BOOK II

ANALYSIS OF LITERARY TEXTS

Revised Edition

CONTENTS
Pages

Foreword

Section One: British Poetry

1.

Ballad

2. Epic

3. Free verse

4. Mock Epic

5.

Ode

6. Pastoral poetry

7.

Sonnet

8. Geoffrey Chaucer

(i)

The Canterbury Tales

9. Edmund Spenser

(i)

Prothalamion

(ii)

The Faerie Queene

10

(iii)

Epithalamion

11

10. William Shakespeare

(i)

Sonnets 1, 14, 18, 19, 29, 30, 33, 55, 129 11

11. John Donne

(i)

Hymn to God, the Father

18

(ii)

The Canonization

19

(iii)

The Flea

20

(iv)

The Sun Rising

20

(v)

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

21

(vi)

Batter My Heart

22

12. George Herbert

(i)

The Collar

22

13. Henry Vaughan

(i)

The Retreat

23

14. John Milton

(i)

Lycidas

23

(ii)

On His Blindness

24

(iii)

Paradise Lost

26

15. Andrew Marvell

(i)

To His Coy Mistress

30

(ii)

The Garden

31

(iii)

Bermudas

31

(i)

MacFlecknoe

32

(ii)

Absalom and Achitophel

35

(i)

An Essay on Criticism

35

(ii)

The Rape of the Lock

36

(iii)

The Dunciad

37

(iv)

Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot

38

18. Thomas Gray

(i)

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 38

19. William Blake

(i)

The Tyger

43

(ii)

London

44

20. Robert Burns

(i)

A Red, Red Rose

45

21. William Wordsworth

(i)

Tintern Abbey Lines

47

(ii)

Ode on the Intimations of Immortality

49

(iii)

London, 1802

50

(iv)

The Solitary Reaper

50

(v)

Resolution and Independence

51

(vi)

Upon Westminster Bridge

51

(i)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

52

(ii)

Dejection: An Ode

55

(iii)

Kubla Khan

56

(i)

The Prisoner of Chillon

57

(ii)

Don Juan

57

(i)

Ozymandias

60

(ii)

Ode to the West Wind

61

(iii)

To a Skylark

62

(i)

Ode to a Nightingale

63

(ii)

Ode on a Grecian Urn

65

16. John Dryden

17. Alexander Pope

22. S. T. Coleridge

23. Lord Byron

24. P. B. Shelley

25. John Keats

(iii)

To Autumn

66

(i)

Ulysses

67

(ii)

In Memoriam

70

(iii)

The Charge of the Light Brigade

72

(i)

My Last Duchess

73

(ii)

Fra Lippo Lippi

75

(iii)

Andrea del Sarto

76

(iv)

Rabbi Ben Ezra

77

(i)

Dover Beach

78

(ii)

The Scholar Gipsy

79

(iii)

Thyrsis

80

(i)

Among School Children

84

(ii)

Easter, 1916

85

(iii)

A Prayer for My Daughter

85

(iv)

The Second Coming

86

(v)

Sailing to Byzantium

87

(vi)

Byzantium

87

30. G. M. Hopkins

(i)

The Windhover

90

31. Wilfred Owen

(i)

Strange Meeting

92

(ii)

Anthemn for Doomed Youth

92

32. Ezra Pound

(i)

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

93

33. T. S. Eliot

(i)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

93

(ii)

The Waste Land

95

(i)

Muse des Beaux Arts

101

(ii)

The Unknown Citizen

102

(iii)

In Memory of W. B. Yeats

102

35. Stephen Spender

(i)

An Elementary School Classroom

103

36. Dylan Thomas

(i)

Fern Hill

105

(ii)

Poem in October

105

26. Alfred Tennyson

27. Robert Browning

28. Matthew Arnold

29. W.B. Yeats

34. W. H. Auden

37. Philip Larkin

(i)

Church Going

106

(ii)

Whitsun Weddings

107

38. Thom Gunn

(i)

On the Move

108

39. Seamus Heaney

(i)

Digging

109

(ii)

Bogland

109

(iii)

Casualty

110

(i)

The Thought-Fox

111

(ii)

Hawk Roosting

111

(iii)

Pike

113

(iv)

Thrushes

113

40. Ted Hughes

Section Two: British Prose and Fiction

1.

Campus Novel

116

2. Epistolary Novel

116

3. Gothic Novel

116

4. Historical Novel

116

5.

117

Magic Realism

6. Metafiction

117

7.

118

Picaresque Novel

8. Psychological Novel

118

9. Realist Novel

118

10. Science Fiction

119

11. Sentimental Novel

119

12. Stream-of-Consciousness

119

13. Francis Bacon

(i)

Of Studies

120

(ii)

Of Truth

120

14. Sir Thomas More

(i)

Utopia

120

15. Philip Sidney

(i)

The Arcadia

121

16. John Bunyan

(i)

The Pilgrims Progress

121

17. Jonathan Swift

(i)

A Tale of a Tub

125

(ii)

The Battle of the Books

126

(iii)

Gullivers Travels

127

18. Samuel Richardson

(i)

Pamela

128

19. Henry Fielding

(i)

Joseph Andrews

130

(ii)

Tom Jones

132

20. Lawrence Sterne

(i)

Tristram Shandy

133

21. Oliver Goldsmith

(i)

The Vicar of Wakefield

134

22. Walter Scott

(i)

Kenilworth

135

23. Jane Austen

(i)

Sense and Sensibility

136

(ii)

Pride and Prejudice

136

(iii)

Mansfield Park

138

(iv)

Emma

139

(v)

Persuasion

141

(i)

Oxford in the Vacation

142

(ii)

Dream Children

143

(i)

Adam Bede

144

(iii)

The Mill on the Floss

146

(iii)

Silas Marner

148

(iv)

Middlemarch

149

26. John Ruskin

(i)

Unto This Last

150

27. Charles Dickens

(i)

The Pickwick Papers

151

(ii)

Oliver Twist

151

(iii)

Nicholas Nickleby

152

(iv)

David Copperfield

152

(v)

Great Expectations

153

(vi)

Our Mutual Friend

155

28. Wilkie Collins

(i)

The Moonstone

156

29. Charlotte Bronte

(i)

Jane Eyre

158

24. Charles Lamb

25. George Eliot

30. Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights

160

31. William Makepeace Thackeray (i)

Vanity Fair

162

32. Thomas Hardy

(i)

The Mayor of Casterbridge

163

(ii)

Tess of the DUrbervilles

164

(iii)

Jude the Obscure

166

(i)

Heart of Darkness

166

(ii)

Nostromo

169

(i)

Howards End

170

(ii)

A Passage to India

171

35. Rudyard Kipling

(i)

Kim

174

36. James Joyce

(i)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 175

(ii)

Ulysses

177

(i)

Sons and Lovers

180

(ii)

Women in Love

181

(i)

To the Lighthouse

182

(ii)

A Room of Ones Own

183

(i)

Crome Yellow

185

(ii)

Brave New World

185

(i)

The Power and the Glory

186

(ii)

The End of the Affair

187

(i)

Animal Farm

187

(ii)

Nineteen Eighty Four

189

(i)

Lord of the Flies

191

(ii)

The Inheritors

192

(i)

Under the Net

192

(ii)

The Bell

194

(iii)

The Unicorn

194

44. Muriel Spark

(i)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

195

45. John Fowles

(i)

The French Lieutenants Woman

196

33. Joseph Conrad

34. E. M. Forster

37. D.H. Lawrence

38. Virginia Woolf

39. Aldous Huxley

40. Graham Greene

41. George Orwell

42. William Golding

43. Iris Murdoch

(i)

46. Margaret Drabble

(i)

The Waterfall

197

(ii)

The Middle Ground

198

(i)

The Grass is Singing

198

(ii)

The Golden Notebook

199

48. Anita Brookner

(i)

Hotel du Lac

200

49. Angela Carter

(i)

Nights at the Circus

200

(ii)

Black Venus

202

50. A.S. Byatt

(i)

Possession

202

51. Zadie Smith

(i)

White Teeth

203

52. Ian McEwan

(i)

Amsterdam

205

(ii)

Atonement

206

(iii)

Saturday

206

47. Doris Lessing

Section Three: British Drama

1.

Alienation Effect

208

2. Angry Young Man

208

3. Comedy of Humours

208

4. Comedy of Manners and Restoration Comedy

208

5.

209

Kitchen Sink Drama

6. Mysteries, Miracle and Morality Plays

209

7.

Problem Play

209

8. Senecan Tragedy

210

9. Sentimental Comedy

210

10. Shakespearean Stage

210

11. Theatre of the Absurd

211

12. Theatre of Cruelty

212

13. University Wits

212

14. Thomas Kyd

(i)

The Spanish Tragedy

213

15. Christopher Marlowe

(i)

Doctor Faustus

214

(ii)

Edward II

221

The Comedy of Errors

223

(ii)

A Midsummer Nights Dream

224

(iii)

The Merchant of Venice

226

(iv)

As You Like It

226

(v)

Twelfth Night

226

Troilus and Cressida

227

(vii) Alls Well That Ends Well

228

(viii) Measure for Measure

228

(ix)

Titus Andronicus

228

(x)

Hamlet

229

(xi)

Othello

230

16. William Shakespeare: Comedies (i)

Problem Plays (vi)

Tragedies

(xii) King Lear

231

(xiii) Macbeth

231

Roman Tragedies (xiv) Julius Caesar

231

(xv) Antony and Cleopatra

234

(xvi) Coriolanus

235

(xvii) The Tempest

236

(i)

Volpone

239

(ii)

Epicoene

240

18. William Congreve

(i)

The Way of the World

240

19. Oliver Goldsmith

(i)

The Good Naturd Man

241

(ii)

She Stoops to Conquer

241

20. Richard Sheridan

(i)

The School for Scandal

242

21. Oscar Wilde

(i)

The Importance of Being Earnest

244

22. J.M. Synge

(i)

Riders to the Sea

246

(ii)

The Playboy of the Western World

246

(i)

Arms and the Man

247

(ii)

Pygmalion

248

Romance
17. Ben Jonson

23. George Bernard Shaw

(iii)

The Apple Cart

252

24. T.S. Eliot

(i)

Murder in the Cathedral

252

25. Samuel Beckett

(i)

Waiting for Godot

254

(ii)

Endgame

255

26. John Osborne

(i)

Look Back in Anger

256

27. Harold Pinter

(i)

The Birthday Party

259

(ii)

The Caretaker

261

(iii)

The Homecoming

262

(i)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

263

(ii)

Travesties

264

(iii)

Arcadia

264

(i)

Lear

264

(ii)

The Bundle

269

(i)

Top Girls

270

(ii)

Cloud Nine

271

(iii)

Serious Money

272

28. Tom Stoppard

29. Edward Bond

30. Caryl Churchill

Foreword to Revised Edition

This compilation of analytical summaries covers the canonical texts in

British literature from the beginnings to early 21 st century. This book is
a useful introduction to any study on English literature, provides the
reader an overview of the discipline, and is an essential handbook for
any competitive exam on the subject.
Students will get a thorough and comprehensive view of English
literature if they read this book along with other TES publications, such
as The Contemporary Students Encyclopedia of English Literature,
Book I: Literary History and Literary Theory, Book III: Literary
Criticism, Book IV: Am erican and Commonwealth Literatures, as well
as the Easy Handbooks which enables quick revision.
These and other upcoming books are part of our dedicated endeavour to
produce a set of all-inclusive and user-friendly study materials for the
English literature student that will help her to tackle any examination.
Kalyani Vallath
2014