Lecture Four
British Literature
Timeline

British literature can be roughly divided into 7
periods.
1. Early and Medieval Literature
2. Literature of Renaissance Period
3. Literature of Revolution and Restoration Period
4. Literature of the 18th century
5. Literature of Romantic Period
6. Literature of Critical Realism
7. Literature of the 20th Century
We will go over the major works in the first six
periods.
Types of Literature
1. Narrative Fiction
 2. Drama
 3. Poetry
 4. Non-fiction Prose

Narrative Fiction
Short stories
 Novels
 Myths
 Parables 寓言故事
 Romances
 Epics 叙事史诗

Drama
Tragedy
 Comedy
 Farce 滑稽剧

Poetry
Sonnet
 Lyric 抒情诗
 Pastoral 田园诗
 Ballad 叙事诗
 Song
 Ode 颂诗
 Dramatic Monologue

I. Early and Medieval Literature
British literature began with the AngloSaxon settlement in England.
 Focus:

◦
◦
◦
◦
The national epic (primitive literature)
The Romance Cycles (feudalist literature)
Folk literature
Chaucer’s literary works
I. National Epic-Beowulf
A long poem of 3000 lines;
 Telling a story about an ancient hero Beowulf’s fight against a
lake monster, his mother and a fire dragon;
 Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the main
character is a hero who travels great distances to prove his
strength at impossible odds against supernatural demons and
beasts.

I. Beowulf (2)
 The
outstanding features of the poem is its use
of alliteration, understatement and metaphor.
-Alliteration 押头韵
“Thus made their mourning the men of Geatland,
For their hero’s passing, his hearth-companions
quoth that of all the kings of earth,
Of men he was the mildest and most beloved,
To his kin the kindest, keenest to praise.”
-Understatement
not troublesome (very welcome); need not praise (condemn)
-Metaphor
swan’s bath (sea); sea-wood (ship)
I. The Romance
Romance: a long composition in verse or
prose, describing the life and adventures of a
noble hero
 Theme of romance: a knight riding forth to
seek adventures, taking part in tournaments,
or fighting for his lord in battle
 Emphasizes the loyalty to king and lord

I. The Romance (2)
Romance Cycles



The great majority of Romances mainly fall into 3 cycles.
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.
Romances are literature for the feudalist ruling class,
and they had nothing to do with the common people.
11
King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
12
I. 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.
2016/3/10
13
I. Folk Literature (2)




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.
2016/3/10
14
I. Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)
15
I. Chaucer (2)





Founder of English literature
The greatest English poet of the Middle Ages
Founder of English realism
A crucial figure in developing the legitimacy
of vernacular, Middle English, at a time when
the dominant literary language were French
and Latin
Introduced “heroic couplet” 英雄双韵体
(rhymed couplet of 5 accents in iambic
meter (aabbccddeeff…) to English poetry,
which used the alliterative verse
I. Chaucer (3)

The Canterbury Tales
◦ A collection of stories written in
Middle English
◦ The tales are told as part of a
story-telling contest by a group
of pilgrims on their trip to
Canterbury.
◦ It paints an ironic and critical
portrait of English society at the
time, particularly the church.
II. Literature of Renaissance Period
•
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.
II. Renaissance (2)
•
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.
II.The Renaissance (3)

In order to appreciate literature in the Renaissance period, it is necessary
to grasp some key words for this period:

The most important ones are 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 words that 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.
2016/3/10
20
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.
2016/3/10
21
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.
•
2016/3/10
22
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.
•
2016/3/10
23
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.
2016/3/10
24
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.
2016/3/10
25
II.The Renaissance (9)
William Shakespeare (2)
•
•
•
•
•
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.
2016/3/10
26
II.The Renaissance (10)
William Shakespeare (3)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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 Labor'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
2016/3/10
(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)
27
II. The Renaissance (11)
William Shakespeare (4)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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)
2016/3/10
28
II. The Renaissance (12)
William Shakespeare (5)

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.
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.

2016/3/10
29
II.The Renaissance (12)
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.
Othello:
 A tragedy of human weakness,
esp. envy.
 A tragedy caused by hypocrisy
and selfishness.
 The issue of racial prejudice
against the black.
2016/3/10
30

III. Literature of the Revolution and Restoration Period
 John
Milton
◦ Paradise Lost-Great epic since Beowulf
 A long epic in 12 books written in blank verse (无韵叙事
诗）
 The story were taken from the Old Testament and was
about the Fallen of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve
by Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden
Paradise Lost
Theme:
A revolt against God’s authority
Characterization
 Satan is the real hero of this epic
 Firm, courageous, persistent
 Prefers independence to happy servility

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost
IV. Literature of the 18th century
 Background:
• The Enlightenment in Europe (an expression
of struggle of bourgeoisie against feudalism)
 Focus
• Jonathan Swift
• Daniel Defoe
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Jonathan Swift

Gulliver’s Travels
Gulliver’s Travels

Story: Gulliver’s self description of his fantastic
visits to some unbelievable places
◦ The story consists of four parts




Voyage to Lilliput
Voyage to Brobdingnag
Voyage to Liputa
Voyage to Houyhnhnms
 http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gulliver/summary.html

Theme
◦ A satirical view of the state of European government
◦ An inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt or
whether they become corrupted
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Daniel Defoe
Earliest proponent of novels
 One of the founders of English novels
 Author of Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe

The famous story of Robinson Crusoe can be
divided into three parts:
◦ Robinson’s youth and the time up to his shipwreck;
◦ his twenty-eight years on an uninhabited island;
◦ his lie and adventures after being rescued from the island.

Published in 1719, Defoe places his story in the 17th
century in England, north Africa, Brazil, an island off
the coast of Venezuela and back to Europe.
Robinson Crusoe (2)

Part 1:

Robinson wishes to pursue his livelihood by going to
sea against the advice of his father. He does so and
after a false start has some success but a third voyage
ends in slavery. He eventually escapes and is helped to
Brazil where he becomes a successful plantation owner.
He embarks on a slave-gathering expedition to West
Africa but is shipwrecked off the coast of Venezuela in a
terrible storm.
Robinson Crusoe (3)

Part 2:
◦ The bulk of the novel attends to Robinson’s
life on the island —how he accomplishes his
survival and even establishes his "kingdom";
how he moves from a frantic state of
discontent to one of resignation and
contentment; how he meets Friday and, finally,
how he leaves the island.
Robinson Crusoe (4)

Part 3:
◦ Though anticlimactic, the third part of the
novel traces Robinson’s securing of wealth
through the honesty and loyalty of friends, his
return to England, travels through the
continent and a last trip to his island to see
how those he left there fared.
Robinson Crusoe (5)

The character of Robinson Crusoe is
representative of the English bourgeoisie
at the earliest stages of its development.
He is most practical and exact, always
religious and at the same time mindful of
his own profits.
Daniel Defoe

Defoe is an anti-romantic, anti-feudal realistic writer.

His stories are all real concerns of his time: people in
their struggle to overcome the natural or social
environment.

Defoe adopted the autobiographical form and made use
of his long trained journalistic skill by describing things in
great detail and by using specific time and space

His style is characterized by a plain, smooth, direct, and
almost colloquial but never coarse language
V. Literature of Romantic Period

Romanticism refers to a literary movement
characterized by
◦ The idealization of nature
◦ Freedom of thought and expression
◦ Heavy reliance on the imagination and subjectivity


Romantic period: the first third of the 19th
century
Focus:
◦ William Wordsworth
◦ George Gordon Byron
◦ Percy Shelley
V. William Wordsworth (1770-1850)





One of the most accomplished and influential of
England’s romantic poets
One of the Lake Poets (together with Robert
Southey and Coleridge)
Poet laureate
He set forth his principles of poetry in the Preface
to the Lyrical Ballads 抒情歌谣集 that “all good
poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feeling”, which contrasted with the classicists who
made reason, order and the old, classical traditions
the criteria in their poetical creations.
He endeavored to bring his language near to the
real language of men.
William Wordsworth (2)
A radical democrat in the early days, attracted
to slogans of liberty, equality and fraternity.
 A conservative in politics and religion in his
later years
 Being strong against the industrialization,
thinking it caused miseries and destroyed
country life
 He changed the course of English poetry by
using ordinary speech of the language and by
advocating return to nature

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824)

His poetry conveys the essence of the
romantic movement in literature.
Byron

Don Juan
◦ A satiric poem
◦ Purpose: to present a panoramic view of
different types of society
◦ Subjects
 Love, war, religion, ethics, politics, etc.
◦ Theme
 Appearance vs. reality
 Natural man vs. hypocritical society
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
One of the most influential leaders of
Romantic Movement
 Living by a radically nonconformist code

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley, with a triumphant praise of the
imagination, highly excelled the role of
poetry, thinking that poetry alone could
free man and offer the mind a wider view
of its powers. Poetry “is a more direct
representation of the actions and passions
of our internal being”. It is through
language that the imagination most readily
apprehends the ideal order of truth.
Prometheus Unbound by Shelley
A four-act play
 Story: torments of the Greek
mythological figure Prometheus and his
suffering at the hands of Zeus;
 It differed from the Aeschylus’s Prometheus
Bound in that there was no reconciliation
between Prometheus and Zeus. Instead,
Zeus was overthrown and Prometheus
was released.

VI. English Critical Realism
It flourished in the forties and the early fifties of
19th century
 The critical realists described with much
vividness of the English society and criticized
the capitalistic system from a democratic
viewpoint
 Great use of humor and satire
 Chief tendency is not of revolution but rather
of reformism with happy endings or important
compromises in the end

English Critical Realism
Contribution to the literary form is the
perfection of the novel.
 The works of this period not only
pictured the conflicts between separate
individuals who stood for definite social
strata, but also showed the broad social
conflicts over and above the mere
individuals.

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Major works
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Northanger Abbey
Mansfield Park
Emma
Jane Austin
Stories of middle-class women in search
of husbands
 Known for fine writing, subtle
characterization and controlled studies of
manners
•
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
A master of story-teller
 A master of character-portrayal
◦ He is best at child character portrayal
◦ He is good at description of horrible and grotesque
figures
 A master of humor and pathos

Charles Dickens

Major works:
◦ Pickwick Papers- “the supreme epic of English
life” in early 19th-century England
◦ Oliver Twist- calling forth the reader’s
sympathy for the down-trodden people of the
lower classes
◦ David Copperfield-an autobiographical book
◦ Hard Times-a fierce attack on the bourgeois
system of education and ethnics and
utilitarianism
William Thackeray (1811-1863)

A representative of critical realism in 19th
century England
Vanity Fair by Thackeray
Subtitle “A novel without a hero”, emphasizing
the writer’s intention not to portray individuals,
but the bourgeois and aristocratic society as a
whole
 It describes the life of the ruling classes in the
early decades of the 19th century, and attacks
the social relationship of the bourgeois world
by satirizing the individuals in the different
strata of the upper society

The Bronte Sisters
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)
 Emily (Jane) Bronte (1818-1848)
 Anne Bronte (1820-1849)
 Major works

◦ Agnes Grey
◦ Wuthering Height
◦ Jane Eyre
by Anne Bronte
by Emily Bronte
by Charlotte Bronte
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

One of the
representatives of
English critical
realism at the turn
of the 19th century
Thomas Hardy (2)
Best known for his Wessex Novels, i.e.,
the novels describing the characters and
environment of his native countryside.
 Major novels:

◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
Under the Greeenwood Tree
Far from the Madding Crowd
The Return of the Native
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy (3)

Tess from the D’urberville
◦ Theme:
 “Ache of modernism”
 Sexual double standard
VII. 20th Century Literature

Thank you!