english lit - culture and society

What is a metaphor?

a figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another

connects two unrelated things to point out the similarities between them

What is a simile?

a figure of speech that compares two different things using “like” or “as”, to clarify and enhance an image

“it pricks like thorn” (Romeo and Juliet)

What is a metonymy?

a figure of speech in which the name of an attribute or a thing is replacing the thing itself

“The Crown” for the monarchy

What is a synecdoche?

a figure of speech where the part stands for the whole

“Give us this day our daily bread” - “bread” stands for the meals in the day

What is a personification?

a figure of speech in which the phrase embodies a quality or abstraction - a human quality embodying an inanimate object

Romeo and Juliet: “Earth hath swallowed all my hopes”

What is an oxymoron?

a figure of speech which compares two contradictory words for special effect

Romeo and Juliet: “O brawling love! O loving hate!”

What is onomatopoeia?

a figure of speech where the word imitatšes the sound of what it represents

“moo” “pop” “whoosh” “zoom” “bow-wow”

Describe the major ideas and developments of the Renaissance era.

renaissance = from french, rebirth, started being used in the 19th century

“period after the Middle Ages” (not very positive vibes, “darkness → light”, a misconception)

Italy considered birthplace

lots of debate where it actually began and ended, “a series of Renaissances” throughout the world

humanism - focus on the individual, on perfecting the worldly life, not the afterlife, revival of the classical world and studies (Hamlet - the endless human potential)

science and tech - printing press (Gutenberg, for communication and expanding knowledge), microscope, telescope, compass, pocket watch ; scientific methods by Descartes (bro is) and Bacon (knowledge is power, 🇫🇷 is 🥓) ; astronomy (Galilei, Copernicus - heliocentric model)

religion - Reformation of the Catholic Church (Martin Luther) mega crisis bc humanism fueled the doubt of the church’s authority

explorations and discovery - new view of the world with routes to Americas, India, Far East, Columbus’ voyage, Francis Drake, beginning of the British Empire (Jamestown)

Describe the English Renaissance specifically, its genres, main authors and compare it to the Italian one. Mention the relevant dynasties of the time.

the timeline and term is debatable - some say it started with the Tudors (1485), some claim it started with Elizabeth’s I. crowning (1558)

ended supposedly with Elizabeth’s death, but man, Shakespeare was still writing? so prolly not, maybe during the Stuarts (James I, Charles I)

definitely ended by 1660 (Restoration era)

English renaissance is known for literature rather than visual arts (Chaucer) as opposed to Italy

emergence of modern English language gave national confidence

main genres: drama (comedy, tragedy, history plays), poetry (Elizabethan, lyric and epic), essays, non-fictional prose

features: morality, ethical dilemmas, questions about life and fate and free will

authors: Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Philip Sidney, Ben Johnson

Describe meter and rhythm in poetry related to sonnets specifically.

meter = how many syllables there are on a line and how they are combined, (un)stressed

each line into feet into stresses

the iambic - one short/unstressed and one long/stressed syllable (heartbeat)

pentameter - five feet on each line

the sonnet form is the iambic pentameter

Describe what a sonnet is and give examples of kinds of sonnets.

italian sonetto = a little sound/song

it is a fourteen-line lyric poem in iambic pentameter and various rhyme schemes

originated in Italy, brought to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard in the 16th century

• petrarchan - italian

  • ABBA ABBA

  • CDE CDE or CDC DCD

  • volta 9th line

• shakespearean - english

  • ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

  • volta in the 3rd quatrain

• spenserian - ABAB BCBC CDCD EE

• miltonic - same rhyme scheme and structure as petrarchan

Who were the two significant English authors of Renaissance poetry? Describe their works.

Sir Thomas Wyatt

• a member of the court circle of Henry VIII (pretty popular)

• bitter towards women

• rumored to have an affair with Anne Boleyn (Henrys wife)

• his rhythm is deliberately rough

• translated Petrarch

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

• also associated with Henry’s court (grew up with his son)

• rash behaviour

• convicted of treason, executed by Henry at 30

• smoother Petrarch translator than Wyatt

• established the English sonnet! not Shakespeare!

• first English poet to use blank verse - unrhymed iambic pentameter

• themes: love, nature, happiness, male friendship

Describe the Elizabethan era and its development of language and publishing

Elizabeth I was known for having a cult following, “Virgin queen married to her country”, strong female leader, she campainged herself as the future of the country, dressed super fancy, jewels, mysterious vibe which was captured by artists (Spenser), likened to a goddess, criticized after her death for her personality (but by men… so….)

“masks” - drama, form of entertainment

religion - protestant x catholic tensions, protestantism made a religion by law, imposed in many ways, pressure & propaganda

education - two universities - for the gentry and aristocracy, women had no acces to grammar schools or unis (taught to read, but writing was “useless” for women)

English language not prestigious at first (Thomas More’s Utopia was written in Latin) but slowly gained a self-confidence which is linked to consolidation and strenghtening of the English state (still difficult to make a living as a writer, no royalties)

What is a sonnet sequence? Which are the most important examples?

it is a series of sonnets on a particular theme to a particular individual, usually had a unified theme (love), which became immensely popular during the Elizabethan era

Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella

Spenser’s Amoretti

Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Describe the most important writers of the Elizabethan era and their work.

Edmund Spenser

• wrote at the same time as Shakespeare

• Spenserian sonnet - ABAB BCBC CDCD EE, the “link sonnet”, volta on the 9th line

• wanted to reform the English verse

• did not come from money

• tried to justify the English colonization of Ireland

• cannot be easily labelled, contradictory works

• Faerie Queene (allegorical epic poem, Catholic Church portrayed as the evil, the ONLY woman represents fuckin CHASTITY bye)

• Amoretti - about his courtship of his wife Elizabeth Boyle, (“little loves”)

• buried next to Chaucer (his idol, yay)

Sir Philip Sidney

• patron of scholars and poets

• wanted to be influential in court but fucked it up with Elizabeth lmao

• wrote some of the most important works of the era:

• Arcadia; New Arcadia

• Defense of Poesy (defends fiction and its moral value)

• Astrophil and Stella (the best sonnet sequence after Shakespeare’s)

John Milton

• the “last great Renaissance poet”? hes from a bit later lol

• a “spokesperson” for the country - focused on glorifying the English language

• his works greatly intertwined with the history of England (church and state affairs, allied w Puritans, supported Cromwell, against the monarchy, wrote to support the free press)

• lost his eyesight later in life (wrote When I consider how my light is spent about it)

• the miltonic sonnet - changed the form and focused on new topics (Paradise Lost - epic poem with blank verse, tells the biblical story of the fall from grace of Adam and Eve)

Name sources of theatre.

Roman influence - Romans introduced theatres to Britain, but they fell into disuse around 400 AD

communal context

church

oral tradition - medieval plays relied on this

Describe late medieval folk theatre.

10th - 15th century

mummings - disguised visitors that went to houses, played dice for food and money and left, later could be presentation of Royal procession or civic pageants

mummer’s play - performed during the Christmas season, at least one character is killed and brought to life by a doctor

morris dance, theatrical dancing

plays and popular figures - Robin Hood plays

Describe what pageants were.

large-scale theatrical production

performed on a pageant wagon

provided the setting for cycles of plays

simple setting, elaborate costumes

Describe what processions were.

organized parades that moved through the city

held for various celebrations and ceremonies

most notable for Queen Elizabeth

Describe Christian dramas.

many people couldnt read → accessible way of teaching the Bible

liturgical plays - early religious drama, began in churches, performed in Latin, enacting stories from the Bible

mystery plays (cycles) - performed on pageant wagons by trade guilds, consisted of several plays that each tells a Biblical story, the judgement of all mankind, mixed comedy and farce, Church supported until they started questioning the religious value

miracle plays - set in a historical context, stories of miracles/martyrdom of saints, including religious conversion

morality plays - came to replace mystery plays, centers on one character that represents the whole of humankind and the rest is abstract, vice is more realistic

What is the only printed play from the Middle Ages?

The Summoning of Everyman - quintessential morality play, details the life and death of Everydayman, who represents the whole humankind

Describe the features and kinds of Renaissance Drama

interludes - more realistic than earlier plays, have a political message and could be similar to morality plays, some could be farce-like, characters not abstract anymore, there were types representing real people, vice important, John Heywood

university/academic drama - popular in the late 15th and 16th century, drama performed by university students, both the audience and actors are well-educated, largely classical influences

Who is the first playwright to write a non-didactic interlude?

John Heywood

Divide the English Renaissance Theatre and Drama into periods.

Elizabethan theatre - 1558—1603

Jacobean theatre - King James I, 1603—1625

Caroline theatre - King Charles I - 1625—1649, the beginning of Civil War caused the theatres to close

Who were the “University Wits”?

pioneer dramatists writing in the last two decades of the 16th century

established the foundation for Shakespeare and his contemporaries

contributed to establishing Renaissance tragedy (focused on lives of great figures), comedy and history plays

Thomas Kyd - established the genre of revenge tragedy

John Lyly

Robert Greene

Thomas Nashe

George Peele

Thomas Lodge

Christopher Marlowe

What do you know about Christopher Marlowe?

gay icon

stabbed eye

spy

coulda been Shakespeare famous if he wasnt murdered

most influential of the University Wits

involved in criminal activities

accused of atheism, homosexuality

his death is one of the great mysteries of English lit - dagger in his eye in a bar fight

used blank verse and he eated

major plays:

• Doctor Faustus

• Edward II. - discussed same-sex desire

• Jew of Malta

• Tamburlaine the Great

Describe Shakespeare’s sonnets.

gay

serving kant

154 sonnets

iambic pentameter

three four-line quatrains and a concluding couplet

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

themes of love and lust, beauty, destructive power of time

most sonnets addressed to a man kundo

1-17 introductory series

127-152 Dark Lady sequence

153-154 Greek mythology?? insane but relatable

Mention female writers of the Renaissance

women began writing in the Jacobean era - most nobility/gentry → better educated than the average woman

1611 Aemilia Lanyer - first Englishwoman to publish a substantial volume of original poems

1613 Elizabeth Cary - Lady Falkland, first Engwoman to publish a tragedy, Mariam

1617 Rachel Speght - first female polemicist published a defence for women

Lady Mary Wroth - long prose romance, Urania and a sonnet sequence Pmaphilia to Amphilantus

debates about women in the Renaissance

“what the fuck are they good for?” what is their “proper place”?

polemic works about gender relations

• Joseph Swetnam - Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women

→ responses on this, creating pamphlet wars: Swetnam the Women-Hater: Arraigned by Women

advice on domestic issues - how to run a proper household, “proper” roles of husband and wife, how to bring up children etc

• Of Domestical Duties - William Gouge

What do you know about Lady Mary Wroth?

most impressive female author of the Jacobean era, success influenced by her Sidney heritage

but replaced heroes with heroines, focused on female experience

The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania (1621)

• love story between a shepherdess and a knight

• discussed issues women face in the patriarchal society

• alluded to her own life and to notable people of the Jacobean court

• influenced by her own love-triangle (Pamphilia = all loving, Amphilantus = lover of two)

• Petrarchan lyric sequence

What do you know about Aemelia Lanyer?

she was the first Engwoman to publish a substantial volume of original poems

Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum - highly feminist, defence of Eve and all the women

feminist ideas also prevalent in the prose epistle To The Virtuous Reader

What do you know about Katherine Philips

best-known woman poet of her own and the next gen

reminiscent of Sappho’s lyrics and John Donne’s love poetry

wrote primarily about the female friendship

many poems dedicated to Anne Owen (Lucasia)

Upon Little Hector Philips

To My Dearest Lucasia

Describe English Renaissance Theatre

“The Theatre” (Shakespeare), The Rose, The Swan, The Globe (rebuilt from The Theatre, Shakespeare), Red Bull

Major playing companies: The Lord Chamberlain’s Men (Shakespeare), The Admiral’s Men (Marlowe)

actors were all men

dramatic effects thanks to the designs (discoveries, balconies, trapdoors), accompanied by music and dance

not a lot of props

What do you know about William Shakespeare?

no university education, married early, grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon

his scripts existed in his own handwritten manuscripts, pirated texts, prompt books

died on his birthday

the number of his own plays and collaboration plays is debatable today

18 plays were published

Describe the early period of William Shakespeare

1591—1601

history plays - based on accounts of English kings written by Raphael Holinshed and other chronicles (Henry IV, V, VI, Richard II, III)

comedies - end happily (in marriage usually), often about women, funny coincidences, disguises, mistaken identities, romance (The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Describe the middle period of William Shakespeare.

1601—1607 (around the time of Elizabeth I.’s death)

tragedies - about men who make a terrible error in their judgement which follows their downfall, complex heroes, some of the most famous plays, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Coriolanus

dark comedies/”problem plays” - mix of comedy and tragedy, raise issues that are not properly resolved, leave the audience feeling uneasy

Describe the late period of William Shakespeare

plays from 1608

romances - mix comedy and tragedy in a soft manner, dream-like, magic, fairy tale

Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest

Describe the style, influences and language in Shakespeare’s work

mainly used histories, other plays, narrative poems

influenced by the mystery plays and the allegorical morality plays, but with new focus on the protagonist’s psyche (even minor characters), also by the revival of classics (particularly Seneca)

plays are written in blank verse but also feature rhymed verse or prose for a specific effect

uses a lot of metaphors and wordplay, coined many new phrases we still use today (swagger in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, eyeball??

Who are some of the contemporaries and followers of Shakespeare?

Ben Jonson

• known for comedy of humours (disgusting medical theory about four liquids in the human body that should be in balance)

• Every Man in His Humour - satirical comedy mocking the London society

• Every Man Out of His Humour - even more exaggerated, longest play written for the Elizabethan public theatre

• his plays rather moralistic and conservative, aimed at correcting vices

• wrote also Sejanus and Catiline, well-known for his masques

Talk about Jacobean and Caroline playwrights.

Thomas Middleton - various output, but missing Shakespeare’s unique insights, known for city comedies (Chase Maid in Cheapside), later focused more on tragedy (The Changeling)

John Webster - Jacobean tragedies that rank closest to Shakespeare’s

Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

Describe the brief end of theatre and its restoration

Oliver Cromwell

William Davenant invented the English opera

when it went back on, two main playing companies:

• The Duke’s Men (William Davenant)

• The King’s company (Thomas Killigrew)

The Restoration Theatre

• women on stage as playwrights - Nell Gwynn (actress), Katherine Philips (she was the first woman to stage a play by a prof company in GB - Pompey), Aphra Behn (the first professional female dramatist)

describe the key genres of Restoration drama

at first dependend on Beaumont and Fletcher and revised works of Shakespeare

then the main genres:

• heroic dramas

• operas

• tragedies

• restoration comedies

Describe heroic dramas.

epic, grand, rhetorical and declamatory, themes of love and honor, idealistic hero, beautiful heroine, try to be together but bring upon everything with their love

written in rhyming pentameter couplets, rhymed heroic couplet

Describe Restoration tragedies

replaced heroic dramas, written in blank verse with the neoclassical rules of unities

gained popularity through Dryden’s All for Love, best serious playwright of the age was Thomas Otway (influenced by neoclassicism and Shakespeare)

Describe Restoration comedies.

diverse

comedies of humours - inspired by Jonson, main playwright Thomas Shadwell

comedies of intrigue - depends on a complicated plot full of surprises and tends to subordinate character to plot, represented by Aphra Behn

comedies of farces

comedies of manners - originated with Dryden → Sir George Etherege, → William Wycherley, very critical against traditional puritanical morals, focus on the nasty struggles of the upper-class society, adulterous love, the chase, sexual conflict

background of the Enlightenment

1660—1785

• GB became a single nation after 1707 (Act of Union)

• country gainedpolitical stability and commercial success

• nation population doubled

focus on science, reason, rationality

political stability

ideas of politeness, order, hierarchy, liberty, sentiment, sympathy

the rise of the novel, popular non-fiction prose

the periods of Age of Reason/Neoclassical Period

1660—1700 The Restoration

1700—1745 The Augustan Age

1745—1785 The Age of Sensibility (Johnson)

features of Neoclassicism

strongly reliant on the models of ancient Greek and Rome

literature is supposed to be perfected through long study

good writing should follow old models, rules, style of ancient genres

“art for humanity’s sake” = neoclassical humanism

followed clear rules anf limiting conventions in literary subjects, structure and diction

The Restoration literature

1660—1700

desire for new elegant simplicity (x Renaissance)

restraint, clarity, good sense

informal, plain, direct style - to reach a new audience with scientific truths

Dryden the most important writer - neoclassical satirical poem - Absalom and Achitophel, neoclassical tragedy All for Love

The Augustan Literature

1700—1745

Alexander Pope - An Essay on Criticism, The Rape of the Lock - the most highly valued mock-epic in English language

Jonathan Swift

Joseph Addison

also Daniel Defoe but he focused on popular audience

imitated the Roman Augustans in topics and style - emphasis on social concerns and ideals of moderation and decorum

admiration of French literature

poets tried to represent Nature

combined the perfection of the form with wit

great era of satire

Where did the novel come from?

Ian Watt: The Rise of the Novel (1957)

focusing on individual experience, in prose, fictional, not taking inspiration from previous sources

the term not fully established until 18th century

genre established with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Richardson’s Pamela, Fielding’s Tom Jones

realism

a realistic depiction of everyday life, all the varieties of human experience

established as a literary term in 1856

the novel’s realism is about the way it presents it rather than what kind of life it presents

french realists said that its different from previous forms because it’s based on scientific scrutiny of life

the novel is however influenced by modern philosophical realism - does the literary work reflect the reality?

rather it reflects this anti-traditional individualist and innovating reorientation of thought

plots and characters in novels

rejection of traditional plots

original, innovative

no relying on mythology, history, legend or previous works

old generality vs new particularity - detail in characterization and environment, characters named as they would be irl

time and space in novels

time

• characters are individualized with a specific background of time and space

• Locke: the individual was in touch with his own continuing identity through memory of his past thoughts and actions

• stream of conciousness

• new time-scale allows for the portrayal of everyday experiences

space

• time and space are inseparable

• detailed description of the space

• departure from mythological, fantastic settings

• everyday, close-to-home settings

formal realism

basically all the themes and things that appear in the novel but not in other kinds of works, the imitation of human life, the correspondence between literature and real life

irony vs satire

satire - a literary genre, where you imitate something to make fun of it or mock it, using humour and critique, making fun of human behaviour, flaws, opinions, politics

• horatian (human behaviour, paradoxes)

• juvenalian (targets social conventions and mindsets)

irony is a tone used in satire, something is the opposite of what you perceive it as

• kinds: verbal, situational, historical, socratic (pretended to be dumb), tragic, dramatic (audience is the only one who knows the secret)

Jonathan Swift

Foremost satirist in English (maybe all time)

misanthrope? hater of humanity?

master of prose, according to him a good prose were “proper words in proper places”

A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books

Gulliver’s Travels - lilliput people, horses,

A Modest Proposal (eating babies)

What do you know about Daniel Defoe?

he was middle class by birth

started to use Defoe instead of Foe in 1690s

was a Dissenter → had to attend the academy at Newington Green because he couldn’t go to university

apparently happily married? (gained dowry from that)

merchant

went bankrupt, sentenced to jail, childhood trauma? (great fire of London 1666, the Great Plague of 1665)

prolific journalistic and political writer, clever pamphlets (A True-Born Englishman - personal defense of William III against the xenophobia of people; The Shortest Way with the Dissenters - satirical attack against the High Tories, got three days on the pillory)

founder and editor periodical, the Review

The Storm - great work of modern journalism

A Journal of the Plague Year - work of fictionalized journalism abt the Great Plague

Describe Defoe as a novelist.

features:

• plain language

• spoke to his own class

• rebellious characters struggling against the established order

• vivid milieu (social, cultural environmental background that shapes a person)

• verisimilitude (it was very similar to the truth, realistic? veri = verum (Latin) = true, similitude = similar)

novels:

• Robinson Crusoe

• Captain Singleton

• Moll Flanders (picaresque - adventurous, traveling place to place - Catcher in the Rye)

• Colonel Jack

• Roxana

About the novel Robinson Crusoe

18th century

changing relationship to religion and God

individualism

explorations and widening horizons

economic resourcefulness

Describe Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative

published in 1789

describes his childhood in Nigaria - helathy, happy life of the villagers in contrast with European inhumanity

gets kidnapped by European traders at 11

he is sent to the new world on a slave ship

describes utmost horrors of the Middle Passage

he is bought by a naval officer, brought to England, baptized, lerans to read and write → gets betrayed by him and his possession gets stolen, which happens several times with different buyers

gets free by earning 40 pounds and buying his freedom, goes back to England and works as a hairdresser

Describe the epistolary novel and its context.

it is a novel through letters written by one or more of the characters

one of the earliest forms of the novel, and most popular up until 19th century

origin: Aphra Behn - Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister and Richardon’s Pamela

one of the greatest: Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker

advantages of the form: offers raw psychological exploration of the mind of the character, events are told in real time, it is complex, from several points of view

disadvantages: repetition, confessional sentimental mode is easily ridiculed

Samuel Richardson

1689—1761

modest background

little formal education, but a big reader

prosperous printing business

early writing: Familiar Letters on Important Occasions, primarily intended as a “complete letter-writer” but Richardson added his moral teachings, inspiration for Pamela

Pamela

• immediate success, written in 3 months (borec)

• the first English novel?

• a dark Cinderella story about a girl harrassed by her employer, holds onto her virtue and is eventually rewarded with a marriage

• parodied by Henry Fielding

Clarissa

The History of Sir Charles Grandison - reaction to Fielding’s Tom Jones, creation of a (too) perfect gentleman

Clarissa by Richardson

one of the longest novels of English lit

in several volumes

protagonist young, pious, intenstely moral heroine Clarissa Harlowe

mainly two letter exchanges

• Clarissa x best friend Anna

• Lovelace x his friend Belford

plot: Clarissa’s family want to marry her off to a wealthy suitor → she runs away with Lovelace, who is scheming to get revenge by seducing her → she is raped by him, she never recovers and dies at the end

Ian Watt’s characterization:

• Richardson was justified in saying that “as long as the work is. there is not one episode or reflection, but what arises naturally from the subject, and makes for it, and carries it on”

• the letter form adapted better than in Pamela

• all important characters are given a complete description - Clarissa as a model of feminine virtue, Lovelace a combination of rakish traits

themes: morals, individual vs society, consequences of one’s actions

Charlotte Lennox

published 18 works - poetry, novels, plays, essays, literary criticism, translations

became a literary celebrity, by the most famous authors of the time (Richardson, Fielding, Johnson)

challenged social norms with her career and works - depicting independent spirited women who defy social expectations

first woman to receive funding from the Royal Literary Fund

Henry Fielding

studied lit and classics, became an advocate, married twice (Charlotte Cradock, then when she died her maid Mary Daniel)

playwright - most important London dramatist of the 1730s, 27 plays

satirist - attacking different institutions and groups of people - mainly political corruption, the Whigs

his playwrighting career ended with the Licensing act of 1737 → then editing and writing several newspapers

novelist - Shamela (reaction to Pamela), Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, Amelia (more serious, deals with domestic problems of a married couple)

his works rooted in the neo-classical tradition, continues the tradition of epic (epic in scale, magnitude and variety in structure)

comic epic x serious epic - lower-class characters, light, ludicrous

unlike the traditional epic, the plot is invented, there are surprises and coincidences, mock-heroic battles

→ maybe to lift up the genre of the novel in terms of prestige?

Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (ew)

themes: virtue as action, society and class, morality and ethics, hypocricy, love, desire, sex and marriage

narration: a fictional image of the real author? technically a third-person omniscient narrator, but appears to us as a real character, almost all-knowing but human

Laurence Sterne

1713—1768

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - nine volumes from 1759 to 1767, most extraordinary novel of the century, scrutinizes the narrative conventions of the 18th century novel, very experimental in terms of linear narrative and chapter order, influenced future writers

Journal to Eliza

A Sentimental Journey

Ignatius Sancho

brought as a slave from West Africa to England at the age of 2

treated horribly as a servant/slave

escaped, became a servant to the second Duke of Montagu, who gave him education

opened a grocery store in central London

composing letters and music, performing as an actor, well-known in artistic circles

first person of African descent to vote in a British election, one of the most important abolitionists of the 18th century

His Letters - first substantial volume published by a man of African descent, describes his hostility towards slavery (no arguments though), influenced each other with Sterne (he took his mode of writing and Sterne wrote a sympathetic portrait of the suffering of slaves)

novels in the romantic era

popular but not respectable

attracted a lot of female readers and writers

created anxieties about commercialization of the book market

→ romantic era changed this with Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly Series (1814) and Jane Austen’s novels

gothic genre revisited the medieval past and an earlier form of the romance

• gloomy atmosphere

• mystery

• mental anguish

• omens and curses

• supernatural/paranormal activity

the gothic

gothic genre revisited the medieval past and an earlier form of the romance

• dark, gloomy atmosphere

• mystery

• mental anguish

• omens and curses

• supernatural/paranormal activity

as a term used to be used in architecture, but used in lit for the first time in Walpole’s Castle of Otranto

• manic count Manfred is trying to marry Isabella, but on the wedding day his son is crushed by a giant helmet falling from the sky

• it was an inspiration for Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron (1777)

one of the oldest and most studied forms of genre fiction

began in the middle of the 18th century in Great Britain

one of the earliest examples: Ferdinand Count Fathom Tobias Smollett

Ann Radcliffe

• most esteemed writer of the english gothic

in America, Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein

parodied in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey

notably a lot of women

theory of gothic

always about power relations, depends on the context of the society it is created in, british - disempowered woman, scheming aristocrats, discusses gender and sexual dynamics, double standard of men having a lot of conquests x chastity for women, about crossing boundaries, a reaction against comfort and security, political stability and commercial progress, resists the rule of reason

themes and tropes of gothic fiction

tales of mystery and horror

supernatural

• devils, wizards, magicians and witches, spooky effects, ghosts, stanism, occult

feelings of terror

gothic characters

• villains, usually male

• pure, virtuous female heroines

• immoral Catholic clergy and nobles

• repressed, deviant sexuality

gloomy atmosphere of doom

elements of romance - exploration of sexuality, obstacles separating the lovers, parents’ disapprovals, distance, confinement, illicit love

pattern of flight and pursue

gothic setting

• English castles

• dark forests

• isolated places

• secret passages, torture chambers, winding stairways

Ann Radcliffe

the biggest representative of English Gothic Novels

1789—1797

developed a “literature of terror”

• terror, suspence, romantic sensibility

horror x terror

• terror expands the soul

• horror contracts, freezes, annihiliates our living experience

The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

• story of Emily

• her aunt marries the villain, Montoni, who takes them to the Castle of Udolpho

• mysterious, eerie events happen in the castle (eventually explained)

• Emily eventually escapes and reunites with her love

• “pictorial art” emphasis on landscape

• themes: reason x imagination, femininity, gender roles, greed, manipulation, justice

The Romance of the Forest

The Romantic Period

the shortest, most complex and diverse in history in English lit

Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Percy Shelley, Keats, Blake

1785—1830

did not éperceive themselves as Romantic, word was applied half a century later by historians

“the spirit of the age”

revolution, imagination, individualism, nature, passion, the emotional

turbulent times - constant threat of revolution (American, French), period of war, a period of harsh, repressive measures

literary support of the French revolution at the beginning → faded with time, hit by reality

poetic principles of Romanticism

explained in Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads Prelude

romanticism is a reaction to the Age of Reason

new concept of the poet and poem - focus on subjectivity and individual experience, poetry arises from mind, emotions, imagination of the poet

the major Romantic form is the lyric poem written in the first person, a habit of referencing the poet’s persona, the poet = “the bard”/spokesperson for the civilization

spontaneity, the impulses of feeling - poetry should be impulsive, against the set rules so far, natural

romantic nature poetry - many poets focus on nature, concept of the sublime

the glorification of the ordinary

individualism and alienation

the supernatural

romance

psychological extremes

the first-generation Romantics

their aim was to change the intellectual climate of the age

William Blake - education in art, Tyger, radical religious, moral, political opinions, “illuminated printing” Songs of Innocence & Songs of Experience

William Wordsworth - “poetry should be for everyone”, Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - poetry about the relationship between nature and the human mind, “conversation poems”, Lyrical Ballads - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, prose writings in literary theory and philosophy

the second-generation Romantics

passion for liberty, set against the Napoleonic Wars

Percy Bysshe Shelley - passion for politics (Queen Mab), most radical and optimistic of the romantics

John Keats - sensuous imagery, explores darker sides of the mind, sexual imagination, widely criticized during his time, Endymion (long poem) Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes

Lord Byron - the most famous, influential, had a colorful life and was often identified with his fictional chars, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Don Juan - written quickly and should be read quickly, longest stirical poem in English lit, “Byronic hero” - aliena, mysterious, gloomy spirit

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

1743—1825

excellent, diverse education @ Warrington Acad

poetry - Poems (debut), Eighteen Hundred and Eleven - ruined her reputation (bitter work abt British politics, “not appropriate for women”)

pamphlets - 1790s, on British politics

children’s lit - Lessons for Children, Hymns in Prose for Children

edited works - 50 volumes of The British Novelists (first effort to create a national canon for the novel)

The Rights of Women