Table Of Content

British Literature & American Literature BY LEILA BORGES SUMMARY THE OLD ENGLISH MAP..............................................................................................................................6 USEFUL INFORMATION TO STUDY LITERATURE........................................................................................8 Taking Notes..........................................................................................................................................8 Essay Planning......................................................................................................................................10 Case against censorship.......................................................................................................................11 Case for censorship..............................................................................................................................11 How to Summarize...............................................................................................................................11 Some extra tips....................................................................................................................................13 Qualities of a character........................................................................................................................14 Author’s tone.......................................................................................................................................15 ANALYSING FICTION / LITERARY TERMS..................................................................................................17 WHAT IS LITERATURE?.............................................................................................................................18 Literary dictionary................................................................................................................................18 Forms of literature...............................................................................................................................18 Poetry...............................................................................................................................................18 Drama...............................................................................................................................................19 Essays...............................................................................................................................................19 Prose fiction.....................................................................................................................................20 Other prose literature......................................................................................................................20 Genres of literature.............................................................................................................................21 Literary genre...................................................................................................................................21 Subgenres........................................................................................................................................21 Important terms for poetry.................................................................................................................22 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.......................................................................................29 History and Structure of the English Language...................................................................................31 General Considerations...................................................................................................................31 Origins and Basic Characteristics.....................................................................................................33 Characteristics of Modern English...................................................................................................34 Phonology....................................................................................................................................34 Historical Background..................................................................................................................35 Vocabulary...................................................................................................................................35 Old English.......................................................................................................................................37 Middle English..................................................................................................................................38 The history of England from the Norman invasion encapsulates all the major trends of the times..40 The Norman Kings............................................................................................................................40 Henry II.............................................................................................................................................41 Magna Carta.....................................................................................................................................41 Edward I...........................................................................................................................................42 The 1300’s........................................................................................................................................43 The Lancasters.................................................................................................................................45 The Wars of the Roses.....................................................................................................................46 LITERARY PERIODS OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE ‐ SUMMARY............................................47 Periods of British Literature.................................................................................................................47 Literary Periods of American Literature..............................................................................................50 INTRODUCTION TO BRITISH LITERATURE................................................................................................52 Anglo Saxon‐literature.........................................................................................................................52 Poetry...............................................................................................................................................52 Prose................................................................................................................................................53 Beowulf............................................................................................................................................54 I Old English Poetry........................................................................................................................55 Plot Overview...............................................................................................................................55 Characters....................................................................................................................................56 Who wrote Beowulf?...................................................................................................................58 The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial..........................................................................................................59 Politics and Warfare.....................................................................................................................59 Christian Colouring in Beowulf....................................................................................................61 Middle English Literature.....................................................................................................................62 Geoffrey Chaucer.............................................................................................................................65 John Gower..................................................................................................................................68 The vision concerning piers the plowman...................................................................................68 The Wiclifite Bible........................................................................................................................69 Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales..............................................................................................74 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.............................................................................................................75 Chaucer's Linguistic..........................................................................................................................76 Literary.........................................................................................................................................76 Chaucer's English.............................................................................................................................76 The general prologue.......................................................................................................................77 The Wife of Bath's Tale........................................................................................................................93 The Prologe of the Wyves Tale of Bathe (with the translation)......................................................93 Comments......................................................................................................................................113 The wife of Bath’s Prologue.......................................................................................................114 The Wife of Bath’s tale...............................................................................................................114 Theme........................................................................................................................................115 The English Literature as a part of General Medieval European Literature..............................116 Literature in the three languages..............................................................................................116 Religious Literature....................................................................................................................117 Secular Literature.......................................................................................................................117 The Romances................................................................................................................................118 Sir Gawain and The Green Knight..............................................................................................120 The End of The Middle Ages. About 1350 to about 1500.................................................................121 The first fifty years. Political and social conditions.......................................................................121 'Mandeville's Voyage'........................................................................................................................122 The Fifteenth Century........................................................................................................................122 The 'popular' ballads......................................................................................................................122 Sir Thomas Malory and his 'Morte Darthur.'.................................................................................123 William Caxton and the introduction of printing to England, 1476..............................................124 The Medieval Drama......................................................................................................................125 The Sixteenth Century. The Renaissance and the Reign of Elizabeth...............................................128 The Renaissance.............................................................................................................................128 The Reformation............................................................................................................................130 Sir Thomas More and his 'Utopia'..................................................................................................131 The English Bible and Books of Devotion......................................................................................131 Wyatt and Surrey and the new poetry..........................................................................................132 The Elizabethan Period......................................................................................................................133 Prose fiction...................................................................................................................................134 Edmund Spenser, 1552‐1599.........................................................................................................135 Elizabethan lyric poetry.................................................................................................................138 The sonnets....................................................................................................................................139 John Donne and the beginning of the 'metaphysical' poetry........................................................139 II The influence of classical comedy and tragedy.............................................................................140 The chronicle‐history play.............................................................................................................140 John Lyly.........................................................................................................................................141 Peele, Greene, And Kyd.................................................................................................................141 Christopher Marlowe, 1564‐1593.................................................................................................141 Theatrical conditions and the theater buildings............................................................................143 An Elizabethan stage......................................................................................................................143 Shakespeare, 1564‐1616...............................................................................................................144 National life from 1603 to 1660....................................................................................................147 Ben Jonson.....................................................................................................................................147 The other dramatists.....................................................................................................................149 The Seventeenth Century, 1603‐1660. Prose And Poetry.................................................................152 Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, 1561‐1626. ...........................................................................152 The King James Bible, 1611............................................................................................................154 Minor prose writers.......................................................................................................................154 Lyric poetry....................................................................................................................................154 John Milton, 1608‐1674.................................................................................................................157 John Bunyan...................................................................................................................................159 The Tudors and the Elizabethan Age.............................................................................................160 The Jacobean Era, Cromwell, and the Restoration........................................................................161 The sixteenth‐century........................................................................................................................162 The early seventeenth century......................................................................................................163 Elisabeth I...........................................................................................................................................165 The great Elizabethan Age of Exploration.....................................................................................166 The Elizabethan Theatre................................................................................................................167 William Shakespeare life and work....................................................................................................168 Shakespeare Chronological listing of plays....................................................................................169 Shakespearean Theater.................................................................................................................169 Literary Terms to help reading Shakespeare.................................................................................170 AMERICAN LITERATURE.........................................................................................................................173 American Literary Time Periods.........................................................................................................173 Overview of American History and Literature...................................................................................175 The Pilgrims....................................................................................................................................175 The mayflower compact................................................................................................................176 Thanksgiving and the indians.........................................................................................................177 The Puritans...................................................................................................................................177 Salem witchcraft........................................................................................................................178 The revealed word, antinomianism, individualism...................................................................179 Caveat‐a‐note on the jeremiad..................................................................................................180 Pioneers to Puritans...................................................................................................................181 Enlightenment to Autonomy.........................................................................................................182 Literature After the Revolution.....................................................................................................182 History of American Literature / Colonial Period..............................................................................184 Early Colonial Literature. 1607‐1700.............................................................................................184 I. The English in Virginia: Captain John Smith, William Strachey, George Sandys.....................184 "Leah and Rachel.".....................................................................................................................187 Indian and Early American Literature........................................................................................188 American Literary aspects:............................................................................................................188 Early American and Colonial Period to 1776.............................................................................188 The literature of exploration.....................................................................................................190 III The Colonial Period in New England..............................................................................................191 William Bradford (1590‐1657).......................................................................................................196 Michael Wigglesworth (1631‐1705)..............................................................................................197 Samuel Sewall (1652‐1730)...........................................................................................................198 Mary Rowlandson (c.1635‐c.1678)................................................................................................199 Cotton Mather* (1663‐1728) ........................................................................................................199 Roger Williams (c. 1603‐1683).......................................................................................................199 American Texts..................................................................................................................................200 Indigenous People's Literature......................................................................................................200 Tsalagi (Cherokee) Stories.........................................................................................................200 Cotton Mather ‐What Must I Do To Be Saved?.............................................................................203 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................................................211 IV THE OLD ENGLISH MAP MAP OF ENGLISH DIALECT 6 The United States of America‐The 13 Original States The United States of America – TODAY 7 USEFUL INFORMATION TO STUDY LITERATURE Taking Notes 1. In preparation for writing an essay or any other piece of work, your notes might come from a number of different sources: course materials, set texts, secondary reading, interviews, or tutorials and lectures. You might gather information from radio or television broadcasts, or from experiments and research projects. The notes could also include your own ideas, generated as part of the essay planning process. 2. The notes you gather in preparation for writing the essay will normally provide the detailed evidence to back up your arguments. They might also include such things as the quotations and page references you plan to use in your essay. Your ultimate objective in planning will be to produce a one or two page outline of the topics you intend to cover. 3. Be prepared for the fact that you might take many more notes than you will ever use. This is perfectly normal. At the note‐taking stage you might not be sure exactly what evidence you will need. In addition, the information‐gathering stage should also be one of digesting and refining your ideas. 4. Don't feel disappointed if you only use a quarter or even a tenth of your materials. The proportion you finally use might vary from one subject to another, as well as depending on your own particular writing strategy. Just because some material is not used, don't imagine that your efforts have been wasted. 5. When taking notes from any source, keep in mind that you are attempting to make a compressed and accurate record of information, other people's opinions, and possibly your own observations on the subject in question. 6. Your objective whilst taking the notes is to distinguish the more important from the less important points being made. Record the main issues, not the details. You might write down a few words of the original if you think they may be used in a quotation. Keep these extracts as short as possible unless you will be discussing a longer passage in some detail. 7. Don't try to write down every word of a lecture ‐ or copy out long extracts from books. One of the important features of note‐taking is that you are making a digest of the originals, and translating the information into your own words. 8. Some students take so many notes that they don't know which to use when it's time to write the essay. They feel that they are drowning in a sea of information. 9. This problem is usually caused by two common weaknesses in note‐taking technique: (cid:190) transcribing too much of the original (cid:190) being unselective in the choice of topics 10. There are two possible solution to this problem: (cid:190) Select only those few words of the source material which will be of use. Avoid being descriptive. Think more, and write less. Be rigorously selective. (cid:190) Keep the essay question or topic more clearly in mind. Take notes only on those issues which are directly relevant to the subject in question. 11. Even though the notes you take are only for your own use, they will be more effective if they are recorded clearly and neatly. Good layout of the notes will help you to recall and assess the material more readily. If in doubt use the following general guidelines. (cid:190) Before you even start, make a note of your source(s). If this is a book, an article, or a journal, write the following information at the head of your notes: Author, title, publisher, publication date, and edition of book. (cid:190) Use loose‐leaf A4 paper. This is now the international standard for almost all educational printed matter. Don't use small notepads. You will find it easier to keep track of your notes if they fit easily alongside your other study materials. 8 (cid:190) Write clearly and leave a space between each note. Don't try to cram as much as possible onto one page. Keeping the items separate will make them easier to recall. The act of laying out information in this way will cause you to assess the importance of each detail. (cid:190) Use some system of tabulation (as I am doing in these notes). This will help to keep the items separate from each other. Even if the progression of numbers doesn't mean a great deal, it will help you to keep the items distinct. (cid:190) Don't attempt to write continuous prose. Notes should be abbreviated and compressed. Full grammatical sentences are not necessary. Use abbreviations, initials, and shortened forms of commonly used terms. (cid:190) Don't string the points together continuously, one after the other on the page. You will find it very difficult to untangle these items from each other after some time has passed. (cid:190) Devise a logical and a memorable layout. Use lettering, numbering, and indentation for sections and for sub‐ sections. Use headings and sub‐headings. Good layout will help you to absorb and recall information. Some people use coloured inks and highlighters to assist this process of identification. (cid:190) Use a new page for each set of notes. This will help you to store and identify them later. Keep topics separate, and have them clearly titled and labelled to facilitate easy recall. (cid:190) Write on one side of the page only. Number these pages. Leave the blank sides free for possible future additions, and for any details which may be needed later. 12. What follows is an example of notes taken whilst listening to an Open University radio broadcast ‐ a half hour lecture by the philosopher and cultural historian, Isaiah Berlin. It was entitled 'Tolstoy's Views on Art and Morality', which was part of the third level course in literary studies A 312 ‐ The Nineteenth Century Novel and its Legacy. Isaiah Berlin ‐ 'Tolstoy on Art and Morality' 3 Sep 89 1. T's views on A extreme ‐ but he asks important questns which disturb society 2. 1840s Univ of Kazan debate on purpose of A T believes there should be simple answers to probs of life 3. Met simple & spontaneous people & soldiers in Caucasus Crimean Sketches admired by Turgenev & Muscovites but T didn't fit in milieu 4. Westernizers Vs Slavophiles ‐ T agreed with Ws, but rejects science (Ss romantic conservatives) 5. 2 views of A in mid 19C ‐ A for art's sake/ A for society's sake 6. Pierre (W&P) and Levin (AK) as egs of 'searchers for truth' 7. Natural life (even drunken violence) better than intellectual 8. T's contradiction ‐ to be artist or moralist 9. T's 4 criteria for work of art (cid:190) know what you want to say ‐ lucidly and clearly (cid:190) subject matter must be of essential interest (cid:190) artist must live or imagine concretely his material (cid:190) and must know the moral centre of situation 10. T crit of other writers Shkspre and Goethe ‐ too complex St Julien (Flaubert) inauthentic Turgenev and Chekhov guilty of triviality 9 11. What is Art? Emotion recollected and transmitted to others [Wordsworth] Not self‐expression ‐ Only good should be transmitted 12. But his own tastes were for high art Chopin, Beethoven, & Mozart T Argues he himself corrupted 13. Tried to distinguish between his own art and moral tracts 14. 'Artist cannot help burning like a flame' 15. Couldn't reconcile contradictions in his own beliefs died still raging against self and society Essay Planning 1. Strategy » You can approach the composition of an essay using a number of different writing strategies. Some people like to start writing and wait to see what develops. Others work up scraps of ideas until they perceive a shape emerging. However, if you are in any doubt at all, it's a good idea to plan your work. The task of writing is usually much easier if you create a set of notes which outline the points you are going to make. Using this approach, you will create a basic structure on which your ideas can be built. 2. Plans » This is a part of the essay‐writing process which is best carried out using plenty of scrap paper. Get used to the idea of shaping and re‐shaping your ideas before you start writing, editing and rearranging your arguments as you give them more thought. Planning on‐screen using a word‐processor is possible, but it's a fairly advanced technique. 3. Analyse the question » Make sure you understand what the question is asking for. What is it giving you the chance to write about? What is its central issue? Analyse any of its key terms and any instructions. If you are in any doubt, ask your tutor to explain what is required. 4. Generate ideas » You need to assemble ideas for the essay. On a first sheet of paper, make a note of anything which might be relevant to your answer. These might be topics, ideas, observations, or instances from your study materials. Put down anything you think of at this stage. 5. Choosing topics » On a second sheet of paper, extract from your brainstorm listings those topics and points of argument which are of greatest relevance to the question and its central issue. Throw out anything which cannot be directly related to the essay question. 6. Put topics in order » On a third sheet of paper, put these chosen topics in some logical sequence. At this stage you should be formulating a basic response to the question, even if it is provisional and may later be changed. Try to arrange the points so that they form a persuasive and coherent argument. 7. Arrange your evidence » All the major points in your argument need to be supported by some sort of evidence. On any further sheets of paper, compile a list of brief quotations from other sources (together with page references) which will be offered as your evidence. 8. Make necessary changes » Whilst you have been engaged in the first stages of planning, new ideas may have come to mind. Alternate evidence may have occurred to you, or the line of your argument may have shifted somewhat. Be prepared at this stage to rearrange your plan so that it incorporates any of these new materials or ideas. Try out different arrangements of your essay topics until you are sure they form the most convincing and logical sequence. 9. Finalise essay plan »The structure of most essay plans can be summarised as Introduction ‐ Arguments ‐ Conclusion. State your case as briefly and rapidly as possible, present the evidence for this case in the body of your essay, then sum up and try to 'lift' the argument to a higher level in your conclusion. Your final plan should be something like a list of half a dozen to ten major points of argument. Each one of these points will be expanded to a paragraph of something around 100‐200 words minimum in length. 10