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“DİLLƏR”

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“XARİCİ ÖLKƏ ƏDƏBİYYATI”

Fənni üzrə

MÜHAZİRƏ MATERİALLARI

Müəllif: f.ü.f.d. N.Ə.Aslanova

Bakı – 2014

1
 LECTURE 1.

THE LITERATURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

PLAN:
1. The ancient Britons
2. The Anglo-Saxon Period
3. Poets of this period
Literature is closely connected with the life and history of the people. If the
modern reader looks at earliest English literature, poetry or prose, he finds that it
reads like a foreign tongue and can be understood only in translation. Why is it so?
Who were those ancient people, the creators of the early compositions which later
on gave rise to so varied literature as English literature.
THE ANCIENT BRITONS –One of the tribes who lived in Britain in the
th
4 century B.C. was called Britons. They belonged to the Celtic race and spoke
Celtic. There are still some traces of this language found in geographical names,
e.g., Stratford-on Avon, Aberdeen. Another Celtic tribe Gaels lived in Ireland,
Scotland and Wales. Their descendants still live there and use some words of
Celtic origin, e.g., Loch Lomond.
The life of the ancient Britons was very primitive. They planted corn, lived
upon fish and the flesh of their cattle, made coarse cloth for their clothes, and were
good warriors. They also built many temples and altars, fragments of which can
still be seen in Great Britain.
The Britons had a strange and cruel religion - the religion of the Druids.
They sacrificed human beings and often burnt men and their animals together with
them.
Such was the condition of the ancient Britons when the Romans came to
conquer their land in the year 55 B.C.
Britain was a Roman province from the I century A.D. till the beginning of
the V century A.D.
The Romans had heard from travellers about some valuable metals which
had been found in Britain. Julius Caesar was the first Roman who invaded the
country in the I century B.C., yet he was unable to conquer it. The Roman
conquest of Britain was made later under Emperor Claudius in A.D. 43.
The Romans brought their civilization with them and taught the Britons to
build bridges, houses and roads. In England one can still find interesting remains
of the Roman times, such as some ruins of public baths and tiled floors of Roman
villas. Many of the great highways of England have been built on the military
roads once made by the Romans. A large number of English words come from the
Latin language, e.g., “street” comes from strata, “wall” from vallum, “port” from
portus, etc.
THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD- When in about 410 the Roman forces
were withdrawn to protect Rome itself the Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons and
Jutes, began their invasion of Britain. They came from the shores of the North Sea

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and the Baltic and settled in what is now the country of Kent. The Britons were
either made slaves or driven to the west of Britain.
All these invaders together created the Anglo-Saxon England - “Angle-
land” . During that period the land was divided into little kingdoms. The most
important were Kent, Wessex, Northumbria, and Mercia. The political power
soon shifted to Wessex.
In 787 the Vikings began their invasion. They brought with them their
customs and laws. Some of them settled in Northern and Eastern England.
In 1066 at the battle Hastings the Norman Duke William defeated the Saxon
King Harold. Again a new invasion took place. The conqueror, as he was now
called, became the king of England. He divided the land of the conquered people
among his lords. The English became a servile class. The Anglo-Saxons were also
converted to Christianity. Monks set up monasteries which became the centres of
learning and education.
The Anglo-Saxons were comparatively well-developed. They liked to hold
meetings in which people could express what they thought and felt. They were
brave, hardy, artistic, poetic people and had no written language yet. The songs,
stories and poems they made up had to be memorized and were handed down from
generation to generation.
POETS OF THIS PERIOD - One of the works of Anglo-Saxon poetry
which is known up today is the poem “Beowulf”.
W. Langland is fully connected with the culture of the middle ages. Chaucer
is the last poet of this period.
Langland is known as an author of the poem”The Vision of Pier the
plowman. It is the series of allegories written in the form of medieval genre of
vision. There are two parts in the poem and it consists of 11 “visions”.
The Venerable Bede the greatest of these writers described the country and
the people of his time in his work “The History of the English church”. It was the
first history of England and Bede is regarded as “The father of English history”.
Caedmon. A shepherd Caedmon started singing verses and became a poet.
Later monks took him to a monastery where he made up religions poetry up to the
VII century. Everything was written in Latin. He was the 1 st poet who composed in
Anglo-Saxon.
Alfred the great (849-901) was the king of Wessex. He was an outstanding
figure and a writer in English history. He is the only English king who is called
“great”. He founded the 1st English public schools for young men.

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 LECTURE 2.

LITERATURE IN THE NORMAN TIMES

PLAN:
1. Literature in the Norman times
2. Robin Hood Ballads
3. Literature of the 14th century
In 1066, October 14 Normans headed by William Normandy defeated
Anglo-Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon feudal monarchy fell as a result of the Norman
Conquest. The Normans who lived in the northern part of France were people of
Scandinavian origin. They had acquired the French language, customs, culture
which they brought with them to England. In England the Normans established a
strong feudal monarchy based on military power. Norman Duke William became
king of England.
In the Norman times three languages were spoken in the country: Latin,
Norman-French and Anglo – Saxon.
Latin was the language of the clergy and the university scholars. Until the
XII century it was mostly monks who were interested in books and learning. With
the development of sciences, such as medicine and law, “Universitas” appeared in
Europe. Paris became the centre of higher education for English students.
In 1168 an expelled group of professors from Paris founded the first
university was formed at Cambridge. The students were taught Latin, theology,
medicine, grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.
The Norman-French was the official language of the king and the
aristocracy. The Normans brought to England romances – love stories and lyrical
poems about their brave knights and their ladies.
The first English romances were translations from French. But later on in the
XII century, there appeared romances of Arthur, a legendary king of Britain. In the
XV century Th. Malory collected and published them under the title “Sir Thomas
Malory’s Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table”. The
knights gathered in King Arthur’s city of Camelot. Their meetings were held at a
round table, hence the title of the book. All the knights were brave and gallant in
their struggle against robbers, bad kings and monsters. King Arthur was the wisest
and most honest of them all.
The towns-folk expressed their thoughts in fabliaus and fables.
Anglo-Saxon was spoken by the common people from the V till the XIV
century. The songs and ballads about harvest, mowing, spinning and weaving were
created by the country-folk, and were learnt by heart, recited or sung accompanied
by musical instruments and dancing.
Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon formed one national language only toward
the beginning of the XIV century. In 1349 English was officially introduced at
schools and in 1362 at courts of law. The linguistics calls the language of this
period “Middle English”.

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 The Robin Hood Ballads
Songs and ballads were widespread among the people of England and
Scotland. They were created and preserved by the people, that is why they are
called “popular ballads”.
Ballads in the middle ages were of different kinds: historical, legendary,
lyrical and humorous. The most popular ballads were about Robin Hood, an
outlaw. In those days the Norman barons ill treated the Saxon peasants. They
often stole their children and took their cattle and corn. Many of the peasants
became outlaws. The outlaws who are best remembered are Robin Hood and his
«merry men». Robin Hood lived in Sherwood Forest in the XII century. His father
was killed by Normans and the family was driven off into the forest. He was brave,
strong, clever and generous. He opposed his oppressors and helped with purse and
sword those who were in any difficulty. He often robbed the rich to protect and
help the poor. There are many tales of the tricks he played on his enemies and the
good turns he did for his friends
“Robin Hood” ballads are partly historical and partly legendary. Many
English writers of the Renaissance mention Robin Hood’s name in their works.
The character of R.Hood is many sided. He is strong, brave and clever. He
always fights for poor people, he is always ready for poor, needy people’s call for
help.
The ballads played an important role in the development of English poetry
up to the 20th century.
The Literature of the XIV century
In the XIV century happened great changes. There was a contradiction
between ruling class, church and peasantry. This contradiction sharpened in 1311.
They were acting under Tylor’s leadership. They demanded to destroy feudalism,
equalisation of all people. People were against Roman Catholic church. At the II
half of XIV century you may observe John Wycliff who was against religious dog
mats. He translated the Bible from Latin into English (1382-1384).
The second half of the 14th century witnessed great changes in England’s
social, economic and cultural life.
Feudalism in England was on the verge of a cataclysmic crisis. Popular
insurrections were growing in force. Among those who defended the people’s
interests we see outstanding personalities as William Langland, John Wycliffe, the
translator of Bible into English John Ball.
With the consummation of England’s national unity English language
underwent a process of unification. London had became the capital of the country
not only in name but in fact. London dialect became the basis of New English.
Thus a new national spirit was being born in England which found its expression
both in the people’s poetry and in the works of a great poet who came forth to
voice this new national spirit Geoffrey Chaucer.

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 LECTURE 3

THE FATHER OF ENGLISH POETRY-GEOFFREY CHAUCER

(1340-1400)
PLAN:
1. Geoffrey Chaucer’s life and education
2. His literary activity
3. “Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer
In the XIV century England was more or less united. It was a time of
growing changes. Trade flourished and towns developed. But feudalism was a
serious obstacle to the development of the country. The feudal wars had ruined the
common people and there were many uprisings against the feudal lords. The best
known was Wat Tyler’s march to London.
In 1381 the oppressed peasants revolted. Thus 60,000 people marched to
London led by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw. But the rebellion was suppressed and
Wat Tyler murdered.
The poets Langland and Wycliff urged the peasants to fight for their rights.
The most vivid description of the XIV century England was given by
Geoffrey Chaucer. He was the first truly great writer in English literature and is
called the “father of English poetry”. He had all the elements of medieval culture
in his work, but he also cleared the way for realism.
Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London in 1340. His family belonged to the
rising middle class, the bourgeoisie. His father was a well-to-do wine merchant. G.
Chaucer was a court favourite and rose quickly in the world. He served as a soldier
in France and visited Italy as a diplomat. He was introduced there to French and
Italian life and was greatly influenced by the culture of these countries. He studied
at Oxford and Cambridge . In 1367 he was sent on several embassies to France,
Italy. In 1373 Chaucer received the post of a Comptroller of Customs in the port of
London.
He had to work in the Customs House all day long and only night time was
left to him to write poems. In 1386 he was elected Member of Parliament.
In 1389 he was appointed Clerk of the King’s Works at Westminster and
Windsor, and the new King Henry IV granted him a pension. The poet died on the
25th of October 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer’s poetry
opened a path to English Renaissance. Writing his poems he continued the
traditions of the Middle Ages. That is why he wrote not few of his poems in the
manner of the French poets.
He translated various works of French authors. Being especially fond of the
great Italian writer Boccaccio, Chaucer wrote a long poem “Troilus and Cressid”
based upon Boccaccio’s poem “Filostrato”.
In his greatest work the “Canterbury Tales” Chaucer created a brilliant and
picturesque panorama of his time and his country.

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 In this poem Chaucer’s realism, freedom of views reached such a high level
of power that had no equal in all the English literature up to the 16 th century. After
his death he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
“The Canterbury Tales” by G.Chaucer (1387-1400). It is for the
“Canterbury Tales” that Chaucer’s name is best remembered. In his greatest work
“Canterbury tales” Chaucer created a brilliant and picturesque panorama of his
time and his country The book is an unfinished collection of stories in verse told
by the pilgrims on their journey to Canterbury.. Several pilgrims gathered at
“Tabard Inn” not far from London. The pilgrims are on their way to the saint place
at Canterbury. It was very difficult and hard for pilgrims to walk all day long.
Sometimes they rested in the inns (karvansaray). The owner of the inn offered
them to speak interesting stories which had happened with them and having heard
from other persons. They continued their way telling different stories. Each pilgrim
was to tell four stories. Chaucer managed to write only twenty-four instead of the
proposed one hundred and twenty-four stories.
The prologue is the most interesting part of the work. It acquaints the reader
with medieval society. The pilgrims are persons of different social ranks and
occupations. Chaucer has portrayed them with great skill at once as types and as
individuals, true of their own age. There is a knight, a yeoman, a nun, a monk, a
priest, a merchant, a clerk, a sailor, Chaucer himself and others, thirty-one pilgrims
in all. The knight is brave, simple and modest. He is Chaucer’s ideal of a soldier.
The nun weeps seeing a mouse caught in a trap but turns her head from a beggar in
his “ugly rags”. The fat monk prefers hunting and good dinner to prayers. The
merchant’s wife is merry and strong. She has red cheeks and red stockings on her
fat legs. The clerk is a poor philosopher who spends all his money on books.
Each of the travellers tells a different kind of story showing his own views
and character. Some are comical, gay, witty or romantic, others are serious and
even tragic. An old man spoke about the great love. In “Canterbury Tales” that
story was named as “The Love of Greecy”. The story makes the listeners that a
woman is unconquered if she loves. Greecy was very beautiful, but very plain and
poor, shepherd’s daughter. Prince of the palace asked Greece to marry him. But
Greece answered: “My way to the palace runs through the agreement of my parents
and through the church”. She very soon joined Prince who had got the agreement
of her parents.

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 LECTURE 4

THE RENAISSANCE
PLAN:
1. The renaissance
2. English literature during the Renaissance
3. Christopher Marlowe’s life and literary activity
The dark Middle Ages were followed by a more progressive period due to
numerous events. Monarchies based on nationality were established in Europe. The
bourgeoisie appeared as a new class. Italy was the first bourgeois country in
Europe in the XIV century.
Columbus discovered America. Vasco da Gama reached the coast of India
making his sea voyage. Magellan went round the earth. The world appeared in a
new light.
The Copernican system of astronomy shattered the power of the Catholic
Church, and the Protestant Church was set up
Printing was invented in Germany in the XV century. It was brought to
England by Caxton in 1476. Schools and universities were established in many
European countries. Great men appeared in art, science and literature.
In art and literature the time between the XIV and XVII centuries was called
the Renaissance. It was the rebirth of ancient Greek and Roman art and literature.
Ancient culture attracted new writers and artists because it was full of joy of life
and glorified the beauty of man.
The writers and learned men of the Renaissance turned against feudalism
and roused in men a longing to know more about the true nature of things in the
world. They were called humanists. Man was placed in the centre of life. He was
no longer an evil being. He had a right to live, enjoy himself and be happy on
earth.
The humanists were greatly interested in sciences, especially in natural
science, based on experiment and investigation.
These new ideas first appeared in Italy. The Italian painters and sculptors
Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo glorified the beauty of man. The
Italian poets Dante, Petrarch and the Italian writer Boccaccio, the French writer
Rabelais, the Spanish writer Cervantes, and the English writer Thomas More and
the poet Shakespeare helped people to fight for freedom and better future.
Engels said that the Renaissance was “the greatest progressive revolution
that mankind had so far experienced, a time which called for giants and produced
giants – giants in power and thought, passion and character, in universality and
learning...”
Indeed, Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, architect, mathematician
and engineer. Michelangelo was a sculptor, painter and poet. Machiavelli was a
statesman, poet and historian.

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The 16th century in England was a period of the breaking up of feudal relations and
the establishing of the foundations of capitalism. Manufactures were developing
and the wool trade was rapidly growing.
At the beginning of the 16th century absolute monarchy was formed in
England. Absolute monarchy in England reached its summit during the reign of
Queen Elizabeth.
The process of bourgeois economy made England a powerful state. This
period is marked by a flourishing of national culture known in history as the
Renaissance.
Renaissance gave new touch to the literature and divided into three stages:
1) I quarter of 15 c- up to the II half of 16c
2) II half of 15 c- up to the death of Shakespeare
3) Since death of Shakespeare (1616)- up to the end of 17 c
At this period the first humanist poets was Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542). He was
prisoned and was interested in Petraska’s poems. He was familiar with Henry the
8th cruelty and despotism. He is the first man who brought the genre of sonnet to
the English Literature. His literary works:
1) Description of the Contrarious Passions in a lover. Here he describes the
feeling of the human being. Lyrical hero feels fear and happiness and joy.
2) Unstable Dream. Lyrical hero of this poem wants his wishes to become
true and he suffers a lot when he failed.
Henry Surrey as the main genre chose the genre of sonnet.
1) Description Praise of this Love Geraldine
2) Prisoned in Windsor. Here he speaks about his bitter life and the death of his
friend Duke Richmond.
“University wits” is connected with these names: Robert Green Thomas Kid and
Christopher Marlove. (Phenelope’s Web, 1587, Menaphon 1589)
Robert Green wrote narratives and drama. “Pandosts” (1588) is a short story.
Green’s six plays are kept up today. They are: comedies-
1) “The Comicall Historie of Alphonsus, king of Aragon” (1587)
2) “The Kottish Historie of King James the Fourth” (1591)
3) “A pleasant Conceyted Canediu of George a Greeme, the Pinner of
Wakefield” (1599). Green created women characters. He also created
comedies and tragy-comedies.
The other number of “University Wits” is Thomas Kud was the author of
tragic drama. “The Spanish Tragedy” (1587). In this short story there are situations
which are closer to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. Besides he is considered to be the
author of the short story “Hamlet”.
The epoch of Renaissance witnessed a particular development of English
drama. Various types of the novel developed in the 16 th century. John Lyly,
Thomas Lodge were the first authors of novels dealing with court life. A great
number of works of classical authors were translated into English during the 16 th
century.

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 Ch. Marlowe was one of the first great English Renaissance dramatists; he
was born in 1564, the year of Shakespeare’s birth, in Canterbury. The son of a
shoemaker, he attended the King’s school in Canterbury and then earned a
B.A.degree from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1584. Several years he
spent in France. Then he moved to London. Between 1587 and and 1593 wrote a
series of plays, including the two parts of Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus.
He was one of the most talented members of “University Wits”. He created a
number of realistic tragedies. “Tamburlaine the great”. It is a short story about
Tamburlaine’s life. He is a great man. Nobody can defeat him. He loves Zenokrate.
He bows before her beauty. He kills his son because he doesn’t want to follow his
father’s way. At the end he declares himself God and Sun. He is eager to conquer
the whole world. Everybody calls him a monster.
In a drama “The Tragicall History of Dr.Faustus” (1589). The main
character is a scientist Dr. Faustus. He makes an agreement with the owners of the
Hell-Luthifere, Velzevul and Mefistofel.
He will be all powerful with Mefistofel’s help 24 years. But then he will be
the sacrifice of the Hell forever. When he sees the beautiful Helen he wants his
soul back but it is too late.
In one of the scenes the allegoric figure of 7 mortal sins appears: Pride,
Greediness, Fury, Envy, Laziness, Spoil. The main problem of the tragedy “The
famous tragedy of the Jew of Malta (1570) and the prologue where Machiavelli’s
historical character appears. The main character is the Jew Varrav. He reaches
wealth by using Machiavelli’s principles.
Machiavelli is clearly blamed in the tragedy Edward II (1592). Lord
Mortimer the younger tries to be a chief of England. He raises barons against
Edward II to get the throne and give it to the young prince. Considers that he will
be appointed as a regent. First Edward II had to give up the crown then he was
killed by Mortimer’s order. He reaches his wish but the new king Edward III could
raise the lords against the murderer of this father. Mortimer was executed but
Queen Isabel was imprisoned in the Tower.

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 LECTURE 5

THE PREDECESSORS OF SHAKESPEARE

PLAN:
1. The predecessors of Shakespeare
2. Thomas More. His life and literary activity
3. “Utopia” by Thomas More
Thomas More (1478-1535) was born in London and educated at Oxford. He
was a lawyer and became a Member of Parliament. He was a Catholic but fought
against the Pope and the king’s absolute power. The priests hated him because of
his poetry and discussions on political subjects. Th. More refused to obey the king
as the head of the English Church, therefore he was thrown into the Tower of
London and beheaded there as a traitor.
His main literary work is his political essay “Utopia” in two parts. It was
written in Latin, but after his death in 1551 it was translated into English and later
into many other European languages. In Utopia he gave a truthful picture of the
people’s sufferings and put forward his ideal of a future happy society.
The book is a description of the author’s imaginary conversation with a
traveller Raphael Hythloday by name.Utopia is the name of Island. The first part is
author’s imaginary dialogue with Hythoday by name.
In the first part Th.More describes
In the second part Hythloday described an unknown land Utopia which he
has seen in an unknown sea. It is an ideal republic. Its government is elected. This
is no private property there. Every man has enough for his needs. Everybody
works. There is no prison and people are punished by labour. Men and women
have equal rights. The most difficult work is done by slaves. The Utopians think
that man must be healthy and wise, but not rich. “Utopia” is a Greek word and
means “nowhere”. There we find the three great words Liberty, Fraternity and
Equality.
The predecessors of W.Shakespeare: J.Lyly, E.Spencer, R.Green,
Ch.Marlowe
T. More J. Lyly, E. Spencer, R. Green, Ch. Marlowe are the predecessors of
W.Shakespeare. J.Lyly is one of authors of novels dealing with court life. Great
popularity was won by him for his novel “Eupeus”
Thomas More is the first English humanist of the Renaissance. Sir Thomas
More
E.Spencer was the author of the greatest epic poem of the time “The fairy
Queen” an allegorical description of the adventures of knights and ladies who fight
against harmful forces.
R.Green tried his pen writing historical chronicles as “The life and death of
Henry the sixth”, “The life and death of Henry the fourth”.
Ch.Marlowe reformed tragic genre in England. He was one of the first great
English Renaissance dramatists. Marlowe wrote a series of plays including the two
parts of “Tamburlaine”, “The Jew of Malta”, “Edward II”, “Doctor Faustus”.

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Robert Burns
Robert Burns- the eldest son of William Burns a poor gardener was born on
the 25th of January 1759 at Alloway Ayrshire. Robert had great thirst for
knowledge. From his teacher he acquired some French and Latin. From his
younger years Burns had an intimate knowledge of Scottish folk songs and the
works of Scottish poets.
In 1766 Burns’ father rented a land. The whole family moved to a new place
where the land was. They worked in the fields from sunup to sundown. Robert’s
schooling was discontinued.
In 1777 the Burns moved to Tarbolton. Robert always found time for
reading. In Tarbolton Robert organized a society where all kinds of moral, social
and political problems were discussed.
After his father’s death Robert and his brother worked on a small farm, but
Robert’s farming brought him misfortune and misery.
Burns’ protest against inequality between landlords and common people
found vent in his poems. They easily won the hearts of common people. In 1786 a
collection of “Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect” made its appearance. The
book contained lyrical, humorous, satirical poems written by R. Burns in the
earlier years. After his book’s second edition he was invited to Edinburgh. In his
“Revolutionary Lyric” written in the nineties Burns regards the future happiness of
common men as the result of revolution. This idea was inspired by the French
revolution which greatly influenced Burns in his poetic work.

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 LECTURE 6

THE RENAISSANCE (THE GOLDEN AGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE)

PLAN:
1.W. Shakespeare’s epoch.
2.William Shakespeare’s life.
3.W. Shakespeare’s literary activity.
4.Comedies and historical chronicles by W. Shakespeare.
5.Sonnets
The epoch during which William Shakespeare lived and wrote represents a
unique chapter in English history. It was a period of great changes. England was
united under one king and became a powerful state. Towns developed, science,
industry and trade flourished.
A bourgeois form of life came into existence. All these contradictions were
reflected in art. In England this new trend of realism was rendered by drama whose
greatest master was Shakespeare. The ideas of (realism) the Renaissance were
expressed by him in the most realistic forms. He created a new epoch in world
literature, and the time was called "The golden age of English literature or "The
age of Shakespeare."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
The great poet and dramatist was born at Stratford-on-Avon. His father John
Shakespeare was a merchant and for a time one of the leading citizens of Stratford.
His mother, Mary Arden, was a farmer's daughter. John and Mary had eight
children. Their 3-rd child was William. The boy learned to read and to write at the
Grammar School in his native town. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway.
They had three children. He left Stratford and went to London. In 1593 and 1594
he published two long poems "Venus and Adonus" and "Lucrece". Both poems
were dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton, a great admirer of Shake’s
plays.
In 1594 Shakespeare became a member in the Lord Chamberlain’s company
of actors. He wrote plays for the company and acted in them. His early plays were
performed in the play houses known as "The Theatre" and "The Curtain". When
the company built the "Globe "theatre most of his greatest plays were performed
there. By that time Shakespeare was acknowledged to be the greatest of English
dramatist. His career as a dramatist lasted for nearly 21 years. Around 1610 he left
London and passed the rest of his life at Stratford -on - Avon. He died at 52 and
was buried in the church at Stratford - on - Avon. Shakes" Literary Work.
He has written 5 long poems, 154 sonnets and 37 plays of all kinds-
comedies, chronicles and tragedies.
His literary work may be divided into 3 periods which are sometimes called
optimistic, pessimistic and romantic.
The optimistic period (1590-1601). During the 1-st period Shakespeare
wrote poems "Venice and Adonis" and "Lykrecia".

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 3 tragedies: "Titus Audronicus"
"Romeo and Juliet" "Julius Caesar"
Comedies: "The merry wives of Windsor" "Much ado about nothing " "
Twelfth night" "The Merchant of Venice "A Midsummer Night Dream " "As you
like it".
"The Taming of Shrew".
Historical Chronicles: "King Henry VI"
"The Tragedy of King Richard I"
"The Tragedy of King Richard"
"The life and death of King John"
"King Henry IV"
"The life of King Henry V" (besides "Henry VIII"). The pessimistic period (1601-
1608) is the 2-nd period and it is connected with tragic conflicts and tragic heroes.
Shakespeare’s created tragedies:
"Hamlet"
"Othello"
"King Lear"
"Macbeth"
"Anthony and Cleopatra" "Timon of Athens ". Comedies which were written
at this period carry tragic shades; they are "Trolins and Cressida", "Measure for
measure".
The Romantic period (1608-1612). During the 3-rd period of this literary
career he wrote the following plays ; "Cymbeline", "The Winter "s Tale", "The
Tempest", "Henry VIII".
SONNETS
The sonnet was perfected in Italy in the XIV century buy Petrarch. It was
introduced into England in the XVI century and became fashionable there.
Shakespeare much later Milton raised this form to great poetic height.
The sonnet is a poem of 14 lines, written in iambic pentameter. Each line has
ten syllables with stress on every other syllable.
Shakespeare’s sonnets were addressed to the so-called “Dark lady” and his
young friend.
The sonnet was the best form that enabled him to criticize various human
vices and express his individual feelings of love, friendship and beauty.
COMEDIES
Though Shakespeare’s comedies take the spectator to Italy they reflect “the
very age and body” of Renaissance England. His characters are the renaissance
men and women , creators of their own fate. They are healthy people whose aim in
life is to enjoy it. Sometimes they are closed to sorrow and heartbreak, but the end
of plays is always happy. Shakespeare’s comedies were written to take the
spectator away from everyday troubles. In them people lived for merriment,
pleasure and love. The comic came out from their human qualities.

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 Shakespeare believed in man’s virtues. He hoped that man would achieve
happiness. He was optimistic, therefore love of life is the main feature of his
comedies, notable for their wit, comic characters and situations, for the smoothly
flowing language and harmonious composition. All of them are written in a light
and playful manner. At the same time they are serious at core and contain deep
philosophical thoughts.
"Twelfth - Night" is one of the most charming and perfect of Shake’s plays.
It was the last of his merry comedies. Afterwards he wrote mainly tragedies. The
play was written to say good-bye to the Christmas holidays which were celebrated
with great pomp and lasted for twelve days. Twelfth Night was the end of merry-
making. Hence the title of the comedy.
The plot of the play is centered round Viola. She is clever, intelligent and
noble hearted woman. Making a sea voyage she and her twin brother Sebastian
were shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria, which was governed by Duke Orsino.
The captain of the ship brought Viola safe on shore. Her brother had apparently
drowned. The captain told Viola that Duke Orsino was in lone with Countess
Olivia whose father and brother had recently died. For the love of them she
avoided people. Viola made up her mind to serve Orsino as a page under the name
Cesario. She put on her brother's clothes. The Duke was fond of Cesario and told
him about his love to Olivia and sent him to her house to talk her about his love.
Viola went there unwillingly because she herself loved Orsino. On seeing Cesario
Olivia fell in love with him. In the meantime Sebastian appears. She mistook him
for Cesario and proposed they should marry. Sebastian agreed. Soon Cesario-Viola
entered. Everybody wondered at seeing two persons with the same face and voice.
When all errors were cleared up, they laughed at Olivia for falling in love with a
woman. The twin brother and sister were wedded on the same day. Viola became
the wife of Orsino, The Duke of Illyria, Sebastian - the husband of the rich and
noble Countess Olivia.

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 LECTURE 7

PESSIMISTIC PERIOD OF SHAKESPEARE. HIS TRAGEDIES.

PLAN:
1. The pessimistic period (1601-1608)
2. “Hamlet” by Shakespeare
3. “Romeo and Juliet” by Shakespeare
4. “King Lear” by Shakespeare
5. “Othello” by Shakespeare
The pessimistic period (1601-1608). Shakespeare’s dramatic genius was at
its highest in the second period of his literary work, when all off Shakespeare’s
famous tragedies appeared. From a merry story-spinner he was transformed into a
severe critic and judge of his time because he realized that the new time that had
come instead of feudalism brought forth new and worse forms of slavery for man.
He was aware of the discrepancy between the ideals of Renaissance humanism and
the possibility of their realization in the real historical conditions of that time. He
wanted to prove that the world, its laws and morals should be changed. He showed
that people had to look for another and more perfect life. Society could achieve
progress and happiness only through struggle, though it did not always promise
success. The great dramatist seemed to say, “Learn in suffering”. He had faith in
man’s virtue. In his tragedies the evil forces are victorious only to a certain point,
in the end the good wins.
Shakespeare’s characters are universal personalities of great depth and
unusual intellects. They are never static as Shakespeare’s attention is concentrated
on his heroes’ development in the world in which they move. At the same time he
has created real, ordinary, live men.
Each tragedy portrays some noble figure caught in a difficult situation when
some weakness of his nature is exposed. For instance, Macbeth strives for pover,
King Lear demands blind submission, etc. Calamity arises through man’s actions
upon which depend not only his own fate, but also that of an entire nation. A man’s
tragedy is not individual, it spreads to other people as well.
In ancient tragedies man was helpless. His life depended on fate.
Shakespeare’s man acts in a concrete social and political world. He is the product
of the environment and history.
During the second period of his literary work Shakespeare wrote the
following tragedies: “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” (1602), “Troilus and Cressida”
(1602), “Othello, the Moor of Venice” (1604), “King Lear” (1605), “Macbeth”
(1606), “Antony and Cleopatra” (1607)
He also wrote a few comedies: “All’s Well that Ends Well” -1602, “Measure
For Measure” -1604, “Pericles, Prince of Tyre” – 1608. These have been named
the dark comedies and differ from those written during the first period as they have
many tragic elements in them.

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 Tragedies. Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies are “Hamlet”, “Othello”, “King
Lear”, and “Macbeth”.
“Hamlet” is a philosophical drama, the tragedy of a humanist. At the
University of Wittenberg Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, learns of his father’s death.
At home he finds his mother Getrude married to his uncle Claudis. The young
prince is overclouded with melancholy. What mostly troubles him is the
uncertainty about his father’s death. He suspects Claudius because his father’s
Ghost tells him that he has been robbed of life of crown of queen by his brother.
Hamlet regards the murder of his father as an indication of the general
corruption of the age.
In the world of Claudius man cannot stand erect, cannot breathe freely. All
around is treachery, stupidity, vulgarity, envy, and hypocrisy. Hamlet suffers, he is
pessimistic, he tries to escape into himself.
To revenge his father and kill Claudis would be the easiest way, but it could
not set things right, Hamlet is not limited by the conventions of his time. He
dreams of a free human spirit, of a life ordered by pace and reason, of a world of
honest people and honest relationship, but he does not believe that such a world
will ever become a reality. He wants to fight not for the crown, power and throne.
He looks for real deeds to be done, but he is revolted by the methods of fighting
introduced by Claudius. The contrast between his ideals and the rottenness of life
brings Hamlet to a Dilemma: either to fly from reality or to overcome all by power
of thought, will and action.
Hamlet hesitates because he is afraid to take a false step which might lead
him against his humanist ideals. He is not a fighter by nature, he is a learned man,
a philosopher . His feelings are deep and intense. He loves Ophelia, the daughter of
the king’s counsellor Polonius. He asks her to run out of the hell about them to a
nunnery. He wants to save her t the price of a separation. To preserve his tender
love he disguises it and him. The change in Hamlet breaks her heart.
From a world of books and philosophy he passes to an energetic action. It is
hard, he is surrounded by cunning enemies. Hamlet wants to make the king admit
his crime. He arranges a play in which the performers act out such a scene: a king
is poisoned and the murderer marries the queen. Claudius sees his secret has been
revealed. He sends Polonius to spy on Hamlet. Mistaking him for the king the
prince stabs the counsellor.
The king sends Hamlet out of Denmark. Two courtiers accompany the
prince to England. They are given a letter to the English court saying that Hamlet
should be put to death as soon as he lands on English ground. Hamlet secretly gets
at the letter, erases his own name and puts the name of the two courteries instead of
it. Soon after the ship is attacked by pirates. Hamlet displays great courage in the
sea-fight. The pirates set him on shore in Denmark. When he gets home he sees the
funeral of Ophelia. She became insane and was drowned. Claudius makes her
brother Laertes challenge Hamlet to fencing and revenge his father and sister.
Laertes is given a poisoned weapon with which he wounds Hamlet. In the fight the
young men exchange their swords and laertes is wounded with his own poisoned

17
weapon. The queen drinks out of a bowl prepared for Hamlet by the king, in case
laertes falled. She dies. Laertes also dies begging forgiveness of Hamlet.
As a character Hamlet is many-sided. He is noble, beautiful, courageous. He
does not fear to look the truth in the face. His capacity for action, decisiveness and
initiative are one part of his nature. On the other hand he doubts, puts things off,
falls into complete pessimism, avoids action. Indecision, doubts, hesitation are the
other side of his character. The two sides are closely interconnected. Hamlet is a
real, live clever man. He criticizes himself for slowness and finds the will to act.
He rises against his own weakness. He discovers the world and himself as well.
This comes about painfully and tragically. His victory is that he has overcome his
own doubts.He knows that his struggle will continue for years to com
Romeo and Juliet. Tragedy does not belong to one single period of
Shakespeare’s work. It is with him in the first two stages of his literary career.
“Romeo and Juliet” was Shakespeare’s first romantic tragedy. He turned from the
romantic comedies to make the romantic tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. The play is
still very popular and the names of Romeo and Juliet are used to describe any great
lovers.
In the tragedy the problem of love is raised to a deep social problem. The
play treats love as a serious tragic subject.
Romeo and Juliet are the victims of a long senseless feud between their
families. The world of the Montagues and Capulets is antagonistic to their love.
The young people are to fight against traditions and patriarchal morality. Juliet
understands the senselessness of this feud.
The death of the young people makes the older generation realize the
absurdity of their feud and leads to the reconciliation of the two families. The
tragedy ends in an optimistic mood.
"King Lear" is a tragedy of interrelationship of men in society. It is a
family tragedy against the background of the social and political life of late
feudalism. It is a play of the clash between cruelty, selfishness, ambition on the
one hand, honesty, justice and humanity on the other.
The tragedy takes us back to the days of ancient Britain though Lear is not a
historical character. He is portrayed as a big feudal, landowner, whose subjects fear
his stormy and hasty temper. In the course of long years of glorious rule his heart
has become filled with pride and complete absence of doubt in the righteousness of
his own ways.
He is 80 and is ready to divide his kingdom and give all state affairs to his
three daughters Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Goneril is married to the Duke of
Albany and Regan to the Duke of Cornwall. Two foreigners – the Duke of
Burgundy and the King of France are seeking the hand of his youngest daughter
Cordelia. The King is going to give away his beloved daughter to one of them. At
this moment the old man is full of pride – the pride of a king and a father. He
decides to test his daughters: the greatest share will be given to the daughter who
will best express her love for him. Goneril and Regan declare that they love him
more than their hohnour, beauty and health. The king is pleased and gives them

18
each one third of the kingdom. Cordelia is ashamed to repeat these words of
flattery , for she loves truth and honesty. Her answer is different.
The tyrant king spoilt by flattery is hurt and disowns her. No one dares to
defend the unhappy Cordelia except, the king’s counsellor Kent, and the king of
France who asks her to go with him to France.
Now Lear will live in turn with Goneril and Regan. He does not foresee his
failure. His two elder daughters insult him shut their doors upon him and let him
out in a thunderstorm. The storm is used by Shakespeare as a metaphor for the
changes and catastrophes in society and the inner life of the characters. Lear is
surprised to see that the attitude to him has changed. From this moment on his
heart has no peace. He is only a poor, old, weak, despised man. His degradation
begins. The family and most of his subjects respected, obeyed and feared him only
because he was in power. In Shakespeare’s time class relations were in transition.
With Lear’s degradation the poet shows that the feudal order is breaking up and a
new generation representing a different outlook takes over.
His two eldest daughters represent the new class. They are selfish, cruel,
false, vulgar, full of plots and plans. Their hearts are hardened. Regan, however, is
more feminine and passive. She is dependent on Goneril whom Lear calls a marble
– hearted friend.
The King’s mind has clouded over, but under hard trials in suffering and
pain he goes through a moral evaluation and becomes humane. He begins to think
of the poor and oppressed masses, of the shelterless people whom he formerly
neglected. He understands the injustice of the order he once represented. He
realizes his mistake. Lear’s story is his progress from being a king to being a man
who faces his fellow – men with understanding and compassion.
Shakespeare is a great master of plot. In “King Lear” we find a double plot.
On the one hand the author reveals the family tragedy of King Lear, on the other
hand he shows the fate of the Earl of Gloucester. This parallelism in the lives of the
two men makes the tragedy vaster and emphasizes the idea that King Lear’s case
was typical of the age.
Gloucester has 2 sons. Edgar and Edmund. The latter is his illegitimate son.
The cruel age, the consciousness of having no rights have made Edmund a cynical
free-thinker. He is devoid of any moral principles. His aim is to get his brother’s
lands and power. By a treacherous letter he succeeds in setting his father against
Edgar whom Gloucester disinherits.
Together with Cordelia the brightest spirit among the young generation is
Edgar. He has a courageous and pure heart, but he has to run away to escape
danger.
In the meanwhile, Cordelia has sent troops to England to rewin her father’s
kingdom. She finds her father in the field near Dover. Old Gloucester helpes his
master to reach this place because he knew of Cordelia’s intention. Edmund
disclosed this secret to Cornwall, and Gloucester’s eyes were plucked out, he
himself was turned out of doors. Edgar disguised as a beggar, helped him to reach

19
Dover where Gloucester died. The British troops under Edmund’s command win
the French army. Edmund orders to hand Cordelia.
Goneril and Regan are in love with Edmund. In a fit of jealousy goneril
poisons her sister Regan. She herself commits suicide when her husband learns
about her plot. Wishing to avenge his father Edgar kills Edmund. So the evil forces
do not triumph but light comes too late. King Lear finds his daughter Cordelia but
she is dead. All that remains for him to do is to die over her listless body. Edgar
and the Duke of Albany are with him at this moment. It is they now who are to rule
Lear’s kingdom.
“Macbeth” is the story of the usurpation of Macbeth and the events that
follow it. It portrays the degradation fall of a noble character. Guided by his
wicked and ambitious wife Macbeth murders the king. Lady Macbeth forces her
husband into action. Her ambition expresses itself through her husband. The
moment Macbeth has the throne he begins to fear other people who might claim
the crown. One murder leads to others until “nature” itself rises against Macbeth.
So, the theme of the tragedy is “blood will have blood”. The atmosphere of horror
is created through the use of imagery (metaphors, similes): “blood, water,
darkness”. In the end Macbeth is defeated, the good forces have won, justice
triumphs.
Othello – continues the love theme developed in “Romeo and Juliet”. Here
love is to fight against another aspect of prejudice – race discrimination. In
marrying Desdemona the black Moor Othello throws a challenge to the feudal
principle of marriage. The love of Othello and Desdemona is great and human. It is
the result of a long growth of feeling. Desdemona comes to understand the Moor’s
nobility of character, for his part, Othello meets in Desdemona a human being
sensitive to his feelings:
She loved me for the dangers I had passed;
And I loved her that she did pity them.
The tragedy shows a conflict between a great personality and society. The
black, but intelligent and noble Othello is contrasted with the white villain Iago,
the weak-willed Cassio and other white men. The Venetian Senate is forced to
suppress their contempt for the inferior race, for the “dirty” Moor. They must
admit that he is a talented military leader.
Othello’s position in society accounts for his contradictory character: a
colured man and a general, brave, severe soldier and a kind gentle man.
Shakespeare shows his inner, psychological world, his feelings and passions. The
boundless trustfulness of Othello is the clue to his tragedy. Othello’s proud faith in
the inner purity and honesty of man is used by nature, he is made jealous. The
death of Desdemona is Othello’s tragedy, as well. It is the collapse of the whole
philosophy by which he lived. By murdering his wife Othello destroys a source of
evil. “She must die, else she’ll betray more men,” he says. For this reason, when he
discovers that he himself is a source of evil, he commits suicide. Othello’s death is
the triumph of his humanism and the downfall of Iago’s philosophy.

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 LECTURE 8

ENGLISH LITERATURE DURING THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION

PLAN:
1. English literature during the bourgeois revolution
2. John Milton’s life and his creative activity
3. Paradise Lost by J. Milton
4. Paradise Regained by J. Milton
In the XVII century broad masses of the English people became interested in
social and political problems. The political situation in the country was
complicated. It was the time of the English Bourgeois Revolution. The bourgeoisie
had become powerful enough to put up a struggle against the king. This struggle
was supported by the farmers and Parliament. The king dismissed Parliament.
Charles I had ruled as an absolute king for seven years. He regarded the country as
his personal possession. But the religious, political and economic forces were
beginning to rise against this notion. The people wanted to increase the power of
Parliament. In 1642 a civil war began between Charles I and the Parliament forces.
It was a war between the Royalists – Cavalier and the Puritans or Roundheads.
Victory went to Parliament. Its leader was Oliver Cromwell, a talented general. His
army was known as Ironsides, because it was never beaten. The king’s army was
destroyed, and the king was sentenced to death. In 1649 England was proclaimed a
Commonwealth (a republic). It was the triumph of the Revolution.

JOHN MILTON
(1608 - 1674)
John Milton is considered to be the greatest poet of the English Bourgeois
Revolution. He was the son of a London scrivener. He was sent to St. Paul’s
School in London, where he studied Greek and Latin classics. He studied hard and
at the age of sixteen went to Cambridge University. There he took both Bachelor’s
and Master’s degrees. He also began to write poetry in Latin.
After the University he lived on his father’s estate in a little village of
Horton, where he gave himself up to study and poetry. In 1638 Milton left Horton
for travel in France, Switzerland and Italy. While in Italy he visited the famous
scientist Galileo. In 1639 he returned to London and occupied himself for a time as
a tutor.
In the 1640’s Milton wrote pamphlets supporting the Independents. Milton’s
made Europe understand that the Revolution was the only force which could give
the English people freedom. In 1649 he was appointed Latin secretary to Oliver
Cromwell’s Council of State for whom he translated diplomatic papers from and
into Latin.
After Cromwell’s death in 1660 monarchy was restored in England. Milton’s
pamphlets were burnt. He moved to a small house near London and returned to
poetry. He was blind now had to dictate his greatest works “Paradise Lost” (1667)

21
and “Paradise Regained” (1671) to his three daughters. When the poet died he was
buried in Westminster Abbey.
Milton was popular in his own age and throughout the XVIII century he was
widely imitated. Nowadays his work can also be enjoyed.
“Paradise Lost” is an epic poem, written in blank verse, in iambic
pentameter. It treats of a biblical theme, but it is revolutionary in spirit. The poem
shows the struggle between God and Satan in the Universe. God is a tyrant. He is
cruel and he punishes. Satan, the hero of the poem, embodies the uncrushed spirit
of the Revolution. He revolts against God, and is driven out of Heaven to Hell.
Glad to be free, he addresses his new home Hell, saying:
Receive thy new possessor, one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time,
The mind in its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Satan plans to work against God by causing the downfall of his first human
creatures Adam and Eve. God has forbidden them to eat the fruit of the tree of
knowledge. Satan comes to Paradise at night, turns into a serpent, and next
morning addresses Eve and advises her to taste the fruit:
... in that day
Ye eat thereof, your eyes that seem so clear,
Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then
Opened and cleared, ye shall be as gods
Knowing both good and evil as they know.
Milton’s Adam and Eve are people who are proud, who love the truth and
wisdom.
... what are gods that man may not
become as they?
Eve thinks these words over and eats the forbidden fruit. Adam and Eve are
punished and must leave Paradise. But they are full of energy and ready to meet all
hardships on the Earth. They are brave and attractive people, eager to know the
world. Milton seems to be on their side.
“Paradise Regained” is a second blank-verse poem in four books, describes
how Jesus, a greater individual than Adam, overcame the temptations of Satan. In
both works, Milton’s characterizations of Satan, Adam, Eve, and Jesus are
penetrating and moving
With the story of the Fall now complete, John Milton declares his intention
to write of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. The book opens with Jesus’
baptism by John, immediately following which Satan and the other fallen angels
(the “Powers of Air”) meet to discuss what to do, fearful of what he may
accomplish. Satan proposes to try “temptation and all guile” in order to subvert
him to their cause.
Following his baptism, Jesus feels the Holy Spirit leading him, and after a
brief recitation of his life thus far, wanders into the desert. Forty days pass, during
which time he neither eats nor feels the need to. Finally, at the end of this period,

22
Jesus encounters an aged man gathering sticks, who asks what bad luck has led
him so deep into the wilderness and how he intends to find his way back. Jesus
replies that “Who brought me hither.Will bring me hence”. The old man then
suggests that, if he is the Son of God, he should miraculously change the stones
into bread so that he can eat. At this, Jesus sees through Satan’s disguise, and Satan
admits his identity and says “Men generally think me much a foe to all mankind.
Why should I? They to me Never did wrong or violence.” He does, however,
lament that human beings will eventually be saved and he will not be.
With this, Jesus rebukes Satan, claiming he deserves his present state and
was allowed into Heaven only to torment him with what he can never again have.
He also claims that “Job'spatience won”, although given the amount of suffering
Satan managed to inflict on innocent people as a result of this, one wonders if he
was not the victor after all. Jesus also accuses Satan of misleading the people with
lying prophecies and claims that the time of oracles is over; “God hath now sent
his living Oracle Into the world to teach his final will, And sends his Spirit of
Truth henceforth to dwell To all truth requisite for men to know.” This dialogue
continues the anti-intellectual themes of Paradise Lost by asserting that men should
only know enough to worship God and should otherwise remain ignorant.

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 LECTURE 9

THE ENLIGHTENMENT
PLAN:
1. The Enlightenment movement
2. D.Defoe’s life
3. D.Defoe’s literary activity
4. “Robinson Crusoe” by D.Defoe
The literature of the XVIII century was conditioned by the social and
political situation in the country. During the XVIII century British prosperity
increased. Britain had many colonies,she had wars with other European countries-
Holland, France and Spain – for a commanding position in India and America.
Though Briatain was still essentially an agricultural country , industry also
developed rapidly. The commercial classes became active. They attempted to bring
the king’s power under Parliament’s control. They formed a party called “Whigs”.
In 1688 the middle class (bourgeoisie) forced the king to rule through Parliament.
It was called the “Glorious Revolution”. Now wealth was the main motivating
power in society. Men became more civilized and rational. The middle class
people assumed a foremost place in English life and history.
London developed in the centre of wealth and civilization, and became the
heart of the literary and intellectual life of the country. Writers loked upon London
as their chief audience.
The middle class found its ideal social centre in the coffee houses. People
went there to exchange news , to conduct business or to whisper political secrets
and hold serious religious, philosophical and literary discussions. Each rank and
profession had its own coffee-house.
The writers of the day were dependent on the new readingpublic which had
never before been greatly interested in literature. In previous periods the number of
readers was comparatively small. Authors wrote largerly for the upper classes. In
the XVIII century the spread of education and the appearance of newspapers and
magazines led to the increase of readers.
The main interest in that time was in man in and in the origin of his good
and evil qualities. Men began to feel that society had a great influence on them and
that it could be reformed. They wanted to improve the World by teaching it.
The fiction writers of the 18th c. started a movement for enlightening the
people.
The movement of the Enlightenment was led by the bourgeoise who hated
feudalism, insisted upon education for all and fought for self-government.
Although the English writers had no such revolutionary aims as Russian or French
Enlighteners had, the literature of this period was very much a public literature. It
represented the outlook and values of the bourgeoise. The new middle class took to
buying and selling books. In 1702 the first daily newspaper was established.
Comedy, satire, essays, political pamphlets and criticism were very popular. The
novel became the leading form of literature. This century was a period of great

24
experimentation in the novel. The novel was used to teach human kindness, to
frame a phylosophical or political idea, to enlighten, etc. The hero of the novel was
a representative of the middle class. His most characteristic features were reason
and common sense.
The student of literature when he passes in his reading from the age of
Shakespeare and Milton to that of Defoe, Swift and Burns, will see certain
differences between the styles and the writers of the two periods. The chief literary
phenomena of the 18th c. were the reign of Classicism and Sentimentalism, the
revival of romantic poetry, and the discovery of the modern novel.
The English Classicists, whoose greatest representative was A.Pope
cultivated in their works formal elegance, balance and control of emotions. They
revived the principles of antique Greek and Roman literature and observed strict
rules in their writings.
Towards the middle of the century a new literary trend Sentimentalism,
appeared. It marked a new stage in the evaluation of the Enlightenment. The
greatest representatives of the trend were S.Richardson, O.Goldsmith and L.Sterne.
They appealed to the hearts of people and made them symphathize with their
heroes. The Sentimentalists strove for primitive patriarchal life and rejected
bourgeois civilization in towns.
Whatever literary trends and movements appeared in the 18th century all the
writers of the Enlightenmnet aimed at the simplicity of style, truth to nature,
reason. clarity, conversational ease and directness. They preferred the language of
country-men and merchants to that of scholars and princes. They conveyed ideas
which the mass of men would readily understand.
The English writers of the time formed 2 groups. Those who hoped to better
the world by teaching it belonged to one group, though their works differed
greatly.These were: Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Samuel Richardson, Laurence
Sterne.
The other groups included the writers who openly protested against the
vicious social order. They were: Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Oliver
Goldsmith, Richard Sheridan, Robert Burns.
DANIEL DEFOE - D. Defoe is regarded as the founder of realistic novel in
English fiction.
He was the son of a wealthy London butcher and received a good education.
The family was Puritans and Daniel was educated in a Dissenting College to
become a clergyman. He preferred, however the life of a merchant. Daniel was
energetic and practical and had an adventurous career. He made a lot of money,
went bankrupt and was imprisoned on several occasions. He travelled on the
Continent, spoke half a dozen languages and was a man of wide learning. From
1694 Defoe took an active part in public affairs. His energy enabled him to
combine the life of a man of action with that of a writer. He was the earliest
literary journalist in England. He wrote political pamphlets on any subject and
every event. He was a man of an active and original mind and independent and
courageous thinker where social questions were concerned.

25
 In his interesting “Essay on Projects” (1698) Daniel Defoe recommended to
establish saving-banks, to construct railways, to give higher education to women,
to protect seamen, etc.
His satire “The True-born Englishman” (1701) proved that there were no
true-born Englishmen superior to other nations. The English themselves were a
mixture of many nationalities: Scots, Danes, Normans and others.
In his pamphlet “The Shortest Way with Dissenters” (1702) Defoe attacked
the Tories and the established Church. He defended the freedom of religious belief.
He was punished for this and had to stand for three days in the pillory. The pillory
sentence was meant to degrade Defoe publicly, but it turned to his triumph. People
brought him flowers and sang his “Hymn to the Pillory” (1703) in which he
criticized the law. As soon as D. Defoe was released from prison he became the
government agent, both for the Whigs and the Tories. His experience as a
government agent accounts for his numerous stories of thieves and pirates, e.g.
“Jonathan Wild”, “Captain Avery” etc.
After producing political pamphlets Defoe turned to writing novels. He came
to it when he was nearly 60 and rich in experience. His first work of fiction was
“Robinson Crusoe” (1719). Its success encouraged Defoe. There followed a series
of other novels: “Captain Singleton”, (1720) “Moll Flanders” (1722), “Colony
Jacque” (1722) and “Roxana” (1724)
In the latter years Defoe’s secret connection with the government became
known, and a great indignation rose against him, destroying his popularity. He fled
to London where he died while hiding from his enemies.
“Robinson Crusoe”. Defoe’s fame as a writer rests on “Robinson Crusoe” –
the first bourgeois novel in English literature. Its publication paved the way for the
modern English novel.
“Robinson Crusoe” is the story of an Englishman who travels abroad. He is
attempting by trade to increase his wealth. He is born of a well-to-do family and
receives a good education. His father wants him to become a lawyer, but Robinson
“would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea.” He runs away from home and
his adventures begin. He is shipwrecked several times, escapes out of slavery from
the Moors, works with great success on his plantation in the Brazil until on his way
to Guinea for Negro slaves he is shipwrecked and finds himself on a desert island.
Robinson settles there and carries money and a lot of various goods from the
wreck to the island. He learns to tame wild goats, grow corn and make bread. One
day he saves a man from cannibals and calls him Friday. Friday turns out to be a
clever man. He learns English and becomes a devoted servant and companion to
his master. After many years Robinson and Friday help the captain of an English
ship to defeat his crew who wants to leave their captain on the desert island. The
ship takes Robinson to England.
The novel was suggested to Defoe by the story of Alexander Selkirk who
had lived alone on an island for five years. Defoe’s hero Robinson Crusoe spends
28 years on a desert island, and the most famous part of the book concerns this
time in his life. Robinson is both an individual outside society and a typical

26
bourgeois. He makes use of the equipment of the 18 th century which he takes from
the ship: tools, pistols, money and other things. His attitude to the surrounding
world is that of a bourgeois of the time. Crusoe’s only thought is to recreate, as
best as he can, something of the material civilization he has a left behind him. His
behavior is practical. He builds a house and fortifies it, he cultivates the ground, he
tames animals. His religion is also businesslike: God helps those who help
themselves.
Robinson Crusoe is the first example of a prudent hero in English literature.
He has all the virtues expected in a merchant: he is honest, hardworking, careful,
enthusiastic and optimistic. He believes it is within man’s power to overcome all
difficulties. He has a realistic approach and common sense in every situation. He
considers the English superior to other peoples and makes the Negro Friday his
servant.
All these are the traits of the rising bourgeois class, and “Robinson Crusoe”
appealed to the readers of those days, who liked a good story with just a touch of
moralizing. Daniel Defoe taught his fellowmen how to live and how to distinguish
between good and evil.
The second part of the book, artistically much weaker than the first, shows
Robinson Crusoe as an old man who is still fond of the sea. He sets on a new series
of adventures. He visits his island, China, Siberia and other places and returns
home at the age of 72.
The novel glorifies energy and practicalness. It is praise to human labour
and the triumph of man over nature. It is the product of the age which saw the
middle-class rise to power and wealth.
The story is narrated in the first person; it is the autobiography of the hero
and at the same time also an account of travels, an adventure story and a realistic
work of fiction. Daniel Defoe is a good storyteller. He has an eye for detail. He
shows a good knowledge of technicalities of all kinds of trades and professions. He
has also a fine faculty for psychological observation. His style is simple, hard and
dry. The book is still considered one of the masterpieces of English prose. It is read
by both children and grown-up throughout the world.

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 LECTURE 10

ROMANTICISM
PLAN:
1. Romanticism
2. Robert Burns’ life
3. Robert Burn’s creative activity
In England great social changes, caused by the coming Industrial
Revolution, took place at the end of the XVIII century. Romanticism was a trend in
literature which appeared at the same time due to certain fundamental changes in
human outlook. Liberty- beautiful and inspiring like a banner in the wind- was kept
steadily before men’s minds by numerous books- all read eagerly by the common
people, all proclaiming the dignity of common life, all uttering a cry of protest
against every form of oppression.
The essential feature of romanticists was their critical attitude to bourgeois
reality and capitalist civilization with its new forms of oppression; a striving for
primitive life and a return to nature; an interest in folklore and mythology; a protest
against Classicism.
There was no uniformity in Romanticism. It was represented by such diverse
poets as Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert
Southey, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.
Some romanticists looked for their ideal in future society though they had no
clear notion of this society. They fought for freedom and equality. Among these
poets George Gordon Byron was a famous throughout Europe as a champion of
liberty. Percy Bysshe Shelley was an out-and-out revolutionary; John Keats also
belonged to this group.
Other romanticists appeared to be always writing about the past. The lake
School Poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey were eager revolutionaries in
their youth. They sympathized with those who fought against injustice and
tyranny. Later they withdrew into the quiet of the country and idealized the
patriarchal way of life. Aloofness from the life of their time and mysticism made
their poetry vague and abstract.
The XVIII century was the time of the rapid development of industry.
Smoky towns grew up around the factories in the North and Midlands. Their
existence was felt all over the country. The poets reacted to this sharply. The past
of the poets’ imagination was different from the complicated industrial society
which was growing around them. The earlier times were simpler and more
picturesque. They wanted to create their own inner world of dream and desire, to
separate it from the ordinary outer world. All romantic poets called men away from
the artificiality and complexity of the cities to the natural world. They turned away
from their own time. Thus Shelley and Keats turned to Greek mythology giving a
new significance to the ancient world. Byron made use of people and landscapes of
the Near and Middle East. Wordsworth made his home the Lake District, at that
time not often visited. A longing to be rid of the precision and order of everyday

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life drove the romanticists to nature. It was as if, frightened by the coming of
industrialism they turned to nature for protection. The greatest poets strove to
convey the influence of nature on the mind and of the mind on nature.

Robert Burns
The greatest poet of the XVIII century was Robert Burns. His popularity in
Scotland is very great. One has only to speak to Scotsmen to sense the deep love
and admiration they feel for their outstanding countryman.
The Scottish bard was born in a clay cottage at the picturesque village of
Alloway. His father was a poor farmer, but a man who valued knowledge. It was
from his father that Robert received his learning and his love for books. His mother
had a beautiful voice and taught him old Scottish songs and ballads which he later
turned into his best poems. At the age of thirteen he had to take over from his
father most of the work on the farm. Those were hard times. Robert developed into
a handsome young man, but he often suffered from illnesses because of the hard
work and scanty food.
At the age of fifteen he met Nelly. “Thus with me began love and poetry
which at times have been my only and… my highest enjoyment,” Robert Burns
wrote later on. It was only the language of his village that was expressive enough
to describe Nelly. In this language he could speak about his emotions of love and
friendship, convey the feelings of ordinary people and sing of nature and animals.
After his father’s death the poet had to support his large family. His farming
was a failure and he thought of emigrating to Jamaica. In 1786 a few friends
helped Robert to publish his first volume of poems. I was called “Poems, Chiefly
in the Scottish Dialect”. As the volume was an immediate success, he did not leave
his country, but went to Edinburgh. There he came into contact with the literary
circles of the Scotch capital. He also toured Scotland and Northern England
collecting ballads and folk-tales. His countrymen loved Burns for his patriotism,
his independent spirit and his depiction of the simple aspects of their life.
Robert Burns died at the age of 37 at Dumfries where he had served as a tax
collector for the last six years of his life. Upon his death the whole country united
to honour him. He was hailed as the national poet of Scotland, and his birthday on
January 25 is always celebrated as a national holiday.
In his lifetime Burn published several volumes of poetry, written either in
English or in the Scottish dialect. He was an Enlightener and summoned his people
to struggle against oppression in his poem “The Jolly Beggars”.
The poet supported the French Revolution. In his poem “The tree of liberty”
he praised the French revolutionaries who had planted “The tree of liberty” and
fought for the happy future of mankind. He believed that the English and the
Scottish people would also plant “the tree of liberty”
Robert Burns was a realist and embodied the thoughts and aspirations of the
Scottish farmers. The most characteristic themes of his poetry are love of freedom;
hatred for all oppressors; man’s everyday work, troubles, rest, joy and love; the

29
good qualities of the Scottish peasants; his rich and complex inner work; the
Scottish history; folklore and the beauty of his country.
The poet’s sympathies for the poor and the oppressed extended even to the
animal world- to a mouse and to a wounded hare. “To a mouse” is one of his most
charming poems. Its author expresses his regret on turning a mouse up in her nest
with the plough. Her provision for winter has been destroyed. The fellow-feeling
for the little creature is caused by his own situation which is even worse.
One of the most popular ballads written by R.Burns is “John Barleycorn”. It
reveals the undying strength of the Scottish people. “John Barleycorn” is based on
personification- the barleycorn is represented as a human being.
R.Burns is also known as a great humorist and satirist. He hated all manner
of cruelty, oppression and mere wealth. He could look and laugh at all that. The
real Burns was revealed in his satiric epigrams and humorous poems. For instance,
“The Twa Dogs” is a dialogue between a gentlemen’s dog Caesar and the poor
ploughman’s dog Luath. Caesar pities the life of Luath: the poor are treated badly
by the rich. Luath replies that contrary to the rich the poor people are honest and
love work. The dog go off rejoiced, they are “not men, but dogs” and resolve to
meet some other day.
R.Burns is one of the popular song writers of English literature. All the
world sings “Auld Lang Syne”; the tender love song “A Red, Red Rose”, “My
Heart is in the Highlands” and others.
Ballads, brief stanzas, epitaphs, epigrams and personal lyrical verse were the
most favourite forms of Burns’ work.
The democratic and revolutionary spirit of whatever and however R.Burns
wrote brought him close to the revolutionary romantics of the XIX century.

WILLIAM BLAKE
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet,
painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now
considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the
Romantic Age.
His paintings and poetry have been characterized as part of the Romantic
movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century.
Early life
William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street (now
Broadwick St.) in Soho, London. He was the third of seven children, two of whom
died in infancy. Blake's father, James, was a hosier. He attended school only long
enough to learn reading and writing, leaving at the age of ten, and was otherwise
educated at home by his mother Catherine Wright Armitage Blake. The Blakes
were dissenters, and believed to have belonged to the Moravian Church.
Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was printed around
1783. In 1784 Blake composed his unfinished manuscript An Island in the Moon.
Later life and career

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 Blake's marriage to Catherine was close and devoted until his death. Blake
taught Catherine to write, and she helped him colour his printed poems conjecture.
William and Catherine's first daughter and last child might be them described in
The Book of Them who was conceived as dead.
Death
On the day of his death, Blake worked relentlessly on his Dante series.
Eventually, it is reported, he ceased working and turned to his wife, who was in
tears by his bedside. Beholding her, Blake is said to have cried, "Stay Kate! Keep
just as you are – I will draw your portrait – for you have ever been an angel to me."
Having completed this portrait (now lost), Blake laid down his tools and began to
sing hymns and verses. At six that evening, after promising his wife that he would
be with her always, Blake died. Gilchrist reports that a female lodger in the house,
present at his expiration, said, "I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a
blessed angel."
George Richmond gives the following account of Blake's death in a letter to
Samuel Palmer:
He died ... in a most glorious manner. He said He was going to that Country
he had all His life wished to see and expressed Himself Happy, hoping for
Salvation through Jesus Christ – Just before he died His Countenance became fair.
His eyes Brighten'd and he burst out Singing of the things he saw in Heaven.
Catherine paid for Blake's funeral with money lent to her by Linnell. He was
buried five days after his death – on the eve of his 45th wedding anniversary – at
the Dissenter's burial ground in Bunhill Fields, where his parents were interred.
Present at the ceremonies were Catherine, Edward Calvert, George Richmond,
Frederick Tatham and John Linnell. Following Blake's death, Catherine moved
into Tatham's house as a housekeeper. She believed she was regularly visited by
Blake's spirit. She continued selling his illuminated works and paintings, but
entertained no business transaction without first "consulting Mr. Blake". On the
day of her death, in October 1831, she was as calm and cheerful as her husband,
and called out to him "as if he were only in the next room, to say she was coming
to him, and it would not be long now".
Blake is recognized as a saint in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. The Blake
Prize for Religious Art was established in his honour in Australia in 1949. In 1957
a memorial to Blake and his wife was erected in Westminster Abbey.
Religious views
Although Blake's attacks on conventional religion were shocking in his own
day, his rejection of religiosity was not a rejection of religion per se. His view of
orthodoxy is evident in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a series of texts written
in imitation of Biblical prophecy. Therein, Blake lists several Proverbs of Hell,
among which are the following:
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest
lays his curse on the fairest joys.

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 In The Everlasting Gospel, Blake does not present Jesus as a philosopher or
traditional messianic figure but as a supremely creative being, above dogma, logic
and even morality:
If he had been Antichrist Creeping Jesus,
He'd have done anything to please us:
Gone sneaking into Synagogues
And not us'd the Elders and Priests like Dogs,
But humble as a Lamb or Ass,
Obey'd himself to Caiaphas.
God wants not Man to Humble himself
Jesus, for Blake, symbolises the vital relationship and unity between divinity
and humanity: "All had originally one language, and one religion: this was the
religion of Jesus, the everlasting Gospel. Antiquity preaches the Gospel of Jesus."
Blake designed his own mythology, which appears largely in his prophetic
books. Within these he describes a number of characters, including “Urizen”,
“Enitharmon”, “Bromion” and “Luvah”. His mythology seems to have a basis in
the Bible as well as Greek and Norse mythology, and it accompanies his ideas
about the everlasting Gospel.
"I must Create a System, or be enslaved by another Man's. I will not Reason
& Compare; my business is to Create."
Words uttered by Los in Blake's Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant
Albion.
One of Blake's strongest objections to orthodox Christianity is that he felt it
encouraged the suppression of natural desires and discouraged earthly joy. In A
Vision of the Last Judgement, Blake says that:
Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have governed their
Passions or have No Passions but because they have cultivated their
Understandings. The Treasures of Heaven are not Negations of Passion but
Realities of Intellect from which All the Passions Emanate in their Eternal Glory.
One may also note his words concerning religion in The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell:
All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors.
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body and a Soul.
2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body, and that Reason, called
Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that called Body is a portion
of Soul discerned by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or
outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve. Watercolour on wood.

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 Blake does not subscribe to the notion of a body distinct from the soul that
must submit to the rule of the soul, but sees the body as an extension of the soul,
derived from the 'discernment' of the senses. Thus, the emphasis orthodoxy places
upon the denial of bodily urges is a dualistic error born of misapprehension of the
relationship between body and soul. Elsewhere, he describes Satan as the 'state of
error', and as beyond salvation.
Blake opposed the sophistry of theological thought that excuses pain, admits
evil and apologizes for injustice. He abhorred self-denial, which he associated with
religious repression and particularly sexual repression: "Prudence is a rich ugly old
maid courted by Incapacity. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence." He
saw the concept of 'sin' as a trap to bind men’s desires (the briars of Garden of
Love), and believed that restraint in obedience to a moral code imposed from the
outside was against the spirit of life:
Abstinence sows sand all over
The ruddy limbs and flaming hair
But Desire Gratified
Plants fruits and beauty there.
He did not hold with the doctrine of God as Lord, an entity separate from
and superior to mankind, this is shown clearly in his words about Jesus Christ: "He
is the only God ... and so am I, and so are you." A telling phrase in The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell is "men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast". This
is very much in line with his belief in liberty and social equality in society and
between the sexes.

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 LECTURE 11.

GEORGE GORDON BYRON

PLAN:
1.Byron’s life
2.His literary activity
3. “Don Juan” by George Gordon Byron
4. “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by G.G.Byron
5. “Don Juan” by G.G.Byron
G. G. Byron, the English revolutionary romanticist, was a poet who
struggled against despotism and reaction with his pen and sword. He called people
to fight against the social evils of his time and challenged the laws and morals of
his contemporary society.
The poet was born in an ancient aristocratic family in London. His father, an
army captain, died when the boy was three years old. Byron was lame and felt
distressed about it all his life. At the age of ten he inherited his great –uncle’s
estate, Newstead Abbey, and spent his childhood in Scotland. He was given a good
education at Harrow Public School and Cambridge University. At twenty-one he
was by birthright seated in the House of Lords.
Byron was very handsome. In spite of his lameness he was a good swimmer
and rider. He seemed proud, tragic and melancholic. But he could also be very
cheerful and witty. His contemporary young men tried to imitate his clothes, his
manners and even his limping gait. His works show his unusual intelligence,
experience and knowledge of life.
Byron’s literary career began while he was at Cambridge. His first volume
of verse entitled “Hours of Idleness” (1807) contained a number of lyrics dealing
with love, regret and parting. There were also some fragments of translation from
Latin and Greek poetry. The volume was ridiculed by the Edinburgh Review. The
poet answered with a biting satire in verse, “ English Bards and Scotch Reviewers”
(1809), in which he attacked the reactionary critics and the three Lake School
Poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey. He did not like their childish
sentimentality.
Byron was also disappointed in the results of the French Revolution; but he
looked upon it as the greatest event of those times.
After graduating from the University in 1809 Byron started on a tour
through Portugal, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Albania. He returned home in 1811
on the framework bill (1812) in the house of lords opposed the government’s
reactionary policy and defended the Luddites. He said, “You call these men a mob,
desperate, dangerous and ignorant: …Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It
is the mob that labour in your fields and serve in your houses, - that man your
navy, and recruit your army, - that have enabled you to defy all the world, and can
also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair! You may
call the people a mob, but do not forget that a mob too often speaks the sentiments
of the people.” “Song for the Luddites was also written in defense of the workers.”

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 “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1812). After two years of touring on the
Continent Lord Byron produced the first two cantos of a travelogue “Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage”. After its publication he said, “I awoke one morning to find
myself famous.” In this poem Byron has built up a character of a sensitive,
disillusioned and generous-minded wanderer exiled from society which he
despises. Disgusted with the gay life of the court his hero sets out on a journey
abroad.
Child Harold moves from country to country and, worried by the fate of the
European peoples, expresses a protest against political tyranny and a longing for
freedom.
The poem established Byron as a major literary and romantic figure.
The poet was often identified with his heroes. Later he wrote many long
poems in the form of poetic dramas with romantic and mysterious heroes, rebels
against society. Proud and independent, they hate tyranny and injustice, but they
are lonely and fight alone. The most famous of these tales, called Oriental, are
“The Giaour” (1813), “The Corsair” (1814) and “Lara” (1814). These romances
made Byron’s reputation not only in England alone, but throughout Europe. Soon,
however, the attitude of the public opinion changed. The bourgeois aristocratic
society did not like his opposition to the ruling classes, and Lord Byron was forced
to leave England forever. The poet wandered from one place to another. He made
friends with P.B.Shelly in Switzerland and settled in Italy in 1817. There he joined
the Carbonari ( a revolutionary organization in Italy in the XIX century) in their
struggle for independence from Austria.
In Switzerland G.G.Byron composed “The Prisoner of Chillion” (1816), a
lyrical drama “Manfred” (1817) and a number of lyrical poems. Byron’s greatness
as a poet lies, however, in his satires “Beppo” (1818); “The Vision of Judgement”
(1822); “Don Juan” (1818-1823) and the tragedy “Cain” (1821). These were
written during his Italian period.
Once Byron wrote:
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that of this neighbours.
When the Carbonari movement was suppressed, he gave all his money and
effort to the Greek people’s struggle against Turkey. His restless life ended there.
He died of fever at the age of thirty-six. His death was mourned by the progressive
people throughout Europe. Pushkin called him a poet of freedom. Goethe spoke of
him in his “Faust”, Belinsky called him “a giant of poetry”, etc.
The poet’s heart was buried in Greece, his body was taken to England and
buried near Newstead. The government did not allow him to be buried in
Westminster Abbey.
“Don Juan”. It was toward the end of his life that Byron turned more and
more to a different kind of poetry than the romantic tales that had made him
famous. These later poems reflect his criticism of life and attack folly and dullness.
His masterpiece “Don Juan” is considered to be one of the greatest long
poems in English literature where humour, adventure and pathos are closely linked

35
together. Byron’s Don Juan is a young Spanish noble man. When he falls in love
with a married woman his mother sends him abroad. He is shipwrecked in the
Mediterranean. The beautiful Haidee, the pirate Lambro’s daughter takes care of
him. When her father returns the idyll of Juan and Haidee ends. Juan is sold into
slavery and bought by the Turkish sultana. Haidee dies of broken heart. Juan
escapes from Turkey and joins the Russian army. He is well received by the
Russian Empress Catherine the Great, who sends him on a mission to England.
Since Juan’s adventures cover a considerable part of Europe his function is
to give his author an opportunity to describe different countries, to comment on
politics and relations between men and to give a satiric portrait of his
contemporary society. That is why the hero is passive. He behaves in a natural way
according to his impulses, but he doesn’t so much act himself as he is acted on.
Byron wanted his hero to take part in the French revolution and die fighting for
freedom, for only a revolution could renew the world. Yet Byron didn’t his work.

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 LECTURE 12

THE XIX CENTURY CRITICAL REALISM (CHARLES DICKENS)

(1812-1870)
PLAN:
1. The XIX century critical realism
2. Dickens’s life and his literary activity
3. “David Copperfield” by C. Dickens
4. “Dombey and Son” by C. Dickens
5. “Oliver Twist” by C. Dickens

In the XIX century British imperialism was on the rise. The socio –
economic contradictions were most severe. Gradually the working class became
aware of their strength. The movement for the worker’s political rights known as
Chartism broke out. It was an immensely complex age. This is how the English
communist critic, Ralph Fox, characterized it: “This was the period of the work –
houses, the Hungry Forties, the Chartist strikes… it was the period of the worship
of money and success.”
Most writers of the XIX century were critical realists. They showed a
realistic picture of their contemporary England. In their works they reflected the
class division of society, the exploitation of the poor by the rich, social injustice
and the struggle of workers against oppression. Karl Marx called Charles Dickens,
William Makepeace Thackeray, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte “the
glorious school” of English novelists whose descriptions revealed to the world
more political and social truths than did all the politicians, publicists and moralists
added together. Here belong, of course, many other writers, George Eliot, and
Emily Bronte, for instance. All these novelists portrayed every – day life, with a
little man for the central character.
In most ways C.Dickens was the greatest novelist that England produced in
the 19 century. He was born in the Navy Pay office. After a short period in London
John Dickens was transferred to Chatham. Years later Charles Dickens, already a
famous writer, returned to live to Chatham where he had spent the happiest years
of his boyhood. John Dickens again moved to London when Charles was nine the
boy didn’t go to school there. He went to work in a blacking warehouse: his father
was in debt and the family was large. Soon John Dickens was arrested and sent to
the debtors’ prison. His wife and the younger children joined him there. The
twelve-year-old Charles had to feed himself. He went to school only after his
father had been released from prison.
In 1827 he became an office boy in a solicitor’s firm and filled up the gaps
in his education by reading at the British Museum. The eager, bright and sensitive
youth found the law dull, but he absorbed much of its atmosphere and background
which he later on depicted in his novels.
John Dickens pensioned of by the Admiralty, learned short hand and became
a parliamentary reporter. His son Charles followed suit. The young man was soon

37
recognized to be one of the best reporters in the whole country. He was invited to
several papers. The young reporter’s power of observation and memory where
phenomenal and provided him with material for his fiction.
In 1835 Charles Dickens published a collection of stories and sketches of
London life entitled “Sketchez by Boz”. The work was warmly received.
Dickens first caught his readers by making them laugh. “Posthumous Papers
of the Pickwick Club” (1836-1837) he seen to see things in an amusing and
exaggerated way. The author describes one adventure after another. The plot is
loose based on a succession of events. He draws character after character rejoining
in the language he puts in their mouths. The world of Pickwick the world of fairy-
tales in which the miseries of the real world are sterilized by humour. Long before
the last number of the paper with “Pickwick Papers” came out England was
Pickwick-ma. Dickens became famous all over the world.
His next novel “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” (1838) was different work.
Fairy-land had become a terrible dream. There was Laughter but very different in
aim and kind from that of “Pickwick Papers”. Now Dickens was satirical and
sarcastic.
With “Nicholas Nickleby” (1839) Dickens showed his talent for the
melodramatic. Dickens appeared not only as an entertainer, but also as a great
novelist. His success cut across all social classes. Reading him people discovered
what they thought and felt of the great social problems which confronted them.
they called him “the master of our sunniest smiles and our most unselfish tears.”
The book deals with the problem of education of children in English private
schools for poor children. the scenes of the children’s life were so realistic and true
to life that a school reform was carried out in England after the publication of the
book.
“The Old Curiosity Shop” (1841) and Dickens’s first historical novel
“Barnaby Rudge” (1841) were published before his visit to America. After his
return from America Dickens wrote “American Notes” and “Martin Chuzzlewit”
(1843-1844) which created a sensation in America. They were social satires of the
American way of life.
Between 1843 and 1848 Dickens published his “Christmas Books”, “The
Chimes”, “The Cricket on the Hearth”. In 1846 he visited Switzerland and Italy.
There he began “Dombey and Son” (1848), David Copperfield (1850), and “Bleak
House” (1853) were followed by “Hard Times” in 1854. While in all his works
Dickens attacks the social conditions of his time, in “Hard Times” he gives this
theme a special emphasis. He shows capitalist exploitation, the contradictions
between workers and manufacturers as well as the beginning of the struggle
between the proletariat and the Capitalists. Dickens is against bad and cruel
capitalists but he is not against the capitalist system as such, he is for reconciliation
between the two classes. The second theme of the novel is the system of education.
The “theory of fact”, the wrong way of bringing up and educating children ruin
their life.

38
 The portrayal of the debtors’ prison in “Little Dorrit” (1857) makes the
reader realize that society itself is only another and much larger prison.
With “A Tale of Two Cities” (1859) Dickens returned to the historical novel
and laid his theme in the French Revolution.
He completed his other two novels “Great Expectations” (1861) and “Our
mutual Friend” (1864-1865) before his death and left unfinished the manuscript of
“The Mystery of Edwin Drood”.
From 1858 to 1868 Dickens gave dramatic reading of his novels in England
and America. They were profitable and he was a brilliant reader of his novels but
he overworked and died at the age of fifty-eight. The writer had hoped to be buried
in the quiet local graveyard, but he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Thousands
of people streamed past his grave for several days. England deeply mourned for
her greatest novelist.
“David Copperfield” (1850). Dickens’s autobiographical novel “David
Copperfield” tells of David’s fate. David is the hero of the novel and the narrator.
The best chapters of the book are those describing the boy’s unhappy childhood.
He is an orphan and is cruelly treated by his stepfather. After his mother’s death
David has to earn his own living until he reaches his rough and strange –looking
aunt Betsy Trotwood. She takes care of her nephew. David receives a good
education and becomes a lawyer and a writer.
The novel offers a realistic picture of the total English bourgeois society in
the middle of the 19 century. Its author attacks oppression of all kinds and raises
his voice in defense of the poor. He shows that only the lower classes are capable
of real love and devotion. The bourgeoisie and the aristocracy are spoiled by
money. The other problems of the book are those of education and marriage in
capitalist society. Dicken’s humour, optimism and sympathy for the common
people made the book one of his most popular novels. “Of all my books”, he
wrote, “I like this the best.”
True, this work is more cheerful and romantic than other of his later novels,
although it also shows the hopelessness of the fate of the poor people. Hardships
and misfortune reach them everywhere. He paints life as it is. Cruelty exists side
by side with goodness, misery – with happiness repulsive people mix with the
noble ones. Life is hard, but beautiful. Nobility is rewarded and wickedness is
punished in the long run.
Like Defoe Dickens not only entertains his readers, but also teaches them,
encourages the oppressed and sympathizes with the unhappy. His realism arouses
love for man, and there is something warm about the world he created.
Dickens is famous for his unforgettable characters. He has left a gallery of
portraits. Many of them are drawn by applying hyperbole. Each speaks his own
language, each acts in his own surroundings, each has one feature, the leading one
among the others, many of them have label-names and all are shown in action.
Dickens’s heroes are either entirely good or entirely wicked. By this contrast he
makes them more expressive. No one can forget Mr. Pickwick and his faithful Sam
Waller, he devoted Pegotty, the disgusting hypocrite Uriah Heep, the angel-like

39
Agnes Wickfield. Their creator is the physician of mind, who can penetrate a
human soul to its very depth.
“Dombey and Son” (1848) Dickens enjoyed life, but he hated the social
system into which he had been born. As he grew older his mood became darker.
The criticism of his age became bitterer. The main subject of his later novels is
money and the things that go with money – power, position and so on. In “Dombey
and Son” the symbol of money-power is Mr. Dombey himself, to whose pride of
position as the British merchant everything must be sacrificed affection wife,
children and love. He thinks he can buy everything, even an aristocratic young
woman for his second wife. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in,
and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed
to float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or
against their enterprises ; stars and planets circled in their orbits to preserve
inviolate a system of which they were the centre.” Yet Mr. Dombey is near-
sighted. he does not see this system is on the decline. The merchant class is losing
power. The future belongs to another type of man of property. Mr. Dombey goes
bankrupt: he is punished for his pride. Bankruptcy causes a great change in him.
He becomes good.
Dickens fails to remain realistic to the end. Mr. Dombey – a loving
grandfather does not seem a character true to life. It is Dickens’s petty bourgeois
sentimentality that finds expression in the happy endings of almost all of his
novels. He criticizes capitalist society from the point of view of middle-class
humanism, he wants to improve the world by means of reforms. The novelist does
not solve the social problems though he introduces them masterfully.
“Oliver Twist” (1838) is Dickens’s first social novel. It pictures the life of
the workhouses, the London slums, poverty and crime there.
The hero of the novel is Oliver Twist, a miserable, poor and unhappy child.
His mother dies in childbirth. The boy grows up in a workhouse where eight of
every ten children die of hunger and cold. His life is not any better when he is
taken as an apprentice by a coffin-maker. Oliver is to go in front of funeral
processions as he has pretty and sad looks. He cannot bear this life. One morning
the unhappy child runs away. On his way to London he meets the “Artful Dodger”,
a boy with little, sharp and ugly eyes. He gives Oliver a good meal and promises to
take him to a good gentleman who will give him shelter and food. The “Dodger”
leads him to a room, black with age and dirt. There are 4 boys and an old dirty Jew
sitting round the table. They are glad to see Oliver. The poor child doesn’t know
they are thieves and the Jew, Old Fagin, their master and a teacher. When he is
taught to steal he thinks it is a game. Once the boys take Oliver out “to work”.
They rob Mr.Brownlow of his handkerchief. Oliver is only watching, but he is
caught and beaten. Mr.Brownlow takes the poor boy home with him, because his
face reminds him of some other familiar face. One day Oliver is sent to a
bookseller with some books and a five-pound note. The boy does not return, he is
kidnapped by a girl from Fagin’s gang, Nancy. Oliver understands the good old

40
gentleman has now reason to believe that Oliver is dishonest and a thief. He begs
Fagin to let him go but in vain
Bill Sikes, a professional burglar, plans to rob Mrs. Maylie’s house. He
makes Oliver open the door for him as he is so small that he can get through the
kitchen window. Oliver alarms the house and is wounded. When Mrs. Maylie and
her niece Rose find the boy, he tells them his sad story. He wants to apologize to
Mr. Brownlow but he has already left England. After a happy spell at Mrs.
Maylie’s Oliver is frightened by Fagin and a stranger, Monks. Nancy tells Rose
that Monks has asked Fagin to make Oliver a thief. Nancy’s “Treachery” becomes
known to Bill Sikes, and he kills her. The police are after him, and the murderer
kills himself while trying to escape. Fagin’s gang is arrested. Fagin is sentenced to
death.
The real name of Monk’s is Edward Leeford. Oliver is his younger half –
brother, whom he has deprived of his fortune and whose life he wants to ruin.
Their father’s will was that the younger brother would get half of his property only
in case he was an honest man. Otherwise all the money would belong to Edward.
That’s why Edward wanted to make Oliver a thief. Now he is discovered. He
leaves England and dies in America. Oliver is adopted by Mr. Brownlow, his
father’s former friend.
Through Oliver’s character Dickens wanted to show that people couldn’t be
spoilt if they were born good and honest. There would be no misery, no crimes and
no poverty if all Brownlows adopted all Olivers. Dickens hoped to change the
world by means of charity

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 LECTURE 13

THE EARLY XX CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
PLAN:
1.The Early XX Century English Literature
2.G.B.Shaw’s life
3.G.B.Shaw’s literary activity
4.”Widower’s Houses” by Bernard Shaw
5. “Pygmalion” by Bernard Shaw
In the second half of the XIX century England passed into the stage of
imperialism. The social wrongs of that time became so deep that few authors dared
to speak of them.
The early XX century English fiction was greatly influenced by various
decadent philosophical theories which led to the creation of works marked by
crude imperialist tendencies and great pessimism. But nevertheless the traditions of
critical realism that had developed in the late XIX century were continued. The
leading genre of the above mentioned period of time was the novel.
The writers of the early XX century fall into two broadly distinguished
groups; those who were concerned primarily with the art of letters without paying
much attention to the problems of the age in which they lived, and those who made
their business to expose the vices of the society they lived in and condemned the
hypocrisy of bourgeois morality, thus unfolding before the readers the gradual
decline of the bourgeoisie. Among them were J.Galsworthy, B.Shaw, , H.Wells.
The above mentioned writers were print on the mental outlook of their own and
the succeeding generation. They set out to teach their countrymen to throw over
the obsolete ideas and dogmas of the XIX century and imbibe new conceptions of
freedom and self-assertion, thus exposing the inflexible, habit-ridden, soul-drugged
survivors of an old and outworn order.
The thirties are marked by an acute struggle of the writers realists
representing different generations against decadent and modernist tendencies in
English literature. In his novel “Death of Hero” Aldington not only exposes the
rotten order of things in his country and expresses a passionate protest against the
horrors of war but continues the controversy against decadence and modernism
begun by Galsworthy in “A Modern Comedy”.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

(1856-1950)
Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in a family of a civil servant. He was
fifteen when he left school to become an office boy at a firm of land agents in
Dublin. Being fond of the theatre he visited it from his earliest years and acquired
so profound a knowledge of Shakespeare that he knew many of the plays by heart.
At the age of nineteen Shaw moved to England to spend his remaining 75
years there. That is why he is usually called an English playwright. In London

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B.Shaw had no intention of continuing office work and he spent a lot of time
educating himself. He used to say: “Though almost penniless I had a magnificent
library in Bloomsbury, a priceless picture gallery in Trafalgar Square and another
at Hampton Court without any servants to look after or rent to pay. I had the brains
to use them.”
Bernard Shaw set out to become a novelist. Between 1879 and 1883 he
wrote five long novels, which were rejected by all publishers. Thus he gave up
writing novels.
In the early eighties Shaw was deeply impressed by the increasing
unemployment in London, being not far from poverty himself. At the British
Museum reading room he read Karl Marx in a French version and “From that hour
I became a man with some business in the world.” He became a socialist and his
life reached a turning point. In 1884 B.Shaw joined the Fabian Society. He became
one of the most famous public speakers, who was feared by every opponent for his
sharp tongue and clear argument.
About his time Shaw was offered a job in the Pall Mall Gazette and in a
short time he became one of the most popular critics of music, art and drama in
London. He wrote under the pen-name of Carnodi Bassetto. Nevertheless Shaw’s
attention was turned to the drama as a means of expressing the ideas crowding his
mind. The long list of his plays opens with the cycle of the “Unpleasant Plays”
which marked the beginning of a new period in the history of English drama.
“Widower’s Houses” (1892) The theme was declared by Shaw to be
“middleclass respectability fattening on the poverty of the slums as flies fatten on
filth.” The play was a ruthless exposure of the darker sides of English life.
A respectable English gentleman Sartorius has made his fortune by renting
tenement houses in the slum area. The houses are in a terrible state, but he refuses
to spend any money on repairs.
A young doctor Harry Trench who is about to marry Mr.Sartorius’ daughter
Blanche is shocked at finding out that her father’s wealth has come from slum
property. Trench offers Blanche to live on his income which he believes is derived
in an honest way.
However, Sartorius proves to Trench the wealth of the latter comes from the
same source, because the slums are located on the land that belongs to Trench and
his aunt. Thus the play reveals that the respectability of the rich rests on the money
squeezed out of suffering and starving people.
Thus the start was made. He started by criticizing bourgeois morals and
corruption. A year later he wrote the “Philanderer” and a few months later another
satire “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” all the three being “plays unpleasant”, because
he was telling the truth to the bourgeois readers and spectators.
The first performance of B.Shaw’s play “Widower’s houses” in 1892 was
quite a sensation. Shaw was attacked both by the public and critics who called him
cynic.
In 1895 he published some of his plays under the title of “Plays Pleasant” –
they include “Arms and the Man”, “The Man of destiny” and “Candida”. The title

43
of the plays is rather ironical: through the amusing situations and witty scenes with
sparkling dialogues B.Shaw continued his criticism of bourgeois morals and ideals.
He attacked militarism and war (“Arms and the Man”, 1894), showing their
senselessness and cruelty, and dethroned Napoleon (“The Man of Destiny”, 1898).
The third cycle of B.Shaw’s “Three Plays for the Puritans” includes. “The
Devil’s Disciple” (1897), “Caesar and Cleopatra” (1898), “Captain Brassbound’s
Conversion” (1899). The title of the third cycle has a double meaning: on the one
hand the plays turn against English Puritanism, bigotry and hypocrisy, on the other
hand they are directed against the decadent drama.
By 1900 Shaw had established his reputation as a playwright. He wrote one
play after another as well as books of criticism and pamphlets on socialism.
B.Shaw’s plays were not merely plays of dramatic action. Their tension was
created by the struggle of ideas, they always set out to solve some social, moral or
philosophical problems. In his more than fifty plays, in their numerous prefaces,
Shaw has treated almost every public and social theme of the century.
Shaw made a revolution in the theatre of his time by introducing the problem
play and contributing a great deal to the further development of the English drama.
Shaw’s plays deal with various problems: politics, science, religion, education and
economics. And in solving them he criticizes the vices of capitalist society laying
bare its gross injustice and showing its inhumanity.
B.Shaw also revived the practice of including a long preface and sometimes
a sequel in the published version, explaining what the play was about and what he
actually meant. He gained a reputation as a man of brilliant wit, making frequent
and effective use of the paradox, which can be found in dramatic structure,
characters and style. Shaw uses them not merely for the sake of witty play of
words, but to turn inside out the moral and social truths of the bourgeois world.
During World War I Shaw wrote long and daring articles, protesting against
the imperialist governments and their war policy. In his article “Common Sense
about the War” he said: No doubt the heroic remedy for this tragic
misunderstanding is that both armies should shoot their officers and go home to
gather the harvest in the villages and make a revolution in the towns.
And when this actually happened in Russia in 1917, Shaw was among the
first to support the Russian Revolution. In his article headed “Are We
Bolshevists?” he answered the question in the affirmative, “Well, of course, we
are, what else are we, pray? ”
Shaw was greatly interested in Russian culture. He highly appreciated and
admired L.Tolstoy, with whom he corresponded, and also Chekhov and Gorky.
To the end of his days Shaw remained a devoted friend of the USSR and
took a lively interest in the life of the first socialist state in the world.
B.Shaw was at the peak of his fame (1925) when he received the International
Nobel Prize for Literature.
In later years B.Shaw visited many countries, but it was his visit to the
USSR in 1931that received world-wide publicity. Shaw celebrated his seventy-
fifth birthday in Moscow, where a reception was given in his honour. After his trip

44
to the USSR Shaw said, “ I was certainly treated as if I were Karl Marx in person”.
But in spite of his great sympathy for the USSR and the great interest he took in
the events going on there, he was at times incredibly contemptuous of the working
class and thought it incapable of ever playing a significant role in winning
socialism. He never fully understand Marxism. The last thing he wanted was
government by the people. Shaw saw and felt the class contradictions of the new
imperialist era very sharp and intense and in his analysis of the political and
economic basis of imperialism he went much farther than his predecessors, the
mid-nineteenth century writers. Shaw’s aim was to show real life, not to write
plays for entertainment with a “happy end”. He opposed the so-called “well-made
play trend” – which was very popular among the playwrights of his time.
The list of Shaw’s plays is very vast; to his most popular plays belong
“Pygmalion”, “The Apple Cart”, “Heartbreak House”, “Major Barbara” “Saint
Joan”
“Heartbreak House” (1917) was written during World War I. Shaw himself
highly appreciated the play and in the preface to it he disclosed the symbolic
meaning of the title. In the subtitle he called the play “A fantasia in the Russian
manner on the English theme”. The dramatic pattern of the play is Chekovian; a
group of people in a country house, the collision of their conflicting ideas and their
impact on each other.
Shaw sympathized with these people for their culture, sincerity, disgust for
business, and at the same time accused them of idleness, of hatred for politics, of
being helpless wasters of their inheritance. The author indicated the futility of the
life of bourgeois intelligentsia.
“Pygmalion” (1912) The main hero of this play, Professor Henry Higgins, is
presented rather ironically, as a kind of modern Pygmalion. In actual fact the satire
implied in the play is directed against Professor Henry Sweet, a well – known
English philologist and phonetician. There are touches of Sweet’s character in the
play, but Henry Higgins is not a portrait of Sweet.
Professor Higgins meets Eliza one stormy night selling flowers to a crowd
under the portico of St.Paul’s Cathedral. The Professor, struck by her remarkably
pure Cockney pronounciation is making notes of her words with a view of
studying them at home. A gentleman seems particularly interested in Higgins, and
the conversation, which springs up between them reveals that he is Colonel
Pickering, a student of Indian dialects.
He and Higgins, it appears, have been interested in each other’s work for
years. Higgins points out that he can perfect the girl’s shocking pronounciation
which keeps her selling flowers in the street and prevents her from getting a
respectable position as a saleslady in a flowershop.
The remark has made a deep impression on Eliza and the very next day she
visits the professor to take lessons in pronounciation, at a price she considers fully
sufficient of one shilling an hour.

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 Finding Eliza’s offer very interesting professor Higgins and Colonel
Pickering make a bet, that in six months Higgins will teach Eliza the language of
“Shakespeare and Milton” and pass her off as a duchess at an ambassador’s party.
If Higgins succeeded Pickering would pay the expenses of the experiment.
Eliza is taken into Higgins’ house where during several months she is being
taught to speak correct English. While staying at Higgins’ home Eliza gets
accustomed to Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering. Higgins is not married
and lives alone with her servants and his elderly housekeeper. He often finds Eliza
amusing and Eliza, grateful for the education he is giving her, make herself useful
to him wherever she can.
In order to prove his experiment Higgins dresses Eliza in beautiful clothes
and takes her to the Ambassador’s Garden Party where she meets the “cream” of
society. Everybody takes her for a grand lady.
Higgins wins his bet. But he has forgotten that a flowergirl is a human being
with mind and heart. He looks upon her only as a thing. He does not care what is to
become of her when he has finished his instruction. He says, “When I have done
with her, we can throw her back into the gutter, and then it will be her own
business again.” Higgins is not unkind by nature and perhaps he has even grown
fond of Eliza without knowing it; but what is an ignorant flowergirl to a gentleman
of means and wide education... Eliza teaches him how wrong he is, giving him a
lesson of feeling. The lesson costs her some pain because not only has she got
accustomed to Higgins, but has also begun to love him.
B.Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” is a satire on higher society. Here aristocrats are
opposed to a simple girl. At the very beginning of this comedy Shaw stresses the
difference between the speech of educated people and that of the ignorant people
(the Cockney speech).
In this preface to “Pygmalion” Shaw wrote: “The English have no respect
for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They can not spell it
because they have nothing to spell with but an old foreign alphabet of which only
the consonants and not all of them – have any agreed speech value. Consequently
no man can teach himself what it should sound like from reading; and it is
impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other
Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise
him.
The reformer we need most today is an energetic enthusiast: that is why I
have made such a one the hero of a popular play”.

LECTURE 14.
46
 WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM
PLAN:

1. William Somerset Maugham’s life

2. William Somerset Maugham’s literary activity
3. “The Moon and Sixpence” by W. S. Maugham
William Somerset Maugham is one of the best known writers of the present
day. He was not only a novelist of considerable rank, but also one of the most
successful dramatists and short story writers.
W. S. Maugham was born in Paris, where his father was a solicitor for the
British Embassy. His mother died when he was eight. Two years later the father
followed, and the orphan child was sent to his paternal uncle, a clergyman in
Whitetable, Kent. What he experienced in that cold and rigid environment he has
told in “Of Human Bondage”, which except for its ending is almost entirely
autobiographical. At thirteen he was sent to Kings School, Canterbury, with an
intention that he should proceed to Oxford and prepare to enter the church.
But he had always wanted to write and finally secured uncle’s permission to
go to the Heidelberg University. According to his uncle’s will he had to choose a
profession and he chose medicine, thus entering St.Thomas Hospital in London in
1892. In 1898 he attained his medical degree, but he never practiced, except for a
year in the Lambeth slums as an internist. “In those six years I must have
witnessed pretty well every emotion of which man is capable. It appealed to my
dramatic instinct. It excited the novelist in me. I saw how men died. I saw how
they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief. I saw dark lines that
despair drew on a face”.
The publication of his first novel “Liza of Lambeth” (1897) enabled
Maugham to visit Italy and France, where he settled down in Paris. His talent for
fiction, however, had little success and tried his hand at playwriting. His luck
turned only in 1907, with his first successful play “Lady Frederick’. In the
succeeding years he produced plays which made him both famous and prosperous.
At first Maugham was better known as a dramatist than as a novelist and short
story writer.
The balance being reversed Maugham started to travel, gaining experience
for his works. Several times he went on round the world trips, and spent long
periods in the USA, the South Seas, China and Russia.
During World War I he enlisted with a Red Cross Ambulance Unit. Later,
however, he was transferred to the Intelligence Service (Secret Service). Early in
the 1930’s Maugham settled down near Paris. At the outbreak of World War II he
was assigned to special work at the British Ministry of Information in Paris. The
Nazi advance overtook him there; he managed, however, to reach England, leaving
behind him all his belongings and many of his unfinished manuscripts. In the years
following he settled down in England.

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 “Of Human Bondage” (1915) is considered to be his masterpiece. “Cakes
and Ale” (1930)- was claimed by Maugham himself to be the best of his books. It
represents the backstage life of literary profession. “The moon and Sixpence” deals
with the life of a painter.
He possessed a keen and observant eye and in his best works he ridiculed
philistinism, narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy, snobbery, money worship, pretence,
self-interest, etc.
His acid irony and brilliant style helped him win a huge audience of readers.
Richard Aldington saluted Maugham as “a master of the hard long art of
writing, praising his clean prose and solid form”. That’s why Maugham is justly
considered by many literary critics “the English de Maupassant”.
W. S. Maugham, a highly prolific novelist and playwright, has left a legacy
of novels, novelettes, short stories, essays and over 20 plays.
Maugham’s chief works include: novels – “The Painted Veil” (1925), “The
Narrow Corner” (1932), “The Razor’s Edge” (1944), plays: “The Circle” (1921),
“Caesar’s Wife” (1922), “The Constant Wife” (1927), “The Sacred Flame” (1929).
Maugham’s short stories are based on his numerous travels in the South –
East of Asia. There are a great many collections of stories to his credit: “The
trembling of a Leaf” (1921), “On a Chinese Screen” (1925), “The Casuarina Tree”
(1926), “Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular” (1931), “A King” (1933),
“Cosmopolitans” (1936), “Creatures of Circumstances” (1947) and others.
The Moon and Sixpence (1919). The novel which has rather an unusual
plot is partly based on the life story of the famous French painter Gauguin, who
being an innovator and rebel in art wanted to do away with the conventionalism in
bourgeois art.
Charles Strickland, a London stockbroker of middle age, who gets possessed
by an irresistible desire to express himself in painting, abandons his business
career and his wife. He leaves London for Paris, where he devotes himself to
painting. Although none of his paintings are appreciated in Paris and he is almost
starving, his decision to paint is irrevocable. The only person who understands
Strickland’s creative genius is the painter Dirk Stroeve. Trying to save Strickland
from a terrible disease abd starvation, Dirk Stroeve brings him home where he
sacrifices his time, his comfort and his money for Strickland. But instead of
gratitude Strickland shows his callousness and inhumanity towards Dirk Stroeve.
He seduces Stroeve’s wife Blanche who falls in love with him. When the latter
takes no more interest in her, she commits suicide.
Thus after years of resultless struggle in Paris Strickland moves to
Marseilles. He spends about four month at Marseilles where he finds it impossible
to earn the small sum he needs to keep body and soul together. His imagination
being hunted for a long time by “an island all green and sunny, encircled by sea
more blue than is found in the Northern latitude”, he decides to go to the South
Seas. By a chance of luck he boards a ship bound for Australia, where he works as
a stroker thus getting to Tahiti. There he marries a Polynesian woman Ata and
devotes the rest of his life to painting. Strickland dies of leprosy. According to his

48
will his wife burns their house the walls of which had been covered from ceiling to
floor with elaborate compositions by Strickland had once carelessly tossed aside
during his years of unrewarded work, does the world of art realize it has lost a
genius.
The novel is an illustration of one of Maugham‘s favourite convictions that
human nature is a knit of contradictions, that the workings of the human mind are
unpredictable. Strickland concentrated on his art. He is indifferent to love,
friendship and kindness, and inconsiderate to others. He ruins the life of Dirk
Stroeve and his wife who nursed him when he was dangerously ill. He doesn’t care
for his own wife and children and brings misfortune to all the people who come in
touch with him. But on the other hand we cannot deny his talent as an artist, a
creator of beauty. His passionate devotion to art arouses our admiration.
Strickland cannot help acting according to his nature, and he cannot care for
him to express himself.
Society, however, is hardly ever tolerant and patient with geniuses. Most
often a genius has to die before he is acknowledged.
Maugham shows how blind the bourgeois public is to real beauty. Later
Strickland’s works are bought by the public because it is fashionable to have them
in one’s flat. The author mocks at the philistines represented by Mrs. Strickland
who has hated her husband so long.
Another important character of the novel, Dirk Stroeve is shown as an
antipode to Strickland. He is a very kind man, but a bad artist, though he possesses
a keen sense of beauty and is the first to appreciate Strickland’s talent. Stroeve
paints easily and is able to cater for the vulgar tastes of the public.
The author shows that the public lacks sensitivity and imagination, therefore
real art is an unattainable for the rich as the moon is. The title served to Maugham
as a symbol for two opposing worlds- the material world quit by Strickland, where
everything is thought of in terms of money and the world of pure artistry and
craving for beauty.

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 LECTURE 15.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AFTER WORLD WAR II

JAMES ALDRIDGE (B. 1918)
PLAN:

1. English Literature after World War II

2. James Aldridge’s life
3. James Aldridge’s literary activity
4. “Signed With Their Honour” by J. Aldridge
The remarkable political and social changes in Great Britain within the years
following World War II had a great influence on intellectual life and on literature
in particular. In the works which appeared after World War II it is possible to
distinguish two main attitudes. The first is the preoccupation of many writers with
themselves and their private experience. The second is the deep concern of some
writers with society, its influence on the individual, its faults.
Some of these writers often try to make an objective record of the situation,
while definite social criticism comes from those who would press more actively for
reforms.
Yet in the fifties these active elements lacked a positive direction. They were
eager and biting in their criticism but silent when it came to the question of what
they really wanted.
Still a certain animation of the progressive mind is keenly felt in English
literature. The plays by Sean O’Casey “The Star Becomes Red” and “Red Roses
for Me”, the first novels by the young war correspondent James Aldridge “Signed
with Their Honour” and “The Sea Eagle” which deal with the struggle of the Greek
people against the Italian and German fascists are evidence of growing
progressive and democratic tendencies in English literature.
John Priestley’s novels “Black-Out in Gretely” and “Daylight on Saturday”,
the subject matter of which is the great heroism and self-sacrifice of the English
people in wartime, gained particular popularity during World War II.
English progressive writing of today is represented by a great number of
very diverse writers whose political and social views are up to now very varied and
unstable. Neither do they belong to a common organization of writers. But their
creative work has one common feature – the realistic tendency is an integral part of
their literary activity. During the last 10-15 years many writers both of the older
and younger generations have turned to social and political problems.
Some of them have even pursued the course of socialism. The main thing
that separates the representatives of socialist realism from the modernists is their
faith in man, his creative power to reorganize the world. The heroes of their
literary works are working men striving to build a better future. They are far from
mysticism and pessimism so characteristic of the modernists.
To this group of writers belong Sean O’Casey, J. Lindsay, J. Aldridge,
G.Greene, Ch. Snow, A.Sillitoe.

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 They are closely connected with the people, the working – class movement,
peace and social progress.

James Aldridge (b. 1918)

James Aldridge was born in Australia, in a journalist’s family; his father was
an editor of the Swan Hill Guardian , the local newspaper. James started working
at the beginning as a messenger boy, then as a correspondent at various Melbourne
papers.
In the thirties he entered the Melbourne commercial college, working at the
same time as a journalist. In the Summer of 1938 young Aldridge left for England
where he entered the Oxford University in 1939 and assumed his work as a
journalist. At the same time he completed pilot’s courses and volunteered for
Spain but was refused exit permit.
At the beginning of World War II Aldridge was assigned war correspondent
to Finland. (Soviet-Finnish War), but very soon he was extradited from Finland for
his sympathy to the USSR.
During World War II James Aldridge worked as a war correspondent in
Norway, Greece, The Middle East and the USSR(He came to the USSR in 1944
and stayed in our country till the very end of the War).
Aldridge’s literary career began with his reports from different frontlines of
the forties. His first novel, entitled “Signed with Their Honour”, was published in
1942 and was followed by “The Sea Eagle ” in 1944. Both novels are dedicated to
the struggle of the Greek people against fascist Italy and Germany.
MoreoverAldridge exposes the treacherous policy of Great Britain towards Greece.
In the above mentioned novels the author shows that the British military command
in Greece preferred the victory of the fascists to the self-defence of the Greek
people.
J.Aldridge’s postwar novels are the following: “The Diplomat” (1949) is a
novel that exposes and criticizes England’s foreign policy and those who are
responsible for creating such a policy. Combining facts and fantasy Aldridge
touches upon important international problems and shows the intensity of the
struggle between progress and reaction. The action of the novel goes on in the
USSR, France and Britain within the years 1946-1947.
In 1953 Aldridge was awarded the Prize pf Peace Among Nations for “The
Diplomat”.
Aldridge’s novel “The Hunter” (1950) is based on his trip to Canada. The
action takes place in the Lake District, depicting the picturesque scenery of Canada
and showing the solidarity of the common people.
“Hero’s of the Empty View” (1954), “I Wish He Would Not Die” (1957)
and “The Last Exile” (1961) transfer the reader to Africa, showing the heroic fight
of the Arabian people for their independence. The author considers the national
liberation movement a historical necessity. Aldridge is also the author of a large
number of short strories. “Of Many Men” (1946) is the title of his book of essays
on the people he met in the course of his military journalist activity.

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 In 1949 Aldridge wrote a play “Forty-Ninth State” , a satirical sketch on the
world political situation at the end of the forties. Here again he ridicules Britain’s
foreign policy, its dependence on the imperialist monopoly capital of the US.
Aldridge’s latest novels are: “The Statesman’s game” (1966) and my brother
Tom (1967) Today Aldridge’s articles in the press on the problems of the
literature very popular.
As a novelist James Aldridge may be considered a leader of a large group of
writers developing thje “anti-colonial ” trend in Modern English literature. Besides
himself his trend includes Norman Lewis, Desmond Stewart, Basil Davidson and
others. The main object of criticism in their works is the British imperialist policy
in the world and the English colonial system in particular.
Aldridge’s favourite heroes (Mc. Gregor, the young scientist in the
“Diplomat”), Captain Scott in “I wish He would Not Die”, Rupert Royce in “The
Statesman’s Game” are conscious fighters against race discrimination and political
reaction. The social perspective in Aldridge’s novels is always clear and definite,
and the characters who have risen from the masses are depicted with warm
sympathy. James Aldridge is a devoted friend of the USSR and the Soviet people.
“Signed With Their Honour” (1942) An English Lieutenant John Quayle
comes with his squadron to Greece in the autumn 1940. The task of the British
airforce is to help the Greek army which is fighting against the combined forces of
Italian and German fascists. The prime minister of Greece Metaxas has no
intention to resist the Italian fascist army, but under the pressure of the Greek
people he does not dare to give over Greece to the Italians without resistance. The
Greek patriots fight heroically, badly equipped under a leadership that tries to
hamper their struggle. Captain Mellas says, “The generals are our tragedy.”
When the Italians start into Greece it is the generals who do not want to fight. The
officers say to thier men, “Don’t fight. Metaxas will fix everything.”
At the beginning the British pilots look upon their task as an ordinary job, an
intrseting adventure. But gradually they come to see that the British command is
deceiving Greece – that Churchill has no desire to fight against the fascist, for he
has his own plans for Greece.
Quayle’s love to Helen, the daughter of a Greek antifascist writer and a
participant of the people’s resistance movement, and later on his marriage,
completely changes his attitude towards the Greeks and their heroic struggle.
Quayle begins to understand what he not long ago considered unreasonable that
people’s fearless strengt5h is capable of changing the outcome of a most hopeless
war. The heroic fight of the Greeks enhances contempt for his own people who
went down on promise leaving the Greeks in the lurch against such odds.
Critical thoughts spring up in Quayle in the course of a joint struggle with
the Greeks, this struggle even alters his character. Being a reserved man by nature,
he statrts seeking out kindred souls, and after talks with the officers Mann and
Gorell, for the first time he feels a joyous relief seeing that he is not alone in his
doubts.

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 When the Italians failed to occupy Greece in April 1941, the hitlerites
poured into Greece. The British forces receive an order to evacuate to Crete and
later to Egypt. John Quayle is ordered to fly his “Gladiator”, which so far has
remained intact, to Cairo. Helen, Quayle’s wife, has to stey behind in Greece,
occupied by the german fascists. In an air encounter near Egypt, attacked by a
Messerschmidt, Quayle’s “Hurrican ” explodes in the sky.
Aldridge remains one of the most outstanding progressive writers in post-
war English literature. The range of his subject matter is very wide. In his novels
and stories he has treated many burning social problems of our time always from
the standpoint of a progressive world outlook. Although formally he is not a
communist, he prceeds from the principles of socialist realism in his work. this is
the main reason why his achievements against a background of decadent and
modernistic art are especially noteworthy.

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 SAATLARIN BÖLGÜSÜ

№ Bölmənin adı Müh. Məş.

1 The literature of the middle ages 2 2
2 Literature in the Norman times 2 2
3 The father of English poetry-Geoffrey Chaucer 2 2
4 The Renaissance 2 2
5 The predecessors of Shakespeare 2 2
6 The golden age of English literature. 2 2
7 Pessimistic period of Shakespeare. His tragedies 2 2
8 English literature during the bourgeois revolution 2 2
9 The Enlightenment. Daniel Defoe 2 2
10 Romanticism. Robert Burns 2 2
11 George Gordon Byron 2 2
12 The XIX Century Critical Realism (Charles Dickens) 2 2
13 The Early XX Century English Literature. 2 2
George Bernard Shaw
14 William Somerset Maugham 2 2
15 English Literature after World War II James 2 2
Aldridge
Total 30 30

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 ƏDƏBİYYAT

1. Modern Criticism and Theory.David Lodge and Nigel Wood, 2008.

2. Macbeth. (Readers’ Guide to Essential Criticism) Nicolas Tredell,

2010

3.R.Abeltina, “English and American Literature”

4. «История английской литературы», Г.В.Аникин,

Н.П.Михальская, 1975

5. www.wikipedia.org

6. www.poets.org

7. www.biography.com

8. www.online literature.com

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 MÜNDƏRİCAT

LECTURE 1. The Literature of the Middle Ages………………………………. 2

LECTURE 2. Literature in the Norman times........................................................ 4
LECTURE 3. The Father of English poetry-Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)........ 6
LECTURE 4. The Renaissance.............................................................................. 8
LECTURE 5. The Predecessors of Shakespeare....................................................11
LECTURE 6. The Golden Age of English literature…………………………….13
LECTURE 7. Pessimistic Period of Shakespeare. His tragedies………………. .16
LECTURE 8. English literature during the Bourgeois Revolution……………. . 21
LECTURE 9. The Enlightenment……………………………………………… 24
LECTURE 10. Romanticism…………………………………………………… 28
LECTURE 11. George Gordon Byron…………………………………………. 34
LECTURE 12. The XIX Century Critical Realism (Charles Dickens)………… 37
LECTURE 13. The Early XX century English Literature.
George Bernard Shaw………………………………………………………… 42
LECTURE 14. William Somerset Maugham…………………………………… 47
LECTURE 15. English literature after World War II James Aldridge…………. 50

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