English Literature

The Middle Ages – Beowulf ( the old Germanic legend) – 8th century

John Wycliffe – a professor of Oxford, he criticised Roman Catholic Church, with his students he
translated the Bible into English

The Renaissance and Humanism

Geoffrey Chaucer – the author of Cantenbury Tales (14th century) – a blilliant story of 30 pilgrims
travelling to Cantenbury

Sir Thomas More (15th century) – wrote Utopia – a vision of imaginary island with perfectly
organized society

John Milton (17th century) – Paradise Lost – about the revolt of Satan against Heaven and God, Satan
and fallen angels represent the principles of independence and freedom

Jonathan Swift (18th century) – Gulliver´s Travels – Gulliver´s travelling through imaginary countries
like the land of giants or Lilliputians) – he criticized politics in England

Daniel Defoe (18th century) – Robinson Crusoe – he shipwrecked on a lonely island (represents
qualities in capitalist competition to be successful)

! William Shakespeare – in details

Romanticism – emotions and passions rather than an intellectual attitude

- the end of the 18th century and during the 19th century

Sir Walter Scott - a founder of historical novel (about Scottish history); Ivanhoe – from the period of
Richard the Lionhearted

Lord George Gordon Byron – Childe Harold´s Pilgrimage

Percy Bysshe Shelley – Prometheus Unbound (based on Greek legend about Prometheus who steals
fire from Olympus to give it to people)

Victorian Age (Critical Realism) -19 th century

Emily Bronte – the Wuthering Heights

Charlotte Bronte – the novel Jane Eyre

Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Christmas Carol

Robert Luis Stevenson – Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde; Treasure Island

Oscar Wilde – influenced by the French theory of ´l´art- pour- l´art and founded the aesthetic cult in
London. He wrote – The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Nightingale and the Rose (fairy tale)

The first Half of the 20the century

Rudyard Kipling – awarded the Nobel Prize for literature (1907) – wrote short stories about India –
The Jungle Book

Herbert George Wells – the father of sci-fi literature – the War of the Worlds; The Time Machine

James Joyce – Dubliners

George Bernard Shaw – from Dublin, famous for drama – he attacked the whole society. In his plays
he criticized the false morals of the society – Pygmalion

Contemporary literature

John Wain – referred to ´angry young men´- express emptiness of intellectuals after WWII

William Golding – a Nobel Prize winner – Lord of Flies (set in the future)

J.R.Tolkien

George Orwell

Agatha Christie – the queen of detective stories

Samuel Becket – A Nobel Prize winner in 1969, born in Dublin – play – Waiting for Godot

American Literature

- while the romantic movement was in Europe as the expression of the revolt against political
and religious authority in America romanticism is connected with nationalism

Washington Irving – topics – the history of New York, biography of George Washington

James Fenimore Cooper – described American wilderness – the Last of the Mohicans

Edgar Allan Poe – the founder of both science-fiction and the detective story – poem – the Raven

Herman Melvile – novel – Moby Dick – a symbolic story of Captain Ahab – he want to kill the white
whale Moby Dick (the symbol of evil)

Mark Twain – worked as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi river – his experience along the river –
the Adventure of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

20 th century – realism, naturalism

- try to describe the ugliness of life, money-making dominates, destroys human character and
put aside all human values

Theodor Dreisler – An American Tragedy

Jack London – the Call of the Wild – adventurous life at the time of the gold rush

After WWI – ´Lost Generation´- writers were influenced by the war (disillusionment)

Ernest Hemingway – was awarded the Nobel Prize (1954) for his book The Old Man and the Sea

- For whom the Bell Tolls

- He spoke for the Lost Generation – participated in WW I – lost their bright ideals and happy
life
- Born on the 21st July 1899 in the state of Illinois (as a doctor´s son)
- He joined the American sanitary troops in Italy and later was seriously wounded
- After the war he worked at first as a foreign correspondent and then he settled in Paris
- Protests against the threat of fascism in Europe; short stories In Our Times
 - The Sun Also Rises; A Farewell to Arms – novels inspired by the First World War
- Love of dangerous hunting in Africa – Green Hills of Africa
- The Fifth Column; For Whom the Bell Tolls – the major theme was the Civil War in Spain
- The Old Man and the Sea – an outstanding story, awarded the Nobel Prize – a story about an
old Cuban fisherman (Santiago) who goes fishing alone in a small skiff – after fruitless fishing
the old man manages to catch an enormous fish - he struggles and finally kills it. But soon it
is attacked by sharks after which only a bare skeleton is left

Francis Scott Fitzgerald – connected with the Jazz Age (of the 20s); The Great Gatsby – this novel is
about a very rich man who earns all his money by smuggling

John Steinbeck – won the Nobel Prize (1962) – he tried to uncover the reasons of social
injustice – The Grapes of Wrath – describes the depression following after the crisis 1929
John Updike – one of the most successful novelists and poets; he describes the American
everyday life in a family - Rabbit
William Saroyan – wrote short stories, novels and dramas full of humanity, valuable human relations
– The Human Comedy

´Beat Group´- gathered around 1956 in San Francisco (a group of poets and artists) – they were
disgusted by corrupt, commercial and conventional world, they hoped they could make their world
better by some excitement given by drugs, drinks, influenced by Zen Buddhism teaching – Jack
Kerouac, William Burroughs, etc.

Drama in the 20th century

Eugene O´Neil – a Nobel Prize winner (1936), he wanted to show the bad parts of human character
and the difficult conditions of life of mankind – Mourning Becomes Electra

Tennessee Williams – shows in his plays selfish, violent and cruel motives of their behaviour as well
as their deep desire to love and be loved – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Edward Albee – an experimental playwright - attack hypocrisy and conformity of people – Who´s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf