ETI 309Introduction to Contemporary Western Literature

Overview of British History and Literature

Anglo-Saxon (Early Medieval) Period AD 410-1066

Historical Context:

• Life centered around self-ruling ancestral tribes or clans.

• It was a time of wars and invasions (by Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, and Normans).

• Church and pagan worlds were side by side; there was a strong belief in fate.

• With the help of Christianity, literacy spread; Roman alphabet was introduced.

Anglo-Saxon (Early Medieval) PeriodLiterature

• The story of English literature begins with the Germanic tradition of the Anglo-Saxon settlers.

• Oral tradition of literature; admiration of heroic warriors who prevail in battle; expression of religious faith and moral instruction through literature

• Poetry is the dominant genre; most texts from the period are anonymous.

• Key literature: Beowulf, Exeter Book, Bede (History of the English Church and People)– Beowulf: a long, anonymous heroic poem about a

brave young man from southern Sweden

Beowulf• This epic poem of the 8th century is in Anglo-Saxon, now

more usually described as Old English.

• It is incomprehensible to a reader familiar only with modern English. Even so, there is a continuous linguistic development between the two.

• The most significant turning point, from about 1100, is the development of Middle English—differing from Old English in the addition of a French vocabulary after the Norman conquest.

• French and Germanic influences subsequently compete for the mainstream role in English literature.

from Beowulf (lines 53-64)Ða wæs on burgum Beowulf Scyldinga, leof leodcyning, longe þrage

folcum gefræge (fæder ellor hwearf, aldor of earde), oþþæt him eft onwoc heah Healfdene; heold þenden lifde, gamol ond guðreouw, glæde Scyldingas. ðæm feower bearn forð gerimed

in worold wocun, weoroda ræswan, Heorogar ond Hroðgar ond Halga til; hyrde ic þæt wæs Onelan cwen, Heaðoscilfingas healsgebedda. þa wæs Hroðgare heresped gyfen,

from BeowulfNow Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings,leader beloved, and long he ruled in fame with all folk, since his father had goneaway from the world, till awoke an heir,haughty Healfdene, who held through life,sage and sturdy, the Scyldings glad.Then, one after one, there woke to him, to the chieftain of clansmen, children four:Heorogar, then Hrothgar, then Halga brave;and I heard that -- was --'s queen,the Heathoscylfing's helpmate dear.To Hrothgar was given such glory of war,

Middle English (Medieval) Period (1066-1485)Historical Context:

• William the Conqueror was crowned king in 1066.

• The Crusades brought the development of a money economy to Britain; trading increased as a result of the Crusades.

• Crowned king in 1154, Henry III introduced a judicial system, royal courts, juries and chivalry to Britain.

• The Hundred Years War between France and England (1337-1453) and The War of Roses between the royal houses of Lancaster and York for the throne of England took place.

• The Black Death (Bubonic Plague) in mid-14th century brought death to millions.

Middle English (Medieval) Period (1066-1485)Literature

• Oral tradition continues; the hero of earlier times is replaced the the man of romance.

• Plays instruct the illiterate masses in morals and religion

• King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is the greatest national myth in English.– Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, author

unknown, is a story of King Arthur’s knights

Middle English (Medieval) Period (1066-1485)

• Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is the first major work in English literature.– A series of stories told by a group of people on a

pilgrimage to Canterbury; some ideas in the work sound very modern; it is also a great mirror of its times.

• Caxton printing press prints Sir Thomas Malory’s romance Le Morte d’Arthur (1477)

from The Canterbury Tales (The Knight's Tale)Heere bigynneth the Knyghtes Tale

Whilom, as olde stories tellen us, onceTher was a duc that highte Theseus; duke, was calledOf Atthenes he was lord and governour,And in his tyme swich a conquerour, suchThat gretter was ther noon under the sonne. None, sunFul many a riche contree hadde he wonne, fully, countryWhat with his wysdom and his chivalrie; knightsHe conquered al the regne of Femenye, reign, AmazonsThat whilom was ycleped Scithia, calledAnd weddede the queene Ypolita, marriedAnd broghte hir hoom with hym in his contree, homeWith muchel glorie and greet solempnytee, much, ceremonyAnd eek hir yonge suster Emelye. also, sisterAnd thus with victorie and with melodye Lete I this noble duc to Atthenes ryde,And al his hoost, in armes hym bisyde.

The Renaissance (Rebirth)Historical Context:

• The Renaissance was the beginning of the modern world in the areas of geography, science, politics, religion, society and art.

• War of Roses ended in 1485; political stability arrived with the establishment of the Tudor dynasty.

• Printing press helped stabilize English as a language and allowed more people to read a variety of literature.

• Economy shifted from farm-based to international trade.

• King Henry VIII cut all contact with the Catholic Church and protestantism became more important.

• Henry VIII’s daughter Queen Elizabeth became the symbol of the Golden Age.

The RenaissanceLiterature

• World view is shifted from religion and afterlife to human life on earth.

• Popular themes are the development of human potential and many aspects of love (constant, unrequited, timeless, courtly, changing, etc.)

• Popular genres of the period are poetry (sonnets) and drama

The Renaissance• Major authors/poets of the period include

– William Shakespeare, – John Donne (Holy Sonnets), – Christopher Marlowe (Doctor Faustus), – Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queen), – Sir Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning)

The RenaissanceLiterature

• This is the age of Shakespeare; most of his tragedies are written between 1598 and 1607.

• His major tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth are of revenge, jealousy, family and ambition and touch on many other subjects, too.

• His major comedies include The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice.

• Shakespeare is also the poet of many famous sonnets.

Sonnet 66 by ShakespeareTired with all these, for restful death I cry,As, to behold desert a beggar born,And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,And purest faith unhappily forsworn,And guilded honour shamefully misplaced,And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,And strength by limping sway disabled,And art made tongue-tied by authority,And folly doctor-like controlling skill,And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,And captive good attending captain ill:

Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

66. SONE (Çeviri : Can YÜCEL)Vazgeçtim bu dünyadan tek ölüm paklar beni, Değmez bu yangın yeri, avuç açmaya değmez. Değil mi ki çiğnenmiş inancın en seçkini, Değil mi ki yoksullar mutluluktan habersiz, Değil mi ki ayaklar altında insan onuru, O kızoğlan kız erdem dağlara kaldırılmış, Ezilmiş, horgörülmüş el emeği, göz nuru, Ödlekler geçmiş başa, derken mertlik bozulmuş, Değil mi ki korkudan dili bağlı sanatın, Değil mi ki çılgınlık sahip çıkmış düzene, Doğruya doğru derken eğriye çıkmış adın, Değil mi ki kötüler kadı olmuş Yemen' e

Vazgeçtim bu dünyadan, dünyamdan geçtim ama, Seni yalnız komak var, o koyuyor adama.

Neoclassical/Restoration (1660-1798)

Historical Context:

• 50% of men were literate; traditional village life ended.

• The industrial revolution began and factories began to spring up; as farming life declined, people grew poorer.

• Coffee houses where educated men spent evenings with literary and political associates became popular.

• The emphasis was placed on the individual, and on reason and logic.

Neoclassical/Restoration (1660-1798)

• John Locke (1632-1704): a social contract exists between the people and the government, which guarantees ‘natural rights’ of life, liberty, and property.

• Locke’s arguments for the social contract, and for the right of citizens to revolt against their king were enormously influential on the democratic revolutions that followed, especially on Thomas Jefferson, and the founders of the United States.

Neoclassical/Restoration (1660-1798)Literature

• In addition to poetry, popular genres of the era are satire, essay, novel, letter, diary and biography.

• John Milton’s Paradise Lost– A major epic poem dealing with the myth of the Creation,

using the figures of God and Satan, Adam and Eve, and the Fall of the Mankind,

– It was followed by Paradise Regained and Agonistes.

• John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress– An allegorical dream-vision work; one of the most important

works in English literature as it fixes the values of society as those of Christianity, faith and stability.

• John Dryden’s Absalom and Architopel– A great example of satire.

Neoclassical/Restoration (1660-1798)Literature

• Alexander Pope (novel, essay, translation)– The Dunciad, An Essay on Criticism, Essay on Man, The Iliad (tr)

• Daniel Defoe (novel)– Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders

• Jonathan Swift (satirical novel)– Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal

• Samuel Johnson (critical essay)– The Lives of the English Poets

• Laurence Sterne (stream of consciousness technique)– Tristram Shandy: a long comic story which plays with time, plot,

and character.

Romanticism (1789-1832)Romanticism: an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement, the Romantic period lasting from the French Revolution to the Reform Act

Historical Context

• Napoleon rose to power in France and opposed England militarily and economically.

• Middle class gained representation in the British Parliament.

• Railroads began to run; gas lamps were developed.

Romanticism (1789-1832)• Romantics saw man in the solitary state, unlike their

predecessors who saw man as a social animal.

• Romantics emphasized the special qualities of each individual’s mind, exalted the atypical, even bizarre, honored the hermit, the outcast, the rebel.

• Romantic writing was mostly poetry.

– William Blake (Songs of Innocence and Experience)– William Wordsworth (The Prelude)– Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“The Rime of the Ancient

Mariner” in Lyrical Ballads)– John Keats (“Isabella”, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, “Ode

to a Nightingale”, “Ode to a Grecian Urn”)– Percy B. Shelley (“Adonais”, “The Mask of Anarchy”)– Lord Byron (“Manfred”)

Romanticism (1789-1832)• Romantic prose:– Jane Austin • Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma

– Mary Shelley • Frankenstein

– Sir Walter Scott • Waverly, The Bride of Lammermoor

• The growth of the novel in this period prepares the way for the even larger growth of the novel in the Victorian period.

Victorian Period (1832-1900)Historical Context:

• There was an unprecedented growth of industry and business in Britain

• Paper became cheap; magazines and novels were mass produced.

• The Crimean War (1854-6) was not a success; the Indian Mutiny of 1857 indicated problems in the colonies; Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species questioned people’s beliefs.

• This was an age of extremes: poor working classes who lived and worked under terrible conditions versus rich and comfortable middle classes.

• Many protests were held against the monarchy; a strong republican movement began to grow.

Victorian Period (1832-1900)Literature

• Novel becomes the most important literary genre in Britain and all over the world.

– Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Hard Times, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol)

– Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre) – Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights) – Anne Brontë (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) – Aphra Behn, aka George Eliot, (Scenes of Clerical Life,

Middlemarch)– Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Jude and the

Obscure)– Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest, The

Picture of Dorian Gray)

Victorian Period (1832-1900)Literature

– Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Strange History of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde)

– Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book, Plain Tales from the Hills)

– Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass); Anna Sewell (Black Beauty); H.G.Wells (The Time Machine, The Invisible Man)

• Victorian poetry shows a more realistic vision of nature

– Alfred Tennyson (In Memoriam A.H.H.); Robert Browning (My Last Duchess); Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the Portuguese)

– Edward Fitzgerald’s free translation from Persian The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is very popular.

– Edward Lear becomes famous for his nonsense poems, in a rhyming form called a limerick (A Book of Nonsense)

Modern Literature (1900-1945)Historical Context:

• In 1900, the British Empire had grown to include many parts of the world, but the Boer War in South Africa was not successful for the British; colonies throughout the world began to rebel and British control of other countries began to disappear.

• The Empire lost one million soldiers to WWI.

• Communism grew in Russia, fascism grew in Italy and Germany.

Modern Literature (1900-1945)Historical Context:

• Workers in large industries became more interested in socialism and joined trade unions.

• The British Labour Party grew; women were allowed to vote for the first time in 1928.

• Winston Churchill lead Britain through WWII; the Germans bombed England.

Modern Literature (1900-1945)Literature

• The content of literature: lonely individual fighting to find peace and comfort that has lost its absolute values and traditions; situational ethics—no absolute values; mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; loss of the hero in literature; destruction made possible by technology

• Genres: free verse poetry, speeches, memoirs, novels (stream of consciousness; detached, unemotional; humorless, present tense; magic realism)

• Approach to life: “Seize life for the moment and get all you can out of it.”

Modern Literature (1900-1945)• Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness, Nostromo)

• E.M.Forster (Howard’s End, A Room with a View, A Passage to India, Maurice-written in 1913, published in 1971 after his death)

• D.H.Lawrence (Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, Lady Chatterley’s Lover-1928, banned until 1960

• James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake)

• Virginia Woolf (Jacob’s Room, Mrs Dalloway, The Waves, A Room for One’s Own)

• William Somerset Maugham (Liza of Lambeth, Of Human Bondage, Cakes and Ale, The Razor’s Edge)

• Saki (The Unbearable Bassington)

Modern Literature (1900-1945)Drama

• George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, My Fair Lady)

• Somerset Maugham (The Circle, The Constant Wife)

• Noël Coward (The Vortex, Private Lives)

• T.S.Eliot (Murder in the Cathedral)

Poetry• Wilfred Owen (Anthem for Doomed Youth, Strange Meeting,

Futility)

• T.S.Eliot (Prufrock and Other Observations, The Waste Land, Four Quartets)

Contemporary Literature (1945-present)Historical Context:

• The British Empire declines.

• The legacy of the WWII, especially the Holocaust, the American A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki inform much of the literature of the earlier period; literature reflects a sense of psychic exhaustion resulting from the trauma and deprivation of the war years.

• Increased immigration is brought about by the need for a larger workforce; racism becomes an issue.

• Cold War develops between the Allies and the USSR.

• Changes take place in class structure, social hierarchy, gender identity, the role of women, moral values, attitudes towards family.

• World grows smaller due to advances in technology; media culture interprets values and events for individuals; world enters a new millenium

Contemporary Literature (1945-present)• The key social, political, and cultural changes took place in

Britain and in the world, since the WWII has had a profound impact on literature.

• Established notions of the literary have been challenged from a previously marginalized perspectives (e.g., feminist, post-colonial).

• The thematic and linguistic range of literature has widened; a more liberal cultural climate allowed greater freedom in the representation of sexuality and sexual orientation.

• By 1970’s, the departure from traditional narrative modes gained momentum, shifting away from traditional realism to magic realism, leading to post-modernism.

Contemporary Literature (1945-present)• Fragmentary, non-linear narrative structures,

increasingly adopted throughout the 70’s and 80’s mirrored the period’s gradual breakdown of political and cultural consensus.

• Mass genocide and the still-present nuclear threat led writers to reassess the validity of what postmodern theorists called “grand narratives”, stories or myths that offer a single, coherent view of the world.

• Literature in the UK after WWII is also difficult to generalize.

Contemporary Literature (1945-present)• Maybe the only clear group is the “Angry Young

Men”, a group of dramatists and novelists (among them Harold Pinter, John Osborne, Kingsley Amis, Allan Sillitoe and Tom Stoppard) who in the 1950s expressed their discontent with traditional English society in anti-establishment works that have also been described as “Kitchen Sink Realism”.

• George Orwell (1903-1950) was also a left-wing writer who criticized social injustice in his novels.– Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen-Eighty-Four

(1949).

Contemporary Literature (1945-present)

• Doris Lessing (1919-), 2007 Nobel Prize winner, she has written both left-wing radical novels and science fiction. (The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook)

• Graham Greene (1904-1991) was both a popular writer and well received by the critics. He wrote “Catholic” novels, like The Power and the Glory (1949) and espionage novels like The Third Man (1950, after the script for the film) and The Human Factor (1978).

• Other more experimental novelists are Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957), who wrote Under the Volcano (1947) a modernist novel with complex symbolism;

Contemporary Literature (1945-present)

• John Fowles (1926-2005), author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), which is frequently mentioned as an example of a metafictional post-modern novel;

• Iris Murdoch (1919-1999), who wrote novels about sexual relationships and the power of the unconscious (Under the Net, 1954); and Anthony Burgess (1917-1993), A Clockwork Orange (1962).

Contemporary Literature (1945-present)• Some of the most acclaimed turn-of-the-century English novelists

include – Ian McEwan (Amsterdam, Enduring Love, Atonement)– Martin Amis (Money, London Fields)– Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go )

• Two Scottish novelists worth mentioning are – Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting)– William Boyd (Armadillo)

• Two important recent poets are – Philip Larkin – Ted Hughes--Poet Laureate and Sylvia Plath’s husband

Popular literature in England during the 20th century• Agatha Christie: detective novels• Ian Fleming: James Bond novels• J. R. R. Tolkien: Lord of the Rings• C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia• Helen Fielding: Bridget’s Jones’s Diary• Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (1995), Fever Pitch (1992)

• Children’s literature:– Enid Blyton, the fifth most translated author worldwide

(The Famous Five series, Malory Towers series) – J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter); – Roald Dahl (1916-1990). James and the Giant Peach,

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, Revolting Rhymes. (Also stories for adults e.g. Tales of the Unexpected)

"The Appointment in Samarra" The speaker is DeathThere was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

"The Appointment in Samarra" • 1. Who is the narrator of the story?• 2. Do you think a market is a good place for Death to

be strolling around in?• 3. What explanation does the author provide for the

merchant's being present in the market on that day?• In your view, is the story more effective if we imagine

Death as gendered in one way or another?• 4. What do you notice about the way the merchant

approaches Death towards the end of the story?• 5. What is the moral of the story?

Fable• A fable is a concise fictional story, in prose or verse,

featuring animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are given human qualities such as verbal communication.

• It illustrates or leads to an interpretation of a moral lesson, which may be added--at the end-- explicitly in a brief expression of a general truth/principle (maxim).

“The Ass's Brains” by AesopThe Lion and the Fox went hunting together. The Lion, on the advice of theFox, sent a message to the Ass, proposing to make an alliance betweentheir two families. The Ass came to the place of meeting, overjoyed at theprospect of a royal alliance. But when he came there the Lion simplypounced on the Ass, and said to the Fox: "Here is our dinner for today. Watch you here while I go and have a nap.Woe betide you if you touch my prey." The Lion went away and the Fox waited; but finding that his master did notreturn, ventured to take out the brains of the Ass and ate them up. Whenthe Lion came back he soon noticed the absence of the brains, and askedthe Fox in a terrible voice:"What have you done with the brains?""Brains, your Majesty! it had none, or it would never have fallen into your

trap.“• Moral of the fable: Wit has always an answer ready.