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CONTENTS
THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD................................ ................................................................ ....... 13
HISTORY (650-1100) ...................................................................................................................................... 13
POETRY .......................................................................................................................................................... 14
Beowulf ...................................................................................................................................................... 14
The Pagan Poems ....................................................................................................................................... 16
PROSE ............................................................................................................................................................ 17
Venerable Bede (672-735) ......................................................................................................................... 17
King Alfred (871-899). ............................................................................................................................... 17
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle........................................................................................................................ 18
THE MIDDL E ENGLI SH PERIOD .................................................................................................. 20
HISTORY (1066-1400) .................................................................................................................................... 20
POETRY .......................................................................................................................................................... 21
Pearl Poet................................................................................................................................................... 21
Sir Gaw ain and the Green Knight (c. 1400) ................................................................................................. 22
Marie de France (c. 1160-1215) ................................................................................................................. 22
PROSE ............................................................................................................................................................ 23
THE AGE OF CHAUCER ................................................................................................ ........... 25
HISTORY (1350-1450) .................................................................................................................................... 25
POETRY .......................................................................................................................................................... 25
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) ................................................................................................................... 25
John Gower (1330-1408) ........................................................................................................................... 32
William Langland (1332-1386).................................................................................................................. 33
PROSE ............................................................................................................................................................ 34
John Wycliffe (1320-1384) ......................................................................................................................... 34
Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1416) ............................................................................................................... 34
Margery Kempe (1373-1438) ..................................................................................................................... 34
FROM CHAUCER TO SPENSER ................................................................................................ ... 36
HISTORY (1450-1550) .................................................................................................................................... 36
POETRY .......................................................................................................................................................... 37
Sir Thomas Malory (c. 1415-1471)............................................................................................................. 37
PROSE ............................................................................................................................................................ 38
William Caxton ........................................................................................................................................... 38
Thomas More (1478-1535) ........................................................................................................................ 38
Bible Translations ...................................................................................................................................... 40
RISE OF DRAMA .............................................................................................................................................. 40

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THE MIRACLE PLAY ..................................................................................................................................... 40

Morality Plays ............................................................................................................................................ 41
Earliest Dramas.......................................................................................................................................... 41
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH ................................ .......................................................................... 43
HISTORY (1550-1630) .................................................................................................................................... 43
POETRY .......................................................................................................................................................... 43
Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) ....................................................................................................................... 43
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516-1547) ............................................................................................... 43
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) ................................................................................................................... 44
Sir Philip Sidn ey (1554-1586)..................................................................................................................... 47
Sir Walter Raleigh (1554-1618) ................................................................................................................. 49
John Donne (1572-1631) ........................................................................................................................... 49
Drama............................................................................................................................................................ 54
Theatres and Troupes................................................................................................................................. 54
University Wits ............................................................................................................................................... 55
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) ............................................................................................................. 55
George Peele (1556-1596) ......................................................................................................................... 58
John Lyly (1554-1606) ............................................................................................................................... 58
Robert Greene (1558-1592) ....................................................................................................................... 59
Thomas Kyd (1558-1594)........................................................................................................................... 59
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)....................................................................................................................... 60
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) ................................................................ ........................... 62
HISTORI ES ...................................................................................................................................................... 63
Henry VI (c. 1591) ....................................................................................................................................... 63
Richard III (c. 1592) ..................................................................................................................................... 63
Richard II (c. 1595) ...................................................................................................................................... 64
Henry IV (c. 1598) ....................................................................................................................................... 64
Henry IV Part 2 ........................................................................................................................................... 65
Henry V (c. 1599) ........................................................................................................................................ 65
Henry VIII.................................................................................................................................................... 65
King John.................................................................................................................................................... 65
COMEDIES ...................................................................................................................................................... 66
The Comedy of Errors ................................................................................................................................. 66
The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1592) ............................................................................................................. 66
Two Gentlemen of Verona (c. 1589-92) ..................................................................................................... 67
Love’s Labour’s Lost ................................................................................................................................... 67
A Midsummer Night's Dream ...................................................................................................................... 67
Much Ado About Nothing ........................................................................................................................... 68
As You Like It .............................................................................................................................................. 69
Twelfth Night (What You Will).................................................................................................................... 70

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The Merry Wives of Windsor ....................................................................................................................... 71

Pericles, Prince of Tyre................................................................................................................................ 71
TRAGEDIES ..................................................................................................................................................... 72
Titus Andronicus ......................................................................................................................................... 72
Romeo and Juliet (c.1597) .......................................................................................................................... 72
Julius Caesar (c.1599) ................................................................................................................................ 73
Hamlet (c.1602) .......................................................................................................................................... 74
Othello (c.1604) ......................................................................................................................................... 77
King Lear (c.1605) ....................................................................................................................................... 78
Antony and Cleopatra (c.1607) .................................................................................................................. 79
Coriolanus (c.1607) .................................................................................................................................... 80
Timon of Athens (c.1606) ............................................................................................................................ 80
TRAGICOMEDIES ............................................................................................................................................. 81
Cymbeline................................................................................................................................................... 81
The Merchant of Venice (c. 1597) ................................................................................................................ 82
The Winter’s Tale........................................................................................................................................ 83
PROBLEM PLAYS............................................................................................................................................. 83
All’s Well That Ends Well (c.1604) ............................................................................................................. 83
Measure for Measure (c.1603) .................................................................................................................... 83
The Tempest (c.1610) ................................................................................................................................. 84
POEMS ........................................................................................................................................................... 85
Venus and Adonis (1593) ............................................................................................................................ 85
The Rape of Lucrece (1594) ........................................................................................................................ 85
Shakespearean Sonnets (1609) ...................................................................................................................... 86
POST-SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA ................................................................ ............................... 89
Ben Jonson (1572-1637) ............................................................................................................................ 89
Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625) ............................................................... 92
George Chapman (1559-1634)................................................................................................................... 92
Thomas Dekker (1572-1632) ...................................................................................................................... 93
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) ................................................................................................................ 93
Thomas Heywood (1570-1641).................................................................................................................. 94
John Webster (c. 1580-c. 1634) ................................................................................................................. 94
PROSE ............................................................................................................................................................ 95
Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) ................................................................................................................... 95
Roger Ascham (1515-1568) ....................................................................................................................... 98
Richard Burton (1577-1640) ...................................................................................................................... 99
THE AGE OF MILTON................................................................................................ ............ 100
HISTORY (1630-1700) .................................................................................................................................. 100
POETRY ........................................................................................................................................................ 100
John Milton (1608-1674) ......................................................................................................................... 100

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METAPHYSICAL POETRY ............................................................................................................................... 107

George Herbert (1593-1633).................................................................................................................... 107
Richard Crashaw (1613-1649) ................................................................................................................. 108
Henry Vaughan (1622-1695) ................................................................................................................... 108
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) ................................................................................................................. 108
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)................................................................................................................... 108
The Cavalier Poets ....................................................................................................................................... 110
Robert Herrick (1591-1674) ..................................................................................................................... 110
Richard Lovelace (1618-58) ..................................................................................................................... 110
Sir John Suckling (1609-42) ..................................................................................................................... 111
DRAMA ......................................................................................................................................................... 111
Philip Massinger (1583-1640) .................................................................................................................. 111
John Ford (1586-1639) ............................................................................................................................ 112
James Shirley (1596-1666) ...................................................................................................................... 112
PROSE .......................................................................................................................................................... 113
Thomas Browne (1605-1682) .................................................................................................................. 113
William Davenant (1606-1668, poet and playwright) ............................................................................. 114
THE RESTORATION................................................................................................ .............. 115
John Dryden (1631-1700) ........................................................................................................................ 115
Samuel Butler (1612-80) ......................................................................................................................... 119
Aphra Behn (c. 1640-1689) ...................................................................................................................... 120
RESTORATION COMEDY ................................................................................................................................ 120
William Congreve (1670-1729) ................................................................................................................ 121
William Wycherley (1640-1715) .............................................................................................................. 122
George Etheridge (c. 1635-91) ................................................................................................................. 122
Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) ............................................................................................................... 123
Restoration Tragedies .................................................................................................................................. 123
PROSE .......................................................................................................................................................... 124
John Bunyan (1628-88)............................................................................................................................ 124
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) ...................................................................................................................... 126
THE AGE OF POPE................................ ................................................................ ............... 127
HISTORY (1700-1750) .................................................................................................................................. 127
PROSE .......................................................................................................................................................... 127
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) .................................................................................................................... 127
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) ................................................................................................................... 131
Richard Steele (1672-1729) ..................................................................................................................... 131
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)........................................................................................................................ 132
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735) ................................................................................................................... 134
POETRY ........................................................................................................................................................ 134
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) ................................................................................................................... 134

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John Gay (1685-1732) ............................................................................................................................. 138

THE AGE OF TRANSITION ................................................................................................ ...... 140
HISTORY (1740-1800) .................................................................................................................................. 140
THE REACTIONARY SCHOOL ......................................................................................................................... 140
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) .................................................................................................................. 140
THE TRANSITIONAL POETS ........................................................................................................................... 144
James Thomson (1700-48)....................................................................................................................... 144
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) ................................................................................................................. 145
Thomas Gray (1716-1771) ....................................................................................................................... 147
Thomas Percy (1729-1811) ...................................................................................................................... 149
THE NEW SCHOOL ........................................................................................................................................ 150
Robert Burns (1759-1796) ....................................................................................................................... 150
William Blake (1757-1827) ...................................................................................................................... 150
THE RI SE OF NOVELS .................................................................................................................................... 155
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) ............................................................................................................. 155
Henry Fielding (1707-1754) ..................................................................................................................... 157
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) ................................................................................................................... 159
Laurence Sterne (1713-68) ...................................................................................................................... 159
Horace Walpole (1717-97) ...................................................................................................................... 161
Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) ....................................................................................................................... 161
Mathew Gregory Lew is (1775-1818) ........................................................................................................ 162
Frances Burney (1752-1840) .................................................................................................................... 162
THE HISTORIANS .......................................................................................................................................... 164
PROSE .......................................................................................................................................................... 164
Edmund Burke (1729-97) ......................................................................................................................... 164
William Godwin (1756-1836) ................................................................................................................... 165
DRAMA ......................................................................................................................................................... 166
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816).................................................................................................... 166
THE RETURN TO NATURE ................................................................................................ ...... 169
HISTORY (1790-1830) .................................................................................................................................. 169
POETRY ........................................................................................................................................................ 169
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) ........................................................................................................... 169
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) ..................................................................................................... 175
Lord Byron (1788-1824)........................................................................................................................... 182
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) ........................................................................................................... 187
John Keats (1795-1821)........................................................................................................................... 194
Robert Southey (1774-1843).................................................................................................................... 200
Thomas Moore (1779-1852) .................................................................................................................... 201
NOVELI STS ................................................................................................................................................... 202
Mary Shelley (1797-1851) ....................................................................................................................... 202

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Walter Scott (1771-1832) ........................................................................................................................ 204

Jane Austen (1775-1817)......................................................................................................................... 206
Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) ................................................................................................................. 210
Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) ......................................................................................................... 211
Charles Lamb (1775-1834) ...................................................................................................................... 211
Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) ............................................................................................................. 214
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) .................................................................................................................... 215
THE VICTORIAN AG E ................................................................................................ ............ 217
HISTORY (1830-1890) .................................................................................................................................. 217
Queen Victoria (1819-1901)..................................................................................................................... 217
Oxford Movement..................................................................................................................................... 217
WORLD LITERATURE.................................................................................................................................. 217
POETRY ........................................................................................................................................................ 219
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) ......................................................................................................... 219
Robert Browning (1812-1889) ................................................................................................................. 225
Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861) .................................................................................................. 229
Mathew Arnold (1822-1888) ................................................................................................................... 230
Edward Fitzgerald (1809-83) ................................................................................................................... 234
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848) ......................................................................................................... 234
Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1828-82) .............................................................................................................. 235
Christina Rosetti (1830-94) ...................................................................................................................... 235
William Morris (1834-96) ......................................................................................................................... 235
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) ............................................................................................... 237
THE NOVELISTS ............................................................................................................................................ 238
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) ................................................................................................................... 238
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) ............................................................................................ 246
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) ................................................................................................................. 249
Emily Bronte (1818-1848)........................................................................................................................ 251
Anne Bronte (1820-1849) ........................................................................................................................ 252
George Eliot (1819-1880)......................................................................................................................... 252
George Meredith (1828-1909) .................................................................................................................. 256
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) ................................................................................................................ 257
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)........................................................................................................ 258
Charles Reade (1818-1884) ..................................................................................................................... 258
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) ................................................................................................................ 258
Wilkie Collins (1824-1849)....................................................................................................................... 259
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) .................................................................................................................. 259
R. D Blackmore (1825-1900).................................................................................................................... 260
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) ....................................................................................................... 260
Francis Bret Harte (1836-1902) ............................................................................................................... 263

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Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865)................................................................................................................. 263

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) ....................................................................................................................... 263
PROSE .......................................................................................................................................................... 264
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) ................................................................................................................... 264
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) .............................................................................................. 265
Walter Pater (1839-1894)........................................................................................................................ 267
James Anthony Froude (1818-94) ............................................................................................................ 267
THE BIRTH OF MODERN LITERATURE ................................ ........................................................ 269
HISTORY (1890-1918) .................................................................................................................................. 269
THE NOVELISTS ............................................................................................................................................ 270
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) ..................................................................................................................... 270
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)..................................................................................................................... 276
H. G. Wells (1866-1946) .......................................................................................................................... 281
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) ..................................................................................................................... 285
George Moore (1852-1933) ...................................................................................................................... 286
Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) .................................................................................................................... 287
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) ................................................................................................................... 288
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)........................................................................................................ 292
Saki (1870-1916) ..................................................................................................................................... 293
DRAMA ......................................................................................................................................................... 293
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) ......................................................................................................... 293
John Millington Synge (1871-1909) ......................................................................................................... 298
Irish Literary Revival ................................................................................................................................. 299
Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929).............................................................................................................. 300
John Galsworthy (1867-1933) ................................................................................................................. 300
Sir W. S Gilbert (1836-1911) .................................................................................................................... 301
Oscar Wilde (1856-1900) ......................................................................................................................... 302
Sir J. M. Barrie (1860-1937) ..................................................................................................................... 307
POETS .......................................................................................................................................................... 308
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) ........................................................................................................................... 308
Robert Bridges (1844-1930)..................................................................................................................... 314
John Masefield (1878-1967) .................................................................................................................... 314
Georgian Poets ......................................................................................................................................... 315
IMAGISM ................................................................................................................................................... 316
dymock poets ........................................................................................................................................... 316
THE DECADENTS ....................................................................................................................................... 316
POETS OF WORLD WAR I .............................................................................................................................. 316
Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) ..................................................................................................................... 316
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) ................................................................................................................ 317
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) ...................................................................................................................... 317

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PROSE .......................................................................................................................................................... 318

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)................................................................................................................... 318
A. C. Bradley (1851-1935) ....................................................................................................................... 319
THE INTER-WAR YEARS ................................ ........................................................................ 320
HISTORY (1918-1939) .................................................................................................................................. 320
George VI (1936-1952)............................................................................................................................. 320
World War II (1939-1945) ........................................................................................................................ 320
THE NOVELISTS ............................................................................................................................................ 321
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) .................................................................................................................... 321
James Joyce (1882-1941) ........................................................................................................................ 326
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) ..................................................................................................................... 332
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) ........................................................................................................................ 337
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) ..................................................................................................................... 341
Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957) ............................................................................................................. 345
May Sinclair (1863-1946)......................................................................................................................... 345
VORTICISM ................................................................................................................................................ 345
Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) .................................................................................................................. 345
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) ............................................................................................................ 345
Robert Graves (1895-1985)...................................................................................................................... 350
Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) ................................................................................................................. 350
Bram Stoker (1847-1912) ........................................................................................................................ 350
Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) ..................................................................................................... 351
David Garnett (1892-1981) ...................................................................................................................... 351
Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) ........................................................................................................ 351
Richard Hughes (1900-1976) ................................................................................................................... 351
POETRY ........................................................................................................................................................ 352
Gerald Manley Hopk ins (1844-1889) ....................................................................................................... 352
T.S. Eliot (1888 -1965) .............................................................................................................................. 356
W. H. Auden (1907-1973) ........................................................................................................................ 368
Stephen Spender (1909-1977) ................................................................................................................. 372
Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972) ................................................................................................................... 372
Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) .................................................................................................................... 373
Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964).............................................................................................................. 373
Ezra Pound (1885-1972) .......................................................................................................................... 373
DRAMA ......................................................................................................................................................... 377
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964)....................................................................................................................... 377
JB Priestly (1894-1984)............................................................................................................................ 378
PROSE .......................................................................................................................................................... 379
Lytton Strachey (1880-1932) ................................................................................................................... 379
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970).................................................................................................................. 379

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IA Richards (1893-1979) .......................................................................................................................... 380

FR Leavis (1895-1978) ............................................................................................................................. 380
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) ................................................................................................................ 381
GM Trevelyan (1876-1962) ...................................................................................................................... 381
CONTEMPORARY BRITI SH LITERATURE (1945-) ................................................................ ........... 382
NOVEL .......................................................................................................................................................... 382
THE BOOKER PRIZE ................................................................................................................................... 382
Sci-fi novelists.......................................................................................................................................... 382
John Wyndham (1903-1969) ................................................................................................................... 382
Brian Aldiss (1925-2017) ......................................................................................................................... 383
Fred Hoyle (1915-2010) ........................................................................................................................... 383
J.G. Ballard (1930-2009) ......................................................................................................................... 383
Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008).............................................................................................................. 384
Graham Greene (1904-1991) ................................................................................................................... 385
Cecil Scott “C.S” Forester (1899-1966) ..................................................................................................... 387
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) ..................................................................................................................... 387
Anthony Powell (1905-2000)................................................................................................................... 389
Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990) ................................................................................................................. 389
ANGRY YOUNG MEN.................................................................................................................................. 390
THE MOVEMENT........................................................................................................................................ 390
Sir Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) ................................................................................................................. 390
Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010) ........................................................................................................................ 391
Sir William Golding (1911-1993) ............................................................................................................. 391
P. H. Newby (1918-1997) ......................................................................................................................... 394
Muriel Spark (1918-2006) ........................................................................................................................ 394
Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)......................................................................................................................... 395
Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) ...................................................................................................................... 397
J. R. R Tolkien (1892-1973) ...................................................................................................................... 398
George Orwell (1903-1950) ..................................................................................................................... 400
Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) ................................................................................................................. 407
Julian Barnes (1946- ).............................................................................................................................. 409
Arthur Koestler (1905-1983).................................................................................................................... 409
Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989) ..................................................................................................................... 410
James Kelman (1946- ) ............................................................................................................................ 410
Caryl Phillips (1958-) ............................................................................................................................... 411
Elias Canetti (1905-1994) ........................................................................................................................ 411
Angela Carter (1940-1992) ...................................................................................................................... 412
Sir Malcolm Bradbury (1932-2000) ......................................................................................................... 413
Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) ................................................................................................................ 413
Joyce Cary (1988-1957) ........................................................................................................................... 413

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Agatha Christie (1890-1976).................................................................................................................... 413

Jeanette Winterson (1959-) ..................................................................................................................... 417
David Story (1933-2017).......................................................................................................................... 418
Malcom Lowry (1909-1957) ..................................................................................................................... 418
John Fowles (1926-2005) ........................................................................................................................ 418
Sir Salman Rushdie (1947-) ..................................................................................................................... 419
J. G. Farrell (1935-1979).......................................................................................................................... 424
Hilary Mantel (1952- ) ............................................................................................................................. 425
Peter Ackroyd (1949-) .............................................................................................................................. 426
William Boyd (1952-, English) ................................................................................................................. 426
David Mitchell (1969-, English) ................................................................................................................ 427
J. K. Rowling (1965- )............................................................................................................................... 428
Martin Amis (1949- ) ................................................................................................................................ 428
Doris Lessing (1919-2013) ....................................................................................................................... 428
Graham Sw ift (1949-) .............................................................................................................................. 429
Zadie Smith (1975-) ................................................................................................................................. 430
Ian McEwan (1948-) ................................................................................................................................. 432
V.S. Naipaul (1932- ) ............................................................................................................................... 433
A. S. Byatt (1936- ) .................................................................................................................................. 436
Kazuo Ishiguro (1954- )............................................................................................................................ 437
Alasdair Gray (1934- ) ............................................................................................................................. 438
David Lodge (1935- ) ............................................................................................................................... 438
POETS .......................................................................................................................................................... 439
Philip Larkin (1922-1985) ........................................................................................................................ 439
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)................................................................................................................... 440
Ted Hughes (1930-1998) ......................................................................................................................... 442
Christopher Fry (1907-2005) .................................................................................................................... 444
Roy Fuller (1912-1991) ............................................................................................................................ 445
Thom Gunn (1929-2004) .......................................................................................................................... 445
Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)........................................................................................................................ 446
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) ..................................................................................................................... 447
Sir John Betjeman (1905-1984) ............................................................................................................... 449
Sir Andrew Motion (1952-) ....................................................................................................................... 449
Carrol Ann Duffy (1955-) ......................................................................................................................... 450
Paul Muldoon (1951- )............................................................................................................................. 451
DRAMA ......................................................................................................................................................... 451
Harold Pinter (1930-2008)....................................................................................................................... 451
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) ................................................................................................................... 457
Sir Tom Stoppard (1937- ) ....................................................................................................................... 465
Alan Bennett (1934- ) .............................................................................................................................. 467

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Sir Arnold Wesker (1932-2016)................................................................................................................ 468

John Osborne (1929-1994) ...................................................................................................................... 469
Edward Bond (1934- ).............................................................................................................................. 470
Caryl Churchill (1938- )............................................................................................................................ 471

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SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (C. 1400)

* The “flowering” of Middle English Literature. Chivalric romance from 14 th century. Arthurian tale.
* Combination of 2 folklore motifs – the beheading game and the exchange of winnings.
* Alliterative verse ends in a rhyming bob and wheel (two syllables and a quatrain).
* Set in Camelot (Arthur’s court), Christmas feast.
** Sir Gawain is the youngest knight in Arthur’s Round Table, also his nephew. He accepts a challenge from
the Green Knight who offers a strike with his axe on himself on one condition. The Green Knight will return the
blow in a year and a day. Gawain beheads him and will meet him again in the Green Chapel. Gawain towards
the end of the year meets Lady Bertilak. Symbolic Green Girdle (lady’s belt). The Green Knight was actually
Mr. Bertilak. All this was the trick of an old lady who Gawain saw at the castle w ho is actually Arthur’s sister
Morgan le Fay.
* Be honest always despite temptation theme. “A true man truly restores, such a one need dread no harm”.
* The poem survives in a single manuscript Cotton Nero A. X along with three religious narrative poems Pearl,
Purity and Patience. Anonymous author, often called “Pearl Poet” or “Gawain Poet”.
*Movie adaptation: Sword of the Valiant (1984).
*** The works of the Pearl Poet belongs to a type of literature traditionally known as “Alliterative Revival”.
* The opening passage calls the tale as a “marvellous event”.
** The story is told in four “fitts” or parts.
** Name of Gawain’s horse: Gringolet.
* Famous translation of Sir Gawain is by Simon Armitage (2007) – adopted for Norton Anthology.

THE ROMANCES

*Jean Bodel, a French poet, was the first person to classify medieval literature to “Three Matters”; Matter of
Rome, Matter of Britain (Arthurian tales mainly) and Matter of France (Charlemagne).

“The Matter of England”:

King Horn — *Oldest extant romance in Middle English.

Havelock the Dane
Guy of Warwick
— A legendary English hero of Middle English Romance. Guy loves Lady Felice (“Happiness”). In order to marry
Felice, Guy becomes a knight and commits many crimes. Feeling remorse, he leaves on a pilgrimage to Holy
Land.
Bevis of Hampton — Another Romance legend.
Richard Coeur de Lio — Fictionalised account of Richard I. It influenced Shakespeare’s King John

“The Matter of Rome”

King Alisandur and The Destruction of Troy

“The Matter of France”

Rau, Coilzear and Sir Ferumbras

Other Romances:
Amis and Amiloun —Tail Rhyme – two friends punished by God with leprosy.
Floris and Blancheflour — Marriage and conversion to Christianity, set in Egypt and Al-Andalus

Le Roman de Tristan (Tristan and Iseult)

— Written by Thomas of Britain; inspired by Celtic legend. Tragic story of adulterous love between Cornish
Knight Tristan (Tristram) and the Irish princess Iseult. * Written in Anglo Norman.

MARIE DE FRANCE (C. 1160-1215)

— Medieval poet born in France, lived in England. Her famous work is Lais of Marie de France. It is a collection
of 12 short narrative poems glorifying courtly love and adventures.
* A genre called Breton Lais is formed by this work.
* Three important poems in this collection: 1) “Milun” 2) “Chevrefoil” -about Tristram 3) “Lanval” – A Knight

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*Thomas Sackville wrote 2 poems in rhyme royal: The Induction and The Complaynt of Henry which appeared
in the miscellany, he also wrote the Myrroure for Magistrates (1563). Gorbuduc with Norton.

George Gascoigne (1535-1577)

—Unsuccessful courtier. * He was the first poet to deify Queen Elizabeth I, in effect establishing her cult as a
virgin goddess married to her kingdom and subjects.
* Composed one of the first regular satires in English The Steele Glass (1576) in blank verse. He also wrote
Jocasta, an important drama.
*** First Prose Comedy in English – The Supposes (1566) – this play was the basis for Taming of the Shrew. The
Supposes is a translation from Ariosto.
** Gascoigne’s Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse in English (1575) is considered one of the earliest
treatise on poetry (even before Sidney) — the first English essay on versification.
** Famous poems: “And if I did, what then?”, “The Lullaby of a Lover”, "Gascoignes wodmanship"

Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

*His first book which was seized and destroyed by Archbishop of Canterbury by public order.
(The Harmon of the Church). He is famous for his sonnet sequence Idea.
*The Shepherd’s Garland – a collection of 9 pastorals. Wrote under the poetic name of *Rowland.
*Drayton was the first to bring the term Ode for a lyrical poem to England (*disputed)
** His most famous poem Poly-Olbion – a topographical poem describing England and Wales. 30 songs in
Alexandrine Couplets – 15,000 lines. (Elizabethan discovery of England).
** His most famous short poem “The Battle of Agincourt” – a historical poem in ottava rima.
*Critically acclaimed mock-epic fairy poem Nymphidia (1627) – queen of faeries Queen Mab, wife of King
Oberon.
*** The famous beginning of the sonnet Idea 61: “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.”
* Other famous works in the collection:
“How many paltry, foolish, painted things” (Idea 6),
“There’s nothing grieves me, but that age should haste” (8)
“As in some countries far removed from hence” (50)

Thomas Campion (1567-1620)

*Wrote over a hundred lute songs (a singer accompanying a lute), masques for dancing. His important work:
A Book of Ayres.
“My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love /I care not for the ladies”
“Never love unless you can /There is a garden in her face.

* Phineas Fletcher (The Purple Island, or The Isle of Man) and Giles Fletcher (Christ's Victorie and Triumph) -
both of them are imitators of highest quality.

Samuel Daniel (1562-1619)

*For a short time, he was Poet Laurate (unofficial)
Epistles to Distinguished Persons and Hymen's Triumph
** Sonnet cycle addressed to Delia called The Complaint of Rosamund. Famous lines from this:
** “If this be love, to draw a weary breath” (9)
“But love whilst that thou may’st be loved again” (32)
“When men shall fnd thy flower, thy glory, pass” (33)

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have sex before the exchange). Agamemnon asks Ulysses why the Greek army is so downcast, Ulysses replies
its because Achilles is not participating, he’s spending time with friend and lover Patroclus. Prince Hector of
Troy wants a single challenge and Ulysses selects Ajax. Ajax makes peace with Hector. War continues,
Patroclus is killed by Hector. Furious Achilles catches Hector unarmed (he is unable to kill him one on one)
and have the Myrmidons kill him.

THE TEMPEST (C.1610)

*NOT a problem play as per Boas, but a play with Jacobean *Masque-era elements.
*Originally listed as a Comedy.
*Last play that Shakespeare wrote alone (he wrote Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen with John Fletcher after
this play). *Original plot
*** Inspiration from Montaigne’s essay “Of the Cannibals” (translated to English in 1603).
*Caliban seems to be an anagram or derivative of “Cannibal”. ** He is associated with the Earth.
*Perhaps Shakespeare’s farewell theme play because its about a great magician giving up his art
*Prospero’s reference to Globe theatre (“the great globe itself”).
*** The play was performed as a part of James I’s daughter Elizabeth’s marriage. A betrothal masque had
been added to Act IV for this performance.
*Inspiration from a letter from William Starchy in 1609, detailing how The Virginia Company’s fleet (with 400
colonists) heading from England to Virginia was hit by a hurricane. The Governor’s ship landed in Bermuda.
*** Aime Cesaire’s Une Tempete set in Haiti- a postcolonial take. Prospero is a white master, while Ariel is
a mulatto and Caliban is a black slave. Caliban favors revolution over Ariel's non-violence, and rejects his
name as the imposition of Prospero's colonizing language, desiring to be called X. At the end of the play,
Prospero grants Ariel his freedom, but retains control of the island and of Caliban.
*Other influences: Shelley's poem With a Guitar, To Jane, W. H. Auden's The Sea and the Mirror. The Diviners by
Margaret Laurence

Plot—
A storm strikes a ship carrying Alonso, King of Naples, his son Ferdinand (Alonso’s brother Antonio
and Sebastian). They were going to Italy after Alonso’s daughter’s marriage. The storm was actually a spell
by Prospero and he tells his own story about the past to his daughter Miranda, they are both on an island.
Prospero was the Duke of Milan until his brothers Antonio and Alonso usurped his position. They were
ordered to be killed but were saved by Gonzalo, who gave them food, water and books about magic. Father
and daughter have been here for 12 years and it is Fortune that brought Prospero his enemies and he made
the Tempest with his slave spirit Ariel (who previously had been trapped in a tree by Sycorax . Sycorax, the
previous ruler of the island and Caliban’s mom, died and Prospero made Ariel his slave with a promise to set
him free). Ariel assures that all the passengers of the ship are safe and scattered in the island. Ariel has been
ordered to take the shape of a sea nymph and become invisible to everyone but Prospero.
Prospero visits his servant Caliban (son of Sycorax) with his daughter. They both despise him for he is still
primitive despite their ‘teaching’. Miranda falls in love with Alonso’s son Ferdinand who ended up on the
island after the shipwreck. Prospero wants this to happen, but not now, so he imprisons Ferdinand. Alonso,
Sebastian, Antonio and Gonzalo are visited by Ariel on another part of the island. Invisible Ariel puts them to
sleep, except for Alonso’s brothers Sebastian and Antonio. Sebastian almost killed sleeping Alonso, but Ariel
wakes them up in time. Sebastian lies that he drew the sword to save the king from lions. Caliban while
getting wood for Prospero, meets two new people. King’s jester Trinculo and King’s drunken butler Stephano.
Caliban thinks they are ghosts, so he hides under a cloak, both of them joins him in his strange behaviour.
They all drink and sing. Prospero accepts Ferdinand and Miranda as a couple and asks Ariel to perform a
masque (Spirits Ceres, Juno and Iris perform). Drunken trio Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo plots to kill
Prospero and enter his chamber (fancy clothes invitation by the all-seeing Prospero). Ariel captures the trio.
Through Ariel the other trio of Prospero’s brothers are brought to Prospero. He shows them the new couple.
All is forgiven. Ariel frees the prisoners, they temporarily wore fancy clothes. Prospero gives Ariel his final
task to calm the seas for the journey, where Prospero’s dukedom will be restored in Italy. Prospero delivers
the epilogue asking forgiveness for his wrongdoings.

#Nature as a play (“The great Globe shall dissolve”) – Ariel in disguises of classical mythology.
“You taught me language, and my profit on’t/Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
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THE RESTORATION
JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

*Poet, critic, translator and playwright. ** Walter Scott called him “Glorious John”.
** A Royalist unlike Milton (who opposed monarchy).
*** First Poet Laureate of England in 1668 and Historiographer Royal in 1670.
*** “Father of English Criticism” declared by Samuel Johnson (principles of merits of composition).
** Dryden is believed to be the first person to posit that English sentences should not end in prepositions
because Latin sentences cannot end in prepositions.
*After attending Trinity College, Cambridge, Dryden worked under Cromwell and met Marvell and Milton. He
published his first poem “Heroic Stanzas” (1658) a eulogy on Cromwell’s death.
*Dryden celebrated restoration of Charles II with Royalist panegyric (praise tribute) Astraea Redux (1660).
*After the opening of the theatres, Dryden wrote his first play The Wild Gallant (1663). A restoration comedy
inspired by Johnson’s Every Man in His Humor. Not successful.
** Dr. Johnson on Dryden: “He found it [English] brick and left it marble”.
** Dryden’s dramatization of Paradise Lost is titled The State of Innocence.
** The Indian Queen is a heroic tragedy in rhymed couplets by Dryden. *Dryden also wrote a play called The
Indian Emperor (1665).

HEROIC COUPLET
** Lines of Iambic Pentameter which rhyme in pairs: aa, bb, cc. Frequently used in ‘Heroic Dramas’ and ‘Heroic
Poems’ pioneered by Dryden.
** This verse form was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales, The Legend
of Good Women).
** Pope used it extensively. Neo classical poets incorporated it with closed couplets (Closed Heroic Couplet).

The Conquest of Granada (1672)

*Two-part tragedy, a defining example of Heroic Drama.
*Plot Spanish conquest of Granada in 1492 and the fall of Muhammed XII, the last Islamic ruler of Iberian
Peninsula (Moors). Hero is Almanzor who fights for the Moors.
“I am as free as Nature first made man, /Ere the base laws of servitude began,”.
*** Dryden famously defined what is a Heroic Drama in his Preface to The Conquest of Granada:
“An heroic play ought to be an imitation, in little, of an heroic poem; and consequently… love and valour
ought to be the subject of it”. By “heroic poem” Dryden meant Epic. Plays attempting to emulate Epics.

Marriage a’la Mode (1673)

— Restoration comedy, a combination of prose, blank verse and heroic couplets. Dryden’s best comedic
endeavor. Set in Sicily. 2 storylines. Romance between Palmyra and Leonidas. Usurper king Polydamas and
foster parent Hermogenes. Leonidas becomes king. Borrowed from Fletcher’s plays. The second plot is about
2 friends Rhodophil and Palamede. Palamede in love with Rhodophil’s wife and Rhodophil takes fancy in
Melantha (Palamede’s girlfriend).

All for Love (1677)

— ** Heroic drama. Dryden’s best known and most performed play. Tragedy in blank verse.
** Also known as World Well Lost.
*** The play is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.
Plot —
Set in Alexandria. Cleopatra wants to win back Antony. Her eunuch Alexas helps her out. Cleopatra
tells Antony that she has rejected Octavius’ offer of Egypt and Syria to her, Antony proclaims his love for her.
Antony’s friend Dolabella brings Octavia, Antony’s real wife. Husband-wife doesn’t really work out. Antony
meets Caesar with Cleopatra’s naval fleet, he is treated like an old friend, he comes back to Alexandria.
Alexas, Cleopatra’s messanger, informs Antony that Cleopatra is dead. Antony tells his friend Ventidus to kill
him, he can’t, Ventidus kills himself. Antony kills himself, Cleopatra sees him dying, she kills herself. Serapion

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** In the chapter “Abraham Cowely”, Johnson famously denounced the Metaphysical poets.
** On Dryden: “He found it [English] brick and left it marble”.
** On Milton’s “Lycidas”: “Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief”.
*** Virginia Woolf borrowed the idea of ‘common reader’ from Johnson’s Lives. Chapter: “Gray”.

*In his late years, he started a violent quarrel with Macpherson, whose Ossian had startled the literary world.
Johnson’s best friend Hester Thrale fell in love with a guy and she sort of left him alone, his final years were
spent in anguish and loneliness. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
** "Johnson knew more books than any man alive” — Adam Smith.
*** Johnson is well known for his ‘refutation’ of George Berkeley’s immaterialism (matter only ‘seemed’ to
exist); Johnson stomped a nearby stone and said “I refute it thus!”.

Johnson’s Quotes:
* “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
** “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
* “The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see
them as they are.”
*“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”
** “Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.” – The Rambler
* “Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.” - ;;
* “Silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find
anything to say.” — The Adventurer
** “I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.”
* “The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature
as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and
multiply the grief he proposes to remove”
* “All performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instan ces of the restless force of
perseverance”
* “Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.”

THE TRANSITIONAL POETS

JAMES THOMSON (1700-48)
*Scottish poet who came to London to seek a patron and fame.
The Seasons (1730) — a series of 4 poems.
—His first poem Winter appeared in 1726. Thomson borrowed Milton’s blank verse, Latin influenced
vocabulary and inverted word order. The poem was very popular.
** A dispute over publishing rights to The Season gave rise to two important legal decisions in the history of
copyright.
*Thomson also wrote the famous British patriotic song “Rule, Britannia” — it was used by the Army and the
Navy. Original included in the collection Alfred, a masque about the great king. Famous refrain: “Britons will
never be slaves!”.

The Castle of Indolence (1748)

— His best poem. ** Spenserian Stanzas at a time when they were considered outdated.
* This work had a strong influence on Byron, Keats and Wordsworth.
** It gives a description of a lotus-land into which world-weary souls are invited to withdraw.
** Lines from Canto I are quoted by Washington Irving in the opening of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:
“A pleasing land of drowsy-hed it was /Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass /Forever flushing round a summer-sky”
*** Anne Radcliffe used some lines as the epigraph to a chapter in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

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in comparison to him". The next day, the Tory Newspaper The Courtier printed: "Shelley, the writer of some
infidel poetry, has been drowned; now he knows whether there is God or no”.
** His grave in Rome bears the inscription Cor Cordium (Heart of Hearts) and few lines from The Tempest:
"Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange."

* Known for his idealism, made him unpopular in England but inspired Pre-Raphaelite poets.
* He wrote several essays on Vegetarianism as well (A Vindication of Natural Diet) and he drew inspiration
from India. His conversion to vegetarianism gets a reference in Queen Mab: “And man no longer now /He slays
the lamb that looks him in the face /And horribly devours his flesh”.
** G. B Shaw: “I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian. It was Shelley who
first opened my eyes to the savagery of my diet.”
*He was also a strong advocate of social justice for lower classes, apart from non-violence.
* Shelley is the inspiration for Marmion Herbert of Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Venetia (1837).
* Henry James's 1888 novella, The Aspern Papers relates a struggle to obtain some letters by Shelley years
after his death. It was made into a stage play and an opera.
** Howard Brenton's play, Bloody Poetry (1984), explores the complex relationships and rivalries between
Shelley, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and Byron.

Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem (1813)

— published with 9 cantos and 17 notes. His first major poem.
** A revised edition of this poem was published under the title The Daemon of the World in 1816.
** Written in irregular unrhymed meter popularised by Southey.
*This poem is a foundation to his theory of revolution and atheism. Inspired by Godwin’s idea of necessity,
Shelley argues that contemporary societal evils would dissolve naturally in time. He believed that perfect
society cannot be attained through violent measures, reflecting on Napoleon. It is to be achieved through
nature’s evolution and people becoming virtuous.
** Pirated versions spread the work, later becoming the Bible for Chartism.
*** Famous Opening: “How wonderful is Death, /Death and his brother Sleep!”
—The poem is written in the form of a fairy tale presenting a vision of utopia on earth. Queen Mab is
fairy, descends to earth and detaches the spirit of Ianthe from her body and transports him to a celestial tour
of Queen Mab’s palace (visions of Ianthe’s dreams).
*The notes deal with atheism, vegetarianism, free love, role of necessity in the physical and spiritual realm,
Christianity— #Perfectibility of man by moral, non-violent means.
*The “Wandering Jew” Ahasuerus appears as a phantom in the poem, but the same character appears as a
hermit in Shelley’s last major work, the verse drama Hellas.

Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816)

— 720 lines long poem, ** Peacock suggested the title who described the character of Alastor from Roman
Mythology as an “evil genius”.
** The name doesn’t refer to the hero of the poem but to the spirit who divinely animates Poet’s imagination.
*One of his first major achievements.
—Discusses the life of a Poet who visits the Middle East, has dream visions of a “veiled maid”-
supernatural elements. Joins nature in death, a world free of decay.
** Epigraph from St. Augustine’s Confessions (397).
** Alastor influenced Yeats’ work The Wanderings of Oisin.
*Alastor and Other Poems is the name of the collection, which includes other poems like “Mutability” which is
quoted in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (1818) — "We rest. – A dream has power to poison sleep…For, be it joy or
sorrow, /The path of its departure still is free:
* Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; /Nought may endure but Mutability."
* “We are as clouds”. Narcissism and vanity of humans.

“Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni” (1816)

— From the collection History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (with Mary Shelly).
*Ode written during his journey to Chamonix Valley with Mary and Claire, reflecting the scenery. The power of
the mountain is compared to power of human imagination. Questions religious certainty.

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*** The novel is written as a Libertarian socialist response to American author Edward Bellamy’s Utopian
science fiction Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888). That book was the third best-seller of its time after
Ben-Hur and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Williams abhorred the state socialism depicted in that book. Morris had
reviewed Bellamy’s work: “In short, a machine life is the best which Mr. Bellamy can imagine for us ”
*In Morris’s Nowhere, women are free from oppression, people practice monogamy but are free to pursue
romantic love because they are not bound by a contractual marriage.
If others can see it as I have seen it, then it may be called a vision rather than a dream.

The Well at the World's End (1896)

— High Fantasy novel incorporating medieval tales. It tells the story of Peter, king of Upmeads and his four
sons, Blaise, Hugh, Gregory and Ralph. The four sons decide to explore the world. The plot centers on Ralph.
He with his love Urusla travel to the well at the world’s end and they drink from it. He eventually becomes
King of Upmeads.
** The novel was praised by H. G Wells who compared the book to Malory.
The Wood Beyond the World (1894)
— Fantasy novel. *Golden Walter is betrayed by his wife. He meets an enchantress.

*I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.
* If you cannot learn to love real art at least learn to hate sham art.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (1837-1909)

*English poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He contributed to 11 th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (first
published in 1768, Edinburg).
*Swinburne wrote about many taboo topics, such as lesbianism, cannibalism, sado-masochism, and anti-
theism. Swineburne had a reputation for blasphemy.
*His poems have common motifs like Ocean, Time and Death. Historical people like Sappho, Anactoria, Jesus
and Catullus are featured.
*Swinburne was an alcoholic and algolagniac (masochism).
** He is considered a poet of DECADENT MOVEMENT
— Late 19th century artistic movement in Europe, an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality. Eg: French
novel Against Nature (1884) by Joris-Karl Huysman. The movement was characterized by self-disgust,
sickness at the world, general scepticism, delight in perversion and employment of crude humour and a belief
in the superiority of human creativity over logic and the natural world.
*** Oscar Wilde stated that Swinburne was "a braggart in matters of vice, who had done everything he could
to convince his fellow citizens of his homosexuality and bestiality without being in the slightest degree a
homosexual or a bestialiser."
* He is the virtual star of the third volume of George Saintsbury's famous History of English Prosody.
*** T. S Eliot on Swinburne’s Shakespearean criticism (The Contemporaries of Shakespeare, The Age of
Shakespeare): “he is more reliable to them than Hazlitt, Coleridge, or Lamb: and his perception of relative
values is almost always correct” — The Sacred Wood.
* Swinburne was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1903 to 1907 and again in 1909.
* His first collection of poems Poems and Ballads (1866) was instantly popular and controversial.

Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)

— Lady of Pain. Sadomasochistic imagery. ** Highly controversial as he combined Pagan goddess Dolores with
Mary.

The Garden of Proserpine

— Goddess of eternal death Proserpine married to Hades (god of underworld). Paganism and masochism.
** Swinburne was a strong advocate of aestheticism.
** The poem is mentioned in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (where the first line of the poem,
"Here, where the world is quiet", was slightly modified to become the motto of the secret organization V.F.D.)
* A portion of the poem is quoted, and plays a pivotal role, in the novel Martin Eden by Jack London.

Hymn to Proserpine
** He laments rise of Christianity for displacing the pagan Goddess. The epigraph at the beginning of the
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The Nature of a Crime— With Ford Madox. Influenced by Conrad’s suicide attempt when he was 20.
#Depression and debt.

The Rover — Conrad’s last complete novel. Set during French Revolution. Peyrol (gunner of French navy) is the
rover.

Short Tales of Joseph Conrad — short story collection.

The Secret Sharer — Takes place in Gulf of Siam (Thailand), a voyage, Leggatt the ‘stranger’ escapes.
“Falk: A Reminiscence” — cannibalism and sexuality, rejected by publishers.
“Prince Roman” — is based on the historical Prince Roman Sanguszko of Poland and is unapologetically
propagandistic in its politically charged, fighting Russian oppression.

*It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose — An Outcast of Islands.
** All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen — Henry James: An Appreciation (1905)
** An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of
a complicated situation — The Mirror of the Sea (1906)

H. G. WELLS (1866-1946)
* Herbert George Wells. English writer of novels, short stories, biographies, even a book of war games.
** “Father of Science Fiction” along with Jules Verne (1828-1905, French) and Hugo Gernsback (1884-1967,
Luxembourgish-American).
* A prophetic social critic and futurist, his Utopian fictions foresaw the advent of airplanes, tanks, space
travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the internet. He imagined time travel,
alien invasion, invisibility and biological engineering.
* Brian Aldiss called him “Shakespeare of Science of Fiction”. *Nominated for Nobel 4 times.
* He was a worthy successor of Dickens for including lower-middle class as major characters is his works.
** Son of a professional cricketer. He worked as a draper’s assistant, then he became a science teacher.
** He studied Biology under Thomas Huxley (“Darwin’s bulldog”).
** His short story The Flowering of the Strange Orchid popularized Darwin’s theories.
** He believes that the author should always strive to make the story as credible as po ssible even when the
elements are impossible. (“plausible impossible”)
*** The term “Time Machine” was coined by H. G. Wells.

* “As soon as the magic trick has been done the whole business of the fantasy writer is to keep everything else
human and real. Touches of prosaic detail are imperative and a rigorous adherence to the hypothesis. Any
extra fantasy outside the cardinal assumption immediately gives a touch of irresponsible silliness to the
invention." — The Scientific Romances of H. G. Wells (1933) [his law of replacing magic with science]
* Wells also wrote nonfiction. ** Wells's first nonfiction bestseller was Anticipations of the Reaction of
Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901) subtitled An Experiment in Prophecy is
his most futuristic work.
** His other bestselling non-fiction in The Outline of History (1920), he began a new era of popularized world
history. Subtitle: The Whole Story of Man. This book had a huge impact on teaching History in institutions of
higher education. * He made reprised short version A Short History of the World (1922), a book praised by
Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
* Wells was critical of political situation in Germany and his books were burned in there.
* Wells was the President of PEN International (Poets, Essayists, Novelists). He expelled German PEN club for
their refusal to admit non-Aryan writers.
* His reputation was on the decline during final years, Orwell called him “too sane to understand the modern
world” and * G. K Chesterton jested: “"Mr Wells is a born storyteller who has sold his birthright for a pot of
message.”
** He once said that his epitaph should be: “I told you so. You damned fools” (from the preface of his novel
The War in the Air)

The Time Machine (1895)

— science fiction novella. ** His first novel. Coinage of the term “time machine”.

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football game. The speaker struggles to accept this. But love is in letting go. Separation is inevitable.
How selfhood begins with a walking away / And love is proved in the letting go. (Requiem for the Living).
* He also wrote the poem The Hard Frost.

* Tempt me no more, for I

Have known the lightning's hour,
The poet's inward pride,
The certainty of power. — Tempt Me No More

* Shall I be gone long?

For ever and a day.
To whom there belong?
Ask the stone to say.
Ask my song. — Is it Far to Go (*His epitaph)

LOUIS MACNEICE (1907-1963)

* CBE (Excellent Order of British Empire).
* Irish poet and playwright. Auden Group. Famous during his time. Socially committed and part of “new
poetry” of 1930s. Oxford. Never joined any political creed unlike Lewis who was also at BBC.
* He produced radio plays for BBC. His best radio verse play was The Dark Tower with Benjamin Britten giving
the music. Celtic exuberance and sardonic humour are features of his poetry.
* Lyricism in mundane colloquial speech. Detached ironic commentator. Opposition to totalitarianism.
* He translated Horace and Aeschylus’s Agamemnon.

Prayer Before Birth

— Against dehumanization, becoming a cog in the machine, automaton drained of humanity.
The Poetry of WB Yeats (1941) — a critical study.
Letters with Iceland (1937). Travel book MacNeice wrote with Auden.

DAME EDITH SITWELL (1887-1964)

* British poet and critic. A poet of emotional depth emerged during WWII. Stylistic artifices. Formidable
personality, eccentric opinions and Elizabethan dressing style.
* Religious symbolism. She helped to publish poems of Wilfred Owen after his death.
* Her only novel I Live Under Black Sun (1937) is based on the life of Jonathan Swift.
* Same birthday and angular features of Elizabeth I.
* With her brothers she edited Wheels: An Annual Anthology of Modern Verse. (1916-21). She strongly
revolted against Georgian Poetry.
* Her poems include Answers, Façade, The Sleeping Beauty (1924). She analysed works of Pope which
prompted a revaluation of his works.

EZRA POUND (1885-1972)

* Ezra Weston Loomis Pound. Expatriate American poet and critic.
* His contribution to poetry began with his development of Imagism, a movement derived from
classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, stressing clarity, precision and economy of language.
* Pound worked in London as editor of several American literary magazines. He helped to discover an d edit
the works of Eliot, Joyce, Frost and Hemingway.
* Angered by the carnage of World War I, Pound lost faith in Great Britain and blamed the war on usury and
international capitalism. He moved to Italy in 1924, and throughout the 1930s and 1940s he
embraced Benito Mussolini's fascism, expressed support for Adolf Hitler, and wrote for publications owned by
the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley.
* During World War II, he was paid by the Italian government to make hundreds of radio broadcasts
attacking the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jews, as a result of which he was arrested in 1945 by
American forces in Italy on charges of treason. He spent months in detention in a U.S. military camp in Pisa,
including three weeks in a 6-by-6-foot outdoor steel cage, which he said triggered a mental breakdown:
"when the raft broke and the waters went over me". Deemed unfit to stand trial, he was incarcerated in St.
Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., for over 12 years.
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he saw a stream, the first time he saw a water body. He forgets about the calf and it wanders off. In fear of
punishment, he hides. His father thinks that he has drowned and he jumps into the stream and drowns to
death. Mohun’s prophecy fulfilled. His family falls apart, sister send away to relatives and Mohun, his brother
and mother send away to other relatives.
Dropped out of school, failed as an apprentice to a pandit, he now lives with his abusive, alcoholic
relative Bhandat. Mohun runs away, with a schoolmate starts a business of writing signs. One day he flirts
with a client’s daughter Shama and she thinks it’s a proposal for marriage. Soon, without Mohun’s liking, he
is married to Shama and becomes a member of the Tulsi household. After his marriage, Mohun moves into
Hanuman House with Shama’s relatives. Seen as a clown, he offends the other members of the family until
he is sent away to run a store on one of the family’s estates.
He makes poor decisions and gets into debt. He decides that he will make a house on his own, so that
he and his wife can have some privacy; the house is almost finished, but destroyed by a storm. 4 children. He
finally decides that he’s going to leave for Port of Spain (capital of Trinidad). There he becomes a journalist,
invites his family to stay with him. Trouble inside family as brother-in-law Seth falls out with him. Mohun
decides to build another house, it burns down after completion. They still stay at Tulsi’s house. The
household becomes chaotic as more and more people move in.
When Mohun’s son Anand starts college, Mohun becomes depressed again. He gets a new job as a
community welfare officer; it pays more money, which allows him to buy a car and increase his status in the
household. However, Mohun and his family leave the house when Mrs. Tulsi’s son Owad returns from his
studies in England. Although they’re allowed to stay, Mohun doesn’t get along with Owad and he decides,
once again, to make plans for a house of his own. One day, he’s approached by a man who wants to sell his
house. He’s excited, but, as usual, he makes a poor decision, as the house has a lot of flaws. The family is
disheartened, but they decide to work together to repair the house. Soon afterwards, he loses his job when
his department is dis-established, and he goes back to his job as a journalist. Although he’s worried about his
income because of the debt he accumulated in buying the house, the entire family works hard to support
each other. The added stress causes Mohun to have a heart attack, and he dies soon afterwards. However, he
dies knowing that he’s left behind a house that will shelter his family for generations to come.
* The book took three years to write. It felt like a career. I found that I was unwilling to re -enter the world I
had created, unwilling to expose myself again to the emotions that lay below the comedy. I became nervous of
the book. — Naipaul on writing Mr Biswas.

* Naipaul wrote his first travel book: The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies – British, French and
Dutch in the West Indies and South America.
** In 1962, Naipaul and Patricia went to India, the land of Naipaul's ancestors, where Naipaul wrote An Area
of Darkness.
* He wrote A Flag on the Island as a script for a movie (the film was never made). The main character is an
American named Frankie who affects the mannerisms of Frank Sinatra. Frankie has links to the island from
having served there during World War II. He revisits reluctantly when his ship anchors during a hurricane.
Frankie was left chastened about finding tidy solutions to the island's social problems.
* He wrote a history book The Loss of El Dorado (1969) about Venezuela and Trinidad. Spanish obsession with
El Dorado legend and the British chasing it; Sir Walter Raleigh and Francisco Miranda would become the
human faces of these stories.
** An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies. It reveals the writer totally.

The Mimic Men (1967)

* Unlike his other Caribbean novels, this is not a comic. No chronology. Ironic language.
- Protagonist, Ralph Singh, an East Indian-West Indian politician from Isabella (fictional tropical island).
Singh is in exile in London and attempting to write his political memoirs. In the aftermath of decolonisation in
1950s and 60s, Singh had shared political power with a more powerful African Caribbean politician. Memoir,
flashbacks. He abandons engagement and enterprise. These, he rationalizes later, belong only to fully made
European societies.

In a Free State (1971)

* BOOKER. The plot consists of a framing narrative and three short stories; “One out of Many,” “Tell Me Who

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opening scene, she hosts a dinner party for a group of famous women from history. As the play unfolds we
find Marlene has left her 'poor' life, and illegitimate child with her sister Joyce, in order to tread the path to
'success'. The play examines the role of women in society and what being a successful woman means. The
play’s cast involves women from age ranges 17 – 23. 3 acts.
* deals with women's losing their humanity in order to attain power in a male-dominated environment.
* All female cast. Women who achieved great stature in “man’s world” but always at a great cost. The other
half of the play, set a year in the past, focuses on Marlene's f amily, where the true cost of her "successful" life
becomes poignantly and frighteningly apparent.
* Marlene the tough career woman is portrayed as soulless, exploiting other women and suppressing her own
caring side in the cause of success. The play argues against the style of feminism that simply turns women
into new patriarchs and argues for a feminism where women's instinct to care for the weak and downtrodden
is more prominent. The play questions whether it is possible for women in society to combine a successful
career with a thriving family life.
* Pope Joan, who, disguised as a man, is said to have been pope between 854 and 856; the explorer Isabella
Bird; Dull Gret the harrower of Hell; Lady Nijo, the Japanese mistress of an emperor and later a Budd hist
nun; and Patient Griselda, the patient wife from The Clerk's Tale.
* The stories of the historical women parallel the characters in the modern -day story. For example, Bird, like
Marlene, got to where she was by leaving her sister to deal with family matters.
* Non-linear structure. In Act I, scene 1, Marlene is depicted as a successful businesswoman, and all her
guests from different ages celebrate her promotion in the 'Top Girls' employment agency. In the next scene we
jump to the present day (early 1980s) where we see Marlene at work in the surprisingly masculine world of
the female staff of the agency, in which the ladies of 'Top Girls' must be tough and insensitive in order to
compete with men. In the same act, the audience sees Angie's angry, helpless psyche and her loveless
relationship with Joyce, whom the girl hates and dreams of killing. Only in the final scene, which takes place
a year before the office scenes, does the audience hear that Marlene, not Joyce, is Angie's mother.
* All the women except Marlene discuss their dead lovers. They also recall the children that they bore and
subsequently lost. After dessert, the women sit drinking brandy, unconsciously imitating their male
counterparts.
*Angie is abrasive and argumentative with both her friend and her mother, Joyce. She and Kit fight and Angie
says she is going to kill her mother. Kit is only 12 and Angie is quite immature for her sixteen years.
* The final act takes place a year earlier in Joyce's kitchen. Marlene, Joyce and Angie share stories with each
other. Angie is very happy that her Aunt Marlene is there, since she looks up to her and thinks that she is
wonderful. It is revealed that Angie is actually Marlene's daughter, whom she abandoned to Joyce's care,
causing Joyce to lose the child she was carrying from the stress. The play ends with Angie calling for her Mum
towards Marlene. It is unclear how much Angie heard of Joyce and Marlene's argument.

* #Women and Career. Surrealist dinner party. Marlene’s promotion over her male colleague Howard Kidd.
Marlene has achieved professional success at the cost of a meaningful personal life. all the women who
attend Marlene's dinner party have transcended gender roles during their lives and have occupied positions
generally associated with men. Churchill critically examines the context of economic independence for women
during 1970s. Joyce is an antithesis to Marlene, as she got married and became a stay-at-home mom.
Neither fulfilled. leading the audience to ponder the ways in which women can strike a balance between work
and life.
* #Language and Identity. Each woman speaks in the idiom of her particular historical era, but their speeches
overlap, emphasizing their common experiences resisting patriarchy across generations.
* # Thatcherite England and Feminist Politics. Ongoing liberation movt. irony in Margaret Thatcher’s ascent to
power in the wake of feminism, since Thatcher’s policies were deeply conservative and anti-feminist. Churchill
clearly depicts the conflicting views over Thatcher in the conversation between Joyce and Marlene. Marlene is
proud that Thatcher, a woman, has become such a powerful elected official, while Joyce does not consider
Thatcher's gender in her assessment that the Prime Minister's policies are suffocating the wo rking class.
* Angie’s macabre statement: "I put on this dress to kill my mother. Surrealism.
* Churchill’s play suggests that the public-private distinction makes unjust demands upon women.
Capitalism.
* the success of the women at the Top Girls agency shows a form of empowerment, although it is qualified by
the fact that the women use their intelligence to further their individual situations rather than to critically
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