LECTURE 1

1.The Ancient Times of Britain

During the period from the 6th to the 3rd century B.C. people called the Celts spread across Europe
from the east to the west. From time to time these tribes were attacked and overcome by other Celtic
tribes from the Continent.
We know the most information about the Celts because of the written accounts that exist. The Celts
did not write down the events themselves. Other peoples who knew them described them in their books.
The Greeks were the first to mention the British Isles. The earliest writer was Julius Caesar, the famous
Roman general, statesman and writer.
In their mode of life the British Celts differed little from the Celtic tribes of the Gauls. In the 1st
century B. C. the British Celts lived in tribes and were ruled by chiefs. The chiefs were military leaders,
and they were sometimes called kings. The Celts lived only in villages, as they had no towns.
The Celts' Beliefs
The Celts worshipped Nature. They imagined the sky, the sun, the moon, the earth and the sea, to be
ruled by beings like themselves but much more powerful.
Sometimes the same pagan gods in various places were called by different names. Besides these they had
many lesser gods and the gods of one tribe were often quite unknown to the other tribes. They also
believed in many nameless spirits who lived in the rivers, lakes, mountains and thick forests. They sacrified
not only animals, but also human beings to their gods.
The Druids
The Celts believed in another life after death. They were taught by priests called druids that their souls
passed after death from one body to another. The druids lived near groves of oak-trees which were
considered to be sacred places. The druids were very important and powerful, sometimes more
powerful than the chiefs. The Celts believed in their magic power.
They believed that the druids were able to foretell the future and the druids very often acted as prophets.
The druids could give orders to begin a battle or to put down weapon and stop fighting. The druids were
also teachers and doctors for they were wiser than the other tribesmen.
2-3. The First Legends
Like all the ancient peoples the Celts made up many legends about their gods and heroes. The legends were
passed down from generation to generation. They were written down in the Middle Ages but they describe
far older times when the tribal way of life predominated among the Celts. The chroniclers and writers
translated the Celtic legends into Modern English and called them the Celtic Sagas.
The heroes of the Sagas and their adventures were imaginary. However, they give an idea of the Celts'
way of life, their occupations, tools, weapons, customs and religion. That is why Celtic mythology is a
valuable source of information about the early inhabitants of the British Isles.
The greatest hero of the Celtic heroic sagas was Cuchulainn. He was a demigod. When he was at the
zenith of his strength, no one could look him in the face without blinking, while the heat of his body
melted the snow round him. Cuchulainn was invincible in battle like Achilles, a Greak hero, and his life
was a series of wonderful exploits like the life of Heracles, another Greek hero.
4. Roman Britain
In the 1st century B. C. the Roman Empire became the strongest slave owning state in the
Mediterranean. The Romans ruled all of the civilized world. It was the last and greatest of the civilizations
of the ancient world.
The Romans were greatly interested to learn from travellers that valuable metals were to be found in
Britain. Finally, they decided to occupy the island and in the 1st century A. D. they conquered Britain.
5. The Anglo-Saxon Conquest of Britain
The Anglo-Saxons made up the bulk of the population in Britain after the conquest of the country. After
the Romans had to leave Britain the Britons were left to themselves. After that Sea robbers came sailing
in ships from other countries, and the Britons were always defended themselves. There were also some
Germanic tribes called the Angles, Saxons and Jutes who lived in the northern and central parts of
Europe. They spoke different dialects of the West Germanic language from which modern German
developed. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes quarrelled a great deal with one another in their fight for
supreme power. They nevertheless became one nation in the course of a few centuries.
6. Beowulf – the Dawn of English Literature
when the Anglo-Saxons conquered Britains, they already had letters of their own called "runes" which
they carved on stone and wood but they had no written language yet, and the stories and poems they made
up had to be memorized. These stories, poems and legends were brought by the Anglo-Saxons to Britain.
The beautiful Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf reached our days may be called the foundation-stone of all
British poetry. Beowulf tells us of the times long before the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain. There is no
mention of England. The poem compiled in the 10th century by an unknown scribe. ("Scribe" comes from
the Latin word "scribere" that means "write"). The manuscript of Beowulf is now in the British Museum
in London. It is impossible for a non-specialist to read it in the original. Its social interest lies in the vivid
description of the life of that period.
7. The Growth of Culture and Literature.
When the Anglo-Saxons conquered Britains, they already had letters of their own called "runes" which
they carved on stone and wood but they had no written language yet, and the stories and poems they made
up had to be memorized. These stories, poems and legends were brought by the Anglo-Saxons to Britain.
Since that time the growth of culture and literature has begun.
8. The Literature of the Norman Period (12 th – 13 th centuries). The Norman Conquest
In the year 1066, the Norman Duke William crossed the Channel and conquered the English in the
great battle fought at Hastings. Within five years William the Conqueror was complete master of the
whole of England. The lands of most of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy were given to the Norman barons,
and they introduced their feudal laws to compel the peasants to work for them. Yet during the following
200 years that the Normans kept coming over to England, they could not suppress the English language.
Communication went on in three languages:
l)at the monasteries, learning went on in Latin;
2)Norman-French was the language of the ruling class spoken at court and in official institutions;
3) but the common people held obstinately to their own expressive mother tongue.
Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon were moulded into one national language only towards the
beginning of the 14 century when the Hundred Years' War broke out. The language of that time is
called Middle English.
9. Types of Literature Brought by the Normans
At that time each rank of society had its own literature. During the 12th and 13th centuries monks
wrote historical chronicles in Latin. The scholars at Oxford University described their experiments in
Latin. The aristocracy wrote their poetry in Norman-French. And the country-folk made their ballads
and songs in Anglo-Saxon.
10. The Romance
During the Anglo-Norman period feudal culture was at its height. Tales in verse and lyrical poems
appeared praising the bravery and gallantry of noble knights, their heroic deeds and chivalrous attitude
towards ladies. At first they were all in Norman-French. Many of the stories came from old French
sources.
A number of romances were based on Celtic legends, especially those about King Arthur and the
knights of the Round Table. The heroes in these romances unlike the characters in the literature of the
Church were simple human beings who loved and suffered. Their worship of a fair lady becomes the
plot of the story.
In the 12th, 14th and 15th centuries there appeared a series of Arthurian legends in English: Arthur
and Merlin, Launcelot of the Lake, Perseval of Wales and others.
In the 15th century, a gentleman by the name of Sir Thomas Malory collected the romances of
King Arthur and arranged them in a series of stories. They began with the birth of Arthur and how he
became king, then related all the, adventures of King Arthur and his noble knights and ended in the
death of these knights and of Arthur himself. Malory's work was published in the year 1485 by
Caxton, the first printer at Westminster (London), under the title of Sir Thomas Malory's Book
of King Arthur and of His Nobl Knights of the Round Table.
11. The Fable and the Fabliau
In the literature of the townsfolk we find the fable and the fabliau. Fables were short stories with animals
for characters and conveying a moral. Fabliaux were funny stories about cunning humbugs and the
unfaithful wives rich merchants. Contrary to the romance the literature of the towns did not idealize their
characters. These stories show a practical attitude to life.
 12. Pre-Renaissance Period in England. The Literature of the 14 th Century. The main themes in
literature.
The protest against the Catholic Church and the growth of national feeling during the first years of the
Great War immediately found an echo in literature. There appeared poor priests who wandered from one
village to another and talked to the people. They protested not only against the rich bishops but also
against all churchmen who were ignorant men and didn’t want to teach the people anything.
One such poor priest was the poet William Langland. His name is remembered for a poem he wrote, Piers
Plowman (Piers – Peter). The poem is a dream allegory. Vice and Virtue are spoken of as if they were
human beings. Truth is a young maiden, Greed is an old witch.
The poem helped the people to concentrate their minds on the necessity to fight for their rights. Chaucer
was the writer of the new class, the bourgeoisie. He was no however a preacher of bourgeois ideology. He
was simply writer of the world, that is to say he wrote about things he saw, and described people he met.
Chaucer was the first who cleared the way to realism.
13. Geoffrey Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales, a masterpiece of Chaucer, sum up all types of stories that existed in the Middle
Ages
The Canterbury Tales are a series of stories written in verse. The framework which serves to connect
them is a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The pilgrimage was a «democratic institution», which means that rich
and poor rode side by side and stopped at the same inns. Such journeys were no doubt very valuable as a
means to break up the monotony of life in days when there were no newspapers and no printed books nor
any theatres. So the pilgrims in the Chaucer’s book agree to tell stories to shorten a tiresome four-days’
trip.
Instead of a preface Chaucer opens his work with a prologue. In the general prologue 30 men and women
from all ranks of society pass before our eyes.
LECTURE 2
Plan of the lecture:1. European Renaissance and its historical background.
The Renaissance) After «dark» Middle Ages became a time known for its art and literature-
Renaissance. The world «renaissance» means «rebirth» and was used to denote a cultural development of
Europe between the 14 th and 17 th centuries.
Historical Background
At that time the feudal system was almost replaced by the bourgeoisie. The boundaries of different
duchies and counties not allowed to trade. It was more profitable to be united under a single ruler.
So , absolute monarchy came into being, and feudal domains came under one-man power. This led to the
forming of nations.
New social and economic conditions called for a new ideology, because the Catholic dogmas did not
correspond to the new trend of life. For that reason in many European countries different varieties of the
Protestant religion sprang up and national Churches were established.
2. The Renaissance in England. 3. First Period of the Renaissance. (одне)
The wave of progress reached England only in the 16th century. Universities were lacking teachers to
spread the ideas of modern though.
English scholars traveled to Italy, where they learned to understand the ancient classics, and when they
returned home, they adopted their classical knowledge for the needs of their country.
The number of primary schools has increased. A new point of view began to spread.
The freedom of thought of English humanists was manifested in antifeudal and even antibourgeois ideas,
showing the life of their own people as it really was.
4. Thomas More – the first English humanist of the Renaissance.
Thomas More was born in London in 1478. Educated at Oxford, he could write the original classical Latin.
There he made friends with a foreign humanist the writer Erasmus of Rotterdam (Holland).
After Oxford, he became a lawyer and later, a judge. Very soon he acquaired the reputation the wittest
man of his time. During the reign of HenryVII he became a member of Parliament. (1504) After the
crowning of HenryVIII he made a rapid career as a statesman. In 1529 More was made Lord Chancellor of
England.
By that time Henry VIII decided to divorce his first wife and marry another. The Catholic religion forbids
divorce, which only the Pope of Rome could grant, but he refused it to Henry VIII. After that the king
proclaimed himself head of the Church of England. More was a devout Catholic, and opposed it.
In 1532, after Henry's second marriage, More refused to take the oath to the king, which would have
meant his recognizing Henry VIII as head of the Church of England. From the official point of view
this refusal was treason, and More was beheaded.
5. "Utopia".
He was an active-minded man and kept a keen eye on the events of his time. Thomas More wrote in
English and in Latin. The English writings of Thomas More include: Discussions on Political Subjects,
Biographies, Poetry. His style is simple, colloquial.
The work by which he is best remembered today is "Utopia" which was written in Latin in the year 1516.
This work is divided into two books. In the first the author gives a profound and truthful picture of the
people's sufferings and points out the social evils existing in England at the time. In the second book he
presents his ideal of what the future society should be like. Utopia describes a perfect social system built
on communist principles.
6. Sonnets as a verse form.
The sonnet is a verse form which was very popular during the Renaissance. It is a poem of fourteen lines
divided into two quatrains (4-line groups) and two terzets (3-line groups).
Іn a classical sonnet a thought is put forth in the first quatrain, and another, contradicting it,' in the
second; they intersect in the first terzet, and a solution is reached in the second terzet, in the last line of
the sonnet.
The author makes the last word of the last line the most significant; this word is called the key of the
sennet.
7. The second period of the Renaissance. 8. The Predecessors of Shakespeare. (одне)
The most significant period of the Renaissance in England falls to the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
Ancient literature taught the playwriters to seek new forms and to bring in new ideas. The new drama
represented real characters and real human problems. The great plays were written in verse.
The English, felt a great interest in their historical past. A result of this was the appearance of Cronicles
(1587) by Raphael Holinshed and other authors; episodes from this work form the plots of many plays
written during the next decades.
By that time the principles of Italian and French Renaissance poetry had been introduced among the writers.
Many famous poetical and prose works by ancient and contemporary authors were translated. The chief
medium of the age was verse – lyric, epic, and dramatic.
The second period of the Renaissance was characterized by the splendour of its poetry. The foremost poet of
the time was Edmund Spenser. He wrote in a new, English, form: the nine-line stanza.
9. William Shakespeare and four periods in Shakespeare's literary work.
William Shakespeare was born in 1564, in the town of Stratford-on-Avon. He was christened in Holy
Trinity Church in Stratford on April 26. In his childhood Shakespeare probably attended the Stratford
Grammar School. Married to Anne Hathaway in 1582.
The first mention of Shakespeare as dramatist was made by Francis Meres in 1598. Meres drew up a list of
Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. The sonnets appeared in a separate edition only in 1609. During the last
years of his life Shakespeare wrote less and less. He tried composing in a new manner, originated by
Beaumont and Fletcher and very fashionable at the time. But after the Globe had been destroyed by fire in
1613 during a performance of Henry VIII, he retired to Stratford and seems to have stopped writing
altogether.
Shakespeare died in 1616.
Four Periods in Shakespeare's Literary Work
The first period, dating from the beginning of his career to 1594, may be called the period of
apprenticeship. The plays of that period were written under the influence of the "University Wits". lay
written during that time, Richard ІІI, remains one of his most popular and most frequently staged works.
During the second period, from the 1594 – 95 season up to 1600, Shakespeare wrote plays belonging to
two dramatic genres: histories and comedies. The two tragedies written : Romeo and Juliet and Julius
Caesar,
During the third period of his literary career, from 1600 to 1608,Shakespeare wrote the great tragedies that
were the peak of his achievement, and made him truly immortal. The hero of any Shakespearian tragedy
perishes by reason of some trait of character that makes him either prefer some positive ideal to life, or else
makes him betray an ideal and hence, meet his doom, Author explained the evolution (or degradation) of
his heroes by the social factors that form their psychology and influence their lives. Many of Shakespeare's
great tragedies are devoted to his favourite themes:the themes of state and society, the nature of power in
general and the institution of monarchy in particular.The end of the period was also marked by the
publication of his sonnets.
The fourth period is characterized by a considerable change in the style of Shakespeare's writings.All of
them are written around a dramatic conflict, but the tension in them is not so great as in the tragedies; all of
them have happy endings.
10. Jonathan Swift – the greatest of English satirists.
Jonathan Swift was born in November 30, 1667 in Dublin, but he came from an English family.
He got his bachelor degree with difficulty in 1686. Then he became a private secretary and an account-
keeper of Sir William Temple at his estate Moor Park. Soon Swift married Hester, daughter of the
housekeeper, 14 years younger, but they lived in a separate house and concealed his marriage.
In 1702 Jonathan Swift wrote a pamphlet in defence of the Whig policy which at that time was thought
by most Englishmen to be for the good of the country.
In 1713 Swift was made Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin in Ireland he came in contact with the
common people and saw the miserable conditions in which the population lived. He continued to write
pamphlets and they made Swift so popular among the Irish people.
In 1728 his wife died after a long and weary illness. This loss affected him so deeply and there was only
one thing he was still interested in – fate of Ireland. Hard workand continuous disappointments in life
undermined Swift`s health.
He died on the 19 th of October, 1745 in Dublin.
LECTURE 3
1. The General Characteristic of the Movement
Romanticism was the leading literary movement in England for more than half a century. The romantic
revival in literature made its appearance at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. It
begins with the fall of the Bastille in 1789 in France up to the end of the 19th century.
Romanticism was a movement against the progress of bourgeois civilization.
But no one as yet knew what was to be done to achieve equality and freedom.
At that time new themes for writing arose: no longer were writers attracted to the domestic epic which
had been the chief subject of the novel. Protesting against the system that crushed human individuality,
they longed to depict strong individuals.
2. Historical Background
The Industrial Revolution, which had begun in. the middle of the 18th century, changed home
manufacturing to large-scale factory production. Mines and factories changed the face of the country.
Mechanization did not improve the life of the common people. There were the diseases of industrial
towns, the misery of child labour, the crowds of underpaid workers. The suffering of the working people
led to the first strikes, and workers took to destroying machines. Workers, who called themselves
Luddites after a certain Ned Ludd who in a fury broke two textile frames, believed that machines were the
chief cause of their sufferings. The Great French Revolution was accepted as progressive by many in
Britain, but when it involved all sections of the French population, it gave a shock to the ruling classes.
Under the influence of the Revolution the Irish peasants plotted a rebellion against English landlordism. It
broke out in 1798 but was cruelly drowned in blood.
So the belief of progressive-minded people in the ideal nature of the bourgeois system fell to pieces.
As a result, a new humanist movement, that of Romanticism, sprang up towards the close of the 18th
century.
3. Two Trends of the Movement. The Passive romanticists
The representatives of new movement were subdivided into 2 groups according to their programmes:
conservative romanticists and progressive or revolutionary romanticists. The Passive (Conservative)
Romanticists were seized with panic and an irresistible desire to get away from the present. These poets
idealized the patriarchal way of life during the Middle Ages, a period that seemed to them harmonious
and peaceful. Their motto was: "Close to Nature and from Nature to God"The poets William
Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey belonged to the group, that was called the
Lake Poets after the Lake District in the northwest of England where these poets lived.
4.The Lake Poets
The Lake Poets, who had similar tastes, formed a literary circle. During the early nineties the works
of these young poets were progressive. They criticized the existing social order, and great enthusiasm for
the French Revolution can be felt in their works of the first period.But the years of terror in France
brought a change in the outlook of the Lake Poets.
The end of the nineties was the second period in the creative work of the Lake Poets. Іn 1798
Wordsworth and Coleridge published a volume of Lyrical Ballads, in which man is depicted as a helpless
creature living at the mercy of supernatural forces. This idea is clearly expressed in the famous ballad by
Coleridge, written in the old English ballad style, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
The merit of the Lake School was that they introduced into poetry the short, straightforward,
forceful words and constructions of everyday speech. They did much to describe English nature, to show
the poor life of the villagers, they were first to start criticis of the bourgeois system in England. Also they
appreciated folklore and national art.
5.The Revolutionary Romanticists
The Revolutionary Romanticists tried to look ahead and see the future. They believed in the right
of people to active struggle for liberty. They kept an eye on all political events and sympathized with the
national liberation; movement in all oppressed countries.
The poets believed that the peoples of the world would gain freedom, and imagined that the states
of the future would be somewhat like the republics of ancient Greece and Rome. But at the same time a
certain romantic individualism and a pessimistic attitude to life can be seen in their works.
The outstanding Revolutionary Romanticists were George Gordon Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
6.Persy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)
P. B. Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets. He came of an aristocratic family, but
already in his youth he was a fighter for freedom. After finishing school, he went to Oxford, but he was
soon expelled from this University. With Thomas Jefferson Hogg in spring 1813 he wrote and circulated
a pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism. This affair caused a break with his family as his parents were
religious people.
In 1812 Shelley went to live to Ireland. Later the Shelleys settled in London. There Godwin
became his philosophical mentor.
In 1815 Shelley took a cottage on the edge of Windsor Great Park where, he wrote Alastor. The summer
of 1816 was spent with Byron at Lake Geneva. There Shelley wrote two philosophical poems, the Hymn
to Intellectual Beauty and Mont Blanc.
In 1817, he wrote An Address to the People on the Death of Princess Charlotte. In spring
1818 he left England and spent the rest of his life to Italy.
The year from summer 1819 to summer 1820 was Shelley's most creative period. He completed
the Prometheus Unbound and wrote another drama, The Cenci. News of the Peterloo massacre inspired
to write The Mask of Anarchy.
Under the impression of the Manchester tragedy Shelley wrote poem Song to the Men of England where
he expressed very clearly his social and political ideas as revolutionary romanticist. The poem calls the
English workers to prepare weapons and use it against the exploiters.
During the Pisan period he completed political document, A Philosophical View of Reform.
In winter 1821 he moved to Pisa where he translated scenes from Goethe's Faust and wrote his last
completed verse drama, Hellas, to raise money in England for the Greek war of independence.
Shelley drew no essential distinction between poetry and politics. Taken as whole, his work
represents a decidedly materialist inflection of the Romantic dream of the fusion of poetry and life.
7. George Gordon Byron and his poems “Mazeppa”, “The Giaour”
George Byron was born in London and was grown up by his mother. They lived in straitened
circumstances. At first, the boy was educated at home and later at school.
He went to Harrow in 1801 and his first poems were written while a pupil there. In 1805 Byron proceeded
to Trinity College in Cambridge.
In 1807 he published a small volume of verse Fugitive Pieces but he destroyed most printing; only four
copies have survived.
Soon after the publication of English Bards Byron came of age and took his seat in the House of Lords.
His popular poems at that time’re The Curse of Minerva, The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos,
The Corsair, Lara and Jacqueline, Hebrew Melodies. Childe Harold`s Pilgrimage made him the
most soughtaftler figure in English society.
In 1815 Byron married Annabella Milbanke. Their marriage lasted little more than a year. After the birth
of their daughter she left him and obtained a separation. The English public supported Lady Byron. So,
Byron left England and never returned.
After sailing to Switzerland Byron joined Mary and Percy Shelley. The third canto of Childe
Harold and The Prisoner of Chillon were written in 1816.
Then Byron continued to Venice. To this period belong Manfred, the fourth canto of Childe
Harold, Beppo, Mazeppa and the first cantos of Don Juan.
Then Byron moved to Ravenna in 1819. There he wrote such dramatic poems as, Marino Faliero,
Sardanapalus and The Two Foscari and became famous throughout Europe.
Byron was an adherent of the Carbonari, a militant nationalist movement and supported it with his
money. However, the Carbonari foundered and they fled to Pisa in 1821.
After moving on to Genoa, Byron resumed work on Don Juan. There he published tale The Island,
satirical poems The Age of Bronze, The Deformed Transformed.
Greek liberation, from centuries of Turkish oppression found a sympathetic response in England. The
committee asked Byron to help Greek and he turned all his energies to aiding the Greeks.
Byron worked hard and in 1824 joined the Greek leader. But in April he cought a severe chill and
died on April 1824. The Greeks wished to bury him in Athens, but only his heart stayed in Greece. His
body was returned to England but refused burial in Westminster Abbey. He was buried in the family vault
in the church.
8. Sir Walter Scott and his main works devoted to Scottish history
Scott was the creator of the historical genre in literature. The essential thing in showing history as
such in a novel is to depict personalities typical of the period and the country described. Like many
writers he too wished to record all the historical facts he knew before they were forgotten, and thus pay
tribute to the past.
The folk ballads Walter Scott had collected were the first poetic work called Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border he published. Soon after, his own romantic poems attracted the attention of the reading
public. The best were The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. But when
Byron's wonderful poems appeared, Scott took to writing novels.
In 1814 Scott published his first novel Waverley and many others novel anonymously, but finally the
secret leaked out. During the next seventeen years Scott wrote more than twenty-five novels and many
stories and tales besides.
For the sake of convenience Scott's works have been divided into three groups.
The first group of novels are those devoted to Scottish history- Rob Roy, A Legend of Montrose, The
Fair Maid of Perth.
The second group refer to English history. The best of them are Ivanhoe, The Monastery, The Fortunes
of Nigel, Woodstock.
The third group is novels based on the history of Europe: Quentin Durward, Castle Dangerous.
The novel St Ronan's Well stands in a class by itself. It is the only novel written by Scott about
his own time and shows his attitude to contemporary bourgeois society.
Scott’s novels have a single model: the story is focused on the life of lovers (usually). The hero
and the heroine striving to come together, meet a lot of problems on their way and famous historical
characters who play a decisive part in their fate. Then the author decides whether to make the end happy
or unhappy.
LECTURE 4
1.The critical realism. The First Half of the XIX th Century. Historical Background
The 19th century was characterized by sharp contradictions. In many ways it was an age of
progress: railways and steamships were built, great scientific discoveries were made, education
became more widespread; but at the same time it was an age of profound social unrest, because
there was too much poverty, and too much injustice.
Dirty factories, inhumanly long hours of work, child labor, exploitation of both men and women
workers, and low wages – these were the conditions of life for the workers in the growing industries
of England, which became the richest country in the world.
The population of the industrial centers was growing rapidly as the number of factory workers
multiplied and many rural districts rare depopulated.
2.The New Literary Trend and its Characteristic Features
The ideas of Chartism attracted the attention of many progressive-minded people of the time. Many
prominent writers became aware of the social injustices around them and tried to picture them in their
works.
The critical realists introduced new characters into literature. They expressed deep sympathy for the
working people; they described the unbearable conditions of their life and work.
The greatness of these novelists lies not only in their truthful description of contemporary life, but also in
their profound humanism.
The books of critical realism were composed contrary to romanticism:
1) Romanticism described something unusual, heroic, but critical realism – everyday life.
2) Romanticism gave its heroes some heroic lines, strength, unusual qualities. Critical realism
described ordinary people with all their feelings and weakness.
The contribution of the writers of critical realism to world literature is enormous. They created a broad
panorama of social life. The greatest novelists of the age are Charles Dickens, William Thackeray,
Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell.
3.The Last Half of the XIX th Century. Historical Background
It was in the last decades of the century that new trade unions sprang up, which workers, regardless of their
qualifications, could join. In the summer of 1889, a great dock strike broke out in London. Meanwhile,
Britain was fighting for colonial expansion and preparing for the Boer war in South Africa. The name of
Joseph Chamberlain appeared in the newspapers. With a view to getting the support of the nation for his
colonial policy, he said in his speeches that he was against individualism, he was for a united British Empire
working collectively together.
4.The Characteristic Features of the Literature
In the seventies of the 19th century most writers on social problems believed that science alone would
finally sweep away all human misery and bring civilization to all.
But during the last decades of the 19th century doubts began to arise as to the faultless nature of European
civilization. People began to see that some people were born to riches for which they had not worked,
while the majority were born to poverty from which there was no escape.
This period was characterized by a crisis in bourgeois culture. All the intellectuals hated the heartless and
hypocritical bourgeois world. The crisis of bourgeois culture was reflected in literature by the appearance
of two trends. 6.Two Trends in Literature
The representatives of the first trend (George Eliot, George Meredith, Samuel Butler, Thomas Hardy)
continued the realistic traditions of their predecessors. Though their criticism is not so sharp, but the great
merit of these novelists is a deep psychological analysis of the characters in their works.
The writers of the second trend tried to lead the reader away from life into the world of dreams and
fantasy. Disillusionment found its expression in a very pessimistic literature, the literature of the
Decadence. Decadent literature idealized the patriarchal way of life. The writers were firm in their opinion
that it was impossible to better the world and conveyed the idea that everyone must strive for his own
private happiness, and enjoy life at all costs.
The decadent writers proclaimed the theory of "pure art". Their motto was "Art for art's sake",
One of these writers, Oscar Wilde, was regarded as the leader of the English aesthetic movement, but many
of his works do not follow his decadent theory of "art for art's sake".
It was the End of the Century that created writers who were interested in human society as a whole (Shaw,
Galsworthy), and a new type of writer who was preoccupied with the future of mankind (Wells). The spirit
of the time lasted till the First World War of 1914 – 1918.
5\7. Charles (John Huffman) Dickens (1812 – 1870)
 Charles Dickens was the greatest critical realist in the 19th century. Dickens was born in a poor family at
Portsmouth. His father was a well-intentioned but irresponsible clerk in the Navy Office. In 1821 the
family moved to London. So, Charles Dickens had an unsettled childhood in London, Chatham
and, ultimately, London again. At Chatham a schoolmaster gave him particular attention.
In Great Britain Charles` father was taken to prison for debts. After his 12th birthday Dickens was put to
work where washed bottles. When his father came out of prison, Charles was sent to school. He learned
foreign languages and studied literature. Charles remained at Wellington House Academy until 1827.
At fifteen Charles became an office boy in a firm of attorneys, and then as reporter. Then as a journalist
and novel writing.
In 1829 he had fallen in love with Maria Beadnell. Her family disapproved of it and their association
ended. It provided material for later fiction.
Welcomed into George Hogarth's family, Dickens courted the eldest daughter of the household, the
pretty Catherine, and the couple were married. The same month saw the beginning of The Posthumous
Papers of the Pickwick Club. Its fourth number, introducing Sam Weller, elevated Dickens to a literary and
financial position.
In his next novels, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickelby, Dickens described the hard life for homeless
children.
8.William Thuckeray. His contribution to the World literature.
William Makepeace Thackeray is one of the greatest English realists. He was born in Calcutta, in the family of
an official. His father died when the boy was 6 y.o. After school, he studied at Cambridge University for a year and
a half.
Later, father's money ran out and William stopped studying, and decided to try himself as a journalist to earn a
living. Having inherited some money, he started two newspapers The National Standard and The Constitutional,
which soon ceased publication. Thackeray lost all his money on it.
In 1836 Thackeray married Isabella Shawe, and from this union there came three daughters. Thackeray's married
life was unhappy as his wife became ill. However, Isabella outlived her husband by many years.
Thackeray's first notable work was The Book of Snobs which deals with the upper classes and their followers in
the middle classes, whose vices the author criticizes. It is a satirical description of different circles of English
society of the century.
Vanity Fair can be called the peak of critical realism. It brought great fame to the novelist. It first appeared in
twenty-four monthly parts which Thackeray illustrated himself. In 1848 it came out as a complete book. This book
can be analyzed in three aspects: a historical novel, a novel of manners and a social novel. The author described the
English society as the fair of vanity, the quality which he could find in all Englishmen of the upper classes.
The novels of the later period The History of Pendennis (1850) and The Newcomes (1854) show the gradual
reconciliation of the author with reality.
Thackeray won great popularity by publishing his novels. In 1851 he gave public readings of his historical and
literary essays. These lectures made up his two books The English Humorists of the Eighteenth century (1851) and
The Four Georges (1854).
Thackeray's last novel Denis Duval remained unfinished, for Thackeray died in 1863.
9. Oscar Wilde
Wilde was born in Dublin, the son of Sir William Wilde and Lady Jane Francesca Wilde. He studied at
Trinity College, Dublin, and later at Magdalen College, Oxford. A brilliant classicist, he won the
Newdigate Prize in 1878 for his poem, Ravenna.
In 1884 he married and in 1888 published The Happy Prince and Other Tales, fairy-stories written for his
two sons. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) followed. In 1891 he brought out more fairy-stories. His
second play, The Duchess of Padua, came the same year; it is an uninspired tragedy in verse. But Wilde
found his true theatrical voice with Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893),
An Ideal Husband (1895) and his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
BERNARD SHAW was born in 1856 in Dublin, the capital of Ireland. As a boy he seldom saw his
parents. His father was occupied in a business which was almost bankrupt because it could not stand up
against competition, and his mother devoted all her time to musical interests.His parents made him change
schools. He educated himself by reading, and by studying foreign languages.
His first play Widower's Houses, Bernard Shaw wrote in 1885. For several years it could be neither staged
nor published. It was staged only in 1892 by the Independent Theatre in London. The play dealt with the
slums of London. It had the effect of a sharp political pamphlet.
After the First Imperialist War Shaw finished two plays which he had begun in 1912. They were Pygmalion
and Heartbreak House. The latter was written under the influence of Russian classics, Tolstoy and
Chekhov. Shaw considered both these plays among his best works.
10. John Golsworthy, Herbert Wells. The main works.
Herbert George Wells (1866 – 1946) Herbert Wells was born on September 21, 1866 in Bromley. His
mother had been a lady's maid, and his father had been a gardener, a shopkeeper, a professional player of
cricket.
While on the cricket field with his father, eight-year-old Herbert met with an accident and broke his
leg. While his leg was healing, he took to reading books and got acquainted with natural history.
During the Second World War Wells wrote against fascism. Herbert Wells devoted more than fifty years of his
life to literary work. He was the author of more than forty novels, many short stories and articles. His novels
are of three types: science fiction, realistic novels on contemporary problems and social tracts' in the form
of novels.
Science played an important part in his works, but the principal theme, even in these works is the social
problems of the day. His creative work is divided into two periods.
The first period begins in 1895 and lasts up to the outbreak of the First World War. His famous
works are: The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1897), The First
Men in the Moon (1901) and other works. The War of the Worlds is the best work written by Wells
during the first period of his literary activity.
The second period comprises works written from 1914 up to the end of World War II. His most important
works are: Russia in the Shadows (1920), The World of William Clissold (1926), Mr Blettsworthy on
Rampole Island (1928), Experiment in Autobiography (1934) and many other works. In the novels of the
second period Wells combines the criticism of society as a whole with the life of an individual. Wells lived
to be nearly 80 years old. He died on the 13 th of August, 1946.
John Galsworthy (1867 – 1933)
Born at Coombe, Surrey, and educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford in 1890. He traveled to
the Far East and he met Joseph Conrad there, and they became lifelong friends.
Galsworthy's career as a playwright began with the success of The Silver Box (produced 1906) which first
employed his favourite device of presenting parallel and contrasted families – one rich, the other poor. In all
he wrote over 31 full-length plays and a number of equally successful one-acters, many commented on
social injustices, and one of them is Justice (produced 1910). Strife (produced 1909) remains one of the
most successful English plays about the effects of a strike. The Skin Game (produced 1920) is a trenchant
commentary on jealously guarded privilege and social snobbery. His Collected plays appeared in 1929.
LECTURE 5
1) Literature of the XX th Century (The Twenties)
The period between 1917 and 1930 was a time when the crisis of the bourgeois world reached its
highest point and revolutions took place in several countries: in Russia, in Germany, and in Hungary.
The writers of this period tried to show how a new society might be built up. But many bourgeois
writers saw nothing but chaos and anarchy before them.
A symbolic method of writing had already started early in the 20th century. It was in the twenties,
that there appeared writers who refused to acknowledge reality as such. The cause of everything that
happened, – that is, what led to events – was the irrational, the unconscious, and the mystical in man.
1) The Thirties
The second period in the development of English literature of the 20th century was the decade
between 1930 and World War II.
The Hunger March of the unemployed in 1933 was the most memorable event in Britain. The unemployed
marched from Glasgow to London holding meetings in every town they passed.
In Germany Hitler came to power in 1933. In 1936 the fascist mutiny of general Franco led to the
Civil War in Spain. An International Brigade was formed, which fought side by side with the Spanish
People's Army against the common enemy – fascism.
 Many British intellectuals and workers joined the ranks of the International Brigade. Every one of
them clearly realized that the struggle against fascism in Spain was at the same time a struggle for the
freedom of their own country.
The Second World War broke out in 1939. A new generation of realist writers, among them
Richard Aldington, J. B. Priestley, A. J. Cronin, and others appear on the literary scene.
2) Post-War Literature
After World War II there appear young writers, who are ready to keep up the standard of wholesome
optimism, land mature writers, who have passed through a certain creative crisis.
In the fifties there appears a trend in literature, the followers of which were called "The Angry
'Young Men". The post-war changes had given a chance to a large number of young people to receive
higher education at universities. But unemployment had increased after the war.
There appeared works dealing with such characters, angry young men as no one was interested to
learn what their ideas on life and society were. Outstanding writers of this trend were John Wain,
Kingsley Amis, and the dramatist John Osborne.
The sixties saw a new type of literature. The criticism was revealed in the "working-class novel". It
deals with characters coming from the working class. The best-known writer of this trend is Alan Sillitoe.
3. William Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965). The novels “Theatre”, “The Moon and
Sixpence”.
William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris. His parents died when he was very little. At the age of ten
the boy was sent to England under the care of his uncle. In 1890 he went abroad and studied at the
University of Heidelberg. He became a medical student at St Thomas's hospital in London.
His experience in treating the sick gave Maugham material for his first work, Liza of Lambeth. He
become a fully qualified doctor, but he decided to devote his life to literature.
Somerset Maugham has written twenty-four plays, nineteen novels and a large number of short stories, in
addition to travel works and an autobiography.
He is primarily a short-story writer and a novelist. The most mature period of Maugham's literary career
began in 1915, when he published one of his most popular novels, Of Human Bondage.
The revolt of the individual against the accepted conventions of society is a theme in which has always
fascinated Somerset Maugham. It inspired his next novel The Moon and Sixpence. Other most prominent
works by Somerset Maugham are the novels: Cakes and Ale, Theatre and the Razor's Edge.
Maugham was strongly influenced by De Maupassant and Chekhov in his story-writing.
Maugham is equally at his best in his tragic stories and in his humorous ones. His most popular stories are
Rain, The Unconquered, Gigolo and Gigolette, The Man With the Scar, The Luncheon.
A realistic portrayal of life, keen character observation, interesting plots coupled with beautiful, expressive
language and a simple and lucid style, all place Somerset Maugham on a level with the greatest English
writers of the 20th century.
4.John Boynon Priestley. Detective stories
Priestley was born in Bradford and educated locally (after infantry service during World War I) at
Trinity Hall, Cambridge. His early publications include The Chapman of Rhymes(1918) and Brief
Diversions. Papers from Lilliput appeared in 1922, the year in which he became a journalist in London.
During the 1920s Priestley wrote several volumes of criticism, including studies of Meredith and
Peacock, and several novels.
However, it was with his novel The Good Companions (1929) that he achieved his first popular
success, a high-spirited account of three people who, at crises in their lives, join a concert party to become
"The Good Companions" troupe.
Angel Pavement (1930), a more somber tale about London life, consolidated his reputation but was
less popular.
In 1931 Priestley made his debut as a playwright, with a dramatization of The Good Companions. It
was spectacularly successful, and many other plays followed.
Dangerous Comer (1932) employed the theories of J. W. Dunne to explain such phenomena as
precognition; this and similar experiments (I Have Been Here Before, 1937; and Time and the Conways,
1937) became known as his "Time" plays.
 In 1937 Priestley became president of the London PEN club, and during World War II he was a
highly successful broadcaster. Postscripts, Britain Speaks and All England Listened are all selections of
his wartime broadcasts.
Post-war publications include novels and numerous volumes of criticism, including The Art of the
Dramatist (1957) and Literature and Western Man (1960).
In total Priestley produced over 60 books and more than 40 plays. His wide-ranging interest in England
and the English character, and his appeal to "the man in the street" have made him one of the most
popular "middlebrow" authors of the 20th century.
His autobiography is incorporated in two volumes, Martin Released (1962) and Instead of the
Trees (1911).
5. Archibald Joseph Cronin (1896 – 1981). “The Citadel”.
Archibald Joseph Cronin was born at Cardross, Scotland. He was educated at Dumbarton Academy and
then studied medicine. During the First World War, he served in the navy as a surgeon sub-lieutenant.
There followed various hospital appointments in different towns of Scotland.
In 1921 he married Agnes Mary Gibson. In 1924 he was appointed Medical Inspector of Mines and a year
later was awarded his MD (Doctor of Medicine), by the University of Glasgow, with honors.
A lot of what he experienced in South Wales appeared later on in his books, in The Citadel particular. In
1930 Cronin's health broke down, so he decided to try his hand at literature. The publication of the first
novel "The Hatter's Castle" was a resounding success. At the age of thirteen he had won a gold medal in
a nation-wide competition for the best historical essay of the year.
The next novel Stars Look Down, marks the beginning of Cronin's most mature period. The action takes
place in the North of England during World War I. The novel is considered one of the best works of
Critical Realism.
In The Citadel, as in many novels of the later period, Cronin deals with the life and work of an intellectual
(usually a medical man). He shows that the profession of a doctor is often regarded only as a means of making
money.
6. Graham Green and his works.
Graham Greene was born in Hertfordshire and educated at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College,
Oxford. He joined the staff of The Times and married in 1927.
In 1935 Greene made a journey across Liberia and on his return was appointed film critic of The
Spectator. In 1937 he was joint editor with John Marks of the short-lived periodical "Night and Day".
The following year he was commissioned to visit Mexico to report on the religious persecution there, and
during World War II he worked for the Foreign Office. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1966,
and a Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur in 1969.
A key event in Greene's life was his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1926. His first novel, The Man
Within, was a historical thriller which reflected many of the themes of pursuit, guilt, treachery and failure.
His first popular success came with Stamboul Train, another thriller with a more topical and political
flavour, and the first of a series of novels which Greene termed "entertainments". These continued with
It's a Battlefield, England Made Me, A Gun for Sale, The Confidential Agent, Loser Takes All and Our
Man in Havana.
Brighton Rock was the first explicitly Catholic novel introducing his central concept of "the appalling
strangeness of the mercy of God". This theme has also been detected in The Power and the Glory, The
Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair and The Quiet American.
His famous plays are The Living Room, The Potting Shed, The Complaisant Lover and Carving a
Statue, The Third Man.
He wrote a number of stories for children, a chapter of autobiography called A Sort of Life and Lost
Childhood, and Other Essays.
LECTURE 6
1. American literature. The beginning of nation literature in America
American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics of Indian cultures.
There was no written literature among the more than 500 different Indian languages and tribal cultures.
Оral literature is quite diverse. Narratives from quasi-nomadic hunting cultures like the Navajo are
different from stories of settled agricultural tribes such as the pueblo-dwelling Acoma; the stories of
northern lakeside dwellers such as the Ojibwa often differ radically from stories of desert tribes like the
Hopi.
Tribes maintained their own religions – worshipping gods, animals, plants, or sacred persons. Systems of
government ranged from democracies to councils of elders to theocracies.
The songs or poetry range from the sacred to the light and humorous: There are lullabies, war chants, love
songs, and special songs for children's games, various chores, magic, or dance ceremonials. Short poem-
songs given in dreams sometimes have the clear imagery and subtle mood associated with Japanese haiku
or Eastern-influenced imagistic poetry.
The first known and sustained contact between the Americas and the rest of the world, however, began
with the famous voyage of an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, funded by the Spanish rulers
Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus's journal in his "Epistola," printed in 1493, recounts the trip's drama –
the terror of the men, who feared monsters and thought they might fall off the edge of the world; how
Columbus faked the ships' logs so the men would not know how much farther they had travelled; and the
first sighting of land as they neared America.
2. William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, Michael Wigglesworth, Samuel Sewall,
Mary Rowlandson, William Byrd and their main works.
William Bradford (1590 - 1657)
William Bradford was elected governor of Plymouth in the Massachusetts Bay Colony shortly after the
Separatists landed. He was a deeply pious, self-educated man who had learned several languages,
including Hebrew. His history, Of Plymouth Plantation, is an account of the colony's beginning. His
description of the first view of America is justly famous. Bradford also recorded the first document of
colonial self-governance in the English New World, the "Mayflower Compact," drawn up while the
Pilgrims were still on board ship. The compact was a harbinger of the Declaration of Independence.
Anne Bradstreet (1612 - 1672)
The first published book of poems by an American was also the first American book to be published by a
woman -- Anne Bradstreet. The book was published in England, given the lack of printing presses in the
early years of the first American colonies. Born and educated in England, Anne Bradstreet was the
daughter of an earl's estate manager. She emigrated with her family when she was 18. Her husband
eventually became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which later grew into the great city of
Boston. She preferred her long, religious poems on conventional subjects. She often uses elaborate
conceits or extended metaphors. "To My Dear and Loving Husband" (1678) uses the oriental imagery,
love theme, and idea of comparison popular in Europe at the time, but gives these a pious meaning at the
poem's conclusion.
Edward Taylor (1644 – 1729)
Like Anne Bradstreet, and, in fact, all of New England's first writers. Edward Taylor was born in
England. The son of a yeoman farmer – an independent farmer who owned his own land – Taylor was a
teacher who sailed to New England in 1668 rather than take an oath of loyalty to the Church of England.
He studied at Harvard College, and, he knew Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Taylor never published his
poetry, which was discovered only in the 1930s.
Taylor wrote a variety of verse: funeral elegies, lyrics, a medieval "debate," and a 500-page Metrical
History of Christianity (mainly a history of martyrs). His best works, according to modern critics, are the
series of short Preparatory Meditations.
Michael Wigglesworth (1631 – 1705)
Michael Wigglesworth was an English-born, Harvard-educated Puritan minister who practiced medicine,
is the third New England colonial poet of note. He continues the Puritan themes in his best-known work,
The Day of Doom. A long narrative that often falls into doggerel, this terrifying popularization of
Calvinistic doctrine was the most popular poem of the colonial period. This first American best-seller is
an appalling portrait of damnation to hell in ballad meter.
It fused the fascination of a horror story with the authority of John Calvin. For more than two centuries,
people memorized this long, dreadful monument and quoted it.
Samuel Sewall (1652 – 1730)
Samuel Sewall's Diary, which records the years 1674 to 1729, is lively and engaging. Sewall fits the
pattern of early New England writers we have seen in Bradford and Taylor. Born in England, Sewall was
brought to the colonies at an early age. He made his home in the Boston area, where he graduated from
Harvard, and made a career of legal, administrative, and religious work.
Sewall was born late enough to see the change from the early, strict religious life of the Puritans to the
later, more worldly Yankee period of mercantile wealth in the New England colonies; his Diary, which is
often compared to Samuel Pepys's English diary of the same period, inadvertently records the transition.
Mary Rowlandson (1635 – 1678)
The earliest woman prose writer of note is Mary Rowlandson, a minister's wife who gives a clear, moving
account of her 11-week captivity by Indians during an Indian massacre in 1676. The book fanned the
flame of anti-Indian sentiment, as did John Williams's The Redeemed Captive (1707). Such writings as
women produced are usually domestic accounts. It may be argued that women's literature benefits from
its homey realism and common-sense wit; certainly works like Sarah Kemble Knight's lively Journal of a
daring solo trip in 1704 from Boston to New York and back escapes the baroque complexity of much
Puritan writing.
William Byrd (1674 – 1744)
Southern culture naturally revolved around the ideal of the gentleman. A Renaissance man equally good
at managing a farm and reading classical Greek, he had the power of a feudal lord.
William Byrd describes the gracious way of life at his plantation, Westover, in his famous letter of 1726
to his English friend Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery:
Besides the advantages of pure air, we abound in all kinds of provisions without expense. I have a large
family of my own, and my doors are open to everybody, yet I have no bills to pay, and half-a-crown will
rest undisturbed in my pockets for many moons altogether.
Byrd is best known today for his lively History of the Dividing Line, a diary of a 1729 trip of some weeks
and 960 kilometers into the interior to survey the line dividing the neighboring colonies of Virginia and
North Carolina.
4. Democratic origins and revolutionary writers.
The hard-fought American Revolution against Britain (1775–1783) was the first modern war of liberation
against a colonial power. The triumph of American independence seemed to many at the time a divine
sign that America and her people were destined for greatness. Military victory fanned nationalistic hopes
for a great new literature. Yet with the exception of outstanding political writing, few works of note
appeared during or soon after the Revolution.
Revolutionary writers, despite their genuine patriotism, were of necessity self-conscious, and they could
never find roots in their American sensibilities. Colonial writers of the revolutionary generation had been
born English, had grown to maturity as English citizens, and had cultivated English modes of thought and
English fashions in dress and behavior. Fifty years after their fame in England, English neoclassic writers
such as Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith, and Samuel
Johnson were still eagerly imitated in America.
5. The American Enlightenment.
The 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an emphasis on rationality rather
than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and representative government
in place of monarchy. Enlightenment thinkers and writers were devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty,
and equality as the natural rights of man.
6. Benjamin Franklin and his famous “Autobiography”.
Benjamin Franklin, whom the Scottish philosopher David Hume called America's "first great man of
letters," embodied the Enlightenment ideal of humane rationality. Franklin recorded his early life in his
famous Autobiography. Writer, printer, publisher, scientist, philanthropist, and diplomat, he was the
most famous and respected private figure of his time.
Franklin was a second-generation immigrant. His Puritan father, a candle-maker, came to Boston,
Massachusetts, from England in 1683. In many ways Franklin's life illustrates the impact of the
Enlightenment on a gifted individual.
Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack, begun in 1732 and published for many years, made Franklin
prosperous and well-known throughout the colonies. In this annual book of useful encouragement, advice,
and factual information, amusing characters such as old Father Abraham and Poor Richard exhort the
reader in pithy, memorable sayings. In "The Way to Wealth," which originally appeared in the Almanack,
Father Abraham, "a plain clean old Man, with white Locks," quotes Poor Richard at length. "A Word to
the Wise is enough," he says. "God helps them that help themselves." "Early to Bed, and early to rise,
makes a Man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
7. The story of “Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving.
The youngest of 11 children born to a well-to-do New York merchant family, Washington Irving became
a cultural and diplomatic ambassador to Europe, like Benjamin Franklin and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Through friends, he was able to publish his Sketch Book simultaneously in England and America,
obtaining copyrights and payment in both countries.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrye Crayon (Irving's pseudonym) contains his two best remembered stories,
"Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." "Sketch" aptly describes Irving's delicate,
elegant, yet seemingly casual style, and "crayon" suggests his ability as a colorist or creator of rich,
nuanced tones and emotional effects. In the Sketch Book, Irving transforms the Catskill Mountains along
the Hudson River north of New York City into a fabulous, magical region.
The story of "Rip Van Winkle," who slept for 20 years, waking to find the colonies had become
independent, eventually became folklore. It was adapted for the stage, went into the oral tradition, and
was gradually accepted as authentic American legend by generations of Americans.
8. James Fenimore Cooper and his novels.
James Fenimore Cooper, like Irving, evoked a sense of the past and gave it a local habitation and a name.
In Cooper, though, one finds the powerful myth of a golden age and the poignance of its loss. Personal
experience enabled Cooper to write vividly of the transformation of the wilderness and of other subjects
such as the sea and the clash of peoples from different cultures. The son of a Quaker family, he grew up
on his father's remote estate at Otsego Lakein central New York State. Although this area was relatively
peaceful during Cooper's boyhood, it had once been the scene of an Indian massacre.
Natty Bumppo, Cooper's renowned literary character, embodies his vision of the frontiersman as a
gentleman, a Jeffersonian "natural aristocrat." Early in 1823, in The Pioneers, Cooper had begun to
discover Bumppo. He is the idealized, upright individualist who is better than the society he protects.
Poor and isolated, yet pure, he is a touchstone for ethical values and prefigures Herman Melville's Billy
Budd and Mark Twain's Huck Finn.
Cooper's novels reveal a deep tension between the lone individual and society, nature and culture,
spirituality and organized religion. In Cooper, the natural world and the Indian are fundamentally good –
as is the highly civilized realm associated with his most cultured characters.
LECTURE 7 1.The Romantic Period
The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England, France, and
beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some 20 years after William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing Lyrical Ballads. In America as in
Europe, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles. Yet there was an important difference:
Romanticism in America coincided with the period of national expansion and the discovery of a
distinctive American voice.
3.Herman Melville (1819 – 1891) and his masterpiece “Moby-Dick or the Whale”.
Herman Melville was a descendant of an old, wealthy family that fell abruptly into poverty upon the
death of the father. Despite his patrician upbringing, proud family traditions, and hard work, Melville
found himself in poverty with no college education. At 19 he went to sea. His interest in sailors' lives
grew naturally out of his own experiences, and most of his early novels grew out of his voyages. His first
book, Typee, was based on his time spent among the supposedly cannibalistic but hospitable tribe of the
Taipis. The book praises the islanders and their natural, harmonious life, and criticizes the Christian
missionaries.
Moby-Dick; or The Whale, Melville's masterpiece, is the epic story of the whaling ship Pequod and its
"ungodly, god-like man," Captain Ahab, whose obsessive quest for the white whale Moby-Dick leads the
ship and its men to destruction. This work, a realistic adventure novel, contains a series of meditations on
the human condition. Whaling, throughout the book, is a grand metaphor for the pursuit of knowledge.
Realistic catalogues and descriptions of whales and the whaling industry punctuate the book, but these
carry symbolic connotations.
4.Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)– the inventor of detective fiction and his main works.
Edgar Allan Poe, a southerner, has a dark metaphysical vision mixed with elements of realism, parody,
and burlesque. He refined the short story genre and invented detective fiction. Many of his stories
prefigure the genres of science fiction, horror, and fantasy.
Po lived a short and tragic life. Poe was orphaned at an early age. In 1835, he married his
cousin Virginia Clemm, who was not yet 14.
His writing is often exotic. His stories and poems are populated with introspective aristocrats. Themes of
death-in-life, especially being buried alive or returning like a vampire from the grave, appear in many of
his works, including "The Premature Burial," "Ligeia," "The Cask of Amontillado," and "The Fall of
the House of Usher."
Poe's verse was very musical and strictly metrical. His best-known poem is "The Raven" (1845). In this
eerie poem, the narrator, who has been mourning the death of his "lost Lenore" at midnight, is visited by a
raven who perches above his door and repeats the poem's refrain, "nevermore." The poem ends in a
frozen scene of death-in-life.
Poe's stories such as "The Raven"have been described as tales of horror. Stories like
"The Gold Bug" and "The Purloined Letter" are tales of ratiocination, or reasoning. All of these stories
reveal Poe's fascination with the mind and the unsettling scientific knowledge.
5.The most popular American book of the XIX century “Uncle Tom`s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly”
by Harriet Beecher Stowe(1811 - 1896).
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly was the most popular
American book of the 19th century. First published serially in the National Era magazine (1851–1852), it
was an immediate success. Forty different publishers printed it in England alone, and it was quickly
translated into 20 languages. Its appeal for an end to slavery in the United States inflamed the debate that,
within a decade, led to the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865).
Reasons for the success of Uncle Tom's Cabin are obvious. It reflected the idea that slavery in the United
States, the nation that purportedly embodied democracy and equality for all, was an injustice.
Stowe herself was a perfect representative of old New England Puritan stock. Her father, brother, and
husband all were well-known, learned Protestant clergymen and reformers. Stowe conceived the idea of
the novel – in a vision of an old slave being beaten – as she participated in a church service. Later, she
said that the novel was inspired and "written by God." Her motive was the religious passion to reform life
by making it more godly.
LECTURE 8
American literature in the second half of the XIX th century
The U.S. Civil War (1861 – 1865) between the industrial North and the agricultural, slave-owning South
was a watershed in American history. Before the war, idealists championed human rights; after the war,
Americans increasingly idealized progress.
The constant influx of immigrants provided an endless supply of inexpensive labor as well. Over 23
million foreigners flowed into the United States between 1860 and 1910. From 1860 to 1914, the United
States was transformed from a small, young, agricultural ex-colony to a huge, modern, industrial nation.
A debtor nation in 1860, by 1914 it had become the world's wealthiest state, with a population that had
more than doubled, rising from 31 million in 1860 to 76 million in 1900. By World War I, the United
States had become a major world power.
As industrialization grew, so did alienation. Characteristic American novels of the period Stephen Crane's
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Jack London's Martin Eden, and later Theodore Dreiser's An American
Tragedy depict the damage of economic forces and alienation on the weak or vulnerable individual.
Survivors, like Twain's Huck Finn, Humphrey Vanderveyden in London's The Sea-Wolf, and Dreiser's
opportunistic Sister Carrie, endure through inner strength involving kindness, flexibility, and, above all,
individuality.
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835 – 1910)
Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, grew up in the Mississippi River frontier
town of Hannibal, Missouri. Twain's masterpiece, which appeared in 1884, is set in the Mississippi River
village of St. Petersburg. The son of an alcoholic bum, Huck has just been adopted by a respectable
family when his father threatens to kill him. Fearing for his life, Huck escapes. He is joined in his escape
by the slave Jim, whose owner, Miss Watson, is thinking of selling him to the harsher slavery. Huck and
Jim float on a raft down the majestic Mississippi. They go through many comical and dangerous shore
adventures. In the end, it is discovered that Miss Watson had already freed Jim, and a respectable family
is taking care of the wild boy Huck. But Huck grows impatient with civilized society and plans to escape.
The ending gives the reader the counter-version of the classic American success myth: the open road
leading to the pristine wilderness, away from the morally corrupting influences of "civilization."
In Life on the Mississippi, Twain recalls his training as a young steamboat pilot when he writes: "I went
to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the eluding and ungraspable objects that ever I tried
to get mind or hands-on, that was the chief."
Jack London (1876 – 1916)
A poor, self-taught worker from California, the naturalist Jack London was catapulted from poverty to
fame by his first collection of stories, The Son of the Wolf (1900), set largely in the Klondike region of
Alaska and the Canadian Yukon. Other of his best-sellers, including The Call of the Wild (1903) and The
Sea-Wolf (1904) made him the highest-paid writer in the United States.
The autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1909) depicts the inner stresses of the American dream as
London experienced them during his meteoric rise from obscure poverty to wealth and fame. Eden, an
impoverished but intelligent and hardworking sailor, is determined to become a writer. Eventually, his
writing makes him rich and well-known, but Eden realizes that the woman he loves cares only for his
money and fame. His despair over her inability to love causes him to lose faith in human nature.
He also suffers from class alienation, for he no longer belongs to the working class. He sails for the South
Pacific and commits suicide by jumping into the sea. Like many of the best novels of its time, Martin
Eden is an unsuccess story. It looks ahead to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby in its revelation of
despair amid great wealth.
Theodore Dreiser (1871 – 1945)
The 1925 work An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, explores the dangers of the American dream.
The novel relates, in detail, the life of Clyde Griffiths, a boy of weak will and little self-awareness. He
grows up in great poverty in a family of wandering evangelists but dreams of wealth and the love of
beautiful women. A rich uncle employs him in his factory. When his girlfriend Roberta becomes
pregnant, she demands that he marry her. Meanwhile, Clyde has fallen in love with a wealthy society girl
who represents success, money, and social acceptance. Clyde carefully plans to drown Roberta on a boat
trip, but at the last minute he begins to change his mind; however, she accidentally falls out of the boat.
Clyde does not save her, and she drowns. As Clyde is brought to justice, Dreiser replays his story in
reverse.
Despite his awkward style, Dreiser, in An American Tragedy, displays crushing authority. Its precise
details build up an overwhelming sense of tragic inevitability. The novel is a scathing portrait of the
American success myth gone sour, but it is also a universal story about the stresses of urbanization,
modernization, and alienation. Within it roam the romantic and dangerous fantasies of the dispossessed.
LECTURE 9
1. American literature of the XX th century. Modernism and Experimentation: 1914 – 1945
Many historians have characterized the period between the two world wars as the United States' traumatic
"coming of age," despite the fact that U.S. involvement was relatively brief (1917–1918) and its casualties
many fewer. John Dos Passos expressed America's postwar disillusionment in the novel Three Soldiers
(1921), when he noted that civilization was a "vast edifice of sham, and the war, instead of its crumbling,
was its fullest and most ultimate expression." Shocked and permanently changed, Americans returned to
their homeland but could never regain their innocence.
Numerous novels, notably Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Fitzgerald's This Side of
Paradise (1920), evoke the disappointment of the lost generation. In T.S. Eliot's long poem The Waste
Land (1922), Western civilization is symbolized by a bleak desert in desperate need of rain (spiritual
renewal).
2. Modernism. Peculiarities of the method of writing
The large cultural wave of Modernism, which gradually emerged in Europe and the United States in the
early years of the 20th century, expressed a sense of modern life through art as a sharp break from the
past. Modern life was radically different from traditional life – more scientific, faster, more technological,
and more mechanized. Modernism embraced these changes.
Henry James, William Faulkner, and many other American writers experimented with fictional points of
view (some are still doing so). James often restricted the information in the novel to what a single
character would have known. Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury (1929) breaks up the narrative
into four sections, each giving the viewpoint of a different character.
To analyze such modernist novels and poetry, a school of "new criticism" arose in the United States, with
a new critical vocabulary. New critics hunted the "epiphany" (moment in which a character suddenly sees
the transcendent truth of a situation); they "examined" and "clarified" a work, hoping to "shed light" upon
it through their "insights."
3. T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a well-to-do family. He received the best
education of any major American writer of his generation at Harvard College, the Sorbonne, and Merton
College of Oxford University. He studied Sanskrit and Oriental philosophy, which influenced his poetry.
Like his friend Pound, he went to England early and became a towering figure in the literary world there.
His modernist poetry had a revolutionary impact. He also wrote influential essays and dramas and
championed the importance of literary and social traditions for the modern poet.
Poems such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred "Prufrock" (1915) embody this approach when the
ineffectual, elderly Prufrock thinks to himself that he has "measured out his life in coffee spoons," using
coffee spoons to reflect a humdrum existence and a wasted lifetime.
The famous beginning of Eliot's "Prufrock" invites the reader into tawdry alleys that, like modern life,
offer no answers to the questions of life
4. Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)
Robert Lee Frost was born in California but raised on a farm in the northeastern United States until the
age of 10. Like Eliot and Pound, he went to England, attracted by new movements in poetry there. A
charismatic public reader, he was renowned for his tours. He read an original work at the inauguration of
President John F. Kennedy in 1961 that helped spark a national interest in poetry. His popularity is easy
to explain: He wrote of traditional farm life, appealing to a nostalgia for the old ways. His subjects are
universal – apple picking, stone walls, fences, country roads. Frost's approach was lucid and accessible:
He rarely employed pedantic allusions or ellipses. His frequent use of rhyme also appealed to the general
audience.
Frost's work is often deceptively simple. Many poems suggest a deeper meaning. For example, a quiet
snowy evening by an almost hypnotic rhyme scheme may suggest the not entirely unwelcome approach
of death. From: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1923)
5. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940)
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald's life resembles a fairy tale. During World War I, he enlisted in the U.S.
Army and fell in love with a beautiful girl, Zelda Sayre, who lived near where he was stationed. Zelda
broke off their engagement because he was relatively poor. At the war's end, he went to seek his literary
fortune in New York City in order to marry her.
His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920), became a best-seller, and at 24 they married. Neither of
them was able to withstand the stresses of success, and they squandered their money. They moved to
France to economize in 1924 and returned seven years later. Zelda became mentally unstable; Fitzgerald
became an alcoholic and died young as a movie screenwriter.
His novel The Great Gatsby (1925), was brilliantly written, the story is about the American dream of the
self-made man. The protagonist, the mysterious Jay Gatsby, discovers the devastating cost of success and
love. Other fine works include Tender Is the Night (1934), about a young psychiatrist whose life is
doomed by his marriage to an unstable woman, and some stories in the collections Flappers and
Philosophers (1920), Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), and All the Sad Young Men (1926). More than any
other writer, Fitzgerald captured the glittering, desperate life of the 1920s.
6. Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)
Few writers have lived as colorfully as Ernest Hemingway, whose career could have come out of one his
adventurous novels. Hemingway was born in Illinois.
After his novel The Sun Also Rises (1926) brought him fame, he covered the Spanish Civil War, World
War II, and the fighting in China in the 1940s. On a safari in Africa, he was badly injured when his small
plane crashed; still, he continued to enjoy activities that inspired some of his best work. The Old Man and
the Sea (1952), a short poetic novel about a poor, old fisherman who heroically catches a huge fish
devoured by sharks, won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1953; the next year he received the Nobel Prize.
Discouraged by a troubled family background, illness, and the belief that he was losing his gift for
writing, Hemingway shot himself to death in 1961. Hemingway is arguably the most popular American
novelist of this century.
His hallmark is a clean style devoid of unnecessary words. Hemingway's fine ear for dialogue and exact
description shows in his excellent short stories, such as "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Short
Happy Life of Francis Macomber." His best novels include The Sun Also Rises, about the demoralized
life of expatriates after World War I; A Farewell to Arms, about the tragic love affair of an American
soldier and an English nurse during the war; For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), set during the Spanish Civil
War; and The Old Man and the Sea.
7. Vladimir Nabokov (1889 – 1977)
Vladimir Nabokov was an Eastern European immigrant. Born into an affluent family in Russia, he came
to the United States in 1940 and gained U.S. citizenship five years later. From 1948 to 1959, he taught
literature at Cornell University in upstate New York; in 1960 he moved permanently to Switzerland.
Nabokov is best known for his novels, which include the autobiographical Pnin (1957), about an
ineffectual Russian emigré professor, and Lolita (U.S. edition, 1958), about an educated, middle-aged
European who becomes infatuated with a 12-year-old American girl.
Nabokov was aware of his role as a mediator between the Russian and American literary worlds; he wrote
a book on Gogol and translated Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. His daring plots helped introduce 20th-century
European currents into the essential realist American fictional tradition. Nabokov's tone, partly satirical
and partly nostalgic, also suggested a new seriocomic emotional register made use of by writers such as
Thomas Pynchon, who combines the opposing notes of wit and fear.