AN182K2 – Cultural History of Britain – Exam Topics
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Definitions of culture and cultural history
Prehistoric, Celtic and Roman Britain
Anglo-Saxon Britain: Conversion to Christianity, Viking raids and Celtic revivals
The Arthurian Legend: historical basis, emergence and transformations (5th-21st century)
Culture in Britain in the High Middle Ages (general characteristics and trends with the
exception of architecture)
6) Medieval architecture in Britain (styles, periods, characteristic features, examples)
7) Culture in Britain in the Late Middle Ages
8) The Renaissance in Britain I: the Tudor Era
9) The Renaissance in Britain I: the Jacobean and Caroline Periods
10) From Palladian to Regency: forerunners and versions of Neo-classicism in English
architecture
11) The emergence of authentic English painting: from Hogarth to Gainsborough
12) Romantic trends in English painting: Constable, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites
13) Neo-classical, Gothic and Romantic: a contrastive description of styles with examples
14) The emergence of the contemporary educational system (institutions of elementary,
secondary and higher education)
15) Outstanding English philosophers in the Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment
Periods
16) The rise and fall of the British Empire(s) and the ideology of imperialism in Britain
(“white man’s burden”, orientalism, concepts of nationhood, English vs. British)
17) Outstanding figures in the history of English music
18) Two centuries of revolution: the economical, industrial and social changes that shaped
Victorian Britain, the “workshop of the world”
19) Modernism: its cultural preliminaries, schools, characteristic features and representatives
in Britain
20) Women’s situation and cultural stereotypes in 18th-20th-century Britain (including
Virginia Woolf’s early feminism)