1. 2. 3. 4.
Early and Medieval English Literature Beowulf, epic in old Briton
Romance: The Arthurian Legends; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (about 1375) Ballads(a story told in song): Robin Hood and Allin-a-Dale
Geoffrey Chaucer, the founder of English poetry: The Canterbury Tales (influenced by Italian writer Boccacio’s Decameron)
The English Renaissance (16th—first half of 17th)
1. Characteristic of Renaissance: 1) a thirsting curiosity for the classical literature; 2) keen interest in the activities of humanity (humanism)
2. Thomas More, the greatest of the English humanists: Utopia
3. Poets in this period: (The sonnet, an exact form of poetry in 14 lines of iambic pentameter intricately rhymed, was introduced to England from Italy by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard)
① Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86), love sonnets: “Astrophel and Stella” ② Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), “Discovery of Guiana”
③ Edmund Spenser (1552-99), The Shepherd’s Calendar (a pastoral poem in 12
books); The Faerie Queene (his masterpiece dedicated to Queen Elizabeth). He is the first master to make Modern English the natural music of his poetic effusions.
④ John Lyly (1554-1606), a romance writer for the gentle reader: Euphues
4. Prose Writer: Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Essays (58 ones). It covers a wide variety of subjects, such as love, truth, friendship, parents and children, beauty, studies, riches, youth and age, garden, death, and many others. They have won popularity for their precision, clearness, brevity and force. 5. Drama (the highest glory of English Renaissance)
① university wits: Lyly, Peele, Marlowe, Greene, Lodge and Nash. They made
rapid progress in dramatic technique because they had a close contact with the actors and audience.
② Christopher Marlowe (1564-93): 1) Tamburlaine; 2) The Jew of Malta; 3)
Doctor Faustus
③ Ben Jonson (1572-1637): 1) Every Man in His Humor; 2) Volpone, or the Fox;
3) The Alchemist; ④ William Shakespeare
Four Tragedies: 1) Hamlet 2) Othello 3) King Lear 4) Macbeth
Celebrated comedies: 1) The Merchant of Venice 2) The Taming of the Shrew 3) A Midsummer Night’s Dream 4) All’s Well That Ends Well
other celebrated plays: 1) Titus Andronicus 2) Romeo and Juliet 3) Henry V 4) Twelfth Night 5) Julius Caesar 6) Timon of Athens 7) The Tempest 8) Antony and Cleopatra
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The Neoclassical Period
1. John Milton (1608-1674): 1) Paradise Lost 2) Paradise Regained (in blank
verse) 3) Samson Agonistes
2. John Bunyan (1628-1688): The Pilgrim’s Progress
3. Metaphysical Poets (mysticism in content and fantasticality in form): 1) John
Donne (1572-1631), the founder of the Metaphysical school of poetry. 2) George Herbert (1593-1633), “the saint of the Metaphysical school”, sings the glory of God 3) Andrew Maevell, a Puritan
4. John Dryen (1631-1700): 1) All for Love (a tragedy) 2) An Essay of dramatic
Poesy (It established his position as the leading critic of the day.)
5. Richard Steele (1672-1729), a representative of the Enlightenment in English
literature, the founder of “The Tatler” (a newspaper)
6. Joseph Addison (1672-1719), another representative of the Enlightenment in
English literature, the founder of “The Spectator” (a daily paper)
7. Alexander Pope (1688-1744), the most important poet and classicist in the first
half of the 18th century. 1) Essay on Criticism (didactic poem in heroic couplets) 2) The Rape of the Lock 3) Pope’s Homer (his translation of “Illiad” and half of “Odyssey” in heroic couplets)
8. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): Gulliver’s Travels
9. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731): 1) Robinson Crusoe 2) Captain Singleton 3) Moll
Flanders 4) Colonel Jacque
10. Samuel Richardson (1680-1761): Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded 11. Henry Fielding (1707-1754): 1) Tom Jones 2) Joseph Andrews 12. Tobias Smollett (1721-1771): Roderick Random
13. Laurence Sterne (1713-1768): 1) Tristram Shandy 2) A Sentimental Journey 14. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), a playwright: The School for Scandal 15. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), a lexicographer critic and poet: Dictionary 16. Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774): The Vicar of Wakefield
17. Edward Gibbon, historian: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Appendix:
Classicism: it is a literary trend that dominated French literature in the 17th and 18th centuries, with a significant influence on English writing, especially from 1660 to 1780. The classicists modeled themselves on Greek and Latin authors, and tried to control literary creation by some fixed laws and rules drawn from Greek and Latin works.
Sentimentalism and Pre-Romanticism in Poetry
Sentimentalist poetry marks the midway in the transition from classicism to its opposite Romanticism in English poetry. Dissatisfied with reason, which classicists appealed to, sentimentalism appealed to sentiment, “to the human heart”. Sentimentalism turned to the countryside for its material, and so is in striking contrast to classicism, which had confined itself to the clubs and drawing-rooms, and to the social and political life of London.
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1. Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 2. William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task (a long poem) Pre-Romanticism:
1. William Blake (1757-1827): 1) Songs of Innocence 2) Songs of Experience
2. Robert Burns (1759-1796): 1) The Scots Musical Museum 2) Selected Collection of Original Scottish Airs
Romanticism in British Literature
1. William Wordsworth (1770-1850), pilot and leader of Romanticism in England, a member of “Lake Poets”: Lyrical Ballads (the manifesto of the English Romantic Movement in poetry)
2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), a member of “Lake Poets”: 1) The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner 2) Kubla Khan 3) Christabel. Coleridge is also the first critic of the Romantic school.
3. George Gordon Byron (1788-1822): 1) Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 2) Don Juan
(his masterpiece)
4. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): 1) Queen Mab 2) The Revolt of Islam
3)Prometheus Unbound 4) Lyrics: ①Ode to the West Wind ② To a Skylark ③ Love’s Philosophy etc. 5) A Defense of Poetry ( literary criticism on poetry) 5. John Keats (1795-1821): long poems: ① Isabella ② Endymion ③ The Eve of St.
Agnes ODES: ① Ode to Melancholy ② Ode on a Grecian Urn ③ Ode to a Nightingale ④ Ode to Autumn
6. Charles Lamb (1775-1834), an essayist: 1) The Essays of Elia 2) Tales from
Shakespeare
7. Walter Scott (1771-1832), founder of historical novel: 1) Ivanhoe 2) Woodstock
etc.
8. Jane Austen (1775-1817): 1) Pride and Prejudice (original title is “First
Impression”) 2) Sense and Sensibility 3) Northanger Abbey 4) Emma 5) Mansfield Park
The Victorian Period (roughly realism)
1. Charles Dickens (1812-1870): 1) The Pickwick Papers 2) Oliver Twist 3)
Nicholas Nickleby 4) The Old Curiosity Shop 5) American Notes 6) Dombey and Son 7) David Copperfield 8) Hard Times 9) A Tale of Two Cities 10) Great Expectations
2. Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855): Jane Eyre
3. Emily Bronte (1818-1848): Wuthering Heights
4. Anne Bronte (1820-1849): The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
5. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863): Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a
Hero
6. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865): Mary Barton, a Tale of Manchester Life 7. George Eliot (1819-1880): 1) Silas Marner 2) Adam Bede 3) The Mill on the
Floss
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8. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)(Wessex novels): ①Far from the Madding Crowd;
②The Return of the Native; ③The Mayor of Casterbridge; ④Tess of the D’ Urbervilles; ⑤Jude the Obscure;
9. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), a prose writer: 1) The French Revolution 2) Hero
and Hero-Worship
10. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859): History of England
11. Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), poet: 1) In Memoriam 2) The Idylls of the King 12. Robert Browning (1812-1889), introducing to English poetry the dramatic
monologue: 1) The Ring and the Book 2) short lyrics such as “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”; “Home-thoughts, from Abroad”
Literary Trends at the Turn of the 19th-20th Century
1. George Gissing (1857-1903), under the influence of naturalism: New Grub Street 2. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894): 1) Treasure Island 2) Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde etc.
3. Aestheticism: “art for art’s sake”----representatives: 1) Walter Pater 2) Oscar
Wilde
4. Oscar Wilde (1856-1900): 1) The Picture of Dorian Gray (novel) 2) A Woman
of No Importance 3) Lady Windermere’s Fan 4) An Ideal Husband 5) The Importance of Being Earnest 6) Salome (tragedy)
English Literature in the 20th Century
Realists
1. Henry James (1843-1916): 1) The Portrait of a Lady 2) The Ambassadors 3) The Golden Bowl
2. Herbert George Wells (1866-1946): 1) The Time Machine 2) The Island of Dr. Moreau 3) Tono Bungay (social satire)
3. John Galsworthy (1867-1933): The Forsyte Saga 2) A Modern Comedy
4. William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965): 1) Of Human Bondage 2) The Moon and Sixpence
5. Jeseph Conrad (1857-1924): 1) The Nigger of the Narcissus 2) Lord Jim 3) Heart of Darkness
6. E. M. Forster (1879-1970): 1) Howards End 2) A Passage to India
7. David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930): 1) The White Peacock 2) Sons and Lovers 3) The Rainbow 4) Women in Love 5) Lady Chatterley’s Lover
8. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): 1) Mrs. Warren’s Profession 2) Major Barbara 3) Heartbreak House
Modernism
Stream of consciousness 1. James Joyce (1882-1941): 1) Dubliners 2) A Portrait of the Artists as a Young
Man 3) Ulysses 4) Finnegan’s Wake
2. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): 1) Mrs. Dalloway 2) To the Lighthouse 3) The
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Waves Imagism
1. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet and dramatist, Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1923
2. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965): 1) Four Quartets 2) The Waste Land
Outline of American Literary History
(1) colonial period (early 17th—late 18th)
① American Puritanism
② Jonathan Edwards, (both represent American Puritanism) ③ Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography; Poor Richard’s Almanac (2)Romantic period (first half of 19th)
① background (political independence; hopes everywhere; ideals of
democracy, equality; industrialization; westward expansion; variety of foreign influence etc.)
② Washington Irving— The Sketch Book (Rip Van Winkle; The Sleepy
Hollow)
③ James Fenimore Cooper— Leatherstocking Tales ④ 1840s’, New England Transcendentalism:
Ralph Waldo Emerson: ①Nature; ②The Poet ③The American Scholar; Henry David Thoreau: Waldon
⑤ Walt Whitman (poet) — Leaves of Grass ⑥ Emily Dickinson (poet)
⑦ Edgar Allan Poe— Israfel; Annabel Lee; his horror stories
⑧ Nathaniel Hawthorne— Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, his
short stories
⑨ Herman Melville— Moby Dick
⑩ New England Poets—Wadsworth Longfellow
(3) Realism (after 1865, against the lie of romanticism and sentimentalism)
① William Dean Howells—The Rise of Silas Lapham
② Mark Twain (original name as Samuel L. Clemens) ( a member of Local
Colorism): ①The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; ②Life on the Mississippi; ③The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; ④The Gilded Age; ⑤The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
③ Henry James—①Portrait of a Lady; ②Ambassador (international theme;
psychological realism); ③Golden Bowl
(4) Naturalism (last decade of 19th century; seeing helpless and hopeless of the
world)
① Stephen Crane—1)Maggie, a Girl of the Streets 2) The Red Badge of
Courage
② Frank Norris—The Octopus ③ Theodore Dreiser—①Sister Carrie; ②An American Tragedy ④ Sherwood Anderson—Winsberg, Ohio (①The Triumph of the Egg ②Horses
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and Men ③Death in the Woods)
⑤ O. Henry—20 Years; Gift of Magi; The Last Leave ⑥ Jack London—①Sea Wolf; ②Martin Eden
⑦ Upton Sinclair (of Muckraking Movement): ①The Jungle; ②The
Slaughterhouse
(5) Imagism (after 1st World War)—Economy of expression; use of a dominant
image
① Ezra Pound—1) Cantos; 2) The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
3) The Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd Petals on a wet, black bough
② Williams Carlos Williams; e. e. cummings; Carl Sanburg; Hart Crane (The
Bridge); Wallace Stevens
③ T. S. Eliot—Waste Land; The Sacred Wood
④ Robert Frost, won Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 4 times in his lifetime Fiction writing on the postwar scene
① Sinclair Lewis----(first American Nobel winner for literature) ①Main Street;
②Babbitt ③Arrowsmith ④Dodsworth
② Willa Cather---- (hanging onto the traditional values)①My Antonia ②The
Song of the Lark ③The Professor’s House ④ Oh, Pioneer! ③ Thomas Wolfe----①Look Homeward, Angel ②Of Time and the River ③You
Can’t Go Home Again
(6) Lost Generation (the 1920s)
① Ernest Hemingway—①The Sun also Rises; ②Farewell to Arms; ③For
Whom the Bell Tolls; ④ The Old Man and the Sea ② F. Scott Fitzgerald—①The Great Gatsby; ②Tender is the Night ③ William Faulkner—①As I lay Dying; ②Light in August; ③Go Down, Moses;
④Absolom, Absolom; (famous for his stream-of-consciousness style)
(7) the 1930s—socialist-oriented; new naturalism ① John Dos Passos—U. S. A
② John Steinbeck—The Grapes of Wrath ③ James T. Farrell—Studs Lorrigan Trilogy
④ John O’Hara—Appointment in Samarra (hard-boiled novels)
(8) Post-war Literature
① social background—vitiated by “Cold War”; Mccarthyism; civil rights
movement; Vietnam war(1968-1973) ② Saul Bellow—①Humboldt’s Gift; ②Herzog ③ Norman Mailer—The Naked and the Dead ④ Joseph Heller—Catch 22
⑤ J. D. Salinger—The Catcher in the Rye
⑥ Allen Ginsberg (a member of Beat Generation)—Howl (poem)
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⑦ Jack Kerouac(a member of Beat Generation)—On the Road ⑧ Nabokov--- Lolita
(10) Ethnic Writers
Chinese American Writers:
① Maxine Hong Kingston(汤亭亭)—①The Woman Worrior: Memoirs of a
Girlhood Among Ghosts; ②China Men; ③Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book ② Frank Chin (赵健秀)---- ①Gunga Din Highway; ②Donald Duc ③ Amy Tan (谭恩美)---- ①The Joy Luck Club; ②The Kitcken God’d Wife; One
③Hundred Secret Senses; ④The Bonesetter’s Daughter ④ Gish Jen (任碧莲)----①Typical American; ②Mona in the Promised Land ⑤ David Henry Huang (黄哲伦)---- M. Butterfly (play)
Native American Writers:
① N. Scott Momady: 1. The House Made of Dawn 2. Way to Rainy Mountain 3. The Ancient Child
② Leslie Marmon Silko: 1. Ceremony 2. Storyteller
③ James Welch: 1. Winter in the Blood 2. Fools Crow 3. The Death of Jim Loney ④ Gerald Vizenor: 1. Griever: An American Monkey King in China; 2. The Trickster of Liberty: Tribal Heirs to a Wild Baronage at Petronia ⑤ Louise Erdrich: 1. Love Medicine 2. Beet Queen 3. Tracks
⑥ Michael A. Dorris: 1. A Yellow Raft on Blue Water; 2. The Broken Cord: A Family’s On-Going Struggle with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Afro-American Literature
Black literature underwent a long process of evolution. Oral tradition came first, then the 18th century poems. At the turn of the 20th century, Black novel developed.
1920s’ Harlem Renaissance: Lanston Hughes----(Harlem Laureate) The Weary Blues
1940s: Richard Right 1950s: Ralph Ellison 1960s: James Baldwin
1970s—today: Toni Morrison; Alice Walker etc. ① Richard Right: Native Son ② Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
③ James Baldwin: 1. Go Tell it on the Mountain 2. Another Country 3. The Fire Next Time
④ Toni Morrison(the first African American who won the Nobel prize for literature):
1. Song of Soloman 2. Beloved 3. Love 4. The Bluest Eye 5. Tar Baby ⑤ Alice Walker: The Purple Color
(11) American Theater
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① Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)—①Beyond the Horizon; ②Long Day’s
Journey into Night; ③The Hairy Ape; ④The Emperor Jones; ⑤The Iceman Comes; (Nobel Prize winner in 1936, called the American Shakespeare)
② Clifford Odets (1906-1963)—Waiting for Lefty
③ Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)—①The Glass Menagerie; ②A Streetcar
named Desire; ③Cat on a Hot Tin Roof;
④ Arthur Miller (1915--)—Death of a Salesman;
⑤ Edward Albee (1928--)—Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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