History and Anthology of English Literature

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History and Anthology of English Literature

• Mickey Xu

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• The Romantic Period
• Historical background Industrial Revolution
  French Revolution
• Thomas Paines The Right of Man was banned
  and he fled to France to escape the trail by the
  British government.

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• Romanticism It refers to a European
  intellectual and artistic movement of the late
  eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that
  sought greater freedom of personal expression
  than that allowed by the strict rules of literary
  form and logic of the eighteenth-century
  neoclassicists. The Romantics preferred emotional
  and imaginative expression to rational analysis.
  They considered the individual to be at the
  center of all experience and so placed him or her
  at the center of their art. The Romantics
  believed that the creative imagination reveals
  nobler truths unique feelings and attitudes
  than those that could be discovered by logic or
  by scientific examination. Both the natural world
  and the state of childhood were important sources
  for revelations of "eternal truths."

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• The First Generation of Romanticist PoetsI. Lake
  Poets The first generation of Romantics include
  Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey. They were also
  called Lake Poets because they had lived for a
  time in close association in the mountainous Lake
  District in the northwest of England. They are
  regarded as one group also because of their
  community of literary and social outlook. They
  traversed the same path in politics and in
  poetry, beginning as radicals and closing as
  conservatives.

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• II. William WordsworthlifeWilliam Wordsworth
  was born April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth,
  Cumberland(a shire). The next year he met
  Coleridge, and the three of them grew very close,
  the two men meeting daily in 1797-98 to talk
  about poetry and to plan Lyrical Ballads, which
  came out in 1798. The three friends travelled to
  Germany that fall, a trip that produced
  intellectual stimulation for Coleridge and
  homesickness for Wordsworth. After their return,
  William and Dorothy settled in his beloved Lake
  district, near Grasmere.Durham University
  granted him an honorary Doctor of Civil Law
  degree in 1838, and Oxford conferred the same
  honor the next year. When Robert Southey died in
  1843, Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate. He died
  in 1850, and his wife published the much-revised
  Prelude that summer.

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• works ?Lyrical Ballads In 1789, Wordsworth
  and Coleridge jointly published the Lyrical
  Ballads.
• The Preface of the Lyrical Ballads The
  manifesto of the English Romantic Movement in
  poetry.

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• His short lyrics I Wandered Lonely as a
  CloudIntimations of ImmortalityLines
  Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern AbbeyThe
  Solitary ReaperThe Prelude autobiographical,
  in 14 books, the spiritual record of the poets
  mind.

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• Style ?Simplicity, vivid imagery, directness
  of language, and unadorned beauty.?Wonderful
  descriptions of nature, Nature Poet.

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Byron(1788--1824)
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• Byron(1788--1824)
• Life
• born on 22 January 1788 in London. At the
  age of 11 he inherited the title Lord Byron from
  his uncle and he went back to England. He was
  handsome but born with a misformed foot, which
  probably affected his disposition.He was
  compared to a roaring lion.In 1809, he started a
  tour around the Europe and the East. He went
  through Portugal, Spain, the Mediterranean,
  Turkey, Albania, Asia Minor. The result was his
  Childe Harolds Pilgrimage, a great success.In
  1815, he got married. During his tour in Europe,
  he befriended Shelly who infulenced Byrons later
  works.After the death of Shelly, he went to
  Greece to help the Greeks win their liberty.

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• Works
• Long narrative and dramatic poems Childe
  Harolds Pilgrimage a long poem of four cantos,
  written in Spenserian stanza. This poem tells of
  Childes travel in Europe.Don Juan It was
  written in Italy Lyrics When We Two Parted
  She Walks in Beauty

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Summary

• Byron wrote this poem the morning after he had
  met his beautiful young cousin by marriage, Mrs.
  Robert John Wilmot.
• The poet admires the womans beauty.

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• Don Juan Byrons masterpiece
• It was written in Italy during the years
  1818---1823. It is 16,000 lines long, in 16
  cantos, and was in ottava rima, each stanza
  containing 8 iambic pentameter lines rhymed
  abababcc.
• The story takes place in the latter part of the
  18th century. Don Juan, its hero, is a Spanish
  youth of noble birth. The poem tells about the
  vicissitudes of his life and his adventures.

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• Percy Bysshe Shelley

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• Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Life
• He was born in 1792. His father was a
  conservative and narrow-minded country gentleman.
  
• Before he was 18, he had written two romances
  and published a collection of poems?
• At 19, he married with a 16 year-old girl. The
  marriage was hasty and unsuitable, because she
  could not share his ideas. In 1814, they
  divorced.
• He went to Ireland in 1812 and published in
  Dublin his Address to the Irish People.
• In 1816, Shelley married Mary Goldwin.

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• works
• Queen Mab
• The Revolt of Islam a long poem in 1818.
• Prometheus Unbound his masterpiece, a lyrical
  drama in 4 acts.
• The Masque of Anarchy a political lyric.
• Lyrics on Nature and Love
• Ode to the West Wind.
• To a Skylark
• Loves Philosophy.
• A Defence of Poetry Poetry, so far from
  being deteriorated and made powerless by the
  advance of civilization, is actually the
  indispensable agent of civilization.

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• John KeatsLife---He was born in 1795 in
  London. His father was a stable keeper.
• ---Before he was 15, both of his parents
  died and he started to be an apprentice to a
  surgeon.---He made friends with Leigh Hunt,
  Hazlitt and Shelley in London and published some
  poems. His first collection of poems was
  published under the help of Shelley.---In 1818
  he started on a walking tour through England and
  Scotland, during which he witnessed the poverty
  and privations of the people. ---Keats also
  lived in poverty. When looking after his brother
  who was badly ill, Keats was stricken with the
  same illness.---Keats fell in love with a young
  lass Fanny Browne but could not marry her on
  account of his poverty and illness.---Shelley
  invited Keats to come to Italy for medical
  treatment. But shortly after his arrival in Rome
  he died in 1821.

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• Works long poems
• EndymionIsabellaThe Eve of St.
  AgnesLamiaHyperrion unfinishedShort poems
• Ode to AutumnOde on MelancholyOde in a
  Grecian UrnOde to a Nightingale( the best)
• His Principle Beauty in truth, truth in
  beauty

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• Some Women Writers (Jane Austen, the Bronte
  sisters, Mrs. Gaskell and Gorge Eliot)
• Among the distinguished English novelists of
  the 19th century are several women. Women
  novelists began to appear in England during the
  second half of the 18th century. But some gifted
  women of the 19th century made such contributions
  to the development of the English novel that they
  have justifiably won their places in the front
  ranks of the brilliant realists headed by Dickens
  and Thackeray. These remarkable women novelists
  are Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Mrs. Gaskell
  and Gorge Eliot.

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• Jane Austen (1775--1817)
• --lived and worked at the turn of the
  century.
• --daughter of a country clergyman, passed all
  her life in doing small domestic duties in the
  countryside.
• --refused to acknowledge that she was the
  author of her novels, which were published
  anonymously owing to the prejudice prevailing at
  the time concerning the writing of novels by a
  lady.
• --living a quiet life in the countryside, she
  kept her eyes steadily upon the people and
  incidents about her, and wrote about the small
  world she lived in.

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• Pride and Prejudice

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• Work
• --six novels
• Northanger Abbey
• Sense and Sensibility
• Pride and Prejudice (the most widely read
  among them)
• Mansfield Park
• Emma
• Persuasion

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• ThemesTheme is the fundamental and often
  universal idea explored in a literary work. The
  term is used interchangeably with thesis.
• ---Love---Reputation

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• Analysis of Major Characters
• Elizabeth Bennet
• she is lovely, clever. Nevertheless, her
  sharp tongue and tendency to make hasty judgments
  often lead her astray.
• Fitzwilliam Darcy
• Intelligent and forthright, he too has a
  tendency to judge too hastily and harshly, and
  his high birth and wealth make him overly proud
  and overly conscious of his social status.

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• Charles Lamb(1775--1834)
• Life ?a lifelong friend of Coleridge, and an
  admirer and defender of the poetic creed of
  Wordsworth.
• ?But while the romantic poets were
  interested in nature and country life, Charles
  Lamb felt more at home in the city than in the
  wild nature. He passed all his days in London.
• He showed us a romantic imagination which
  can find its stimulus not only in nature and in
  country life but also in society and people.
• ?He is considered as the finest familiar
  essayist in England. (The familiar essay is
  characterized by its relaxed style, its
  conventional tone, and its wide range of subject
  matter. )

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• Works
• Tales from Shakespeare (1818)
• Specimens of English Dramatic Poets
  Contemporary with Shakespeare(1808) Essays of
  Elia (1820)
• Last Essays of Elia

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• Features
• He is a humorist and a master of puns and jokes,
  which abounds in his essays.
• He is fond of old writers. His writings are full
  of archaisms.
• His essays are intensely personal.
• His romanticism is different from Wordsworths.
  He was a romanticist of city, and his imagination
  was inspired by the busy life of London.

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• Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Scottish writer
  and poet and one of the greatest historical
  novelists.

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• Works
• He is regarded as the founder and great master of
  the historical novel.
• 1).the group of novels on the history of
  Scotland Waverley (1814), Guy Mannering (1815),
  Old Morality (1816), Rob Roy (1817)
• 2). The group of novels on English History
  Ivanhoe (1819), famous for the realistic
  description of the life of feudal England.
• 3). The group of novels on the history of
  European countries
• Quentin Durward (1823)
• St. Ronans Wells (1823) the only novel of
  Scotts which deals with his contemporary life.

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• His influence
• Scotts historical novels combine a romantic
  atmosphere with a realistic description of
  historical background, thus paving the way for
  some of the best works of Dickens and Thackery.
  In fact, his literary career marks the transition
  from romanticism to realism in English literature
  of the 19th century.