- •Lecture 1. Period I. The Anglo-Saxons. To a.D. 1066
- •Period II. The Norman-French Period. A.D. 1066 To About 1350
- •Lecture 2. Period III. The end of the middle ages (about 1350 to about 1500). The medieval drama.
- •The medieval drama
- •The reformation.
- •Sir thomas more and his 'utopia.'
- •The elizabethan period.
- •Prose fiction.
- •Edmund spenser, 1552-1599.
- •In general style and spirit, it should be added, Spenser has been one of the most powerful influences on all succeeding English romantic poetry.
- •Christopher marlowe, 1564-1593.
- •Shakespeare, 1564-1616.
- •Ben jonson.
- •Lecture 4. The Seventeenth Century (1603-1660). Prose and Poetry. The Restoration (1660-1700).
- •Lecture 5. The Eighteenth Century, Pseudo-Classicism And The Beginnings Of Modern Romanticism
- •Samuel taylor coleridge.
- •William wordsworth (1770-1850).
- •Robert southey.
- •Walter scott.
- •The last group of romantic poets.
- •Percy bysshe shelley (1792-1832).
- •John keats (1795-1821).
- •Lord macaulay.
- •Thomas carlyle.
- •It will probably be evident that the mainspring of the undeniable and volcanic power of 'Sartor Resartus' is a tremendous moral conviction and fervor.
- •John ruskin.
- •Matthew arnold.
- •Alfred tennyson.
- •Elizabeth barrett browning and robert browning.
- •The novel. The earlier secondary novelists.
- •Charles dickens.
- •William m. Thackeray.
- •George eliot.
- •George meredith (1828-1910).
- •Thomas hardy.
- •Stevenson.
- •Rudyard kipling.
- •Lecture 8. The 20th century english literature
- •William Strachey (1609-1618).
- •George Sandys (1578-1644).
- •John Winthrop (1588-1649).
- •Early Descriptive Writers.
- •Roger Williams, 1606-83.
- •Increase Mather, 1639-1723.
- •Cotton Mather, 1663-1728.
- •The Bay Psalm Book
- •Michael Wigglesworth, 1631-1705.
- •Sarah Kemble Knight, 1666-1727.
- •William Byrd, 1674-1744.
- •Other historical books.
- •Jonathan Edwards, 1703-58.
- •Benjamin franklin: 1706-1790.
- •Second half of the eighteenth century. The revolutionary period: speeches, argumentative essays, state papers.
- •The Declaration and the Constitution.
- •Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817.
- •Revolutionary Songs and Ballads.
- •Francis Hopkinson, 1737-91.
- •Charles Brockden Brown, 1771-1810.
- •James fenimore cooper: 1789-1851.
- •The literary development of new england in the 19th century.
- •Ralph waldo emerson: 1803-82.
- •Henry d. Thoreau: 1817-1862.
- •Nathaniel hawthorne: 1804-1864.
- •In 1849, following his enforced retirement from surveyorship at the custom-house in Salem office, -- the result of political schemes, -- Hawthorne wrote “The Scarlet Letter”.
- •Edgar allan poe: 1809-1849.
- •Lecture 11. Poetry and prose of the 19th century.
- •John greenleaf whittier (1807-1892).
- •James russell lowell (1819-1891).
- •Oliver wendell holmes: 1809-1894.
- •Walt Whitman (1819-1892).
- •Novelists and humorists. Southern Romancers and realistic fiction.
- •W.G. Simms, 1806-1870.
- •Realistic Fiction.
- •Lecture 12. Literature of the new spirit. Fiction at the turn of the 20th century.
- •Fiction since 1870.
- •W. D. Howells (1837-1920).
- •Henry James (1843-1916).
- •Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945)
- •Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
- •Ezra Pound
- •Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
- •F. Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream
- •Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
- •Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
- •William Faulkner (1897-1962)
- •John Hoyer Updike
The reformation.
Lastly, the literature of the sixteenth century and later was profoundly influenced by that religious result of the Renaissance which we know as the Reformation. While in Italy the new impulses were chiefly turned into secular and often corrupt channels, in the Teutonic lands they deeply stirred the Teutonic conscience. In 1517 Martin Luther, protesting against the unprincipled and flippant practices that were disgracing religion, began the breach between Catholicism, with its insistence on the supremacy of the Church, and Protestantism, asserting the independence of the individual judgment. In England Luther's action revived the spirit of Lollardism, which had nearly been crushed out, and in spite of a minority devoted to the older system, the nation as a whole began to move rapidly toward change. Advocates of radical revolution thrust themselves forward in large numbers, while cultured and thoughtful men, including the Oxford group, indulged the too ideal hope of a gradual and peaceful reform.
Sir thomas more and his 'utopia.'
Out of the confused and bitter strife of churches and parties, while the outcome was still uncertain, issued a great mass of controversial writing which does not belong to literature. A few works, however, more or less directly connected with the religious agitation, cannot be passed by.
One of the most attractive and finest spirits of the reign of Henry VIII was Sir Thomas More. A member of the Oxford group in its second generation, a close friend of Erasmus, his house a center of humanism, he became even more conspicuous in public life. More's most important work was his 'Utopia,' published in 1516. The name, which is Greek, means No-Place, and the book is one of the most famous of that series of attempts to outline an imaginary ideal condition of society which begins with Plato's 'Republic' and has continued to our own time.
'Utopia,' broadly considered, deals primarily with the question which is common to most of these books and in which both ancient Greece and Europe of the Renaissance took a special interest, namely the question of the relation of the State and the individual. It consists of two parts. In the first there is a vivid picture of the terrible evils which England was suffering through war, lawlessness, the wholesale and foolish application of the death penalty, the misery of the peasants, the absorption of the land by the rich, and the other distressing corruptions in Church and State. In the second part, in contrast to all this, a certain imaginary Raphael Hythlodaye describes the customs of Utopia, a remote island in the New World, to which chance has carried him. To some of the ideals thus set forth More can scarcely have expected the world ever to attain; and some of them will hardly appeal to the majority of readers of any period; but in the main he lays down an admirable program for human progress, no small part of which has been actually realized in the four centuries which have since elapsed.
The controlling purpose in the life of the Utopians is to secure both the welfare of the State and the full development of the individual under the ascendancy of his higher faculties. The State is democratic, socialistic, and communistic, and the will of the individual is subordinated to the advantage of all, but the real interests of each and all are recognized as identical. Everyone is obliged to work, but not to overwork; six hours a day make the allotted period; and the rest of the time is free, but with plentiful provision of lectures and other aids for the education of mind and spirit. All the citizens are taught the fundamental art, that of agriculture, and in addition each has a particular trade or profession of his own. There is no surfeit, excess, or ostentation. Clothing is made for durability, and every one's garments are precisely like those of everyone else, except that there is a difference between those of men and women and those of married and unmarried persons. The sick are carefully tended, but the victims of hopeless or painful disease are mercifully put to death if they so desire. Crime is naturally at a minimum, but those who persist in it are made slaves (not executed, for why should the State be deprived of their services?). Detesting war, the Utopians make a practice of hiring certain barbarians who, conveniently, are their neighbors, to do whatever fighting is necessary for their defense, and they win if possible, not by the revolting slaughter of pitched battles, but by the assassination of their enemies' generals. In especial, there is complete religious toleration, except for atheism, and except for those who urge their opinions with offensive violence. 'Utopia' was written and published in Latin; among the multitude of translations into many languages the earliest in English, in which it is often reprinted, is that of Ralph Robinson, made in 1551.