THE OUTLINE OF THE BRITISH
LITERATURE AND SOME
REPRESENTATIVES
(FROM 19TH CENTURY UP TO
NOW)
Pavla Krtilová C4B
ROMANTICISM (1780-1832)
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a time of great technical inventions and Industrial
revolution, workers as well as children are subject to
inhuman explotation
return to nature, mainly about freedom, love, nature,
brave men, history, mystery, exotic countries
writers wanted to express feelings and emotions
heroes are usually social outcasts (murderers,
prostitutes …) and the story takes place on a lonely
mysterious places like cemeteries or castles
origin of gothic novel – horror and romance together
(Mary Shelley -Frankenstein)
POETS OF ROMANTICISM
Lake Poets
 William Wordsworth ,Samuel T. Coleridge
 “Lyrical Ballads” inspired by lake District
 authors who admired British nature and wrote
lyrical poems
Poets of the period
 Lord George Gordon Byron
 Percy Bysshe Shelley
 John Keats
PROSE WRITERS OF ROMANTICISM
Sir Walter Scott from Scotland
 romantic prose writer
 “the father of historical novel”
 Ivanhoe – set in the medieval age of knights under the
rule of Richard the Lion Heart
Jane Austen
 romantic prose writer
 born in poor family, 6 brothers and 1 sister, never
married, died young
 the domestic novel – dealing with family life
 Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Jane Eyre…
VICTORIAN LITERATURE – REALISM
(19TH CENTURY)
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“ Victorian realism”
description and critics of British society
social novel – the major type of works
Obr.1.: (12.3.2014),Dostupné z http://qvj.chadwyck.com/marketing.do
Charles Dickens
 a representative of critical realism
th
 he depicted the life of the poor in 19 century (orphans..)
 used his own experiences from his childhood and life
 Oliver Twist- about a young orphan, without a family, who
band together with robbers, it was one of the first social
novels in 19th century
 David Copperfield
William Makepeace Thackeray
 Vanity Fair
Robert Louis Stevenson
 adventurous novels (Treasure Island, The Strange Case
Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde)
Lewis Carroll
 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Oscar Wilde
 famous dramatist of Victorian Era
 born in Dublin, homosexual, alcoholic, prisoner
 novel The picture of Dorian Gray
 ironic conversational drama The Importance of Being
Earnest
20TH CENTURY
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influenced by two world wars, various allies,
revolutions, economic achievements...
PROSE
George Orwell
 born in India, educated in England
 inspirited by the poorest parts of London
 Animal Farm (mean to satirize the politics os the Soviet Union),
1984 (anti-utopian novel)
Agatha Christie
 “Queen of Detective fiction”
 about 100 detective stories, novels and plays
 she gave life to Ms Jane Marple, Hercule Poirot…
 The death on Nile, Murder in the Orient Express
Francis Conan Doyle
 Sherlock Holmes
J.R.R. Tolkien
 fantasy writer
 inspirited in old German and Celtic myths
 Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings
C.S.Lewis
 Chronicles of Narnia
Rudyard Kipling
 Jungle Book
John Galsworthy
 Saga of Forsyte – trilogy about wealthy family
J.K. Rowling
 Harry Potter
James Joyce
 an Irish novelist and poet of modernism
 short-story collection Dubliners, novel A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man
Virginia Wolf
 an English writer of modernism
 novels Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando
DRAMA
George Bernard Shaw
 a writer and a philosopher
 Pygmalion – about two different social classes
Obr.2.:(12.3.2014), Dostupné z: http://www.chemainustheatrefestival.ca/season_lady_history.html