Old English was a derivative of languages of the Germanic and Scandinavian

invaders (Anglo-Saxons) mixed with the Roman Latin of the previous era.

Oral tradition was valued greatly.

This was a way to tell later generations of their

history and to pass their views of religion on.

In Literature, epic poetry was very popular. The most famous

English epic is Beowulf.

Old English poetry follows a system of alliteration which binds its verses
together and creates a distinctive sound.

As stories were told orally in this time alliteration made it easier to remember

the text.

Alliteration: the use of words that begin with the same sound near one another

 Beowulf is the oldest and longest (more than 3,000 lines long) epic poem
in Old English, the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England.

 Nobody knows for certain when the poem was first composed, but it was
written somewhere between the 7th and 10th century.

 The author of Beowulf is unknown.

 Beowulf tells the story of its famous hero, and his successive battles with
a monster, named Grendel, with Grendel’s revengeful mother, and with a
dragon which was guarding a hoard of treasure.

 These epic tales often end in the death of the hero, after they have
defeated the enemy. The Anglo-Saxons believed that fate is responsible
for death.

Considered the greatest English-speaking writer in history and known as

England’s national poet, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) has had more
theatrical works performed than any other playwright.

He is also praised for his contributions to the English language, popularizing—

terms and phrases that still regularly crop up in
everyday conversation.

Examples include the words “fashionable” (Troilus and Cressida), “eyeball” (A

Midsummer Night’s Dream) ; and the expressions “foregone conclusion”
(Othello), “in a pickle” (The Tempest), “wild goose chase” (Romeo and Juliet).

"To be, or not to be: that is the question." (Hamlet)

"All that gliters is not gold." (The Merchant of Venice)

He wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets.

20th Century Literature

Modernism and Post-Modernism
Middle English Literature
Medieval Literature

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The Canterbury Tales

Epic poetry

1650

650

Geoffrey Chaucer

 Greatest English Poet of the Middle Ages. Considered “the father of

English Literature”

 He was born some time around 1343 in London

 He came from a wealthy family and had many high powered jobs

 It is believed he started writing The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s

 The printing press had not yet been invented, so the first copies of his
work were handwritten

 He was buried in Westminster Abbey

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
The Canterbury Tales are still popular today because the subject
matter is still relevant
The stories are about love, adultery, battles, trickery, death, loss,
poverty and religion
They are also very funny
“Men at some time are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

— Julius Caesar. Act 1, Scene 2

The industrial revolution led to a new society, with deep contrasts.

Struggles in the 19th century:

 setting up a democracy
 gradual expansion of the vote -working men-later women
 wealthy nations vs. position of the poor
 colonialism
 social class differences

Authors included these themes in their novels.

Some examples are:

Charles Dickens: complicated and improbable plots, comical and exaggerated

characters, realistic descriptions of life of the poor, critical of society. (Oliver
Twist, Great Expectations)

Oscar Wilde: shows the contradictions in Victorian society through satire and
using irony (The picture of Dorian Gray, The importance of being Earnest)

* Religion
Representations of stories of the bible, pilgrimages
* Courtly love
“An idealized and often illicit form of love celebrated in the literature of
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in which a knight or courtier
devotes himself to a noblewoman who is usually married and feigns
indifference to preserve her reputation.”
The 20th century was like no time period before it.

Einstein ("all is relative"), Darwin ("theory of evolution"), Freud (psychoanalysis)

and Marx (communist theory) were just some of the thinkers who profoundly
changed Western culture. These changes had a great impact in Literature.

Modernism, a movement that was a radical break from 19th century

Victorianism, led to postmodernism, which emphasized self-consciousness and
pop art.

While 20th century literature is a diverse field covering a variety of genres, there
are common characteristics that changed literature forever.

 Introduction of the 29 characters (pilgrims) in the story

 The pilgrims are on their way to Canterbury Cathedral

 Each pilgrim is required to tell 4 stories

 The best storyteller will win a meal

 There are only 24 completed stories, so we do not know the outcome of

the competition.

* They have many meanings and lessons behind them: while the audience is
learning, they are also entertained by the genius comedy and/or tragedy that
takes place.

* Timeless themes: friendship, love and vengeance appear the most -- these
themes are easy to relate to because they come from human emotion which is
common to everyone.

* Characters are portrayed as real people with emotions, regardless of their

social position.
* Powerful Language and

Inspirational quotes

Fragmented Perspective

If there's one thing readers could count on before the 20th century, it was the
reliability of an objective narrator in fiction.

Modernist and postmodern writers, however, believed that this did a disservice
to the reliability of stories in general.

The 20th century saw the birth of the subjective narrator, who could not be
trusted with the facts of narrative.

Nick Carraway, narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, for example,
tells the story with a bias toward the novel's titular character.

In an extreme case of fragmented perspective, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

switches narrators between each chapter.

1100

2000

19th Century - Modern English

Modern English - Renaissance (c. 1550-1649)

17th-18th centuries
English literary history
Beowulf

Prior to the 20th century, literature tended to be structured in linear,

chronological order.

Twentieth century writers experimented with other kinds of structures.

* Virginia Woolf, for instance, wrote novels whose main plot was often
"interrupted" by individual characters' memories, resulting in a disorienting
experience for the reader. ("Flashbacks")
* Ford Madox Ford's classic The Good Soldier plays with chronology, jumping
back and forth between time periods. Many of these writers aimed to imitate the
feeling of how time is truly experienced subjectively.

1) The main character is the HERO, who is a figure of great national or even
cosmic importance, and represents a culture’s heroic ideal.

2) The setting of the poem is ample in scale, and may be worldwide, or even
larger.

3) The action involves superhuman deeds in battle.

4) In these great actions, the gods and other supernatural beings take an
interest or an active part.

5) An epic poem is a ceremonial performance and is narrated in a ceremonial

style which is deliberately distanced from ordinary speech and proportioned to
the grandeur and formality of the heroic subject matter and the epic
architecture.

Translation into Modern English

When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,
Romanticism in Literature

Geoffrey Chaucer
Romanticism was a literary movement that swept through virtually every country
in Europe that lasted from about 1750 to 1870.

Romanticism has very little to do with things popularly thought of as "romantic,"

it is a reaction against Enlightenment period which emphasized the importance
of emotions over rational thought. Whereas Enlightenment thinkers value logic,
reason, rationality and society as a whole, Romantics value passion, and
individuality.
William Wordsworth's published Lyrical Ballads in 1798. It is identified as the
first work of the Romantic Period in English literature. It was a hugely successful
work, requiring several reprinting over the years. The dominant theme of Lyrical
Ballads was Nature, specifically the power of Nature to create strong
impressions in the mind and imagination. Other important authors of the time
are Lord Byron, John Keats and Mary Shelley.

In the USA, where they declared their independence from Britain in 1776, some
of the most famous romantic writers were Herman Melville, Walt Whitman,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving, Henry David Thoreau and Edgar
Allan Poe.

The prologue
"What’s in a name? A rose by any name would smell as sweet." -

Romeo and Juliet Act 2, Scene 2

Medieval Literature

1550

Enlightenment literature

Poetry
The impact on English Literature

No one could quite determine how to follow up after Shakespeare, and working
in his shadow presented creative difficulties for English writers.

The English novel developed during the 18th century, partly in response to an
expansion of the middle-class reading public, and more affordable books and
libraries.

1500-1800: Formative age of the novel.

* Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe's

* Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift's.

Theatre developed slowly during the 18th century, but did not reach the level of
Shakespearean times. There were many private theatres for the higher classes

By the 18th century dictionary-writing was becoming a recognized activity.

Renaissance - Early Modern English

Why are Shakespeare's plays

still so relevant?

The Knights Tale

Popularity
http://study.com/academy/lesson/alliteration-in-beowulf-examples.html

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts.”

—As You Like it. Act 2, Scene 7

now

1900

Renaissance literature

To their contemporaries, nineteenth-century women writers were women first,

writers second. A woman novelist, unless she disguised herself with a male
pseudonym, had to expect critics to focus on her femininity and her individual
achievements were many times not recognized. Some based their criticism in
the idea that women were conspiring against men to rob them of their market;
others thought women were inferior creatures with inferior bodies (brains) who
could think no better than men; finally some thought women had no interesting
experiences in life, so there was nothing interesting they could write about ...
Despite rigid gender roles that emphasized a woman’s proper place in the home
(the domestic sphere), nineteenth century British women confidently took up the
pen to write their own stories. Whether domestic fiction or social commentary,
children’s poetry or political pamphlets, women took advantage of the huge
increase in print production in the Victorian era to make their voices heard

Jane Austen published some of her novels without her name on them; the
Brontë sisters used men's names when they first wrote; Mary Anne Evans wrote
using the name George Eliot.

Middle English
1800

Women Writers in the Century of the Novel

The Renaissance was a period of time from the 14th to the 17th century in
Europe. This era bridged the time between the Middle Ages and modern times.
The word "Renaissance" means "rebirth".

It was a rebirth of education, science, art, literature, music, and a better life for
people in general. It was the revival of interest in the classical cultures (Greek
and Roman).

There were many new inventions at the time. The printing press especially had
an impact in Literature:

a. it reduced the cost of producing books immensely

b. it made the production of books increase massively: information and literary

works became available to the masses (as the spread of education was also
encouraged in many of the kingdoms)

c. ideas spread easily from one place to another

d. it helped unify the English language (+spelling).

 Rhyme replaces alliteration

 'Romances' (King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table)

 'The Canterbury Tales' by Geoffrey Chaucer (frame narrative)

  Ballads (Robin Hood)

Old English (c.650-1100)

Quotes by William Shakespeare

Medieval Literature
"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death
but once." -

Julius Caesar. Act 2, Scene 2

Fragmented Structure
The Novel of the City (Urban Setting)

The 20th century is distinguished as the century of urbanism. As more people

moved to cities , novelists used urban environments as setting for the stories
they told. Perhaps the best known of these is James Joyce's "Dubliners," a
series of short stories that all take place in various locales in Dublin

Writing from the Margins

The 20th century gave voice to marginalized people who previously got little
recognition for their literary contributions.

The Harlem Renaissance, for example, brought together African-Americans

living in New York to form a powerful literary movement, of fiction and poetry
that celebrated black identity.

Similarly, more female writers gained recognition through novels that chronicled
their own experience.

Finally, the post-colonial literary movement was born, with writers such as
Chinua Achebe writing stories on behalf of subjugated peoples who had
experienced colonization by Western powers.

 1066: The Norman conquest takes place under William the Conqueror

 English was spoken by the lower classes, Latin was the language of the
church and French was spoken by the higher classes.

Themes
Modern English (18th century)
Enlightenment/Age of Reason: Light was associated with reason (rational
thought). It was a celebration of ideas – ideas about what the human mind was
capable of, and what could be achieved through deliberate action and scientific
methodology.

Enlightenment thinkers believed that the advances of science and industry were
leading to a new age of egalitarianism and progress for humankind. More goods
were being produced for less money, people were traveling more, and the
chances of improving social status seemed more likely.

Many of the new, enlightened ideas were political in nature, the main concern
was how to achieve a more egalitarian society. These themes were reflected in
Literature.