Magdalena Ożarska PhD
BRITISH LITERATURE
Year One, Part One
1-2. INTRODUCTION TO OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE
Reading:
CAEDMON’S HYMN, DEOR’S LAMENT,
THE WANDERER, THE DREAM OF THE ROOD (from The College Anthology)
BEOWULF (from The College Anthology)
Topics for discussion:
1. Old English poetic devices.
2. Methods of emotional expression.
3. The symbolic meaning of fight: Christ and the Cross, Beowulf and the monsters.
Terms to be known: caesura, alliteration, kenning, formulas, elegiac poetry,
prosopopeia, “ubi sunt” theme, heroic poetry.
3. INTRODUCTION TO MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Reading:
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (from The College Anthology)
THE PEARL (from The College Anthology)
Topics for discussion:
1. Descriptive qualities of the texts.
3. Sir Gawain as a reflection of Arthurian legends.
4. Heroic and moral significance of the events presented.
5. The Pearl as a dream vision.
Terms to be known: romance, medieval romance, bob and wheel, the Round Table,
dream vision.
4-5. GEOFFREY CHAUCER’S THE CANTERBURY TALES
THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH DRAMA
Reading:
THE GENERAL PROLOGUE
THE MILLER’S TALE (together with explanatory notes; pay special attention to
the following fragments: pp. 105 - 106 up to And had to bear the cross as others
bear, pp. 108 – 109: from It happened later she went off to she’d have been
pounced upon, pp. 110 – 111: from And so it happened that one Saturday to How
can you lie up there asleep all day; p. 114 – 115: from I want you now to Now off
you go and hurry up about it; pp. 118 – 120: from The first cock crew to O God,
why did I let myself be fooled; pp. 120 – 121: from But Absalon who didn’t give a
bean to Help! Water! Help!; p. 122: from All started laughing to the end),
EVERYMAN (from The College Anthology)
Topics for discussion:
1. The General Prologue as a social panorama.
2. Selected tales: various genres and their elements.
3. Moralistic and entertaining aspects of the text.
4. Everyman as a morality play.
Terms to be known: fable, exemplum, fabliau, mock-heroic, beast epic, moral(ity) play,
miracle play, interlude, mystery play
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6. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMA AND THE ACHIEVEMENT OF WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE
Reading:
MACBETH (revision)
Pay special attention to the following: Act I Scene 3: ll. 38-69, 120-158; Scene 7: 128; Act II Scene 1: 33-64; Scene 3: 1-41; Act III Scene 4: ll. 129-143; Act IV Scene
3: ll. 91-98, 164-173; Act V Scene 2: ll.17-31, Scene 3: ll. 18-62, Scene 5: ll. 16-28.
HAMLET
Pay special attention to the following: Act II Scene 2: ll. 191-222; Act III Scene 1:
ll. 55-165, Scene 2: ll. 349-354; Act IV Scene 1: ll. 125-160; Act V Scene 2: ll. 350359.
Topics for discussion:
1. Sources of Shakespeare’s plays.
2. The relationships and moral change of the protagonists in Shakespeare’s
tragedies.
3. Problems of good and evil, humour, symbolic and supernatural elements.
4. Features of Shakespearean tragedy.
Terms to be known: tragedy, comedy, romance, history play, Shakespearean tragedy,
comic relief, play within a play, soliloquy, tragic hero
7. ENGLISH ELIZABETHAN SONNETS; THE ACHIEVEMENT OF JOHN MILTON
Reading:
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S Sonnets (from The College Anthology), Sonnet 63
SIR THOMAS WYATT’S I Find No Peace, My Galley Charged With Forgetfulness
HENRY HOWARD’S Love That Doth Reign And Live Within My Thought,
Alas, So All Things Now Do Hold Their Peace
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY’S Sonnet 1 from Astrophel and Stella
EDMUND SPENSER’S Sonnet 1 from Amoretti (all from The College Anthology)
JOHN MILTON On His Blindness, Preface to Paradise Lost
Topics for discussion:
1. Reflections on life, love and death contained in the poems.
2. Elizabethan poetic devices.
Terms to be known: sonnet, types of sonnet, hyperbole, metaphor, simile, epithet,
paradox, oxymoron, personification, epic, enjambment (run-on lines)
8. METAPHYSICAL POETS
Reading:
JOHN DONNE The Good Morrow, The Flea, Batter My Heart, Death Be Not Proud
GEORGE HERBERT The Collar, The Pulley
ANDREW MARVELL To His Coy Mistress
Topics for discussion:
1. Cultural and social background of the epoch and general characteristics of
Metaphysical poetry.
2. Subject matter and poetic devices as applied by the poets at issue.
Terms to be known: conceit, paradox, strong lines, wit, abrupt beginning,
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9. THE RISE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL
Reading:
DANIEL DEFOE Robinson Crusoe
Topics for discussion:
1. Formal realism and its execution in the novels at issue.
2. The types of hero: Puritan, Homo Economicus, Man in the state of Nature
Terms to be known: formal realism, types of early realism Homo Economicus, Man in
the State of Nature, protonovel, Bildungsroman
10. 18th-CENTURY ENGLISH POETRY AND EARLY ROMANTICISM
Reading: ALEXANDER POPE An Essay On Criticism, The Rape Of The Lock, and
An Essay On Man
THOMAS GRAY Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard
WILLIAM BLAKE The Lamb, The Tyger (all from The College Anthology)
Topics for discussion:
1. Features and trends of English 18th-century poetry
2. Blake’s concepts of innocence and experience, his artistic achievement
Terms to be known: satire, elegy, decorum, Chain of Being.
11. ROMANTIC POETS OF THE FIRST GENERATION
Reading:
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH The Daffodils, Tintern Abbey, Preface To ‘Lyrical
Ballads’
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Kubla Khan, The Ancient Mariner
Topics for discussion:
1. Romantic views on the nature of poetry as presented in the Preface to Lyrical
Ballads
2. Wordsworthian conceptions of nature, the poet and the poetic process.
3. The Ancient Mariner as a Romantic ballad.
Terms to be known: romantic ballad, imaginative realism
12. ROMANTIC POETS OF THE SECOND GENERATION
Reading:
JOHN KEATS Ode on a Grecian Urn
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Ode to the West Wind
GEORGE GORDON BYRON Don Juan (fragments in Krajewska’s English Poetry)
Topics for discussion:
1. Keats’s conception of art.
2. The pattern of imagery in Shelley’s Ode.
3. The generic structure of a digressional poem. Byron as an untypical Romantic.
Terms to be known: ode, romantic ode, digressional poem, narrative tale in verse,
ottava rima
13. ROMANTIC PROSE
Reading: JANE AUSTEN Sense and Sensibility
Topics for discussion:
1. The uses of irony in the novel.
2. The position of the woman as reflected in the novel.
Terms to be known: novel of manners, social novel.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Alexander M., A History of English Literature, Macmillan Foundations 2000.
2. Bela T., Mazur Z., The College Anthology of English Literature, Universitas
1997.
3. Blaim A., The Adventurous Parable: Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’, Wydawnictwo
Gdańskie 1994.
4. Carter R., McRae J., The Penguin Guide to Literature in English, Penguin
2004.
5. Helsztyński S., Specimens Of English Poetry and Prose, vol. I, PWN 1986.
6. Kowalik B., Artistry and Christianity in ‘Pearl’, Wydawnictwo Gdańskie 1994.
7. Kowalik B., ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’: An Ingenious Knot,
Wydawnictwo Gdańskie 1994.
8. Krajewska W., English Poetry of the Nineteenth Century. PWN 1984.
9. Sikorska L., An Outline History of English Literature, Wydawnictwo
Poznańskie 2002.
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