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Chapter I: literature of the middle ages
A. ANGLO- Saxon period (5th - 10th centuries)
During the first five centuries of our era and long before that, Britain was inhabited by a people called Kelts, who lived in tribes.
Britain’s history is considered to begin in the 5th century, when it was invaded from the Continent by the fighting tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. At the very end of the 5th century they settled in Britain and began to call themselves English (after the principal tribe of settlers, called English).
Although we know very little of this period from literature some poems have nevertheless reached us. In those early days songs called epics were created in many countries. The epics tell about the most remarkable events of a people’s history and the deeds of one or more heroic personages.
The Song of Beowulf
The first masterpiece of English literature, the epic poem The Song of Beowulf, describes the historical past of the land from which the Angles, Saxons and Jutes came. They brought the subject over from the Continent when they invaded Britain, and it was made into a poem somewhere about the 7th century.
The story of Beowulf tells of the time when kings Hrothgar ruled the Danes. Hrothgar built a great house for himself and his man. It has a large hall with flat stones in the centre. All the men slept in this hall. There was a great feast when the hall was built. During the feast the songs from the hall were heard by a monster that lived at the bottom of a lonely lake. The gay songs irritated him. When all Hrothgar’s men were asleep, Grendel, the monster, appeared. He seized thirty of the sleeping men, carried them away and ate them. Night after night the man disappeared one after another, until Hrothgar had lost nearly all of them.
One day the men that guarded the coast saw a ship approaching the shores of Denmark from Norway. A young Viking was on board, tall and strong as a young oak-tree. It was Beowulf, who had heard of Grendel and his doings, He had come to help Hrothgar to kill the monster. He was received with great joy by Hrothgar, who gave a feast in his honour. When the men lay down to sleep after the feast, Grendel appeared in the dark hall. He seized Beowulf ad a great struggle began. In this struggle the monster lost his arm, but ran away. Again there was singing and joy in the hall the next night. But late a night a still more terrible monster, a Water Witch, appeared. She was Grendel’s mother who had come to kill Beowulf, but she did not find him and disappeared, carrying away one of the best of Hrothgar’s men. The next day Beowulf went after her and found her a the dead body of Grendel. With an old sword of the giants that he found there Beowulf killed the Water Witch and cut off Grendel’s head. Carrying the head he came back to the men who were waiting for him. Later, he returned to his own people with rich presents from Hrothgar.
The second part of the poems tells us of Beowulf’s deeds when he was king of Norway. A fiery dragon was destroying his country. Beowulf found the dragon’s cave and a lot of treasure in it.
Beowulf saved his country- he killed the dragon, but the monster wounded him with his fiery breath. Beowulf died and his people buried him on a high cliff by the seashore. Over his grave raised a mound and rode around it, singing a song of mourning.
Thus, the epic The song of Beowulf, tells of some events from a people’s history, sings the heroic deeds of a man, his courage and his desire of justice, his love for his people and self- sacrifice for the sake of his country.
The poem is a classical example of Anglo-Saxon poetry. It has no rhyme, but each line has alliteration, which is a repetition, at close interval, of the same consonant in words or syllables. Another interesting feature of the poem is the use of picture names that show the subject in a new light. The unknown poet calls the sea a ‘sail-road’, or ‘sat-stream’, the musical instruments ‘joy-wood’, ‘glee-wood’, etc. These descriptive words, together with the subject, are called double metaphors.
B. Anglo- Norman period (11th-13th centuries)
1. Background
In the year 1066, in the Battle of Hastings, the Anglo- Saxon king’s army was defeated by William, Duke of Normandy, who became King of England. A strong feudal monarchy was established in the country. The ruling classes consisted of the Norman nobility and the clergy. The power of the Catholic Church had become very great. Most of the English people became serfs.
The Normans came from the north-west of France. They brought with them the culture of their country and the French language. Thus, three languages were spoken in England. The language of the nobility was French; the churchmen used Latin and the common people spoke Anglo- Saxon.
The three social classes of the country had their own literature. The Normans brought the romance to England. The romance told of love and adventure and expressed the ideas of knighthood in feudal society.
The literature of the Church was scholastic, moralizing, and it supported the feudal system. The books written in Latin by monks, taught the common people that they should be poor and obey their masters. Their suffering on earth, the Church said, would bring them happiness in heaven.
The Anglo- Saxon composed their own popular poetry. The main genres were the fabliaux- funny stories about townspeople, and the bestiaries- stories in which the characters were animals.
2. Famous writers & their works
The legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table is the most powerful and enduring in the western world. King Arthur, Guinevere, and Sir Lancelot did not really exist, but their names conjure up a romantic image of gallant knights in shining armour, elegant ladies in medieval castles, heroic quests for the Holy Grail in a world of honour and romance, and the court of Camelot at the centre of a royal and mystical Britain.
The Arthurian legend has existed for over a thousand years and is just as compelling today as it was in the faraway days of its early creators - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Robert de Boron, Chrétien de Troyes, and most majestically: Sir Thomas Malory in his epic work, Le Morte d'Arthur. Countless writers, poets, and artists (not to mention film-makers and now, webmasters) have been inspired by the life and times of King Arthur.
C. The Pre-Renaissance (14th -15th centuries)
1. Background
In this period, the fight between English, Latin & French came to an end. In 1362, the Parliament decided to use English at courts. In 1399, Henry IV, the first king whose mother tongue was English came to the throne. In 1485, after the war of the Roses (1455 – 1485), the Tudor Age (1485 – 1603), an age that witnessed the growth and prosperity of the Renaissance, began.
2. Features of literature trends: Folklore & Drama
2.1. Anglo-Saxon folklore
Anglo-Saxon folklore continued its vigorous vitality and flourished in the 15th century ballads. Originally, a ballad was a song intended as the accompaniment to a dance. The standard ballad verse form is a quatrain, often with one rhyming pair. Most of the 15th century ballads are centered on a legendary hero of the English people: Robin Hood.
2.2. Drama
The drama was born in the church. In the early times, the clergymen explained the truths of religion by a series of living pictures in which the performers acted in dumb show. Later, the actors spoke as well as acted their parts. The plays were known as Mysteries and Miracles. The performance of these stories in church marked the first stage in the development of drama. The second stage was reached when the Mysteries and Miracle gave place to Morality and Interlude. The serious and comic elements in the Mysteries and Miracle were now separated. The Morality was didactic and the characters typified certain qualities such as Sin, Grace, and Repentance. The Interlude was comic and aimed at amusement. The forth stage saw the beginning of English tragedy and comedy. The Renaissance saw the flourishing of English drama.
3. Famous writers & their works
Geoffrey Chaucer and Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer was considered the most famous writer at this time. He was the last poet of the Middle Age and the first poet who paved the way for English realistic literature.
Chaucer was the author of a number of translations and literary works: Le roman de la rose (translation), The Book of the Duchess. The Canterbury Tales is his most important work.
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories in verse told by people of different social standing. Chaucer had planned 120 stories but wrote only 24 because death broke off his work.
The Canterbury Tales begins with the General Prologue, a detailed introduction and description of each of the pilgrims journeying to Canterbury to catch sight of the shrine to Sir Thomas a Becket, the martyred saint of Christianity, supposedly buried in the Cathedral of Canterbury since 1170. The pilgrims, a mixture of virtuous and villainous characters from Medieval England, include a Knight, his son the Squire, the Knight's Yeoman, a Prioress, a Second Nun, a Monk, a Friar, a Merchant, a Clerk, a Man of Law, a Franklin, a Weaver, a Dyer, a Carpenter, a Tapestry-Maker, a Haberdasher, a Cook, a Shipman, a Physician, a Parson, a Miller, a Manciple, a Reeve, a Summoner, a Pardoner, the Wife of Bath, and Chaucer himself. They each bring a slice of England to the trip with their stories of glory, chivalry, Christianity, villainy, disloyalty, cuckoldry, and honor. Some pilgrims are faithful to Christ and his teachings, while others openly disobey the church and its law of faithfulness, honor, and modesty.
The pilgrimage begins in April, a time of happiness and rebirth. They pilgrims hope not only to travel in this blessed time, but to have a rebirth of their own along the way. The pilgrimage consists of these characters journeying to Canterbury and back, each telling two tales in each direction, as suggested by the host. At the conclusion of the tales, the host will decide whose story is the best. The Knight is the first to tell a story, one made up properly of honor and chivalry. His tale is followed by the Miller's opposite tale of dishonor and frivolity. Chaucer frequently places tales of religion and Christ-like worship with tales of unfaithful women and cuckolded men. The Reeve, the Cook, and the Man of Law tell the next stories, while the host interjects his opinions throughout. There are several rivalries that grow from within the intertext, including the small quarrels between the Friar and Summoner and between the Miller and Reeve. Between each tale, most pilgrims have a prologue, in which they tell about themselves or allow Chaucer to illustrate the dynamics of the group. The Friar and the Summoner develop a minor feud, in which they each tell tales of ill-will towards the other's profession, and the Pardoner brings his own immoral behavior into the Tales. The Wife of Bath is a memorable character and is often thought of as a primordial feminist who acts on her own terms instead of those of the man.
The Canterbury Tales are not fully completed, for the original task of having each pilgrim tell two tales is never realized. Furthermore, two of the tales are begun and then suddenly cut off before their grand conclusion, such as the Squire's Tale and the Tale of Sir Thopas. Some of the pilgrims never even tell one story, such as the Tapestry-Maker and the Haberdasher, and the destination of Canterbury is not explicitly mentioned in the pilgrims' prologues or Chaucer's Retraction.
Chaucer concludes his tales with a Retraction, asking for mercy and forgiveness from those whom he may have offended along his course of storytelling and pilgrimage. He hopes to blame his ignorance and lack of education on any erroneous behavior or language, for he believes that his intentions were all moralistic and honorable. In the end, he gives all credit to Jesus Christ.
Chapter II: literature of the RENAISSANCE
I. Cultural – Historical Background
The word’ Renaissance’ was first used by Jules Michelet, a French historian (1780-1874). First of all, ‘Renaissance’ means not only ‘the revived interest in Greek and Roman literatures’ but also ‘the discovery of the world and human beings’. More than that, it implies ‘the awakening of men’s mind, the awakening of individual spirit and secularism’.
1. Renaissance: the revived interest in Greek and Roman literatures
It is obvious that, in the Middle Ages, people did read and study Greek and Roman literatures, but the number of readers of these literatures was very limited among scholars and literary men. Now, thanks to Petrarch’s and Boccacio’s enthusiasm in propagating the spirit of humanism in Greek and Roman literatures, and thanks to the invention of the printing machine, the number of readers of ancient writers increased greatly and the reading and studying of Greek and Roman literatures became an interest. In this period, the spirit of humanism became assimilated with the studying of those literatures.
2. Renaissance: the discovery of the world and human beings
The Renaissance was a great age of geographical and scientific discoveries.
In geographical field, Christopher Columbus discovered America; Amerigo Vespucci and Vasco da Gama discovered the Philippines; Magellan travelled around the world and discovered several lads and islands. These great geographical discoveries opened new horizons and bright prospects for European people; they longed to discover other continents and people.
In scientific field, Newton discovered ‘Law of Gravity’, Galileo and Copernicus discovered the stars and the stellar systems, and Kepler discovered the orbits of planets. These scientific discoveries had deep influence on the concepts of the Middle Ages about the position ad destiny of men in the Universe.
In the Middle Ages, men completely lost their values and position. The Church of Rome taught them that men were symbols of evils and sins, that they were slaves in this temporary world. They lived and waited for their emancipation from this earthly hopeless life. They lived and prepared themselves for future life in paradise.
In the Renaissance, men were reborn. They began to accept this world with a much more optimistic attitude. They enjoyed their present life and realized this earthly life was beautiful ad interesting, that men ha the right to live and enjoy everything on earth.
3. Renaissance: the awakening of men’s mind, the awakening of individual spirit and secularism
Middle Ages men despised materialistic and sexual desires. Renaissance men were quite different: new land discoveries, new luxurious life, new economic political and social life all created new will and eagerness in them. Spiritually, they began to lead a revolt against the strict, cramped and austere pattern of life in the Middle Ages.
In this age there was also a great shift in the outlook. The thought of the Middle Ages was essentially God-centred. But humanism, by its very nature, placed a new importance on created things. This emphasis on the importance of temporal things led to a de-emphasis of God and the eternal life. Renaissance men were no more subordinated to God. Their happiness was here, on earth, and it depended on their own strength and ability to achieve it. Men were their own guides to truth ad happiness. Utopia” The historical Thomas More, the author of Utopia, was an extraordinarily complicated man who tied up all the threads of his life in his heroic death. The real man is to me much more interesting than the plastic creation adored by his most fervent admirers. The Utopia is the sort of complicated book that we should expect from so complicated a man.It is heavy with irony. Irony is the recognition of the distance between what we say and what we mean. But then irony was the experience of life in the Sixteenth Century - reason enough for Shakespeare to make it perhaps his most important trope while the century was drawing to a close. Everywhere in church, government, society, and even scholarship profession and practice stood separated by an abyss.In Utopia three characters converse and reports of other conversations enter the story. Thomas More appears as himself. Raphael Hythlodaeus or Raphael Nonsenso, as Paul Turner calls him in his splendid translation is the fictional traveler to exotic worlds. More's young friend of Antwerp Peter Gillis adds an occasional word.Yet the Thomas More of Utopia is a character in a fiction. He cannot be completely identified with Thomas More the writer who wrote all the lines. Raphael Hythlodaeus's name means something like "Angel" or "messenger of Nonsense." He has traveled to the commonwealth of Utopia with Amerigo Vespucci, seemingly the first voyager to realize that the world discovered by Columbus was indeed a new world and not an appendage of India or China.
Raphael has not only been to Utopia; he has journeyed to other strange places, and found almost all of them better than Europe. He is bursting with the enthusiasm of his superior experiences. But how seriously are we to take him? The question has been much debated. The Thomas More in the story objects cautiously and politely to Raphael's enthusiasms. Anyway, the main point about renaissance dialogues and declamations such as Utopia is that their meaning depends on how we hear them. How we hear them depends on what we bring to them.
“More was one of the most thorough and consistent thinkers in the Sixteenth Century. He argued everything like the splendid lawyer he was. I believe that when we read Utopia dialectically, through his other works, we may penetrate to some degree the ironic screen that he has thrown over the work. Even so, complete certainty about his meaning sometimes eludes us.” (Harry Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance, New York, Oxford University Press, 1969.)
II. The Elizabethan Drama
1. Origin
Records of drama in English go back to the Middle Ages, a period in which numerous 'Miracle' and 'Morality' plays were written. Such plays were often based on biblical themes, especially those involving such miraculous events as the saving of Noah and his family in the ark, or those from which a clear moral could be drawn. Medieval plays were usually written to coincide with such religious festivals as Christmas or Easter. They were at first performed in the churches, but later on, the ‘Miracles’ were played on movable stages in the streets.
Out of the ‘Miracles’ arose the ‘moralities’, in which virtues and vices such as Sin, Grace, Repentance, Hope, Belief, Justice, were personified. A humorous element soon crept into these allegorical productions, which became a vehicle for satire. On the other hand, ‘Interludes’ (dramatic dialogues with song and clowneries) were sometimes introduced into them in order to relieve the attention of the spectators. These interludes- in which the characters were generally drawn from real life- enjoyed great popularity and soon assumed an independent existence; from them the English Drama was directly evolved.
3. Theatres and Performances at the Close of the 16th Century
From the beginning of the 16th century, there had been in England numerous companies of actors playing either in London or in provincial towns. Performances were at first given in inn-yard, the actors playing on a field platform erected on trestles; later on, regular theatres were built. The companies of actors did not comprise any women: the feminine parts were played by boys whose voice had not yet broken.
3. The Elizabethan Drama
Elizabethan drama refers to the plays produced while Queen Elizabeth reigned in England, from 1558 until 1603. England during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign is considered to have reached its greatness and glory. The Queen herself was the symbol of the glory of the country. Despite plagues and other calamities, England grew prosperous and powerful and deserved to be called ‘Merry England’.
When William Shakespeare came to London to carry on his theatre work, he found everything in his favour: the theatre alive and strong, people enjoying going to the theatre and plays shrewdly written for the public’s taste. Since the first public theatre was opened in 1576, a group of talented men called the University Wits had already developed new types of plays out of old forms and had learned what the public wanted.
During the years 1590-1600 the whole nation became intensely interested in its past. People loved to watch plays which sang of patriotism and of their kings. In order to meet this demand, Shakespeare wrote ten plays of this kind.
Unlike Shakespeare, most playwrights of the time were more practical men, bent on making a living rather than a noble calling. They may have been well-educated, but they were more eager to fill the theatres than to please the public and the critics. As a result, drama in England, from the start, was almost a popular art rather than a learned and classical art it was in France.
A dramatist in those days was likely to be an actor and producer. He joined a company and became its playwright. He sold his manuscripts to it and kept no personal rights in them. Revising old plays and working with another man on new ones were common. No manuscripts of Shakespeare, for this reason, have survived, because they were not printed.
III. Typical Writers and Works
1. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) - The Greatest Humanist and The Idol of The Renaissance
Details about William Shakespeare’s life are sketchy, mostly mere surmise based upon court or other clerical records. William Shakespeare, surely the world's most performed and admired playwright, was born in April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, about 100 miles northwest of London. Shakespeare was the eldest son of Mary Arden, the daughter of a local landowner, and her husband, John Shakespeare (1530-1601), a glover and wood dealer.
William no doubt attended the local grammar school in Stratford where his parents lived, and would have studied primarily Latin rhetoric, logic, and literature. At age 18 (1582), William married Anne Hathaway, a local farmer’s daughter eight years his senior. Their first daughter (Susanna) was born six months later (1583), and twins Judith and Hamnet were born in 1585.
Shakespeare’s life can be divided into three periods: the first 20 years in Stratford, which include his schooling, early marriage, and fatherhood; the next 25 years as an actor and playwright in London; and the last five in retirement back in Stratford where he enjoyed moderate wealth gained from his theatrical successes. The years linking the first two periods are marked by a lack of information about Shakespeare, and are often referred to as the “dark years”; the transition from active work into retirement was gradual and cannot be precisely dated.
William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, and was buried two days later in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church where he had been baptized exactly 52 years earlier.
William Shakespeare’s works
Scholars distinguish three periods in William Shakespeare’s works:
Tragedies
Histories
Comedies
3
William Shakespeare’s Sonnets
The Sonnets of William Shakespeare appeared, without his permission, in 1609 and advertised as "never before imprinted". The publisher, although reputable, clearly wanted to make use of the celebrity of William Shakespeare who by 1609 was a famous member of the Globe Theatre and could count royalty amongst his patrons. The 1609 quarto, entitled Shakespeare’s Sonnets, was published by Thomas Thorpe, printed by George Eld, and sold by William Aspley and William Wright
Chapter IV: the age of enlightenment (1689-1798)
I. Cultural – Historical Background
The period from the middle of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century is often regarded as the historical background for the appearance of the Enlightenment in England. Some remarkable events in this period were:
1. The Dispute of Power between the Tory and the Whig
The Bourgeois Revolution (1648) gave birth to two conflicting parties: the Whig and the Tory.
The Whig, set up by Lord Shaftesbury, belonged to the Low Church, consisting of city merchants, financiers, bourgeoisie, and dissenters.
The Tory, set up by Dryden, belonged to the High Church, consisting of great landowners, aristocrats, and clergymen.
In the 18th century, these two parties alternately ruled England. Their continuous disputes threw the English political and social life into confusion.
2. The Rise of the British Empire
This was a period of the British colonial expansion. It began a time when ‘The sun never sets on the British Empire’. Ireland was deprived of all rights; Scotland agreed to unite with England; England defeated Louis XIV in the two wars with France and got hold of Gibralta, ‘a western key to Mediterranean Sea; most of the French colonies in America were handed to England; Senegal and India went to England, too. The conquered lands were used as the sources of cheap raw materials.
3. The Beginning of the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was initiated by the inventions of various kinds of machines in the 2nd half of the 18th century. With new machines, either invented or imported, the English industry, especially the textile and mine industries, developed rapidly. Along with the expansion of the British Empire, the enlargement of the British market and the increasing standard of living of English people, the Industrial Revolution precipitated the development of England into a big capitalist country.
II. Literature
The 18th century in England as well as in Europe, was the age of REASON. The writers’ central problems were the study of ma and the origin of his virtues ad vices. Believing that’ Vice is due to ignorance’, they started a movement for the enlightenment of the people.
The terminology ‘Enlightenment’ indicates the historical role of the bourgeoisie in the age of the Bourgeois Revolution in comparison with the corrupt feudalism by recalling the contrast between light and dark. It also implies the progress of the ideological movement and literature in the 18th century.
Being a period of political intrigue and increasing intellectual tendencies, the age of Enlightenment was favourable to the development of prose rather than of poetry.
The literature of this time was illustrated by such masters of prose as Swift, the prince of English satirist; Defoe, the father of the English novel; Adison and Steele, the creators of English essay-writing; and Pope, the acknowledge ruler of the literary world of his day.
The Enlightenment writers belonged to two groups:
III. Typical Writers and Works
1. Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731)
Daniel Defoe is rightly considered the father of the English and the European novel, for it was due to him that the genre became once and for ever established in European literature.
Daniel Defoe’s life was complicated and adventurous. He was the son of a London butcher whose name was Foe, to which Daniel later added the prefix De. He sometimes used it separately giving his name a French sound. His father, being a puritan, wanted his son to become a priest. Daniel was educated at theological school. However, he never became a priest, for he looked for another business to apply his abilities to. He became a merchant, first in wine, then in hosiery. He traveled in Spain, Germany, France and Italy on business. Though his travels were few they, however, gave him, a man of rich imagination, material for his future novels. Foe’s business was not very successful and he went bankrupt more than once. He took an active part in the political life of Britain. In 1685 he participated in the Duke of Monmouth’s revolt against James II. The rebellion was defeated in a compromise of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie and resulted in a compromise of these two classes. After this defeat, Defoe had to hide himself for some time. When the Dutchman William of Orange came to throne of England in 1688, Defoe was among his most active supporters.
It was in his later years, however, that Defoe wrote the novels for which he is now justly famous. They were perhaps the first books that conform to the term "novel", and brought him great success. 1719's Robinson Crusoe and its sequel, the Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, are probably the most famous, but soon he had published Captain Singleton (1720), Moll Flanders (1722), A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) and Roxana (1724). These novels were extremely influential and showed a journalist's interest in realistic description. Many of the works written after Roxana were travel books (e.g. A New Voyage round the World (1724) and A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-6)). Defoe's simple but effective prose style ensured him widespread popularity and he is seen as the father of the English Novel, as well as the first journalist of great individual merit. He died in his lodgings on April 24, 1731.
Typical Work: Robinson Crusoe
Critique
2. Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)
The greatest satirist in the history of English literature, Jonathan Swift, was the contemporary of Steele, Addision, Defoe and other English enlighteners of the early period. However, he stood apart from them, for while they supported the bourgeois order, Swift, by criticizing different aspects of the bourgeois life came to the negation of the bourgeois society. Lunacharsky called Swift one of the first critics of bourgeois system and capitalist reality.
Jonathan Swift was born on November 30, 1667 in Dublin in an English family. His father died seven months before Jonathan’s birth leaving his family in poverty. Jonathan was brought up by his prosperous uncle Godwin Swift who sent him to school and then to Trinity College in Dublin.
There he studied theology and later became a clergyman. His favorite subjects, however, were not theology but literature, history and language. At 21 Swift went to live in England and became a private secretary of distant relative, Sir William Temple, a writer and a well-known diplomat of the time. At Moor Park, Sir William estate, Swift made friends with Hester Jonson, the daughter of one of Temple’s servants, fourteen years his junior. Hester, or Stella as Swift poetically called her, remained his faithful friend through all his life. His letters to her, written in 1710-1713, were later published in the form of a book under the title of Journal Stella.
During the two years at Moor Park, Swift read and studied much and in 1692 he took his Master of Arts Degree at Oxford University. With the help of Sir William, Swift got the place of vicar in a small church in Kilroot (Ireland) where he stayed for a year and a half. Then he came back to Moor Park and lived there till Sir William’s death in 1698.
Typical Works: Gulliver’s Travels
Critique
Swift is best known for his satires. In Gulliver’s Travels, his masterpiece, he satirizes the evils of the existing society in the form of fictitious travels.
In the first voyage to Lilliput, Gulliver finds himself in a country of very small people. He feels contempt for their ideas, customs and institutions. The Emperor boasts that he is the delight of the Universe while as a matter of fact; he is just as tall as a snail. Swift satirizes the hypocrisy, hostility and flattery of England in the 18th century.
In the second voyage to Brobdingnag, Gulliver lives in the land of giants. They are generally good-nature creatures and treat him kindly though they were amused by his size. So we can see that Brobdingnag is an expression of Swift’s desire to escape from the disgusting world and create an ideal monarch with a clever, honest and kind king.
Jonathan Swift’s bitterness of satire reaches its climax in Gulliver’s third trip to Laputa. Swift ridicules the scientists of 18th century who are isolated from the world. They are busy inventing stupid things, such as: extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, building houses beginning at the roof, etc. All these things don’t serve any practical purpose and unfamiliar to humanity as a whole.
Gulliver’s last voyage is the most biting satire of all. He finds a land governed by horses of highest intelligence and uprightness. In this region, peace and contentment are never destroyed by disease, flattery, cheats, bribery and social evils. These beastly creatures show Swift’s extreme pessimism caused by a deep contempt and hatred for humanity.
Through his Gulliver’s Travel, Jonathan Swift has shown that he is the greatest satirist in English literature.
Critics have suggested that Swift intended the novel to be both an attack on mankind and its follies and a honest assessment of mankind's positive and negative qualities. It is also considered a critique of the greatest moral, philosophical, scientific, and political ideas of Swift's time. The greatest and most lasting accomplishment of Gulliver's Travels may be its ability to encourage readers of any society at any time to raise important questions about mankind's limitations, how we can structure our institutions to bring out the best in people, and what it means to be human.
Chapter v: the 19th century English literature
A. The English Romanticism (1798-1832)
I. Cultural – Historical Background
1. The American Revolution (1775-1783)
The American Revolution was the symbol of the growth of national consciousness in America in the last decades of the 18th century. In May 1775, the Second Continental Congress of the 13th English colonies faced a most basic decision: the irresistible demand for national independence.
2. The French Revolution
The French Revolution was an inevitable outcome of difficulties in both economics and politics after the century-long wars with England. The growing bourgeoisie, supported by the starving peasants and the town poor, went revolutionary. The success of the French Revolution (14/7/1789) also had a deep influence on England. English workers and petty bourgeoisie, following the example of the French Revolution, stated acting. ‘Correspondence Societies’ sprang up everywhere with quite radical programmes for universal suffrage, freedom of speech, unions, press, meeting, etc.
English literary men, in particular, welcomed the French Revolution as a new fresh air that breathed hope into human hearts.
3. The ‘Holly Alliance’
Considering a revolutionary France under the leadership of the militarist Napoleon dangerous, England joined other European countries to cancel Napoleon’s ambitions to conquer Europe. Defeating Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo in 1815 England, together with her allies, set up the’Holly Alliance’. The ‘Holly Alliance’ tried to do everything that a reactionary alliance could do to return to the pre-1789 state, and to suppress democratic trends and revolutionary ideas. Europe entered a state of disillusionment.
4. The Industrial Revolution
With the inventions of new machines already well started in the second half of the 18th century, and with the expansion of the United Kingdom after the fall of the Napoleonic empire, England became a powerful, prosperous manufacturing country.
The changes that the Industrial Revolution brought about had both good ad bad effects on the social life of this country. On the one hand, industrialization increased the wealth of the nation; on the other hand, it caused much suffering to the working people who were thrown out of work by the introduction of machinery into mines ad mills. As a result, the workers began to attack workplaces, breaking machines and calling themselves Luddites. The Luddite movement became widespread and caused lots of trouble and damage to the State.
II. Literature
2.1. The Two Generations of the Romantics
The Conservative Trend (The Lake School)
Early in 1798 William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey formed a group called ‘The Lake School’. The school was named after the beautiful lake in the North West of England where Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey had been living for a long time.
The Lake poets underwent evolution in their political views and creative activities. They started with protesting against social injustice, showing their interest in vital social problems of their time. They admired the French Revolution so warmly that Wordsworth even travelled to France to witness the great liberation of mankind. But later on, frightened by the blood and fire across the water, they went over to the side of reaction and started rejecting both economic and social progress. They regretted being unwise in welcoming the French Revolution and in believing that REASON was capable of creating an equal society. They turned away from the ideas of the Enlightenment to the distrust of reason and rationalism. They bent their pens towards the idealization of the patriarchal feudal past and medieval attitudes.
The Progressive Trend (The Cockney School)
Quite opposed to the conservative trend of Romanticism was the progressive trend known as the Cockney School, whose representatives were Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelly, and John Keats.
The representative of this school expressed the ideas and interests of the classes that were disappointed to see the state of things which was a result of the capitalist development. They saw its negative sides and criticized them. But their criticism was much more than a confirmation of the patriarchal ideas of the past, their criticism was the expression of the longing for a better present and a wonderful future. They were little interested in the past, only mindful of the present. Their eyes were fixed on the current affairs on the days. Their works, in general, embodied the dream of social justice that the broad masses of people cherished.
2. George Gordon Byron (1788 – 1824)
One of the great poets of England was the revolutionary romancist George Gordon Byron. He was born on January 22, 1788 in London, in an old aristocratic, but poor family. The boy spent his childhood in Scotland, with his mother. At the age of ten Byron returned to England, as heir to the title of Lord and the family of castle of Newstead Abbey. It was situated near Nottingham, close to the famous Sherwood Forest. He went to school to Harrow, then to Cambridge University. When he was 21 he became a member of the House of Lords. In 1809 he traveled abroad, visiting Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece and Turkey. He returned home in 1812.
In 1812 Byron delivered his speeches in House of Lords. His first speech was in defense of the Luddites. Later he spoke on favor of the oppressed Irish people. In his speeches Byron showed himself a defender of the peoples cause, and that made the reactionary circle hate him. When after unhappy marriage in 1812, he and his wife parted, his enemies in the governing circles seized this opportunity and began to persecute him. The great poet was accused of immorality and had to leave his native country.
In May 1816 Byron went to Switzerland where he made friends with the poet Percy B. Shelly, his great contemporary. Their friendship was based on the similarity of their political convictions. Both of them hated oppression and stood for the liberty of nations.
At the end of 1816 Byron continued his voyage and went to Italy, where he lived till 1823. There he became actively engaged in the Carbonari movement against Austrian rule, for the liberation of Italy. The defeat of the Carbonari uprising (1821) was a heavy blow to the great fight for liberty. In the summer of 1823 he went off to Greece to fight for liberation from Turkish oppression. There, on April 19, 1824, Byron died of a fever. The Greeks, who considered him their national hero, buried his heart in their country and declared national mourning for him. His body was brought to England where it was buried near Newstead Abbey. In 1969 the authorities finally allowed his remains to be buried in the “Poets’ Corner” in Westminster Abbey.
Byron’s Poetry
Byron as a poet of freedom
Much more than Wordsworth and Coleridge, who, after their first enthusiasm for the French Revolution, surrendered to caution and skepticism, more even than Keats, whose love of liberty was hardly developed to its full range, Byron was all through his life a poet of freedom.
The struggle for freedom was clearly shown in ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’, in ‘The Oriental Tales’, and in ‘Don Juan’.
Byron as a poet of love
Byron’s second theme is love. In the subject of love, he seems to have been haunted by the dream of an ideal first love, tender and natural, and not at all like what he had felt for the women whom he thought to have loved. This theme is shown in Byron’s ‘The Oriental Tales’ and ‘Don Juan’.
Byron as a realist
In the great appeals for liberty which ring through Don Juan, and in the attacks which Byron makes on its enemies, the fundamental purpose of his poem is seen: Byron set out to tell the truth. He was never tired of insisting that the chief merit of his poem was in their truthfulness. Like his hero, he has seen the world and known that it was ‘very much unlike what people write’. Therefore, in Don Juan, Byron declares:’ I mean to show things really as they are, not as they ought to be: for I avow that till we see what’s what in fat, we’re far from much improvement’. And Byron believed that by fastening upon the truth, he would improve the world. And this belief distinguishes Byron from the other romantics: with Keats, it is the past; with Shelly, the future; with Byron, it is the present that really interests him. Byron is always a man of the world; ad Don Juan is the record of his personality, the personality of a poet and of a man of action.
B. The English Critical Realism (1832-1901)
The reign of Queen Victoria, one of the longest in the annals of England (1837-1901), is also one of the most glorious in the history of English literature.
The literature of the Victoria age does not essentially differ in spirit and poetic mood from that of the preceding period. The study of the works produced in the second half of the 19th century will necessarily reveal gradual changes in method and spirit, as well as manifestation of strongly individual temperaments; yet it can be said that, on the whole, Victorian literature continues to flow in the channels of Romanticism.
II. Literature
It was in the period of political strife that a new trend was born in English literature: Critical Realism. Romanticism now seemed too abstract, too aloft, too remote from the actual world. A direct and straightforward consideration of everyday life became an imperative necessity. Writers in the Victorian age denounced the evils of the day and pictured the lives of the people of both low and high societies, thus creating social novels. There are some of the most essential features of this trend. They are found in the leading writers of the time, chiefly Dickens, Thackeray, Bronte, and others.
The Victoria age was primarily an age of prose rather than poetry; therefore, we shall pay particular attention to the two distinguished authors of critical realism: Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.
III. Typical Writers and Works
1. Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was the greatest critical realist in the 19th century English Literature. He was born in Portsmouth, in a poor family. He had to leave school and worked hard to support the family. At 15, he studied short-hand and worked as a reporter, then a writer. Dickens’s life as a literary artist falls into 4 periods.
In the first period (1833 – 1841), he wrote some novels such as Oliver Twist (1838), the Posthumous parpers of the Pickwick Club, etc. This was the period of humour and optimism.
In the second period (1842 – 1848), he had some famous novels: American notes, Dombey and son, etc. This was the period of sarcasm and criticism.
The third period (1849 - 1860) was the period of strongest social criticism on the soulless and unwholesome nature of competition in an industrial life. In this period, he had many novels like: David Copperfield, Bleak House, A tale of two cities...
The fourth period (1861 – 1865) was characterized by romanticism resulting from disillusionment, with some works such as: Great expectation, Our mutual friend.
Charles Dickens had great contribution to English and world literature. On the literary side, he was not only the writer who had described the town-life of his day, but he was also the first genuine story teller.
On the social side, he was not merely a story teller but a social reformer who used fiction as a platform for his social appeals, and who proved to possess a very rare quality. He brought smile with sermonic powder to people in a complicated history.
In general, Charles Dickens was the pioneer of a great age of fiction. No doubt, English life and literature seem to be saner and sunnier with Dickens.
David Copperfield is autobiographical in its essence. The finest of the novels is Great Expectations- a long but tightly knit work, moving. It is in this book that Dickens reveals his understanding of the mind of the child, his sympathy with its fantasies and its inability to understand the grown-up world. In some ways, Dickens remained a child.
2. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 – 1863)
W.M. Thackeray was born on Calcutta, India, in the family of an English official of high standing. Contrary to Charles Dickens, Thackeray had a very good education both at school ad at Cambridge University. The future writer wanted to be an artist and went to Europe to study art. For some time he lived among the artistic circles of Paris. Later, when he returned to London, he learned that he had lost all his money, for the bank where it was deposited had gone bankrupt. Thus, he had to earn his living. He began sketches, but was not very successful. He started writing satirical and humorous stories and essays. Later he wrote novels and delivered lectures.
Thackeray wrote in the same year and under the same political conditions as his contemporary Dickens did. Together they’re better appreciated that apart; they present the life of their period more completely together. Dickens usually chose for his main character the “little” man with his troubles and difficulties. Thackeray directed satire against representatives of the upper classes of society, whom he knew better. Dickens was inclined to look for a happy solution that smoothed over existing contradictions. Thackeray, on the contrary, was merciless in his satirical attacks on the ruling classes. He considered that art should be a real mirror of life. He showed bourgeois society and its vices without softening their description. In this approach o art he was the follower of the great satirist of the Enlightenment, Jonathan Swift.
Thackeray’s most outstanding works are The Book of Snobs (under this title he published a collection of satirical essays) that appeared in 1846 – 1847 and his novel Vanity Fair (1847 – 1848).
Typical Work: Vanity Fair
Critique
‘Vanity Fair’, the best known of Thackeray’s works, is a social novel which shows not only the bourgeois aristocratic society as a whole, but also the very laws which govern it. Describing the events which took place at the beginning of the 19th century, the author presents a broad satirical picture of contemporary England. The social background of the novel, which influences all the characters in their thought and actions, is high society at large. Thackeray attacks the vanity, pretensions, prejudices, and corruption of the aristocracy. He mercilessly exposes the snobbishness, hypocrisy, money worshipping and parasitism of all those who form the bulwark of society. Thackeray shows that goodness often goes hand in hand with stupidity ad folly, that cleverness is often knavery.
The title of this novel was an allusion, quite familiar in these days, to the city of London which had been described as Vanity Fair in the famous 17th century religious allegory of John Bunyan:’ The Pilgrim’s Progress’ (1678). It is also associated with the book of the Bible whose memorable words are’ ALL IS VANITY’. His main subject is the false heartless ways and the resourceful hypocrisy of society, the silent misery of simple souls.
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