Survey of English Literature

Fuck.

What is literature

• Written Texts that has been given meaning by people

  • Textual format

  • How it is written/crafted/made

• Complexity/layers of meaning > different interpretations

• Intention: someone engages with written thing

• Purpose: beyond information/contents

  • For re-reading

• Narration, Action, Setting, Characters, Mediated/Constructed, not reality/Imagined,

• Effort was put into it

• Doesn’t exist in a vacuum, made within a social/cultural contexts (influence)

Literature still often assumed to conform to some (or all) of the following characteristics nowadays:

• Written texts (at most with some decorative illustrations)

• fictional writing

• complex texts which presuppose a degree of knowledge/education and require some effort on the reader’s part (vs. popular entertainment)

Contemporary authors in Britain often write against these limits by

• trying to make literature accessible to a broader readership

• allowing readers to prioritise entertainment / enjoyment over intellectual engagement / interpretation

• making their works more intermedial, e.g. by including visual elemets which have the same importance as the written text

• mixing fiction with documentary and/or authobiographical elements

  • experimental and/or programmatic (anit-elitist) challanges to traditional categories

Striving for “authentic” intermediality

• aiming at recreation of “authentic” experiences

• sometimes prioritising visuality our text

Beowulf

• Old English heroic poem

• Consists of more than 3000 alliterative long lines

• Set in Scandinavia

• Cotton Manuscripts

• Dated between 8th and 11th century

• Construction of archetypal “heroic” individual in binary opposition to the villain

• absolute moral values of the community embodied by the victorious herp in contrast to the monstrous “Other”

Beowulf characteristics Grendel

• Killing soldiers in their sleep

• creeping, accursed of God, savage

• secrecy, cowardly

• unfair advantages

• described as an enemy of God

• demon grim, evil spirit

• holding the moors

• honour does not seem to be a relevant concept

Beowulf characteristics Beowulf

• great brave praised

• acts out in the open

• fairness

• supported by divine authority

• honour > value warrior culture

• Goodly vessel

Beowulf extras

Darkness places

explicit moral judgment

These stereotypes/archetypes and stories are reassuring

affirmation of values > responsibility of othering a “villain” ?

Description of character/action: representation of the communities’ moral values

• Context of Anglo-Saxon warrior culture

• oral transmission of the work: use of mnemonic techniques and space for improvisation

Canterbury Tales

• written in 1387 - 1400

• Story telling contest of a group of pilgrims on the way to Canterbury

• use of a frame narrative / palpable first-person narrator, frame-tale

• panorama of medieval society (vs. focus on the heroic individual in Beowulf)

• subjectivtiy of 1st person narrator

• ironically pointing out shortcomings in their society/ in “model” citizens

• tales mirror the tellers’ professions and social standing in language use and style > character types

• use of irony and satire

  • humorous social criticism

• character types > of Beowulf

  • BUT judgement is the narrator’s / nor overall moral authority

Typical features of Classical Comedy

• Focus on plot rather than character development (vs. tragedy)

• Frequent use of character types / flat characters (often telling of very similar names)

• use of intensely complicated and interwoven plot strands

• main topic: LOVE > love as a motivator

• youthful lovers in conflict with the patriarchal system / social establishment

• often shift to natural spaces (freedom from social contentions, Forest of Arden)

• use of disguise

• often leads to play with gender categories: ambiguity

• especially complex against the background of Elizabethan theatre conventions

Function of the Last Act of Comedy

• removal of obstacles to love

• correct allocation of the lovers into couples

• marriage

• community festival

• promise of continuity (future generations)

  • similar to tragedy

• Shakespeare comedies often have some serious elements some degree of genre mixing

• most obvious at the end: restoration of order

• imprtant in the Elizabethan world picture

• return to fixed (gender and class) hierachies

• nevertheless, potential ideological ambiguity?

American Literature:

• Where do you begin: white settlers, white English settlers?

• What about Native American traditions? no written tradition, but oral traditions: storytelling, creation myths, songs: integral part of cultural identity, sharing knowledge over generations

• What happens if we simply forego them?

Question of canon, selection by instructor, textbooks/anthologies that allege to define what American literature is.

Every decision for one literary text is a decision against hundreds of others. That can’t be changed, but it’s important to be aware of!

American Literature Special complexity:

• Whoes story are you telling?

• Who is writing the story?

• Where do you lay the focus and what do you leave out? > white settlers, The Founding Fathers, Native American History?

Puritanism: central to understanding the US even today: civil religion, economy and work ethic, racial disparities…

• Rejected the core beliefs of Catholicism and the Roman church > reformation

• Reformation in England > Puritans wanted further purification of religion

• Faced with religious persecution > left England for “A new world”

• Bible as highest authority > not church hierarchy

Reformation

Martin Luther, John Calvin: rejected core beliefs of Catholicism and the Roman church; two ideas are central to Puritanism

• the Bible is the highest authority - not the pope, bishop, priest; doing away with the church’s hierarchy

• every believer has a direct relationship with God

• Reformation in England: Anglican church retained many features of the Catholic church > Puritans desired to purify religion even further; faced religious prosecution

Religious Dissenters form England: The Pilgrims

• Religious separatists: Calvinists, left the Anglican Church to found a new covenant with God in “the new world”

• Arrived in Plymouth in 1620 on the Mayflower

• Governor of the colony: William Bradford (until 1657); wrote Of Plymouth Plantation, describing the departure from Europe, the journey, the arrival, and early years of community life

Religious Dissenters form England: The Puritans

• Religious reformists who sought to reform the Anglican Church in hope of returning to England at some point, after having set an example as a model union in the new world

• Landed in Boston on the Arabella in 1630

• John Winthrop: one of the key intellectual and religious figures: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”

North America

• Important question to reflect on regarding their departure to North America: were they being religiously prosecuted for dissenting or is there a settler colonialist/imperialist longing?

• Winthrop: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill the eyes of all people are upon us” > God

Core Ideas of Puritanism

• Absolute Sovereignty (God is in control of everything)

• Human Depravity (original sin, we are fuck ups)

• Predestination (God has decided everything already, no freedom to decide your own fate, but work and devotion needed to be saved)

• Covenant Theology (alliance instituted by God of Chosen/Elect people; must be kept by humans)

  • Conversion narratives

• Individualism & Reading

Reading (and Writing) Puritanism

• The Bible

• Conversion narratives

• Diaries and Journals

• Chronicling God’s work

• Reading and writing to make sense of the world and discover signs of one’s closeness

Edward Taylor

• 1642-1729

• Born in England, arrived in 1688 in North America

• Minister > write sermons/poems

  (Huswifery)

Huswifery

• Letting yourself be guided by God

• Conceit: Elaborated extended metaphor

  • Spinning wheel > wool, making cloth

  • Getting to paradise and getting pure and holy/glorify

  • becoming or being made worthy of being saved

  • Individualism > personal appeal to God

• Lyrical I speaks to God directly

• Speech situation? Language and tone?

• Lanser’s Rule: Use the pronouns of the Author for the perspective of the story

Anne Bradstreet

• 1612-1672

• born in England arrived in NA in 1630

• First female writer to be published in the British colonies in NA

• In memory of my dear grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet

In memory of my dear grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet

• Form? Tone? Elegy: in response to someone’s death: mourning, celebration, solace

• Tension: Blest babe why should I once bewail thy fate | Or sigh the days so soon were terminate

• Resolution: Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate.

• Predestination, Individualism > individual processing death of grandchild

• Shift in the second stanza > some questioning (nature metaphor)

• Still faith in God’s plan

The Making of the Unites States of America

• Revolutionary War 1775 - 1783

• Declaration of Independence 1776

• “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”

A new Nation

• Who are we? Common culture

• Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay (1838) “The American Scholar”: calls for independence from England also in the thought, ideas, expression; national self-reliance

• visual art to commemorate and celebrate the origin stories

American Romanticism (Early National Period (1820-1865))

• Emergence of self-awareness as American writers; national literature; first major literary movements that are genuinely American

  • Transcendentalist Movement 1836-1844

  • American Renaissance: 1850-1855

  • Dark Romanticism:

• Questioning Puritanism’s focus on sin and an all-knowing God

• Counter-movement to Enlightenment, which had focused on reason and thought > science, maths, etc.

• Instead: intuition, feeling subjective/individual truths

• celebration of American beauty and identity

Transcendentalism 1836 - 1844

• Non-conformity, individualism

• self-reliance

• importance of the individual

• over-soul, supreme being

• importance of nature

• (know thyself = study nature)

• touch grass, nature as a teacher

Walt Whitman

• 1819-1892

• 1855: first edition of Leave of Grass — poetry collection > focus on celebration of the ordinary

• Gay

• When I heard the Learned Astronomer

When I heard the Learned Astronomer

• Chill, respect the vibes of the nature guy, free verse

• science in school makes him tired and sick.

• Wandering off > into nature, perfect, quiet for yourself

• Shift in tone when the individual leaves the lecture hall to experience nature

• Individual truth and learning in nature

Emily Dickinson

• 1830-1886, Amherst MA

• most of her poetry was published posthumously

• Poems didn’t have titles, they were thus numbered

• Some keep the Sabbath going to Church (236)

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church (236)

• Breaking traditions by othering herself

• Church things at home: Bobolink, Orchard, our little sexton - sings,

• I just wear my Wings

• I’m going, all along

• nature replaces elements of church

• experiences God

• Emphasis on experiencing something directly and individually

• beauty and relevance of nature/the nature of world

King Lear Basics

• First printed in 1608, written beforehand

• third appearance in First Folio in 1623 (modified according to company’s prompt book)

• modern editions tend to conflate the two versions, not one original text of basis

The Genre of Classical Tragedy

• Catastrophe (Ending in Death)

• Tragic Hero / Protagonist

• Fall of princes

• very hierarchical, fixed places for every being, no possibility of change

• independency of different realms

  • violations of this order affect other realms as well

The tragic protagonist

• high social rank > fall of princes

• tragic flaw > in his character/misreading of an important situation (leads to the protagonist’s downfall) (failure to recognise true love) (violation of Elizabethan chain of being)

• desired effect on the audience: catharsis (emotional purification, pity and fear) through identification with the protagonist

King Lear Advanced

King Lear to beggar - becomes insane - dies - Choleric

hierarchies are important; he had to stay with power and couldn’t leave

Loses everything in the end, alone

Lear as a Tragic Protagonist

What is Lear’s tragic flaw?

• Vanity, inability to distinguish between flattery and true love

• Second possibility: evaluation of his behaviour related to the cultural context of Shakespeare’s time

  • Choice to give away his kingdom “Elizabethan chain of being”

Interdependency of different realms:

• subplot mirrors main plot (father > daughters/sons)

Plot Development

The Three Unities of Classical Drama:

• Unity of time (no gaps (within 24 hours))

• Unity of place (One or very few locations)

• Unity of action (Coherence, concentration)

Shakespeare tends to stretch (not totally broken) those unities (ambiguity)

• still has the overall coherence > ambiguity,

• offering certain freedom to the audience how to read the play

• catharsis is still there, emotions

• Still having to keep all the kinds of audiences engaged

Freytag’s Triange/Pyramid

• overall effect: symmetry (usually 5 acts), regularity, continuity

• ending is often foreshadowed already in Act 1

  More Detailed view:

• retarding moment/moment of last suspense

• Maybe you have a good ending after all

The triangle charts both the audience’s involvement in the play (tension) and the protagonist’s development (learning process)

Elizabethan Theatre

• Theatre is not considered “art” in Shakespeare’s times but (popular) entertainment

• spectators behaved accordingly

• closely connected to location of most London theatres: outside the “respectable” party of the city

• No female actors

• hardly any scenery or stage props

• no curtain

• performances in daylight

Characteristics:

• Large audiences, often rather unruly

• theatre attended by all social groups and classes

• hierarchical structure in terms of the different seating areas (e.g. “groundlings” stand close to the stage)

  • classes separated by seat prices

• proscenium stage: close spatial proximity (and often interaction) between actors and audience; spectators are placed (almost) all around the stage

Consequences for SP plays

• different kinds of spectators (social class, educational backgrounds) have to be addressed in one play

  • use of different social ranks offering identification, distinguished by the use of verse (usually iambic pentameter) and prose

• use of “comic relief” in tragedy the fool

• possibility of multiple readings of one scene

• ideological ambiguity (potential political criticism)

  • Elizabethan theatre gave rise to elements in Shakespeare’s plays which are often marginalised in performances (especially of the tragedies) nowadays

Two daughters push him out, threated him, he becomes angry and fight his daughters quietly

• point of no return > madness

• thunderstorm is like additional character, makes it more dramatic

• Most suspenseful moment, unknowing for the audience