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ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
Distanční studijní text
Michaela Weiss
Opava 2019
Obor: Literatura a lingvistika
Klíčová slova: Staroanglická literatura, anglická středověká literatura, Anglické renesanční
drama, Anglická renesanční poezie, Metafyzičtí básníci, Romantismus,
Viktoriánská literatura, Modernismus, poválečná anglická poezie,
próza a drama, současná britská a postkoloniální literatura.
Anotace: V kurzu se studenti seznámí se základními pojmy literární vědy. Výchozím
bodem budou obecná zamyšlení nad literaturou, příbuznostmi a naopak
odlišnostmi literatury od jiných disciplín, nad její povahou a funkcí
a rolí jazyka v literatuře. S pomocí filozofie a lingvistiky se bude analyzovat
proces literární komunikace a různá pojetí autora, čtenáře, literárního
díla a jeho významu. Budou diskutovány pojmy syžetu a fabule,
typologie postav, hlavní žánry a vyprávěcí techniky, tropy a základy poetiky
(rytmus, rým, verš, aliterace a jiné). Bude pojednáno o otázce stylu
a v české literární teorii méně užívaných pojmech, jako jsou např. juxtapozice
a intertextualita. V semináři pak budou všechna tato témata a pojmy
aplikovány na konkrétních textech. Cílem cyklu je poskytnout studentům
dobré literárně teoretické zázemí a současně praktickou výbavu
pro textovou analýzu, kterou budou užívat v návazných literárních semi-
nářích.
Autor: Michaela Weiss
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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Obsah
ÚVODEM............................................................................................................................5
RYCHLÝ NÁHLED STUDIJNÍ OPORY...........................................................................6
1 ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL THE MID 16TH CENTURY..............................7
1.1 OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE..........................................................................8
1.2 MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE ................................................................10
1.3 ENGLISH RENAISSANCE POETRY .............................................................12
1.4 RENAISSANCE DRAMA................................................................................13
2 ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE 18TH TO 20TH CENTURY.....................18
2.1 METAPHYSICAL POETS ...............................................................................19
2.2 BEGINNING OF THE NOVEL........................................................................20
2.3 ROMANTICISM ...............................................................................................23
2.4 VICTORIAN PROSE AND POETRY..............................................................25
2.4.1 GOTHIC FICTION....................................................................................26
2.4.2 VICTORIAN POETRY.............................................................................27
2.5 PROSE AND DRAMA AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY........................29
3 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 20TH
CENTURY ..............................................32
3.1 MODERNISM ...................................................................................................33
3.2 POSTWAR BRITISH PROSE ..........................................................................36
3.3 POSTWAR BRITISH DRAMA........................................................................38
3.4 POSTWAR BRITISH POETRY .......................................................................39
3.5 POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE....................................................................40
SOURCES..........................................................................................................................45
SHRNUTÍ STUDIJNÍ OPORY.........................................................................................46
PŘEHLED DOSTUPNÝCH IKON...................................................................................47
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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ÚVODEM
Vážení studenti,
Vítejte v kurzu Anglická literatura. Tento předmět je zařazen ve studijních plánech mezi
povinné předměty Vašeho bakalářského studijního programu. Pro absolvování tohoto
kurzu se předpokládá úspěšné zvládnutí kurzu Úvod do literatury, v němž se student seznámil
se základní literární terminologií a literárními formami a získal schopnost je aplikovat
na primární literární texty.
Tento studijní materiál obsahuje základní teoretický základ, v němž jsou představeny
zásadní literární směry v kontextu anglické literatury. Kurz je členěn do 3 částí, které chronologicky
mapují zásadní rysy daného období a představují hlavní rysy a představitele daného
literárního proudu. Jeho cílem je nejen podat přehled vývoje anglické literatury, ale
také dále rozvíjet schopnost práce s textem a kritického myšlení.
Vzhledem k obtížnosti samostudia, obzvláště v oblasti literatury, obsahuje každá kapitola
část teoretickou, v nímž jsou vysvětleny a ukázány hlavní rysy daného literárního
směru a představeni zásadní autoři a díla daného období. Každá podkapitola obsahuje kontrolní
otázky, jejich řešení najdete na konci každé kapitoly. V LMS Moodle najdete vybrané
texty, které se k danému tématu vztahují. Součástí těchto textů jsou i otázky k diskuzi. Ty
jsou určeny spíše k zamyšlení a k diskuzi během přímé výuky.
Přeji Vám hodně úspěchů při studiu.
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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RYCHLÝ NÁHLED STUDIJNÍ OPORY
Studijní opora k předmětu Americká literatura představuje dějiny americké literatury od
17. století do současnosti. V popředí zájmu stojí jednak významné literární proudy a jejich
představitelé, jednak politický a kulturní kontext, ve kterém tyto literární proudy vznikly.
Student tak získá nejen znalosti literatury, ale i politického a kulturního kontextu a naučí
se hlouběji vnímat souvislosti mezi literaturou a společenskými vlivy.
Studijní opora je rozdělena do 3 kapitol. Každá kapitola odpovídá jednomu setkání během
přímé výuky. Každá kapitola obsahuje několik podkapitol, které odpovídají jednotlivým
položkám sylabu. První kapitola představuje vývoj anglické literatury od jejích počátků
do konce období renesance.
Druhá kapitola se věnuje období od 18. do počátku 20. století. Zkoumá především zásadní
literární hnutí jako je romantismus, viktoriánská próza a poezie a drama na přelomu
století. Třetí, poslední kapitola se zabývá vývojem anglické literatury po druhé světové
válce až do současnosti. Jednotlivé podkapitoly představují nejvýznamnější básnická hnutí
a dramatickou tvorbu. Nejvíce pozornosti je věnováno vývoji prózy, kde je zahrnuta i postkoloniální
literatura.
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1 ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL THE MID 16TH CEN-
TURY
QUICK OVERVIEW
This chapter introduces major trends and movements in British literature from its beginnings
until mid 17th century. It focuses on essential movements and their representatives
in the context of British history and culture. The main attention will be paid to chief AngloSaxon
literary techniques, genres and texts, as well as the Middle English period, with the
late-medieval work of Geoffrey Chaucer being presented as central to medieval writing in
English. Further emphasis is placed on the period of English Renaissance, introducing the
work of some of the greatest classics of British poetry and drama, e.g., Edmund Spenser
and William Shakespeare. Particular attention will be paid to the development of the English
sonnet.
AIMS
This chapter will
 Introduce variety of forms, genres and writers of the Old English literature
 Address early narrative poetry and language variety of the Middle English writing
 Introduce the drama and poetry of the Renaissance
KEYWORDS
Old English Literature, Middle English literature, Renaissance poetry, Renaissance
drama
ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL THE MID 16TH CENTURY
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1.1 OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE
Anglo-Saxon literature (or Old English literature) includes literature written in Old English,
from the mid-5th century to the Norman Conquest (1066).
Genres: narrative poetry, sermons, religious poetry, chronicles. The most popular and
well-known feature of Old English poetry is the alliterative verse.
DEFINITION – ALLITERATIVE VERSE
Alliterative verse is used in Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry. Each line in the poem
has at least four stressed syllables of alliterative words. Alliterative words are words that
repeat the same sound at the beginning of the words in a line or sentence.
Example:
Alliterative verse in Beowulf
Two poetic figures commonly found in Old English poetry are the Kenning, a type of
metaphor: e.g., in Beowulf, the sea is called “the swan's road,” and Litotes, a dramatic
understatement used by the author for ironic effect.
Old English poetry was predominantly oral, the poets (referred to as the Scops) were
accompanied by musical instruments, such as a harp.
The first manuscript is called the Junius manuscript (also known as the Caedmon
manuscript), which is an illustrated poetic anthology.
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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The second manuscript is called the Exeter Book, also an anthology, located in the Exeter
Cathedral since it was donated there in the 11th century.
The third manuscript is called the Vercelli Book, a mix of poetry and prose; how it came
to be in Vercelli, Italy, no one knows, and is a matter of debate. The fourth manuscript is
called the Nowell Codex, also a mixture of poetry and prose.
Most Old English poets are anonymous; twelve are known by name from medieval
sources, but only four of those are known by their vernacular works to us today with any
certainty: Caedmon, Bede, Alfred, and Cynewulf. Of these, only Caedmon, Bede, and Alfred
have known biographies.
Caedmon is the best-known and considered the father of Old English poetry. He lived
in Whitby in the 7th century. Only a single nine-line poem remains, called Hymn, which is
also the oldest surviving text in English.
The Old English poetry which has received the most attention deals with the Germanic
heroic past. The longest and most important, is Beowulf. It tells the story of the legendary
hero Beowulf. The story is set in Scandinavia, in Sweden and Denmark It has achieved
national epic status, on the same level as Homer’s Iliad.
Other heroic poems:
The Fight at Finnsburh, a retelling of one of the battle scenes in Beowulf (although this
relation to Beowulf is much debated), and
Waldere, capturing the life of Walter of Aquitaine.
Widsith is believed to be very old in parts, dating back to events in the 4th century concerning
the Goths.
The Battle of Brunanburh, which celebrates the victory of King Athelstan over the Scots
and Norse.
Battle of Maldon celebrates Earl Byrhtnoth and his men who fell in battle against the
Vikings in 991.
Poetic devices:
Kenning: a metaphor usually in a form of a compound noun (e.g., “swan-road” for the
sea);
Variation: repetition of a single idea in different words, with each repetition adding a
new level of meaning.
ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL THE MID 16TH CENTURY
10
POINTS TO REMEMBER
Old English literature had originally oral form. It was written down in monasteries. Major
text of this period is Beowulf. Typical features of Old English poetry are: kennings,
alliterative verse, and repetition.
1.2 MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE
The earliest examples of verse romance, a genre that would remain popular through the
Middle Ages, appeared in the 13th century. King Horn and Floris and Blauncheflour both
are preserved in a manuscript of around 1250.
Popular subgenres were:
French Influence: Arthurian romances such as Of Arthur and of Merlin and Ywain and
Gawain;
Roman influence: (tales such as The Seege of Troye and Kyng Alisaunder);
English Breton lays, stories of otherworldly magic, such as Lai le Freine and Sir Orfeo.
However, French romances, notably the Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes,
were more influential than the English ones. In England French romances popularized concepts
of adventure and heroism that significantly differed from Anglo-Saxon heroic. Ideals
of courtly love, defined by elaborate manners and rituals, replaced the heroic code; adventure
and heroism was taken up for a lady rather than to honour the king.
The alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written in the 14th
century,
survived in a manuscript with three other poems: Pearl, Purity, and Patience that were all
written by the same author. Sir Gawain became one of the most influential romances. It
combines the pagan and Christian values. The story consists of two old folk-tales, united
in the form of an Arthurian romance.
The most famous version of the Arturian legend in English was put together by SIR
THOMAS MALORY (d. 1471). His Morte Darthur, edited by William Caxton, was published
in 1485.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER, was at various times a diplomat, and civil servant. His poetry
frequently reflects the views and values associated with the term “courtly.” He decided to
start writing in English so that his poetry is linguistically accessible to more readers. Yet,
it is not surprising that his earliest substantial poems, the Book of the Duchess (c. 1370) and
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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the House of Fame (c. 1380), were heavily influenced by the fashionable French love poetry
of the time.
Orher Works: the Parlement of Foules (c. 1382) and Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385),
and The Canterbury Tales.
The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387–1400) is an unfinished series of stories told by a group
of pilgrims travelling from London to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket and back.
The Knight’s Tale
The illusion that the individual pilgrims (rather than Chaucer himself) tell their tales
gave him a possibility to portray many personalities and employ various genres:
pious legend (in “The Man of Law's Tale” and “The Prioress's Tale”),
fabliaux (“The Shipman's Tale,” “The Miller's Tale,” and “The Reeve's Tale”),
chivalric romance (“The Knight's Tale”),
popular romance (parodied in Chaucer's “own” “Tale of Sir Thopas”),
beast fable (“The Nun's Priest's Tale” and “The Manciple's Tale”).
ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL THE MID 16TH CENTURY
12
POINTS TO REMEMBER
There were three major languages employed: Latin, French and English.
Popular forms: Arthurian legends, folk tales.
Major Writer: Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales
1.3 ENGLISH RENAISSANCE POETRY
The Renaissance poetry introduces traditions from other European culture, especially old
Greek and Roman literature.
New forms: courtly poetry
Mainly presented an idealised version of the courtly world.
Example:
Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene
Shepheardes Calender This poem introduces into an English context of the
classical pastoral. The explorations of love found in the sonnets of William
Shakespeare and the poetry of Walter Raleigh and others also implies a
courtly audience.
Philip Sidney's Arcadia
Sir Philip Sidney was the Renaissance “universal man”: diplomat, soldier, and poet. He
believed that poetry should not present life as it is but as it should be (Defence of Poesie)
He demonstrated his theory in his sonnet sequence of unrequited desire, Astrophel and
Stella.
The form of the sonnet sequence was popularized by Shakespeare's sonnets (published
1609), yet in a new and innovative way.
Shakespeare's sonnets differ from Shakespeare's plays, but they still have a story. The individual
poems can be either read separately or in connection to other poems. Because of
the lack of biographical information on Shakespeare, we cannot say to what extent they are
autobiographical.
The first 126 sonnets are dedicated to an unnamed young nobleman, whom the speaker
loves; the remaining sonnets are dedicated to an unknown Dark lady whom the speaker
both loves and hates. The Shakespearean sonnet usually follows the following rhyme
scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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EXAMPLE
Shakespeare, Sonnet 60
Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
1.4 RENAISSANCE DRAMA
English Renaissance theatre is often called “Elizabethan theatre.” However, strictly
speaking, the term covers only the plays written and performed publicly in England during
the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (that is, 1558–1603). Elizabethan theatre is therefore distinguished
from Jacobean theatre (associated with the reign of King James I, 1603–1625), and
Caroline theatre (associated with King Charles I, 1625 until the closure of the theatres in
1642). In practice, however, "Elizabethan theatre" is often used as a general term for all
English drama from the Reformation to the closure of the theatres in 1642. As such it can
be synonymous with English Renaissance drama or early modern English drama.
English Renaissance theatre derived from several medieval theatre traditions.
ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL THE MID 16TH CENTURY
14
1) mystery plays that were a part of religious festivals during the middle Ages. The
mystery plays were complex retellings of legends based on biblical themes, originally performed
in churches but later becoming more linked to the secular celebrations that grew up
around religious festivals.
2) morality plays that evolved out of the mysteries, and the "University drama" that
attempted to recreate Greek tragedy.
3) Later, in the 17th century, the Commedia dell'arte and the elaborate masques frequently
presented at court came to play roles in the shaping of public theatre.
Genres
History play: depicted English or European history.
Examples:
Shakespeare: Richard III, Henry V,
Christopher Marlowe: Edward II
George Peele: Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First.
Tragedy
Marlowe: Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta.
Tragedy of revenge: Thomas Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy.
John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi.
Comedy
Thomas Dekker The Shoemaker's Holiday
Thomas Middleton A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's early plays were mainly histories and comedies.
Histories
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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Shakespeare became a master of histories, dramatizing the English history from Richard
II to Henry VII in two four-play sequences.
The first sequence, comprising the three Henry VI plays and Richard III (1589–92),
begins as a patriotic celebration. But this is soon replaced by a mature, disillusioned understanding
of the world of politics, culminating in the devastating portrayal of Richard
III—probably the first “character”, in the modern sense, on the English stage.
The second sequence, Richard II (1595), Henry IV (two parts, 1596–98), and Henry V
(1599), begins with the deposing of a bad but legitimate king and follows its consequences
through two generations.
Comedies
One group, The Comedy of Errors (c. 1589–94), The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1590–
94), The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597–1601), and Twelfth Night (1601), are comedies
of intrigue, fast moving, often farcical, and placing a high emphasis on wit.
A second group, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1592–93), Love's Labour's Lost (c.
1595), A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595–96), and As You Like It (1599), have as a
common denominator a journey to a natural environment, such as a wood or park, in which
the restraints governing everyday life are released and the characters are free to remake
themselves.
The Tempest, often considered Shakespeare's farewell to his theatrical art, has inspired
Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, and Jean Sibelius, who wrote music for it in 1926.
Tragedies
Shakespeare sets husband against wife, father against child, the individual against so-
ciety.
Tragedy types:
revenge tragedy in Hamlet (1600),
domestic tragedy in Othello (c. 1603–04),
social tragedy in King Lear (1605),
political tragedy in Macbeth (1606),
heroic tragedy in Antony and Cleopatra (1607).
The tragic hero must be a noble man who enjoys some social status but possesses some
moral weakness or flaw which leads to his downfall. External circumstances such as fate
also play a part in the hero's fall. The hero then makes a bad turn, a bad decision that causes
his downfall.
ENGLISH LITERATURE UNTIL THE MID 16TH CENTURY
16
The four most famous Shakespeare tragedies are King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, and Mac-
beth.
POINTS TO REMEMBER
Major Renaissance poetic form: sonnet (sonnet sequence)
Major dramatic forms: histories, tragedies, comedies (in blankverse)
QUESTIONS
1. Name major poems of the Old English period. What is an alliterative verse?
2. What were the three major sources of Middle English literature? What were the
dominant forms?
3. What are the major poetic and dramatic forms of Renaissance?
STUDY GUIDE
In LMS Moodle you will find texts with study questions related to this era, marked as
TEXTS 1-4. Please read them and try to answer the questions, you can use the questions as
a guide to your reading. The text analysis will be carried out in class.
SUMMARY
This chapter introduces major trends and movements in British literature from its beginnings
until mid 17th century. It focuses on essential movements and their representatives
in the context of British history and culture. The first two subchapters focus on chief AngloSaxon
literary techniques, genres and texts, as well as the Middle English period, with the
late-medieval work of Geoffrey Chaucer being presented as central to medieval writing in
English. Following subchapter deal with the literature of the English Renaissance, introducing
the work of some of the greatest classics of British poetry and drama, e.g., Edmund
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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Spenser and William Shakespeare. Particular attention will be paid to the development of
the English sonnet.
TAKE A BREAK
Now it is time to take a break, you have finished the first chapter, which covers our first
in-class meeting.
ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE 18TH TO 20TH CENTURY
18
2 ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE 18TH TO 20TH
CENTURY
QUICK OVERVIEW
You will be acquainted with the poetical innovation of the movement called the Metaphysical
poets. Main attention will be paid to the political context that was shaping the new
poetical development in the 17th century and after. You will then become familiar with the
beginning and wide popularity of the new emerging genre: the novel. You will find out
about the first representatives of the genre and their different literary style. Special attention
will be paid to the novels of Daniel Defoe and experimental writing of Laurence Sterne.
You will also be acquainted with the innovative poetic features of the Romantics and the
new forms and subject matters they introduced into the British literature. The chapter also
outlines the development of Victorian prose and poetry, including the turn of the century
drama.
AIMS
The chapter will:
 Explain the innovation of Metaphysical poets,
 Outline the beginning oft he novel,
 Define the main features of Romanticism,
 Introduce the Victorian poetry and novel.
 Outline the drama at the turn of the century
KEYWORDS
Metaphysical poets, John Milton, satire, beginning of the novel, Romanticism, Victorian
prose and poetry, turn of the century drama
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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2.1 METAPHYSICAL POETS
The metaphysical poets were a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century,
who shared an interest in metaphysics. The label "metaphysical" was given to them much
later. These poets themselves did not form a school or start a movement, most of them
didn't even know or read each other. Their style was characterized by wit, subtle argumentations
and an unusual simile or metaphor, called conceit.
John Donne was a Jacobean poet and preacher. His works, famous for their realistic
and sensual style, include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, elegies,
songs, satires and sermons. Donne came from a Roman Catholic family, and so he experienced
persecution until his conversion to the Anglican Church. Donne uses language from
science, law and trade, court and city. Donne is the first London poet.
His metaphors (conceits) compare two completely unlike objects. One of the most famous
of Donne's conceits is found in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” where he
compares two lovers who are separated to the two legs of a compass:
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Donne's works also employs paradoxes, puns, and analogies. His pieces are often ironic
and cynical, especially regarding love. Common subjects of Donne's poems are love (especially
in his early life), death (especially after his wife's death), and religion.
Donne's most interesting imitators were the three major religious poets—George Herbert,
the Roman Catholic poet Richard Crashaw and Henry Vaughan.
George Herbert was a Welsh poet, orator and a priest. In his late thirties he gave up his
secular ambitions and took holy orders in the Church of England. Throughout his life he
ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE 18TH TO 20TH CENTURY
20
wrote religious poems .His Jacula Prudentium, (sometimes seen as Jacula Prudentum), a
collection of proverbs included many sayings still repeated today, for example "His bark is
worse than his bite." Herbert influenced his fellow metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan who,
in turn, influenced William Wordsworth. George Herbert's poetry has been set to music by
several composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Lennox Berkeley, Judith Weir,
Randall Thompson, William Walton and Patrick Larley.
Andrew Marvell (March 31, 1621 – August 16, 1678) was an English metaphysical
poet, and the son of an Anglican clergyman (also named Andrew Marvell). He was the first
assistant of John Milton. Famous poems include “To His Coy Mistress” (to which T. S.
Eliot refers in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land), “The Garden,”
“An Horatian Ode”, and the Country House Poem, “Upon Appleton House”.
Henry Vaughan (April 17, 1622 - April 28, 1695) was a Welsh Metaphysical poet and
a doctor. Vaughan was a Royalist sympathizer and is thought to have possibly served during
the Civil War. Vaughan took his literary inspiration from his native environment. One
particular theme to which Vaughan stressed was the conversion of the Jews.
POINTS TO REMEMBER
The metaphysical poets did not form a school or start a movement, most of them didn't
even know each other. Their style was characterized by wit, subtle argumentations and an
unusual simile or metaphor, called conceit.
Major representatives: John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw and Henry
Vaughan.
2.2 BEGINNING OF THE NOVEL
DEFINITION - NOVEL
Novel is a long narrative work of fiction with realistic elements. It is often in prose form
and is published as a single book. The word ‘novel’ has been derived from the Italian word
‘novella’ which means “new”. Similar to a short story, a novel has some features like a
representation of characters, dialogues, setting, plot, climax, conflict, and resolution.
However, it does not require all the elements to be a good novel.
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
21
The novel as a literary genre emerged in the beginning of the 18th century. The industrial
revolution led to the rise of the middle-class and created a demand subjects related to everyday
experiences. The novel, therefore, developed as a piece of prose fiction that presented
characters in real-life events and situations.
Examples:
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones
Major writers and works:
Samuel Richardson: Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), using the epistolary form
(novel in letters).
Clarissa: or, the History of a Young Lady (1747–48)
Henry Fielding: An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (1741)
The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1742)
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)
Tobias Smollett: The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748)
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751)
Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy (1759–67)
Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)
Even these early novels were experimental, especially Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. Sterne
does not use chronological narrative, the chapter sequence is not linear, some pages are left
blank, other times he uses drawings or images:
ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE 18TH TO 20TH CENTURY
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POINTS TO REMEMBER
The novel as a literary genre emerged in the beginning of the 18th century. It developed
as a piece of prose fiction that presented characters in real-life events and situations.
Major representatives: Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Tobias Smollett,
Samuel Richardson
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2.3 ROMANTICISM
DEFINITION - ROMANTICISM
A poetic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries that turned toward nature
and the interior world of feeling, in opposition to the mannered formalism and disciplined
scientific inquiry of the Enlightenment era that preceded it.
The most important feature of the Romantic poets is the new role of individual emotion
and thinking. Wordsworth called it “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,” and in
1833 John Stuart Mill defined “natural poetry” as “Feeling itself, employing Thought only
as the medium of its utterance.”
Defining cultural and political context:
 French Revolution
 Industrialization
 American Independence
 Rise of commercialism and
 Mass culture
Major representatives
William Blake claimed to have visions. When he was eight, he reported seeing a tree
filled with angels. His spiritual beliefs are manifested in his collection Songs of Innocence,
which is a collection of illustrated lyrical poems, published in 1789. Its companion volume
is Songs of Experience. Blake believed that innocence and experience were “the two contrary
states of the human soul,” and that true innocence was impossible without experience.
Songs of Innocence contains poems either written from the perspective of children or written
about them.
All included poems are accompanied by illustrations that enhance the meaning of the
poems:
ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE 18TH TO 20TH CENTURY
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LAKE POETS (1st
GENERATION OF ROMANTIC POETS)
The most famous representative of the 1st generation was William Wordsworth, who
was mainly a lyrical poet. His most famous poems were collected in the revolutionary collection
called Lyrical Ballads (1798). The volume began with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
“Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” continued with poems displaying delight in the powers of
nature and simple instincts of ordinary people, and concluded with the meditative “Lines
written a few miles above Tintern Abbey,” an attempt to set out his mature faith in nature
and humanity.
2ND
GENERATION OF ROMANTIC POETS
John Keats
Lord Byron
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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POINTS TO REMEMBER
Emphasis on nature and natural or primitive way of life
Critical of civilization
Association of human moods with nature
Emphasis on imagination, spontaneity
Emphasis on individual and subjectivity
Loose poetic forms
Use of informal language
Expressions of feelings of a solitary man
2.4 VICTORIAN PROSE AND POETRY
In February 1837 Charles Dickens published a novel that made him the famous writer of
his time, The Pickwick Papers (1836–37. In the same year Victoria became the Queen of
England. She was on the throne for 64 years, this period is called Victorian.
POINTS TO REMEMBER
Features of Victorian era:
Industrialism, rise of technology, spreading of the British empire and recovery from the
Napoleonic wars, materialism
Britain became the world power. The economic success was marked by of the middle
class. The time became famous for its social conventions, Puritanism. Sexuality became
social taboo.
New technological inventions: steam engine, phone, and railroad.
Poverty and unemployment.
ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE 18TH TO 20TH CENTURY
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Charles Darwin:, On the Origin of Species, 1859, The Descent of Man 1871. Darwin’s
theory questioned the biblical version of creation and the whole church. Man was not seen
as an image of God, but as an animal. Man is now insignificant in the endless universe.
In 1867 Karl Marx published his Das Kapital. He introduced a vision of new society
based on equality. All men shall contribute to the wealth and well being of the whole society.
He became famous for his ideals of classless society.
The mainstream literature could be defined as critical realism, the main representatives
being Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray or George Eliot.
Charles Dickens:
David Copperfield (1849–50) uses the form of a fictional autobiography
Great Expectations (1860–61)
William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair (1847–48)
George Eliot: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), and Silas Marner
(1861), Middlemarch (1871–72).
This rise of realist fiction was accompanied by a revival of its opposite, the romance. It
was influenced by the Gothicism and Romanticism. The 18th
century Gothic writers are
often described as forerunners of Romanticism.
2.4.1 GOTHIC FICTION
In 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus introduced
the theme of the dangers of science; created the obsessed scientist, who was to develop
into the mad scientist, and the archetypal Monster. Considered the predecessor of
science fiction. The novel is a combination of gothic elements and scientific knowledge of
that time. The novel consists of letters and diary of Capt. Walton. Dr. Frankenstein created
a creature that could feel and think. Yet he did not foresee the consequences, the creature
is hated and feared for its difference.
Robert Louis Stevenson gained popularity with the romantic adventure story Treasure
Island. Among his other popular works are Kidnapped (1886), The Strange Case Of Dr.
Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1886) based on a dream and written and printed in 10 weeks. The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The story has been considered a criticism of
Victorian double morality.
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Brontë Sisters
In their novels they present the contrast between imagination and social convention,
between the will and passion of the individual and the norms of the society. Main theme of
all their novels are the description of the woman who lives in loneliness and often also
poverty but finds her dignity and is aware of her intellectual ability.
Charlotte Brontë was inspired by Walter Scott, Thackeray and Richardson. Her most
famous novel is Jane Eyre, 1847 the story of a poor orphan who becomes a governess and
falls in love with her master. She does not know that he is married to mad woman he is
hiding in the attic.
Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights is a complex story of a relationship of two families:
Earnshaws and Lintons. It is narrated by a housekeeper and former servant of Earnshaws
and by a foreigner Lockwood who rents a room in that house. Linton family represents the
educated, civilized values, calm love based on tradition and social values and Earnshaws
represent the destructive, dark energy, passion without sense.
Least talented was Anne Brontë : Agnes Grey, 1847, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 1848.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is famous mainly for his detective stories. Most famous novel
The Hound of Baskerville, 1902. it is a combination of crime story and gothic novel. Most
popular is his detective series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock
Holmes.
Abraham "Bram" Stoker is an Irish writer, best known for his vampire novel Dracula
(1897). Dracula is an epistolary novel, written as collection of diary entries, telegrams, and
letters from the characters, as well as fictional clippings from the Whitby and London news-
papers.
2.4.2 VICTORIAN POETRY
The Victorian age of the novel was in fact also an age of great poetry. Alfred Tennyson
(1809-92) made his mark very early with Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830) and Poems (1832;
dated 1833. His early work Tennyson though influenced by Keats, anticipates the French
Symbolists of the 1880s. The second volume of the Poems of 1842 contains the dramatic
monologue, a technique developed independently by both Tennyson and Browning in the
1830s and the greatest formal innovation in Victorian poetry. The chief work of his later
period, however, was Idylls of the King (1859, revised 1885). An Arthurian epic.
ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE 18TH TO 20TH CENTURY
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DEFINITION – DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
Dramatic monologue, a poem written in the form of a speech of an individual character;
it compresses into a single vivid scene a narrative sense of the speaker’s history and
psychological insight into his character.
Robert Browning (1812-89) his most famous collection was Dramatic Lyrics. It was a
collection of dramatic monologues, among them “Porphyria's Lover,” “Johannes Agricola
in Meditation,” and “My Last Duchess.” The monologues involve the reader in sympathetic
identification with the interior processes of criminal or unconventional minds.
In 1846 Browning married Elizabeth Barrett (1806-61). Though now remembered
chiefly for her love poems Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850) and her experiment with
the verse novel Aurora Leigh (1856; dated 1857), she was in her own lifetime far better
known than her husband.
Matthew Arnold (1822-88) critic and a poet. He criticizes the materialism and vulgarity,
the decline of traditional values and its consequences for culture. he was opponent of
the mass culture, seeing it as a great evil that would lead to cultural decline. His most famous
poem was "Dover Beach", "The Scholar-Gipsy". His most important collection of
essays is Culture and Anarchy, 1869.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, formed in 1848 was founded as a group of painters. It
is probably the only artistic group with a defined program. Its founder, Dante Gabriel
Rosetti believed that the painter Raphael started a wrong way in art and it is necessary to
go before Raphael. Because he idealized nature and it did not present the truth. The medieval
artists were, according to Rosetti much closer to God and truth, they did not seek
individual fame but god’s grace.
Christina Rossetti, sister of Dante Gabriel. She wrote mainly melancholic poems, allegoric
poems, not as sensual as her brother. Most famous are: Goblin Market, 1862. The
Prince's Progress, 1866. She is compared to Emily Dickinson.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), a Jesuit priest whose work was first collected as
Poems in 1918, nearly 30 years after his death. His poetry cannot be considered Victorian
but formally it belongs to the experimental poetry of the 20th century. He uses so called
"sprung rhythm" (trhaný rytmus), which means that there is a given number of stresses
syllables in each verse but unlimited number of unstressed syllables. he also uses words
from old English, plays with pronunciation of words. Therefore it is extremely difficult to
read his poems.
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Edward Lear (1812-88) Book of Nonsense, 1846., his work is similar to the work of
Lewis Caroll and became the classic of nonsense literature.
Example:
2.5 PROSE AND DRAMA AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
Early Victorian drama was a popular art form, appealing to an uneducated audience that
demanded emotional excitement rather than intellectual involvement. Vivacious melodramas
did not, however, hold exclusive possession of the stage. The mid-century saw comedies
by Dion Boucicault and Tom Taylor. In the 1860s T.W. Robertson started writing a
new realist drama. The 1890s were the outstanding decade of dramatic innovation.
Major playwrights:
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). At the same time the influence
of Henrik Ibsen was helping to produce a new genre of serious “problem plays,” such as
Pinero's Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893) or the social realism of G. B. Shaw’s plays.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was influenced by Ibsen. All his plays are didactic,
fusing elements of socialism, science and philosophy. Shaw's early plays The Philanderer,
ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE 18TH TO 20TH CENTURY
30
and Mrs. Warren's Profession, both written in 1893 were banned due to open expressions
of immorality. Shaw complained of official censorship in the introduction to the collection
of Unpleasant Plays, 1898 where these two plays were eventually published.
His other famous plays include: Man and Superman where he put a motor car on the
stage, Major Barbara, 1905. His most influential play was Pygmalion, 1913. A study of
the relationship between the creator and the creation. In fact, writing the screenplay for the
film version of 1938 helped Shaw to become the first and only man ever to win the Nobel
Prize for literature and an Academy Award. Pygmalion derives its name from the famous
story in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Aesthetic Movement: English artistic movement of the late 19th century, considered
decadent, dedicated to the doctrine of ‘art for art's sake’, coined by the philosopher Victor
Cousin and promoted by Théophile Gautier in France. Art exists for the sake of its beauty
alone. Art does not have to serve purposes taken from politics, religion, economics, and so
on. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, and Oscar Wilde argued for the doctrine of
art for art's sake. They believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be
beautiful. The Aesthetes developed the cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor
in art. Life should copy Art.
QUESTIONS
1. What is a conceit? Give an example
2. What is an epistolary novel? Give an example
3. Name at least five features of Romanticism
4. Which writers started to use dramatic monologue in poetry?
STUDY GUIDE
In LMS Moodle you will find texts with study questions related to this era, marked as
TEXT 5-9. Please read them and try to answer the questions, you can use the questions as
a guide to your reading. The text analysis will be carried out in class.
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SUMMARY
This chapter focuses on the development of British literature from the 17th
century to
the turn of the 20th
century. The first subchapter introduces the Metaphysical poets in the
cultural and political context. The following subchapter discusses the beginning and wide
popularity of the new emerging genre: the novel, its first representatives and their different
literary style. Special attention was paid to the novels of Daniel Defoe and experimental
writing of Laurence Sterne.
The two final subchapters deal with the innovative poetic features of the Romantics and
the new forms and subject matters they introduced into the British literature, as well as the
development of Victorian prose and poetry, including the turn of the century drama.
TAKE A BREAK
Now it is time to take a break, you have finished the second chapter, which corresponds
our second in-class meeting.
English literature in the 20th century
32
3 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 20TH CENTURY
QUICK OVERVIEW
This chapter introduces main features of modernism, especially with the innovation of
form. Main attention shall be paid to the work of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. You
will be acquainted with the post-war development of British prose (including the postcolonial
fiction), drama, and poetry.
AIMS
The chapter will:
 Define modernism and introduce major features of modernism,
 Introduce postwar British prose, including postcolonial writing
 Provide an outline of postwar British drama
 Provide an outline of postwar British poetry.
KEYWORDS
Modernism, Bloomsbury Group, postwar prose, postwar drama, postwar poetry, postcolonial
literature
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3.1 MODERNISM
The technological and social changes at the beginning of the 20th
century are called the
modernity. Art that reacted to these changes From 1908 to 1914 was a period of artistic
innovation and experiment. In the year 1908 Ford Madox Ford (1873-1930) founded The
English Review where he published Conrad, Wells, Hardy but also main modernists: D. H.
Lawrence and Ezra Pound. Ford was the representative of literary impressionism. He was
critical of the mass production that was producing mediocre art. His most famous novel is
The Good Soldier (1915).
Modernism redefines time, space, human consciousness, the new definition between the
outer and inner self. Modernists concentrate on the time of human mind, the difference
between objective and subjective time. This new vision of man was reflected also in the
modernist painting – e.g. cubism. At that time there were two important philosophers who
were interested in the process of human mind and strongly influenced the modernist aesthetics:
Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and William James. Bergson made a distinction between
relative and absolute knowledge. Relative knowledge is derived from words that
cannot capture the essence of the world. This can be reached only by intuition. Intuition is
an intellectual sympathy during which the mind becomes one with the object. Human identity
is for Bergson not fixed but it consists of flow of different states of mind.
William James, founder of American pragmatism coined the term stream of consciousness,
he believed that human mind is not static, but it is a constant flow of states which
include the past and foreshadow the future events.
DEFINITION – STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Stream of consciousness is a method of narration that describes happenings in the flow
of thoughts in the minds of the characters.
British modernism was never a movement, it consisted of strictly individual artists.
James Joyce (1882-1941) is the most influential modernist in prose of the twenties and
thirties. Joyce grew up in nationalistic and orthodox Catholic family in poor Ireland. He
spent most of his life outside Ireland but never stopped writing about it. In his collection of
short stories, Dubliners (1914), and his largely autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man (1916), he described in a realist and symbolist way the individual
cost of the sexual and imaginative oppressiveness of life in Ireland. Dubliners are his most
English literature in the 20th century
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realistic work, the stories are images of lives of young men growing up in the bigot surroundings.
Joyce is concentrating on their mental development and their emotions rather
than on a conventional action. Three stories deal with childhood, three with adolescence
and three with public life.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) is already more complicated, Joyce for
the first time used different layers of language and different levels of self-awareness to
describe the growing up of the protagonist. The book starts with simple narration of childhood,
using very limited vocabulary and syntax to express the consciousness of child, uses
fairytale-like phrases, nursery rhyme rhythms and ends with symbolical and complicated
style of the young artist. The protagonist moves from passive observer, hearer and seer to
be the reader and maker. The protagonist, Stephen Dadalus is studying to be a priest, after
some time he starts to doubt his faith and wants to become an artist.
Ulysses (1922) is a panoramic novel of Dublin life. It was banned as pornographic. It is
set in Dublin, 1904 and the whole novel follows the single day in the lives of the characters.
It consists of 18 episodes based on Homer. Leopold Bloom is modern Ulysses/Odysseus,
his wife Molly is a modern Penelope and their son Stephen is a modern Telemachos. The
novel follows Leopold Bloom's mind as he shops, cooks, and desires sex. Stephen on the
other hand is tortured by his guilt and intellectual speculation. All the characters are differentiated
by the language they use, which reflects their consciousness.
Finnegan's Wake (1939) is his last work and it is complex that it is impossible to understand
it. It consists of a series of drunken dreams of Dublin pub owner Earwicker. The
language is full of symbolism, words from many languages, it is a mosaic of associations,
symbols and myths.
Virginia Woolf was a famous feminist essayist, and a central figure of Bloomsbury
group. Bloomsbury Group was a group of painters, writers, political activists and philosophers.
They were very liberal, aristocratic, Most of them studied in Cambridge, where
they met professor George Moore and entered his debating society. From this society later
emerged the Bloomsbury Group. Moore emphasized the role of individual experience and
imagination, he believed that joy over beauty of man, art and nature are the highest values
of life.
Virginia Woolf's books were published by Hogart Press, which she founded with her
husband, the critic and writer Leonard Woolf. Their first printing machine fit on a kitchen
table, but soon they were publishing major works, such as T.S. Eliot's Waste Land (1922),
Maxim Gorky, E.M. Forster, and Katherine Mansfield, and the complete translation of the
works of Sigmund Freud.
Her novels To the Lighthouse (1927) and The Waves (1931) turned her into a leading
figure of modernism. She used stream of consciousness and interior monologue and nonlinear
narrative. She was a leading feminist: In To the Lighthouse Woolf described marriage
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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in the following way: "So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman looking at a
girl throwing a ball."
Mrs. Dalloway (1925) consists of a web of thoughts of several groups of people during
one day. There is almost no traditional plot but Woolf works with time and chronology.
The protagonist Clarissa Dalloway spends her day in London preparing for her evening
party. She recalls her life before World War I, her friendship with Sally Seton, and her
relationship with Peter Walsh.
Virginia Woolf's concern with feminist themes are dominant in A Room Of One's Own
(1929). In it she made her famous statement: "A woman must have money and a room of
her own if she is to write fiction." Woolf examined the obstacles and prejudices that have
hindered women writers. She claimed that most literature had been "made by men out of
their own needs for their own uses." In the last chapter Woolf touched the possibility of an
androgynous mind. Woolf refers to Coleridge who said that a great mind is androgynous:
“Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely
feminine...”
Orlando (1928), a fantasy novel, traced the career of the androgynous protagonist, Orlando,
from a masculine identity within the Elizabethan court to a feminine identity in 1928.
Chief model for the character was writer Vita Sackville-West.
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) was a famous literary critic and novelist. In his essay
„Why the Novel Matters“ (1925) he claims that novelist is superior to saint, scientist, philosopher
and poet. Lawrence was not experimental as Joyce or Proust.
In his first partly autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers (1913) Lawrence rewrote the
story of Oedipus set in mining area. The novel is based on contrast between love to mother
and love to lovers. Mrs Morel marries a man below her social class and soon stops loving
him, instead she takes her sons as her lovers. When the sons grow up they realize that they
are not able to love a woman, because they are emotionally tied to their mother. The love
to mother is even stronger than a love to young girls. Rainbow (1915) and its sequel Women
in Love (1920) stress a distinction between freedom and control, instinct and will. Between
sexual and natural desires and the civilized, restricted world.
He is most famous for his last novel Mrs Chatterley's Lover (1927). The novel as banned
as pornographic and was published thirty years later. It is set in the mining area and tells a
story of Mrs Chatterley who lives with her crippled husband. She finds a lover, a forester
and with him she finds the unity with nature and with her sexuality.
English literature in the 20th century
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POINTS TO REMEMBER
Modernist methods: Subjective treatment of time and space
Use of stream of consciousness and internal monologues.
3.2 POSTWAR BRITISH PROSE
Main features of the era:
Effects of the WW I and global economic crisis of the 1930s
Rise of fascism
Spanish Civil War (1936–39)
WW II
Major themes in literature:
Class division
Sexual repression
Return to realism
Graham Greene (1904-1991) novelist, short-story writer, playwright and journalist,
whose novels treat moral issues in the context of political settings. Greene is one of the
most widely read novelist of the 20th-century. He is sometimes classified as 'Catholic novelist'.
Greene's religious convictions did not become overtly apparent in his fiction until
The Brighton Rock (1938), which depicted a teenage gangster Pinkie with a kind of demonic
spirituality. Religious themes were explicit in the novels The Power And The Glory
(1940), The Heart Of The Matter (1948). The Quiet American (1955), which was about
American involvement in Indochina. The story focuses on the murder of Alden Pyle (the
American of the title).
William Golding (1911-1993) received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. In many
novels Golding has revealed the dark aspects of human heart, when isolated individuals or
small groups are pushed into extreme situations. His work is characterized by exploration
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of “the darkness of man's heart”, deep spiritual and ethical questions. The main theme of
his novels is the evil in the world and the fall of man.
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical story set in the near future during wartime. The story
describes a group of children, who are evacuated from Britain because of a nuclear war.
Their airplane crashes on an uninhabited island, and all the adults are killed. The boys create
their own society, which gradually degenerates from democratic, rational, and moral community
to tyrannical and cruel.
George Orwell (1903-1950) was a novelist, essayist and critic. He became famous for
his political satires Animal Farm (1945), and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which shows
that the destruction of language is an essential part of oppression.
1984 represents a protest against political manipulation, restriction of freedom and corruption.
Britain is controlled by Big Brother and the Party that continuously rewrite history.
The official language is Newspeak, and the society is dominated by such slogans as "War
is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", "Ignorance is Strength."
John Fowles (1926) became famous already for his first novel The Collector (1963)
which is a combination of thriller and allegory. The novel was inspired by the opera of Béla
Bartók Bluebeard's Castle. It is a story of young butterfly collector Clegg who captures
young girl Miranda and imprisons her in his cellar. The novel consists of two parts, the first
part is told from the point of view of the collector and the other is told from the point of
view of the girl. Clegg is not described only as a criminal but also as a victim of his social
position, his low self-esteem. For him Miranda is not only sexual object but also the symbol
of beauty and social status he never had.
Angry Young Men. A group of writers: John Braine, John Wain, Alan Sillitoe, Stan
Barstow, and David Storey
They wrote partially autobiographical and documentary novels. Their major themes being
upward social mobility (from working class to middle class)
Kingsley Amis, is a satirist and campus novel author is also classified as an Angry
Young Man. He became famous for his first novel Lucky Jim (1954).
To other campus novel writers belong Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge. These
writers wrote satirical novels from the universities.
Ian McEwan (1948): The Cement Garden, 1978. After three children lose both of their
parents, they hide their mother’s dead body in the basement not to be taken into child care
institutions. Other important novels: The Comfort of Strangers, Black Dogs.
Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) A Clockwork Orange is set in a future London and is
told in nadsat, a mixture of Russian, English and American slang, gypsy talk and Jacobean
prose. Alex, the main character, is a juvenile delinquent, who rapes and kills people. He is
English literature in the 20th century
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captured, and brainwashed by authorities to change his murderous aggressions. As an unexpected
side effect, he starts to hate Beethoven's music, he used to love.
3.3 POSTWAR BRITISH DRAMA
In 1956 John Osborne's Look Back in Anger started a new trend in British drama by
introducing a working class protagonist. Other major play: The Entertainer (1957).
Beginning of “kitchen-sink” drama.
Shelagh Delaney: A Taste of Honey [1958]
Arnold Wesker: political trilogy Chicken Soup with Barley [1958], Roots [1959], and
I’m Talking About Jerusalem [1960]
John Arden: social historical plays Serjeant Musgrave's Dance [1959], Armstrong's Last
Goodnight [1964].
Theatre of the Absurd
Representatives: Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Adamov, Fernardo Arrabal, Jean Genet,
Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter
Concept defined by Albert Camus in the Myth of Sisyphus, 1942.
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“The Theatre of the Absurd” is a term coined by the critic Martin Esslin for the work
of playwrights, mainly from the 1950s and 1960s. The term is derived from an essay by the
French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, who claimed that there is no meaning or
rational explanation of the world, that is why the whole universe must be seen as absurd.
POINTS TO REMEMBER
The Theatre of the Absurd has no clear plot or action, characters are types, dialogues
often do not make sense. Language does not work as a means of communication.
Major English representatives:
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Beckett has written a short play dedicated to VaclaHavel,
which was staged in France in 1984.
Harold Pinter won a Nobel Prize. He was inspired by Chekhov and Beckett but his
plays use more concrete action and language. His plays are based on common, banal situations.
The Room, 1957. In his later plays he uses a lot of erotic motifs and shocking presentation
of animalism: The Homecoming, 1965. His latest plays are: War, 2003, Death etc.,
2005.
New wave of British drama
Tom Stoppard (born in Gottwaldow): his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead
(1966) made him one of the most prominent British dramatists. He also wrote historical
drama was Travesties (1974), which uses as a starting point the fact that novelist James
Joyce, Russian revolutionary Lenin, and Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara all lived in Zurich,
Switzerland during World War I.
3.4 POSTWAR BRITISH POETRY
Poetic movements
The Movement
Main features: anti-romantic, anti-modernist, ironic, nostalgia, traditionalism, representatives
were mainly academics
English literature in the 20th century
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Representatives: Philip Larkin, D.J. Enright, Donald Davie, John Wain, Roy
Fuller, Robert Conquest, and Elizabeth Jennings
The Group
Originally formed as discussion circle. Similar attitudes to poetry as the Movement.
Representatives: Philip Hobsbaum, Peter Redgrove, Michael Horovitz, Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes – husband of American poet Sylvia Plath, drew images from natural world:
The Hawk in the Rain, Crow
Working class poets
Several poets concentrated specifically on the industrial regions
Douglas Dunn: Terry Street (1969) - north-eastern England.
Tony Harrison: The Loiners (1970), From the School of Eloquence and Other Poems
(1978), Continuous (1981) - industrial Yorkshire. His poetry shows anger and frustration
by the social conditions of the working class.
Irish poets: Northern School
Representatives: Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon,
Seamus Heaney
Paul Muldoon: 2003 Pulitzer Prize in poetry
Seamus Heaney: Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Door into the Dark (1969)
Depicts rural and agricultural life, pondering relationship between the world of his parents
and his own status as a poet.
3.5 POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE
DEFINITION – POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
41
Postcolonial literature is concerned with the world as it is during and after the period of
European and American imperial domination and its effects of this on contemporary life.
It describes the interactions between the colonizing nations and the peoples they colo-
nized.
These literatures come out of their regional or national traditions, yet at the same time,
their present form is significantly shaped by the experience of colonization. All writers
present a clash between the colonizers and the colonized, challenging the stereotypes or
assumptions of the ruling majority.
Major representatives:
Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children (1981),
Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart (1958),
Michael Ondaatje: The English Patient (1992)
Jamaica Kincaid: A Small Place (1988),
J. M. Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace (1990),
Derek Walcott: Omeros (1990),
Romesh Gunesekera Heaven's Edge (2002),
Hanif Kureishi: My Beautiful Laundrette, Buddha of Suburbia (1990).
QUESTIONS
1) What is the major trait of postcolonial literature? Name at least three representatives
2) What are major features of The Movement? Obvykle jednoduché testové otázky pro
autoevaluvaci studentova pokroku ve studiu.
3) Name the main features of the Theatre of the Absurd.
STUDY GUIDE
English literature in the 20th century
42
In LMS Moodle you will find texts with study questions related to this era, marked as
TEXTS 9-13. Please read them and try to answer the questions, you can use the questions
as a guide to your reading. The text analysis will be carried out in class.
SUMMARY
This chapter introduces main features of modernism, especially with the innovation of
form (stream of consciousness, subjective treatment of tima and space). Main attention
shall be paid to the work of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.
It further discusses the post-war development of British prose, providing an overview of
major postwar writers (including the postcolonial fiction); postwar British drama with its
formal variations (kitchen-sink drama, the Theatre of the Absurd), and postwar poetic movements,
including The Movement, the Group, working-class poets or Northern Ireland
poets.
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
43
ANSWERS: CHAPTER 1
1. Beowulf, Widsith, Waldere, Battle of Maldon; Alliterative verse is a stylistic form
of writing used in Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry. When a poem has alliterative
verse, each line in the poem has at least four stressed syllables of alliterative
words. Alliterative words are words that repeat the same sound at the beginning of
the words in a line or sentence
2. Latin plays, French tales and English lays; Arthurian legends, short tales
3. Sonnet and sonnet sequence, courtly poetry, histories, tragedies and comedies
ANSWERS: CHAPTER 2
1. Type of metaphor comparing two unlike objects used by metaphysical poets, example:
John Donne- compass legs as two lovers
2. Novel in letters, Samuel Richards: Pamela
3. Association of human moods with nature, Emphasis on imagination, spontaneity,
individual and subjectivity, Loose poetic forms, Use of informal language
4. Tennyson and Browning
ANSWERS: CHAPTER 3
1) clash between the colonizing and colonized cultures; Rushie, Coetzee, Kinkaid
2) anti-romantic, anti-modernist attitude, irony, nostalgia, traditionalism
3) no clear plot or action, characters are types, dialogues often do not make sense. Language
does not work as a means of communication.
English literature in the 20th century
44
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
45
SOURCES
Burgess, A. (1991). English Literature: A Survey for Students. London: Longman.
Kastan, D. S. (2006). The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. Oxford: OUP.
Hilský, M. (1995). Modernisté, Praha: Torst.
Oliveriusová, E. a kol. (1988). Dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: SPN.
Sanders, A. (1994). The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Oxford: Clarendon
Press. (dostupné na http://elibrary.bsu.az/books_400/N_253.pdf)
Stříbrný, Z. (1987). Dějiny anglické literatury 1. Praha: Academia.
Stříbrný, Z. (1998). Dějiny anglické literatury 2. Praha: Academia.
.
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
46
SHRNUTÍ STUDIJNÍ OPORY
Tato studijní opora slouží jako stručné představení anglické literatury od počátku do
současnosti. Vzhledem k širokému tematickému záběru představuje výběr zásadních literárních
směrů a hnutí a jejich hlavních představitelů. První kapitola představuje vývoj anglické
literatury od jejích počátků do konce období renesance. První část představuje zásadní
díla, žánry a básnické formy staroanglické literatury. Druhá podkapitola se zabývá
anglickou středověkou literaturou a zahraničními vlivy, které ji formovaly. Hlavní pozornost
je věnována dnes již klasickému dílu Geoffreyho Chaucera. Poslední dvě podkapitoly
obsahují přehled zásadních děl období anglické renesance, o oblasti poezie i dramatu.
Hlavní pozornost je věnována odkazu Williama Shakespeara.
Druhá kapitola se věnuje období od 18. do počátku 20. století. Zkoumá především zásadní
literární hnutí jako jsou metafyzičtí básníci, jejichž dílu je věnována první podkapitola,
dále představuje romantické hnutí a jeho vliv na viktoriánskou prózu a poezii. Poslední
podkapitola je věnována vývoji dramatu na přelomu století. Třetí, poslední kapitola se zabývá
vývojem anglické literatury od modernismu do současnosti. Jednotlivé podkapitoly
představují nejvýznamnější básnická hnutí a dramatickou tvorbu. Nejvíce pozornosti je věnováno
vývoji prózy, kde je zahrnuta i současná postkoloniální literatura.
Michaela Weiss - ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
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PŘEHLED DOSTUPNÝCH IKON
Čas potřebný ke studiu Cíle kapitoly
Klíčová slova Nezapomeňte na odpočinek
Průvodce studiem Průvodce textem
Rychlý náhled Shrnutí
Tutoriály Definice
K zapamatování Případová studie
Řešená úloha Věta
Kontrolní otázka Korespondenční úkol
Odpovědi Otázky
Samostatný úkol Další zdroje
Pro zájemce Úkol k zamyšlení
Název: ANGLICKÁ LITERATURA
Autor: PhDr. Michaela Weiss, Ph.D. včetně titulů
Vydavatel: Slezská univerzita v Opavě
Filozoficko-přírodovědecká fakulta v Opavě
Určeno: studentům SU FPF Opava
Počet stran: 48
Tato publikace neprošla jazykovou úpravou.