700 – 1066 = Anglo-Saxon/Old English (Norman concress)

1066 – 1350 = Early Middle English

1350 – 1485 = Later Middle English (Ascent of Tudors to the throne)
I. Old and Middle English (700 – 1485)
- 5th century tribes of Saxons, Angles and Jutes - Germanic tongue now called Old English
- words from Latin
- Scandinavian vocabulary
- the influence of French From 1066 - changed the language system and vocab)

Four important points to be made beforehand about the literature of this period:
1. relatively small quantities of English verse and prose actually produced during these centuries
2. the literary efforts were by no means confined to the English language
3. the amount of lost literature can never be determined or estimated: the age of manuscript
(monastic centres) × the age of print
4. the tradition of the English literature actually begins with Geoffrey Chaucer
Why? 1) small population (2-3 million), 2) illiterate inhibitants, 3) Big amount of lost literature (they weren't previously printed
and were only kept as manuscript, 4) Until after 1350,many dialects were spoken and there was no unity (wessex was the most well-spread)

- scholar and monk the Venerable Bede (probably 673-735), The Ecclesiastical History of the English
People (Historica ecclesiastica gentis Anglonum), written in Latin
- invented the character of a poet called Caedmon (who is said to die around 700), an illiterate
wrote history mixed with fiction/hopes/legends -
shepherd who was given the gift of composing poetry by God Poet Caedmon is fiction

- most famous poem is Caedmon’s Hymn, often considered Bede’s death song.

- religious epics based on the Old Testament written by anonymous authors: Genesis (round 700) and
Exodus (early 8th century)
- Other 8th and 9th-century Christian poems: Caedmon’s followers. One such poet is known by name –
Cynewulf (round the year 800), the first English poet who signed his works Bede only created a fictional poet Caedmon,
and didn't put his name)
- his most famous poem is called Elene
- works of other members of Cynewulf’s school: The Phoenix, The Panther or The Wale.

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 Old English Poetry
Only little evidence of English poetry from the period before the Conquest. The four major poetic
codices of this period all date around the year 1000:
beowulf
1 - the Beowulf manuscript the dream of the rood
2 - the Bodleian manuscript of biblical poems (including Genesis and Exodus) genesis/exodus
Exeter: the seafarer
3 - the Vercelli manuscript which contains The Dream of the Rood
4 - the Exeter manuscript which includes the so-called ‘elegies’ and the riddles
The most representative examples of Anglo-Saxon poetry: Beowulf, The Seafarer and The Dream of
the Rood.

Beowulf Performed by Scops (songsters)

Elizabeth to thethe
financed king, basically people
expeditions who learned
as a private investor,the
asunwritten poem by heart
to earn something

- time of origin still a matter of controversy: 700-1000

- heroic epic
- combination of Christian and pagan elements Christian ones could've been added by the monks,
though there is no evidence
- some incidental stories which belong to the world of ancient Germanic legends
- set in the Baltic kingdoms of Denmark, Geatland and Sweden (pagan customs going back to pre-
Christian times)
- the image of a Christian poet, perhaps a monk (Christian and biblical motifs and allusions)
kennings = because of the length of the poem, whey use kennings - metaphores, that stood for something (nicknames)

The Seafarer 1st person narration

- the Exeter manuscript contains, among others, six poems which are sometimes classified as elegies:
The Wife’s Lament, The Husband’s Message, Wulf and Eardwacer, the two best-known The Wanderer
and The Seafarer, and TheRuin
- The Seafarer a direct first-person account of the hardships of life at sea.
- ambiguous or even paradoxical speaker’s attitude: the sea life is presented as bitter and terrible, full
of hardship, labour and sorrow, yet as the poem progresses, sea-life is contrasted with land-life,
glorifies the difficulties of the former at the expense of the easy and dubious pleasures of the latter
- religious turn: land × heaven opposition
the seaman describes the terrors of sea-life, then lives on the land and realises that it's horrible, so he is then
happy with living in the sea

The Dream of the Rood

- masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon religious poetry
- does not describe the biblical event itself, but a vision or dream of the Crucifixion
- the functions of both symbol and narrator are performed by the rood, Christ’s Cross
- the paradox of a death which is also a victory
- appeal in the 1st person narration: the dreamer/reader can also hope to participate in that victory

A sinner falls asleep and has a dream about a beautiful tree, that talks (I was an ordinary tree, now I'm majestic -
because the tree was picked for Jesus Christ (The cross was supposed to be made from it)) - an ad for Christianity basically)

-2-
 Old and Middle English Prose
- developed in the late 9th century, strong influence of Latin
- most significant figure - King Alfred the Great (reigned 871-899)

- not as original as poetry, its main aim was to teach and instruct (translations)
- translated Pope’s religious reference book Pastoral Care (Cura Pastoralis), inspired other
translations (Ecclesiastical History with Caedmon’s Hymn or The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)
- the best Anglo-Saxon prose produced a century later in the age of the Monastic Revival or
Benedictine Reform → religious genres like homilies, sermons, legends and translations from the
Bible
- two greatest representatives - Benedictine monks
1 Wulfstan (died 1023), the bishop of London, later archbishop of York best known for his sermons

(Sermon to the English)

2 Aelfric (about 955-1020), a propagator of the orthodox Christian faith and learning to English readers:

two books of homilies (Catholic Homilies) and a set of Lives of Saints.

Middle English Poetry and Religious Prose

- after the Norman Conquest in 1066, English writings were excluded from the main centres of power
and patronage → English poetry and prose - the margins of society
- new official language Norman French (secular administration) + Latin (church affairs)
- Domesday Book (1086) "The doomsday book" - a summary of what the English lost to the French
- obviously not really popular
- the contact with the Normans – increase in vocabulary of the old English → the period between
1150-1350 = Early Middle English

- first important and serious poetic attempt: a chronicle in verse Brut – a national epic about mythical
Britain written around 1200 by priest Layamon

-3-
 - direct model French chivalry chronicle in verse Roman de Brut (1155)
- not a mere imitation - 16.000 alliterative verses, combination of many Old English legends and
myths, the true hero is King Arthur
- mixes the Anglo-Saxon traditions with new French influences of the court novel
- another secular poem composed around 1200: The Owl and the Nightingale, an animal story which
belongs to the genre of debate or ‘conflictus’, much practised by medieval Latin poets
- the two birds agree only in admiring the man who is to judge between them, Nicholas of Guildford
→ it is in fact one of the first comic poems in English

- the most popular genre at the French Court = court or chivalry novels. chivalry romances - knights

- in England produced mostly in Anglo-Norman or English (for poorer people), called metrical
romances
- the most famous ones: King Horn (1st half of 13th c.) and The Lay of Havelok the Dane (2nd half of
13th c.) all about battles/wars

- religious prose – John Wycliff (after 1320- 1384), master at Oxford University

he saw the faults in dogmas and the fault os christianity,

so he formed a group of Poor Priests

- formed a group of so-called Poor Priests, reformers later also known as Lollards who spread his
teaching by personal example among ordinary people
- wrote sermons and other religious writings addressing common people in their straightforward style
- most important work is The Wycliffite Bible (finished around 1382), an extremely accurate
translation from the Latin original created with help of his students
He believed that english is a good enough language for religion teaching. He translated (along with students) the Bible to English and
it was his way of saying that english is good enough a language

Edward III (1327 - 77) - the turn away from french and widespread of english-written literature (increase in literacy)
Richard II (1377-99)

Alliterative Revival They were trying to revive the english poetry from before the concess (no rhyme at the end of the line,
but same letters at the beginning?) - alliteration
- the body of mainly unrhymed alliterative verse (the North and West of England, 1350 to early 15th
century), caused by two quite general developments:
- the accelerating decline of French in the England of Edward III
- the continuing increase in literacy; development towards almost the mass production of
manuscript copies. Edward III (1327 - 77) - the turn away from french and widespread of english-written literature (increase in literacy)

people could read and write, so the books had to be mass-produced

-4-
 - religious satirical allegory The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman (kept in three version from around
1370, 80 and 90), still mysterious authorship, the most probable author William Langland (around
1332-1400)

William Langland dreaming Piers Plowman

- full of elements of religious and social criticism expressed through symbols: Truth (God), Evil,
Mother Church, Love, Corruption, etc.
active deed, contemplation, restoration
- divided into three parts: Dowell, Dobet and Dobest Well, better, best life

- Pier embodies a plowman, peasant, religious leader, perfect priest, and even Christ himself

- the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (around 1370) – different idea: the world of pure fantasy,
based exclusively on the chivalrous code of honour, courage and modesty
- it belongs rather to the Arthurian writing of the Round Table
- skillful composition, good characteristics of the hero, a great description of the settings (e.g. King
Arthur’s court)
- the Gawain-poet = one of the most brilliant representatives of the generation of English poets called
‘Ricardian’ (his chief contemporaries - Gower, Langland and Chaucer)
Pearl - contains some rhymes
- the poem Pearl (around 1370), written probably by the same unknown Gawain-author idea of salvation and life after death

- 101 regular 12-verse stanzas organized in twenty groups, the alliteration accompanied by rhymes
- a dream-poem that describes how the narrator, in his other-worldly vision, encounters a damsel who,
like Beatrice in Dante’s Divine Comedy, sets out to explain the mysteries of Paradise
- the dialogue between rich in the comedy of pathos and human incomprehension
- the Gawain-poet’s authorship also attributed to Cleanness and Patience.

Pearl and Sir Gawain might have (and probably were) written by the same poet

-5-
Geoffrey Chaucer (after 1340-1400)
- a son of a prosperous London wine merchant
- served as a page at the Royal Court and later as a soldier in France (1359-60)
- not a professional poet (the king’s gentleman, diplomat, Controller of Customs in the Port of
London, Justice of the Peace for Kent, member of Parliament, Clerk of the King’s Works)
- died in 1400, buried in Westminster Abbey (Poets’ Corner)

the king himself sent money for Geoffrey to be let out of

100 yrs war (the most money was still paid by his father though)

courtly french poetry - written soon after the deat of Blanche -

offers consolation for the king who lost his duchess
- earliest major poem - a dreamy elegy The Book of the Duchess (1368); based on the dreamer-narrator
- his true poetic inspiration in Italy – Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca,
1304–1374). And Boccaccio
- influence of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Chaucer’s next dream-poem, The House of Fame
- main poems of his middle period: The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde, and The Legend of
The parliament of fowls (again a dream poem - about dream)
Good Women. královská strofa - rýmy
in 7 lines, ryhmed at the end of the lines - jambic rhyme

- The Parliament of Fowls (early 1380s): rhyme royal: 7-verse stanzas with regular rhyme pattern a-
b-a-b-b-c-c, antithesis of the opening, anticlimax of the final couplet
- having read Cicero’s book on sexual love as a lawless and selfish passion, the poet falls asleep and
dreams of wandering further into the garden of love. There he comes across the goddess Nature
presiding over the assembly at which, every St Valentine’s Day, birds choose their mates
- the complexity of the poem: the ideas of courtship × realistic view of life (humour and light irony)

- the rhyme royal developed in Chaucer best finished poem Troilus and Criseyde (1385 or after), a
well-known story of unhappy love on the background of the Troy War, already used and thus inspired
Criseyda is a widow, Troilus falls in love with her, Criselde is toying with him but then she falls in love
by Boccaccio with another and gives him Toilus's gifts

- the narrator is a bookish reader who is retelling, for the benefit of modern lovers
- the comic character of Pandarus (Criseyde’s jovial uncle and the lovers’ go-between, yet only when
he realizes that Criseyde betrayed Troilus with the Greek beauty Diomedes he calls for revenge and
death upon her)

-6-
 - the richest but also most equivocal character (especially for women readers) = Criseyde
- Chaucer’s narrator is free of any religious moralizing or courtly-chivalrous idealizing
- the humorous, ironic attitude can be seen in the character of Troilus
- it seems that the women readers of Troilus and Criseyde were probably offended → Chaucer’s next
poem, The Legend of Good Women (after 1385) = an act of reparation for this and other offences
an appology to women for Ciselde
against their sex. written in Heroic couplet - rhymes in 2 lines and the lines are in jambig pentameter
Heroic legends about women who died for love
- Chaucer completed only nine of these legends
- important novelty for the development of English poetics – they are written in heroic couplet later
used in the best Canterbury Tales

- Chaucer began The Canterbury Tales in about 1387 and probably continued to work on it until the
end of his life. The original plan: some thirty pilgrims to the shrine of St Thomas Becket in Canterbury
meet at Tabard Inn (South London), each to tell two tales on the road to Canterbury and two on the
way back to London (only twenty-four of them were found)
- inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron
- a great variety of tellers giving various stories in various genres and verse forms
- the company provides a panorama of the medieval hierarchical society
stories from their way to Cantebury - all in movement
Dekameron has a similar storyline - they also travel,
they also tell stories

But people in Dekameron, they all know each other

and tell stories on the same topics, whereas in The
Centerbury Tales, there is quite a variety

Chaucer as a pilgrim

- the best and most vital part of the book is the General Prologue in which the characters are
introduced – from aristocracy, clergy, energetic middle class, learned men, craftsmen, up to various,
often dubious, individuals
- ironic narrative device - a kind-hearted naïve narrator and the inn-keeper, the initiator of the plan
⇒ the tales - a skillful combination of narrative genres, secular and religious, high and low: a courtly
middle class, craftsman, aristocrats - all social classes except the lowest and the highest
romance, comic tale or fabliau, moralizing fairy-tale, or exemplum
- Chaucer as the narrator treats himself ironically too
Knight goes first - he's the highest ranking. He tells a chivalry romantic story which is very boring, and so the miller goes after him and tells an provocative erotic story (Fabliaux)

-7-
 - there is a lot of Chaucer in his poetry - all the first person narrators speak of what they have dreamt,
read or seen in a manner the reader soon learns to recognize as characteristic (bookish, decent,
innocent, inexperienced)
→ he can therefore only report ‘faithfully’ what he observes, reads and dreams + since his stories are
not of his own making, they are not often to his taste
Chaucer - the father of modern english literature (he standardised the literary English and replaced the free rhyme by jambic rhyme - structure)

- Chaucer’s influence formed all the following English poetry

his followers - often their only merit = promoting Chaucer’s rhyme system against the old alliterative principle
(sometimes called the ‘rhyming school’). The most significant of these was the courtly poet John
Gower (about 1330-1408) whom Chaucer called ‘moral Gower’. His best work is the English
Confessio Amantis or Lover’s Confession (completed 1390), a 33.000-line-long compilation of 113
mostly moral stories (exempla) in octosyllabic couplets skillfully retold from familiar sources.

After Chaucer there was almost no poetry, since he was a literal genius and that is often the case

The Fifteenth Century

- chief poets of the first generation of ‘courtly makers’: Thomas Hoccleve (around 1366-1426) and
they worked fof the king, they had 1 thing in common - they addressed
John Lydgate (around 1370-1449) all their works to the king and they both admired Chauces
Lydgate - historical topics, long books, quite boring
Hoccleve - provocative, suggestive books
- Lydgate was a Benedictine monk, a moralizing author often closer to Gower than to Chaucer; his
main works: Troy Book (1412-20), The Siege of Thebes (1420-22), The Fall of Princess (1431-38)
- Hoccleve was a civil servant who paid a great homage to Chaucer by calling him ‘the first founder of
English language’. Compared to ‘moral’ Gower, Hoccleve is rather ‘immoral’, e.g. in the poem La
Male Regle (A Bad Example, around 1405).

- Scottish poets, sometimes called ‘Scottish Chaucerians’

- King James I of Scotland (1394-1437): courtly lyrics. His best work - allegoric lyric poem The
inspired by chaucer
Kingis Quair (King’s Book, about 1423)
- Robert Henryson (around 1430-1508): The Testament of Cresseid inspired by chaucer and by latin

- William Dunbar (around 1460-1520) - a priest who raised Scottish poetry to such degree that he is
considered the most significant Scottish poet before Robert Burns; great range of his poetry - religious
and liturgical poems, moral pieces, allegories of love and state ceremony, comic poems, and poems of
abuse and insult. His most famous poem = satirical Lament for the Makers (1508)
ellegy for dead writers (Chaucer, Gower, Henryson) and getting ready for own death
Dynbar - priest, considered the best scottish poet before Robert Bernt/Burnt
rich in themes and genres - even satirical

drama before shakespeare almost always a part of church service, not outside
set on bible. They kater moved to the stairs of churches and then to markets, but stil
- one more genre flourished during this period – folk drama: overall religious - Passions (Pašije), Miracles (příběhy svatých)

- from the 13th century religious plays – mysteries and miracles

=Cechy
- in the 14th century cities became centres of new dramatic boom: trade guilds organised into cycles

-8-
 Lessons from religion (fight between good and evil) - not strictly based on bible,
but rather the lesson - what is evil temtation and what is good
- beginning of the 15th century - new genre: moralities, dramatized religious allegories. The
first preserved English morality was The Castle of Perseverence (around 1425), the best one is
Everyman (around 1500).
Everyman is about to die and god informs him thta he will. He wants somebody to die with him,
but naturally nobody wants that, so he realises that the only thing that dies with him are his
good deeds - you die with what you give, not receive

II. The Renaissance Period

Historical and Cultural Background

Transition from the Medieval period to the Renaissance

a series of civil wars called the Wars of the Roses (1455-85) - the Tudor dynasty
the Reformation and the consequent elimination of the power of the Catholic Church: because of henry viii
- rituals like confession, penance, and the notorious indulgences
- the clergy were important people in society
- the church was a rich and powerful institution
- in 1534 Henry VIII dissolved it in England, kept most of its lands and treasures for himself and
declared himself head of the new church of England - a new secular state

Henry VIII
- a lot of people, particularly outside London, still preferred Catholicism to the new Protestant
religion × yet the interiority of this new religion gave rise to the new more thoughtful, perhaps
even more intelligent, works of literature of the Renaissance that are all about discovering the real
self, the man behind the mask, as it were - the literature of the Renaissance period was obsessed
with the gap between appearance and reality (this kind of concern would not have been possible
under the old Catholicism)

-9-
 Point of protestantism - introspection, thinking of yourself, your psyche
- new literature about discovering yourself (not the outside, not the things
you obviously do, but the inside - how you feel and who you are)

- Protestants, unlike Catholics, believed that priests and ministers have no special authority in
interpreting the bible; every Protestant has to read and understand the bible for himself → the
Everyone was supposed to read the bible (Catholics only wanted latin,
importace of translation of the bible into English protestants wanted it for everyone - translations - higher status of Eng)

England’s new position as a world power Spain also had power, collonies, market...

- the discovery of America: gold and other natural resources → American colonies
- shipbuilding, navigation skills → increases in trade → change from the old medieval economy
to the modern mercantile economy (another reason why the Renaissance is also known as the
early modern period)
- England's emergence as a world power dates from the invasion of the Spanish Armada, which
the English navy successfully defeated in 1588 → Elizabeth I’s England secure from foreign
attack Elizabeth financed the expeditions as a private investor, as to earn something
⇓ Sem zadejte text
in this peace and prosperity literature and culture were able to flourish

Armada attacked the ENglish navy, Armada ran into a storm,

so most ships were destroyed - terrible defeat for Spain (1588 - England
Reflections in literature = new world superpower) - Elizabeth was the most mighty monarch worldly

- Renaissance literature did not really get started until after the Armada in 1588 → the Renaissance
itself was aware of the vast time difference between the modern age and the medieval period
⇒ Renaissance literature is not based on Chaucer and the medieval literature, but on a new literary
Only after 1588 did the English literature start recovering after Chaucer
background– the classical world and Italian humanism Chaucer was too old of an inspiration for them now, so they chose the classical
world and Italian literature

- classical literature = the literature and culture of ancient Greece and Rome, largely unknown to wider
audience in medieval period, the fashion was not for classical fiction but for works of philosophy and
theology → it was a real challenge for Renaissance authors and intellectuals to rediscover the great
Classics
- classical culture ⇒ new literary standards for writers to aim at and created new genres (especially
drama) no longer from native mythology or folk tradition but Greco-Roman mythology (the
beginnings of a 'prestige' or 'high' literary culture) Shakespeare - borrowed names and events from greco-roman mythology

- new importance of rhetoric - the art of speechwriting and speaking in public Rhetoric = Literature
in this time
- philosophy of Humanism = belief in man as the highest created being on earth, belief in man's power
for good as well as evil, and belief that man can accomplish practically anything (totally unlike the
Humanism - criticism of the church, it is optimistic,
belief of both the Catholic and Protestant churches) motivational, inovative, capacity of humans
- belief that the natural world can be known about and understood, that it is alright to change nature
because man is the highest created being → confident, optimistic and enthusiastic belief in human
endeavour and progress
- Neo-Platonism = a philosophy based on the ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Its
basic ideas are that love is the instrument of understanding and wisdom, and that beauty (in a

- 10 -
 The idea of cave - applied to love and to women - beautiful women are also beautiful inside
- pretty women are sensual and a man might learn from them - human improvement through love

woman) is man's highest goal because it is indicative of purity and goodness → the human soul is
therefore civilised by love (Petrarch's love poetry).

Petrarch's in love with Laura, she can't stand him,

she keeps refusing him, but he still loves her
because that is his essence and its above him,
it's a purpose

Paradox - even though the reneissance doesn't

acknoledge the outside as important, it does
describe pretty women as pretty inside - love is
no longer sinful, but is elevated into the field of
human creation and literature

Petrarch

- in English Renaissance literature - awareness of the possible gap between appearance and reality
(Neo-Platonism: outsides represent insides, especially in beautiful women) → belief in the
civilising and beneficient outcomes of love elevated love into a serious literary and philosophical
subject

- 11 -
 Henry VII - 1485-1509
Henry VIII - 1509-47
Edward VI - 1547-53 - Harry's only son
Mary Tudor - 1553 - 58 - Harry's oldest daughter
Elizabeth I - 1558-1603
Early and Mid-Renaissance Literature
- Tudor literature begins and ends with the theme of King Arthur, namely in the works of Sir Thomas
Malory (d.1471) and Edmund Spencer more than a century later. Malory’s most famous work = a
long prose romance Le Morte Darthur (The Death of Arthur, 1485), printed by the first English printer
William Caxton (about 1421-1491) Edmund Spencer - the faerie queen
- there are several different periods of Tudor literature according to which monarch was on the throne
6 wives, created a new religion to be able
- the first significant Tudor monarch - Henry VIII (reigned 1509-47) to divorce and do what he wanted
- the printing press invented but not really used much not really literary, but he believed in the importance of education
and during his reign, many grammar schools were established.
He wanted his children to be educated as well (all daughters and one son)
- grammar schools → extending literacy and education to the middle and lower middle classes
Not much of a writer, but a philosopher, politician, he was lated executed after not agreeing with the new king's religion
, his divorce
- one of best known authors of this period - Sir Thomas More (around 1477-1535), a humanist
scholar, a brilliant linguist and philosopher, a friend of the great continental philosopher Erasmus
– as a martyr he was declared saint in 1935. he wanted to be a monk, died for original christian doctrines and tradition. Was pronounced saint after death

Thomas More (1527)

- his Utopia, published in 1516, written in Latin, describes a perfect society, a vision of just social
establishment, that is supposed to exist somewhere in or near America, out there in the undiscovered
world – establishment based on the absence of private property, compulsory common work on fields,
uniformed clothes to avoid lusting, 6-hour-a-day working time, compulsory education for all in their
free time – the same type of school for all children, taught in their mother tongue, criminality punished
by slavery and hard labour, people trained in fighting but loathing war, deism which tolerates other
set on a word-play (Utopia = from greek, meaning NO LAND)
beliefs too, etc. a story told by a person whose name is translated to nonsense teller (Rafael)

perfect utopian vision - detailed descriptions of democrativ society (humanistic development)

- there were not many important writers in the reign of Henry VIII; two of his courtiers wrote love
sonnets:

- 12 -
 - Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42), a respected diplomat, twice imprisoned in the Tower; poetry
innovative especially for its spirit – personal and very intensive experience full of intimate feelings,
focused on his own self, inner life; main merit = establishing of the English sonnet
- Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey (around 1517-47), old aristocratic family, a courtier and
warrior, but after a false accusation sentenced and executed; not as deep and real as Wyatt, but
more elegant and smooth, less innovative but more precisely classical; pioneering merit = the
employment of blankverse; translated Books II and IV of Virgil’s The Aeneid, his original
poetry published posthumously as Songs and Sonnets, Written by Henry Howard, Late Earl of
Surrey and Others (1557).

- English drama developed, e.g. humanistic circle of Thomas More; popular genre - debate, a
rhetorical exercise presenting various opinions on conflicting actions, mostly without any definite
staged argument, usually with no conclusion
conclusion
- the most significant and talented playwright of this time - John Heywood (around 1497-1580),
More’s influence: humanism and satirical humour; merit = got rid of moralizing and didactic
tendencies, made his plays a source of amusement. His most famous piece - The Four PP (about
1545); form of a debate, but its spirit is closer to a farce in which four people – a palmer, pardoner,
fraška
‘pothecary and pedlar – organize a lying contest
- the early Renaissance playwrights bridged the gap between the medieval religiously allegoric drama
with the new, secular and considerably realistic Elizabethan drama
english first tragic hero
- mid-Renaissance drama: Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex (1565) by Thomas Norton (first three
acts) and Thomas Sackville (fourth and fifth acts), the first ‘regular‘ English tragedy divided into
scenes and acts and trying to keep the unities according to the Antiquity patterns

First tragic hero - Gorbuc or Ferrex and Porrex - Norton and Sackwille

Elizabethan Period and After an unstable period filled by conflict The bloody Mary -
known for burning people
for catholic reasons
- after Henry VIII → Edward the Sixth (son of Henry's third wife Jane Seymour) → Mary Tudor
(reigned 1553-58), Henry's eldest daughter (with his first wife Catherine of Arragon), also known as
Eli killed more people than Mary, but isn't as known for it
Bloody Mary → Elizabeth I, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. It was especially the last part of her reign,
(1590 – 1603), that was interesting from the point of view of literature and art in general. Elizabethan
literary culture was to a large extent based around the court. Sonnet sequences of all kinds, not just to
Elizabeth, flourished at court, and some of them were even published in the press, like Shakespeare's.

- 13 -
 2 types of writers:
1) only those who wrote for fun, didn't get money for it - more
2) those under publishers under favour of aristocrats who made living by writing

all poetry and prose revolved around the court

and politics - courtly authors with patrons -
Eli was fond of pekple writing sonets about her
and so the courtly authors flattered her +
Elizabeth's reign gave rise to the existence of
theatres - spreading information, developing
language

Elizabeth I

- courtly authors and authors who wrote for money and sold their work to a publisher → patrons
- courtly writers – to get the queen to notice them → e.g. the courtier Edmund Spenser was not very
important until he wrote The Faerie Queene
- private aspect of poetry, e.g.. Sir Philip Sidney, a courtier from a good family, wrote his sonnet
sequence Astrophil and Stella for the entertainment of the court ladies
- Elizabeth's reign - the opening of England's first theatres

- Elizabeth died in 1603 and James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, took the throne
= the end of the House of Tudor, the start of the House of Stuart
- interested in literature (even wrote poetry himself), took an active interest in theatre and encouraged
Shakespeare and other English writers
- James's interest in drama → the genre of the court masque, a short play performed at court by the
highest ranking courtiers, sometimes including the king and queen; its subject is flattering to the
monarch and the monarch's magical powers - expensive and took a lot of rehearsing
- James also patronised the poet John Donne

- James's eldest son, Henry, died when he was 18, so when James died his other son, Charles, became
king. Charles I married a French princess, Henrietta-Maria → his court showed a love for French
fashions, court masques, showing off and overspending. → finally went bankrupt. couldn't save, lived luxuriously -
big downfall
the church was aainst english theatre and poetry - they viewed it as the means of the devil - just devil tempting you to laugh,
be aroused...
Problems the court had to face:
- complains about the court's extravagance.
- the growing dissatisfaction of ordinary people with the court's self-indulgence
- widespread dislike of Henrietta-Maria because she was a Catholic

- 14 -
 - Charles had fantastic taste in pictoral art and literature but he was not very good at governing the
kingdom → Civil War; English public theatres closed in 1642, Charles I executed in 1649; England
became a Puritan Republic and literature – or any form of entertainment – was no longer allowed.

charles - good artist, bad king

Renaissance love poetry

- love = one of the most common subjects for Renaissance poetry Shocking in that period

- Renaissance view of love much more frank about the possibility that people have sex (Ovid) OVID

- the most favorite and recurent theme = time and the constant pressure of time together with an
seize the day
awareness that love is really only for the young - carpe diem attitude to the problems of love

- one of the interesting side-effects of Renaissance love poetry = love elevated to the summit of all
human happiness, the most important thing in the speaker's life

- the idea of love as a different but superior sort of reward → pastoral settings of many poems

- paradox in the view of women: love poetry is written in order to persuade a woman to have a
relationship with the poet × the morals of the day valued virginity in women, and chastity, or
nymph, then a virgin
faithfulness in married women ⇒ a problem for women how to respond → unrequited love
motifs of sex - quite graphic and open. Women didn't really have rights, but they were viewed as those highly sexual objects, who
were however also shamed for their sexuality
- another popular genre - the complaint of the fallen woman, written by male poets (e.g. Samuel
Daniel’s poem, 'The Complaint of Rosamund') → hypocrisy in their poetry
predominantly romantic/love poetry, mainly written by men (even when the pov of women) - usually about the desire for women.
the desire ends when they actually get the woman - she becomes less appealing
- an interesting point - all love poetry, particularly sonnets, are extra-marital; showing neverending
suffering in love → sonet sequences are not supposed to have conclusions × paradoxically, this is an
age when men ruled the world
⇓
- poetry full of paradoxes mostly reflected in the most popular genre of that time – the sonet
- ironies:
because sonnet was the preferred form, but sonnet
is also extremely structured and difficult. they didn't show their
- love poetry - an intellectual and artistic exercise for the poet sincere feelings, they rather showed off using poetry

- the most famous sonnet sequences of the Renaissance were printed even though it should be the most intimate to the poet,
it's also available in a book store

- 15 -
 English Renaissance Poets
- two Elizabethan aristocratic courtiers who wrote poetry and prose:
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) - a soldier (died in a battle against Spain in Holland) and a
promising diplomat, a patron of art and original writer; wrote for himself and a narrow circle of close
friends called Aeropagus = aristocrat (didn't write for money, but maybe to serve the queen)

= epitome of the perfect courtier/gentleman

idealised poetry on the

idealised countryside (sun always
Sir Philip Sidney shining, everything sunny and happy)
=about the perfect life of the shepherds - excapist poetry
- Sidney‘s first ambitious work - a prose Arcadia (1580, printed 1590, 93, 98), a long pastoral and
chivalrous romance that combines pastoral elements with a mood derived from the Greek model
- also a literary critic; in his The Defence of Poesy (also known as the An Apology for Poetry, 1581,
pr.1595) he defended poetry against Puritan extremists by emphasizing its moral nature and
educational function. raising/forming people

- Sidney’s best work - the first English sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella (’star-lover and a star’,
1581, pr.1591) which gained him a nickname ‘English Petrarch’. Yet, these sonnets are not a mere
copy of Petrarch’s works – they are very emotional, partly obscure, narrative, with philosophical
trappings; experiments with rhyme scheme

Sir Walter Ralegh (older spelling Raleigh, 1552-1618) - a famous English writer, poet,
courtier and explorer. He became a favourite of Queen Elizabeth - appointed Captain of the Guard,
knighted in 1585, and later given many rewards (especially estates) by the Queen
- in 1591 secretly married, the Queen ordered Raleigh imprisoned and it took several years before
he married one of the queen's lady-in-waiting (she was much younger, different social class, pregnant)
Ralegh returned to favour
love-hate relationship with the queen (even because of the School of Night)
- his position weakened again when it became known that he was a spiritual centre of a company of
radical thinkers and poets called The School of Night (at that time known as the ‘School of Atheism’;
Ralegh’s position even worsened with James I – in 1603 falsely accused of conspiracy against the king
and treason, sentenced to death and imprisoned in the Tower for thirteen years until 1616 (while
imprisoned - political, educational and philosophical treatises, and the first volume of The Historie of
the World in 1614)

- 16 -
- in 1616 released to undergo a second discovery expedition to the Orinoco River in South America, in
search of El Dorado; failure - Ralegh was beheaded in October 1618

not that much of a gentleman/courtier

- unlike Sidney’s, Ralegh’s poetry scarcely written in emotional style – more mature, manly, rational
(e.g. his friendly criticism of Christopher Marlowe’s sentimental verses); most of his poetry got lost,
we have only about 30 poems and fragments from a long, half autobiographical and sometimes dark
poem The Ocean’s Love to Cynthia (before 1603)

The greatest courtly poet of the period - Edmund Spenser (1552-99); born and died in
he wrote for money - patrons
poverty in London. Though talented and educated (Cambridge), he had to rely on various patrons for
whole his life; two of them liked him a lot – Philip Sidney and Walter Ralegh. He spent a considerable
part of his life in Ireland where he worked as a secretary and where he wrote his poetry. In 1598, in
one of many Irish uprisings, Spencer’s seat was burnt down, including one child and some of his
works - forced to return to London where he died soon, buried in Westminster next to his beloved
Chaucer.
- represents the height of English Renaissance courtly poetry with all its glory and faults; the first
poem - a collection of pastorals called The Shepheardes Calendar (pr.1571), written from the point of
view of various shepherds throughout the months of the year - an allegory symbolizing the state of
humanity
probaboly written to an irish girl he later married
- Spenser also wrote 88 sonnets Amoretti (1595); he created his own variant of the sonnet form called
Spenserian sonnet (three quatrains followed by a couplet, the rhyme scheme is a-b a-b, b-c b-c, c-d c-
d, e-e)
- Spenser’s most complex and extensive work - the unfinished allegorical epic The Faerie Queene
(printed in parts in 1590, 1596, 1609). The original plan was twelve books, each devoted to one moral
+
virtue combining Aristotle’s ethics with the medieval chivalrous moral code. These virtues are
presented allegorically through Arthurian knights in the mythical ‘Faerieland’. As it was published in
1596, the epic presented the following virtues:

- 17 -
 Book I: Holiness
Book II: Temperance
Book III: Chastity
Book IV: Friendship
Book V: Justice
Book VI: Courtesy
- the unfinished Book VII was to be devoted to Mutability and Constance. The individual virtues are
directed to the central character and theme – King Arthur and his search for the Fairy Queen. Arthur
represents the virtues of Magnificence and the Faerie Queene abstract Glory (hence her name,
Gloriana), while concretely she is modelled according to Queen Elizabeth

spenser = court poet

Edmund Spenser

- formal perfectness: each book has twelve songs containing about fifty stanzas; original Spenserian
Stanza of nine iambic verses rhymed a-b-a-b-b-c-b-c-c → he is generally characterized as
maybe a poet who isn't that often read, but inspires other poets
“poets’poet” who influenced whole generations of English poets
- The Faerie Queene difficult to understand due to many complicated allegorical explanations and
interpretations - skilful synthesis of many traditional literary genres into the new Renaissance epic

=drama isn't considered literature -

plays were only given to the hands of actors
English Renaissance Drama – Shakespeare’s Contemporaries to learn and only later printed if they were famous.
Thus many of them got lost

- Elizabethan period extremely favourable to the development of drama - assimilation of the classical
= because the queen loved the theatre (1st play-houses were built)

and humanistic influences with the native creative powers → folk character

- 18 -
actors called vagabounds - they were both welcomed and hated,
because they mostly spent their days by drinking, impregnating women
and gwtting other people to join the theatre.

no actresses (only actors) Elizabethan playhouse – The Globe

if there were females, they were prostitutes
because the queeen loved it
NO high fun!
- the first permanent playhouses in London (south bank of the Thames) - folk, common entertainment
- The Theatre (1576 by James Burbage and his two sons, Richard Burbage the most famous
first performer of Hamlet
tragedian); the Curtain Theatre (1577), the Rose (1587), the Swan (1595), the Globe (1599), the
theatres could contain 2000-4000 people
Fortune (1600), and the Red Bull (1604)
queen and king never came to see the theatre - the theatre came to them
- the public theatres - three stories high, mostly round in shape, with an open space called yard at the
centre, only the galeries were roofed, the large stage ran amidst the yard for standing audience called
'groundlings', no main curtain, the upper level behind the stage could be used as a balcony, usually
built of timber and with thatched roofs
- two distinctive theatre cultures - the public playhouses or arenas, and the private performances
performed at private schools (e.g. Eton, Westminster) or universities (Oxbridge), and a few private
theatres (e.g. The Blackfriars) private - very expensive.
- the perpetual encounters of these two theatre cultures → dynamic creative atmosphere in the drama
development during the late 16th and early 17th centuries

Thomas Kyd (1558-94) - little is known about his private life

- 19 -
- The Spanish Tragedie (probably mid to late 1580s), the most popular play of the "Age of
Shakespeare", founded the tradition of bloody revenge tragedy similar to Hamlet

- more rough and primitive × likeness to Hamlet – the idea of revenge, a play in play, a ghost, the
difficulty of the revenge due to the villain’s social status, the revenger’s hesitation and his half
pretended madness, a character called Horatio, the motif of a woman going mad out of unbearable
pain, the revenger’s melancholy, black clothes, as well as his doubts about the evidence’s validity (and
also the number of corpses on the stage in the end) originality in that time = the ability to take something already
created and written and reacreate it a bit
⇒ main contribution = Shakespeare’s predecessor and source of influence
- about 1587 entered the service of a nobleman, who sponsored a company of actors (around 1591
Christopher Marlowe also joined this patron's service → friends)
- 1593 Kyd among those arrested for supposed atheist libel denying; his lodgings were searched and a
fragment of a heretical tract was found → imprisoned, tortured and asserted that it had belonged to
Marlowe
- eventually released but was not accepted back into his lord's service, his efforts to clear his name
fruitless; died only a year later
Marlowe and Kyd were friends, they shared opinions and logics. Kyd was imprisoned
for atheism, so he put the blame on Marlowe, who was killed. He alone died a year later
Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) a dramatist, poet, and translator, the foremost Elizabethan
tragedian before Shakespeare, known for his magnificent blank verse, his titan protagonists, and his
own untimely death. 29 yo
- strongly subjective, his Titanic heroes always self-reflexive, contain the author’s self-projection of
feelings, desires and thoughts → his heroes are of plebeian origin

Christopher Marlowe

- Marlowes' first known play to be performed - Tamburlaine the Great (1587), a story of the conqueror
Timur, who rises from a lowly shepherd to wage war on the kings of the world

- 20 -
 - The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta, depicting a Maltese Jew's barbarous revenge against
the city authorities. The very choice of the main character - a rebellion against the contemporary
religious, political and economic establishment
a Jew that is betrayed by christians, so he goes on
and kills the christians (poisions them)
- The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, based on the recently published German Faustbuch;
presents Faustus’s longing for the ultimate knowledge as one of the main Renaissance virtues – he
makes his hero a person called a forward wit → Marlowe’s Faustus = the great Renaissance martyr of
progress the will to know everything without actually learning, giving it time
- Marlowe's plays were enormously successful, thanks in part, to the imposing actor Edward Alleyn
- Marlowe is often alleged to have been a government spy who himself cooperated with the secret
police - killed under mysterious circumstances in a tavern in Deptford (near London) in a dispute over
he probably collaborated with the Privi Council, but since he was atheistic, they probably decided to kill
an unpaid bill him. They killed him in a pub according to a legend (there is the rumor that he didn't die and he escaped and
lived in secret (wrote for Shakespeare)
- Shakespeare influenced by Marlowe in his - The Merchant Of Venice, Richard II, and Macbeth (Jew
of Malta, Edward II and Dr Faustus respectively)
writer - poet (about shepherd)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) no records of shakespeare 1585-1592 - lost years

- born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, married Anne Hathaway there in 1582 and had twin daughters
and a son, Hamnet. After his son died, he left his family and moved to London where he began to
write for the theatres sometime in the late 1580s, which is when his plays began to be performed.
Throughout the 1590s - mainly comedies (Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, Two
Gentleman of Verona, Love’s Labour Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and history plays (Richard
II, Richard III, Henry IV, Henry VI, King John), with the exception of his early tragedy Romeo and
Juliet; best-known comedies in this decade: The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado for Nothing and As
You Like It. In 1601 he wrote Hamlet and from then on he produced all his best-known tragedies –
Julius Caesar, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear and Anthony and Cleopatra. At the end of his career, in
about 1610 or so, he turned to the new genre of tragicomedy with elements of masque (Cymbeline,
The Winter’s Tale). His last play is believed to be The Tempest, dating from about 1612; stopped
writing, left London, and went back to Stratford, bought a house there (called New Place) where he
also died in 1616. Seven years later, in 1623, First Folio of his plays was Publisher in London.
his friends, actors and so on, collected his works
and published them

1613 The Globe burnt down during his play of Henry the 8th. After that, he leaves
London and retired to Stratford and died at 1616

- 21 -
 The cover of the first Folio

- start of his career- the 'Lord Chamberlain's Men' acting company

- late 1590s, the Lord Chamberlain's Men had a dispute with their landlord - moved The Theatre to the
city of London, rebuilt it, called it 'The Globe'; the copany was a favourite one with Queen Elizabeth,
even more prestige in 1603 - James I took it under his patronage (King’s Men)
- contributed greatly to the genre of sonet - the cycle of 154 sonnets printed in 1609
only 2 of them
- most of the sonnets addressed to a beautiful young man (1-126), a rival poet, and a dark-haired lady
(the ‘Dark Lady’ 127-152)
the poems about dark lady are explicitly
he probably didn't want to publish them, sexual, whereas the ones about the man
but they ended up published nontheless are more platinically romantic.
Bi king?

Title page from 1609 edition

Elizabethan comedy
- the plot ends happily – usually in marriages
- a 'low' genre → ordinary people, scenes of everyday life, topical jokes and political satire
- origins in Roman comedies whose certain structural features the Elizabethans imitated (five acts,
composed in verse, complicated plots and lots of farcical action, often put generations against one
in roman comedy, everything was realistic - the characters, the situations, everything.

- 22 -
 another, prominent character is the cunning slave, who works for the young sons against the strict
father)
- diference: Roman comedy generally realistic, no magical or unrealistic elements × Elizabethan
comedies - 'city comedies' (satirical); the genre of 'romance comedy' (Shakespeare) - more timeless
- like all Renaissance literary genres, comedy is not trying to be original - based on formula and
convention ⇒ to find a dramatist's originality and skill, you have to look at how he uses the
conventions in his own way.
- the basic elements of Renaissance romance comedy: love plots, disguises, mistaken identity, trickery
and manipulation of action to ensure happy ending, witty dialogue, lots of jokes, lots of fun and high
spirits + songs and dancing, parts for trained animals, and fools who → Shakespeare does not aspire to
high culture but is a popular entertainer
in between the acts, there was always something happening on the stage, sometimes dancing, sometimes singnig, sometimes The Fool came
and started improvising . jokes, stories,...
Shakespeare didn't aspire to impress the higher class, he was okay with being a simple author

- the conventions of a Renaissance tragedy less numerous and versatile – dead bodies in the end,
sensational violence and gory deaths
- Shakespeare's great tragedies focus on the psychology of the tragic hero, the inherent violence in
human nature
- tragedy has a philosophy and a literary criticism behind it in Aristotle's Poetics (+ great Greek
writers and philosophers behind it) → a serious artistic genre for Renaissance writers
- Aristotle's key idea about tragedy: the story of a man – the tragic hero – who falls from happiness
and prosperity into misery through something that he does himself → not a victim of fate but partly
he fails BECAUSE OF HIMSELF - he isn't the victim of fate or cisrcumstances.
responsible for his own downfall But his fault isn't TOO bad, it wouldn't trigger the tragedy, but in this case, it does
=> the theory of Minor tragedy
- Shakespeare’s tragedies simultaneously reflect the time they were written in. The Tragedy of Hamlet,
Prince of Denmark (1601) - artistic expression of the cisis of humanism and Renaissance optimism at
the turn of the centuries amleth in translation - a fool

- the medieval tale about the Danish Prince “Amleth”, recorded by Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish
medieval historian, in 1200 + main source - Thomas Kyd
- Hamlet = Shakespeare’s longest but also probably most philosophical play - the number of questions
and lack of solutions or answers rank it among problem plays

- 23 -
 dramatic genre - masque
developed in court, it was based
on a simple plot, beautiful costumes,
lots od dances and showing the
royals in supernatural settings
(flying for example)

- these plays were extremely expensive

- the supernaturality of these plays
inspired the tragicomedies (in order for
the play to become comedic instead of
tragic, you need a surprise or something
"above"
- stage machinery is expensive - theatre
is slowly becoming a thing for the rich
and wealthy

Aristotle said that a play can only be either a comedy or a tragedy, never something in between!

Tragicomedy was only born when Aristotles influence wasn't as big, it starts as a tragedy, engs up a comedy
- tragicomedy = a play that starts off as a tragedy but ends up as a comedy (Shakespeare’s last plays:
Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest)
- the Pioneers of tragicomedy in Renaissance England Francis Beaumont (about 1584-1616) and
John Fletcher (1579-1625), wrote nearly all of their plays collaboratively. After Shakespeare's
retirement, tragicomedy → dominant dramatic style throughout the rest of the century
- the elements of surprise and reversal - relies heavily on magical and supernatural elements to create
happy endings (e.g. a character rising up from a grave and announcing that he is not dead after all);
comic device of mistaken identity taken to new extremes - the characters less important than the plot
- special effects on stage to really outwit the audience; influences = small indoor theatres and the
court masque
- from the second decade of the seventeenth century theatre increasingly exclusive and catered only to
the tastes of the upper classes
- Shakespeare’s contemporaries and successors: a comedy playwright Thomas Dekker (about 1572-
1632), Thomas Heywood (about 1574-1641), or John Webster (about 1580-1630s), a tragedian of
great formal elegance and artful crimes and revenges - The Duchess of Malfi (played 1613, printed
1623)
dekker, heywood, webster, shakespeare

- the rising Puritan movement hostile to the theatres (considered to be sinful) → closing of all theatres
in 1642-1660
they didn't like men playing women in theatres (they viewed theatre as homosexual, which
was kinda true, many of the actors were gay)

- 24 -
after 1660, after opening, there were many remakes of original plays to fit the tastes
of the rich
- the Restoration began to produce distinctively new plays of its own (influence of French theatre of
Louis XIV) × the Renaissance classics remained the main source of the Restoration drama -
adaptations to conform to the new taste

III. From Late Renaissance to Classicism

- one of the most significant literary personalities of the first half of the 17th century was Benjamin
(Ben) Jonson (1572-1637), an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. Although only eight
years younger than Shakespeare, Jonson already represented another stage of English writing, creating
the transition from the heroic Renaissance humanism to analytical, critical or even satirical rationalism
which dominated in the era of Classicism and Enlightenment
- dominant, respectable but hot-tempered person; his relationship with Shakespeare long and friendly,
but also full of arguments and rivalry; due to his temperament - many conflicts (imprisoned twice)

he conducted a play against the monarchy

after which he ended up in prison.
then he killed a fellow actor in a duel,
which got him into prison again
Ben Jonson
- although Jonson regarded his court works most, the real duality and vitality are to be found in his
plays for public playhouses - Every Man in His Humour (1598) the genre of ‘comedy of humours‘
- Jonson's enduring reputation rests on the satirical city comedies written between 1605 and 1614:
Volpone, or The Fox (performed in 1605-1606, first published in 1607), Epicoene: or, The Silent
Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614)
- also wrote poetry, including an ode to Shakespeare; founder of a new poetic school, known as ‘Ben’s
tribe‘ - continued in the Renaissance tradition but refined it through its genre and style purity
- Jonson’s relationship to the court less fortunate: his masques were very successful, popular with
James I (Poet Laureate) × Charles I did not share his predecessor’s inclination → died in poverty

The Poet Laureate - Jonson was the first

in the position - their task was
to write poetry for the royals
and to opěvovat je

- 25 -
 John Donne and his ‘Metaphysical School’
- specific love poet of the late Renaissance – John Donne (1572-1631), unusual love poetry that
contrasts with the work of earlier Renaissance poets
- poetry full of innovatively provoking imagination, disharmonious in thought and metre
all his petry has been published in 1530
he didn't write poetry to be published,
only for himself and his friends
born into a catholic family, received a catholic
upbringing
he finished a university, but couldn't
get a degree because he was a catholic and those
couldn't get degrees
reputation of notorious woman-lover, traveler

he converted to protestantism and started writing

critical poetry against catholicism

- born into a prominent Catholic family; studied law as a young man – experienced life in the city of
London, with all the pleasures it could offer → reputation of a notorious woman-lover, theatregoer and
creator of thoughtful verses, also travelled a lot around Europe
- about 1593 converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism, found a job as private secretary, fell in love
because she was young
with his lord‘s niece, married her when she was only 17, marriage was pronounced illegal → jail,
after his wife died- turning point in Donne's career - King James I persuaded Donne to join the Anglican Church, making
him dean and priest of St. Paul's cathedral in 1621 → religious poetry, especially Holy Sonnets, and
sermons
× however
Donne is still best known for his love poetry, written when he was a young man (printed
the flea is the metaphor,
posthumously) - ‘metaphysical poetry‘: strange and unusual metaphors where very unalike objects,which means sex, act
against god

emotional, physical or intellectual, are joined together → dramatic poetry –can be read as direct
dramatization of intimate human relationships or physical erotic actions; it surpasses the traditional
psychophysical one through its transcendental aspect, combination of noble and ordinary, earthly
realism with mysticism, elegant wit with satire, learned and religious contemplations with extatic
passion, highly cultivated language with colloquialisms, vulgarisms
- awareness of the physical realities of love physical but transcendental
- also an intellectual poetry: intelligence and imagination + constant questioning of the realities of the
emotional side of love → poems full of paradoxical, grotesque, ironic and ambiguous puns and
images - conceits

- 26 -
 John Donne (1616)

+ sense of cynicism about the conventions of love

1642-49: the english civil war - charles I lost, one of the leading generals became lord protector and england became a republic - new laws
(closure of all theatres and the deletion on christmas)

John Milton and Other Writers of the Revolution

- the English Civil War (1642 -1649): king's side defeated, the king Charles I beheaded, Oliver
Cromwell Lord Protector, England a Puritan Republic
- different kinds of poetry produced by both sides as a response to the civil war
- 'Cavaliers' = nickname given to people who took the king's side in the civil war, also applied to the
Sem zadejte text
poetry they subsequently wrote; Richard Lovelace (1618-58), a Cavalier and metaphysical poet. His
best work - a collection The Lucasta Poems (1649) Cavalier poetry
- the most famous poets on Cromwell's side - John Milton and Andrew Marvell. Andrew Marwell
(1621-78) was Milton’s most faithful friend and admirer. In 1657 replaced Milton as Latin secretary to
the Council of State, and in 1659 he became a Member of Parliament. He was able to remain an MP
after the restoration of the monarchy and opposed Charles II's court for its decadence and corruption.
1660 - the year of the restoration of the monarchy - the king returned from the exile and took over the throne

John Milton (1608-74) - sincere revolutionary, Cromwell’s Latin secretary

he was on his honeymoon when the civil war started and he immediately returned
- wrote twenty-five political treatises home because he saw it important to see what was happening and to choose which
side to be on. (He was a politician)
- worked extremely hard for the Republican government became a political enemy 2 unhappy marriages
- eventually went blind he told it to his daughters and they wrote it down:)
- pro-revolutionary pamphlets
he had an unfortunate life, everything went wrong. He wrote a poem about justifying god's ways - he said that people shouldn't justify
god's ways, they should accept them

- 27 -
 John Milton
- blind ⇒ did not actually write his masterpiece, Paradise Lost (printed 1667) but composed it in his
head and then dictated it to one of his daughters
- Paradised Lost is the story of how Adam and Eve managed to lose the Garden of Eden that is told in
the book of Genesis. God does not really come out well of the poem because he performs the severe
act of throwing Adam and Eve out of paradise, and the readers tend to sympathize with Adam and
Eve, feeling inevitably that God is cruel in the way he treats them
+ his God is artistically unsuccessful, while his Satan is a perfect poetic portrait of revolt → Paradise
Lost invites at least two different readings – a more and less radical one:
the radical reading important to the Romantic poets

William Blake's Paradise Lost - Christ as Redeemer of Humanity

a less radical interpretation sees positive benefits in Adam and Eve's decision to eat
the apple → although a religious poem it does seem to have a humanistic message
about the power of love

- Milton’s late works more apparently autobiogrphical: Paradise Regained (1671), a sequel to
Paradise Lost; poetic tragedy Samson Agonistes also printed in 1671

- 28 -
 Restoration Drama
= the period after the reestablishment of the monarchy in 1660. The term is often used for the period
from 1660 to the fall of James II in 1688, and in English literature to the death of John Dryden in 1700

- the old regime was not restored completely: progressive bourgeoisie forces in Parliament - strong
enough opposition to the king × the situation was slower in religion → Exclusion Cisis → the Glorious
(or Bloodless) Revolution in 1688 gave the power to James’s protestant daughter Mary II and her
husband William III = a formal affirmation of the newly established social order

- the Exclusion Cisis: Charles II died without any legitimate children → crown passed to his brother,
James II who had converted to Catholicism after the monarchy had been restored, married a Catholic
princess, they had a son. Parliament was mainly Protestant and repeatedly tried to create legislation to
exclude any Catholics from ever becoming rulers of England. James II's answer = dissolved
Parliament × James's brother-in-law, the Dutch prince William of Orange, invaded England, James ran
away, William of Orange and his army marched to London, was offered the throne of England
EXCLUDE THE CATHOLICS
- the reopening of the theaters and a consequent great revival of the drama

- the governing society - liking for literary Classicism (French influence)

- Classicist theory distinguished strictly ‘high‘ and ‘low‘ literary genres as well as tragedy and
comedy, the three unities were demanded, the old Chaucerian iambic pentametre was made into heroic
couplet

- the drama of this period - the genre of comedy: Restoration comedy of manners notorious for its
brilliance of wit and sexual explicitness - written in prose, witty and elegant yet rather limited since
they no longer took from the everyday English but exclusively from the high society → puns and
conceits full of conversational stereotypes, amoralisms and cold cynicism, stereotypical characters

- the first perfect comedy of manners The Country Wife (pl. 1674-5) by William Wycherley (1641-
1716), based on the satirical confrontation of the town and country society

- other important figures: a playwright and architect John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) with his The
Provoked Wife (1697), or William Congreve (1670-1729) with his Love for Love (1695) and The Way
of the World (1700)

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 Restoration Period – Prose after the Revolution
- English Restoration literature is marked especially by four names – Milton, the autor of the
masterpiece of English poetry, and the most read one, John Bunyan, were not a typical representatives
of that period, while the other two, Samuel Pepys and John Dryden catch best the spirit of their time

John Bunyan (1628-88) - a representative of religious prose; born in a poor family in

central England near Bedford, little schooling, followed his father in the tinker's trade
- received into the Baptist church in Bedford in 1653, became a deacon and began preaching, with
great success from the start

BUNYAN - RELIGIOUS

- Baptist church was a part of English Dissenters, who were religious dissenters from the Church of
England, hoped for a better and more pure Reformation in the Church of England: "orthodox"
Christian belief – paramount divine authority of Christ, free autonomy of the local church from outside
interference, the individual’s freedom to interpret the Bible for himself or herself, religious freedom in
one’s choice of religious practice, and the separation of church and state
- in 1658 Bunyan accused of preaching without a license, imprisoned in 1660 - 12 years in prison;
during this time allegorical novel The Pilgrim's Progress
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každá víra povolená
- released in 1672, when Charles II issued the Declaration of Religious Indulgence, in 1675
imprisoned for preaching again (Charles II withdrew the Declaration), this time for six months -
second part of his book in prison twice for preching without license
- The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come = a religious allegory (1678,
second part in 1684); translated into more than 100 languages, describes the author’s dream in which
he sees a morality character of Christian who undergoes a troublesome pilgrimage from the earthly
pilgrimage from City of Destruction to the heavenly Celestial City
- full of action and various characters
- aim: to make the biblical message accessible to large ordinary audience

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 Burdened Christian flees from home

Samuel Pepys (pronounced /pi:ps/, 1633-1703) - private Diary that he kept during 1660–1669,
published after his death - a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great
events, such as the restoration of the monarchy, the Great Plague of London (1665) or the Great Fire
of London (1666)

John Dryden (1631-1700), the most influential English poet, literary critic, translator and playwright
poet

- time full of political and social conflicts and changes → incredible shifts of ideas

John Dryden

- his existential worries made him write well-paid theatre plays and masqeues as well as some
comedies of manners for the aristocratic audience, e.g. Marriage A-la-Mode (1672)

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– heroic drama: heroic couplet, exotic settings, bombastic stories, heroes and heroines of absolute
virtues and great passions, villains with the opposite qualities, rhetorical pathos of dialogues, grand
dramatic conflicts especially between love and honour or higher social duty, e.g. Aureng-zebe (1675)

- three adaptations from Shakespeare, the best is All for Love, or the World Well Lost (1678), a
Classicist variation on Anthony and Cleopatra

- literary criticism: An Essay on Dramatic Poetry (1668); a dialogue between four people; one of
them, Neander, stands for Dryden himself → father of English literary criticism

- Dryden’s poetry - Annus Mirabilis (1667) - the year 1666, with the Fire of London and navy battles
with Holland; satirical and political poems like The Hind and the Panther (1687)

IV. Eighteenth Century

The Period of Neo-Classicism

- 'eighteenth-century' literature can be considered to begin after the Exclusion Crisis of 1688
- the exclusion crisis = the start of modern English politics; two camps in parliament: those who
supported exclusion were called 'Whigs' (‘new money‘); those against exclusion were called 'Tories'
(‘old money‘) → writing and politics were at this time closely-related: the Tories: more conservative,
suspicious of change, preferring the old to the new, ridiculing modern ideas and modern literary taste
× Whig literature: more liberal and open to new ideas
- the eighteenth century - a period marked by conflict and anxiety - stable development × unstable
politics

- fear of the French not merely political, but is reflected in literature and culture as well; awareness
that French fashions and tastes were more sophisticated than native English taste × English people
satirised those who openly attempted to copy the French

- new coffee house culture: cities, popular places for people to gather and meet one another - good
manners and politness and the ability to know how to behave more important than wealth and social
status
- the concept of 'wit': a clever, intellectual, educated form of humour, witty but also smart and
educated (a bon mot)

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 - the periodical: a daily newspaper that instead of reporting news offers opinions and ideas on such
topics as literature and fashion and art and politics - The Spectator (1711 - 1714), edited by Joseph
Addison (1672-1719) and Richard Steele (1672-1729)

- ancient Roman and Greek literary theory; Neo-Classical taste came from France influenced by
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Aristotele → Classical literary principles immediately made the norm of any writing with aspirations;
Renaissance - new themes, motifs and approaches to art × the eighteenth century - perfectness of form,
uniformity and proportion → correctness, restraint, refinement and vraisemblance

- the Neo-Classical writers respected the Classics to such an extent, they were unable to do more than
copy or parody them - trapped by the strict rules of their own criticism → almost no room to
experiment with new ideas → conservatism
neo-classicist believed that the classics knew it best and they were only meant to imitate the antiquity
(or satirical - mock genres - because they couldn't come up with anthing new (they didn't believe they were
able)

- movement towards rationalism and experimentation - age of reason, progress and exploration (e.g.
The Royal Society); new discoveries were made in agriculture, age of gardening, landscape architects
the royal society: not professional scientists, only people interested in science, motivated by the royals - meant to explore and discover John Locke

the royal society envited travelers and explorers - people were impressed by orientalism, by exoticism

- age of travel and exploration - public interest in exotic foreign countries, a fashion for orientalism, a
native of a South Sea island was brought back to England → myth of the 'noble savage' – a completely
primitive and uneducated but naturally polite and helpful (the enthusiasm for exploration culminated
the term is connceted to rousseau, but tridon came up with the term
with James Cook)
the age of progress, the age of reason and elightment

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 Noble savage

- the eighteenth century is now considered as an age of science, exploration, progress and experiment,
and this is true when we consider the century as a whole. But in the early decades of the eighteenth
century people had rather repressive and rigid ideas: good manners and politeness, and Neo-Classical
styles in architecture, gardens, and literature

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

- Catholic family, bad health (disabled, undersized and hunchback with chronic migranes); a
professional writer

Alexander Pope
made living by writing without the help of patrons he made money by translations

- in his youth - playful, witty poetry such as 'An Essay On Criticism' and 'The Rape of the Lock';
translations of Homer’s poems between 1715-20;1725-8 published all Shakespeare’s plays with his
own foreword; in his later life wrote satires of contemporary politicians and writers such as his
Dunciad.

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 - the irony of his life = a representative of the high style famous for his satires and mock-heroic poems
which the Classicist theory considered lower genres

- a Tory → on the side of the ancients versus the moderns in all literary debates; also a member of a
literary club called the Scriblerians. There were 5 members of this group: Pope and Swift, the poet
John Gay, a politician Parnell, and a medical man Dr Arbuthnot
Martinus Scriblarus - a man believing in new ideas, forgetting
old traditions, believing in everything new - they wrote a fictional
biography about this fictional man that they hated - they hated the modern world
and progressive philosophies - they saw the decline of sociatey and how they believed
in everything modern and new without critical thinking

Pope, Swift, Gay, Parnell, Arbuthnot he made money by translations, which made him enough money to
buy a beautiful villa
<-
He justified Shakespeare as being a good writer even though the didn't
follow the aristotle's rules of drama

critical thinking!!!

Pope's house at Twickenham

Škrabálkové
- the Scriblerians tended to write farce, parody and satire: witty people with good senes of humour
dissatisfied with the world around them – their tastes were not merely conservative but reactionary →
tried to stick to their old values and to old ideas of literary taste and standards
Mock-heroic poem - a poemt that mocks the traditional genre of epic

- most famous for 'The Rape of the Lock' (1712-14), a playful poem, a representative mock-heroic epic
of the whole Neo-Classicism - a parodic version of the world of the gods and goddesses of
a story about two rich catholic families, their children were engaged. a lock of hair of the lady was a token of love - the lady had to do it
conventional epic volunetrily, but the groom cut it off himself as a joke - the families fell apart
the man had to write a poem to make up for it:)

the goddess of stupidity is sent to earth to corrupt

the minds of politicians (they can't distinguish between
+ bitter satires of new ideas and false learning - most famous the Dunciad (1728) good and bad.

allegory to bible - Let there be dark (end of world)

- literary critic, the poem 'Essay Upon Criticism' (1717); offers his rules for judging literature: the
most important thing is that the poet follows and accurately describes nature, the true source of art ×
there are also rules for art, which he calls the 'rules of old' (the Neo-Classical criticism)
critical thinking!!! - more attractive Scriblerian virtue: common sense - values common sense and humanity over the
relentless intellectualism and criticism
they were quite conservative and traditional, but they had a lot of critical thinking

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 Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
- like Pope, a conservative Tory and a member of the Scriblerian club, all his major works satirical

Jonathan Swift

- born in Ireland, although his parents were English, was an Anglican and hoped he could become a
bishop × the place of the Dean of St. Patrick's cathedral in Dublin in 1713

- ironically, the English Protestant dean Swift became a national defender and hero of the Irish people
– supporter of Irish independente, involved in charity

- two satires written in 1697 but published seven years later: The Battle of the Books and A Tale of a tub
Tub (in English = a nonsense tale, old lady’s tale)
satorical satire of all the churches (criticism - catholic gets the most)

- most famous treatise A Modest Propsal (1729), a pamphlet suggesting solution to Ireland‘s two
problems: overpopulation and famine = a satire of the rationalist or utilitarian philosophy fashionable
at that time → Shift suggests that if it could be proved that Irish people would really be better off if
they sold or ate their children in order to increase the 'total good' of their society.
utilitarian philosophy - the aim justifies the means - the the good to most people and don't pay attention
to which means you use to achieve it - MODEST PROPOSAL IS A PARODY
- Swift's belief (shared with Pope and their fellow Scriblerians) that new ideas and progress are less
important than basic, unchanging, human values and that common sense matters more than philosophy
and should always be applied to new philosophical ideas

+ Swift goes further than this in A Modest Proposal as he turns his proposal around to demonstrate the
lack of sympathy and human feeling with the poor Irish people from the side of the rich landlords - to
shock readers and make them think that they should do more to help those in need
extreme problems take extreme measures
- Swift’s best work = Gulliver’s Travels written in 1721-25 and first published anonymously in 1726,
a perfect example of his conservatism and satirical skills parody on Traveler's tale - he shows his conservatism
in this

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- Swift does not create these magic worlds to recommend modern ideas, but to satirise them → the
first two books are satires of England’s, and consequently European, government and politics, the
third book offers a satire of modern learning and academic study, while the fourth attacks the society
as a whole through the unfavourable comparison to the utopian world

- Pope and Swift‘s Neo-Classicist conservative ideas can seem absurd and old-fashioned to us now ×
an attractive side of Scriblerian philosophy: toleration for the weaknesses of others → a humanist
response to the pressures of the dominant rationalism and science of the 18th century

V. The Development of the Novel

- the novel was not in fact invented until the first half of the eighteenth century - it does not have
anything like the history and pedigree of poetry or drama
- the rise of the English middle class and its growing economic, but also political, importance from the
early Restoration period
- the growth of realism in the eighteenth century
- the 'ballad sheet' or 'news sheet' - something like a newspaper (only much shorter), it features stories
of crimes and criminals, the more sensational the better, and might have cartoons or pictures and
maybe the words of some popular song or ballad → designed to appeal to the lower classes, people
who could read but had very little education and were certainly not interested in poetry or periodicals -
the ideal audience for the novel
- the novel = new respectability of prose as a literary medium × still way behind poetry in terms of
literary prestige and respectability

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 - Licensing Act (1737); playwrights in the early eighteenth century had the freedom to criticise
government policy and corruptions, a famous example = The Beggar's Opera (1728) by John Gay
(1685-1732) × after Licensing Act playwrights began to write prose narratives
- new literary background - Cervantes's Don Quixote (two parts 1605,1615), extremely fashionable
with English writers in the eighteenth century

Daniel Defoe (about 1660 – 1731)

- along with Samuel Richardson considered the founder of the English novel
- born as a son of a London butcher, his real name was Daniel Foe; his parents strict Presbyterian
dissenters → educated in a Dissenting Academy; the world of business - a general merchant
- rarely free from debt; traveled in Europe and Scotland; a "commissioner of the glass duty",
responsible for collecting the tax on bottles; was operating a tile and brick factory
- Defoe’s first notable work a successful poem, The True-Born Englishman (1697)
- a convinced Puritan Whig - pamphleteering and political → arrest, high fine and placement in a
pillory in 1703, principally on account of a pamphlet entitled "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters"
× poem Hymn to the Pillory

Pillory: a wooden frame for public punishment having holes

in which the head and hands can be locked.

→ Newgate Prison, went bankrupt → compromises against his political conviction – a Tory
intelligence agent × after the Tories fell - intelligence work for the Whig government
- not taken seriously by literary men × became the spokesman for the whole progressive English
middle class
- unscrupulous, diabolical journalist, often considered the first modern journalist who made use of his
narrative talent and ability of credible mixing of facts and fiction

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- in April 1719 (aged almost sixty) published Robinson Crusoe, which was based partly on the
memoirs of voyagers and castaways (e.g. Alexander Selkirk)
- a first-person narrator and apparently genuine journal entries → a realistic frame for the novel, which
presents itself as a fictional autobiography + many moral and religious contemplations
- the bourgeoisie myth a self-made Utopia and self-sufficient active enterprise

- in A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) he pretends it is a diary written by a London seddler in 1664-
5 without thinking of its publishing - the most detailed facts which evoke strong feeling of authenticity
- Moll Flanders (1722) - individual heroine; in common with Robinson = vitality, life energy, struggle
for independence and opportunities in accordance with her intelligence and abilities; presented as a
forced individualist → the readers are often made sympathize with her
- Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress (1724)

Samuel Richardson (1681-1761)

- like Defoe, a representative of the town or bourgeoisie prose; a London printer, the official
parliamentary printer. Unlike Defoe, personified a successful, solid, conventional tradesman with
conventional yet strict religious belief and morality

Samuel Richardson

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- always liked writing letters for girls and women → a volume of model letters for unskilled letter
writers - the basis of Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1740-41) - a huge sucess; an epistolary novel about
a poor maidservant in a wealthy household
- Clarissa or, the History of a Young Lady (1747-8) - a tragic story of a girl who runs off with her
cynical seducer Lovelace, but is later abandoned
- Richardson’s novels were enormously popular in their day - emphasis on detail, his psychological
insights into women, and his dramatic technique
- last novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753-4)
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Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

– from a famous yet unwealthy aristocratic family, studied law
– typical Enlightenment humanist who, with other colleagues, stood up against the corrupt
government of Sir Robert Walpole
– advocate of the poor

Henry Fielding
- first literary attempts: satirical poems and comedy plays → theatrical Licensing Act in 1737
- needed an impulse: Richardson’s Pamela → two parodical novels: Shamela (1741) and The History
of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr. Abraham Adams (1742)

- originated the genre of a humoristic novel - “comic epic in prose” → masterpiece The History of Tom
jones, a Foundling (1749), a wide panoramatic novel of the 18th century England in which Fielding
combined the principles of classical epic with his comical epic in prose and the principles of drama
- did not pretend that his characters were realistic unlike Defoe

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Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
- created, immediately after the form of the genre had been established, an anti-novel
- thanks to his wealthy and influential great-grandfather, the archbishop of York → Cambridge →
theological scholarship → a priest × secular clergyman
- discovered his literary talent in his forties, and for eight years he was writing his masterpiece novel
The Lufe and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-67)

Laurence Sterne
= protest against all literary and social conventions of the aristocratic-bourgeouisie 18th century
England
- the genre’s traditional structure inverted "progressive digressions": plot digressions, flashbacks,
flashaheads, sidestories, inserted stories, the author’s notes and commentaries, anecdotes, drawings,
blank pages, blackened pages, etc. Some of Sterne’s methods remind of film tricks (e.g. deliberate
slowing down or fastening of the action)
- not directly satirical, more humorous, parodic → the characters, though often appear foolish, are in
fact full of humanism, inspired by Sterne’s beloved Cervantes inspired by cervantes
+ innovative understanding of time – more or less psychological time

- departed England for France in 1762 (illness) → second novel, A Sentimental Journey Through
France and Italy (1768) - highly unconventional book of travels
- the word “sentimental” = with philosophical basis, having humanist feelings of respect, liking and
sympathy to other people regardless their opinion and social class → philantropist philosophy

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 VI. Pre-Romantic Poetry
- poets who were writing before the movement of Romanticism had begun in England (with
Wordsworth and Coleridge in the late 1790s), whose poetry is already clearly moving away from the
Neo-Classical style Moving away from neo-classicism
- an interest in nature; pathos and sentimentality about the lives of ordinary people and defenceless
animals; lack of Classical influence; freeing of poetic convention and technique
- the first predecessor of the pre-romantic tendencies in English poetry Thomas Gray (1716-71) and
his masterpiece 'Elegy Composed in a Country Churchyard' (1751)
Thomas Gray = Elegy composed in a country churchyard
Robert Burns (1759-96) - a personification of the new folk songster, still considered the
Scottish national poet; he liked to use Scottish dialect words in his work, showing his sympathy for
ordinary people and taking pride in his roots
- collection Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) - immediate success × never accepted in the
Edinburgh artistic and intellectual elite

Robert Burns
- journeys around Scotland and northern England - collected folk songs and poems; a passionate
supporter of the French Revolution
- many of his songs became nationalized, e.g. ’Auld Lang Syne’

William Blake (1757-1827) - poet, engraver, painter and eccentric mystic visionary, a
poet of London at the time of the oncoming Industrial Revolution.

- apprenticed engraving; had an exceptionally developed imagination → mystical and religious visions
all his life → many of his contemporaries considered him mad
- a self-learner, extraordinarily endowed with genius, copied and illustrated all his works by himself
- first collection of poems Songs of Innocence (1789) = a state of mind based on innocence and purity

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 William Blake

- a distinctive prosaic manifesto The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, inspired by Milton’s Satan, he
took the side of the Hell Paradise lost and
Paradise regained!

- 1794 Songs of Experience composed as a counter-point to Songs of Inocence; Blake’s experience

after the five years is above all the social one → his tyger is not a symbol of evil but an image of
natural vigour, energy and beauty captured in his most famous metaphor: fearful symmetry

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- later poetry darker and gloomier as the political and social situations were becoming less liberal →
turned his writing to his cosmological visions aimed into the future - cycle of Prophetic Books which
included, among others, The Book of Los (1795), The Four Zoas (1800), Milton (1804) and Jerusalem
(1804), most of them are written in long free verses, the language inspired by the Bible
+ belief that a man would destroy the old religious and social order (Babylon) and build up a new, free
city – Jerusalem → Blake’s Jesus is a friend of revolutionary people and artists

From Jerusalem by William Blake

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William Blake: A Radical Visionary

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