SESSION 4

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRITISH LITERATURE

the longest period
A Short History of English Literature
the shortest period

1. Old English Period (450-1066) 616 years

2. The Middle Age (1066-1485)
3. The Elizabethan Period (1485-1603)
4. The Seventeenth Century Period (1603-1660)
5. The Restoration and the 18th Century Period (1660-1798)
6. The Romantic Period (1798-1832) 34 years
7. The Victorian Period (1832-1901)
8. The Twentieth Century Period
1. Old English Period (450-1066)

A. Historical background
449 The Germanic tribes invaded England and brought with them AngloSaxon, the
language which is the basis of Modern English
597 St. Augustine brought Roman Christianity to England
871 -1016 The Danish Invasion
1170 Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered
1066 The Norman Conquest /ˈkɒŋ.kwest/ led by William the Conqueror /ˈkɒŋ.kər.ər/ and
the introduction of strict Norman feudal  /ˈfjuː.dəl/ system.
B. Literature
1. Poetry:
- to be chanted with harp accompaniment
- bold and strong, but also mournful  /ˈmɔːn.fəl/ and elegiac /ˌel.ɪˈdʒaɪ.ək/ in spirit
- without rhyme, abundant use of alliteration
Important works: Beowulf, Religious writings reflecting Christian doctrine, Elegies
2. Prose:
- mainly religious works written in Latin
- Important works:
• Ecclesiastical /ɪˌkliː.ziˈæs.tɪk.əl/ History of the English People written by Bede in
731.
• The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius is an Old English translation which is
about Platonic philosophy adaptable to Christian thought, and is of great influence
on English literature.
 2. The Middle Age (1066-1485)
A. Historical background
1066 The Norman Conquest led by William the Conqueror
1215 King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta
1338 Hundred Years War with France began
1348-1349 Black Death struck England
1381Peasants’ Revolt
1415 The victory over French at Agincourt
1453 Defeat in France to end Hundred Years War
1454 Wars of Roses began
1476 William Caxton set up first printing press in London
1492 Columbus sailed to America
B. Literature
Extensive influence of French literature on native English forms and themes

1. Drama The beginning of native English drama was closely associated with the
church celebrations of traditional religious feasts.

2. Poetry
• The simplicity and directness of the emotion, and the handling of dialogue, show
Chaucer’s capacity to bring language, situation and emotion together effectively.
• Religious innocence, married chastity, villainous /ˈvɪl.ə.nəs/ hypocrisy /hɪˈpɒk.rɪ.si/,
female volubility /ˌvɒljʊˈbɪlɪti/.
• Literature, with Chaucer, has taken on a new role: as well as forming a developing
language, it is a mirror of its times – but a mirror which teases as it reveals, which
questions while it narrates, and which opens up a range of issues and questions,
instead of providing simple, easy answers.
C. Major authors
Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400),
William Langland (c.1330-c.1386),
Sir Thomas Malory (?-1471)
3. The Elizabethan Period (1485-1603)
A. Historical background
1485Henry Tudor became king as Henry VII, ending the War of the Roses
1509 The accession /əkˈsɛʃ(ə)n/ of Henry VIII
1517The Protestant Reformation began
1534Henry VIII became Supreme Head of the Anglican Church
1553-1558 The religious conflicts between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant under
the reign /reɪn/ of Queen Mary I
1558Elizabeth I ascended the throne and maintained social stability.
1588 Spanish Armada defeated by the English fleet
1595 Sir Walter Ralegh’ s first expedition to South America
1603 Death of Elizabeth I; ascension /əˈsɛnʃ(ə)n/ of James I, the first Stuart King
B. Literature
The Renaissance: It was the revival of Greek and Roman studies that emphasized
the value of the classics for their own sake, rather than for their relevance to
Christianity. In literature the Renaissance was led by humanists, scholars and poets.
The invention of printing contributed to the spread of ideas

Humanism is the term most often used to describe the cultural and literary
movement that spread through Western Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. It
was the greatest cultural achievement of the period. There is no systematic theory
of humanism, but any world-view which claims that the source of value in the
world is man, or more loosely that man supplies the true measure of value, may be
described as humanist.
1. Drama
- In late 15th century there were plays with secular plots and characters in
elaborate verse style.
- The invention of short plays called ‘Interludes’

- The fusion of classical form with English content: more mature and artistic

- The coming of professional theatrical groups with plays written by professional

playwrights; the first men were called ‘University Wits’, so named since they were
all university men, who, instead of going into the church or teaching, turned to
writing to earn their living

- The golden age of English drama with a lot of great playwrights such as Christopher
Marlowe, William Shakespeare
2. Poetry

- Generally less important than drama.

- Two most important poets were Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser.

- Three chief forms of poetry which flourished in the Elizabethan Age were:

(i) Lyric, a short poem that expresses a poet’s personal emotions in a songlike style.
Thomas Campion (1567-1620) wrote many beautiful lyrics in his ‘Books of Airs’
(1601-1617)

(ii) The sonnet: a 14 line poem with a certain pattern of rhyme and rhythm

(iii) Narrative poetry: a narrative poem that tells a story

3. Prose
- Translation works: ‘The Translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble
Grecians and Romans’ (1579) by Sir Thomas North
- The beginning of English novels: Lyly’s Euphues started a fashion
which spread in books and conversation. The style is filled with tricks
and alliteration; the sentences are long and complicated; and a large
number of similes are brought in. Readers forget the thoughts behind
the words, and look for the machine-like arrangement of the sentences.
Robert Greene (1558-1592), Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) are among the
first novelists of the time. However, the Elizabethan novels are of little
value on the whole.
C. Major authors
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), William Shakespeare (1564-1616)-
Hamlet, The Earl of Surrey (1514-1547), Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542),
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Thomas
More (1478-1535), John Lyly (c.1554-1606).
Wrap up segment
1. Which period is this?
Columbus sailed to America
Extensive influence of French literature on native
English forms and themes
1066-1485
Answer

The middle age period

2. Which period is this?
 Elegies
Ecclesiastical History of the English
People written by Bede
450-1066

abundant use Beowulf

of alliteration
Answer
The Old English Literature Period
3. Which period is this?
1485-1603
Answer
The Elizabethan period
4. The Seventeenth Century Period (1603-
1660)
A. Historical background
1603Death of Elizabeth Tudor and the accession of James Stuart
1605: Guy Fawkes - Catholic extremist forming the Gunpowder plot to blow up
Parliament.
1620The search for religious freedom in America and Holland
1625Death of James I and the accession of Charles I
1630The split between the King and Parliament
1642Outbreak of English Civil War and the closing of all theatres
1649Civil War ended with Charles I beheaded /bɪˈhɛd/
The beginning of Cromwellian Protectorate
1660 The end of the Protectorate and the accession of Charles II
1. Drama
- Public theatres flourished under Charles I until Parliament closed them in 1642: in
more sober and careful style than those of Elizabethan period.

- The emergence of comedies with inimitable verse and imagination.

- The coming of tragicomedies: morally dubious situations, surprising reversals of

fortune, and sentimentality combined with hollow rhetoric.

- The Masque became an important theatrical form during the reigns of James I
and Charles I; court entertainment held in private royal halls with lavish costumes,
elaborate stage designs and machinery.
 2. Poetry

- Epic poetry: especially by John Milton; noble and beautiful, but also difficult

- The lyrical poetry: two trends:

+ Metaphysical poetry: This literary trend has some typical characteristics as follows:

 Abundant use of far-fetched metaphors and images called ‘conceits’

 Daring, colloquial, passionate

 Against accepted rules of poetic rhythm and diction

 Deliberately rough meter with short syllables, irregular spaced as in everyday speech
+ Neoclassical poetry or Cavalier poetry
Admiration of ancient classics
Restrained in language and feeling to achieve precision and brevity
Intellectually thin but meticulously clear and incisive in expression
Preference for the closed couplet
Strong syntactically, i.e. closely knit in grammar
Use of balanced, parallel and antithetical phrases
3. Prose
- Prose became plainer, less elaborate than the previous period
- King James Bible or The Authorized Version (1611) was the best translation
of the original text in the reign of King James
- Scientific and biographical works: The Anatomy of Melancholy’ of Robert
Burton (1577-1640)
- Developments in realistic fiction with Thomas Overbury’s A Wife (1614) and
Thomas Fuller’s Holy and Profane State (1642)
- Essays: first introduced by Francis Bacon.
C. Major authors
Ben Jonson (1572-1637), John Donne (1572-1631), Robert Herrick
(1591-1674), John Milton (1608-1674), Richard Lovelace (1618-1658),
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
5. The Restoration and the 18th Century
Period (1660-1798)
A. Historical background
1660Charles II /ˌtʃɑːlz ðə ˈsekənd/ came to the throne from exile: restoration of the
English monarchy
1665-1666 Great Plague in England
1666Great Fire in London
1685James II became king of England
1689William of Orange and his wife Anne reigned England.
1707Scotland joined England and the UK was formed
1751The Enlightenment movement in France
1775American Revolution
1789 French Revolution
A period of novelty, change and refoundation rather than of great
writing
Chiefly a literature of wit, concerned with civilization and social
relationship A literature ‘from the head, not the heart’
Lyric becoming minor: reason is more important than emotion, form –
more important than content
The development of the novel
1. Drama
- Plots, language and morals of early plays are trimmed to suit fashions
influenced by the French plays of Pierre Corneille (1616-1684) and Jean
Racine (1639-1699)
- Drama now tries to be purely comic or purely tragic
- Tragic drama is made up mainly of heroic plays in which men are splendidly
brave, and the women wonderfully beautiful
- The coming of a new kind of comedy called ‘Comedy of Manners’

- Some remarkable plays of the period are: Dryden’s The Conquest of

Granada (1670), Wycherley’s The Country’s Wife (1675), Oliver Goldsmith’s
She Stoops to Conquer (1773), Sheridan’s The School for Scandal (1777).
2. Poetry
- Satire /ˈsætaɪə(r)/ in poetry
- The invention of heroic couplet: 2 rhymed pentameters
- Poetry becomes minor in this period
- ‘The churchyard school of poets’ include Edward Young (1683-1765), Robert Blair
(1699-1746). These poets revel at great length in death and morbidity /mɔːˈbɪdəti/,
creating an atmosphere of ‘delightful gloom’. The trend toward this kind of
melancholy /ˈmelənkəli/ traveled to Europe and became fashionable during the
height of European Romanticism.
- Other poets of the period are: Thomas Gray (1711-1771) and his romantic poems,
William Blake (1757-1827) and his revolt against reason, and Robert Burns (1759-
1796) with his robust and passionate lyrics.
3. Prose
Style built upon the principle of neoclassicism: elaborately
balanced use of parallels and antitheses
C. Major authors
John Dryden (1631-1700), Alexander Pope (1688-1744), John Locke
(1632-1704), Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), Jonathan Swift (1667-1745),
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), Henry
Fielding (1707-1754)
6. The Romantic Period (1798-1832)
A. Historical background
The Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century: the gap between the rich and
the poor, social change, unrest and turbulence
The coming of the new middle class
1793-1815 The war between England and France: high taxes and inflation
1820The long reign of George III ended
1832The Reform Bill was carried out in Parliament: progress towards democracy
The ‘Holy Alliance’ consisting of England and other European countries: the
suppression of democratic trends and revolutionary ideas and the
disillusionment /ˌdɪs.ɪˈluː.ʒən.mənt/ in Europe
B. Literature
English Romanticism:
- Extending roughly from 1798 with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, known as the Lake
Poets.
-The embodiment of disillusionment and negative attitudes towards the
actual world.
-The embodiment of the revolt against Classicism both in topic and style
-Main features of English Romanticism:
• Concept of poetry: Poetry is to express the poet’s mind and feeling stress
on subjective emotion than reason
• Love of nature
• Sympathy of the humble common people
• Imagination to construct a fantastic dreaming world, remote in time and
place
• Return to the past (both in content and form; ballad is popular)
• Sense of melancholy and loneliness
• Love of freedom and a feeling of rebellion against tyrannical /tɪˈrænɪkl/
authority
C. Major authors
William Blake (1757-1827), William Wordsworth (1770-1850)-Daffodils,
Sammuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), George Gordon, Lord Bryron
(1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), John Keats (1795-
1821), Sir Walter Scoot (1771-1832), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Charles
Lamb (1775-1834)
7. The Victorian Period (1832-1901)
B. Literature

• The trend to criticize the society and social evils:

critical socialism
• The Victorian Age: primarily an age of prose
rather than poetry
 1. Drama
- The different kinds of drama: melodrama, comedy, burlesque,

- Domestic melodramas are central to the Victorian theater

- A revival of drama: the trend towards a kind of realistic drama began in the 1860s
with the plays of Tom Robertson: Society (1865), Caste (1867), Play (1868), and
School (1869)

- Translation of Norwegian playwright, Henrick Ibsen (1828-1906): The Pillars of

Society, A Doll’s House, etc leading to the concept of the ‘play of ideas’

- The new flood of ideas – socialist, Fabian (Shaw’s brand of socialism), and
aesthetic – was leading to a re-evaluation of the role of artistic expression in
helping to formulate public opinion

- Oscar Wilde’s plays: brilliantly witty and epigrammatic comedies, whose surface
polish conceals considerable social concern
2. Poetry
The period of transitions
3. Prose
- The triumph of the novel: the expansion in range and scope

- Major themes:

• Love of humanity and nature

• The contrast between the ‘haves’ and the ‘haves not’

• The sympathy of the misery

• The current political and social issues

• Satirizing the upper class’ pride and their hypocrisy and snobbishness, selfishness
and wickedness
• The development of fancy writing in the second half of the 19th century: new
genres of science fiction, the detective story, ghost stories, utopian writing, and
C. Major authors
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863),
Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)-Jane Eyer,
Emily Brontë, (1818-1848), George Eliot (1819-1880), Thomas Hardy
(1840-1928), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Joseph Conrad
(1857-1924), Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
8. The Twentieth Century Period
1. Drama

- Great achievement with unorthodox views of society and art

- Room for social, psychological and religious debates in
modern plays
2. Poetry:

• Different trends
- Georgian Poetry
- Imagism:
- The Modern Movement

+ rejecting romantic, rhetoric and clever obscure language

+ in favor of plainness, clarity and modest irony
• Poems about World War I are written
3 Prose

The four main trends

• The Imperialist trend
• The Progressive Realistic trend
• The Decadent Trend
• The Socialist Realistic Trend
C. Major authors
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Sean O’Casey (1880-1964), T. S.
Eliot (1888-1965), A. E. Housman (1859-1936)- When I was One-and –
Twenty One, W.B. Yeats (1867-1939), Dylan Thomas (1914-1953),
Ruyard Kippling (1865-1936), H. G. Wells (1866-1946), John Galsworthy
(1867-1933), William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), James Joyce
(1882-1941), D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), Erza Pound (1885-1972),
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), Virginia Woolf (1892-1941), Evelyn
Waugh (1903-1966), Graham Greene (1904-1991), Samuel Beckett
(1906-1989), Irish Murdoch (1919-1999)
NEXT WEEK: HAMLET REVELATION
-Read the summary of Hamlet online
-Group presentation: Characterization of Hamlet: diễn tả được sự diễn biến tâm
lý tính cách nhân vật Hamlet
WRAP UP ACTIVITY
Go to LMS and do the Wrap-up quiz