MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Frequent questions & the answers

1. Discuss Renaissance prose,who were its main authors?

Renaissance – roughly 1485-1660

The most known/influential authors of Renaissance prose were:

- Sir Francis Bacon

o Essays
o The Advancement of Learning
o Novum Organum
o New Atlantis
- Richard Hooker
o Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
- Sir Thomas More
o Utopia
- Sir Walter Raleigh
o The Discovery of Guiana
o The History of the World
- Thomas Nashe
o Pierce Penniless
o The Anatomy of Absurdity
o The Unfortunate Travellerr
- Robert Burton
o The Anatomy of Melancholy

In the Renaissance, people's mentalities changed: because of discoveries & inventions in different fields
they started measuring the world around them, discovering the visible + invisible world. Travel writing was
becoming popular.

Authors included various topics – politics, social structure, religion & religion vs. science, ethics, morality, the
human mind… so basically, more focus on Man and less on God.

2. Discuss the issues of the Renaissance writer as compared to medieval literature.

I guess you can refer to the last 2 paragraphs of the previous answer. Well, many Renaissance writers
included the ‗science vs. religion‘ theme (reason vs. revelation). Some (e.g. Richard Hooker) believed that
the Bible (religion) was important, but the Reason overruled it. Some discussed politics (Sir Thomas More -- in
Utopia -- wrote about the search for the perfect government). Some used scientific, logical reasoning (Sir
Francis Bacon). Some analysed the human mind (Robert Burton) etc.

Maybe check for some more info yourself, I'm not 100% sure this is the right answer.
 3. Briefly discuss the works of Edmund Spenser.

He was a poet in the Elizabethan period, considered the best after Shakespeare. He modelled his verse on
Geoffrey Chaucer – tried to imitate his language and continue the past, not break from it.

The works:

- The Shepherd’s Calendar:

o 12 monthly eclogues, which contain pastoral dialogues, monologs and allegories
o Stock characters take place in the work; the debates range from politics to ceremony
o 3 principal themes: love, poetry, religion
- Amoretti sonnets:
o 89 sonnets
o Probably celebrate his love for Elizabeth Boyle, whom he married
o The story of a lover wooing a mistress, who at first refuses him, then returns his love and
finally turns against him again (what a bitch). Spenser describes her beauty in details,
colours.
- Epithalamion
o Superb work, surpasses Amoretti
o 23 stanzas of 17-19 lines
o A marriage hymn, a description of the poet‘s wedding day – autobiographical work
o Sees the mistress not as an unattainable image of perfection, but as a creature reflecting,
and sometimes clouding the glory of her Divine Creator
- The Fairie Queene
o His most famous work
o An English Christian humanist epic, an epic work of great proportion
o Simultaneously celebrates the pastoral past and Queen Elizabeth I; draws a parallel
between the mythical King Arthur and Elizabeth.
o A continued allegory; highly metaphorical – Elizabeth appears in many disguises
o 7 books:
 1. HOLINESS
 2. TEMPERANCE
 3. CHASTITY
 4. FRIENDSHIP SEVEN VIRTUES OF A GOOD KNIGHT
 5. JUSTICE
 6. COURTESY
 7. MUTABILITY

4. What was Shakespeare’s opinion of the Elizabethan poetry? Provide an example.

Refer to question 6.

5. Discuss Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence.

In 1608 he published his Sonnets. Central themes: love, poetry and time – love outlasts time, poetry outlasts
both. With these sonnets, he examines feminine and masculine relationships as a kind of a spiritual
testament to what happened in his private life. He wasn‘t too autobiographical in them, though.

154 Sonnets:

o 1-17: written to a young man, urging him to marry and have children, thereby passing
down his beauty to the next generation – the PROCREATION sonnets
 o 18-126: addressed to a young man, expressing the poet‘s love for him
o 127-152: written to the poet‘s mistress expressing his strong love for her
o 153-154: allegorical

The final 30-or-so sonnets discuss a number of issues, such as:

- The young man‘s infidelity with the poet‘s mistress

- Self-resolution to control his own lust
- Beleaguered criticism of the world
- …

Form: 3 quatrains (which appear as one stanza) + a couplet (the solution or the summarized idea); Rhyme:
abab cdcd efef gg

6. Compare Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 and Spencer’s Ye Tradefull Merchants.

Ye Tradefull Merchants is actually Sonnet XV in Spenser‘s Amoretti and is the base for Shakespeare‘s Sonnet
130. Both poets declare love for their mistresses, however there‘s a difference: Spenser‘s sonnet represents
the conventional approach of glorifying the woman he loves, describing her as extremely beautiful and so
on; Shakespeare takes the opposite approach: In Sonnet 130, he uses anti-hyperbolical figures of speech --
this sonnet is addressed to the Dark Lady who isn‘t the most beautiful lady in the world, but is beautiful
enough for him and he loves her. Sonnet 130 is a parody of the conventional love poetry.

7. Describe the scientific and philosophical work of Sir Francis Bacon.

Bacon's impact on the scientific field was immense – in his works he included various topics: ethics, politics,
history, law, science, religion, philosophy.

- He was a scientist, philosopher, the creator of the English essay.

- In Essays he wrote statements of fundamental ethical principles and raised many important
fundamental issues (e.g. fear of death & the nature of revenge)
- In The Advancement of Learning he argued against learning from religion/politics (book 1) and
wrote about his view on poetry (book 2).
- In Novum Organum he argued for a new scientific method of logical reasoning, free of prejudice
from the past and the received affectations of the present -> the INDUCTIVE LOGICAL REASONING
- In New Atlantis he anticipates the Royal Society of London. It outlines Bacon's scientific utopia,
portrays a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge.

8. Who was Thomas More and what was his contribution to English literature?

Thomas More was a writer in the Renaissance period.

- He was a pioneer of travel writing and a political critic of the English monarchy
- He was involved in the scandals between the Church and King Henry VIII: he opposed the King's
divorce and his second marriage – because of that he was beheaded

His most famous work is Utopia:

- we believe the term 'utopia' was coined by More himself; Utopia = nowhere land, imaginary
society
 - the search for Utopia = the search for the perfect government (equal right for men and women,
free will in religion)
- Political science fiction
- 2 books:
o Book 1 analyses the evils of his age in an ironic, realistic manner
o Book 2 is satirical – state with religious tolerance, physical comforts, honesty and good faith
- Translated into many language and an inspiration to many other authors (Daniel Defoe's Robinson
Crusoe; Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels; William Golding's Lord of The Flies; Aldous Huxley's Brave
New World;…)

9. What is a picaresque novel and who were its main authors?

The picaresque novel tells an episodic story of a vagrant rogue's (= a thief, a dishonest person) progress
towards his own improvement into an honest person accepted in society (from bad to good); the reward
does not come on earth, however.

Examples:

- Daniel Defoe:
o Moll Flanders
- Henry Fielding:
o Joseph Andrews
- Tobias Smollett:
o Roderick Random
o Humphrey Clincker

It is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical, realistic and humorous. It depicts the
adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his/her wits in a corrupt society.

10. Discuss the metaphysical school of poetry and point out the main authors.

Metaphysical poetry = the Stuart age

The metaphysical poets were a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, who shared an interest
in metaphysical concerns and a common way of investigating them. These poets themselves did not form
a school or start a movement; most of them did not even know or read each other.

The term Metaphysical is misleading – it means something beyond the physical world, but none of this
poets were interested in metaphysics (nowadays the term is used in connection with the poets; it has
nothing to do with what is beyond physical).

- they rejected the conventional elements of Elizabethan poetry

- metaphysical conceits: unusual images (comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its
justness), farfetched
- comparisons, joining things that are primarily unlike

The authors:

- JOHN DONNE: His works are notable for their realistic and sensual style and include sonnets, love
poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. Common
subjects of Donne's poems are love (especially in his early life), death (especially after his wife's
death), and religion.[7] John Donne's poetry represented a shift from classical forms to more
personal poetry.
- GEORGE HERBERT: playing with the shapes and sounds of words
 - RICHARD CRASHAW: used erotic terms to make tension between secular and divine (ecstasy,
martyrdom, bliss of suffering)
- HENRY VAUGHAN
- THOMAS CAREW: themes of rejected love and expressing passion

11. Discuss John Donne's poetry

- His poems were never published during his lifetime, but his manuscripts circulated among the
people.
- He wrote verse letters, epigrams, elegies, sonnets, songs, satires ...
- Donne‘s poetry can be divided into 2 parts:
o satirical, cynical, political and obsessed with sexuality, ironical
o religious poetry, devoted to death and spirituality
- He goes against classical authors and works (Plato, Shakespeare, Sidney )
- He likes to play with language -- he builds metaphors in clusters (one on top of the other). He shows
a remarkable sense of humour. He puts the idea before rhythm, sometimes his poems don‘t ―flow‖.
He uses colloquial language and the rhythm of spoken language.
- He‘s very confident; he takes delight in complicating things and figurative language. All his
conceits are witty. He always comes up with a new question; he‘s never satisfied with easy
answers.

He wrote:

- The Flea
- A Valediction Forbidding Mourning: a song, in which he used unusual images and conceit
- Songs and Sonnets: he created 40 new stanza forms; passion, feeling and sensuality are all
subjected to wit
- Elegies: Elegy XIX Going to Bed; is written in courtly love tradition (Christian nations in which the love
of the woman is transformed into a religious symbol)
- Divine Poems: He was not witty anymore, but became spiritual, religious and metaphysical. The 19
holy sonnets are preoccupied with eternity, death and spirituality. The poems explore the paradox
which he was fond of- contradictions, argumentations, abrupt openings, dramatic monologues.
He also uses typical rhetorical manners, apostrophes, imperatives.

12. What are the main features of the Restoration period?

- The Elizabethan Puritanism was gone; however, it lacked the vigour of the Elizabethan age.
- The Restoration relied on reason and facts rather than speculation. Religious values were not
questioned. There was a predominance of the classical value (clarity, precision, avoidance of
sentimentality, belief in the power of reason).
- This period is also called the Neoclassical Age or the Age of Reason (also the Augustan Age). Poets
did not deny the value of imagination; they only thought that it should be controlled by reason.
- Writers imitated the authors from the Augustan Age (Virgil, Horace, Ovid) and drew parallels
between the two ages and between themselves and those authors.
-

13. Discuss John Milton.

John Milton was a religious poet, active in a transient period; he partly belongs to the Restoration, but he
began writing much earlier, in the Elizabethan period. He was torn between the two eras and was a unique
case.
His life and work were affected by:

- political turbulence
- religious conflicts (he didn't know whether to become a priest or not)
- the loss of his sight

He wrote a famous political speech Areopagitica, in which he fights for the right of free speech, because
the Parliament wanted to introduce censorship.

He produced many works of puritan rebellion.

His first poems were in Latin and Italian -> classical basis but modernity brought from Italy

His most famous works:

- On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

- L'allegro and Il Penseroso
- Masques
- Lycidas

His sonnets:

- On His Blindness
- On His Deceased Wife
- On Time
- On The Late Massacre in Piemont
- PARADISE LOST
- Paradise Regained
- Samson Agonistes

I think mentioning Paradise Lost and its sequel, Paradise Regained is enough for this question.

14. Discuss Paradise Lost.

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton, published 1667.

- The main subject is The Creation and Fall of Man and the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from
Paradise.
- The work contains 12 books, written over a period over a period of 25 years (11 thousand verses).
- Milton studied many subjects from the Bible and chose the theme of the fall of man/humanity.
- It is an epic poem of extreme proportions.
- It is a comment on God‘s supremacy, not on human‘s individuality, to justify the ways of God to
man.
- Man's first disobedience and its consequences -- It analyses the questions of freedom, free will and
individual choice. It is an attempt to classify and rationalise the spirit of Renaissance.
- It is an epic about a hero (it‘s difficult to define the actual hero) – Satan (for Blake and Shelley,
Satan is the hero),-Adam (he faces the world, accepts the punishment and what Eve has done),-
nobody.

Paradise regained – the sequel to Paadise Lost – Christ ends the reign of Satan.

15. Discuss Oliver Goldsmith.

 - Goldsmith was active in drama, poetry and fiction of the pre-Romantic period.
- His works include sentimentality, melancholy, simple life… with a bit of EXOTIC 
- He had an elegiac rhythm

His works:

- Poetry -- The Deserted Village: idealization of nature (rural life = simplicity, pleasure rather than hard
work), contrast between idyllic past and harsh reality of the present
- Drama: comedy – She Stoops to Conquer: was very successful at the time; basically it's about a
woman who pretends she is of a lower rank (=stoops to a lower level to conquer) so that the main
character, Marlo, isn't shy in front of her. In the end she conquers him.
o This play is a reaction to the sentimental comedy, Goldsmith ridicules its manner.
- Fiction: novel – The Vicar of Wakefield: a pastoral parable, an improbable fairy-tale of a vicar
whose family is beset by misfortune; the vicar is the epitome of goodness, but gets cheated upon,
loses his fortune, finds himself in prison etc. He cannot understand why God punishes him, but in the
end he gets a reward – his daughter gets married and his son gets out of prison.
o The vicar is a moral figure; many other figures are based upon him.

16. What were the types of restoration drama and its main authors (one
representative for each type)?

Two categories:

- TRAGEDY (John Dryden, Thomas Otway): focused on personal life (suicide, remorse, failure); a short
re-awakening of the classical spirit;
o the Elizabethan domestic tragedy form – George Lillo (the first spokesman of the middle
class in theatre, spoke against aristocratic ideas, ignored by the British theatre)
- COMEDY OF MANNERS (William Wycherley, William Congreve, Sir George Etherege,…): directly
mirrors the manners of the upper-class:
o satire – emphasizing corruption
o romantic comedy – about love in the world of money and laws

17. Discuss the Restoration's sentimental comedy.

The English sentimental comedy is a kind of comedy that achieved some popularity with respectable
middle-class audiences.

- It showed virtue rewarded by domestic bliss, in contrast with the comedy of manners
- Its plots, usually involving unbelievably good middle-class couples, emphasized pathos (=an
appeal to the audience's all kinds of emotions) rather than humour
- Pioneered by Richard Steele in The Funeral and more fully in The Conscious Lovers
- It survived into 19th-century melodrama
- It was opposed by Sheridan and Goldsmith who attempted a partial return to the comedy of
manners

18. What is the Graveyard School of Poetry? Who are its main authors?

The ―Graveyards poets‖ were a number of pre-Romantic English poets of the 18th century characterized by
their gloomy meditation on morality in the context of the graveyard.

They were preoccupied with the themes of death, morbidity, and delightful gloom, the sense of
Weltschmerz – devoted to investigation of melancholy and clinical states of mind.
Authors:

- Thomas Gray (Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard)

- Edward Young (The Complaint or Night Thoughts)
- Robert Blair (The Grave)

19. Describe Burns’s contribution to romantic poetry.

He was the greatest rustic poet (rustic = about countryside life) of the 18 th century. He had all sorts of
aesthetic tendencies – classicism, romanticism, and he assimilated a long line of Scottish literary tradition.

Much of his finest work is satirical or descriptive. His poetry always remained close to its vital roots and the
oral tradition of Scotland. He is the greatest song writer that Britain ever produced.

His best known ballad is Tam O’ Shanter, 1791 which is written in the Scottish dialect. He wrote two volumes
of poetry – The Kilmarnock vol. 1786 and The Edinburgh vol. 1787 which is a mixture of love poems, ballads,
satiric poems, folk songs and anarchist cantatas.

He influenced William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, P. B. Shelley. Burns influenced also Scottish writers, he
worked to collect and preserve Scottish folk songs, sometimes rewriting, expanding and adopting them.

20. What is a sentimental novel and who are its main authors (briefly discuss the work
of Laurence Sterne)?

It's an 18th century literary genre which celebrates the emotional and intellectual concepts of sentiment,
sentimentalism, and sensibility.

- The romance, memories, letters, journals.

Along with a new vision of love, sentimentalism presented a new view of human nature which prized
feeling over thinking, passion over reason, and personal instincts of "pity, tenderness, and benevolence"
over social duties.

Authors:

DANIEL DEFOE – Robinson Crusoe (symbolical drama – going to sea is an act of rebellion)

SAMUEL RICHARDSON - the hero is usually preoccupied with his or her love and love sufferings.
Pamela=letters

JONATHAN SWIFT – Gulliver's Travels

HENRY FIELDING – first great comic novelist in England

LAURENCE STERNE:

- founding father of the 20th century stream-of-consciousness novel

- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman:
o the greatest reflexive novel
o a parody of contemporary conventions of the novel as a genre
o its organization lies in the consciousness of the narrator
o digressions bring about a hundred topics all mixed together
o influenced by John Locke's essay on human understanding – every man lives in a world of
his own, is a prisoner of his private inner world, which is also his own creation
OLIVER GOLDSMITH, THOBIAS SMOLLETT – ugly aspects of life; life is presented as it is; HENRY MACKENZIE;
SARAH FIELDING

21. Point out at least 5 differences between the Augustan age and the Romantic
age.

1. AA - literature reflected society; RA - literature 'reformed' society (preface, Shelley's ''Prometheus

Unbound'')
2. AA - classical themes, influences; RA - moving away from the classical, rediscovery of the local
3. AA - desire for order and balance in measure; RA - the indefinite and boundless
4. AA - intellect prevailed; RA - emotion and imagination prevailed
5. AA - relies on reason and fact, not speculation; RA - desires and dreams, the visionary, mystical
6. AA - trying to frame rules of writing; RA - rejecting the rules of poetic diction (W. Wordsworth's
preface to the 2nd edition of ''Lyrical Ballads'')

22. Which were the main features and main authors of the Augustan Era?

Don't forget that Augustan Era = Restoration = Age of Reason = Neoclassical Age

Writers in the Augustan Age tended to distrust the imagination and prefer to write within the limits of logic
and common sense. The century was therefore also called ―The Age of Reason‖. The respect for the cities
reached its height as a result of the new importance of the industry. Mountain scenery was considered
boring by the writers. They had very little interest with the concerns of the individuals. The subject matter
was always the life of their own times.

Authors:

- Alexander Pope (The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad)

- John Dryden (The Hind and the Panther, Absalom and Achitophel, MacFlecknoe, The Wild Gallant)
- Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels, A Tail of a Tub)
-

23. Compare the works of Robert Browning and Lord Alfred Tennyson.

- Dramatic monologues
- not what the speaker directly reveals but what he gives away when speaking about past actions
- Rather than thinking out loud, the character composes a self-defense which the reader, as "juror," is
challenged to see through.
- extreme psychotic characters
- irregular rhythm

- medieval legends, classic myths

- influence of Romantic poets (direct continuation of romanticism)
- blank verse
- reflects the Victorian period
Browning used dramatic monologues which are effective because the setting, audience and nuances (=
različica, učinek) of language contribute to their meaning. The monologues enabled him to explore
extreme and usually extremely morbid states of mind. He used different characters and a range of different
voices which did not allow the reader to identify the speaker with the author- they act as a kind of a mask
that allows the author to explore the human soul without being too personal. His poetry is written in a
tradition which includes the soliloquies of Shakespeare and the poetry of John Donne. They used colloquial
language and contrasting stylistic tones which were often shocking and unpredictable.

Tennyson’s observation was deeply felt and personal. He viewed Nature as being violent and threatening
rather than being the solace and inspiration as it was to Wordsworth. His emotion was recollected in regret,
sense of lost, doubt and anxiety- there is a tone of melancholy which contrasts with the Romantic optimism,
commitment and wit. He wrote dramatic monologues which illustrate his musicality and his belief that
language should recreate the sights, sounds and rhythms of the vision of life. His dramatic monologues
were simpler than those of R. Browning and were usually based on classical legend and the classical hero
proclaims a view of life which is the reason for the poem: man should pursue knowledge and experience in
spite of danger. He was more concerned with sensations than with ideas and was also accused of
sentimentality. His emotion was contained although strongly felt. He was capable of bringing together
sound and sense, mood and atmosphere and making and appeal to the emotions of the reader. His
poetry is emotive rather than intellectual.

24. What are the main features of Romanticism?

In a basic sense, the term "Romanticism" has been used to refer to certain artists, poets, writers, musicians,
as well as political, philosophical and social thinkers of the late 18th and early to mid-19th centuries.

- Belief in man's potentials, in his perfectibility, power of feeling and imagination, fundamental
goodness, nature... These few beliefs led to theories of political and social liberalism, interest in
individual human feeling (an individual can find truth in his emotions).
- There was a revival of interest in the strange and the exotic, in the tale of horror and Scandinavian
legends.
- There was a gap between the reality and the ideal.
- Childhood is seen as man's closest link to the ideal existence before his birth.

The main poets of this movement were William Blake, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

25. Discuss Lord Byron's epic poetry.

Lord Byron belongs to the younger generation of Romantics. He embodies all the features of a romantic
poet – he was an alienated outsider. He was the first English poet to influence Europe.

His poem Don Juan is an unfinished epic satire, which:

- combines seriousness and humour (the tone of the poem is light-hearted and comic despite the
serious subject)
- semi-autobiographical
- composed in ottava rima
- the poem's light tone suggests Byron doesn't take the characters and events seriously; the
language is colloquial, conversational and slangy
- Don Juan is a replica of Childe Harold, but he is more light-hearted, craving for experience and
sensation; he is passive and mostly acted upon: he is a constant seeker of meaning
- Don Juan represents physical desire divorced from any spiritual or even humane feelings
- He undergoes a series of adventures but does not mature
 - A range of ideas; from the supposed glory of war and heroism to fidelity in love and oriental
exoticism

26. Describe the Byronic hero.

I guess you can refer to Don Juan's description in the previous question.

27. Who/ what influenced William Blake?

Blake was a great visionary, a mystic, whose ideas came from many sources; rather than following the
established cultural tendencies of his age, he turned to the occult traditions in Europe:

- the Jewish cabbalistic ideas – tradition of mystical understanding of God and universe
- Emanuel Swedenborg – Heaven and Hell: The Bible must be understood in a mystical and spiritual
sense -> the real world comprises of three worlds:
o the heavens
o the hells
o our world where judgement takes place
 The Trinity is Love (Father), Wisdom (Son), and Energy (Spirit)
- Jacob Boehme – a German mystic: will is the original force; opposition God vs. nature
- the Rosicrucian Brotherhood – an organisation of esoteric thinkers in the 15 th century; knowledge of
spiritual truth held by the ancient Gnostics is essential for salvation -> Earth + Heaven symbolism

28. Discuss the poetic drama in the Romantic period.

- The category of plays written wholly or mainly in verse.

- In earlier times all plays throughout Europe were in verse, and tragedy continued to be written so
long after prose had become the accepted medium for comedy. Shakespeare interpolated
comic scenes in prose into his great poetic plays; and by the time of Dryden, prose comedies
existed side by side with tragedies in verse.
- As the theatre increasingly attracted a mass audience, prose (with a greater or lesser
approximation to everyday speech) became the accepted mode of expression for all plays.
- Works written by poets in dramatic form:
o Lord Byron's Werner (1830)
o Browning's A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (1843)
o Shelley's The Cenci (1886), and Tennyson's Becket (1893)—had some success, but on the
whole the public preferred the rhetorical dramas of Sheridan Knowles and Bulwer-Lytton.
o Stephen Phillips briefly revived blank verse in the commercial theatre in London, but he
was the last of the poetic dramatists in the tradition of the 19th century.

29. What were Keats’s contributions?

- Keats was the greatest of the young Romantics.

- The theme of his poetry: the everyday world of chaos dominated by death and decay vs. the
eternal beauty and lasting truth of poetry and the human imagination.
- Elements of Hellenism, feeling for the Middle Ages
- A special conception of what a poet should be: suffering is necessary for the understanding of the
world; great poetry grows from deep suffering and tragedy
His work:

- Poems: attracted very little attention

- Endymion: a poetic Romance: extensive use of Greek mythology; search for an ideal love and
happiness beyond earthly possibility
o Theme: A shepherd's love for the Moon and his search for her
- Lamia and Other Poems (Ode to a Nightingale; Hyperion; Isabella,…): Keats develops a poetic
language; everything in the poems is balanced; Keats's odes are considered to be the best of short
poems in the century
o elusive beauty: tends to escape from whoever wants to possess -> the subject of Keats's
ballads written between 1818-1820
- La Belle Dame sans Merci: his most famous ballad; full of magical and fantastic images; Keats uses
unfamiliar vocabulary: OE words, archaisms
o Themes:
 Dream vs. reality
 Imagination vs. actuality
 Superstition vs. supernatural
o Influenced Robert Graves and the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

30. Who were the main Elizabethan prose writers?

Note: Elizabethan era = the Renaissance

Refer to question 1.

31. Discuss the importance of Lyrical ballads.

- The work is the result of the collaboration between William Wordsworth and T.S. Coleridge
- Generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in
literature
- It‘s the first manifesto of the new poetry, which opened with Coleridge‘s The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner and concluded with Wordsworth‘s Tintern Abbey
- The primary focus is on nature, where they found the truth and other lost values; concerned with
psychology, and claiming that the human soul is the center of everything
- Wordsworth was the first to raise the question of the appropriate poetic language. He added a
preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, where he discussed the origin and purpose of
the poetry. The preface influenced the whole Romantic Movement and much subsequent poetry
in English. Poetry is: ―a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings that can only be done by an
oversensitive person‖.

32. What is the definition of the epistolary novel and who were its main authors?

An epistolary novel is written in the form of letters – that imposes certain constrains but also makes possible
an extreme form of realism (letters are credible documents), provides basis for more intimate
correspondence.

Two authors who used wrote epistolary novels in the Restoration prose were:

- Samuel Richardson:
o Pamela – almost all letters come from the heroine alone
o Clarissa – besides Clarissa, there are three others letter writers – multiple viewpoints
- Tobias Smollett:
 o The Expedition of Humphry Clinker – ironic + epistolary: Richardson's epistolary method, but
the characters correspond only one way, each writes to a confidant outside the story – the
characters never receive an answer, the reader has to participate more actively.

33. Discuss political, economic and social circumstances at the making of the
English novel.

NOTE: this was Googled, not taken from notes since I couldn't find anything in them relating to
the question itself.

- Authors in the 18th century narratives often compared their plots to machines
- They used mechanical metaphors in the wake of the scientific revolution – the machine became
the dominant model for understanding the organization of nature and became prominent in
everyday cultural life.
- However, this idea -- of the world being a piece of clockwork and the people its many parts –
challenged:
o Traditional religious conceptions of the freedom of will
o and newer political principles protecting the right of the individual to resist the domination
of absolute power
- The definition of the novel as a genre in the 18 th century resulted from attempts to reconcile the
contradictions between notions of individual freedom and the new, mechanical understanding of
nature.
- Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, though celebrated for its 'clockwork' form, was in fact written as a
response to the mechanization of the theatre (e.g. pantomimes), which seemed to be threatening
the professional integrity of actors and authors.
- In Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne repeatedly invokes machines as metaphors for narrative, but
then shows that the "sunshine" and "soul" of the reading experience is to be found in those
moments when the narrative machine breaks down into digressions.

You can also refer to q. 36

34. What was the concept and main features of Pre-Raphaelian Brotherhood?

- It was established by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.
- It was a group of artists active in the middle of the nineteenth century. Their goal was to resist
modern art conventions by a return to the pre-Renaissance art forms involving vivid colours and
details.
- They wanted to replace the conventionalism of the contemporary poetry, they tried to achieve
verisimilitude (imitative representation of the object discussed) in their works.
- They found their models in Italy, in the early Renaissance artists, especially in Raphael (but only in
Raphael‘s pre-Roman period; this also led to the creation of the group‘s name).
- They used themes from classical mythology, legends and Dante‘s works- these themes were dealt
with in a pathetic style with an element of naivety- that is why the art of the pre-Raphaelite seems
too sentimental.
- Many of their works were inspired also by Keats- they said that he was painting with words and that
his poetry was charged with magic.
- Their opinion was that the creed (=prepričanje) had to be lived up to and the technical expertise is
of minor importance. The Brotherhood was publishing a magazine called The Germ (there were
only 4 issues published in 1850).
 35. Which were the two literary trends in the Victorian period?

1. associated with intellectual production; the need for objectivity, standard of balance and
precision (Robert Browning)
2. idealistic, spontaneous; direct continuation of romanticism; the cult of beauty; sympathy with
emotions (lord Alfred Tennyson)

Victorian poetry:

- nostalgic sentiments for the Middle Ages

- religious scepticism
- concerned with the search of identity, meaning of life
- respect for romantics
- the duty of the poet is to present the world around him and not his own soul (Restoration period)
- poetry is deliberately didactic
- one of the distinctive poetic forms is the dramatic monologue (origins are perhaps in Elizabethan
drama)

36. What was the intention of Theatre's Licensing Act and what were its
consequences?

- The Theatres Licensing Act was introduced by Lord Chamberlain in 1737 as a result of the social,
legal, economic and political conditions of the time, as well as the reactions to literary works that
involved these issues.
- The intent was to maintain control – to silence all political and religious satire and sexual immorality
on stage. The act gave Lord Chamberlain the power to approve any play before it was staged.
- The Licensing Act had profound influence on English literature and has served as a model in many
other western societies.
- The consequences:
o The public mistrusted plays that passed the censors
o The theatres had to stage revivals – production of Shakespeare's plays became much
higher
o Additionally, the act diverted politically interested authors from the stage and into writing
novels (e.g. Fielding, Brooke). Some of them never even approached the stage (Tobias
Smollett, Laurence Sterne)