ENGLISH LITERATURE AMERICAN LITERATURE

the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer which details the 1. Washington Irving (1783-1859) has often been called
experience of a seafarer exiled at sea with no company "the Father of American Literature." He is thought of, for
whosoever, spoken in a mournful and elegiac mood. instance, as the first American writer to make his living
primarily through his creative work, and he is the first
American acclaimed by the English literary establishment
as worthy of recognition.
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? BY 2.Mark Twain.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Shall I compare thee to a
summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And
summer’s lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too
hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold
complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime
declines, By chance or nature’s changing course
untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose
possession of that fair thou ow’st; Nor shall death brag
thou wander’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time
thou grow’st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
- Shakespeare uses Sonnet 18 to praise his beloved's
beauty and describe all the ways in which their beauty is
preferable to a summer day. The stability of love and its
power to immortalize someone is the overarching theme of
this poem.

Comedies of manners were the most popular during the 3. Mark Twain was an American humorist, novelist, and
Restoration period which would mock upper-class travel writer. Today he is best remembered as the author
members of society and would include vulgar and sexually of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures
suggestive scenes and language. The Country Wife (1675) of Huckleberry Finn (1885). Twain is widely considered
by William Wycherley is a five-act play satirizes the sexual one of the greatest American writers of all time.
duplicity during King Charles II’s reign.

Writings in this period mainly focused on the evolution of 4. The Realistic Period (1865-1900) - Defined as "the
science, morality and society. As this is the period when a faithful representation of reality”. - A technique that
major change has occurred, most of the writers reacted to denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the
the writings of the previous eras. The novel was the representation of middle-class life.
medium of expression for Victorians whereas it dominates
the society during that time. Victorian writers such as
Charles Dickens and George Elliot put Realism into their
works with the belief that "the purpose of literature should
be to accurately mirror the world and portray realistic
scenes with complex, life-like characters." The
combination of Romantic subjectivity and Augustan
objectivity was presented during this period.

The Pre-Raphaelites was established for the desire of 5. Life on the Mississippi is an autobiographical chronicle
creating arts for modern age through practicing simplicity of Mark Twain's adventures during his training as a
and precision. The Aestheticism and Decance believed steamboat captain when he was twenty-one years old. The
that literature and poetry should be more reflective but the book includes some historical context about the
Pre-Raphaelites brotherhood were against of it. Mississippi River, such as explorer Hernando de Soto's
encounter with the river in 1542.