Transcript British_literature

A Brief Introduction to British Literature
山东大学外国语学院
申富英
http://www.jpkc.sdu.edu.cn/culture/final/content12.htm
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An Introduction
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British literature can be roughly divided into eight periods, for the sake of
convenience:
I. Early and Medieval Literature;
II. Literature of the Renaissance Period;
III. Literature of the Revolution and Restoration Period;
IV. Literature of The 18th Century;
V. Literature of The Roman Period;
VI. Literature of Critical Realism;
VII. Prose and Poetry of the Mid- and Late 19th Century;
VIII. Literature of the 20th century.
• Today we will mainly introduce the literature before the 18th century.
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I. Early and Medieval Literature
• First, Early and Medieval Literature. For this part, the
most important things for you to know include:
1. The national epic of the English people, which
belongs to the primitive literature;
2. Romance cycles, which belong to the feudalist
literature;
3. Folk literature whose subjects are from the lower
class;
4. Chaucer’s literary works.
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1. National Epic:
Beowulf
• A long poem of 3000 lines;
• Written in old English in alliterative form;
• Telling a story about an ancient hero Beowulf’s fight against a
lake monster and his mother, a monster, too;
• Beowulf’s battle against a fire dragon.
• The poem reflects ancient people’s longing for a courageous
hero who can fight against the unknown and terrible nature
and protect them from the threats from nature. The
outstanding features of the poem is its use of alliteration,
understatement and metaphor.
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2. Romance (1)
The knighthood
• The most prevailing kind of literature in feudal England is the
Romance. Romance is usually about the knights’ stories.
• A knight is a man of noble birth, skilled in the use of weapons.
• He loves adventures and tournaments.
• His most outstanding characteristics include:
• A. Loyalty to the king;
• B. Loyalty to his lord;
• C. Loyalty to the church, and
• D. Chivalry and devotedness to ladies.
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2. Romance (2)
Romance Cycles
• The great majority of Romances mainly fall into 3 cycles. That is:
1. The matters of Britain:
About King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table
2. The matters of France:
About Emperor Charlemagne and his peers
3. The matters of Rome:
About Alexander the Great
• Of these three cycles, the matters of Britain is the most important one,
and the culminations of its is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
The last thing I want to say about Romances is that they are literature for
the feudalist ruling class.
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King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table
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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
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3. Folk Literature
• Literature of the lower
class in the feudalist
society includes written
folk literature and oral folk
literature.
• As for the written folk
literature, the most
important writer is William
Langland, whose
masterpiece is Piers the
Plowman.
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3. Folk Literature
• With an oral tradition, popular ballads usually
deals with a single episode and their beginning is
often abrupt, without any introduction to the
characters and background information.
• The themes of ballads are various in kind.
• And among the ballads published, the Robin Hood
ballads are of special significance.
• Robin Hood, the famous outlaw welcomed by the
poor was a half-historical and half-legendary hero.
He and his men lived in the forest, fighting with
the oppressors and protecting the poor and the
oppressed.
• The best known of the earliest collections was
given by Bishop Thomas Percy (1729～1811),
named Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.
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4. Chaucer
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Chaucer is the most important poet in the medieval age.
He is the father of English poetry in that he introduces rhymed verse, especially
couplet, into Britain to replace alliterative verse formerly prevailing in British
poetry and making English the literary language.
He is also the founder of English realism because The Canterbury Tales, his
masterpiece, provides a panorama of the life in the medieval England.
He is the forerunner of humanism for in his masterpiece the keynote is humanism.
He praises human intellect, human beauty, human passion and human living
environment, and affirms human rights to pursue earthly happiness.
He does much in making London dialect the foundation of modern English speech.
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II. The Renaissance (1)
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Chaucer's death starts the transition period in England
full of significant changes.
The King of England, after the Wars of Roses, assumed
greater power than before; and Henry VII (1485～
1509) founded the Tudor dynasty which was a
centralized monarchy and met the needs of the rising
bourgeoisie and so won its support. Declaring the
separation from the Roman Catholic Church,
implementing a large-scale suppression of the
monasteries and confiscating the property of the
Church to enrich the new bourgeois, Henry VIII
(1509～1547) started the movement called the
Reformation, the essence of which is the fight of the
bourgeois for power. However, the CounterReformation carried out by Queen Mary (1553～1558)
put an end to the Reformation and caused the bloody
religious persecution.
The reign of Elizabeth I (1558～1603) was a period of
political and religious stability on the one hand and
economic prosperity on the other. The Church of
England was re-established, ending the long time
religious strife; commerce and industry forged ahead
as a result of the enclosure movement at home and
the opening of new sea routes in the world. In the
meantime, the rise of the bourgeoisie also showed its
influence in the sphere of cultural life.
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II. The Renaissance (2)
• The word “Renaissance” means revival of interest in ancient
Greek and Roman culture, specifically between the 14th and
mid 17th century.
• Renaissance, in essence, was a historical period in which the
European humanist thinkers and scholars made attempts to get
rid of feudalist ideology in Europe and introduce new ideas
that expressed the interests of the rising bourgeoisie, to lift the
restrictions in all areas placed by the Roman catholic church.
• Humanism is both the keynote of the Renaissance and the
intellectual liberation movement. Humanists took interest in
human life and human activities and gave expression to the
new feeling of admiration for human beauty, human
achievements and human reason and passion.
• The English Renaissance was an exciting time for literature
which experienced a burst of ideas and literary brilliance.
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II. The Renaissance (3)
• In order to appreciate literature in the Renaissance period, it is
necessary to grasp some key words for this period:
• Of course the most important one is humanism and revival of
the interest in the ancient Greek and Roman literature.
• Besides these two words, which can be applied to all the
works by all the renaissance writers, there are also some key
word which can be used in analyzing some individual writers.
• Emphasis on the importance of national unity.
• The importance of ideal kingship.
• The importance of legal succession to the throne.
• The issue of witchcraft and racial prejudice.
• The close study of human nature, esp. human weakness.
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II. The Renaissance (4)
• Thomas More (1477～1535),
scholar, thinker and statesman,
was the leading humanist of his
day. Among his writings the best
known is Utopia (1516)
• The work tells of a journey to an
imagined island name Utopia,
where an ideal form of society
exists.
• Its title comes from the Greek
word meaning “nowhere” and
was adopted by More as the
name of his ideal commonwealth.
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II. The Renaissance (5)
• Edmund Spenser (c. 1552～1559) was the
most influential poet and the dominating
literary intellect in the late 16th century in
England. The Shepherd's Calendar (1597), a
poem in the traditional pastoral form and
his first important work, established his
poetic reputation.
• The union of line and meter in the poem is
more harmonious, more supple, and richer
than that in the works of Chaucer.
• His sonnet Amoretti is one of the most
famous sonnet sequences of the
Elizabethan Age.
• In his masterpiece The Faerie Queene,
Spenser devised a verse form called the
Spenserian Stanza, which consists of eight
ten-syllable lines, plus a ninth line of 12
syllables, an iambic rhythm and a rhyme
scheme as follows: abab bcbc c.
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II. The Renaissance (6)
• Politician, philosopher and essayist,
Francis Bacon (1561～1626) showed his
great intellectual energy in his day.
• His major works are The Advancement
of Learning and New Instrument.
• While being the founder of English
materialist philosophy and the founder
of modern science in England, he is also
the first great English essayist.
• In 1597 Francis Bacon published his first
collection of essays, which made
popular in English a literary form widely
practiced afterward. It is the most
informal and casual of his works, the
Essays, that is read most often.
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II. The Renaissance (7)
• Based on the miracle play, the morality play, the interlude
and the classical drama, drama flourished in this age more
than any other form of literature.
• Christopher Marlowe (1564～1595) was the greatest of the
pioneers of English drama.
• His importance is due to the energy with which he
endowed the blank verse line (unrhymed iambic
pentameter), which in his hands developed an
unprecedented suppleness and power.
• His plays have great intensity, but sometimes they show a
genius which is epic rather than dramatic—at least in
Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta and Doctor Faustus which
are his acknowledged masterpieces.
• The final scene of Doctor Faustus is one of the most
intensely dramatic in English literature. It shows his musical
handling and control of the ten-syllable line.
• Marlowe's works paved the route for the greatest
dramatist—William Shakespeare—whose accomplishments
were the monument of the English Renaissance and whose
works gave the fullest expression to humanist ideals.
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II. The Renaissance (8)
William Shakespeare (1)
• William Shakespeare (1564～1616), a great poet
and dramatist of the English Renaissance period, is
surely one of the greatest writers the western
world has ever produced.
• The facts concerning Shakespeare's life are scarce;
nevertheless there are many records left in the
works of his contemporaries and later biographers
that help us to restore his image.
• William Shakespeare was born probably on April
23, 1564, in Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire. As a
child William was sent to the local grammar school
that he had attended for six years. He studied Latin
and Greek and read widely the books current in his
day. When Shakespeare was fourteen, his father
fell into debt, and the boy probably left school and
became a country schoolmaster to help support his
family.
• In 1582, William Shakespeare, then eighteen, was
married to Anne Hathaway, eight years of his elder.
Six months later, Susanna was born; in 1585, their
twins, Hamnet and Judith, were baptized.
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II. The Renaissance (9)
William Shakespeare (2)
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Shakespeare arrived in London in the year
1586 or 1587. At that time drama was
rapidly gaining popularity among the
people.
Shakespeare worked both as actor and
playwright. He established himself so well
as a playwright that Robert Greene, one of
the “University Wits” resentfully
declared him to be “an upstart crow. ”
However, during the period in London, he
became an acclaimed actor and
established playwright.
Shakespeare retired from the stage and
returned to Stratford in 1612. He died on
April 23,1616, the 52nd anniversary of his
birthday.
William Shakespeare produced 37 plays, 2
narrative poems and 154 sonnets.
His plays can be divided into four types:
historical plays, comedies, tragedies and
romantic tragi-comedies. His major dramas
may fall into three periods:
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II. The Renaissance (10)
William Shakespeare (3)
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The first period (1590～1600)
Henry VI
Richard III
The Comedy of Errors
Titus Andronicus
The Taming of the Shrew
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Love's Labour's Lost
Romeo and Juliet
Richard II
A Midsummer Night's Dream
King John
The Merchant of Venice
Henry IV, Part I
Henry IV, Part II
Much Ado about Nothing
Henry V
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Julius Caesar
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
(1590～91)
(1592～93)
(1592)
(1593)
(1593～94)
(1594)
(1594)
(1595)
(1595～96)
(1595～96)
(1596～97)
(1596～97)
(1597)
(1597)
(1598～99)
(1598～99)
(1598～1601)
(1599)
(1599～1600)
(1599～1600)
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II. The Renaissance (11)
William Shakespeare (4)
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The second period (1601～1608)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
(1600～01)
Troilus and Cressida
(1602)
All's Well That Ends Well
(1604)
Measure for Measure
(1604～05)
Othello, the Moore of Venice (1604～05)
King Lear
(1605～06)
Macbeth
(1606)
Antony and Cleopatra
(1607)
Coriolanus
(1607)
Timon of Athens
(1605～08)
Pericles
(1608)
The third period (1609～1612)
Cymbeline
(1609～10)
The Winter's Tale
(1610～11)
The Tempest
(1611～12)
Henry VIII
(1613)
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II. The Renaissance (12)
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William Shakespeare (5)
Let’s have a brief look at Shakespeare’s greatest
dramas.
The Merchant of Venice:
It deals with the conflict between the rising
bourgeois and the feudalist money lender.
It praises true love and friendship and attacks
greed and selfishness.
It also reveals the prevailing prejudice against
the jew.
It shows the rising bourgeoisie’s confidence in
winning the future.
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Hamlet:
It praises humanists as represented
by Hamlet. He is the scholar, a soldier
and a statesman.
It shows the inevitable problems
faced by the humanists.
Hamlet’s delay of action is due to his
awareness of the possible national
disaster which will be brought about
by his personal revenge and his sense
of responsibility to put the interests
of his nation and his people before
his own.
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William Shakespeare (5)
• Macbeth:
• A tragedy of human
weakness, esp. ambition.
• Importance of legal
succession to the throne,
which has great
significance in keeping
national
unity.
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• Othello:
• A tragedy of human
weakness, esp. envy.
• A tragedy caused by
hypocrisy and selfishness.
• The issue of racial
prejudice against the black.
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II. The Renaissance (13)
William Shakespeare (6)
• The Tempest:
• The spirit of reconciliation.
• The spirit of forgiving.
• King Lear:
• A tragedy caused by splitting
national unity.
• A tragedy caused by Lear’s impulse.
• A tragedy due to Lear’s inability to
distinguish between the true and the
false. And his irresponsibility as a
king.
• A tragedy due to the prevalence of
the social evils.
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