EL 114 REVIEWER  It is another word for PLAY.

LITERATURE... ITS DEFINITION... FUNCTION OF LITERATURE

The word LITERATURE comes from the Latin word "LITERA" which 1. For entertainment
literally means an "acquaintance with letters." 2. Aesthetic pleasure
3. Awareness/ educational purposes
It is a body of work, either written, oral or visual, containing imaginative 4. Uplift moral
language that realistically portrays thoughts, emotions, and experiences of
the human condition. OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 410 AD 1066 AD

DEFINITION...

o It is any collection of written or spoken works.

O lt is a method of recording, preserving and transmitting knowledge and

entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, political and
spiritual role.,

TYPES OF LITERARY GENRES

1.FICTION is a form of literature that talks about imaginary places, people,

events. OLD ENGLISH - A combination of the original language spoken by the
Britons and the language spoken by the Germanic Tribes (Karwa, A. 2020).
Examples:
It is also called Anglo-Saxon, language spoken and written in England; it is
1. Harry Potter by: J.K Rowling the ancestor of Middle English and Modern English (Britannica, 2023).
2. The Lord of the Rings by: J.R.R Tolkien
1. a Game of Thrones by: George R.R. Martin KINDS OF POETRY
3. The Count of Monte Cristo by: Alexandre Dumas
 RELIGIOUS POETRY - It covers ritual incantations, prayers,
2. ESSAY - is a form of writing that is relatively short. It is a focused piece hymns, and (to an extent) dirges that are used on more serious and
of writing designed to inform or to persuade. solemn occasions. (Singh, N. 2022)
 HEROIC POETRY - A form of narrative verse that tells the story
The word ESSAY for the 1st time was used by a French writer, Michele
of a hero, warriors, or rulers.
Montaigne. The origin of the word ESSAY comes from French word
 LYRIC POETRY - A formal type of poetry which expresses
"essayer", which means "to try" or "to attempt" to write ( Musai, B. 2004
personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person.
Of Love by: Francis Bacon
AUTHORS AND THEIR LITERARY WORKS
"It is impossible to love, and be wise... Love is a child of folly. Love is ever
rewarded either with the reciprocal, or with an inward and secret contempt.
You may observe that amongst all the great and worthy persons there is not
one that hath been transported to the mad degree of love: which shows that
great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion. That he had
preferred Helena, quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas. For whosoever
esteemeth too much of amorous affection quitted both riches and wisdom."

MESSAGE: if you want to become better, choose not to love.

3. POETRY- is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings according to

William Woodsworth.

"We Wear the Mask" is an 1895 poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. It is

generally considered one of his most famous works and has been cited by
several scholars as his best poem.

4. Drama - is a type of literature that is written for the purpose of being

performed in front of an audience.

 is a play for theater, or radio or television

 It is written in the form of a script.
HEROIC THEME

Some features of Heroic Poetry:

 Alliterative and stressed verse

 No external rhyme
 Use of Caesura (a break between words within a metrical foot)
 Use of Kennings (a compound expression in poetry with
metaphorical meaning)
 Heroic idealism
 Use of allusions
RELIGIOUS  POETRY - a type of literature, or artistic writing, that attempts to
stir a reader's imagination or emotions.
Some features of Religious  PROSE - a form of written or spoken language that follows the
natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical
 Latin inspiration
structures
 Heroic styles adapted to biblical subjects
 DRAMA - the portrayal of fictional or non-fictional events through
 Dramatic details the performance of written dialogue.
 Use of rhetoric
 Narrative verse Authors and Their Literary Works
 Influence of classical models
 Didactic or religious passion

ELEGY THEME - There are many old English lyrics, mostly with an Elegy
theme. They were originally meant to be sung and expressed the poets
thoughts and feelings.

WAR THEME - There are some old English poems with the themes of war,
such as the Battle of Maldon. The well known war poems of the period and
this war was fought against the Danes. It is an inspiring poem particularly
noteworthy for the word of courage.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ISSUES DURING OLD ENGLISH

PERIOD

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

 Kingdoms and Tribal Societies: In history, England were divided

into kingdoms and tribal societies, each has its own leaders and
rules.
 Class System: At the top were the nobles and warriors, beneath
them were the common freemen and at the bottom were slaves

POLITICAL STRUCTURE

Tribal Kingdoms: The various regions and kingdoms had their own rulers,
often referred to as kings or chieftains. These rulers were not united under a
single centralized authority; instead, they had varying degrees of autonomy.

MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (1066-1500) Major themes during Middle English Period

 CHIVALRY - The term 'chivalry' comes from the Old French

'Chevalerie' meaning 'horse soldiery'. The religious, social and
moral conduct followed by knights in the Middle Ages.
 RELIGION - One of the most important concerns in all Middle
English society.

Social and Political Issues

 Power Struggle - Norman conquest in 1066 when William the

conqueror included England, leading the Norman influence on
English culture and language.
 Feudal System - It involved a hierarchical arrangement of society
with the king or monarch at the top, followed by nobles, knights,
• Middle English was a combination of the Anglo-Norman dialect and Old and peasants. Landownership was central to this system.
English.
RENAISSANCE PERIOD (14th-17th Centuries)
• This period helped in interchanges of language between 2 or more cultures
 Renaissance - Takes its name from the French word for rebirth
that is mutually beneficial and productive.
The revival of art and literature under the influence of classical
• They arise two major things (The classical text and birth of universities). models in the14th–16th centuries.
The Known Authors and Their Literary Works
The literary works in this period was divided into 3
  John Milton - He was a 17th century historian, journalist and poet
born in London, England. He wrote poetry and prose between 1632
and 1674, and is most famous for his epic poetry.
Paradise Lost
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at
least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
 Francesco Petrarch - A poet and scholar that lived in the 1300s.
He was known for his Italian poetry and wrote many famous
poems, such as the Il Canzoniere and the Triofi. He was also a very
enthusiastic Latin scholar and wrote most of his poems in this
language.
Il Canzoniere
All day I weep; and then at nighttime when/ all miserable mortals stop
to rest/ I find myself in tears, my pains have doubled:/ and so all of
my time I spend in weeping.
With their sad moisture I wear out my eyes, with grief my heart,
among all living things/ I rank the worst, because those loving arrows/
forever keep me exiled from my peace.
Alas, for from one sun until another,/ from one night to the next, I
have already/ run through most of this death which is called life!
More for her fault I grieve than for my ills,/ for living pity, the help I
placed my faith in,/ can see me burn in fire and give no aid.
 This period goes by the names "the Enlightenment," "the Age of
Reason," and "the Neo-Classical Age."
 Neoclassical literature was written between 1660 and 1798. This
time period is broken down into three parts: the Restoration period,
the Augustan period, and the Age of Johnson.
Three Stages of Neoclassicism
 The Restoration Period (1660-1700) - the reestablishment of the
monarchy in England with the return of Charles II in 1660.
 The Augustan Period (1700-1750) - A period of literary eminence
under the Roman emperor Augustus (27 BCE to 14 CE) during
which Virgil, Horace, and Ovid flourished.
 The Age of Johnson (1750-1798)- often referred to as The Age of
Sensibility, is the period of English literature named after Samuel
Johnson.
Literary Forms
 Some popular types of literature include parody, essays, satire,
fables, letters, melodrama, and rhyming with couplets. While
drama declined and almost disappeared during the later.
Authors and Their Literary Works
John Dryden - was a famous poet of his time. His poetry can be divided into
three parts:
 Political Satires, Doctrinal Poems, The Fables
 The Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day and Alexander’s Feast are his best
short poems. Absalom and Achitophel is his great allegorical satire.
 Absalom and Achitophel - The poem is a satirical critique of
contemporary politics, but Dryden couches his argument in a
biblical story from the Book of Samuel.
 Themes: Temptation, sin, fall and punishment

Dante Alighieri - Dante - famous Italian poet, “Il Summo Poeta” (The
Supreme Poet) and The Father of The Italian Language.
 The Divine Comedy - the greatest literary work in the Italian
language.
 Wrote his poems in the Italian vernacular rather than Latin Alexander Pope - was a poet and satirist of the English Augustan period.
 Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are “The Three Pope was physically weak because of his long illness. He was best known for
Fountains/Crowns” his poems: An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712–14),
William Shakespeare The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man (1733–34).
 An English playwright, poet, and actor. Widely regarded as the
greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent
dramatist. “Bard of Avon”
 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other
verses.
 Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.
Major Themes During Renaissance Period
 Humanism - A worldview centered on the nature and importance
of humanity, that emerged from the study of Classical antiquity
 Secularism – is a way of life and thinking that rejects religion.
Daniel Defoe - was a novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist who gained
 Individualism – it is the belief and practice that every person is
enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe (1719). A well-educated
unique and self-reliant.
London merchant, he became an acute economic theorist and began to write
Social and Political Issues During the Renaissance Period
eloquent, witty, often audacious tracts on public affairs.
 Social inequality - The wealthy elites continued to hold most of
the power, while the lower class remained disenfranchised. Jonathan Swift, pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff, Anglo-Irish author, who was
 The Emergence of Strong States - It takes feudal system, the foremost prose satirist in the English language. Besides the celebrated
however, monarch began to wield more power and influence. novel Gulliver’s Travels (1726), he wrote such shorter works as A Tale of a
Tub (1704) and “A Modest Proposal” (1729).
The Neoclassical Period (1660-1798)
 The prefix 'neo' means 'modern' or 'new,' and the root word
'classic' represents the ancient Greek and Roman style.
 Neoclassicism was an art movement that sought to evoke the style
of classical antiquity in writing, painting, sculpting, and
architecture found in Greek and Roman culture.
Major Themes During Neoclassical Period

They elevated the role of reason in finding more answers about the world,
which led to the rise of themes such as skepticism, rationalism, empiricism,
order, deism, and classicism.

 Skepticism: the attitude of doubting knowledge claims set forth in

various areas.
 Rationalism: a theory that reason rather than experience is the
foundation of certainty in knowledge.
 Empiricism: defined as basing ideas and theories on the direct
experience of the senses, including experimentation, as opposed to
knowledge gained from books
 Order: sought to design political and social order that reflected
natural laws and God's will.
 Deism: a belief system that credits God as the original architect of
the universe's natural laws but who does not currently oversee the
events of the world.
 Classicism: In the arts, a resurgence of classical ideals like
harmony, realism, and reason inspired the Neoclassical movement.
 Samuel taylor coleridge - was born in 1772. He was an
extraordinary child who read the Bible and Arabian Nights before
he was five. He was an influential writer, poet, literary critic, and
philosopher of the age of the Romantic Period. He was a founder of
his friend William Wordsworth of the Romantic Movement in
England. He was called “Opium Eater,” “The Poet of Super-
naturalism.”
 His well-known works:
 Lyrical ballads, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel,
Kubla Khan, Dejection: An Ode, The Nightingale, Biographia
Literaria

Social and Political Issues During the Neoclassical Period

Major currents: This was a period of political and military unrest, British
naval supremacy, economic growth, the rise of the middle class, colonial
expansion, the rise of literacy, the birth of the novel and periodicals, the
invention of marketing, the rise of the Prime Minister, and social reforms.

Gulliver's Travels Moral

Commitment to something greater than oneself; respect and caring for others;
caring for other living things and environment; and courage.

THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

 Romanticism is an artistic movement that valued imagination and
feelings over intellect and reason.
 It Is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that
originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western
Europe. was partly a revolt against the aristocratic, social, and
political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against
the scientific rationalization of nature and was embodied most
strongly in visual art, music, and literature.
 When talking about the Romantic Era in literature, we are actually
referring to romantic as "freely imaginative fiction" and not
romantic as in "romance”.
 George Gordon byron - was a British poet and one of the leading
figures in the Romantic movement. He was called the Rebel poet in
England. He was also an influential poet of the age of the Romantic
Period. He published his first work “Hours of Idleness
(Juvenilia)” at the age of 19 when he was reading at Cambridge
University.
His Well-known Works :
 Don Juan, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, She Walks in Beauty ,Hours
of Idleness, Heaven and Earth

KNOWN AUTHORS AND THEIR LITERARY WORKS

 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH - was born on April 7, 1770, in

Cockermouth. He is known as the “Poet of Nature,” “Worshiper
of Nature,” and “The Lake Poet.” The French Revolution
inspired him as the brightest star of the age of the Romantic
Period.
 His well-known works:
 Lyrical Ballads, The Daffodils, The Solitary Reaper, The
Excursion, The Prelude, The Recluse
  Percy Bysshe Shelly - was one of the major English Romantic
poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in
the English language. The famous English poet was born in 1792 in
Fieldplace, near Sussex, England. He was an Optimistic and
pessimistic poet.
His Well-known Works :
 Ode to a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind, -Adonais, Queen Mab,
The Necessity Atheism, A Defense of Poetry, Prometheus
Unbound, Ozymandias
 John Keats - He was the youngest among the Romantic poets The
famous poet of English literature was born in 1795 in Mubfields,
London. He was called “Poet of Beauty” Sensuousness.” He was
most famous for his sense of beauty and professionally known as a
man of medicine
His Well-known Works :
Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to Psyche, Odeon Melancholy, Ode to Autumn,
Isabella, Lamia.
FORMS OF POETRY
1. Odes- a lyric poem in the form of an address to a particular subject, often
elevated in style or manner and written in varied or irregular meter.
2. Lyric Ballads- Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of
poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
3. Sonnets- a poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme
schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line.
 JANE AUSTEN - She was born on 16th December 1775.
 Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813),
Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Northanger Abbey (1818),
Persuasion (1818), Lady Susan (1871
LITERARY ACHIEVEMENTS
The Romantic Period overthrew the values instilled during the Augustan Age
and strove to sever itself from the rigid writing styles of the ancient, classical
examples of Virgil, Horace, and Homer. Instead, poets and authors were
inspired to write in their own individual and creative voices.
SOCIAL POLITICAL ISSUES
 AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY WITH A POWERFUL
LANDHOLDING ARISTOCRACY WAS GIVING WAY TO A
MODERN INDUSTRIAL NATION OF LARGE-SCALE
EMPLOYERS AND A GROWING, RESTLESS MIDDLE
CLASS.
 AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS WERE
HUGELY IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF THE POLITICAL
LANDSCAPE. THREATS TO EXISTING SOCIAL STRUCTURE
WERE BEING POSED BY NEW REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS.
 A TIME OF HARSH POLITICAL REPRESSION IN
ENGLAND, IN SPITE OF THE NEED FOR CHANGES
BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
 MILL TOWNS GREW, THE LANDSCAPE WAS
INCREASINGLY SUBDIVIDED, FACTORIES SPEWED
POLLUTION OVER SLUMS, AND THE POPULATION WAS
INCREASINGLY DIVIDED INTO RICH AND POOR
 REFORMS DID NOT OCCUR BECAUSE THE PHILOSOPHY
OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE ("LET ALONE*) PREVAILED.
 THE CONSEQUENCES WERE LOW WAGES, HORRIBLE
WORKING CONDITIONS, AND LARGE-SCALE
EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN BRUTALLY
HARD OCCUPATIONS (SUCH AS COAL MINING).
 IN THE FACE OF TECHNOLOGICAL UN- EMPLOYMENT
AND POVERTY, WORKERS WHO COULD NOT VOTE HAD
TO RESORT TO PROTESTS AND RIOTS, INCURRING
FURTHER REPRESSION. BUT WHILE THE POOR
SUFFERED, THE LEISURE CLASS PROSPERED
 WOMEN OF ALL CLASSES WERE REGARDED AS
INFERIOR TO MEN, WERE UNDER-EDUCATED, HAD
LIMITED VOCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES, WERE SUBJECT
TO A STRICT CODE OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR, AND HAD
ALMOST NO LEGAL RIGHTS.
MAJOR THEMES DURING ROMANTIC PERIOD
 INDIVIDUAL, SUBJECTIVE, IRRATIONAL,
SUPERNATURAL, NATURE, PERSONAL, EMOTIONAL,
VISIONARY, TRANSCENDENTAL