British Literary History AN22003BA
List of topics
BA second year
Note: the exam is going to be based on the lectures. In those two cases when a certain topic is
not fully discussed during the lectures, the readings listed at the end of this list ought to be
consulted. In the case of the metaphysical poets, the seminar notes must be consulted.
Students are also encouraged to use their seminar notes in preparing for other topics,
whenever they are relevant.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Culture and literature in Medieval England
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Renaissance: background and general characteristics
William Shakespeare: his life and art
The metaphysical poets (seminar notes)
The definition, foundations and ideals of modernity; the modern self
The art of John Milton
The two main approaches to the novel; the early forms of prose narrative (Bunyan,
picaresque); the social factors behind the rise of the novel
9. The general features of 18th-century fiction; major 18th-century novelists (Defoe,
Richardson, Fielding, Sterne)
10. The literature of the Augustan Age; satire and Jonathan Swift
11. The general features of romanticism
12. William Blake
13. The first generation of the romantics: Wordsworth and Coleridge,
14. The second generation of the romantics: Shelley and Keats
15. Victorian social and cultural background
16. The Gothic, Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë
17. Emily Brontë and George Eliot
18. Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy
19. Victorian poetry (Tennyson and Browning)
20. The concept of modernism (vs. modernity); features of modernist art, modernism and
the avant-garde
21. The general features of modernist fiction 1 (Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence)
22. The general features of modernist fiction 2 (E.M. Forster and James Joyce)
23. Literature, Society and Dystopia in Orwell or Golding
24. 20th-century British poetry before 1945
25. Main trends in 20th-century British and Irish drama until 1945
Further reading:
On Metaphysical Poetry and John Donne:
Hunter, Jim. Literature in Perspective: The Metaphysical Poets. "Background" London:
Evans Brothers Ltd.,1965: 11-24, 25-42, 90-107
Guiborry, Achsah. “John Donne.” The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to
Marvell. Ed. Thomas N. Corns. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 123-147.
(available in the library in a limited number of copies or you can get a digital copy of the
scanned chapters also in the library)
(Further works related to the Metaphysical Poets you may wish to consult [not obligatory,
only recommended; consult relevant chapter(s)]
Cookson, Linda ed. The Metaphysical Poets. Harlow: Longman Critical Essays, 1990.
Corns, Thomas N. The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to Marvell.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.)
On D. H. Lawrence:
Two chapters from George Hyde’s book on Lawrence:
(available on xerox copies in the library)