LITERARY STUDIES

WHAT IS LITERARY STUDIES?

klarer mentions that fiction, poetry, drama, and film are genres studied
in textual studies, or literary studies . “The literary work was neither a
vehicle for ideas, a reflection of social reality nor the incarnation of
some transcendental truth; it was a material fact, whose functioning
could be analyzed rather as one could examine a machine” (Eagleton 2-
3)
Literature:
 Imaginative
 Creative
 Writing 
HOW DO WE PRACTICE CRITICAL THINKING?
 Pre-reading 
 Annotating
 Identifying key passages
 Questioning/interpreting
 Connecting parts
 Forming your own ideas
 Sharing your ideas

LECTURE NO 2
LITERATURE:
 Literature defines any simplistic definition. Some people call
books on different subjects like history, geography, medicine etc.as
books of literature.
FOR EXAMPLE:
  For example, Hallam had named the books on theology and
medicine as the books of literature. However, Charles Lamb had
even refused to call the works of writers like Hume and Gibbon as
Literature. The question therefore arises as to which books should
be called books of literature?
  Are the books on medicine etc. not different from the plays of
Shakespeare or the novels of Dickens? Can both be put under the
common title of
                           ‘Literature’? 
HUDSON’S DEFINATION:
 W.H. Hudson tried to find a solution to this problem.
 W.H. Hudson tried to find a solution to this problem. According to
him the books of literature should have two features. First of all
they should be.
 "of general human interest "
 and secondly they should have
 "the element of form"
 So that the readers can get pleasure from the form. These books are
called literature of power.
HUDSON WROTE:
The great impulse behind literature may, I think, be grouped with
accuracy enough for practical purposes under four heads: (i) our desire
for self-expression; (2) our interest in people and their doings; (3) our
interest in the world of reality in which? We live, and in the world of
imagination which we existence; and (4) our love of form as form "We
are strongly impelled to confide to others what we think and feel; hence
the literature which directly expresses the thoughts and feelings of the
writer. We are intensely interested in men and women, their lives,
motives, passions, relationships; hence the literature which deals with
the great drama of human life and action? We are fond of telling others
about the things we have seen or imagined; hence the literature of
description.
SALMAN RUSHDIE:
 Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest place in
human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not
absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and the
heart: 
REVIEW:
Despite the large and ever increasing number of works which deal with
special aspects of literature on the historical and critical sides, An
Introduction To The Study Of Literature By William Henry Hudson is
like that there is still a place for a compact and fairly comprehensive
volume of this kind.

LECTURE NO 3
The Short Oxford History of English Literature by Andrew
SUMMARY;
The Short Oxford History of English Literature provides in a single
volume a comprehensive introductory guide to the literature of the
British Isles from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day.
Separate chapters trace the development of English literature from
Beowulf to the 'post-modernism' of Seamus Heaney and Angela Carter.
The History provides detailed discussion of Old and Middle English
literature, the Renaissance, Shakespeare, the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, the Romantics, Victorian and Edwardian literature,
Modernism, and post-war writing. 
Discussions of key writers and works from Anselm and Chaucero
Spenser and Bunyan, and from Swift and Johnson to Dickens and D. H.
Lawrence, are combined with analysis of the impact on literature of
contemporary political, social, and intellectual developments. The
History looks again at the canon of English Literature and provides a
fresh assessment of the distinctive contribution of Scottish, Irish, and
Welsh writers. And it asks about the future of the canon in the light of
the fragmented condition of British writing in the post-imperial period.
Lively, accessible, and up to date, The Short Oxford History of English
Literature will be an invaluable source for all readers and students of
English literature. Andrew Sanders is a Reader in Modern English
Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London.
CONTENT:
 Introduction: Poets' Corners: The Development of a Canon of
English Literature
 1. Old English Literature
 2. Medieval Literature 1066-1510
 3. Renaissance and Reformation: Literature 1510-1620
 4. Revolution and Restoration: Literature 1620-1690
 5. Eighteenth-Century Literature 1690-1780
 6. The Literature of the Romantic Period 1780-1830
 7. High Victorian Literature 1830-1880
 8. Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature 1880-1920
 9. Modernism and its Alternatives: Literature 1920-1945
 10. Post-War and Post-Modern Literature.

Old English Literature

Or
Anglo-Saxon
 Earliest form of English literature 
 600AD - 1100AD
START:
 Old English began, in written form
 King Alfred the great (849-899), wanting to restore English
culture, noted that while very few could read Latin , many could
still read old English. He thus proposed that students be educated
in old English, and those who excelled would go on to learn Latin.
In this way it begins.
THE END
 Anglo- Saxon rule came to an end in 1066 soon after death of
Edward the confessor. Harold was crowned king immediately after
Edward died, but he failed to his attempt to defend his crown. And
later this era was ushered in. 1066. 
LITERATURE:
 There are about 400 surviving manuscripts containing old English
text. 
 Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous, with some
exceptions. 
 Heroic poems
 Wisdom poetry
 Prose