An Introduction to British and American Literature

传媒学院王淼

Course objectives

• 《英美文学史》讲授英国、美国文学发展历史的课程，它按照历史发展顺序介绍了英美文学的发展过程，并就每个历史阶段的主要代表人物和流派进行介绍。本课程是英语专业高年级的必修课程，也是系统学习和研究英美文学作品的必要环节。对主要的英美文学作家和作品有所了解。基本了解主要英语国家的地理、历史、现状、文化传统，初步具备英语文学知识。

Reference books

• 英国文学简史 刘炳善编，上海外语教育出版社

• 美国文学简史 常耀信编，南开大学出版社• 美国文学学习指南 李正栓 编 清华大学出版

社

Part I A brief introduction of British Literature

Old English Literature (450 -1066) • Middle English literature (1066-1500) • English Renaissance and Shakespeare (later half of

the 15th-the beginning of 17th Century)• The 17th and 18th Century Literature• Romantic Literature and Critical Realist (1798-1832) • The Victorian Age (1832-1901)• The 20th century Literature

Part II A History of American Literature

• Early American and Colonial Period to 1776 • Romanticism • New England Transcendentalism • Realism • Local Colorism • American Naturalism • The 1920s, imagism • The 1930s • Black American Literature • American Drama • Novels in the Post-War

Old English Literature (450 – 1066)

• The Anglo-Saxon Period: 449-1066 The early inhabitants in British Isles were Britons, a tribe of Celts. Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Old English: Anglo-Saxon language Norman Conquer: 1066 

• Beowulf: The legendary hero of an anonymous Old English epic poem believed to have been composed in the early eighth century. The subject matter of this verse is concerning legendary or historical figures that lived before the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England. Beowulf slays the monster Grendel and its mother, becomes king of the Geats, and dies fighting a dragon.

Middle English Literature (1066-1485)

• Background: England was in feudal society

• King Arthur & His Knights of the Round Table

• Sir Gawain & the Green Knight (culmination, the prime)

• Ballad: Robin Hood

The Age of Chaucer

• Geoffrey Chaucer(1340?-1400 ): the founder of English poetry. Forerunner of English realism Forerunner of English humanism

• 24 stories in The Canterbury Tales cover major literary genres in medieval Europe

• The Canterbury Tales is one of the landmarks of English literature, perhaps the greatest work produced in Middle English

The Significance of The Canterbury Tales

• It gives a comprehensive picture of Chaucer’s time;

• The dramatic structure of the poem is highly commended;

• Chaucer’s gentle satire and mild irony made him a pioneering English humorist writer;

• Chaucer wrote in the London dialect of his day. In so doing Chaucer greatly increased the prestige of the English language.

English Renaissance(1485-1603)

• Renaissance and Humanism • Francis Bacon (essayist): essays • Christopher Marlowe( 1564-1593): playwright;

Tamburlaine, The Jew of Malta, and Doctor Faustus.

• William Shakespeare: the greatest of all writers and poets

• Tragedies: Hamlet; Othello; King Lear; Macbeth • Comedies: The Twelfth Night; A Midsummer

Night’s Dream; The Merchant of Venice • Sonnets

Shakespeare(1564-1616)

• The first period: Henry VI; Richard II, III;  Romeo and Juliet; A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream;  The Merchant of Venice; Julius Caesar; As you like it; Twelfth Night

• The 2nd Period: Hamlet; Measure of Measure; Othello; King Lear; Macbeth; Antony and Cleopatra

• The 3rd Period: The Winter’s Tale; The Tempest; Henry VIII

• Thomas More(1478-1535): Renaissance English writer and Catholic martyr, in the Tudor court of King Henry VIII. Utopia

• Ben Johnson(1572-1637): Renaissance dramatist, playwright, and poet.

• Edmund Spenser (1552-1599): was an important English poet and Poet Laureate best known for The Faerie Queene

The Early 17th  Century(1603-1660)

• English Bourgeois Revolution: the Puritan Revolution

• John Milton: poet; Paradise Lost ， Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes. Paradise Lost is a long epic in 12 books, done in blank verse. The stories were taken from the Old Testament.

• John Bunyan (1628-1688): : a typical Puritan writer. The Pilgrim’s Progress

• Restoration Period: John Dryden(1631-1700), English dramatist, poet, critic and leader in Restoration comedy wrote the comedic play Marriage A-la-Mode, and the tragedy All for Love.

• John Donne(1572-1631):17th century English Metaphysical poet. Songs and Sonnets, Holy Sonnets

The 18th  Century (the Age of Reason)

• The Enlightenment Movement • Enlighteners: Joseph Addison and

Richard Steele: The Spectator • Neoclassicism : • Alexander Pope: Essay on Man, Essay on

Criticism, The Rape of the Lock • Samuel Johnson: The Dictionary of the

English Language (1755), Lives of the Poets

Realistic Novelists

• Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders

• Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels • Henry Fielding: Tom Jones   • Sentimentalism: overindulgence in one’s

emotion for the sake of his overwhelming discontent towards the social reality and pessimistic belief and emphasis upon the virtues of man

• Samuel Richardson: Pamela, Clarissa (epistolary novels)

• Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield, The deserted Village

• Lawrence Sterne: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy

• Richard Brinsley Sheridan: The School for Scandal

• George Gordon, Lord Byron: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Don Juan. A libertine; a profligate. A man who is an obsessive seducer of women. Completed in 1819, published in 1821

• Percy Bysshe Shelley: Queen Mab; Prometheus Unbound; Ode to the West Wind; The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound, The Masque of Anarchy

• John Keats: Ode to a Nightingale; Ode on a Grecian Urn; To Autumn; Ode on Melancholy

• Sir Walter Scott: wrote historical novels: Rob Roy; The Heart of Midlothian; Ivanhoe

• Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Emma; Persuasion

• Samuel Johnson(1709-1784):  Dictionary of English language. A Preface of Shakespeare, Lives of Poets

English Romanticism(1798-1832)

• Pre-romantic poets • Robert Burns: the greatest of Scottish poets • William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Songs of

Experience; The Lamb and The Tyger • Romantic Period (1798-1832) • The Lake Poets: William Wordsworth (I

Wandered Lonely as a Cloud), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan ), and Robert Southey

• William Wordsworth: the representative poet of passive romanticism. Lyrical Ballads, the break with the conventional poetical tradition of the 18th century. The preface to the Lyrical Ballads served as the manifesto of the English Romantic Movement in poetry. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (1807)

The Victorian Age (1832-1901)

• Chartist Movement 1836-1848 • An age of prose; moral purpose; an age of doubt

and pessimism • Poets: • Alfred Tennyson: In Memoriam, The Idylls of

the King • Robert Browning: Pippa Passes, My Last

Duchess • Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets from the

Portuguese

Critical realists and their works

• Charles Dickens: the greatest representative of English critical realism. The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities, Great ExpectationsWilliam Thackeray: Vanity Fair(1848)  Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre (1847) Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights (1847)Elizabeth Gaskell: Mary Barton; North and South George Eliot: was the pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans. Adam Bede; The Mill on the Floss; Silas Marner;Middlemarch

The 20th Century English Literature

• Modernism: a break with all tradition • Modernist Poetry : • T. S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,

The Waste Land • W.B. Yeats • Dylan Thomas • Philip Larkin • Ted Hughes • Seamus Heaney

Drama

• George Bernard Shaw: the 25th Nobel Literature winner. Mrs. Warren’s Profession; The Widower’s Houses; Pygmalion; Man and Superman; Back to Methuselah; Saint Joan; Arms and the Man; Pygmalion

• Oscar Wilde: art for art’s sake. The Picture of Dorian Gray; Lady Windermere’s Fan; An Ideal Husband, etc.

Novelist

• Thomas Hardy: one of the representatives of English critical realism at the turn of the 19th century. The Return of the Native; Tess of D’Urbervilles; Jude the Obscure; The Mayor of Casterbridge

• John Galsworthy: one of the most prominent of the 20th century English realistic writers. The Island Pharisees; The Man of Property,;The Forsyte Saga(The Man of Property)

• D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers; Women in Love; Lady Chatterley’s Lover

• Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim; The Heart of Darkness • E.M. Forster: Howard’s End; A Passage to India

Modernistic writers

• Virginia Woolf: Orlando (biography); Interior Monologue; Mrs. Dalloway; The Wave; To the Light House

• James Joyce: founder of stream of consciousness. Dubliners; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Ulysses (modern epic); Finnegans Wake

Contemporary period

• George Orwell: Animal Farm• William Golding: The Lord of Flies• John Fowles: The French Lieutenant’s Woman• Doris Lessing: The Grass is Singing, The

Golden Notebook• V. S. Naipaul: A House of Mr. Biswas, A Bend in

the River• A.S. Byatt: Possession• Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses,

Midnight’s Children

Part II American Literature—Early

American and Colonial Period to 1776

• American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures. There was no written literature among the more than 500 different Indian languages and tribal cultures that existed in North America before the first Europeans arrived.

• Thomas Paine (1737-1809): 

• Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense sold over 100,000 copies in the first three months of its publication.

Revolutionary Writers （ 1776-1820 ）

• Benjamin Franklin(1706-1790): Autobiography is Poor Richard's Almanack. He was an American politician, scientist, inventor, and educator. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence.He conducted the difficult negotiation with France that brought financial and military support for America in the war.

• He founded the college that was to become the University of Pennsylvania.

• Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) : Declaration of Independence (1776). Jefferson’s great monument in literature and political theory.

The Literature of American Romanticism

• The Romantic movement which had flourished earlier in the century both in England and Europe proved to be a decisive influence without which the upsurge of American romanticism would hardly have been possible.

• Washington Irving(1783-1859): was the first native American author to have his works characterized as classic literature. Chief works: Rip Van Winkle,  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

• James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851): Cooper's novels reveal a deep tension between the lone individual and society, nature and culture, spirituality and organized religion. Chief works: The Pioneers, The Leather-Stocking Tales (five novels ). He is The Pioneer ofa.American sea novel; b.American espionage story;c.American frontier adventure tales;d.American sociopolitical novel.

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882): poet Laureate of Middle class values. Hiawatha

New England Transcendentalism

• Transcendentalism is idealism. New England Transcendentalism was the product of a combination of foreign influences and native American Puritan tradition.

• The term “transcendentalism” is derived from the Latin verb transcendere meaning. Transcendentalism has been defined as the recognition in man of the capacity of acquiring knowledge transcending the reach of the five senses, or of knowing truth intuitively, or of reaching the divine without the need of an intercessor.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882): Nature 

• Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862): his masterpiece, Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). In Walden, Thoreau not only tests the theories of Transcendentalism, he re-enacts the collective American experience of the 19th century: living on the frontier. Civil Disobedience

• Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864): The Scarlet Letter; The House of the Seven Gables; Twice-Told Tales

• Herman Melville (1819-1891): Moby Dick. Moby-Dick can be read as a thrilling sea story, an examination of the conflict between man and nature.

• Walt Whitman (1819-1892) and Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) were pioneers in American poetry. Whitman was the poet of American democracy. 

• Works: Leaves of Grass. Major works: The Free Man; Leaves of Grass The range of Whitman’s subjects is remarkable and intentional, for he set out to include and celebrate everything.Whitman’s poetic style: original, revolutionary, indisputably American; Free-verse

• Edgar Allan Poe(1890-1849) : was one of the earliest writers to discuss the aesthetic qualities of the short story as a distinct prose narrative form.

• Poe worked hard at structuring his tales of aristocratic madmen, self-tormented murderers, neurasthenic necrophilia’s, and other deviant types so as to produce the greatest possible horrific effects on the reader. The Fall of the House of Usher

The Literature of Realism

• In American literature, the Civil War brought the Romantic Period to an end. The age of Realism came into existence.

• Samuel Clemens(1835-1910), pen name of Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Life on the Mississippi

• William Howells (1837-1920): The Atlantic Monthly; The Rise of Silas Lapham

• Henry James (1843-1916):1st period: The American; Daisy Miller ; The Portrait of a Lady2nd period: dropped the “international theme”3rd period: The Turn of the Screw; What Maisie Knew; The Golden Bowl; he returned to his “international theme”.

Local Colorism

• Hamlin Garland defined local colorism as having “such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place by anyone else than a native. ”

• Local colorists: • Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin • Mark Twain(1835-1910): pen name of  Samuel

Clemens. Chief works:  The Life on the Mississippi; The adventures of Tom Sawyer; The adventures of huckleberry Finn; The Gilded Age; The Prince and the Pauper

American Naturalism

• Stephen Crane(1871-1900): a pioneer writing in the naturalistic tradition. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; The Red Badge of Courage

• Frank Norris (1870-1902): McTeague; The Octopus: The Responsibilities of the Novelist

• Jack London(1876-1916): strong individualism Martin Eden; White Fang; The Sea Wolf; The Call of the Wild; The Iron Heel

• O. Henry(1862-1910): pen name of William• Sidney Porter. A prolific writer. Style: direct; use

of southern dialect; use of slang; master of surprise. The Gift of the Magi.

• Upton Sinclair (1878-1968): The Jungle

The 1920s: imagism 

• It is the second renaissance in the history of American literature.

• Imagism • Ezra Pound(1885-1972): In a Station of

the Metro. imagist poems. • T.S. Eliot(1888-1965): won the Nobel

Prize for Literature in 1948. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; The Waste Land; Four Quartets

Modern poets

• William Carlos Williams(1883-1963): In the American Grain; Spring and All

• Robert Frost(1874-1963): four-time Pulitzer Prize winning American poet. His first book of poems, A boy’s will; The road not taken; Mending Wall

• E.E.Cummings (1894-1963): anti-orthodox. The Enormous Room

• F. Scott Fitzgerald(1896-1940): This Side of Paradise; The Beautiful and Damned; The Great Gatsby; Tender is the Night He was a representative figure of 1920s, the Jazz Age

• Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945): It is in Dreiser’s works that American naturalism is said to have come of age. Sister Carrie; An American Tragedy Dreiser sets forth his naturalistic concept of American society. A pioneer of naturalism in American literature. Sister Carrie ;The Financier

• Ernest Hemingway

• A Nobel Prize winner for literature.

• Iceberg theory: “The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.”

• Hemingway’s chief works

• The sun also rises (1926)

• A Farewell to Arms (1929)

• Death in the Afternoon (1932)

• For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

• Across the River and into the Trees (1950)

• The Old Man and the Sea(1952)

• William Faulkner

•  was awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950

• Chief works: The Sound and the Fury ;Absalom, Absalom! Go Down, Moses

• Sherwood Anderson• Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941): Winesberg,

Ohio; The Triumph of the Egg; Poor White • Sinclair Lewis(1885-1951): the first American

author to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Main Street; Babbit

• Willa Cather (1873-1947): My Antonia; Oh, Pioneers

• Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)

The 1930s

• The depression spread.

• John Steinbeck (1902-1968) ： The foremost novelist of the American Depression of the 1930s.

• His major works: Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath.

• He was awarded Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and, in 1962, a Nobel Prize for literature.

Black American Literature

• The 1920s saw a new upsurge of Black American literature in what has come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance.

• The most important person in the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. He was known as Black America’s poet laureate.

• Richard Wright(1908-1960): Native SonRalph Ellison: Invisible Man

American Drama

• Eugene O’ Neil: American’s greatest playwright. The Hairy Ape; Long Day’s Journey into Night

• Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie; A Streetcar Named Desire

• Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman. It is a sad version of the American dream.

Novels in the Post-War

• The post-war prosperity produced a sense of optimism.

• Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead

• Saul Bellow: Dangling Man; The Victim; The Adventure of Augie March

• J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye

• Joseph Heller: Catch-22

Beat generation

• non-confirmist, rebellious attitude towards conventional values concerning sex, religion and the American way of life, an attitude which results from the feeling of depression and exhaustion and the need to escape into an unconventional-communal-mode of living.