I.

ELIZABETHAN ERA
1.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): UK

The Sonnets (154 sonnets, published in 1609), Themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The sonnets are almost all constructed from three four-line stanzas (called quatrains) and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter[17] (a meter used extensively in Shakespeare's plays) with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg (this form is now known as the Shakespearean sonnet). Main Characters: The fair Youth, The Rival Poet and The Dark Lady Romeo and Juliet 1 - 1597 A tragic Romace, with dramatic structure (switching between tragedy and comedy), Themes The forcefulnesss of love, The Fate or Destiny, The themes of death and violence permeate Romeo and Juliet, and they are always connected to passion, The Individual Versus Society, The Theme of Light, The Theme of Time, Hamlet 1601 Great tragedy, revenge-play (Elizabethan genre), perpetual Ambiguity, uncertainty. THEMES - The theme of revenge Sons Seeking Revenge, Madness, Death, Ambition (Clausius), Loyalty (Hamlet, loyal to his father), Hesitation, Inherited sin and corruption (Claudius kills his brother old King Hamlet, Cains sin) Macbeth, 1607- Regicide tragedy, THEMES Tragedy of character, A tragedy of moral order (The disastrous consequences of Macbeth's ambition are not limited to him. Almost from the moment of the murder, the play depicts Scotland as a land shaken by inversions of the natural order. Shakespeare may have intended a reference to the great chain of being, although the play's images of disorder are mostly not specific enough to support detailed intellectual readings.), a Poetical Tragedy, Witchcraft and evil, Superstition, Prophecy, The corrupting power, The difference between kingship and tyranny, Guilt and Remorse, Ghosts and Visions, The natural and Supernatural, Ambition and Temptation, Salvation and Damnation. Motifs:Violence, hallucinations, A Midsummer Nights Dream - 1596 Themes in the story Loves difficulty -the fairies make light of love by mistaking the lovers and by applying a love potion to Titania's eyes, forcing her to fall in love with Bottom as an ass Magic - The fairies magic, which brings about many of the most bizarre and hilarious situations in the play, is another element central to the fantastic atmosphere of A Midsummer Nights Dream.

Dreams - As the title suggests, dreams are an important theme in A Midsummer Nights Dream; they are linked to the bizarre, magical mishaps in the forest. Loss of individual identity-Maurice Hunt, - "that pleasing, narcotic dreaminess associated with the fairies of the play".[8] By emphasizing this theme even in the setting of the play, Shakespeare prepares the reader's mind to accept the fantastic reality of the fairy world and its magical happenings. Ambiguous sexuality- Douglas E. Green explores possible interpretations of alternative sexuality. He does not consider Shakspeare to have been a "sexual radical". Green writes that the "sodomitical elements", "homoeroticism", "lesbianism", and even "compulsory heterosexuality" in the story must be considered in the context of the "culture of early modern England" as a commentary on the "aesthetic rigidities of comic form and political ideologies of the prevailing order". Feminism-Male dominance is one thematic element found in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Shakespeare's comedies often include a section in which females enjoy more power and freedom than they actually possess. The challenge to patriarchal rule in A Midsummer Night's Dream mirrors exactly what was occurring in the age of Elizabeth I. II. AUGUASTANISM ENLIGHTENMENT (Sec. 18) 2. Daniel Defoe (1659-1731): UK Robinson Crusoe - 1719 (fiction, adventures literature, religion (Puritanism, selfexamination, moral), british empirialism, civilizing, rise of bougeoisie from the middle-class individuals, rise of capitalism, realism) Picaresque and personal journal. Omniscient narrator. Language is plain, simple and expressive. Themes: providence, religion, moralism, survival, inter-social relations, philosophical and social beliefs. 3. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): UK (Anglo-Irish satirist, writer) Gullivers Travels 1726- satire of human nature with a dirrect address of contemporary England, and a parody of travellers tales, fantasy. Written in 1st person. Gulliver is not a hero, but a persona, a mask, a device used by the writer to express his own opinions. Style is clear, pointed, precise. Human allegory, even a dystopia. FOUR PARTS: I. Lilliputians: - represent the court of George the first. - phisically small (nice, fine, delicate) - figurately small:narrow minded II. Brobdingnags: - represent the enlightened monarchy. - phisically big (gyants, not so nice, fine, delicate) - figurately big: big-herted, open- minded III. Laputans: - represent the Royal Society. - attacking satiricallly the exagerations of science attraction - excessive interest in science produce lose of touch with reality IV. Yahoos and Houyhnhnms-Allegory for Instinct and Reason -Yahoos - represent the instinct, feelings without reasoning

- Houyhnhnms represent cold reason, which lacks human warmth, love, affection, devotion, generosity - Gulliver sees himself as the embodiment of common humanity. Symbols -the four above.Themes: The individual versus society, Might versus right, the limits of human understanding Broadly, the book has three themes:

a satirical view of the state of European government, and of petty differences between religions. an inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt or whether they become corrupted. a restatement of the older "ancients versus moderns" controversy previously addressed by Swift in The Battle of the Books.

4. Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768): UK (Anglo-Irish novelist) Tristram Shandy 1759 (unconventional narrat. technique, unconventional time scheme and its self-declared digressive-progressive style Satire of english novels progress). Mocks all the conventions of new genre of the novel, anti-novel. Theme: failure, time (flashbacks, digression), communication, hobby-horse (it refferes to sexual images), noses. The psychological elements perceived as being more important in art and philosophy. Influences James Joyces prose fiction, precoursor of stream of conciusness technique and self-reflexive writing and of the modern novel. It is a Anti-novel with an anti-hero. Nine volume comic meta-novel. Absurd language.

III. ROMANTICISM (Sec 18 (1790-1840) nature, imagination and symbols 5. John Keats (1795-1821): UK (English Romantic poet)

Ode on a Grecian Urn 1819 (Themes: innocence, art and culture, love and sex, nature, transience), fascinated with Greek stones, phartenon, panteism.

6. S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834): UK (English poet, literary critic, philosopher) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 1797 (Themes: The natural world, the spiritual world, religion, retribution, redemption through deep suffering). He was a poet of illusion, misticism, mysterious and of supernatural. Style and metre of the old balads, imagination and imagery, symbols (the sea, sun). The poem may be a complex metaphor of the poets fate. 7. Jane Austen (1775-1817): UK (English novelist) Pride and Prejudice 1813 (romantic fiction, realism, social concerns from a womans point of view: Women-marriage and choosing the right partener, men choosing the right career, profession: military, church).Themes: pride, prejudice, love, reputation, class.

IV. BRITISH (VICTORIANISM) & AMERICAN NOVEL (Sec 19 18371901) Realism (British) vs. Romance (USA), the era of the British Empire(1/3 of the world, rise of bourgeosie and education of middle-class people, realism, manners and morals, clearcut characters, the good are rewarded, the villains are punished, heros, industrialization. 8. Charles Dickens (1812-1870): UK (English novelist, social realism+romace) Great Expectations 1860 (picaresque plot leads to bildungsroman, development of a satirical, wry, critical, sentimental, dark, dramatic, foreboding, Gothic, sympathetic.
Themes: Ambition and self-improvement, Social class, crime, guilt and inocence.

single character, Pip). Psychological realism with a complex vision of society. Psychic growth, spiritual transformation. First person narrator (Pip). Tone: Comic, cheerful,

David Coperfield 1850 (the most auto-biographical, child labor, schools, highly colored characters (social types). First person narrator (David). Style: descriptive, realistic. Rhetorical devices: suspense, sympathy, pathos, the characters behaviour, gestures, language (he appeals to imagination, fantasy, using romantic devices: archetypal, mythical symbols. Themes: The abuse of power, The importance
of charity and kindness, equality in marriage. Time is private, subjective, lyrical, focussed in the conciousness of narrator.

9. Lewis Caroll (1832-1898): UK (author, mathematician, logician, photographer and deacon) Alices Adventures in Wonderland 1865 Literature for children (fantasy world, fantasy genre) Themes: Growing up (Motifs of Identity and Curiosity), Size change, Death (final stage of growth), Games &Learning the rules. Written during the Victorian era, a time now remembered for its stifling propriety and constrictive morals. The creatures of wonderland have many arbitrary customs. Their behaviors are all defensible with strange logic, but the customs are still silly or even cruel. There are obvious echoes of the Victorian world, as the animals are opinionated and have strong ideas about what constitutes appropriate behavior. The creatures' preciousness and their arbitrary sensitivities mock the fastidiousness of the Victorian era. 10. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): UK (English novelist and poet, second generation) (realism, naturalism, pessimism - 1880-1940)Second generation, last victorianist. Tess of the DUberville 1891 (realism, romance, naturalism) Tess of the D'Urbervilles has often been interpreted as Thomas Hardy's criticism of the shortcomings of his society, denouncing the hypocritical nature of conventional morality, social stereotypes and the deplorable implications of Industrialisation. Themes: The injustice of existence, Changing ideas of Social class in victorianism, Cosmic forces shaping human existence, Fate, Men dominating women: Alec, Angel. Tone: pessimistic, fatalist Literary devices: 1. Symbolism (Stonehenge= ritual sacrifice, victim offered to the Gods on altar, Alec symbolyzes the new bourgeois intrusion into the countryside. The death of the horse= Family gradual degradation, Colors red=sexuality and white=purity), imagery, allegory 2. Narrator 3rd person, limited omniscient 3. Genre: tragedy, pastoral 4. Tone: distant, passive observer 5. Style: simple, short sentences. Romance:superstition, symbolism, fatalism,fairytale.

AMERICAN NOVEL Romance, puritanism, symbolism, fantasy and sentimentality, psychological

and moral nature.

11. Natanael Hawthorne (1804-1864): USA (American novelist and short-story writer) The Scarlet Letter-1850 (independence, Civil War, transcendentalism (Emerson, Thoreau), dark romanticism, puritan heritage, impact on Melville, meanwhile British Victorianism, industrialism, imperial expansion) Romance, symbolism, fantasy and
sentimentality, psychological and moral nature.

Themes: Legalism, evil, sin and guilt, Past and Present, Identity, Individual vs.Society, Symbols: Hester and Arthur = Adam and Eve, scarlet letter A=sin,Adultery, But after her repentence is Able, Admirable, Abel, Angel, Artist, America, Pearl=embodiment of the scarlet letter, Arthur Dimsdale has it on his chest, symbol of his sin. Chillingworth=personification of the unpardonable sin=Satan, lacking affection. 12. Herman Melville : 1819-1891 (a national literature and romantic individualism Moby Dick USA-1851 REALISM USA V. REALISM - USA 13. Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass 14. Emily Dickinson 15. Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn VI. MODERNISM (Sec XX) UK 16. Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady UK 17. Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim 18. James Joyce: Ulysses 19. Virginia Wolf 20. William Faulkner: Absalom! Absalom 21. T.S. Eliot: Waste Land 22. William Golding: Lord of the Flies MODERNISM (Sec XX) U.S.A. 23. G.B.Shaw: Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion 24. F.S.Fitzgerald; The Great Gatsby 25. Ernest Hemingway: Short Stories 26. Eugene ONeill: Mourning Becomes Electra 27. John Steinbeck