HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LITERATURE
(to niekoniecznie są pytania, lista obejmuje zakres materiału – utwory oraz problematykę - który należy opanować na
egzamin; WAŻNE: zawsze należy podawać przykłady z omawianych tekstów ilustrujące argumenty!)
1. Early forms of Old English writing: runic alphabet, the advent of Roman alphabet,
manuscripts, characteristic genres, themes and features
2. Beowulf as an epic poem, the role of the genre in medieval European literatures
3.
Beowulf as an example of the heroic ideal, values of heroic society
4. Anglo-Saxon religious poetry; parallels and differences between “Dream of the Rood”
and heroic poetry
5. Dream vision technique
6. Sources and characteristic features of medieval romances - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
7. Courtly love and chivalry
8. The Canterbury Tales as an encyclopaedia of literary genres (fabliau, exemplum, saint’s life,
fable, verse romance, folk tale)
9. The Canterbury Tales as a microcosm of the English medieval society: low culture and high
culture
10. types of medieval drama:
-
mystery plays – origin, themes
-
miracle plays
-
morality plays
11. Characteristic features of morality plays
-
allegory and personification
-
the main motifs: memento mori, danse macabre, ars moriendi
-
the conflict, psychomachy
12. Renaissance Drama: Christopher Marlowe: Dr Faustus - Renaissance tragedy, humanism,
the influence of the medieval drama
13. Shakespeare’s sonnets:
-
Different types of sonnets and their thematicity
-
themes: love , time, death, begetting children, creating poetry
-
anti Petrarchan tradition
-
platonic and sexual love
14. The concept of romantic comedy - comic effect vs. tragic elements, motif of disguise,
tragic potential of love - William Shakespeare: Midsummer Night’s Dream
aktualizacja 06.04.2011 r.
1
15. William Shakespeare’s tragedy - characteristic features of Shakespearean tragedy
(supernatural elements and their role, madness, exploration of human passions, questions
of morality)
16. Classical (Greek) vs. Renaissance tragedy
17. Hamartia as an error of judgement or a tragic flaw
18. Characteristic features of metaphysical poetry:
19. The Rape of the Lock as a mock-heroic poem
20. The rise of the novel – reasons for the appearance of a new genre, early forms of novels
(picaresque, epistolary, satire)
21. Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe and Puritan doctrine
22. Guliver’s Travels as a political and philosophical satire
23. Pre-Romantic poetry – origins, ideas.
24. Visionary quality of Blake’s poetry, rational and mystical elements
25. Romantic idea of poetry and its role – Lyrical Ballads
26. Attitude towards nature in Romantic poetry
27. Differences between early and late Romantic poetry
28. Romantic genres – ballad and ode
29. The function of art and Death in Keats’ poetry (“Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode on a Grecian
Urn)
30. The force of chaos in Shelley’s ‘nature’ poems, the properties and symbolism of wind
(Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind”)
31. Victorian Novel - the social aspect of the novel; representation of Victorian society,
recurrent themes of Victorian literature (Charles Dickens: Great Expectations, Emily
Brontë: Wuthering Heights)
32. Romantic and gothic elements in Wuthering Heights
33. Gothic novel
34. Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Wilde’s attitude towards life and art in fin de
siecle, Aestheticism
35. Irish themes in William Butler Yeats' poetry
-
the treatment of past and tradition
36. T.S. Eliot: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'', The Waste Land”
-
T.S. Eliot’s views on poetry, dissociation of sensibility
-
Juxtaposition
-
Dramatic monologue
aktualizacja 06.04.2011 r.
2
-
Reference to myths and the classics
-
The idea of objective correlative
37. Joseph Conrad: The Heart of Darkness
- The exploitation of the natives by white colonizers
- Degeneration of civilization
- The symbolism of the journey
38. Stream Of Consciousness: James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
39. Narrative experiments [interior narration], perspectivism, symbols in Virginia Woolf Mrs.
Dalloway
40. The theater of the absurd
-metaphysical despair
-insufficiency of language
-symbolism
41. Antiutopia – origins of the genre, characteristic feature, examples
42. Post-modern novel, forms of narration, narrative experiments, intertexuality; the use of
history and literature, metafiction - John Fowles: The French Lieutenant's Woman
aktualizacja 06.04.2011 r.
3
HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
1. Puritan Literature (17th c.)
- literary genres and their representations: historical accounts, diaries, poetry, sermons,
conversion narratives: form and typical artistic devices used on examples of texts
discussed (Bradford, Bradstreet, Taylor, Edwards)
- Calvin's doctrine of predestination and its representation in Puritan texts
- Puritan historiography and belief in Providence on examples of Puritan texts
2. Enlightenment literature (18th c.)
- contrasting Franklin's and Edwards' autobiographies as representing 18th c. philosophy
(deism) and Great awakening ideas (Calvin's), respectively – compare and contrast
3. The turn of the 19th century:
- problems and anxieties: how solved in Irving's stories
- romantic elements vs neoclassical residue in “Rip Van Winkle”
- compare and contrast Poe's gothicism with that of Irving
- the American Gothic tradition – Poe, Brockden Brown – elements, how it differs from
European gothic tradition (what is new, what elements are missing, what is missing)
4.
American Transcendentalism (19th c)
- role of nature in Emerson's and Thoreau's texts
- man vs society in Emerson's and Thoreau's texts
- philosophy of individualism (American Scholar, Self-Reliance, Civil Disobedience)
5. American Romantic Symbolism (mid-19th c)
- compare and contrast the vision of nature in Hawthorne and Melville with that of
Emerson
- symbolism in “Scarlet Letter” and “Moby Dick”
- “Scarlet Letter” and “Moby Dick” as representing the American Romance (definitions,
elements, examples)
6. Romantic poetry (19th c)
- Whitman: language, form, novelty, subject matter; how ideas of democracy and
development of America are visible in both form and subject matter;
- Dickinson: language, form, artistic devices, subject matter; compare and contrast the
two poets
7. American realism and naturalism (end of 19th c)
aktualizacja 06.04.2011 r.
4
- Mark Twain – local color realism – elements, examples; the issue of racism and slavery –
how racist the text is; romanticisation of the river – symbolism; Huck as the American
hero
- Henry James – limited point of view; psychological realism; motif of Europe vs America
- Stephen Crane – naturalism: definitions and influences; how naturalism is visible in his
works (images, narrator's discourse; philosophy, irony)
8. Modernist poetry (20th c)
- imagism – features, philosophy, method, examples
- modernist elements in selected poems – tenets and how they are visible in the poems
(form, themes)
9. Modernist fiction (20th c)
- features of modernist fiction (form, themes, disappointment)
- symbol and narration in modernist fiction: Fitzgerald and Faulkner
- disillusionment with the American Dream – how visible in Fitzgerald (motifs, how
Daisy connected with the American Dream in the text, irony)
10. Postmodern fiction (the 1970s and later)
- historiography, auto-thematic character and metafiction – definitions, how realized in
Vonnegut's and e.g. Coover's fiction
- fragmentation in postmodern fiction – its role
- the role of the reader – methods of activating the reader in creating meaning
(intertextuality, fragmentation, comic strip convention, play on genres, parody)
aktualizacja 06.04.2011 r.
5