20th Century Literature

REFORMATION: DISSENT, DOUBT AND SPIRITUAL VIOLENCE

When in the late 1520s the Catholic authorities of England tried to buy up and burn all copies of William Tyndale's English translation of the Bible, they were attempting to stop the spread of what they viewed as a dangerous plague of heresies spreading out from Luther's Germany. The plague was the Protestant Reformation, a movement opposed to crucial aspects of both the belief system and the institutional structure of Roman Catholicism.

Many of the key tenets of the Reformation were not new: they had been anticipated in England by the teachings of the theologian and reformer John Wycliffe in the fourteenth century. But Wycliffe and his followers, known as Lollards, had been suppressed, and, officially at least, England in the early sixteenth century had a single religion, Catholicism, whose acknowledged head was the Pope in Rome. In 1517, drawing upon long-standing currents of dissent, Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg in Germany, challenged the authority of the Pope and attacked several key doctrines of the Catholic Church. According to Luther, the Church, with its elaborate hierarchical structure centered in Rome, its rich monasteries and convents, and its enormous political influence, had become hopelessly corrupt, a conspiracy of venal priests who manipulated popular superstitions to enrich themselves and amass worldly power. Luther began by vehemently attacking the sale of indulgences — certificates promising the remission of punishments to be suffered in the afterlife by souls sent to Purgatory to expiate their sins. These indulgences, along with other spiritual and temporal powers claimed by the Pope, had no foundation in the Bible, which in Luther's view was the only legitimate source of religious truth. Christians would be saved not by scrupulously following the ritual practices fostered by the Catholic Church — observing fast days, reciting the ancient Latin prayers, endowing chantries to say prayers for the dead, and so on — but by faith and faith alone.

This challenge spread and gathered force, especially in Northern Europe, where major leaders like the Swiss pastor Ulrich Zwingli and the French theologian John Calvin established institutional structures and elaborated various and sometimes conflicting doctrinal principles. Calvin, whose thought came to be particularly influential in England, emphasized the obligation of governments to implement God's will in the world. He advanced too the doctrine of predestination, by which, as he put it, "God adopts some to hope of life and sentences others to eternal death." God's "secret election" of the saved made Calvin uncomfortable, but his study of the Scriptures had led him to conclude that "only a small number, out of an incalculable multitude, should obtain salvation." It might seem that such a conclusion would lead to passivity or even despair, but for Calvin predestination was a mystery bound up with faith, confidence, and an active engagement in the fashioning of a Christian community.

The Reformation had a direct and powerful impact on those realms where it gained control. Monasteries were sacked, their possessions seized by princes or sold off to the highest bidder; the monks and nuns, expelled from their cloisters, were encouraged to break their vows of chastity and find spouses, as Luther and his wife, a former nun, had done. In the great cathedrals and in hundreds of smaller churches and chapels, the elaborate altar-pieces, bejeweled crucifixes, crystal reliquaries holding the bones of saints, and venerated statues and paintings were attacked as "idols" and often defaced or destroyed. Protestant congregations continued, for the most part, to celebrate the most sacred Christian ritual, the Eucharist or Lord's Supper, but they did so in a profoundly different spirit from the Catholic Church, more as commemoration than as miracle, and they now prayed not in the old liturgical Latin but in the vernacular.

The Reformation was at first vigorously resisted in England. Indeed, with the support of his ardently Catholic chancellor, Thomas More, Henry VIII personally wrote (or at least lent his name to) a vehement, often scatological attack on Luther's character and views, an attack for which the Pope granted him the honorific title "Defender of the Faith." Protestant writings, including translations of the Scriptures into English, were seized by officials of the church and state and burned. Protestants who made their views known were persecuted, driven to flee the country or arrested, put on trial, and burned at the stake. But the situation changed decisively when Henry decided to seek a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne Boleyn.

Catherine had given birth to six children, but since only a daughter, Mary, survived infancy, Henry did not have the son he craved. Then as now, the Catholic Church did not ordinarily grant divorce, but Henry's lawyers argued on technical grounds that the marriage was invalid (and therefore, by extension, that Mary was illegitimate and hence unable to inherit the throne). Matters of this kind were far less doctrinal than diplomatic: Catherine, the daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, had powerful allies in Rome, and the Pope ruled against Henry's petition for a divorce. A series of momentous events followed, as England lurched away from the Church of Rome. In 1531 Henry charged the entire clergy of England with having usurped royal authority in the administration of canon law (the ecclesiastical law governing faith, morals, and disciplines, including such matters as divorce). Under extreme pressure, including the threat of confiscations and imprisonment, the Convocation of the Clergy begged for pardon, made a donation to the royal coffers of over £100,000, and admitted that the king was "supreme head of the English Church and clergy" (modified by the rider "as far as the law of Christ allows"). The next year the Convocation submitted to the demand that the king be the final arbiter of canon law: one day later Thomas More resigned his post.

In 1533 Henry's marriage to Catherine was officially declared null and void, and on June 1 Anne Boleyn was crowned as queen. The king was promptly excommunicated by Pope Clement VII. In the following year, the parliamentary Act of Succession confirmed the effects of the divorce and required an oath from all adult male subjects confirming the new dynastic settlement. Thomas More and John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, were among the small number who refused. The Act of Supremacy, passed later in the year, formally declared the king to be "Supreme Head of the Church in England" and again required an oath to this effect. In 1535 and 1536 further acts made it treasonous to refuse the oath of royal supremacy or, as More had tried to do, to remain silent. The first victims were three Carthusian monks who rejected the oath — "How could the king, a layman," said one of them, "be Head of the Church of England?" — and in May 1535, they were hanged, drawn, and quartered. A few weeks later, Fisher and More were convicted and beheaded. Between 1536 and 1539 the monasteries were suppressed and their vast wealth seized by the crown.

Royal defiance of the authority of Rome was a key element in the Reformation but did not by itself constitute the establishment of Protestantism in England. On the contrary, in the same year that Fisher and More were martyred for their adherence to Roman Catholicism, twenty-five Protestants, members of a sect known as Anabaptists, were burned for heresy on a single day. Through most of his reign, Henry remained an equal-opportunity persecutor, ruthless to Catholics loyal to Rome and hostile to many of those who espoused Reformation ideas, though many of these ideas gradually established themselves on English soil.

Even when Henry was eager to do so, it proved impossible to eradicate Protestantism, as it would later prove impossible for his successors to eradicate Catholicism. In large part this tenacity arose from the passionate, often suicidal heroism of men and women who felt that their souls' salvation depended upon the precise character of their Christianity and who consequentially embraced martyrdom. It arose too from a mid-fifteenth-century technological innovation that made it almost impossible to suppress unwelcome ideas: the printing press. Early Protestants quickly grasped that with a few clandestine presses they could defy the Catholic authorities and flood the country with their texts. "How many printing presses there be in the world," wrote the Protestant polemicist John Foxe, "so many blockhouses there be against the high castle" of the Pope in Rome, "so that either the pope must abolish knowledge and printing or printing at length will root him out." By the end of the sixteenth century, it was the Catholics who were using the clandestine press to propagate their beliefs in the face of Protestant persecution.

The greatest insurrection of the Tudor age was not over food, taxation, or land but over religion. Most people conformed, more or less willingly, to the structural and doctrinal changes commanded by the king and his ministers, but there were pockets of resistance, particularly in the north of England, from those who were loyal to the traditional religious order of Roman Catholicism and who resented the attempt to subordinate the church to the authority of the state. On Sunday, October 1, 1536, stirred up by their vicar, the parishioners of Louth in Lincolnshire, in the north of England, rose up in defiance of the ecclesiastical visitation sent to enforce royal supremacy. The rapidly spreading rebellion, which became known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, was led by the lawyer Robert Aske. The city of Lincoln fell to the rebels on October 6, and though it was soon retaken by royal forces, the rebels seized cities and fortifications throughout Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and northern Lancashire. Carlisle, Newcastle, and a few castles were all that were left to the king in the north. The Pilgrims soon numbered forty thousand, led by some of the region's leading noblemen. The Duke of Norfolk, representing the crown, was forced to negotiate a truce, with a promise to support the rebels' demands that the king restore the monasteries, shore up the regional economy, suppress heresy, and dismiss his evil advisers.

The Pilgrims kept the peace for the rest of 1536, on the naive assumption that their demands would be met. Then, early in 1537, Henry moved suddenly to impose order and capture the ringleaders. One hundred and thirty people, including lords, knights, heads of religious houses, and, of course, Robert Aske, were executed.

World War 1 Poets

Victorian Literature

Modernism: Eliot and Joyce

British Literature Part-2

British Literature Part-1

Supernatural, Spiritual and Spectral Gothicism

Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” 

and Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights"

Spirituality and supernaturalism have always been topics of literary consideration, but there are specific historical moments when controversy erupts and new standards are put into place.  In the midst of this disagreement, the Gothic novel emerged as a new genre of writing, and it directly addressed this highly contested topic.  The realms of Gothicism constrained within the prose works of sisters Charlotte and Emily Brontë is a most fascinating and mesmerising domain.  We do not habitually think of Charlotte or Emily Brontë as ‘genre writers’ as such, but in reality, much of their work falls more or less squarely into the Gothic tradition.  Their novels are full of thematic and symbolic references to isolated houses, gloomy, windswept moors, heavy atmosphere, and spectral visitations.  Magic, mystery, and chivalry commonly form the structural basis for the Gothic novel generating integrity of feeling and depth, which makes the spectacularly Gothic more than just a stereotype in the works of Charlotte and Emily.

Moving away from conventional Gothic stereotyping, the Gothic revival was de-sensationalized and adopted into the mainstream by the likes of Charlotte Brontë in “Jane Eyre” in 1847 and equally by Emily Brontë in “Wuthering Heights” in the same year.  However, in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Gothic mode shifted again towards romantic fiction and was revived yet again, this time by the likes of Daphne de Maurier who built on the works of the Brontë sisters to the lay the foundation for the modern Gothic romance.  Nevertheless, the Gothic genre became an effective literary device for the novels of Charlotte and Emily, thrusting the Gothic novel and all of its attributes into the mainstream of British prose writers and their works.  In particular, this fine example of Gothicism is wonderfully depicted and explored in “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” by Charlotte and Emily Brontë respectively. 

It would prove uncomplicated to neglect the importance of the two Brontë sisters, quite simply because they are responsible for some of the very best writing to come out of the nineteenth century, not to mention the most enduring. Their work represents genre with a twist, which gives the two novels a timeless quality whilst keeping them alive in the literary domain in the twenty-first century.  The Gothic, sinister tone that the writers adopt is bad enough for the Brontë's protagonists, but the really horrifying occurrences have prosaic explanations (malicious aunts, abusive husbands) and are perpetrated by their relatives and alleged friends. For the Brontës, hell really was, by definition, rooted in other people.  Nevertheless, what remains so fascinating about the Gothic genre lies with the fact that it is anything but a homogenous or static genre.  Belief and the suspension of disbelief are at the crux of Gothicism.  The credence of and disbelief in the supernatural manifests itself in connection to ideas of the sublime, to connotations of sensibility, to the core of the creation myth, and in theological concepts about damnation. 

Charlotte Brontë composed “Jane Eyre” between 1799-1809 in a language that is unfailingly masterful, in accordance with the various generic conventions of the romantic/Gothic genre.  This novel is the classic Gothic narrative when thinking about escape, subversion and mobility.  Some critics have argued that “Jane Eyre” is not a Gothic novel but more an example of the use of ‘Gothic’ by nineteenth century novelists like Charlotte and her sister.  Nonetheless, the traditional Gothic conventions are used, but in a personal way, from childhood terrors to all those mysterious and threatening sights and sounds that reveal the presence of some malevolent force, that anticipate the tragedy at Thornfield.  Charlotte’s symbolic use of the Gothic demands a more complicated response than the simple momentary intensity of feeling sought by the early Gothic novelists.  Thus, her novel is heavily influenced by the element of Gothicism, which, at the time, was hugely popular.  Gothic novels of the time depicted the revival of interest in the supernatural, the abnormal and ultimately the horrible.  In “Jane Eyre,” the peculiar, old house with its malevolent atmosphere, the raving lunatic and Rochester’s telepathic message to Jane, are all derivatives of the Gothic novel.  “Jane Eyre” is also a good example of how the interrogative texture of the Gothic works with regard to the supernatural and spiritual.  “Jane’s refusal to compromise, her departure from Rochester and Thornfield after the encounter with Bertha, is virtually initiated by the mother as a ghost, in a beautiful Gothic scene:” 

“I dreamt I lay in the red-room at Gateshead; …the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever.  I watched her come – watched with the strangest anticipation; as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk…

It gazed and gazed on me.  It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near it whispered in my heart – ‘My daughter, flee temptation.’ ‘Mother, I will.’”

In this supernatural, nocturnal encounter, “Jane Eyre” depicts the emotional dimension of the Gothic interrogative texture.  In other words, the generic Gothic ‘excesses’ like horror and supernaturalism interact with the emotional aspect of Gothicism, by association with the realm of dream, desire and nightmare.  Here, Charlotte moves toward depth in ways that have an immediate impact like that of the Gothic.Through Jane’s strange, frightened yet symbolic state of mind, one witnesses Charlotte’s flair for the surreal, in her plunging into feeling that is without status in the conformist world of the novel.

Conformity and conventionality are a far cry from the origins that make “Wuthering Heights” strike us as so unique, so unanticipated. This great novel, though not inordinately complicated, contrary to general assumption, manages to be a number of things: a romance that brilliantly challenges the basic presumptions of the "romantic"; a "Gothic" that evolves (with an absolutely inevitable grace) into its temperamental opposite; a parable of innocence and loss, and childhood's necessary defeat; and a work of consummate skill on its primary level, that is, the level of language.  Again we see the combination of the romantic and the Gothic, brought together superbly by Emily Brontë in “Wuthering Heights.”  There are many elements of the Gothic genre in the novel but Brontë’s treatment of Gothic concerns differs radically from her contemporaries.   Emily’s novel operates through suggestion rather than overtly and sensationally inscribing the supernatural elements. Fantastic or supernatural events become acceptable in the novel because, for the most part, the text is grounded in reality and daily life.  This is exposed in the setting of her novel, because in “Wuthering Heights,” Emily uses Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights to depict isolation and separation. The dark and foreboding environment described at the beginning of the novel foreshadows the gloomy atmosphere found in the remainder of the book. Wuthering Heights is an ancient mansion perched on a high ridge, overlooking a bled, windy, sparsely inhabited wasteland. The harsh, gloomy characteristics of the land are consequently reflected in the human characters, hence enhancing the deeper, darker feeling evident in her text.

Dark and eerie landscapes are not reserved exclusively for the Brontë sisters though, as echoed in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”  Victor’s country house near Geneva is described as isolated, dwarfed by massive, snow-capped mountain ranged and hunted by the emptiness of a calm lake. Victor also describes it as "an unusual tranquillity."  This effect of isolation and tranquillity generates a sublime mood in true Gothic convention.  Parallel to this in “Wuthering Heights,” features the presence of the supernatural and throughout the novel, hallucinations and visions of Catherine and Heathcliff occur at moments of heightened emotion and passion. They have both endured illness and starvation prior to these psychological disturbances. Their emotional states are realised in shadowy figures by the consciousness of the character themselves. The highly passionate relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff, forged in their embittered and savage childhood, has been variously interpreted: it is a doomed "Gothic" romance, whose depth of feeling makes the inane Lockwood and his narrative-mate Mrs. Dean appear all the more shallow.  These supernatural events happen in the beginning of the novel and continue until the very end.  In Chapter three, Lockwood is grabbed and pleaded to by Catherine's ghost through a window, and in the last chapter Ellen talks about people seeing the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine walking on the moors.  In between, Heathcliff tells Ellen about hearing Catherine sighing in the graveyard and sensing her nearby, and when he gives up his plans of revenge he even seems to see her ghost.  Ellen also sees Heathcliff as a goblin, and wonders if he is a vampire or a ghoul, although she realises that she is being silly. These themes and instances are tied to a spirituality and life-after-death theme present in the novel.  Hence, the idea of “Wuthering Heights” being a doomed Gothic romance is not wholly erroneous.

Despite indulging into the genre of Gothic romance with its customary touch of passion and ‘dark’ emotion, we cannot ignore the Gothic influence, although it is clear that both Charlotte and Emily refine the technique considerably from the “authentic” Gothic of the 1790’s.  For example in “Jane Eyre,” we see the richness in the poetry, symbolism and metaphor, which marks it distinct from the definite pattern of previous Gothic novels.  It is neither a novel of “manners” in the tradition of Austen, nor a straightforward Gothic Romance in the style of Mrs Radcliffe.  Essentially, what Charlotte Brontë did was to create a work, which cleverly unifies elements of the two styles, and yet remains uniquely independent of them at the same time, since it addresses issues, which were at the time rather controversial.  Contextually, there was little freedom for middle-class women during the period of the Gothic novel, and this remained the case in the time of Charlotte.  Marriage especially was often considered to be a mere bargain, whereby fortunes were secured by using the female figure exploitatively.  However in “Jane Eyre,” Charlotte, and the characters she depicts, do not always conform to this conventionality.  In fact the novel exhibits a number of autobiographical elements and Jane is seen as a projection of Charlotte Brontë herself, hence the element of controversy.  In illustrating this idea further, consider the way in which the heroine in “Jane Eyre” in fact undergoes the trials that the hero is habitually supposed to undergo in a Gothic romance.  Elements of this specific modern Gothic genre can be seen in Chapter 36 when we hear Jane say:

“I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in me- -not in the external world.  I asked, was it a mere nervous impression…

which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.”

These supernatural visions and experiences we see Jane discover a great inner-passion, whilst rehabilitate the extra-rational, moving deeper and deeper into the less known realities of human life.  The power of these private dreams and spectral visions manifest themselves in the protagonist as she moves through the novel. 

Spectral visitations and visions appear throughout “Wuthering Heights,” as they do in most other works of Gothic fiction, yet Emily Brontë always presents them in such a way that whether they really exist remains ambiguous.  Thus the world of the novel can always be interpreted as a realistic one, despite the clear Gothic undertones, which form the generic structure of Emily’s novel.  Even certain ghosts, such as Catherine's spirit when it appears to Lockwood in Chapter three, may be explained as nightmares rather than bizarre or misinterpreted features of Gothicism.  How one chooses to interpret these events however, remains a question for the individual, of which Emily Brontë poses no clear answer.  A further example is the villagers' alleged sightings of Heathcliff's ghost in Chapter 34, which again could be dismissed as unverified superstition or nightmarish visions.  Whether or not these ghosts are "real," so to speak, they symbolize the manifestation of the past within the present, and the way memory stays eternally with people, permeating their day-to-day lives.  “The point is that that in various ways Charlotte manages to make the patently Gothic more than a stereotype.”  In doing so, she addresses “a new dimension of Gothic.” 

By initiating this new Gothic dimension into the mainstream of the literary world, sisters Charlotte and Emily aided in the modification of the ‘Gothic’ genre.  By doing so, they demanded of the reader a more mature and complicated response than the relatively simple thrill or momentary passion of feeling sought by primitive Gothic.  This intensity of feeling common to both novels enhanced the role played by dreams and the sheer fascination with the spiritual.  Thus, Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” is enriched with fresh details, transfigured by a sense of the supernatural and the extraordinary.   The Gothic novel may also have exercised its influence on Emily in another way, by concealing the author’s personality from the reader.  This is thanks to the use of an interpreter-narrator, allowing Emily to share in the illusion created but at the same time detaching herself from it.  “Wuthering Heights” can also be paralleled with the Gothic novel in the way that we find the same schematic simplification in the casting of characters.  On the one hand, sympathetic figures, victims of the “villain’s” wickedness, and, on the other hand, a set of unappealing figures.  At the centre of her novel, Emily situates the ‘dark’ character, a descendant of the traditional ‘traitor’ who is positioned outside all social conventions, namely Heathcliff.  However he has this originality, which sets him apart from the archetypal ‘dark’ figure I have hitherto discussed.  In keeping with the traditions of this genre, that the evil-doer should be distinguished in appearance, Heathcliff is physically tough and sober in his habits.  He tells Mrs Dean, “With my hard constitution and temperate mode of living, and unperilous occupations I ought to, and probably shall, remain above ground till there is scarcely a black hair on my head.” (Chapter 33)  Even closer to the ‘villain’ of the Gothic novel is Mrs Dean’s description of Heathcliff’s appearance:

“Do you mark these lines between your eyes; and those thick eyebrows, that instead of rising arched, sink in the middle; and that couple of black fiends so deeply buried who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil’s spies?”                                                                   (chapter 7)

So it is the primacy of Emily’s own creative imagination, so far as the use of ideas borrowed from various sources, which encourage us to place the influence of the Gothic novel.  Privacy of one’s creative imagination and the fact that both Charlotte and Emily have experimented with the Gothic genre may reveal something about the nature and appeal of Gothicism In the first instance.

Undeniably but not unexpectedly, both the Brontë sisters were deeply influenced by and involved in the Gothic genre but their involvement with Gothicism did not end there.  Aside from utilising the Gothic romance genre, Charlotte and Emily gave a great deal back to the genre by introducing ‘new Gothicism’ into the mainstream of English literature through the novels “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights”. The influence of the Gothic had a profound effect on the Brontës because it was “seen as part of female culture and as a ‘woman’s genre’.” ³  In the past, ‘Gothic’ has been variously defined as “a literary exploitation of the avenues to death” [F. Cudworth Flint] or as “the essence of romanticism” [Montague Summers] and romanticism was the literary expression of supernaturalism.  However, either way, the emergence of this “new Gothic” form permitted Charlotte and Emily to develop their talent – the talent for discovering and giving dramatic form to impulses and feelings which, because of their depth or mysteriousness or intensity or ambiguity, raise wonderfully the sense of realism in both “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights.”  For the sisters, the “new Gothic” genre was not, therefore, the reinvention of an old mode into a new form.  Hence, Charlotte and Emily’s novels are not rebellions against Victorian social standards, as is believed by many critics.  Rather, they prove to be their way of transmuting Victorian ideals into a symbolic and emblematic form.  In studying such aspects of the Brontë’s literature as imagery, ideas of love and indeed Gothic stylistics, it is possible to observe “how most interpretations invariably return to the question of Charlotte and Emily’s personal involvement in their novels.” [Ian Gregor.]  How far that is true remains to be seen.

A Short History of English Literature

A Short History of English Literature

Old English, Middle English and Chaucer

Old English

English, as we know it, descends from the language spoken by the North Germanic tribes who settled in England from the 5th century A.D. onwards. They had no writing (except runes, used as charms) until they learned the Latin alphabet from Roman missionaries. The earliest written works in Old English (as their language is now known to scholars) were probably composed orally at first, and may have been passed on from speaker to speaker before being written. We know the names of some of the later writers (Cædmon, Ælfric and King Alfred) but most of the writings are anonymous. Old English literature is mostly chronicle and poetry - lyric, descriptive but chiefly narrative or epic. By the time literacy becomes widespread, Old English is effectively a foreign and dead language. And its forms do not significantly affect subsequent developments in English literature. (With the scholarly exception of the 19th century poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, who finds in Old English verse the model for his metrical system of "sprung rhythm".)

Middle English and Chaucer

From 1066 onwards, the language is known to scholars as Middle English. Ideas and themes from French and Celtic literature appear in English writing at about this time, but the first great name in English literature is that of Geoffrey Chaucer (?1343-1400). Chaucer introduces the iambic pentameter line, the rhyming couplet and other rhymes used in Italian poetry (a language in which rhyming is arguably much easier than in English, thanks to the frequency of terminal vowels). Some of Chaucer's work is prose and some is lyric poetry, but his greatest work is mostly narrative poetry, which we find in Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Other notable mediaeval works are the anonymous Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight (probably by the same author) and William Langlands' Piers Plowman.

Tudor lyric poetry

Modern lyric poetry in English begins in the early 16th century with the work of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547). Wyatt, who is greatly influenced by the Italian, Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) introduces the sonnet and a range of short lyrics to English, while Surrey (as he is known) develops unrhymed pentameters (or blank verse) thus inventing the verse form which will be of great use to contemporary dramatists. A flowering of lyric poetry in the reign of Elizabeth comes with such writers as Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The major works of the time are Spenser's Faerie Queene, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare's sonnets.

Renaissance drama

The first great English dramatist is Marlowe. Before the 16th century English drama meant the amateur performances of Bible stories by craft guilds on public holidays. Marlowe's plays (Tamburlaine; Dr. Faustus; Edward II and The Jew of Malta) use the five act structure and the medium of blank verse, which Shakespeare finds so productive. Shakespeare develops and virtually exhausts this form, his Jacobean successors producing work which is rarely performed today, though some pieces have literary merit, notably The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil by John Webster (1580-1625) and The Revenger's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626). The excessive and gratuitous violence of Jacobean plays leads to the clamour for closing down the theatres, which is enacted by parliament after the Civil war.

Metaphysical poetry

The greatest of Elizabethan lyric poets is John Donne (1572-1631), whose short love poems are characterized by wit and irony, as he seeks to wrest meaning from experience. The preoccupation with the big questions of love, death and religious faith marks out Donne and his successors who are often called metaphysical poets. (This name, coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in an essay of 1779, was revived and popularized by T.S. Eliot, in an essay of 1921. It can be unhelpful to modern students who are unfamiliar with this adjective, and who are led to think that these poets belonged to some kind of school or group - which is not the case.) After his wife's death, Donne underwent a serious religious conversion, and wrote much fine devotional verse. The best known of the other metaphysicals are George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) and Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).

Epic Poetry

Long narrative poems on heroic subjects mark the best work of classical Greek (Homer's Iliad and Odyssey) and Roman (Virgil's Æneid) poetry. John Milton (1608-1674) who was Cromwell's secretary, set out to write a great biblical epic, unsure whether to write in Latin or English, but settling for the latter in Paradise Lost. John Dryden (1631-1700) also wrote epic poetry, on classical and biblical subjects. Though Dryden's work is little read today it leads to a comic parody of the epic form, or mock-heroic. The best poetry of the mid 18th century is the comic writing of Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Pope is the best-regarded comic writer and satirist of English poetry. Among his many masterpieces, one of the more accessible is The Rape of the Lock (seekers of sensation should note that "rape" here has its archaic sense of "removal by force"; the "lock" is a curl of the heroine's hair). Serious poetry of the period is well represented by the neo-classical Thomas Gray (1716-1771) whose Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard virtually perfects the elegant style favoured at the time.

Restoration comedy

On the death of Oliver Cromwell (in 1658) plays were no longer prohibited. A new kind of comic drama, dealing with issues of sexual politics among the wealthy and the bourgeois, arose. This is Restoration Comedy, and the style developed well beyond the restoration period into the mid 18th century almost. The total number of plays performed is vast, and many lack real merit, but the best drama uses the restoration conventions for a serious examination of contemporary morality. A play which exemplifies this well, is The Country Wife by William Wycherley (1640-1716).

Prose fiction and the novel

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), wrote satires in verse and prose. He is best-known for the extended prose work Gulliver's Travels, in which a fantastic account of a series of travels is the vehicle for satirizing familiar English institutions, such as religion, politics and law. Another writer who uses prose fiction, this time much more naturalistic, to explore other questions of politics or economics is Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.

The first English novel is generally accepted to be Pamela (1740), by Samuel Richardson (1689-1761): this novel takes the form of a series of letters; Pamela, a virtuous housemaid resists the advances of her rich employer, who eventually marries her. Richardson's work was almost at once satirized by Henry Fielding (1707-1754) in Joseph Andrews (Joseph is depicted as the brother of Richardson's Pamela Andrews) and Tom Jones.

After Fielding, the novel is dominated by the two great figures of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and Jane Austen (1775-1817), who typify, respectively, the new regional, historical romanticism and the established, urbane classical views.

Novels depicting extreme behaviour, madness or cruelty, often in historically remote or exotic settings are called Gothic. They are ridiculed by Austen in Northanger Abbey but include one undisputed masterpiece, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1797-1851).

Romanticism

The rise of Romanticism

A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the revolt of the senses or passions against the intellect and of the individual against the consensus. Its first stirrings may be seen in the work of William Blake (1757-1827), and in continental writers such as the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the German playwrights Johann Christopher Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

The publication, in 1798, by the poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) of a volume entitled Lyrical Ballads is a significant event in English literary history, though the poems were poorly received and few books sold. The elegant latinisms of Gray are dropped in favour of a kind of English closer to that spoken by real people (supposedly). Actually, the attempts to render the speech of ordinary people are not wholly convincing. Robert Burns (1759 1796) writes lyric verse in the dialect of lowland Scots (a variety of English). After Shakespeare, Burns is perhaps the most often quoted of writers in English: we sing his Auld Lang Syne every New Year's Eve.

Later Romanticism

The work of the later romantics John Keats (1795-1821) and his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822; husband of Mary Shelley) is marked by an attempt to make language beautiful, and by an interest in remote history and exotic places. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) uses romantic themes, sometimes comically, to explain contemporary events. Romanticism begins as a revolt against established views, but eventually becomes the established outlook. Wordsworth becomes a kind of national monument, while the Victorians make what was at first revolutionary seem familiar, domestic and sentimental.

Victorian poetry

The major poets of the Victorian era are Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) and Robert Browning (1812-1889). Both are prolific and varied, and their work defies easy classification. Tennyson makes extensive use of classical myth and Arthurian legend, and has been praised for the beautiful and musical qualities of his writing.

Browning's chief interest is in people; he uses blank verse in writing dramatic monologues in which the speaker achieves a kind of self-portraiture: his subjects are both historical individuals (Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea del Sarto) and representative types or caricatures (Mr. Sludge the Medium).

Other Victorian poets of note include Browning's wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) is notable for his use of what he calls "sprung rhythm"; as in Old English verse syllables are not counted, but there is a pattern of stresses. Hopkins' work was not well-known until very long after his death.

The Victorian novel

The rise of the popular novel

In the 19th century, adult literacy increases markedly: attempts to provide education by the state, and self-help schemes are partly the cause and partly the result of the popularity of the novel. Publication in installments means that works are affordable for people of modest means. The change in the reading public is reflected in a change in the subjects of novels: the high bourgeois world of Austen gives way to an interest in characters of humble origins. The great novelists write works which in some ways transcend their own period, but which in detail very much explore the preoccupations of their time.

Dickens and the Brontës

Certainly the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, and possibly of all time, is Charles Dickens (1812-1870). The complexity of his best work, the variety of tone, the use of irony and caricature create surface problems for the modern reader, who may not readily persist in reading. But Great Expectations, Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend and Little Dorrit are works with which every student should be acquainted.

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) and her sisters Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-1849) are understandably linked together, but their work differs greatly. Charlotte is notable for several good novels, among which her masterpiece is Jane Eyre, in which we see the heroine, after much adversity, achieve happiness on her own terms. Emily Brontë's Wüthering Heights is a strange work, which enjoys almost cult status. Its concerns are more romantic, less contemporary than those of Jane Eyre - but its themes of obsessive love and self-destructive passion have proved popular with the 20th century reader.

Later Victorian novelists

After the middle of the century, the novel, as a form, becomes firmly-established: sensational or melodramatic "popular" writing is represented by Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne (1861), but the best novelists achieved serious critical acclaim while reaching a wide public, notable authors being Anthony Trollope (1815-82), Wilkie Collins (1824-89), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-63), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans; 1819-80) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Among the best novels are Collins's The Moonstone, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Eliot's The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede and Middlemarch, and Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.

Modern literature

Early 20th century poets

W.B. (William Butler) Yeats (1865-1939) is one of two figures who dominate modern poetry, the other being T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965). Yeats was Irish; Eliot was born in the USA but settled in England, and took UK citizenship in 1927. Yeats uses conventional lyric forms, but explores the connection between modern themes and classical and romantic ideas. Eliot uses elements of conventional forms, within an unconventionally structured whole in his greatest works. Where Yeats is prolific as a poet, Eliot's reputation largely rests on two long and complex works: The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943).

The work of these two has overshadowed the work of the best late Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian poets, some of whom came to prominence during the First World War. Among these are Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), A.E. Housman (1859-1936), Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). The most celebrated modern American poet, is Robert Frost (1874-1963), who befriended Edward Thomas before the war of 1914-1918.

Early modern writers

The late Victorian and early modern periods are spanned by two novelists of foreign birth: the American Henry James (1843-1916) and the Pole Joseph Conrad (Josef Korzeniowski; 1857-1924). James relates character to issues of culture and ethics, but his style can be opaque; Conrad's narratives may resemble adventure stories in incident and setting, but his real concern is with issues of character and morality. The best of their work would include James's The Portrait of a Lady and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and The Secret Agent.

Other notable writers of the early part of the century include George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), and E.M. Forster (1879-1970). Shaw was an essay-writer, language scholar and critic, but is best-remembered as a playwright. Of his many plays, the best-known is Pygmalion (even better known today in its form as the musical My Fair Lady). Wells is celebrated as a popularizer of science, but his best novels explore serious social and cultural themes, The History of Mr. Polly being perhaps his masterpiece. Forster's novels include Howard's End, A Room with a View and A Passage to India.

Joyce and Woolf

Where these writers show continuity with the Victorian tradition of the novel, more radically modern writing is found in the novels of James Joyce (1882-1941), of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Where Joyce and Woolf challenge traditional narrative methods of viewpoint and structure, Lawrence is concerned to explore human relationships more profoundly than his predecessors, attempting to marry the insights of the new psychology with his own acute observation. Working-class characters are presented as serious and dignified; their manners and speech are not objects of ridicule.

Other notable novelists include George Orwell (1903-50), Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), Graham Greene (1904-1991) and the 1983 Nobel prize-winner, William Golding (1911-1993).

Poetry in the later 20th century

Between the two wars, a revival of romanticism in poetry is associated with the work of W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (1907-73), Louis MacNeice (1907-63) and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72). Auden seems to be a major figure on the poetic landscape, but is almost too contemporary to see in perspective. The Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914-53) is notable for strange effects of language, alternating from extreme simplicity to massive overstatement.

Of poets who have achieved celebrity in the second half of the century, evaluation is even more difficult, but writers of note include the American Robert Lowell (1917-77), Philip Larkin (1922-1985), R.S. Thomas (1913-2000), Thom Gunn (1929-2004), Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and the 1995 Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney (b. 1939).

tabular view

A Tabular View of English Literature 
I. The Britons and the Anglo-Saxon Period, from the beginning to the Norman Conquest in 1066 A. D.
• A. The Britons, before and during the Roman occupation, to the fifth century.
• B. Anglo-Saxon Poetry, on the Continent in prehistoric times before the migration to England, and in England especially during the Northumbrian Period, seventh and eighth centuries A. D. Ballads, 'Beowulf,' Caedmon, Bede (Latin prose), Cynewulf.
• C. Anglo-Saxon Prose, of the West Saxon Period, tenth and eleventh centuries, beginning with King Alfred, 871-901.
• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

II. The Norman-French, Period, 1066 to about 1350.
• Literature in Latin, French, and English.
• Many different forms, both religious and secular, including the religious drama.
• The Metrical Romances, including the Arthurian Cycle.
• Geoffrey of Monmouth, 'Historia Regum Britanniae' (Latin), about 1136.
• Wace, 'Brut' (French), about 1155.
• Laghamon, 'Brut' (English), about 1200.

III. The End of the Middle Ages, about 1350 to about 1500.
• The Hundred Years' War.
• 'Sir John Mandeyille's' 'Voyage.'
• Chaucer, 1338-1400.
• John Gower.
• 'The Vision Concerning Piers the Plowman.'
• Wiclif and the Lollard Bible, about 1380.
• Popular Ballads.
• The War of the Roses.
• Malory's 'Morte Darthur,' finished 1467.
• Caxton and the printing press, 1476.
• Morality Plays and Interludes.

IV. The Renaissance and the Elizabethan Period, about 1500 to 1603.
• Great discoveries and activity, both intellectual and physical.
• Influence of Italy.
• The Reformation.
• Henry VIII, 1509-47.
• Edward VI, to 1553.
• Mary, to 1558.
• Elizabeth, 1558-1603.
• Defeat of the Armada, 1588.
• Sir Thomas More, 'Utopia.'
• Tyndale's New Testament and other translations of the Bible.
• Wyatt and Surrey, about 1540.
• Prose Fiction.
• Lyly's 'Euphues,' 1578.
• Sidney's 'Arcadia.'
• Spenser, 1552-1599.
• 'The Shepherd's Calendar,' 1579.
• 'The Faerie Queene,' 1590 and later.
• Lyric poetry, including sonnet sequences.
• John Donne.
• The Drama.
• Classical and native influences.
• Lyly, Peele, Greene, Marlowe.
• Shakespeare, 1564-1616.
• Ben Jonson and other dramatists.

V. The Seventeenth Century, 1603-1660.
• The First Stuart Kings, James I (to 1625) and Charles I.
• Cavaliers and Puritans.
• The Civil War and the Commonwealth.
• Cromwell.
• The Drama, to 1642.
• Francis Bacon.
• The King James Bible, 1611.
• Lyric Poets.
• Herrick.
• The 'Metaphysical' religious poets--Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan. Cavalier and
Puritan poets.
• Milton, 1608-1674.
• John Bunyan, 'Pilgrim's Progress.' 1678.

VI. The Restoration Period, from the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the death of Dryden in 1700.
• Charles II, 1660-1685.
• James II, 1685 to the Revolution in 1688.
• William and Mary, 1688-1702.
• Butler's 'Hudibras.' Pepys' 'Diary.'
• The Restoration Drama.
• Dryden, 1631-1700.

VII. The Eighteenth Century.
• Queen Anne, 1702-1715.
• The four Georges, 1715-1830.
PSEUDO-CLASSIC LITERATURE.
• Swift, 1667-1745.
• Addison, 1672-1719.
• Steele, 1672-1729.
• Pope, 1688-1744.
• Johnson, 1709-1784.
THE LATER PROSE.
• Burke, 1729-1797.
• Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall,' 1776-1788.
• Boswell, 'Life of Johnson,' 1791.
THE NOVEL.
• 'Sir Roger de Coverly,' 1711-12.
• Defoe, 1661-1731.
• 'Robinson Crusoe,' 1718-20.
• Richardson, 1689-1761.
• 'Clarissa Harlowe,' 1747-8.
• Fielding, 1707-1754.
• Smollett.
• Sterne.
• Goldsmith, 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 1766.
• Historical and 'Gothic' Novels.
• Miss Burney, 'Evelina,' 1778.
• Revolutionary Novels of Purpose. Godwin, 'Caleb Williams.'
• Miss Edgeworth.
• Miss Austen.
THE ROMANTIC REVOLT - Poetry
• Thomson, 'The Seasons,' 1726-30.
• Collins, 'Odes,' 1747.
• Gray, 1716-71.
• Percy's 'Reliques,' 1765.
• Goldsmith, 'The Deserted Village,' 1770.
• Cowper.
• Chatterton.
• Macpherson, Ossianic imitations.
• Burns, 1759-96.
• Blake.
THE DRAMA
• Pseudo-Classical Tragedy
• Addison's 'Cato,' 1713.
• Sentimental Comedy
• Domestic Tragedy.
• Revival of genuine comedy of manners
• Goldsmith, 'She Stoops to Conquer,' 1773
• Sheridan

VIII. The Romantic Triumph, 1798 to about 1830.
• Coleridge, 1772-1834.
• Wordsworth, 1770-1850.
• Southey, 1774-1843.
• Scott, 1771-1832.
• Byron, 1788-1824.
• Shelley, 1792-1822.
• Keats, 1759-1821.

IX. The Victorian Period, about 1830-1901.
• Victoria Queen, 1837-1901.
• ESSAYISTS. POETS. NOVELISTS.
• Macaulay, 1800-1859
• Mrs. Browning, 1806-
• Charlotte Bronte
• Carlyle, 1795-1881
• Ruskin, 1819-1900
• Tennyson, 1809-1892
• Dickens, 1812-1870
• Browning, 1812-1889
• Thackeray, 1811-1863
• Matthew Arnold
• Kingsley, 1819-1875
• Poems, 1848-58
• George Eliot, 1819-
• Rossetti, 1828-82
• Matthew Arnold
• Morris, 1834-96
• Reade, 1814-1884
• Essays, 1861-82.
• Swinburne, 1837-1909
• Trollope, 1815-1882
• Blackmore, 'Lorna Doone,' 1869
• Shorthouse,' John Inglesant,' 1881
• Meredith, 1828-1910
• Thomas Hardy, 1840-
• Stevenson, 1850-1894
• Kipling, 1865-