English Literature PDF

**ENGLISH LITERATURE** **I. THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD** **A. Historical Background** 1. The beginning of English Literature appeared in 7^th^ or 8^th^ century AD. After the Romans withdrew their troops from Britain in 410, there followed a long period of social unrest, war and turbulenc...

**ENGLISH LITERATURE** **I. THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD** **A. Historical Background** 1. The beginning of English Literature appeared in 7^th^ or 8^th^ century AD. After the Romans withdrew their troops from Britain in 410, there followed a long period of social unrest, war and turbulence. 2. The Britons were forced to defend themselves alone against **Picts** and **Scots** from Scotland. Then, from the European continent came the **Angles, Saxons,** and **Jutes (about AD 428).** 3. The Anglo-Saxons were tall and fair-haired people who wore breastplate called "bymies," sometimes adorned with gold, their helmets were covered with figures or boars, heads or other decoration and they fought with sword and spears or with bows and arrows. They plundered city after city. When this society became established, English literature began. 4. **Augustine** was sent by Pope Gregory to convert the British to Christianity. He established the center of learning and scholarship of all Western Europe. **B. Old English Literature** 1. **The Venerable Bede** (673?-735), a monk, was the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholar who wrote the "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation." 2. **Alfred the Great** (848?-899) wrote in his native tongue and encouraged scholarly translation from Latin into Old English (Anglo-Saxon). It was probably during his time that the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' was begun. 3. **Beowulf** is the most notable example of the earliest English poetry, which blends Christianity and paganism. - Beowulf is written in Old English, the source of Modern English - The story of 'Beowulf' takes place in lands other than England; but the customs and manners described were those of the Anglo-Saxon people. This epic poem describes their heroic past. It tells of Beowulf's three fierce fights with the monster Grendel, the equally ferocious mother of Grendel, and the fiery dragon. By conquering them, Beowulf saves his people from destruction. - Old English poems, such as 'The battle of Brunanburg' and 'The Battle of Maldon,' are heroic, while "The Wanderer' and 'The Sea-Farer' have a sad and pleasing lyric quality. 4. **Caedmon** (7^th^ century) was unlearned cowherd. According to legend, he was inspired by a vision and miraculously acquired the gift of poetic song. Unfortunately, only nine lines by this first known poet survive. 5. **Cynewulf** (8^th^ century) signed his poems in a kind of cypher, or anagram, made up of ancient figures called **runes**. His poems, such as 'Christ', deal with religious subjects. **II. MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD** **A. Historical Background** 1. **Harold II**, last the Anglo-Saxon kings, was killed in the Battle of Hastings on Oct. 14, 1066. **William the Conqueror** crossed to England from the North of France, overcame the English King Harold and assumed the kingship. 2. The **Norman Conquest** greatly changed English Life. The Normans wiped out the English ruling class. They destroyed vernacular English; purged and purified monasteries; emphasized knowledge of Latin; and gave England a new architectural novelty - the castle. 3. Frenchmen filled all positions of power. The Old English language went untaught and was spoken only by "unlettered" people. The language of the nobility and of the law courts was Norman French; the language of the scholar was Latin. This situation lasted for nearly 300 years. 4. **Age of Chivalry** -- Chivalry came into being, fed by the greatest Crusades. The Tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were a result of this movement. Chivalry was closely connected with feudal obligations, with the church and with social relation between men and women. 5. Education flourished; and the first universities, **Oxford and Cambridge,** were founded in the 12^th^ century. **B. Medieval Literature** 1. **Pearl Poet** (14^th^ century) is generally remembered for his narrative poem 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.' - **Sir Gawain** is considered the best example of the romance. - Romances are considered the most popular literary form of the Middle Ages. Gawain is knightly adventures and courtly love. 2. **Geoffrey Chaucer** (1340?-1400) was one of the world's greatest storytellers. - His 'Canterbury Tales' is a masterpiece, with characters, who remain eternally alive: the Wife of Bath, with her memories of five husbands; the Noble Knight; returned from heroic deeds; his gay young son; the Squire; the delightful Prioress; and entertaining scoundrels, such as the Friars, Summoner, and Pardoner. - He chose a religious pilgrimage as the frame story of the richest portrayal of medieval men and women. - He directed satire to the worldliness of the bishops and abbots and the corruptness of friars and pardoners. 3. **Sir Thomas Malory** wrote 'Le Morte d'Arthur', a collection of stories about King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table culled from Arthurian legends. 'Le Morte d' Arthur' was the main source for later retelling of the stories. 4. **Middle English Drama** - Drama began with the impersonation or dramatization of passages from the liturgy of the resurrection and the nativity of Christ. - **Miracle and mystery** plays began as celebration of traditional religious feasts and fasts. - They were first produced in the Latin language and staged inside the Church. - By the 14^th^ century, whole "cycles' of short plays were performed on certain feast days of the Church -- the plays were based closely on the narratives of the Bible, hence they are called **miracle plays**. - **Morality plays** were also popular at the end of the Middle English period. They dramatized the typical content of a homily or a sermon. They usually personified such abstraction as Health, Death, or the Seven Deadly Sins and offered practical instruction in morality. - **Everyman** is regarded as the best of the morality plays. It talks about Everyman facing **Death.** He summons the help of all is friends but only Good Deeds is able to help him. Characters in this morality plays are personifications of abstraction like Everyman, Death, Fellowships, Cousins, Kindred, Goods, Good Deeds, etc. 5. **English and Scottish ballads** were sung by people at social gatherings. They preserved the local events, beliefs and characters in an easily remembered form. One familiar ballad is 'Sir Patrick Spens', which concerns Sir Patrick's death by drowning. **III. THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD** A. **Historical Background** 1. **Renaissance** swept Western Europe in the 15^th^ Century. The word means "rebirth" and refers especially to the revival of ancient Greek learning 2. The invention of printing through movable types (Gutenberg) kindled a new spirit of inquiry and hastened the overthrow of feudal institution. 3. In England, the Renaissance coincided roughly with the reigns of the **Tudors** -- Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth I. Under Elizabeth brilliant rule, England became a world power. 4. For England, the year 1485 is a convenient date for making this change from medievalism. In that year, two significant events took place: the Wars of the Roses ended on Bosworth Field and William Caxton printed Malory's 'Le Morte d' Arthur'. 5. The gradual broadening of human knowledge during this period is often referred to as the **revival of learning**. The individual liberated himself/herself from the bonds of feudalism and other rigid institutions of the Middle Ages. 6. The **Reformation** changed the interpretation of the relation of the individual Christian to Church and to God. 7. The **Humanist** labored to make the ancient classics prevail. They not only emphasized the importance of beauty and perfection in art, but they also preached the Greek ideals of a well-rounded life that is trained in both the body and the intellect. **B. English Renaissance Literature** 1. **Christopher Marlowe** (1564-93) died at 29 when he was stabbed in a tavern brawl. A line from his own **'Doctor Faustus'** in his best epitaph: "Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight. - His plays, such as 'Tamburlaine' (1587?) and 'Doctor Faustus' (1588?), brought passion and tragedy onto the stage. - **Dr. Faustus** powerfully exemplifies the sum total of the intellectual aspiration of the Renaissance 2. **Edmund Spenser** (1552?-99) left an unfinished work entitled **'The Faerie Queene'** (1589-96) which is considered his masterpiece. - ***"The Faerie Queene"*** is an elaborate allegory built on the story of a 12-day feast honoring the Queen of Fairy Land (Elizabeth I). - Each verse in the Spenserian stanza contains nine lines: eight line of [iambic] [pentameter], with five feet followed by a single line of iambic [hexameter], an "[alexandrine], with six. The rhyme scheme of these lines is "**ababbcbcc**." 3. **William Shakespeare** is the greatest genius of the Elizabeth Age (1564-1616). He wrote more than 35 plays as well as 154 sonnets and 2 narrative poems ('Venus and Adonis', 1593; 'The Rape of Lucrece', 1594) - He is a genius at characterization; he immortalized the noble and yet disturbed Hamlet; Pathetic Ophelia; wise Portia; ambitious Macbeth; witty Rosalind; villainous Lago; and dainty Ariel. - His sonnets, also known as the Elizabeth sonnets, are composed of three quatrains and one heroic couplet with the rhyme scheme -- **abab-cdcd-efef-gg** 4. **Ben Johnson** (1573?-1637) was a contemporary of Shakespeare. His comedy was strictly patterned after the structure of the Greek masters'. - '**Volpone'** (1606?) is a comical and sarcastic portrait of a wealthy but selfish old man who keeps his greedy would-be heirs hanging on his wishes, each thinking that he will inherit Volpone's wealth. 5. **The King James Bible** is one of the supreme achievements of the English Renaissance. This translation was ordered by James I and made by 47 scholars working in cooperation. It was published in 1611 and is known as the Authorized Version. It is rightly regarded as the most influential book in the history of English civilization. 6. **Characteristics of the Period** - There was a marvelous increase in the production and quality of English literature. - Poets took up new views, beautified them, and sang of them in their lyrics. - Writers wrote in praise of peace, of springtime and above all heavenly and earthly love. - The sonnet became the most favorite lyric poem. The sonnet is a 14-line iambic pentameter poem. - English prose also made a distinct advance during this period, but writers of Elizabethan prose concentrated on style. - **Melodrama and sensationalism** appeared in writing done by such dramatist as John Webster (1580?-1625?) Thomas Middleton (1570?-1627), and John Ford (1586-1640?). These playwrights took such liberties with their subjects and with the language. - In 1642, the **Puritan reformers** controlling London ordered that the theaters be closed. - They did not reopen officially until the Restoration. **IV. THE 17^th^ CENTURY** 1. *The 17^th^ century* is sometimes been called an **Age of Transition**; sometimes an A**ge of Revolution.** 2. Oliver Cromwell ruled England. The national pride of Englishmen lessened as the crown lost dignity through the behavior to show its power. 3. A new middle class began to show its power. 4. The **Age of Exploration** and scientific investigation reigned. **B. Literature of the 17^th^ Century** 1. **The 17^th^ century** was an age of prose. Interest in scientific detail and leisurely observation marked the prose of the time. This new writing style emphasized clarity, directness, and economy of expression. It first appeared just before 1600 in the **'Essays'** of Bacon. 2. **Francis Bacon** was a famous English essayist, lawyer, philosopher and statesman who had a major influence on the philosophy of science. Philosophically, Bacon sought to purge the mind of what he called "idols," or tendencies to error. 3. **John Bunyan** wrote the prose masterpiece of the century **'The Pilgrims Progress'** (1678) 4. **John Milton** (1608-74) was the great poet of the first half of the century. - He was a Puritan who served Cromwell as Latin secretary. - Milton's greatest early poem is "Lycidas' (1638), a lament on the death of a college friend. - He dedicated his masterpiece, 'Paradise Lost' (1667), to his daughters. This is an epic poem telling of the fall of the angels and of the creation of Adam and Eve and their temptation by Satan in the Garden of Eden ('Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree..."). It is written in blank verse of great solemnity. - Paradise Regained (1671) is Milton's sequel to "Paradise Lost." - Milton's last work is a blank-verse tragedy in the ancient Greek manner. It deals with the story of Samson and Delilah. 'Samsom Agonistes' (1671) is in many ways Milton's allegorical description of himself as a Samson bound in chains by his enemies, the followers of King Charles II. 5. **John Donne** (1573-1631) was the greatest of the metaphysical poets. - **Metaphysical Poetry** makes use of conceits that is, of farfetched similes and metaphors intended to startle the reader into an awareness of the relationships among things ordinarily not associated. - Donne's chief subject was love as it perfects man. He never treated the subject profanely. He drew from diverse sources as theology, myth, sciences, folklore, geography, war and court litigation. - He was occasionally earthly, but only because he recognized that man is a creature who must love in a natural way. - His poem 'The Extasy' is a celebration of sacramental love. His prose is as rich as his poetry; but nothing matches the mastery of such poetry as his 'Hymne' to God My God, in my Sicknesse. 6. **George Herbert** (1593-1633), like Donne, was both metaphysical poet and an Anglican priest. Some of Herbert's most effective poetry deals with man's thirst for God and with God's abounding love. Herbert's collection, 'The Temple' (1633), was published posthumously (he probably did not intend his poetry to be published). 7. **Andrew Marvell** (1621-78), **Richard Crashaw** (1612?-49) and **Henry Vaughan** (1622-?) were other metaphysical poets of merit. Most easily understood perhaps, is Marvell, a well-loved lyric 'To His Coy Mistress'. 8. **Cavalier Poetry** is written with a sense of elegance and in a style which emphasized charm and the delicate play of words and ideas. Chief among the Cavalier group were Thomas Carew (1595?-1639), Richard Lovelace (1618-58), Sir John (1609-?) and Robert Herrick (1591-1674). 9. **John Dryden** (1631-1700) wrote such poem as 'Absalom and Achitophel' (1681-82) and 'Alexander's Feast' (1697), which established his superiority in both satire and lyric. He was also the leading dramatist, writing both comedy ('Marriage-a-la-Mode', 1673; 'The King Keeper', 1680) and tragedy ('Aureng-Zebe', 1676) of great popularity. His translation of Virgil's Aeneid is still widely read for its poetry alone. **V. THE 18^TH^ CENTURY: AGE OF REASON** **A. Historical Background** 1. The 18^th^ century celebrated the excellence of the human mind. 2. Many people of the time thought they were passing through a golden period similar to that of the Roman emperor **Augustus**. For this reason, the name "Augustan" was given to the early 18^th^ century. The century has also been the **Age of Enlightenment**. Many writers of the era used ancient Greek and Roman authors as models of style. Hence, the period literature is often described as **neoclassic.** 3. Scientific discoveries were encouraged. Many important inventions for example, the spinning jenny, the power loom, and the steam engine brought about an industrial society. 4. Cities grew in size, and London began to assume its present position as a great industrial and commercial center. 5. In addition to a comfortable life, the members of the middle class demanded a respectable moralistic art that was controlled by common sense. They reacted in protest to the aristocratic immoralities in much of the Restoration literature. **B. The 18^th^ Century Literature** 1. **Joseph Addison** and **Richard Steele** began modern essay in two periodicals, ***The Spectator*** (1711-12), and ***The Tatler*** (1709-11). Their essays appealed to the middle classes in the coffeehouse rather than to the nobility in their palaces. 2. **Jonathan Swift** (1667-1745) is one of the great prose writers of all time. - Although born in Ireland, Swift always said that he was an Englishman. His defense of the Irish people against the tyranny of the English government, however, was whole-hearted. As much as he may have disliked Ireland, he disliked injustice and tyranny more. - **'A Modest Proposal'** (1729), is a bitter pamphlet where he ironically suggested that Irish babies be specially fattened for profitable sale as meat, since the English were eating the Irish people anyhow, by heavy taxation. - '**Gulliver's Travels** (1726) is a satire on human folly and stupidity. Swift said that he wrote it to vex the world rather than to divert it. Most people, however, are so delightfully entertained by the tiny Lilliputians and by the huge Brobdingnagians that they do not bother much with Swift's bitter satire on human pettiness or rudity. 3. **Alexander Pope** (1688-1744) published an exposition of the rules of the classical school in the form of a poem 'An Essay on Criticism" in 1711. - **'The Dunciad'** (1728) lists the stupid writers and men of England by name as dunces. These "dunces" proceeded to attack Pope in kind. - Pope excelled in his ability to coin unforgettable phrases. Such as lines as "fools rush in where angels fear to tread' or "damn with faint praise" illustrate why Pope is the most quoted poet in English literature except for Shakespeare. - '**The Rape of the Lock'** (1712) mockingly describes a furious fight between two families when a young man snips off a lock of the beautiful Belinda's hair. The poem is a mock-epic depicting humorous indictment of the vanities and idleness of {.smallcaps}th-century high society. Basing his poem on a real incident among families of his acquaintance, Pope intended his verses to cool hot tempers and to encourage his friends to laugh at their own folly. 4. **Henry Fielding** (1707-54) was assumed by 'Pamela' and parodied it in **'Joseph Andrews'** (1742), which purports to be the story of Pamela's brother. - Seven years later he wrote **'Tom Jones'** (1749), one of the greatest novels in English literature. It tells the story of a young founding who is driven from his adopted home, wanders to London, and eventually, for all his suffering, wins his lady. 5. **Laurence Sterne** (1713-68) wrote 'Tristram Shandy' (1760-67), a collection of episodes with little organization but a wealth of 18^th^-century humor. 6. **Oliver Goldsmith** (1728-74) wrote one of the best plays ("She Stoops to Conquer," 1773), one of the best poems ('The Deserted Village', 1770), and one of the best novels ('The Vicar of Wakefield', 1766) of the latter half of the 18^th^ century. **VI. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND** **A. Romanticism** 1. The most important tenets of Romanticism were belief in the importance of the individual, imagination and intuition. 2. The Romanticist believed that all humans deserve the treatment to which human beings are by nature entitled. Every human has a right to **life, liberty,** and **equal opportunity.** 3. The main tenets of Romanticism included a shift faith in reason to faith in the senses, feelings, imagination; from interest in urban society and its sophistication to an interest in the rural and natural; from public, impersonal poetry to subjective poetry; and from concern with scientific and mundane to interest in the mysterious and infinite. 4. Because of the concern for nature and the simple folk, authors began to take an interest in old legends, folk ballads, antiquities, ruins, "noble savages," and rustic characters. - Many writers started to give more play to their senses and to their imagination. - Their pictures of nature became livelier and more realistic. - They loved to describe rural scenes, graveyards, majestic mountains, and roaring waterfalls. - They also liked to write poems and stories of such eerie or supernatural things as ghosts, haunted castles, fairies, and mad folk. **B. Pre- Romantic Writers** - His nature lyrics are tenderly beautiful ('To a Mountain Daisy'); His sentimental songs are sung wherever young or old folks gather ('Auld Lang Syne', 'Flow Gently Sweet Afton'). His rich humor can still be felt in "Tam o' Shanter', 'To a Louse', and 'The Cotter's Saturday Nights.' 2\. **Mary Wollstonecraft** (1759 -- 97), wrote 'Vindication of the Rights of Women' (1792) which was one of the first feminist books in all literature. 3\. **Gothic** **Schools** wrote stories of terror and imagination. Representative novels are 'The Castle of Otranto' (1764), by Horace Walpole (1717 -- 97); 'The Mysteries of Udulpho' (1794) by Ann Radcliffe (1764 -- 1823); and 'The Monk' (1796), by Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775 -- 1818). All these novels are filled with the machinery of sensationalism unreal characters, supernatural events, and overripe imagination. 4\. **Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley** -- (1787 -- 1851) followed Gothic tradition in her 'Frankenstein' (1818). **C. The Romanticists** 1. **William Blake** (1757 -- 1827) was both poet and artist. He did not only write books, but also illustrated and printed them. Many of his contemporaries thought him insane because his ideals were unusual. He devoted his life to freedom and universal love. - He was interested in children and animals the most innocent of God's creatures. As he wrote in **'Songs of Innocence'**(1789): *When the voices of children are heard on the green,* *And laughing is heard on the hill,* *My heart is at rest within my breast,* *And everything else is still.* - He also wrote 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' which attacks hypocrisy, and 'Song of Experience,' which present a somber world, one that is sick and diseased by lust and greed, with nature replaced by churches, factories and ale-houses. 2. **Samuel Taylor Coleridge** (1772 -- 1834) put more wonder and mystery into beautiful melodic verse than did. The strange, haunting supernaturalism of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Christabel (1816) have universal and irresistible appeal. 3. **William Wordsworth** (1770 -- 1850), together with Coleridge brought out a volume of verse 'Lyrical Ballads' (1798), which signaled the beginning of English Romanticism. Wordsworth found beauty in the realities of nature, which he vividly reflects in the poems. "The World is Too Much with Us," "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways,' and "She was a Phantom of Delight. 4. **Charles Lamb** (1775- 1834) wrote playful essay "The Dissertation Upon a Roast Pig' (1822). He also rewrote many of Shakespeare's plays into stories for children in 'Tales from Shakespeare' (1807). 5. **Sir Walter Scott** (1771 -- 1832) wrote poems and novels. 'The Lady of the Last Minstrel' (1805) and 'The Lady of the Lake' (1810) are representative of Scott's poems. Between 1814 and 1832, Scott wrote 32 novels which include 'Guy Mannering' (1815) and 'Ivanhoe' (1819). 6. **Jane Austen** (1775 -- 1817) was a gifted writer of realistic novels, but who experienced difficulty finding a publisher for her skillfully drawn portraits of English middle-class people. 'Pride and Prejudice' (1813) is her best-known work. - 1. **George Gordon Byron** (1788 -- 1824) was an outspoken critic of the evils of his time. He hoped for human perfection, but his recognition of man's faults led him frequently to despair and disillusionment ('Manfred', 1817; 'Cain', 1821) - Much of his works are satires, bitterly contemptuous of human foibles ('Don Juan', 1819-24). His narrative poems ('The Corsair', 1814; "Mazeppa', 1819), about wild and impetuous persons, brought him success. - Other poems include: "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, "She Walks in Beauty," and "The Prisoner of Chillon". 2. **Percy Bysshe Shelley** (1792-182) was the black sheep of well-to-do, conservative family. Sonnets, songs, and poetic dramas flowed from his pen in the last four years of his life. - Shelley and Keats established the romantic verse as a poetic tradition of the period. - Many of his works are profound and meditative ('Prometheus Unbound', 1820). Others are exquisitely lyrical and beautiful ('The Cloud', 'To a Skylark', 'Ode to the West Wind'). 'Adonais' (1821), his tribute to Keats, ranks among the greatest elegies. - In "Ode to the West Wind," Shelley shows an evocation of nature wilder and more spectacular than Wordsworth described it. 3. **John Keats** (1795- 1821) believed that true happiness was to be found in art and natural beauty ('Ode on a Grecian Urn', 1819; 'Ode to a Nightingale', 1819). His verses are lively testimony to the truth of his words in 'Endymion'(1818) *A thing of beauty is a joy forever:* *Its loveliness increases; it will never* *Pass into nothingness* - Keats's mood, varying from rapture to melancholy, from meditation to fantastic gaiety, shows unfailing good taste and restraints and a classic sense of form. - His "Ode to a Nightingale "spoke of what Keats called "negative capability" describing it as the moment of artistic inspiration when the poet achieved a kind of self-annihilation arrived at the trembling, delicate perception of beauty. **VII. THE ENGLISH VICTORIAN AGE** **A. Historical Background** 1. The literature written during Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901) has been given the name Victorian. 2. In 1833, Great Britain abolished slavery in the colonies. 3. Choosing the members of the parliament placed powers in the hands of the voters, in 1834. 4. Many great changes took place in the first half of the 19^th^ century. Intellectual rebellions, such as those of Byron and Shelley, gave place to balance and adjustment. Individualism began to be replaced by social and governmental restraints. 5. Science made rapid strides in the 19^th^ century. The theory of evolution gave new insights into the biological sciences. 6. Technical progress transformed Britain into a land of mechanical and industrial activity. Old ideas of faith and religion were put to serious tests by the new attitudes brought about by scientific progress. 7. With progress, population doubled; poverty and discontentment increased. **B. Major Victorian Poets** -- shifted from extremely personal expression (or subjectivism) of the Romantic writers to an objective surveying of the problems of human life. 1. **Alfred Tennyson** (1809- 92) reflects his age especially in his idealism and his devotion to rather formal virtue. He wrote seriously with high moral purpose. - **'Idylls of the King'** (1859) is a disguised study of ethical and social condition. **'Locksley Hall'** (1842), **'In Memoriam'** (1850), and **'Maud'** (1855) deal with conflicting scientific and social ideas. - Much of Tennyson's poetry, however, can be read without worrying about such problems. His narrative skill makes many of his poems interesting just as stories. For example, each of the Arthurian tales in **'Idylls of the King'** brings the reader a wealth of beauty and experience. 'The Lady of Shalott' and 'The Death of Oenone' are pleasing tales to young readers. 2. **Elizabeth Barrett Browning** (1806-61) wrote the most exquisite love poems of her time in 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' (1850). These lyrics were written secretly while Robert Browning was courting her. - She combines religious fervor with deep classical learning. - Her best poems are often touched with mysticism and intense emotions. 3. **Robert Browning** (1812-89) is best remembered for his dramatic monologues. 'My Last Duchess' (1842), 'Fra Lippo Lippi' (1855), and 'Andrea del Sarto' (1855) are excellent examples. - The stirring rhythm of 'How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix' (1845) and the simple wonder of 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin" (1842) endear Browning to readers. - He was more interested in the emotions of the individual rather than in universal law. - He analyzed the complexity of human life and delighted so much in the analysis of motives. 4. **Matthew Arnold** (1822-88) wrote poetry marked by an intense seriousness and classic restrains. - His elegiac poems on the death of his father, Dr. Thomas Arnold ('Rugby Chapel', 1867) and his friend Arthur Hugh Clough ('Thyrsis', 1867) are profound and moving. - His interest in the problems of making Englishmen aware of higher values of life caused him to quit writing poetry and turn to critical prose. As a critic, he drove his ideas home with clarity and force. 5. **The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood** is a group of painters and poets who rebelled against the sentimental and the commonplace. - They wished to revive the artistic standards of the time before the Italian painter Raphael. - Their poems are full of mystery and pictorial language. One member was **Dante Gabriel Rossetti** (1828-82) his 'Blessed Damozel' (1850) and 'Sister Helen' (1870) are typical of highly sensuous verse. - **Christina Georgina Rossetti** (1830-94), Gabriel's sister, wrote one of the most fanciful poems in the language, 'Goblin Market' (1862). **C. Victorian Novelist** 1. **Charles Dickens** (1812-70) became a master of local, as in 'The Pickwick Papers' (1836-37). Few of his novels have convincing plots, but in characterization and in the creation of moods he was outstanding. By 1850, Dickens had become England's best-loved novelist. His works include: Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol 2. **William Makepeace Thackeray** (1811-63) produced a different type of novel. He was not a reformer, as Dickens was. - He attempted to see the whole of life, detached and critically. - He disliked sham, hypocrisy, stupidity, false optimism, and self-seeking. The result was **satire on manners**. Literature would be a poorer without 'Vanity Fair' (1847-48) and its heroine, Becky Sharp. 3. **Charlotte Bronte (**1818-1855), **Emily Bronte** (1818- 1848) **Anne Bronte** (1820- 1849) wrote **Jane Eyre** and **Wuthering Heights.** 4. **Anthony Trollope** (1815 -- 1882) dealt with middle- and upper-class people interestingly, naturally, and wittily ('Orley Farm', 1862). 5. **George Eliot (Marry Ann Evans)** (1819-80) was one of England's greatest women novelists. In 'Silas Mariner' (1816) and 'Middlemarch" (1871-72), she used the novel to interpret life. **D. Birth of the Psychological Novel** 1. **George Meredith** (1828- 1909) was one of the first to apply psychological methods to the analysis of his characters. For the average reader, the brilliance of such novels as 'the Ordeal of Richard Feverel' (1859) and 'The Egoist' (1879) are obscured by the absence of plot and the subtleties of the language. 2. **Thomas Hardy** (1840-1928) brought to fiction a philosophical attitude that resulted from the new science. - He believed that the more science studies the universe, the less evidence is found for an intelligent guiding force behind it. - In a series of great novel, from 'The Return of the Native' (1878) to 'Judge the Obscure' (1895), Hardy sought to show how futile and senseless in man's struggle against the forced of natural environment, social convention, and biological heritage. 3. **Samuel Butler** (1835- 1902) also looked into the scientific controversies of his day. - He believed that evolution is the result of the creative will rather than of chance selection. - He wrote a novel about relation of parents to children 'The Way of All Flesh' (1903) - The point of the story, made with irony, is that family restrains the free development of the child. **E. Romance and Adventures** 1. **Robert Louis Stevenson** (1850-94) wrote stories in a light mood. His novels of adventures are exciting and delightful: "Treasure Island' (1883), 'Kidnapped' (1886), and 'The Master of Ballantrae' (1889) - 2. **Rudyard Kipling** (1865 -- 1936) glamorized the Foreign Service and satirized the English military and administrative classes in India. He stirred the emotions of the empire lovers through his delightful children's tales. He is known for 'Barrack Room Ballads' (1892), 'Soldiers Three' (1888), 'The Jungle Books' (1894, 1895), and 'Captains Courageous' (1897). 3. **Lewis Caroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson**) (1832-98) combines fantasy and satire in 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' (1865). **F. 19^th^ Century Drama** 1. **Oscar Wilde** (1854- 1900) is a poet and novelist who wrote several fine plays. His 'Importance of Being Earnest' (1895) is brittle in its humor and clever in its dialogue and is probably the best of his dramas. 2. **George Bernard Shaw** (1856-1950) wrote plays that read even better than they act. They are important for their prefaces, sizzling attacks on Victorian prejudices and attitudes. - Shaw began to write drama as a protest against existing conditions slums, sex hypocrisy, censorship, and war. Because his plays were not well received, Shaw wrote their now famous prefaces. - Shaw has the longest career of any writer who ever lives. He began in the Victorian Age and wrote until 1950. **VIII. MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE** **A. Historical Background** 1. With new inventions upsetting old ways, it became increasingly difficult to find order or pattern in life. People began to talk of the "machine age" and to ask whether it was wholly good. Could man trust science to bring about a better life? 2. Psychologists explored the mind and advanced varied and conflicting theories about it. Human behavior was no longer easily explainable. 3. The new sciences of anthropology and sociology contributed to the upheaval of ideas. Religious controls and social conventions again were challenged. 4. Naturally, there were changes in literary taste and forms. Old values were replaced by new values or were lost. Literature became pessimistic and experimental. **B. Modern English Literature** 1. **Early 20^th^-Century Prose** - **John Galsworthy** (1867-1933) depicted the social life of an upper-class English family in 'The Forstyle Saga' (1922), a series of novels which records the changing values of such a family. Galsworthy also wrote serious social plays, including 'Strife" (1909) and 'Justice (1910). - **H.G Wells** (1866- 1946) wrote science fiction like 'The Time Machine' (1895), 'The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The War of the Worlds (1989. He also wrote social and political satires criticizing the middle-class life of England. An example of which is "Tono-Bungay' (1909), a satire on commercial advertising. - **Joseph Conrad** (1857) wrote such remarkable novels as 'The Nigger of the Narcissus' (1898) and "Lord Jim' (1900). The scenes, chiefly of a wild and turbulent sea, are exotic and exciting. The characters are strange people beset by obsession of cowardice, egoism, or vanity. - **E.M Forster** (1879-1970) is a master of traditional plot. His characters are ordinary persons out of middle-class life. They are moved by accident because they do not know how to choose a course of action. He is famous for 'A Passage to India' (1924), a splendid novel of Englishmen in India. **2. Early 20^th^ Century Poetry** - **A.E. Housman** (1859-1936) was an anti-Victorian who echoed the pessimism found in the Thomas Hardy. In this "Shropshire Lad' (1896) nature is unkind; people struggle without hope or purpose; boys and girls laugh, love, and are untrue. - **Walter de la Mare** (1873-1956) concentrated on the wonder and fancy of the child's world and the fantasy of the world of the supernatural. 'Peacock Pie' (1913) is representative of his verse. As novelist and teller of tales, De la Mare was a super naturalist who believed in the reality of evil as of good. - **William Butler Yeats** (1865- 1936), John Millington Synge (1871 -- 19090, and Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) worked vigorously for the Irish cause. All were dramatist and all helped found the famous Abbey Theatre. **3**. **Impact of World War I** - World War I cut forever the ties with the past, it brought discontent and disillusionment. Men were plunged into gloom at the knowledge that "progress" had not saved world from war. - World War I left its record in literature. Rupert Brooke (1187-1915), who died during the war, has been idealized for what is actually a rather thin performance in poetry. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), also a war casualty, was far more realistic about the heroism and idealism of the soldier. Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) and Edmund Blunden (1896-1974), both survivors of carnage, left violent accounts of the horrors and terrors of war. - In fiction, there was a shift from novels of the human comedy to novels of characters. Fiction ceased to be concerned with a plot or a forward-moving narrative. Instead, it followed the twisted, contorted development of a single character or a group of related characters. **4. Writers after World War I** - **William Somerset Maugham** (1874-1965) wrote 'Of Human Bondage' (1915) which portrays a character who drifts. 'The Moon and Sixpence' (1919), based on the life of the artist Paul Gauguin, continues the examination of the character without roots. 'Cakes and Ale' (1930) shows how the real self is lost between the two masks public and private that every person wears. - **D.H Lawrence** (1885-1930) was a man trying to find himself, trying to be reborn. This tragic, heroic search is reflected in his curious novels about the secret sources of human life. The records of his search and torment are his great novels 'Sons and Lovers' (1913) and "Women in Love'. - **James Joyce.** (1882-1941) was searching for the secret places in which the real self is hidden. He believed he had found the way to it through human vocal language. To him, language was the means by which the inner, or subconscious, feeling gained expression. Civilized man tries to control his spoken language in writing; he could let his language flow freely. If one could capture this free flow of language in writing, he would have the secret of man's nature, thus, was born **stream of consciousness**, a technique that has been employed in much contemporary literature. "Ulysses" (1922), vast, rambling accounts of 24 hours in the lives of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, was banned in some countries but has nevertheless greatly influenced modern fiction. - **Virginia Woolf** (1882-1941) also believed that reality, or consciousness, is a stream. Life for both reader and characters is immersion of that stream. 'Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and 'To the Lighthouse' (1927) are among her best works. - **Katherine Mansfield** (1888-1923), **Dorothy M. Richardson** (1882-1957), and **Elizabeth Bowen** (1899-1973) also wrote stream of consciousness fiction engrossed with the realities of the mind. - **Aldous Huxley** (1894- 1963) worked with the external world, which he found false, brutal and inhuman. In 'Point Counter Point' (1928), 'Brave New World' (1932), and 'After Many Summers Dies the Swan' (1939), his cynicism reached its peak. 5. **Fiction after the World Wars** - **William Golding** (born (1911) was one of the most significant postwar novelists. His first novel, and the one for which he will probably be best remembered, was 'Lord of the Flies' (1954). This story tells of a group of schoolboys isolated on an island that reverts to savagery. It is an imaginative interpretation of the religious theme of the original sin. - Among Golding's later books are 'Pincher Martin' (1956), 'Rites of Passage' (1980), and 'The Paper Men' (1983) - Goldings was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983 for his novels. - **George Orwell** (1903-50) is word renown, for the powerful anti-Communist satire 'Animal Farm' (1945). This was followed in 1949 with his attack on totalitarianism entitled 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' - **Graham** **Greene** (1904-91) turned increasingly to Christianity. Greene lived to have a career that endured into the 1980s. Among his better-known later novels are 'The Quiet American' (1955), 'Our Man in Havana' (1958), ' A Burnt-Out Case' (1961), 'The Human Factor )1978), and 'Monsignor Quixote'(1982). - **Kingsley Amis** is considered by many to be the best of the writers to emerge from the 1950s. The social discontent he expressed made 'Lucky Jim' a household name in England. - Lucky Jim is the story of Jim Dixon, who rises from a lower-class background only to find all the positions at the top of the social ladder filled. - His later novels include 'That Uncertain Feeling' (1955), 'Take a Girl Like You' (1960), and 'Girl, 20' (1971). His 1984 novel 'Stanley and the Women was virulently antifeminist. His 'The Old Devils' (1986) won the Booker Prize. - While Amis was a realist, he was also a humanist, attempting to put the writer's talent in the service of society 6. **Anthony Burgess** (born 1917) was a novelist whose fictional exploration of modern dilemmas combines wit, moral earnestness, and touches of the bizarre. - 'A Clockwork Orange' (1962) was both comic and violent. - His other novels include 'Enderby Outside' (1968)' Earthly Powers' (1980), The End of the World News' (1983), and 'The Kingdom of the Wicked' (1985) 7. **Doris Lessing** (born 1919) wrote novels concerned with people involved in the social and political upheavals of the 20th century. - Her 'Children of Violence' , a series of five novels, begins with 'Martha Quest' (1952) and ends with a vision of the worlds after nuclear disaster in 'The Four-Gated City' (1969). - In 1979 she began publication of a science-fiction sequence entitled 'Canopus in Argos: Archives'. 8. **Muriel Spark** (born 1918), wrote 'Ballad of Peckham Rye' (1960) and 'The Girls of Slender Means' (1963), which were characterized by humorous fantasy. - Her later books were a sinister nature, including 'The Mandelbaum Gate' (1965), 'The Driver's Seat' (1970), and 'Not to Disturb' (1971). - Her best-known works are Momento Mori (1959) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). - She blended religious thought and sexual comedy in 'The Only Problem' (1984). 9. **Salman Rushdie** wrote and 'Midnight's Children' (1981) and 'The Satanic Verses' (1988) which prompted Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a death threat against him, because Muslims considered the books blasphemous. **\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--END\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--** **AMERICAN LITERATURE** **A. EARLY AMERICAN AND COLONIAL PERIOD to 1776** - American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always song) of Indian cultures. These were no written literature among the more than 500 different Indian languages and tribal cultures that existed in North America before the first Europeans arrived. - Tribes maintained their own religions --worshipping gods, animals, plants sacred persons. System of government ranged from democracies to council of elders to theocracies. These tribal variations enter into the oral literature as well. - Indian stories are characterized by the following: - Reverence for nature as a spiritual as well as physical mother. - Nature is rendered alive and endowed with spiritual mother. - Main characters may be animals or plants, often totems associated with a tribe, group, or individual. - Accounts of migrations and ancestors abound, as do vision or healing song and trickster's tales. - - **B. THE LITERATURE OF EXPLORATION** 1. **Christopher Columbus** the famous Italian explorer, funded by the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabelle, wrote the "**Epistola**," printed in 1943 which recounts his voyages. 2. **Captain John Smith** led the Jamestown colony and wrote the famous story of the Indian maiden, **Pocahontas.** - Whether fact or fiction, the tale is ingrained in the American historical imagination. The story recounts Pocahontas, favorite daughter of Chief Powhatan, saved Captain Smith's life when he was a prisoner of the chief. Later, when the English persuaded Powhatan to give Pocahontas to them as a hostage, her gentleness, intelligence, and beauty impressed the English, and, in 1614, she married John Rolfe, an English gentleman. - The marriage initiated an eight-year peace between the colonist and the Indians, ensuring the survival of the struggling new colony. **C. COLONIAL PERIOD IN NEW ENGLAND** - - - - - - Modest, pious, and hardworking, Taylor never published his poetry, which was discovered only in the 1930's. - He wrote a variety of verse: funeral elegies, lyrics, a medieval "debate," and 500-page modern critics, are the series of short Preparatory Meditations. 4\. **Jonathan** **Edwards** (1703-1758) was molded by his extreme sense of duty and by the rigid Puritan environment, which conspired to make him defend strict and gloomy Calvinism from the forces of liberalism springing up and around him. He is known for his frightening, powerful sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" **D. THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENT** - - Writer, printer, publisher, scientist, philanthropist, and diplomat, he was the most famous and respected private figure of his time. He was the first great self-made in America, a poor democrat born in an aristocratic age that his fine example helped to liberalize. - Franklin's **Autobiography** is, in part, another self-help book. Written to advise his son, it covers section of which are temperance, silence, resolution, industry, sincerity, justice, and moderation. - He was an important figure at the 1887 convention at which the U.S Constitution was drafted. In his later years, he was president of an antislavery association. One of his last efforts was to promote universal public education. 2. **Thomas** **Paine** (1737-1809) is known for his political pamphlets. Thomas Paine's pamphlet **Common Sense** sold over 100, 000 copies in the first three months of its publication. It is still rousing today. "The cause of America is in a great cause of mankind." 3. **Philip** **Freneau** (1752-1832) was the poet of the American Revolution who incorporated the new stirring of European Romanticism in his lyric like 'The Wild Honeysuckle" (1786), which evokes a sweet-smelling native shrub. Not until the "American Renaissance" that began in the 1820s would American poetry surpass the heights that Freneau had scaled 40 years earlier. 4. **Washington** **Irving** (1789 -- 1859) became a cultural and diplomatic ambassador to Europe, like Benjamin Franklin and Nathaniel Hawthorne. - 5. **James Fenimore Cooper** (1789-1851) wrote the Leather Stocking tales in which he introduced his renowned character Natty Bumppo, who embodies his vision of the frontiersman as a gentleman, A Jeffersonian "natural aristocrat." - **Natty Bumppo** is the first famous frontiersman in America literature and the literary forerunner of countless cowboy and backwoods heroes. - He is the idealized, upright individualist who is better than the society he protects. Poor and isolated, yet pure, he is a touchstone for ethical values and prefigures "Herman Melville's Billy Budd and Mark Twain's Huck Finn. - Among her best-known poems is "To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works," which confronts white racism and asserts spiritual equality. - Wheatley was the first to address such issues confidently in verse, as in "On Being Brought from Africa to America." **E. THE ROMANTIC PERIOD (1820 -- 1860)** - - - - - - - **[The Transcendentalist ]** - - - 1. **Ralph Waldo Emerson** (**1803-1882**) had a Romantic belief in intuition and flexibility. - In his essay "Self-Reliance," Emerson remarks; "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - He calls for the birth of American individualism inspired by nature. - Most of his major ideas -- the need for a new national vision -- are suggested in his first publication, ***Nature*** (1836). 2. **Henry David Thoreau** (1817-1862) wrote Walden, or Life in the woods (1854), which was the result of two years, two months, and two days (from 1845 to 1847) he spent living in a cabin, he built at the Walden Pond on property owned by Emerson. - In Walden, Thoreau not only tests the theories of Transcendentalism, he re-enacts the collective American experience of the 19^th^ century: living on the frontier. - He also wrote "Civil Disobedience," with its theory of passive resistance based on the moral necessity for the just individual to disobey unjust laws. This was an inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi's Indian independence movement and Martin Luther King's struggle for lack American's civil rights in the 20^th^ century. 3\. **Walt Whitman** (1819-1892) was a part-time carpenter and man of the people, whose brilliant, innovative work expressed the country's democratic spirit. - Whitman was largely self-taught; he left school at the age 11 to go to work, missing the sort of traditional education that made most American authors respectful imitators of the English. - His Leaves of Grass (1855), which he rewrote and revised throughout his life, contains "Song of Myself," the most stunningly original poem ever written by an American. 4\. **Emily** **Dickinson** (1830-1886) was a radical individualist. She was born and spent her life in Amherst, Massachusetts -- a small Calvinist village. - She loved nature and found deep inspiration in the birds, animals, plants, and changing season of the New England countryside: She Wrote 1, 775 poems but only one was published in her lifetime. - Dickinson's terse, frequently imagistic style is even more modern and innovative than Whitman's. She never uses two words when one will do, and combines concrete things with abstract ideas in an almost proverbial, compressed style. - She sometimes shows a terrifying existential awareness. Like Poe, she explores the dark and hidden part of the mind, dramatizing depth and the grave. - She has an excellent sense of humor, and her range of subjects and treatment is amazingly wide. - Her poems are replete with odd capitalizations and dashes. **[The Brahmin Poets]** 1. **Henry** **Wadsworth** **Longfellow** (1807-1882) was a responsible for the misty, a historical, legendary sense of the past that merged American and European traditions. - - 2. **Oliver Wendell Holmes** (1809-1894) was a physician and professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard. Of the Brahmin poets, he is the most versatile. His works include collections of humorous essay (e.g. The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858), Novels (Elsie Venner, 1861), biographies (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1885), and verses ("The Deacon's Masterpiece, or, The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay.) **[The Romantic Period (1820-1860); Fiction]** 1\. **Nathaniel Hawthorne** (1804-1864) set his stories in Puritan New England. His greatest novel, The Scarlet Letter (1850) has become the classic portrayal of Puritan Americas. - - - - 2\. **Herman Melville** (181901891) went to sea when he was just 19 years old. His interest in sailors' lives grew naturally out of his own experiences, and most of his early novels grew out of his voyages. - - - 3\. **Edgar Allan Poe** (1809-1849) refined the short genre and invented fiction. - - - 4\. **Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883)** epitomized he endurance of the women reformers. - - **5. Harriet Beecher Stowe** (**1811**-**1896**) wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin; Or, Life Among the Lowly which became the most popular American book of the 19^th^ century. Its passionate appeal for an end to slavery in the United States inflamed the debate that, within a decade, led to the U.S Civil war (1816-1865). - - **F. THE RISE OF REALISM (1869-1914)** 1\. **Samuel Clemens** (Mark Twain) (1835-1910) - - - - 2\. **Bret Harte** (**1836**-**1902**) is remembered as a local colorist and author of adventures stories such as "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," set along the western mining frontier. 3\. **Henry James** (**1843-1916**) wrote that art, especially; literary art, "makes life, makes interest, and makes importance." - - 4\. **Edith Wharton (1862-1937)** descended from a wealthy family in New York society and saw firsthand the decline of this cultivated group and, in her view, the rise of boorish, nouveau-riche business families. This social transformation is the background of many of their novels. - - - 5\. **Stephen Crane (1871-1900)** was as journalist who also wrote fiction, essays, poetry, and plays. - - - - 6\. **Jack London (1876-1916)** is a naturalist who set his collection of stories, The Son of Wolf (1900). In the Klondike region of Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. His best-sellers The Call of the Wild (1903) and The Sea-Wolf (1904) made him the highest paid writer in United States of his Time. **7. Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945**) his 1925 work An American Tragedy, explores the danger of the American dream. - - - 8\. **Willa** **Cather** (1837- 1947) grew up on the Nebraska Prairie among pioneering immigrants, later immortalized in O Pioneers! My Antonia (1918), and well-known story "Neighborhood Rosicky" (1928) - - 9\. **Carl Sandburg (1878-1967**) was a poet, historian, biographer, novelist, musician, essayist, but a journalist by profession - - 10\. **Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869)-1935**) is the best U.S poet of the late 19^th^ century. Unlike Master, Robinson uses traditional metrics. Robinson's imaginary Tilbury Town, like Master's Spoon River contains lives of quiet depression. - **G. MODERNISM AND EXPERIMENTAION: 1914-1945** 1\. Many historians have characterized the period between the two world wars as the United States traumatic "coming of age," despite the fact that U.S direct involvement was relatively brief (1917-1918) 2\. John Dos Passos expressed America's postwaqr disillusionment in the novel Three Soldiers (1921), when he noted that civilization was a "vast edifice of sham, and the war, instead of its crumbling, was its fullest and most ultimate expression." 3\. In the postwar "Big Boom," business flourished, and the successful prospered beyond their wildest dreams. The middle-class prospered. 4\. Americans of the "Roaring Twenties" fell in love with other modern entertainments. Dancing, movie going, automobile touring, and radio were national crazes. American women, in particular, felt liberated. 5\. Freudian psychology and to a lesser extent Marxism (like the earlier Darwinian theory of evolution) became popular. 6\. Despite outward gaiety, modernity, and unparalleled material prosperity, young American of the 1920s were "the lost generation" -- so named by literal portraitist Gertrude Stein. Without a stable, traditional structure of values, the individual lost a sense of identity. 7\. The world depression of the 1930s affected most of the population of the United States. Workers lost their jobs, and factories shut down; business and banks failed; farmers, unable to harvest, transport, or sell their crops, could not pay their debts and lost their farms. 8\. In literature - - - **H. POETRY EXPERIMENTS IN FORM** 1. - - *The apparition of these faces in the crowd;\ Petals on a wet, black bough.* 2\. **T.S Eliot (1888-1965**) wrote influential essays and dramas, and championed the importance of literary and social traditions for the modem poet. He received the best education of any major American writer of his generation at Harvard College, the Sorbonne, and Merton College of Oxford University. - - - - 3**. Robert Frost (1874-1963**) read an original work at the inauguration of President John F. Kenney in 1961 that helped spark a national interest I in poetry. - - - - 4\. **Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)** lived in a doubled life, one as insurance business executive, and another as a renowned poet. His associates in the insurance company did not know that he was a major poet. - - - 5\. **William Carlos Williams (1883-1963**) championed the use of colloquial speech; his ear for the natural rhythms of America English helped free America poetry from the iambic meter that had dominated English verse since the Renaissance. - - - 6**. Edward Estlin Cummings** (1894-1962), commonly known as e.e Cummings, wrote attractive, innovative verse distinguished for its humor, grace, celebration of love and eroticism, and experimentation with punctuation and visual format on the page. - - - 7\. **Langston Hughes (1902 0 1967)** was a talented poet of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s - - **I. PROSE WRITING, 1914-1945: AMERICAN REALISM** 1\. **F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940**) is known for his novel The Great Batsby (1925), a brilliantly written, economically structured story about the American dream of the self-made man. - - - 2\. **Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961**) the most popular American novelist of his century. His heroically catches a huge fish devoured by sharks, won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953; the next year he received the Nobel Prize. - - - - - **4. Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)** became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930. - - **5. John Steinbeck (1902-1968)** combines realism with romanticism that finds virtue in proof farmers who live close to the land. - - - - 6**. Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)** lived an outwardly exemplary life, attending Smith College on scholarship, graduating first in her class, and winning a Fulbright grant to Cambridge University in England. - - - - 7\. **Richard Wright (1908-1960)** was born into a poor Mississippi sharecropping family that his father deserted when the boy was five. - - - - - **J. 20^TH^ CENTURY AMERICAN DRAMA** 1\. **Eugene O'Neil (1888-1953**) is the first American Playwright to be honored with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. - - - - - 2\. **Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)** is known for his plays Out Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), and for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) - - 3\. **Arthur Miller (1915**) is New York-born dramatist-novelist-essayist-biographer. 4\. **Tennessee Williams (1911-1983**) focused on disturbed emotions and unresolved sexuality within families -- most of them southern. - - - - **K. THE AFFLUENT BUT ALIENATED 1950s** - - - - - - - - **Significant Writers** 1**. Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994**) is known for his one highly-acclaimed book the Invisible Man (1952). - - - 2\. **Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980)** created fiction organized around a single narrator telling the story from a consistent point of view. - Her first success, the story "flowering Judas" (1929), was asset in Mexico during the revolution. - - Horse, Pale Rider (1939), The leaning Tower (1944), and Collected Stores (1965). - Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. 3\. **Eudora Welty (1909)** was born Mississippi to a well-to-do=-family of transplanted northerners. - - - - 4\. **Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964**) lived a life cut short by lupus, a deadly blood disease. - - - - 5\. **Saul Bellow (1915**) is of Russian-Jewish background. In college he studied anthropology and sociology, which greatly influence his writing even today. - - - - 6\. **J.D Salinger (1919)** achieved huge literary success with the publication of his novel The Cather in the Rye (1951). - - - 7\. **Jack Kerouac (1922- 1969**) was the son of an impoverished French-Canadian family, Jack Kerouac also questioned the values of middle-class life. - - - 8\. **John Barth (1930)** is more interested in how a story is told than itself. Barth entices his audience in a carnal fun-house full of distorting mirrors that exaggerate some feature while minimizing others. - - 9\. **Norman Mailer** **(1923)** follows in the tradition of Ernest Hemingway. His ideas are bold and innovative. - - 10\. **Toni Morrison (1931)** won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993. - - - - - \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--END\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--