanticism, medievalism, social criticism, comedy of manners, etc.); major poets and playwrights. A. Tennyson, R+E.B. Brownings, Pre-Raphaelites, D.G. Rossetti, M. Arnold, O. Wilde. Historical and social background -------------------------------- #### Monarchy -- Queen Victoria (1837-1901) + Prince Albert = symbols of British Empire - synonyms of the time: expansion and contrast -- Britain's climax of power and wealth - the greatest territorial expansion -- the greatest empire in the history of world (1/3 of world's land size) - positive public reception (contact + jubilees) #### Territorial expansion -- The Empire - *'the Sun never sets'* British Empire; *population: 8 million (1800) → 458 million (1900)* - controversial ('buy empire goods from home and overseas') - gradually started producing more goods than were able to use → colonisation = a positive process: - obligation to civilize 'less fortunate savages' - belief in being 'destined' to rule the world - need of cheap resources, labour, new markets for growing industry in UK #### Scientific expansion - **steam engine** (Stevenson) + **cheap way of making steel** (Bessemer) → architectural, infrastructural, industrial growth - inventions → **scientific positivism** = science helps us progress and improve; 'science is good because it always has [benefits]/[positive] consequences for mankind' - 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park -- the British built the largest building ever called *Crystal* *Palace* from glass and steel = pinnacle of Scientific revolution; Britain boasts of its advance #### Railway Expansion - steam in factories and on railway; coal, shipbuilding, [steel]¸ pottery - very fast and relatively cheap import of products + people could very easily travel (\* tourism) #### Urban expansion - 1850's guidebook declared London to be *'the richest and largest, best-lighted and best‑drained city in the world'* - life in cities: 1830 -- agricultural country (4 million, 20%) x 1901 -- urban society (30 million, 75%) - palaces surrounded by suburban slums (disease, hygiene, criminality, prostitution, drug dealing) Life in Victorian Britain ------------------------- #### Religion - rise of industry → urbanisation → criminality → calls for renewed religiousness (promoting Christianity as a way of fighting x decrease of morals in society), *e.g. Oxford Movement (Catholic)* - belief: if religion is accepted by all, crime and poverty will disappear - x scientific expansion: ***Charles DARWIN*** (1809-89) -- Theory of Evolution: man not made in the 6‑day wonder, survival of the fittest = shock to religiousness → **** published ***Origin of Species*** #### Classes and morals - industry → massive rise of middle classes = the new rich *nouveau riche* (agricultural land that was held by upper classes was abandoned) → upper class aspirations (dress, eating, speech, etc.) - middle and upper-middle classes dictate Victorian and moral stereotypes - [literature:] prudishness, conservatism, Neo-puritan values (very restrictive, promoted the idea of hard work, traditional family where husband has the upper hand; words like 'eating', 'trousers' became taboos), stress on family - **the poor** exploited by industrialists because there were no rights protecting the life of the workers (child labour 12-16 hours/day, the poorest lived in the workhouses in exchange of labour, critical of orphans) - life expectancy in the W end of London (upper classes): 60 years x E London: 35 years Victorian poetry ---------------- - reaction to expansion and change → neo-gothic revival - romantic escapism - science x religion - literature as a social tool *(M. Arnold)* x refuge from social problems = aesthetic *(O. Wilde)* - criticism of mass production - ***Lord Alfred TENNYSON*** - Poet Laureate = court poet of Queen Victoria - idealised past -- nostalgic and melancholic longing for lost order (\~ romanticism) → legends, myths - ***The Lady of Shallot*** - ***In Memoriam A.H.H.*** - ***Idylls of the King*** - ***Robert BROWNING*** - x Tennyson -- focus on renaissance - dramatic monologue = poems as contrastive dialogues → speaker's psyche - multiperspectivism (reader must decide how to interpret) -- subjectivity x objectivity - ***"My Last Duchess"*** - ***The Ring and the Book*** - ***Elizabeth B. BROWNING*** - love poetry: ***Sonnets from the Portuguese*** - humanistic: ***The Cry of the Children*** - ***Matthew ARNOLD: Dover Beach*** - ***Rudyard KIPLING: White Man's Burden*** #### Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1840s-50s) - group of 7 painters, sculptors, poets *(Dante Gabriel **Rossetti**, William Michael **Rossetti**, William Holman **Hunt**, John Everett **Millais**, Frederic George **Stephens**, James **Collinson**, Thomas **Woolner**)* - x progressivism, materialism and machine-age mass production - art from before Raphael -- lost sensitivity during scientific progress in Renaissance - real art = original, spontaneous, vivid - style: medieval, biblical, decorative, colour appeal Victorian drama --------------- - popular *opera*; attempts to write drama -- melodramatic, middle-brow x change with Shaw and Wilde - ***G. B. SHAW*** - Irish - socialist (left-wing) orientation, \* Fabian society - ***Mrs. Warren's Profession*** - ***Pygmalion*** - ***Saint Joan*** - ***Oscar WILDE*** - Irish - x Victorian hypocrisy and Puritanism -- revealed homosexuality, imprisoned, 1900 died in exile (Paris) - Art for Art's Sake (space for free life, beauty) - short stories and fairy tales: ***Canterville Ghost***; ***The Happy Prince and Other Tales***; ***The Picture of Dorian Gray*** - essays: ***The House Beautiful***; ***The Soul of Man under Socialism*** - drama (witty criticism of Victorian society): ***Lady Windermere's Fan***; ***A Woman of no Importance***; ***The Ideal Husband***; ***The Importance of Being Earnest*** 13. Drama from Restoration till 1900 ==================================== Restoration -- situation, nature of conflict, re-opening of theatres, major features of restoration drama, heroic drama, restoration comedy, Sentimental comedy, 18th century drama, J. Dryden, W. Congreve, Sheridan, C. Ciber, J. Gay, etc. Victorian drama, major features + playwrights (Opera, comedy of manners, Guilbert and Sullivan, Victorian poets as playwrights, O. Wilde, G.B. Shaw, Art for Art's sake, Aestheticism). 17^th^-century crisis --------------------- ***Charles I*** (1625-1649) - absolute monarchy (stricter than his father James I), belief in divine rights of kings, devoted Catholic - didn't use the right to summon Parliament - 1629 -- Parliament dismissed - 2 chambers: House of Lords, House of Commons → enemies among the classes (a middle class in the House of Commons) who spoke openly against the king - the members of Parliament tried to take the king's decisions to courts -- unsuccessful - 11 years of Personal rule (all power in his own hands) - Oliver Cromwell representing puritanism (= extreme Protestant movement from Europe) → revolution, **Civil War 1642-49:** Charles I beheaded, his son Charles escaped to exile in France **The Interregnum 1649-1660** - 1649-1654: Commonwealth → 1654-1660: Protectorate = the only time England wasn't a kingdom - royalists (E should remain monarchy) + radical opposition **The Royalists** **Parliamentarians** ------------------------------------- --------------------------- The king + Aristocracy + NXW gentry London and S. bourgeoisie Monarchists Republicans Anglican Church Puritanism **Oliver Cromwell** - became an absolute ruler, a dictator, called himself "lord protector" - the Parliament was dismissed - got rid of almost all his opponents -- imprisoned them in Tower (like Tudors) - extreme Puritan -- changed the life in England (no culture life, Sundays for praying) - tensions with Irish Catholics -- massacred them, just for a rumour there were killed puritans - the Commonwealth and the protectorate were difficult to lead past his death, his son Richard Cromwell wasn't strong character and the republic collapsed **[Restoration 1660-1680s]** - 1659 Oliver Cromwell died → Charles II restores to the throne (1660-85) from Versailles - monarchy changes completely -- the king becomes a symbolic figure, the political power now rests in Parliament = parliamentary monarchy Drama ----- ### 17^th^ century - decline after Shakespeare, theatres closed during civil war - Restoration drama (1660s) - *adaptation of Elizabethan plays* (tragedy, comedy) - *heroic drama/tragedy* -- exaggerated - ***John DRYDEN -- Indian Queen***; ***The Conquest of Granada*** - *restoration comedy* -- domestic problems of the middle/upper class → comedy of manners - ***William CONGREVE -- The Way of the World*** ### 18^th^ century - *sentimental comedy* -- middle-class protagonists overcome moral trials, aims to produce tears - ***Sir Richard STEELE -- The Conscious Lovers*** - continuation of *comedy of manners* -- ridicule of sentimental drama, focus on moral of the upper class - ***Richard Brinsley SHERIDAN -- The School for Scandal*** ### 19^th^ century - popular *opera* - attempts to write drama -- melodramatic, middle-brow - change with Shaw and Wilde - ***G. B. SHAW*** - Irish - socialist (left-wing) orientation, \* Fabian society - ***Mrs. Warren's Profession*** - ***Pygmalion*** - ***Saint Joan*** - ***Oscar WILDE*** - Irish - revealed homosexuality → imprisoned → 1900 died in exile in Paris - Art for Art's Sake (space for free life, beauty) - x Victorian hypocrisy and Puritanism - short stories and fairy tales: ***Canterville Ghost***; ***The Happy Prince and Other Tales***; ***The Picture of Dorian Gray*** - essays: ***The House Beautiful***; ***The Soul of Man under Socialism*** - drama (witty criticism of Victorian society): ***Lady Windermere's Fan***; ***A Woman of no Importance***; ***The Ideal Husband***; ***The Importance of Being Earnest*** ### Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1840s-50s) - group of 7 painters, sculptors, poets *(Dante Gabriel **Rossetti**, William Michael **Rossetti**, William Holman **Hunt**, John Everett **Millais**, Frederic George **Stephens**, James **Collinson**, Thomas **Woolner**)* - x progressivism, materialism and machine-age mass production - art from before Raphael -- lost sensitivity during scientific progress in Renaissance - real art = original, spontaneous, vivid - style: medieval, biblical, decorative, colour appeal POPLAWSKI: The Victorian Age ============================ Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre (1847) ---------------------------------- - Bildungsroman - the function of voice -- self-censorship (of women) - refusal to speak to Rochester = rejection of his authority -- colonizer x colonists - addresses the reader throughout the book - madwoman in the attic = Jane's alter ego can be seen to symbolise the woman writer whose creative impulses cannot be openly expressed - inspired by Pilgrim's Progress -- explores religiosity -- Jane's struggle for passion and liberty at the same time as being faithful to God and her fellow man Charles Dickens: Bleak House (1852-3) ------------------------------------- - darker writing -- fog that encases this modern world -- shames the readers for the reluctance to see it Christina Rossetti: Goblin Market (1862) ---------------------------------------- - 2 sisters Laura and Lizzie with Victorian occupations -- economic, sexual, religious - ending: Christ-like saviour Lizzie saves her fallen sister - passionless women in patriarchal society - men goblins = merchants -- capitalism, advertisement Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - tension btw the desire to master and to be mastered - identifying Henry Jekyll by a long series of professional identities = anxieties of middle class men - determining who and what Hyde represents - doppelganger -- 2 central characters functioning as doubles of one another/an individual with divided personality - not a simple allegory of good x evil (not always antagonistic relationship, Jekyll's pity for Hyde) - Hyde described as savage, ape-like - Jekyll's transformation into Hyde 'the brute that slept within me' - some features of detective novel (fascination with handwriting as a key to identity) - 'Make them wonder.' (not laugh, not cry) Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) --------------------------------------------------- - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People = A Serious Comedy for Trivial People (inversion) - how much control do the men have over their invented alternative identities - railway = the era's most important progress x origin identity of Jack Worthing 14. Literature at the Turn of the Century ========================================= Early 20th century Britain, Georgian and Edwardian period, politics, social life & changes. Scientific innovations and their link to new literature. Experimental writing of the period, modernism and other 'isms' (e.g. imagism). Modernist attitudes to 19th century tradition. Modernity X modernism, major writers and features of experimentalism (e.g. J. Joyce, Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, H. James, D. Richardson). Edwardian & Georgian Era ------------------------ - sudden release of Victorian rigidness and conservatism - new streams in art -- e.g. *Art Nouveau* (secese) - revolution in our knowledge of ourselves and the world - science: *A. Einstein* (linearity of time -- it's relative to space and speed), *S. Freud* (conscious will is influenced not only by reason but the unconsciousness that speaks during our dreams and reveals our desires), *W. James* (psychologist, theory of our mind -- operates as a river, 1 idea changes into another on the basis of subjective associations = stream of consciousness) - technology: communication (press, radio, phone, rail, car), synthetic materials, man-made fibres, plastic, X-ray, uranium, engines, electricity - [1920s:] distance, travel, speed, consumption, communication, mechanization → convinced writers that Europe is entering new age **[The Great War 1914-1918]** - crisis of monarchies, growth of national spirit (CZ, Irish State) - new weapons (submarines, planes, poison gas) -- huge devastation, 33 million casualties, 8 million deaths, massive propaganda (the 1^st^ time in history of using media to promote the war) - some writers believed the conflict resulted from technological development *(K. Čapek)* - reception of the War by intellectuals -- Western culture: - **exhausted**, **disintegrated**, **fragmented** - **disillusion** with technical progress - **distrust** to optimism of human progress - **vision of apocalypse** - **rejection** of the 19^th^ c. rationalism and scientific positivism Modernism --------- - war seen as culmination of European decline + new knowledge of reality through science - 19^th^ c. realism (mimesis) = insufficient + rejected → need for experiments, avant-garde - new art aims to convey new reality in a new way #### [Modernism in POETRY] W. Stevens: "poetry is not about a moment; it is the moment" ***IMAGISM*** (1909-1917) - ***Des Imagistes*** (1914) -- an anthology - ***Ezra Pound*** (USA)*, **R. Aldington**, **A. Lowell**, **W. C. Williams*** (USA) - wanted to recreate in the text the moment of experience, direct treatment of the subject - poetry should not be about some story, but it should recreate that moment *W.C. WILIAMS: This is Just to Say; The Red Wheelbarrow* - inspired by Japanese style of *haiku*; associations with our experience -- designed to evoke our emotions - the taste of cold plums, 'so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow' #### [Modernism in PROSE] [19^th^ c. Realism:] large panoramas, omniscient narrator, detail, closed ends, narrative dimension [20^th^ c. Modernism:] decay and disintegration of western culture - plotlessness, open endings, multiple narrators, collage, experiment with time (subjective perception) - focus on psychology -- **stream of consciousness** - people feel lonely, helpless, trapped in stagnation (moving in circles rather than making progress), separated from others *(E. Munch: Scream) =* man as a victim of the western world #### James JOYCE (1880-1941) - ***Dubliners** (1914)* - ***The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man** (1916)* - ***Ulysses** (1922)* #### Virginia WOOLF (1882-1941) & (Bloomsbury Gr.) - ***Mrs. Dalloway** (1925)* - ***To the Lighthouse** (1927)* - ***Orlando** (1928)* #### D. H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930) - from family of coal miners - continued in realistic style of narrative (no stream of consciousness); influenced by Sigmund Freud - ***Sons and Lovers*** *(1913)* - ***Rainbow** (1915)* - ***Lady Chatterley's Lover** (1928)* Realists believed that real things have physical properties (objective) = the opposite of Plato (only ideal things = imaginations are real) x Modernists believed that real can be even subjective associations, opinions, memories, moods, spirituality, feelings... ### Early 20^th^ century writing (1900-1920): MODERNISM - Edward VII ruled 1901-1910 → George V ruled 1910-1936 - release of Victorian conservatism - revolution in our knowledge (science -- Einstein, Freud, James; technology -- radio, phone, electricity) - modern life: communication (press, radio, rail, car), 1920s speed and distance travelling - [1914-18: The Great War] - crisis of monarchies, growth of national spirit - some writers believed it resulted from technological development - Western culture: - exhausted, disintegrate, fragmented - disillusion (with technical progress) - distrust (to optimism of human progress) - vision of apocalypse - rejection (of the 19^th^ c. rationalism and scientific positivism) #### POETRY - war = culmination of European decline + new knowledge of reality through science - new art aims to convey new reality in a new way - ***IMAGISM (US: E. POUND, W. C. WILLIAMS; UK: R. ALDINGTON, A. LOWELL): Des Imagistes*** - poetry should not be about some story but should recreate that moment - ***T. S. ELIOT: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; The Waste Land; Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats*** #### PROSE - decay and disintegration of western culture → man as a victim of the western world - plotlessness, open endings, multiple narrators, collage, experiment with time (subjective) - stream of consciousness -- focus on psychology - ***James JOYCE: Dubliners; The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses*** - ***Virginia WOOLF: Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse; Orlando; The Mark on the Wall*** - ***D. H. LAWRENCE: Sons and Lovers; Rainbow; Lady Chatt