Professional Documents
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History of English Literature
History of English Literature
‘No household in the English-speaking world is properly furnished unless it contains a copy of the Holy Bible
and one of the works of William Shakespeare. It is not always thought necessary that these books should be
read in maturer years, but they must be present as symbols of religion and English culture.
Shakespeare has not always been so symbolic a figure. He was an actor and playwright, when neither actors
not the stage were regarded as respectable or of any importance. The notion that he was the supreme genius of
the English race did not began until he had been dead more than a century; but since then it has become so
firmly accepted that no schoolboy can avoid a detailed study of at least one of his plays.
(Introducing Shakespeare- G.N. Harrison)
Details about William Shakespeare’s life are sketchy, mostly mere surmise based upon court or other clerical
records. William Shakespeare, surely the world's most performed and admired playwright, was born in April,
1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, about 100 miles northwest of London. Shakespeare was the eldest
son of Mary Arden, the daughter of a local landowner, and her husband, John Shakespeare (1530-1601), a
glover and wood dealer.
William no doubt attended the local grammar school in Stratford where his parents lived, and would have
studied primarily Latin rhetoric, logic, and literature. At age 18 (1582), William married Anne Hathaway, a
local farmer’s daughter eight years his senior. Their first daughter (Susanna) was born six months later (1583),
and twins Judith and Hamnet were born in 1585.
Shakespeare’s life can be divided into three periods: the first 20 years in Stratford, which include his schooling,
early marriage, and fatherhood; the next 25 years as an actor and playwright in London; and the last five in
retirement back in Stratford where he enjoyed moderate wealth gained from his theatrical successes. The years
linking the first two periods are marked by a lack of information about Shakespeare, and are often referred to as
the “dark years”; the transition from active work into retirement was gradual and cannot be precisely dated.
William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, and was buried two days later in the chancel of Holy Trinity
Church where he had been baptized exactly 52 years earlier.
Written upon William Shakespeare’s tombstone is an appeal that he be left to rest in peace with a curse on those
who would move his bones.
Good friend, for Jesus´ sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed here!
Blest be ye man that spares thes stones
And curst be he that moues my bones.
Translation:
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake, forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here;
Blest be the man that spares these stones
And curst he that moves my bones.
William Shakespeare’s works
Scholars distinguish three periods in William Shakespeare’s works:
1. The early period (roughly from 1590 to 1600), during which he wrote mainly gay comedies and
dramatic histories. This is the period of optimism of William Shakespeare.
2. The middle period (roughly from 1600 to 1608), during which he wrote great tragedies and bitter
comedies. This is the period of maturity of William Shakespeare.
3. The late period (roughly from 1609 to 1612), during which he wrote legendary and lyrical plays, and
tragic comedies.
Tragedies
1. Titus Andronicus first performed in 1594 (printed in 1594),
2. Romeo and Juliet 1594-95 (1597),
3. Hamlet 1600-01 (1603),
4. Julius Caesar 1600-01 (1623),
5. Othello 1604-05 (1622),
6. Antony and Cleopatra 1606-07 (1623),
7. King Lear 1606 (1608),
8. Coriolanus 1607-08 (1623), derived from Plutarch
9. Timon of Athens 1607-08 (1623), and
10. Macbeth 1611-1612 (1623).
Histories
11. King Henry VI Part 1 1592 (printed in 1594);
12. King Henry VI Part 2 1592-93 (1594);
13. King Henry VI Part 3 1592-93 (1623);
14. King John 1596-97 (1623);
15. King Henry IV Part 1 1597-98 (1598);
16. King Henry IV Part 2 1597-98 (1600);
17. King Henry V 1598-99 (1600);
18. Richard II 1600-01 (1597);
19. Richard III 1601 (1597); and
20. King Henry VIII 1612-13 (1623)
Comedies
21. Taming of the Shrew first performed 1593-94 (1623),
22. Comedy of Errors 1594 (1623),
23. Two Gentlemen of Verona 1594-95 (1623),
24. Love's Labour's Lost 1594-95 (1598),
25. Midsummer Night's Dream 1595-96 (1600),
26. Merchant of Venice 1596-1597 (1600),
27. Much Ado About Nothing 1598-1599 (1600),
28. As You Like It 1599-00 (1623),
29. Merry Wives of Windsor 1600-01 (1602),
30. Troilus and Cressida 1602 (1609),
31. Twelfth Night 1602 (1623),
32. All's Well That Ends Well 1602-03 (1623),
33. Measure for Measure 1604 (1623),
34. Pericles, Prince of Tyre 1608-09 (1609),
35. Tempest (1611),
36. Cymbeline 1611-12 (1623),
37. Winter's Tale 1611-12 (1623).
2. Typical Works
Hamlet- Prince of Denmark
Critique
Hamlet is without question the most famous play in the English language. Probably written in 1601 or 1602, the
tragedy is a milestone in Shakespeare’s dramatic development; the playwright achieved artistic maturity in this
work through his brilliant depiction of the hero’s struggle with two opposing forces: moral integrity and the
need to avenge his father’s murder.
Shakespeare’s focus on this conflict was a revolutionary departure from contemporary revenge tragedies, which
tended to graphically dramatize violent acts on stage, in that it emphasized the hero’s dilemma rather than the
depiction of bloody deeds. The dramatist’s genius is also evident in his transformation of the play’s literary
sources—especially the contemporaneous Ur-Hamlet—into an exceptional tragedy. The Ur-Hamlet, or
“original Hamlet,” is a lost play that scholars believe was written mere decades before Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
providing much of the dramatic context for the later tragedy. Numerous sixteenth-century records attest to the
existence of the Ur-Hamlet, with some references linking its composition to Thomas Kyd, the author of The
Spanish Tragedy. From these sources Shakespeare created Hamlet, a supremely rich and complex literary work
that continues to delight both readers and audiences with its myriad meanings and interpretations.
In the words of Ernest Johnson, “the dilemma of Hamlet the Prince and Man” is “to disentangle himself from
the temptation to wreak justice for the wrong reasons and in evil passion, and to do what he must do at last for
the pure sake of justice.… From that dilemma of wrong feelings and right actions, he ultimately emerges,
solving the problem by attaining a proper state of mind.” Hamlet endures as the object of universal
identification because his central moral dilemma transcends the Elizabethan period, making him a man for all
ages. In his difficult struggle to somehow act within a corrupt world and yet maintain his moral integrity,
Hamlet ultimately reflects the fate of all human beings.
3. William Shakespeare’s Sonnets
What is a sonnet?
The sonnet came to birth in Sicile at the court of King Frederic I (1123-1190) – a Holy Roman emperor. His
Chancellor Piteo Della Vigna, is generally credited with the invention of the sonnet, evolving from Sicilian folk
songs.
These early sonneteers rhymed the first eight lines, or octet, of the sonnet abababab. To the octet is added a six-
line stanza called the sestet, rhyming abcac, or ababa. Petrach sometimes concluded his sonnets with a couplet
aa or cc.
English has not so many rhyme sounds as Italian so it is natural that in Elizabethan England, a new sonnet form
developed in which only two rhymes of each sound were demanded. Hence, we have the English sonnet, or
Shakespearean sonnet, which has three four- line units or quatrains and a concluding couple. The English sonnet
rhyme scheme is ababcdcdefefgg.
William Shakespeare’s Sonnets
William Shakespeare’s Sonnets are an island of poetry surrounded by a barrier of icebergs and dense fog; or in
the metaphor of Sir Walter Raleigh, the modern Oxford scholar. They have been used like wedding cakes, not
to eat but to dream upon.
The Sonnets of William Shakespeare appeared, without his permission, in 1609 and advertised as "never before
imprinted". The publisher, although reputable, clearly wanted to make use of the celebrity of William
Shakespeare who by 1609 was a famous member of the Globe Theatre and could count royalty amongst his
patrons. The 1609 quarto, entitled Shakespeare’s Sonnets, was published by Thomas Thorpe, printed by George
Eld, and sold by William Aspley and William Wright
Though it is hard to find a clear composition for the 154 sonnets by Shakespeare, on the whole we can
understand that these sonnets are about an ideal frank emotional friendship between the poet and a noble
handsome young man who was uninterruptedly praised by Shakespeare; and about a love affair between the
poet and an attractive charming Dark Lady, who was once an unlimited source of his happiness and
unhappiness. Through these sonnets, we also know that his old friend and his Muse did meet each other, did
love each other, and by so doing, both did betray him, both did bring him great sorrow ad grief, though he did
his best to try an explanation for their wrongdoings and forgive them.
This sonnet, sonnet 116, may have been written in the hours of his great sorrow and grief, in his anguish and
disappointment, about a shattered belief in love and friendship.
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Chapter III: the classical literature (1603-1689)
I. Cultural – Historical Background
After the death of Shakespeare, great changes took place in English life and thought. England began to split into
two warring camps: the king’s and the Parliament’s. The division was between the old and the new way of life.
On the one hand was the conservative element of the country- those who derived their wealth from the land,
from old estates, and who supported the reigning monarch and accepted the established religion of England. On
the other hand were those whose livelihood came from trade, who belonged to the town, who wanted a greater
share in the government of the country, and who thought that the Reformation of religion in England had not
gone far enough.
The new men of England, the men who gained their wealth from trade, were inclined to a sort of religious belief
very different from the established faith of England. They were for the most part Puritans: they wanted a purer
kind of Christianity than the Reformation had brought to the country. They wanted a Christianity so pure that it
would admit of no toleration, no joy, no colour, no charity; an austere religion which frowned on easy pleasure,
and published moral crimes in the most savage manner.
Briefly speaking, the 17th- century England was a time of conflicts between the king and the Parliament,
between English Protestants and Puritans. These conflicts became so acute under the reign of King Charles I
that they led to the Civil War, followed by the Restoration of the Monarchy and the ‘Glorious Revolution’.
1. The Civil War (also called The Bourgeois Revolution, 1640-1648)
After Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, James VI of Scotland became James I of England and Scotland, the first
king of The Stuarts. Being an extravagant and licentious king, James I brought with him to England the Scottish
courtiers. To make up for his luxurious expenditures and expensive court, the king was forced to impose and
raise taxes, which was rejected by the parliament dominated by puritans. The dispute between the king and the
parliament became more and more acute when Charles I, son of James I, succeeded the throne in 1652 ad very
later imprisoned those Parliament members who tried to prevent him from doing what he wanted. As a result,
the Civil War (1640-1648) between the two camps- the King’s army and the Parliament’s army- broke out.
Charles I was captured and beheaded in 1649. The Commonwealth of England (with Oliver Cromwell as Lord
Protector) was set up in 1649.
2. The Restoration of the Monarchy (1660)
No sooner had the Commonwealth been established than it developed into a tyrannical government. The
republic under the dictatorship of Cromwell imposed on England a way of life that she had never known before.
As a result, the hopes and beliefs that English people placed on Oliver Cromwell began to shatter. The political
situation in England became worse with the death of Cromwell in 1658. His son, Richard, was too inferior to his
father in intelligence and will power to maintain his heredity title (i.e. Lord Protector of The Commonwealth of
England) and to unite the Parliament’s army. England fell into a state of chaos and Charles II, an exile in
France, was called back to England to ascend the throne in 1660, restoring the English monarchy.
3. The ‘Glorious Revolution’ (1688)
Leaving France, Charles II was promised a warm support by Louise XIV on two conditions:
1. not to interfere in the political arena in Europe, and
2. to yield certain concessions to the Roman Catholics in England.
Everything seemed to be going well until Charles’ death. In 1685, Charles II died without direct issue and let
the crown to his brother, James II. As a Stuart king, James II inherited all the extravagance licentiousness of the
Stuarts. On the other hand, James II was an extremely fanatical Stuart, who tried to play the all- powerful
monarch, regardless of the compromise between Charles II and Louis XIV. Therefore, James II was no more
supported by King Sun of France and he had to pay the price. In 1688, an arrangement was made among the top
layers for James II to flee to France, leaving the crown to his daughter, Mary, and his son-in-law, William of
Orange. This event was known as the ‘Glorious Revolution’, making the end of the Absolute Monarchy and the
beginning of the Constitutional Monarchy in England.
II. Literature
The changes that took place in political and religious life of England were truthfully reflected in the literature of
the 17th century. The Bourgeois Revolution which had sent Charles I to the scaffold and banished the Stuarts ha
been no less religious than political, for the men who opposed unrestrained royal prerogative were in majority
earnest religious men, imbued with Calvinistic principles. These men, known by the name of Puritans, had risen
to power with the establishment of the Commonwealth. The sincerity of this religious fervour is revealed by
Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ and Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. But the Puritan rule (1648-1660) soon degenerated
into a sombre tyranny, and the ludicrous satire of Butler, the ‘Hudibras’- a reaction against Puritanism- bears
witness to the disaffection of the public for the ‘government of the godly’.
The Puritans had overstrained men’s moral capacities ad severely punished moral crimes: on the king’s return in
1660, there was a general outburst of frivolity. The stage- always a faithful mirror of the stage of society- was
invaded with the licentiousness of the times, and there was not a comedy of Dryden, Wycherley, Vanbrugh,
Congreve, and Farquhar which was not tainted with it. Against this genera depravity, Jeremy Collier, in his
‘Short Review of the Immorality of the English Stage’ (1698), raised a vehement protest.
There was a dark period for the development of stage in England. During the Puritan rule, theatres were closed
because pleasure was regarded as sinful and stage was thought to be the world of devils. After the downfall of
the absolutely monarchy in England, the Cavaliers had emigrated to France, mostly to Paris, where, being
playgoers, they had attended the performances given at the Hotel de Bourgogne and the Palais Royal: this was
the very moment when the masterpieces of Corneille (‘Le Cid’, 1636; ‘Horace’, 1640) were calling forth
tempests of applause. The English exiles were conquered by the orderly pomp, noble pathos and psychological
depth of the French ‘classical drama’, and naturally desired, when the Restoration had brought them back to
England, to have performances of s similar kind. However, the plays written under Charles II were quite
different from those written under Elizabeth: they were written in service of the king and his court, not in
service of the public.
Dryden (1631-1700), the most distinguished Cavalier poet and playwright, accordingly turned out heroic
dramas written in conformity to the French pattern. His tragedy ‘All for Love’ (1678) was at the time
considered as fine as Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra. But, as a tragic writer, Dryden was surpassed by
Otway (1652-1685), whose two tragedies ‘The Orphan’ (1680) and ‘Venice Preserved’ (1682) won European
fame.
In prose, the business of writers became to express thoughts in a clear, straight-forward, conversational
language, intelligible to any men of sense. Dryden, in his essay ‘Of Dramatic Poesie’(1668), and Locke, in his
essay ‘Concerning Human Understanding’(1690) gave models of an easy, yet dignified prose style, hardly to be
improved upon by the artists of the age of Pope. But prose in the 17 th century flourished among Puritan writers,
especially with John Bunya and John Milton, the latter being also a first-rate poet.
III. Typical Writers and Works
Typical Writers: John Milton
John Milton (1608-74) is the first great literary personality of England. He came from a London family with a
certain amount of money. He never had to earn his own living. He had leisure and was able to study, equip
himself with more learning than any previous great poets. His father was a composer of music and he himself
was blessed with musical ear. Later he was blind and his greatest work is written after this calamity struck him.
One of his great works is “On the morning of Christ’s Nativity”, in which he is not content merely to praise the
new-born heavenly-child, but must describe his victory over the false gods. From most of his works, we can see
that he was destined to be the man alone, finding no pleasure in the gay world about him. Some see Milton as
the egocentric, the proud self-centered men around whom the universe revolts: what he wants, god also must
want. If his marriage is a failure, the marriage law must be altered. If he despises woman then woman must be
despicable. According to him, he is never wrong. It is fitting epilogue to the career of this great poet. Even in
his last days, Milton is still experimentary with verse and language, producing new tones and rhythms (even
new word like “eye-witness”). In the new cynical, bright and corrupt England of Charles II, some of his works
stand as a monument to an age whose literary glories, whose moral aspirations, whose genuinely heroic spirit
can never be approached in the centuries to come. Milton is the last of the old.
Typical Work: ‘Paradise Lost’
In 1667 John Milton bestowed his great masterpiece, Paradise Lost, upon the world. In 1674 the revised second
edition was published, where he divided the original ten books into twelve and added the introductory
summaries or "Arguments" for each book at the request of confused early readers.
Chapter IV: the age of enlightenment (1689-1798)
I. Cultural – Historical Background
The period from the middle of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century is often regarded as the historical
background for the appearance of the Enlightenment in England. Some remarkable events in this period were:
1. The Dispute of Power between the Tory and the Whig
The Bourgeois Revolution (1648) gave birth to two conflicting parties: the Whig and the Tory.
The Whig, set up by Lord Shaftesbury, belonged to the Low Church, consisting of city merchants, financiers,
bourgeoisie, and dissenters.
The Tory, set up by Dryden, belonged to the High Church, consisting of great landowners, aristocrats, and
clergymen.
In the 18th century, these two parties alternately ruled England. Their continuous disputes threw the English
political and social life into confusion.
2. The Rise of the British Empire
This was a period of the British colonial expansion. It began a time when ‘The sun never sets on the British
Empire’. Ireland was deprived of all rights; Scotland agreed to unite with England; England defeated Louis XIV
in the two wars with France and got hold of Gibralta, ‘a western key to Mediterranean Sea; most of the French
colonies in America were handed to England; Senegal and India went to England, too. The conquered lands
were used as the sources of cheap raw materials.
3. The Beginning of the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was initiated by the inventions of various kinds of machines in the 2 nd half of the 18th
century. With new machines, either invented or imported, the English industry, especially the textile and mine
industries, developed rapidly. Along with the expansion of the British Empire, the enlargement of the British
market and the increasing standard of living of English people, the Industrial Revolution precipitated the
development of England into a big capitalist country.
II. Literature
The 18th century in England as well as in Europe, was the age of REASON. The writers’ central problems were
the study of ma and the origin of his virtues ad vices. Believing that’ Vice is due to ignorance’, they started a
movement for the enlightenment of the people.
The terminology ‘Enlightenment’ indicates the historical role of the bourgeoisie in the age of the Bourgeois
Revolution in comparison with the corrupt feudalism by recalling the contrast between light and dark. It also
implies the progress of the ideological movement and literature in the 18th century.
Being a period of political intrigue and increasing intellectual tendencies, the age of Enlightenment was
favourable to the development of prose rather than of poetry.
The literature of this time was illustrated by such masters of prose as Swift, the prince of English satirist; Defoe,
the father of the English novel; Adison and Steele, the creators of English essay-writing; and Pope, the
acknowledge ruler of the literary world of his day.
The Enlightenment writers belonged to two groups:
The first group wanted to better the world by teaching including Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Daniel
Defoe, and Alexander Pope.
The second group openly protested against vicious social orders in their social satires, including
Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding and Robert Burns.
III. Typical Writers and Works
1. Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731)
Daniel Defoe is rightly considered the father of the English and the European novel, for it was due to him that
the genre became once and for ever established in European literature.
Daniel Defoe’s life was complicated and adventurous. He was the son of a London butcher whose name was
Foe, to which Daniel later added the prefix De. He sometimes used it separately giving his name a French
sound. His father, being a puritan, wanted his son to become a priest. Daniel was educated at theological school.
However, he never became a priest, for he looked for another business to apply his abilities to. He became a
merchant, first in wine, then in hosiery. He traveled in Spain, Germany, France and Italy on business. Though
his travels were few they, however, gave him, a man of rich imagination, material for his future novels. Foe’s
business was not very successful and he went bankrupt more than once. He took an active part in the political
life of Britain. In 1685 he participated in the Duke of Monmouth’s revolt against James II. The rebellion was
defeated in a compromise of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie and resulted in a compromise of these two
classes. After this defeat, Defoe had to hide himself for some time. When the Dutchman William of Orange
came to throne of England in 1688, Defoe was among his most active supporters.
It was in his later years, however, that Defoe wrote the novels for which he is now justly famous. They were
perhaps the first books that conform to the term "novel", and brought him great success. 1719's Robinson
Crusoe and its sequel, the Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, are probably the most famous, but soon he
had published Captain Singleton (1720), Moll Flanders (1722), A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and
Roxana (1724). These novels were extremely influential and showed a journalist's interest in realistic
description. Many of the works written after Roxana were travel books (e.g. A New Voyage round the World
(1724) and A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-6)). Defoe's simple but effective prose style
ensured him widespread popularity and he is seen as the father of the English Novel, as well as the first
journalist of great individual merit. He died in his lodgings on April 24, 1731.
Typical Work: Robinson Crusoe
Critique
2. Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)
The greatest satirist in the history of English literature, Jonathan Swift, was the contemporary of Steele,
Addision, Defoe and other English enlighteners of the early period. However, he stood apart from them, for
while they supported the bourgeois order, Swift, by criticizing different aspects of the bourgeois life came to the
negation of the bourgeois society. Lunacharsky called Swift one of the first critics of bourgeois system and
capitalist reality.
Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667 in Dublin in an English family. His father died seven months
before Jonathan’s birth leaving his family in poverty. Jonathan was brought up by his prosperous uncle Godwin
Swift who sent him to school and then to Trinity College in Dublin.
There he studied theology and later became a clergyman. His favorite subjects, however, were not theology but
literature, history and language. At 21 Swift went to live in England and became a private secretary of distant
relative, Sir William Temple, a writer and a well-known diplomat of the time. At Moor Park, Sir William estate,
Swift made friends with Hester Jonson, the daughter of one of Temple’s servants, fourteen years his junior.
Hester, or Stella as Swift poetically called her, remained his faithful friend through all his life. His letters to her,
written in 1710-1713, were later published in the form of a book under the title of Journal Stella.
During the two years at Moor Park, Swift read and studied much and in 1692 he took his Master of Arts Degree
at Oxford University. With the help of Sir William, Swift got the place of vicar in a small church in Kilroot
(Ireland) where he stayed for a year and a half. Then he came back to Moor Park and lived there till Sir
William’s death in 1698.
Typical Works: Gulliver’s Travels
Critique
Swift is best known for his satires. In Gulliver’s Travels, his masterpiece, he satirizes the evils of the existing
society in the form of fictitious travels.
In the first voyage to Lilliput, Gulliver finds himself in a country of very small people. He feels contempt for
their ideas, customs and institutions. The Emperor boasts that he is the delight of the Universe while as a matter
of fact; he is just as tall as a snail. Swift satirizes the hypocrisy, hostility and flattery of England in the 18 th
century.
In the second voyage to Brobdingnag, Gulliver lives in the land of giants. They are generally good-nature
creatures and treat him kindly though they were amused by his size. So we can see that Brobdingnag is an
expression of Swift’s desire to escape from the disgusting world and create an ideal monarch with a clever,
honest and kind king.
Jonathan Swift’s bitterness of satire reaches its climax in Gulliver’s third trip to Laputa. Swift ridicules the
scientists of 18th century who are isolated from the world. They are busy inventing stupid things, such as:
extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, building houses beginning at the roof, etc. All these things don’t serve
any practical purpose and unfamiliar to humanity as a whole.
Gulliver’s last voyage is the most biting satire of all. He finds a land governed by horses of highest intelligence
and uprightness. In this region, peace and contentment are never destroyed by disease, flattery, cheats, bribery
and social evils. These beastly creatures show Swift’s extreme pessimism caused by a deep contempt and hatred
for humanity.
Through his Gulliver’s Travel, Jonathan Swift has shown that he is the greatest satirist in English literature.
Critics have suggested that Swift intended the novel to be both an attack on mankind and its follies and a honest
assessment of mankind's positive and negative qualities. It is also considered a critique of the greatest moral,
philosophical, scientific, and political ideas of Swift's time. The greatest and most lasting accomplishment of
Gulliver's Travels may be its ability to encourage readers of any society at any time to raise important questions
about mankind's limitations, how we can structure our institutions to bring out the best in people, and what it
means to be human.
Chapter v: the 19th century English literature
A. The English Romanticism (1798-1832)
I. Cultural – Historical Background
1. The American Revolution (1775-1783)
The American Revolution was the symbol of the growth of national consciousness in America in the last
decades of the 18th century. In May 1775, the Second Continental Congress of the 13th English colonies faced a
most basic decision: the irresistible demand for national independence. Under the leadership of George
Washington, the Colonial Army fought a heroic people’s war against Great Britain to win independence ad set
up the new United States Government. A great new nation was born on September 3, 1783 when Great Britain
reluctantly signed the peace treaty which recognized the independence of the United States of America.
The success of the American Revolution had a great influence on the political life in England. The words of the
Declaration of Independence, which was passed on 4th July 1776 by Congress, awakened all people outside the
USA the truth’ All men are created equal’.
2. The French Revolution
The French Revolution was an inevitable outcome of difficulties in both economics and politics after the
century-long wars with England. The growing bourgeoisie, supported by the starving peasants and the town
poor, went revolutionary. The success of the French Revolution (14/7/1789) also had a deep influence on
England. English workers and petty bourgeoisie, following the example of the French Revolution, stated acting.
‘Correspondence Societies’ sprang up everywhere with quite radical programmes for universal suffrage,
freedom of speech, unions, press, meeting, etc.
English literary men, in particular, welcomed the French Revolution as a new fresh air that breathed hope into
human hearts.
3. The ‘Holly Alliance’
Considering a revolutionary France under the leadership of the militarist Napoleon dangerous, England joined
other European countries to cancel Napoleon’s ambitions to conquer Europe. Defeating Napoleon at the battle
of Waterloo in 1815 England, together with her allies, set up the’Holly Alliance’. The ‘Holly Alliance’ tried to
do everything that a reactionary alliance could do to return to the pre-1789 state, and to suppress democratic
trends and revolutionary ideas. Europe entered a state of disillusionment.
4. The Industrial Revolution
With the inventions of new machines already well started in the second half of the 18 th century, and with the
expansion of the United Kingdom after the fall of the Napoleonic empire, England became a powerful,
prosperous manufacturing country.
The changes that the Industrial Revolution brought about had both good ad bad effects on the social life of this
country. On the one hand, industrialization increased the wealth of the nation; on the other hand, it caused much
suffering to the working people who were thrown out of work by the introduction of machinery into mines ad
mills. As a result, the workers began to attack workplaces, breaking machines and calling themselves Luddites.
The Luddite movement became widespread and caused lots of trouble and damage to the State.
5. The Post-War England
Filled with the dread of revolutions, the Torries in power were conservative and reactionary. Every reform was
opposed. Every democratic trend was suppressed.
In accordance with the Torry’s reactions, new economic ideas were moulded, drowning the labouring poor
more deeply into the gulf of poverty and misery. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) initiated’ Diminishing
Returns’, an economic theory which stated that, after a certain point, further increases in a particular factor of
production lead to progressively smaller increases in output. Malthus is best remembered to the world as the
British economist who wrote ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’ (1798), arguing that a population
without planning increased faster than food production. In his opinion, poverty was impossible to eradicate
because population increased by geometrical progression whereas food and natural resources increased by
arithmetical progression. Therefore, the only thing to do was to prohibit the marriages among the poor, or
prohibit them multiplying. Otherwise, they would starve. Adam Smith (1723-1790), the author of ‘The Wealth
of the Nations’ (1776) suggested letting things work themselves out according to the ‘law of supply and
demand’. This economic idea led to the false conclusion that no struggle was necessary. In addition, ‘The Poor
Law’ (1834) drove the poor and beggars, whose subsidies were cut according to this la, to workhouses- the
‘Bastilles’ of the proletarians.
II. Literature
1. What is meant by ‘Romanticism’?
As an –ISM in literature, Romanticism was the embodiment of disillusionment and negative attitudes towards
the actual world.
Firstly, it was the embodiment of disillusionment in the consequences of the French Revolution. The
atmosphere of reaction overspreading Brittan and Europe after the formation of the ‘Holly Alliance’ seemed to
destroy the expectation to live in Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
Romanticism, secondly, was the embodiment of the negative attitudes of various social layers towards the way
of life that the Industrial Revolution bourgeoisie created. Under the omnipotence of money, the 19 th century
bourgeoisie led a snobbish artificial selfish life. To escape from this state of sickness, the romantics on the one
had, advocated returning to NATURE, to the meadows and mountains, where man can find himself and his
fellow-countrymen, where his soul can be saved from corruption. On the other hand, the romantics tried to
construct dream worlds from their own imagination as a refuge for their souls. The individual man, as a result,
began to shrink into his self and drown himself in the solitary ego: loneliness became a disease of the age.
As an approach to literature, Romanticism was the embodiment of the revolt against Classicism both in topic ad
in style. Topically, the great romantic poets found their inspiration chiefly in the simplicities of everyday life:
an ordinary sunset, a walk over the hills, a cluster of spring flowers, the song of a nightingale, a cottage girl, etc.
Stylistically, the romantics expressed their feelings in everyday language, easily understood by all.
In general, in Romanticism, Reason gave way to Imagination, Feelings and Emotions. Romanticism was no
more the age of reason; it was the age of imagination and emotions.
There are six essential features of this historical romanticism:
- A deep interest in nature and in obscure, humble or underprivileged people
- A vivid imagination that can produce supernatural of fantastic dream worlds
- An enthusiasm in fighting against tyrannical authority and glorifying liberty
- A love for the remote in time and distance
- A sense of disappointment mixed with a melancholy mood
- A revolution in literary language-use
2. Romanticism in English Poetry
2.1. The Two Generations of the Romantics
The Conservative Trend (The Lake School)
Early in 1798 William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey formed a group called ‘The
Lake School’. The school was named after the beautiful lake in the North West of England where Wordsworth,
Coleridge, and Southey had been living for a long time.
The Lake poets underwent evolution in their political views and creative activities. They started with protesting
against social injustice, showing their interest in vital social problems of their time. They admired the French
Revolution so warmly that Wordsworth even travelled to France to witness the great liberation of mankind. But
later on, frightened by the blood and fire across the water, they went over to the side of reaction and started
rejecting both economic and social progress. They regretted being unwise in welcoming the French Revolution
and in believing that REASON was capable of creating an equal society. They turned away from the ideas of
the Enlightenment to the distrust of reason and rationalism. They bent their pens towards the idealization of the
patriarchal feudal past and medieval attitudes.
The Progressive Trend (The Cockney School)
Quite opposed to the conservative trend of Romanticism was the progressive trend known as the Cockney
School, whose representatives were Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelly, and John Keats.
The representative of this school expressed the ideas and interests of the classes that were disappointed to see
the state of things which was a result of the capitalist development. They saw its negative sides and criticized
them. But their criticism was much more than a confirmation of the patriarchal ideas of the past, their criticism
was the expression of the longing for a better present and a wonderful future. They were little interested in the
past, only mindful of the present. Their eyes were fixed on the current affairs on the days. Their works, in
general, embodied the dream of social justice that the broad masses of people cherished.
2.2. Contrasts between the two generations of Romanticism
Between the two generations of Romanticism there are remarkable contrasts:
Wordsworth Coleridge and Southey reached manhood in the early years of the French Revolution. They were
thoroughly imbued with revolutionary ideas, and conceived boundless hopes of regeneration of mankind. They
were bitterly disappointed when they realized that the French Revolution deviated from its noble aims, and that
the golden age promised by prophets and politicians was receding into an ever-remoter future. They accordingly
reconciled themselves with more orderly notions. They idealized medieval attitude, patriarchal feudal past and
mysterious religious doctrines and they tried to escape from the actual world to look for the ‘paradise lost’ as a
refuge for their own sufferings. In a word, the old romantics were indeed UNPRACTICAL CONSERVATIVE
DREAMERS.
Byron, Shelly, and Keas came of age at the very moment when Europe was smoking with ruins and the Holy
Alliance was dictating its orders to exhausted peoples. They had inherited the noble aspirations of their elders,
but felt frustrated in their very youth; Byron sought for a remedy of ennui in action: he travelled and fought, and
fell on the soil of Greece. Shelly, filled with revolutionary spirit to the core, tried to carry out his principles of
life, and reaped disaster: from his misery he found a refuge in the worship of intellectual beauty and in the
composition of poems expressing his unshattered belief in the ultimate triumph of justice and goodness. Keats,
the frailest of the three, drew aside from the turmoil of the world, drank deep at the fountains of beauty and died
at 26. But all these young romantics were PRACTICAL REVOLUTIONARY DREAMERS. They rose against
the tyrannical authority and social injustice in the hope to change the world with their own individual actions.
They did not bend their pens and have any compromise with the bourgeoisie in their struggle for social justice
and for a better future for the common people.
III. Typical Writers and Works
1. William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
The life of William Wordsworth was quiet and eventful. He was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland in 1770 and
spent the great part of his life in the mountains of the Lake District, where he was very deeply influenced by the
natural beauty of the country, and was always in sympathy with the humble people.
In 1788 William Wordsworth went to St John’s College, Cambridge, but no professor he met in his university
classes as much impressed on him as did the sky and the trees and the wild flowers of his native region: he
preferred devoting most of his time to the admiration of Nature to cramming for any exams at Cambridge
University; and he was more interested in reading books than in listening to the lectures.
On leaving the university, he spent a few months in London, and then crossed over to France (1790). He found
this country ‘mad with joy’ and was ready to give what aid he could to the French Republicans. He resided in
France three years. There he met two people who did change his life: Captain Michel Beaupuy, who propagated
and explained the noble aims of the French Revolution to him; and Miss Annette Vallon, with whom he fell in
love ad gave birth to a daughter, Caroline. Attracted by the fresh air of the Revolution and the first sweet
flavour of love, he intended to devote his whole life to France and his whole heart to the French woman, but,
unfortunately, he was compelled to return to England because his relatives stopped his supplies of money.
However, he still hoped that he would return to France someday to live with his beloved wife. But the war
between England and France in 1793 broke his heart ad his hope. He did not meet his wife until 1802. No
sooner had they lived with each other in the same roof than they had to say goodbye to each other, because there
appeared some gloomy clouds in their happy sky. He was by this time experiencing a severe intellectual crisis:
continuous bloody events in France left him disillusioned and pessimistic; his dreams of brotherhood were
shattered.
With a broken heart for love and with a disillusioned and pessimistic soul for the development of the French
Revolution, he came back to his own inwards, leading a secluded life in the valley of Grasmere, the heart of his
beloved Lake District. He asked Nature and Poetry to give him the peaceful joys for which his mind was
thirsting. From then on, he withdrew from urban civilization and sought consolation in the country life.
William Wordsworth’s Poetry
Wordsworth on Nature
Nature is an unfinished treasure of romantic souls. To Wordsworth, Nature is the most valuable and beloved
source of living. He blames people who spend so much of their energy in the materialistic life that their lives
become senseless and sordid:
‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours; we have given our heats away, a sordid boon’.
Wordsworth’s aim as poet was to search for beauty in Nature- in mountains, woods, and streams- ad to explain
this beauty to the soul of man. All the sights and sounds of Nature attracted him, and he was always looking for
an idea behind or under the beauty. As for him, Nature has a soul. The soul of man had been corrupted by town
civilization, but the soul of Nature was not. So the best way for man was to enter into communication with
Nature’s soul and Nature would lift him out of himself and place him in a higher state in which the soul of
Nature and the soul of man were united in a single harmony. The belief led him to the conclusion that nature
was man’s best moral teacher:
‘Let Nature be your teacher’.
Nature, to Wordsworth, has a message to Man. And in order to find out such a message, he tried to’ see into the
life of thing’. A wonderful sunset with its glorious colours, meant more to him than just the end of another day.
It seemed to him to be full of ‘The light that never was on sea or lad’. He felt more than he saw or heard, and it
was this feeling, which came to him direct from Nature or God, that he tried to describe in his poetry.
Flowers, especially wild flowers such as the primrose and the daffodils gave him Nature’s message to man.
Most of us can see how beautiful even a common flower is, ad admire its loveliness and its scent. We may even
feel the beauty in our hearts as well as see it with our eyes. But how many can describe, or make clear to others,
what this feeling is? Wordsworth could, at any rate, make us realize that what we feel at the sight of a beautiful
flower is the flower’s way of speaking to us. Or it is Nature speaking to us through the flower.
‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears’.
To Wordsworth, poetry meant experience of this kind- moments of deep feeling- which he could remember
later when his mind was at rest. Then was the time to write them down. He did not forget what he had heard or
seen.
‘The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more’.
In short, more than any other poets of his time, Wordsworth clearly realized the relation and interaction between
the inward life of Man and the outdoor life of the objective world. Nature, no wonder, was his religion; and he
himself was ‘Nature’s high priest’.
Wordsworth on Man
Wordsworth’s love of Nature is seen not only in his admiration of natural beauty but also in his understanding
of the simple men and women of the valleys and hills of the Lake District, humble people with ordinary joys ad
sorrows. He understood the character of the poor, believed in them and admired them. He saw their courage,
strength ad hope:
‘Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,
His daily teachers had been woods and rills, the silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.’
Many of his poems are about these neighbours of his, the men, women, and children among whom he lived,
people about whom little real poetry had been written in the past. In his poems on Nature, when dealing with the
source of Goodness (and especially when expressing the significance of Goodness), Wordsworth always
established his absolute belief in the noble value of the commoners. In his poems on Man, he dealt with the
primal qualities where Ma and Nature touch and blend. Thus his love for Nature was transferred to the
shepherd, the reaper, ad to other farmers and cottagers with their ordinary joys and sorrows. Other poets had
neglected them. But to Wordsworth everybody, rich or poor, was a human being. And his ears were ever open
to listen to what he called ‘the still, sad music of humanity’.
The choice of men and women in ‘humble and rustic life’ as the objects for description in his poetry resulted
from his love for them, but more basically from his conception associated with Rousseau’s name, of the ‘noble
savage’, with its implication that men are better when closer to their ‘natural state’, uncorrupted by the
artificiality of civilization.
Wordsworth’s Typical Poems
The Daffodils (1804)
I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
In secret we met—
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?--
With silence and tears.
Song for the Luddites (1816)
As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will _die_ fighting, or _live_ free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!
Recommended literature
1. William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet, Twelfth Night
2. John Donne.(1572-1631): The Good Morrow, Good Friday.
3. John Milton. (1608-1674): Paradise Lost.
4. John Bunyan. (1628-1688): The Pilgrim’s Progress.
5. Daniel Defoe (1660-1731): The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
6. Jonathan Swift.(1667-1745): Gulliver’s Travels .
7. Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Rape of the Lock, Ode on Solitude, The Universal Prayer.
8. William Blake (1757-1827): Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and
Hell.
9. William Wordsworth (1770-1850): The World is Too Much With Us, The Daffodils, The Rainbow, The
Solitary Reaper
10. George Gordon Byron (1788 – 1824): When we two parted, Song for the Luddites
11. John Keats (1795-1821): On a Grecian Urn.
12. Walter Scott (1771-1832): Ivanhoe
13. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855): Jane Eyre.
14. Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility
15. Charles Dickens (1812-1870): Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield,
16. Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
17. Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
18. William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair
19. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900): The Picture of Dorian Gray
20. Robert Browning (1812-1889): My Last Duchess.
21. Gerald M. Hopkins (1844-1889): Pied Beauty
22. William B. Yeats (1865-1939): Easter 1916, The Circus Animals’ Desertion.
23. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965): Murder in the Cathedral, The Waste Land.
24. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): Pygmalion, Major Barbara
25. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924): Heart of Darkness
26. D.H.Lawrence. (1885-1930): Sons and Lovers, England, My England.
27. James Joyce (1882-1941): A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses.
28. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941): Mrs. Dalloway. Modern Fiction.
29. George Orwell (1902-1950): Animal Farm.
30. Graham Green (1904-1990): End of the Affair
31. William G. Golding (1911- 1993): Lord of the Flies.
Literature quiZ 1
Middle age
1. Which people began their invasion and conquest of southwestern Britain around 450?
a) the Normans b) the Geats c) the Celts d) the Anglo-Saxons e) the Danes
2. The popular legend of which of the following figures made its earliest appearance in Celtic literature before
becoming a staple subject in French, English, and German literatures?
a) Sir Gawain b) King Arthur c) Saint Patrick d) Saint Augustine e) King Alfred
3. The decision of which writer to emulate French and Italian poetry in his own vernacular prompted a changed
in the status of English?
a) Margery Kempe b) Sir Thomas Malory c) Geoffrey Chaucer d) William Langland e) John Gower
4. What is the first extended written specimen of Old English?
a) Boethius's Consolidation of Philosophy b) Saint Jerome's translation of the Bible
c) Malory's Morte Darthur d) Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People
e) a code of laws promulgated by King Ethelbert
5. Who was the first English Christian king?
a) Alfred b) Richard III c) Richard II d) Henry II e) Ethelbert
6. Old English poets, such as the Beowulf poet, were fascinated by the tension between which two aspects of
their hybrid culture?
a) Islam and Christianity b) insular and continental philosophy c) pagan and Christian moral codes
d) oral and written literatures e) all of the above
7. The use of "whale-road" for sea and "life-house" for body are examples of what literary technique, popular in
Old English poetry?
a) symbolism b) simile c) metonymy d) kenning e) appositive expression
8. Which of the following statements is not an accurate description of Old English poetry?
a) Romantic love is a guiding principle of moral conduct.
b) Its formal and dignified use of speech was distant from everyday use of language.
c) Irony is a mode of perception, as much as it was a figure of speech.
d) Christian and pagan ideals are sometimes mixed.
e) Its idiom remained remarkably uniform for nearly three centuries.
9. Which of the following best describes litote, a favorite rhetorical device in Old English poetry?
a) embellishment at the service of Christian doctrine b) repetition of parallel syntactic structures c) ironic
understatement d) stress on every third diphthong e) a compound of two words in place of a single word
10. Which of the following languages did not coexist in Anglo-Norman England?
a) Latin b) German c) French d) Celtic e) English
11. Which twelfth-century poet or poets claimed to have obtained narratives from Breton storytellers?
a) Geoffrey Chaucer b) Marie de France c) Chrétien de Troyes d) a and c only e) b and c only
12. To what did the word the roman, from which the genre of "romance" emerged, initially apply?
a) a work derived from a Latin text of the Roman Empire b) a story about love and adventure
c) a Roman official d) a work written in the French vernacular e) a series of short stories
13. The styles of The Owl and the Nightingale and Ancrene Riwle show what about the poetry and prose written
around the year 1200?
a) They were written for sophisticated and well-educated readers.
b) Writing continued to benefit only readers fluent in Latin and French.
c) Their readers' primary language was English. d) a and c only e) a and b only
14. In addition to Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, the "flowering" of Middle English literature is
evident in the works of which of the following writers?
a) Geoffrey of Monmouth b) the Gawain poet c) the Beowulf poet d) Chrétien de Troyes
e) Marie de France
15. What was Geoffrey Chaucer's final work?
a) Complaint to His Purse b) Troilus and Criseyde c) The Canterbury Tales
d) Legend of Good Women e) The House of Fame
16. Who is the author of Piers Plowman?
a) Sir Thomas Malory b) Margery Kempe c) Geoffrey Chaucer d) William Langland
e) Geoffrey of Monmouth
17. Which literary form, developed in the fifteenth century, personified vices and virtues?
a) the short story b) the heroic epic c) the morality play d) the romance e) the limerick
16th century
1. Which of the following sixteenth-century works of English literature was translated into the English language
after its first publication in Latin?
a) Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus b) William Shakespeare's King Lear c) Thomas More's
The History of King Richard III d) William Shakespeare's Sonnets e) Thomas More's Utopia
2. Which of the following sixteenth-century poets was not a courtier?
a) George Puttenham b) Philip Sidney c) Walter Ralegh d) Thomas Wyatt e) all of the above
3. What was the predominant religion in England during the early sixteenth century?
a) Atheism b) Protestantism c) Catholicism d) Hinduism e) Paganism
4. Which of the following might be addressed/represented by pastoral poetry?
a) an exaltation of the city life over the boring country life b) shepherd and shepherdesses who fall in love and
engage in singing contests c) heroic stories in epic form d) a celebration of the humility, contentment,
and simplicity of living in the country e) b and d only
5. Which of the following could be found in heroic poetry?
a) the glorification of a nation or people b) exotic adventures and marvels c) an imitation of Homer and
Virgil in structure and motifs d) a concern with love as well as war e) all of the above
6. Which of the following were kinds of comedies written for the Elizabeth theater?
a) tragic-comedy b) humor comedy c) city comedy d) raucous comedy e) all but d
7. Which of the following is true about public theaters in Elizabethan England?
a) They relied on admission charges, an innovation of the period. b) The early versions were oval in shape.
c) They were located outside the city limits of London. d) The seating structure was tiered, with placement
correlating to ticket cost. e) all of the above
Early 17th century
1. What major new prose genre emerged in the Jacobean era?
a) the novel b) the sermon c) the familiar essay d) the diary e) the intimate essay
2. Which of the following female authors of the Jacobean era wrote a work that became the "first" of its kind to
be published by an English woman?
a) Rachel Speght b) Aemilia Lanyer c) Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland d) Lady Mary Wroth
e) all of the above
3. What was the general subject of the Welsh poet Katherine Philips's work?
a) celebrations of the transience of all life and beauty
b) celebrations of lesbian sexuality in terms that did not imply a male readership
c) celebrations of religious ecstasy and divine inspiration
d) celebrations of female friendship in Platonic terms normally reserved for male friendships
e) celebrations of an intense longing for past biblical eras of innocence and for the perfection of heaven
4. Who authored the scholarly biography, Life of Donne?
a) Izaak Walton b) Katherine Philips c) John Skelton d) Isabella Whitney e) Aemilia Lanyer
5. What is the title to Milton's blank-verse epic that assimilates and critiques the epic tradition?
a) L'Allegro b) Lycidas c) Paradise Lost d) The Divine Comedy e) The Beggar's Opera
6. Which writer was not active under both Elizabeth I and James I?
a) William Shakespeare b) Ben Jonson c) John Donne d) Francis Bacon e) John Milton
Restoration and the 18th century
1. Which of the following best describes the doctrine of empiricism?
a) All knowledge is derived from experience. b) Human perceptions are constructed and reflect structures of
political power. c) The search for essential or ultimate principles of reality. d) The sensory world is an
illusion. e) God is the center of an ordered and just universe.
2. Against which of the following principles did Jonathan Swift inveigh?
a) theoretical science b) metaphysics c) abstract logical deductions d) a and b only e) a, b, and c
3. Whose great English Dictionary, published in 1755, included more than fifteen hundred illustrations and
114,000 quotations?
a) William Hogarth b) Jonathan Swift c) Samuel Johnson d) Ben Jonson e) James Boswell
4. What was most frequently considered a source of pleasure and an object of inquiry by Augustan poets?
a) Civilization b) Woman c) God d) Alcohol e) Nature
5. Which of the following was described by its author as a "comic epic-poem in prose"?
a) Fielding's Joseph Andrews b) Richardson's Pamela c) Swift's Gulliver's Travels d) Johnson's The
Vanity of Human Wishes e) Burney's Evelina
6. For which of the following poetic genres was blank verse generally not considered a good medium in the
eighteenth century?
a) love poems b) philosophical poems c) descriptive poems d) meditative poems e) epics
7. Which work exposes the frivolity of fashionable London?
a) Defoe's Robinson Crusoe b) Swift's Gulliver's Travels c) Behn's Oroonoko
d) Richardson's Clarissa e) Pope's The Rape of the Lock
8. Which of the following is not generally considered a Gothic romance?
a) William Beckford's Vathek b) Matthew Lewis's The Monk c) Tobias Smollett's Roderick
Randsom d) Ann Radcliffe's The Italian e) William Godwin's Caleb Williams
9. Who wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a novel that abandons clock time for psychological
time?
a) Henry Fielding b) Laurence Sterne ) Samuel Richardson d) Tobias Smollett e) Jonathan Swift
Romantic age
1. What served as the inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley's poems to the working classes A Song: "Men of
England" and England in 1819?
a) he organization of a working class men's choral group in Southern England
b) the Battle of Waterloo c) the Peterloo Massacre d) the storming of the Bastille
e) the first Reform Bill, passed in 1832, which aimed to bring greater Parliamentary representation to the
working classes
2. Who applied the term "Romantic" to the literary period dating from 1785 to 1830?
a) Wordsworth because he wanted to distinguish his poetry and the poetry of his friends from that of the ancien
régime, especially satire
b) English historians half a century after the period ended
c) "The Satanic School" of Byron, Percy Shelley, and their followers
d) Oliver Goldsmith in The Deserted Village (1770)
e) Harold Bloom
3. Which of the following became the most popular Romantic poetic form, following on Wordsworth's claim
that poetic inspiration is contained within the inner feelings of the individual poet as "the spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings"?
a) the lyric poem written in the first person b) the sonnet c) doggerel rhyme d) the political tract
e) the ode
4. Romantic poetry about the natural world uses descriptions of nature _________.
a) for their own sake; to merely describe natural phenomenon b) to depict a metaphysical concept of nature by
endowing it with traits normally associated with humans c) as a means to demonstrate and discuss the
processes of human thinking d) symbolically to suggest that natural objects correspond to an inner,
spiritual world e) b, c, and d
5. How would "Natural Supernaturalism" be best characterized as a Romantic notion introduced by Carlyle?
a) a form of animism in which objects in the natural world are believed to be inhabited by spirits
b) a spontaneous belief in the supernatural based upon a surprise encounter with a supernatural being
c) a process by which things that are familiar and thought to be ordinary are made to appear miraculous and new
to our eyes
d) the experience of hallucinating contact with the supernatural world when taking opium
e) an oxymoron that nobody understood and that cannot be explained in the context of a discussion of Romantic
literature
6. Which setting could you not imagine a work of Romantic literature employing?
a) a field of daffodils b) the "Orient" c) a graveyard d) a medieval castle
e) All of the above would be appropriate settings for Romantic literature.
7. Which poet asserted in practice and theory the value of representing rustic life and language as well as social
outcasts and delinquents not only in pastoral poetry, common before this poet's time, but also as the major
subject and medium for poetry in general?
a) William Blake b) Alfred Lord Tennyson c) Samuel Johnson
d) William Wordsworth e) Mary Wollstonecraft
8. Which of the following descriptions would not have applied to any Romantic text?
a) a spiritual autobiography written in an epic style b) a lyric poem written in the first person
c) a comedy of manners d) a political tract demanding labor reform
e) a novel written about the intellectual and emotional development of a monster created by a scientist
9. Which of the following poems describe or celebrate an apocalyptic regeneration of humanity and the world
effected by the creative capacity of the human mind?
a) Coleridge's Dejection: An Ode b) Blake's "Prophetic Books" c) Carlyle's Sartor Resartus
d) Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman e) all but d
10. Which of the following periodical publications (reviews and magazines) appeared in the Romantic era?
a) London Magazine b) The Spectator c) The Edinburgh Review d) The Tatler e) a and c only
11. The Gothic novel, a popular genre for the Romantics, exemplified in the writing of Horace Walpole and
Ann Radcliffe, could contain which of the following elements?
a) supernatural phenomenon b) perversion and sadism, often involving a maiden's persecution
c) plots of mystery and terror set in inhospitable, sullen landscapes d) secret passages, decaying mansions,
gloomy castles, and dark dungeons e) all of the above
12. Which two writers can be described as writing historical novels?
a) Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley b) William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge c) Sir
Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth d) Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë e) none of the above: Romantic
novelists never wrote historical novels.
13. Which Romantic writer(s) wrote in more than one of these popular literary forms: essay, novel, drama,
poetry?
a) Percy Bysshe Shelley b) William Wordsworth c) George Gordon, Lord Byron d) Samuel Taylor
Coleridge e) all of the above
Victorian age
1. Which ruler's reign marks the approximate beginning and end of the Victorian era?
a) King Henry VIII b) Queen Elizabeth I c) Queen Victoria d) King John
e) all of the above, in that order, with Victoria's reign marking the most pivotal period for England's colonial
efforts in India, Africa, and the West Indies
2. Which of the following novelists best represents the mid-Victorian period's contentment with the burgeoning
economic prosperity and decreased restiveness over social and political change?
a) Anthony Trollope b) Charles Dickens c) John Ruskin d) Friedrich Engels e) Oscar Wilde
3. What does the phrase "White Man's Burden," coined by Kipling, refer to?
a) Britain's manifest destiny to colonize the world b) the moral responsibility to bring civilization and
Christianity to the peoples of the world c) the British need to improve technology and transportation in
other parts of the world d) the importance of solving economic and social problems in England before
tackling the world's problems e) a Chartist sentiment
4. Which of the following best defines Utilitarianism?
a) a farming technique aimed at maximizing productivity with the fewest tools
b) a moral arithmetic, which states that all humans aim to maximize the greatest pleasure to the greatest number
a critical methodology stating that all words have a single meaningful function within a given piece of literature
d) a philosophy dictating that we should only keep what we use on a daily basis.
e) a form of nonconformism
5. Which of the following authors promoted versions of socialism?
a) William Morris b) John Ruskin c) Edward FitzGerald d) Karl Marx e) all but c
6. Which best describes the general feeling expressed in literature during the last decade of the Victorian era?
a) studied melancholy and aestheticism b) sincere earnestness and Protestant zeal c) aucous celebration
mixed with self-congratulatory sophistication d) paranoid introspection and cryptic dissent e) all of the above
7. Fill in the blanks from Tennyson's The Princess.
Man for the field and woman for the _____:
Man for the sword and for the _____ she:
Man with the head and woman with the _____:
Man to command and woman to _____.
a) crop; scabbard; foot; agree b) throne; scepter; soul; decree c) school; scalpel; pen; set free
d) hearth; needle; heart; obey e) field; sword; head; command
8.Which of the following Victorian writers regularly published their work in periodicals?
a) Thomas Carlyle b) Matthew Arnold c) Charles Dickens d) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
e) all of the above: In addition to short fiction, most Victorian novels appeared serialized in periodicals.
9. What best describes the subject of most Victorian novels?
a) the representation of a large and comprehensive social world in realistic detail b) a surrealist exploration
of alternate states of consciousness c) a mythic dream world
d) the attempt of a protagonist to define his or her place in society e) a and d
10. What was the relationship between Victorian poets and the Romantics?
a) The Romantics remained largely forgotten until their rediscovery by T. S. Eliot in the 1920s.
b) The Victorians were disgusted by the immorality and narcissism of the Romantics.
c) The Romantics were seen as gifted but crude artists belonging to a distant, semi-barbarous age.
d) The Victorians were strongly influenced by the Romantics and experienced a sense of belatedness.
e) The Victorians were aware of no distinction between themselves and the Romantics; the distinction was only
created by critics in the twentieth century.
11. What type of writing did Walter Pater define as "the special and opportune art of the modern world"?
a) the novel b) nonfiction prose c) the lyric d) comic drama e)transcripts of Parliamentary debates
12. Which of the following comic playwrights made fun of Victorian values and pretensions?
a) W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan b) Oscar Wilde c) George Bernard Shaw d) Robert Corrigan
e) all but d
20th century
1. Which scientific or technological advance did not take place in the first fifteen years of the twentieth century?
a) Albert Einstein's theory of relativity b) wireless communication across the Atlantic c) the creation of
the internet d) the invention of the airplane e) the mass production of cars
2. In the 1930s, younger writers such as W. H. Auden were more _______ but less _______ than older
modernists such as Eliot and Pound.
a) popular; reverenced b) brash; confident c) radical; inventive d) anxious; haunting
e) spiritual; orthodox
3. Which poet could be described as part of "The Movement" of the 1950s?
a) Thom Gunn b) Dylan Thomas c) Pablo Picasso d) Philip Larkin e) both a and d
4. Which of the following writers did not come from Ireland?
a) W. B. Yeats b) James Joyce c) Seamus Heaney d) Oscar Wilde
e) none of the above; all came from Ireland
5. Which novel did T. S. Eliot praise for utilizing a new "mythical method" in place of the old "narrative
method" and demonstrates the use of ancient mythology in modernist fiction to think about "making the modern
world possible for art"?
a) Virginia Woolf's The Waves b) Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness c) James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake
d) E. M. Forster's A Passage to India e) James Joyce's Ulysses
6. Who wrote the dystopian novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four in which Newspeak demonstrates the heightened
linguistic self-consciousness of modernist writers?
a) George Orwell b) Virginia Woolf c) Evelyn Waugh d) Orson Wells e) Aldous Huxley
7. Which of the following novels display postwar nostalgia for past imperial glory?
a) E. M. Forster's A Passage to India b) Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea
c) Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness d) Paul Scott's Staying On e) c and d
8. When was the ban finally lifted on D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, written in 1928.
a) 1930 b) 1945 c) 1960 d) 2000 e) The ban has not yet been formally lifted.
9. Which of the following was originally the Irish Literary Theatre?
a) the Irish National Theatre b) the Globe Theatre c) the Independent Theatre
d) the Abbey Theatre e) both a and d
English Literary quiZ 2
1 - Who was the author of the famous storybook 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'?
a. Rudard Kipling b. John Keats c. Lewis Carroll d. H.G. Wells
2 - How many lines does a sonnet have?
a. 10 b. 12 c. 14 d. they vary
3-Who wrote 'Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise'?
A Browning b. Marx c. Shakespeare d. Kipling
4- Name the book which opens with the line 'All children, except one grew up'?
a. The Railway Children b. Winnie the Poo c. Jungle Book d. Peter Pan
5 - Which is the first Harry Potter book?
a. HP and the Goblet of Fire b. HP and the Philosopher’s Stone c. HP and the Chamber of Secrets
6 - In which century were Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales written?
a. 14th b. 15th c. 16th d. 17th
7 - What nationality was Robert Louis Stevenson, writer of 'Treasure Island'?
a. Scottish b. Welsh c. English d. Irish e. French
8 - 'Jane Eyre' was written by which Bronte sister?
a. Anne b. Charlotte c. Emily
9 - What is the book 'Lord of the Flies' about?
a. a road trip around the USA b. a swarm of killer flies c. schoolboys on a desert island
10 - In the book' The Lord of the Rings', who or what is Bilbo?
a. dwarf b. wiZard c. troll d. hobbit e. man f. castle
11- The following taboo phrases were used by which writer?
"I fart at thee", "shit on your head', "dirty bastard"
a. Ben Johnson b. William Shakespeare c. Henry James d. Ernest Hemingway
12 - Who wrote the crime novel "Ten Little Niggers"?
a. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle b. Irvine Welsh c. Agatha Christle d. Emile Zola
Answers
1 - Who was the author of the famous storybook 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'? c
2 - How many lines does a sonnet have? 14
3 - Who wrote 'Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise'? c
4 - Name the book which opens with the line 'All children, except one grew up'? d
5 - Which is the first Harry Potter book? b
6 - In which century were Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales written? 14
7 - What nationality was Robert Louis Stevenson, writer of 'Treasure Island'? a
8 - 'Jane Eyre' was written by which Bronte sister? b
9 - What is the book 'Lord of the Flies' about? c
10 - In the book' The Lord of the Rings', who or what is Bilbo? c
11 - The following taboo phrases were used by which writer? a
"I fart at thee", "shit on your head', "dirty bastard"
12 - Who wrote the crime novel "Ten Little Niggers"? c
English Literary quiZ 3
1. Which Welsh poet wrote "Under Milk Wood?"
a. Anthony Hopkins b. Richard Burton c. Tom Jones d. Dylan Thomas
2. Who wrote Canterbury Tales?
a. Geoffrey Chaucer b. Dick Whittington c. Thomas Lancaster d. King Richard II
3. Who wrote "The Hound of the Baskervilles"?
a. Agatha Christie b. H Ryder-Haggard c. P D James d. Arthur Conan Doyle
4. Wlliam Shakespeare is not the author of:
a. Titus Andronicus b. Taming of the Shrew c. White Devil d. Hamlet
5. Which of the following writers wrote historical novels?
a. Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte b. Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth c. William Wordsworth
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge d. Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley
6. Which of the following are Thomas Hardy books?
a. The Poor Man and the Lady b. The Return of Native c. Chollttee d. None of the above
7. Who wrote 'The Winter's Tale?'
a. George Bernard Shaw b. John Dryden c. Christopher Marlowe d. William Shakespeare
8. Sophocles and Aeschylus were Roman playwrights.
a. True b. False
9. The Princess, In Memoriam, and Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington are the works of:
a. Alfred Tennyson b. Robert Browning c. Oscar Wilde d. John Milton
10. The story of ___________ revolves around Indian characters and Indian society.
a. Last Orders b. God of Small Things c. Disgrace d. The Sea
11. Which of the following is not a J.K. Rowling book?
a. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban b. Quidditch Through the Ages c. Harry Potter and the Half-
Blood Prince d. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Theme. e. None of the above
Answers
1. Dylan Thomas
2. Geoffrey Chaucer
3. Arthur Conan Doyle
4. White Devil
5. Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth
6. The Poor Man and the Lady
7. William Shakespeare
8. False
9. Alfred Tennyson
10. God of Small Things
11. None of the above