English Literature
A Brief History
Art is an expression of life in its truth and beauty; and artist looks deeper into life and enjoys that treasure of truth and beauty; and his realization finds expression in his creation in the form of music, dance, painting or literature. Literature is a kind of artist's record of life - a simple portrait presenting in the facts in the perspective of soul and nature, and an author is an architect of that work of art which has its natural appeal to the readers' emotions and imagination rather than his intellect.
A literary creation is called literature when it attains the stage of universality with the widest human interests and simplest human emotions. Pure literature knows no bound of race, land or religion. It's chiefly occupied with elementary emotions and passions like love and hate, joy and sorrow, fear and faith- the natural expression of human hearts.
Literature, when first created, remains personal, but when expressed, it becomes universal. It has some definite object: to know man in his inner and outer nature, his feelings and expression of life, his good or bad activities. In order to understand a people of an age, it is necessary to study their history that records their deeds, but it is equally important to read their literature that records their dreams which made their deeds possible.
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English Literature
English literature begins with songs and stories of the ancestors of the English people who lived on the borders of the North Sea. Then the tribes of those ancestors-the Jutes, Angles and Saxons conquered Britain during the later part of fifth century and laid the foundation of the English nation. They were mainly warriors and sea rovers, but the men of profound emotions. Their poetry reflects their nature trough subjects, like the sea, the boats, battles, adventure, nostalgia and so on. In the history of English literature, this period of creation is known as "The Anglo-Saxon Period" which produced chiefly the first poetry in Latin, especially great epic poem "Beowulf" , and a few other pieces like "Widsith", Deor's Lament" and "The Seafarer".
Bede, a historian, and Ca'edmon and Cynewulf, the two great poets, belong to the Northumbrian school of writers between 650 and 850. The beginning of English prose writing is seen under Alfred (848-901) who revised and enlarged the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The Anglo-Norman period began after the conquest of Anglo-Saxon England under William, Duke of Normandy of France. The literature, which they brought to England, is remarkable for its romantic tales of love and adventure. With its influence , the Anglo-Saxon speech simplified itself by dropping many of its Teutonic vocabulary to become the English language. Thus English literature is combination of French and Saxon elements.
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The Age of Chaucer
The fourteenth century produced only a few eminent writers, of whom, Geoffrey Chaucer is greatest of all. Chaucer's best poetical works are "The Canterbury Tales", "The Romance of the Rose (translation)", "Troilus and Cressida", and "The Legend of Good Woman". Chaucer's works and Wyclif's translation of the Bible developed the Midland into the national standard of prose in England.
The two other contemporaries of Chaucer were William Langland and John Mandeville. Langland is known for his great poem "Piers Plowman". About the year 1356, Mandeville's work "Voyage and Travail of Sir John Mandeville" was written in the midland dialect giving an outline of his wide travels.
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The Age of Elizabeth
The period between the later part of the sixteenth and the earlier part of seventeenth centuries is called the "Age of Elizabeth" which produced many excellent prose works, although it is essentially an age of poetry.
During this age, the emergence of the first national poet (since Chaucer's death in 1400) of Edmund Spenser, along with Christopher Marlow, Philip Sydney, William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, and Francis Bacon is noticed. Spencer produced "Shepherd's Calendar", "The Faerie Queen"; Marlowe's poem "Hero and Leander", and his translation of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are remarkable. And besides his poems, Philip Sydney wrote his romance prose "Arcadia", and The Defense of Poisie, a critical essay.
William Shakespeare's appearance as a great force in the literary arena of English Literature secured him the foremost place in the world's literature, he is over the ages a universal poet and dramatist. His famous works are "Henry VI", "Richard III", "The Comedy of Errors", "Titus Andronicus", "The Taming of the Shrew", "Love's Labour's Lost", "Romeo and Juliet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", "King John", "Richard II", "The Merchant of Venice", "Henry IV", "Henry IV (Part Two)", "Much Ado about Nothing", "Henry V", "Julius Caesar", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "As You Like It", "Hamlet", "Twelfth Night", "Trollus and Cressida', "All's Well that Ends Well", "Measure for Measure", "Othello", "Macbeth", "King Lear", "Antony and Cleopatra", "Timon of Athens", "Pericles", "Cymbeline", "The Winter's Tale", "The Tempest", and "Henry VIII".
Ben Johnson's powerful dramas, like "Every Man in His Humor", "Cyntia's Revels", "The Poetster", "The Alchemist", "The Volpone", "The Silent Woman" etc. and Bacon's "The Advancement of Learning", "Novum Organum", "The Instauratio" and his famous "Essays" accelerated immensely the steps of growth of the English literature of the age.
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The Puritan Age
The period between 1625 and 1675 is known as the "Puritan Age (or John Milton's Age)", because during the period, Puritan standards prevailed in England, and also because the greatest literary figure John Milton (1608-1674) was a Puritan. The Puritans struggled for righteousness and liberty.
Puritanism became a great national movement which included English Churchman as well as extreme Separatists. While the Catholic Church had always held true to the ideal of the united church, the possibility of the ideal of a purely national Protestantism grew.
The political upheaval of the period is summed up in the struggle between the King and the Parliament, the blasphemy of a man's divine right to rule his fellowmen was ended. Thus the age marked the beginning of the reformation.
In literature also, the age created a sort of confusion due to breaking up of old ideas. Some of the literary men had the tendencies to look backward for the old golden age, and some wanted to look forward for a better world with the throbs of hope and fresh vitality and youth. And in John Milton, the indomitable Puritan spirit finds its noblest expression. There was Samuel Daniel, John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Carew, Robert Herick, Sir John Suckling, Sir Richard Lovelace, John Bunyan, Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter, Izaak Walton among other important writers of the age.
Milton's "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" , his sonnets and other works; Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress", and "Faerie Queene", Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy", Browne's "Religio Medici", Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying", and Walton's "Complete Angler" are known as remarkable works of the age.
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The Restoration Period
During 1660-1700, there were tremendous social reactions from the restraint of parliament. A wild delight in the pleasures and varieties of the world like performances of dramas and theaters, the revival of bull and bear baiting, sports, music, dancing etc. replaced the absorption in other "other-worldliness",. The writers turned from Italian influence of imagination to French objective repression of emotions.
The greatest literary figure of the Restoration period is John Dryden (1631-1700) whose book provides an excellent reflection of both good and evil tendencies of age. He is best known for his narrative poem "Annus Mirabilis", "All for love", "Religio Laici", "A'eneid", "Fables" etc.
Samuel Butler, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke were among others prominent writers of the age. Butler's "Hudibras", Hobbe's "Leviathan", Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" etc. add glory to the literature of the age.
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Eighteenth-Century Literature
The literature of the century may be classified under three categories: the trend of classicism, the revival of romantic poetry, and the beginning of the "modern novel". Modern newspapers like "Chronicle", "Post", and "Times" and the literary magazines like "Tatler" and "Spectator" had greatly influenced the development of the prose style.
Alexander Pope (1688-1774), a unique figure during the period, was, for a generation, "the poet" of a great nation. Pope's "Pastorals", "Windsor", "Forest Messiah", "Essays on Criticism", "Tamburlaine", "Eloise to Abelard", "the Rape of the Lock", "Dunciad", "Moral Epistles" are well known.
Besides, Jonathan Swift's (1667-1745) famous work "Bickerstaff Almanac" containing "Predictions for the year 1708, as Determined by the Unerring Stars", , his two great satires are "Tale of a Tub", and "Gulliver's Travels".
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) seized upon the new social life and made it the subject of many of his essays based upon types of men and manners. The most interesting work of Addison's early life is his "Account of the Greatest English Poets". His "Cato" is one of his popular poems. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is remembered chiefly for his "Dictionary", an English lexicon, the "Lives of the Poets", and "Rasselas", "Prince of Abyssinia". Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is best known for essays, like "Reflections of the French Revolution", "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful". Edward Gibbon's (1737-1794) "Memoirs" and "The Decline and Fall of Roman Empire" are two remarkable works. Thomas Gray's (1716-1771) "The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is the most perfect poem of the age, although his "Letters" and the "Journal" are also noteworthy.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) is famous for his "The Deserted Village" (poem), although he was also noted essayist, dramatist and novelist. His "The Vicar of Wakefield", "The Citizen of The World", "The Good-Natured Man" and "She Stoops to Conquer" brought him more fame. William Cowper (1731-1800) wrote his largest poem, "The Task". Robert Burns (1759-1796) is better known as a great song-writer. William Blake (1759-1796) is perhaps the most original romantic poet of the age. His last huge prophetic works, prophetic works; "Jerusalem" and "Milton", the "Poetical Sketches", "Songs of Experience" reflect different views of human soul. His other famous works are "Urizen", "Gates of Paradise", "Marri age of Heaven and Hell", "The French Revolution", "The Vision of the Daughters of Albion".
James Thomson's (1700-1748) poems, like "Rule Britannia" (one of the national songs of Britain), "The Castle of Indolence", "The Seasons"; William Collins' (1721-1759) "Oriental Eclogems", George Crabbe's (1721-1759) poetical works, like "The Village", "The Parish Register", "The Borough", "Tales in Verse", "Tales of the Hall" ; James Macpherson's (1736-1796) "Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands", "Fingal", "Temora" are wonderful works of the age.
Other prominent writers of the age were Thomas Chatterton, Thomas Percy, the author of "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry", "Northern Antiquities", Daniel Defoe, famous for his "Robinson Crusoe", "Journal of the Plague Year", "Memoirs of a Cavalier", "Captain Singleton", "Colonel Jack", "Moll Flanders", "Roxana" etc.; Samuel Richardson, a noted writer of "Family Letters", "Pamela", "Clarissa", "Sir Charles Grandison" etc.; Henry Fielding, the author of "Joseph Andrews", "Jonathan Wilde", "The History of Tom Tones", "A Foundling", "Amelia" etc.; Tobias Smollett, The author of "Roderick Random", "Peregrine Pickle", "Humphrey Clinker" etc.; Lawrence Sterne, the author of "Tristram Shandy", "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy".
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The Age of Romanticism
During the first half of the nineteenth century, known as "Age of Romanticism", the literature in England was largely political in form, and mainly romantic in spirit. In the early works of Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley the political turmoil in England and the triumph of democracy are reflected. The age is marked by the first appearance of some women novelists, like Anne Radcliffe, Jane Porter, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen, in addition to many prominent poets, like William Wordsworth (170-1850) who is famous for his "Lyrical Ballads" (in the partnership with Coleridge), "The Prelude", "The Excursion", "The Recluse", "The Home at Grasmere", especially for poems, "Lucy", "Intimations of Immortality", etc.
Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834), a powerful poet and a contemporary of Wordsworth, was a great man of grief who made the world glad. His chief contribution is "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to the "Lyrical Ballads". His other famous poems are "A Day Dream", "The Devil's Thoughts", "The Suicide's Argument", "The Day Wandering of Cain", "Kubla Khan", "Christabal" etc.; and his prose works include "Biographia Literaria", or "Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions", "Lectures on Shakespeare", "Aids to Reflection" etc.
Robert Southey (1774-1843) is famous for his "Thalaba", "The Curse of Kehama", "Madoc", "Roderick", "Life of Nelson", "Lives of British Admirals" etc. Walter Scott (1771-1883) is poet of "Marmion", "Lady of the Lake", "Ministrelsy of the Scottish Border", "The Lady of the Last Ministrel" etc. His novels, "Waverley", "Guy Mannering", "The Antiquary", "Black Dwarf", "Old Mortality", "Rob Roy", "The Heart of Midlothian" etc. are successful. But is most popular work is "Ivanhoe" which was followed by "Kenilworth", "Nigel", "Peveril", "Woodstock", "Count Robert", "The Talisman" etc.
George Gordon, Lord Byron's (1788-1824) famous works are "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "Manfred", "Cain", "Mazeppa", "The prisoner of Chillon", "The Corsair", "The Giaour", "Don Juan" etc. Percy Bysshe Shelley's (1792-1822) noteworthy works are "Alastor", or "the Spirit of Solitude", "Prometheus Unbound", "Queen Mab", "The Revolt of Islam", "Hellas", "The Witch of Atlas", "Adonais", etc. Shelley's popular poems are "The Cloud", "To a Skylark", "Ode to the West Wind", "To Night" etc.
John Keats (1795-1821), a poet devoted to his ideal, who lived for poetry, has produced wonderful poetry: Poems, "Endymion", "Lamia, Isabella", "The Eve of St. Agnes", and "Other Poems" etc. Charles Lamb (1775-1835) is renowned chiefly for his "Tales from Shakespeare", in addition to "Rosamund Gray", "John Woodvil", "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare", "Last Essays of Elia" etc.
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) is recognized as an established author for his prose works, like "Confessions of an English Opium Eater", "Literary Reminiscences", "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth", "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts", "Letters to a Young Man", "Joan of Arc", "The Revolt of The Tartars", "The English Mail-coach", "Autobiographical Sketches" etc. He wrote on wide range subjects: "Klosterheim", a novel, "Logic of Political Economy", "The Essays on Style and Rhetoric", "Philosophy of Herodotus" etc.
Jane Austen (1775-1817), who is a powerful author, was famous for her novels, like "Pride and Prejudice", "Sense and Sensibility", "Emma", "Mansfield Park", "Northanger Abbey" etc.
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The Victorian Age
The later part of the nineteenth century is said to be the "Victorian Age" of English literature, because Victoria became queen of England in 1837, and there was rapid growth of democracy and splendid progress in all branches of art and science. The age produced two great poets, Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) and Robert Browning (1812-1889). Tennyson is famous for his works, like "Poems", "The Princes", "a Medley", "Maud", "In Memoriam", "The Idylls of the King", "Ballads", "Demeter" etc. Robert Browning's works, like "Paulin", "Paracelsus", "Stafford", "Sordello", "Bells and Pomegranates", "Letters", "The Ring and The Book", "Dramatic Lyrics", "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics", "Men and Women", "Dramatic Personae", "The Inn Album", "Jocoseria Colombe's Birthday", "In a Balcony", "Fifine at the Fair", "Red Cotton Night-Cap Country", and of all "The Last Ride Together", established him as a great poet of the age.
Besides the said two poets, there were few other prominent writers of the age. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was the leading writer of all of them. Her "Piers Plowman", "The Seraphim and Other Poems", "Sonnets from the Portuguese", "Casa Guide Windows", "Aurora Leigh", "Poem Before Congress", "Last Poems" are remarkable. Robert Browning married this invalid talented lady whose fame spread much before her husband in the literary field.
Other writers were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Moris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Among the novelists of the Victorian age, the most prominent was Charles Dickens (1812-1870) whose major works included "Pickwick Papers", "Oliver Twist", "Nicholas Nickleby", "Bleak Dorrit", "Davis Copperfield", "The Chimes", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Charismas Carol", "Dombey and Son", "Our Mutual Friend", "Old Curiosity Shop" etc.
Another successful novelist of the age was William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) whose important works are "Henry Esmond", "Pendennis", "The Newcomes", "The Virginians", and of all of them the most popular "Vanity Fair" that brought him instant fame. His essays, like "English Humorists" and "The Four Georges", are among finest essays of the period.
In the Victorian Age, the prominent writers, like Mary Ann Evans, George Eliot produced a few worthy novels, like "Scenes of Clerical Life", "Adam Bede", "Mill on the Floss", "Silas Marner", "Romola", "Felix Halt", "Middlemarch", "Daniel Deronda" etc., the drama-poem, "Spanish Gypsy", and a volume of essays, "the Impressions of Theophrastus Such" etc.
Among other writers of the Victorian Age, there were Charles Reade, Anthony Trollope, Charlotte Bonti, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Charles Kingsley, Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson, Richard Doddridge Blackman, George Meredith, Thomas Babington Macaulay, an essayist, Thomas Carlyh, John Ruskin, Mathew Arnold, John Henry Newman etc.
Thomas Hardy's "Under the Greenwood Tree", "A Pair of Blue Eyes", "Far from the Madding Crowd", "The Return of Nature", "The Woodlanders", "Tess of the D'Urbervillas", "Jude the Obscure" are his best works.
Stevenson's wonderful novels, such as "Treasure Island", "Dr. Jekyll and Hyde", "Kidnapped", "The Master of Ballantrae", "David Balfour", and his remarkable essays, namely "Virginibus Puerisque", "Familiar Studies of Men and Books", and "Memoirs and portraits", and his sketches of travels, like "An Island Voyage", "Travels with a Donkey", "Across the Plains", "The Amateur Emigrant", and also volumes of poems, "Underwoods", "A Child's Garden of Verses" make him a great author.
Macaulay is famous in literature for his essays, such as History of England, Essays on Milton, etc. His poetical work "Lays of an Ancient Rome" is a collection of ballads. Ruskin's major essays are "Ethics of the Dust", "Crown of Wild Olive", "Sesame and Lilies", "Fors Clavigera", "Unto the Last", and of his books of art, "Seven Lamps of Architecture", "Stones of Venice", "Modern Painters" established him as prominent writer of the age.
Mathew Arnold's popular works are "The Strayed Reveller and other poems", "Balder Dead", "Sohrab and Rustam", "Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems"; His essays: "The Study of Poetry", "On Translating Homer", "Essays in Criticism", "Friendship's Garland", "Culture and Anarchy" and books on religious subjects, like "St. Paul and Protestantism", "Liberation and Dogma", "God and the Bible", "Last Essays on Church and Religion", "Discourses in America" etc. are equally adored.
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Twentieth Century Literature
During the twentieth-century, English literature took a new turn, bringing a noticeable sign of development in almost all its branches, especially in novel-writing. The World-War II left an unavoidable influence on the contemporary literature. The signs of rapidly grown modernity are noticed in prose and poetry, not only in England but also in America.
The prominent writers during the century were Rudyard Kipling (1856-1936), Herbert G. Wells (1866-1946), John Galsworthy (1867-1933), James M. Barrie (1860-1937), Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), Samuel Butler (1835-1902), John Masefield, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), George W. Russell (1867-1935), John Millington Synge (1871-1909), Walter de la Mare (1873-1956), among others.
Kipling's verses possess ballad-like quality. Some of them are "Departmental Ditties", "Barrack-Room Ballads" etc. Some of his best verses are "Ballad of East and West", "Gunga Din", "Fuzzy Wuzzy" etc. His short story collection include "A Diversity of Creatures", "Soldiers Three", and also his fictions, "The Brushwood Boy", "Captain's Courageous", "Kim", "The Jungle Book" etc. make him a great writer.
H.G. Wells is known mainly for his unique style of writing. His famous works are "An Experiment in Autobiography", "Tono-Bungay", "The New Machiavelli", "The Soul of a Bishop", "Joan and Peter", "Outline of History", "A Year of Prophesying", "The Shape of Things to Come", "The Time Machine", "Mr. Britling Sees it Through", "The Wheel of Chance" etc.
Galsworthy's novels, "The Man of Property", "Flowing Wilderness and Indian Summer of a Forsyle" raised him to the level of front rank novelists. His plays, "The Island Pharisees", "Justice", "Loyalties", "Escape", "The Silver Box", etc are also popular. Masefield's "Collected Poems", "Salt-Water Ballads", "Ballads and Poems", "The Everlasting Mercy", "The Widow in the Bye Street", "The Daffodil Fields", "End and Beginning" etc. are masterpieces.
Barnard Shaw is perhaps the most dynamic dramatist of modern English literature. His famous dramas are "Windows' Houses", "Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles", "Caesar and Cleopatra", "The Devil's Disciples", "The Doctor's Dilemma", "Candida", "John Bull's Other Island", "Divorcee", "Getting Married" etc. W.B. Yeats is a renowned essayist, editor, poet, playwright of the modern age. His famous works are "The Seven Woods", "Wild Swans at Coole", "The wind among the Reeds", "Collected Poems" etc. and his plays, like "Land of Heart's Desire", "The Shadowy Waters" etc. are notable. Walter dela Mare is a famous modern poet. Some of his poetical works are "The Listeners and Other Poems", "Peacock Pie", "The Fleeting and Other Poems", "Bells and Grass", "Collected Poems" etc.
The inter-war years (World War II) produced many bold writers in English literature. Some of them are David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930), James Joyce (1882-1941), Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), Edward Morgan Foster (1879-1970), Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973), Stephen Spender (1909-1977), C. Day Lewis (1904-1972), Louis MacNiece (1907-1967), Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), Sean O'case'y (1884-1964), Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973), William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), J.B. Priestley(1894- ), James Bridie (1888-1951) etc.
Among the writers of miscellaneous prose, Winston Churchill (1874-1965) stands supreme. His speeches and non-fictional works include "Into Battle", "The Second World War" etc.
During the forties and the later period of the twentieth-century, there was a remarkable growth of the American novels in English language. The works of the American novels are found to be realistic with picture of contemporary life and society, indicating lack of moral values, exposure of corruption, emotional crises etc. The famous writer in this respect is Earnest Hemmingway (1898-1962) whose noteworthy novels are "The Sun Also Rises", "Men Without Women", "A Farwell to Arms", "To Have and Have Not" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
William Faulkner (1897-1962) is the author of "Soldier's Pay", "The Sound and Fury", "Sanctuary" etc. Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was a famous imagist poet; his works include "The Pisan Cantons" which indicate vast survey of history from his personal emotional sustenance.
Among the modern outstanding writers of prose in England are Henry Miller (1891- ), John Steinbeck (1902-1968), Nelson Allgren (1909- ), James Baldwin (1924- ), V.S. Naipaul (1932- ), Graham Greene (1904- ), Charles Percy Snow (1905- ), Evelyn Wamgh (1903-1950), etc. and in the field of poetry, Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953), George Barker (1913- ), Robert Conquest (1917- ), Ted Hughes (1930- ), Dominic Frank (Dom) Moraes (1938- ), etc. As dramatists, Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), the foremost, Samuel Beckett (1906- ), John James Osborne (1929- ), Arnold Wesker (1932- ), Harold Pinter (1930- ), etc. are famous.
Popular scientific literature has also grown during the post-war period. The names of Julian Huxley, Jacob Bronowski, J.D. Bernal etc. are noteworthy in this respect. Huxley's "Man in the Modern World" and Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" are very popular.
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A Brief History
Art is an expression of life in its truth and beauty; and artist looks deeper into life and enjoys that treasure of truth and beauty; and his realization finds expression in his creation in the form of music, dance, painting or literature. Literature is a kind of artist's record of life - a simple portrait presenting in the facts in the perspective of soul and nature, and an author is an architect of that work of art which has its natural appeal to the readers' emotions and imagination rather than his intellect.
A literary creation is called literature when it attains the stage of universality with the widest human interests and simplest human emotions. Pure literature knows no bound of race, land or religion. It's chiefly occupied with elementary emotions and passions like love and hate, joy and sorrow, fear and faith- the natural expression of human hearts.
Literature, when first created, remains personal, but when expressed, it becomes universal. It has some definite object: to know man in his inner and outer nature, his feelings and expression of life, his good or bad activities. In order to understand a people of an age, it is necessary to study their history that records their deeds, but it is equally important to read their literature that records their dreams which made their deeds possible.
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English Literature
English literature begins with songs and stories of the ancestors of the English people who lived on the borders of the North Sea. Then the tribes of those ancestors-the Jutes, Angles and Saxons conquered Britain during the later part of fifth century and laid the foundation of the English nation. They were mainly warriors and sea rovers, but the men of profound emotions. Their poetry reflects their nature trough subjects, like the sea, the boats, battles, adventure, nostalgia and so on. In the history of English literature, this period of creation is known as "The Anglo-Saxon Period" which produced chiefly the first poetry in Latin, especially great epic poem "Beowulf" , and a few other pieces like "Widsith", Deor's Lament" and "The Seafarer".
Bede, a historian, and Ca'edmon and Cynewulf, the two great poets, belong to the Northumbrian school of writers between 650 and 850. The beginning of English prose writing is seen under Alfred (848-901) who revised and enlarged the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The Anglo-Norman period began after the conquest of Anglo-Saxon England under William, Duke of Normandy of France. The literature, which they brought to England, is remarkable for its romantic tales of love and adventure. With its influence , the Anglo-Saxon speech simplified itself by dropping many of its Teutonic vocabulary to become the English language. Thus English literature is combination of French and Saxon elements.
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The Age of Chaucer
The fourteenth century produced only a few eminent writers, of whom, Geoffrey Chaucer is greatest of all. Chaucer's best poetical works are "The Canterbury Tales", "The Romance of the Rose (translation)", "Troilus and Cressida", and "The Legend of Good Woman". Chaucer's works and Wyclif's translation of the Bible developed the Midland into the national standard of prose in England.
The two other contemporaries of Chaucer were William Langland and John Mandeville. Langland is known for his great poem "Piers Plowman". About the year 1356, Mandeville's work "Voyage and Travail of Sir John Mandeville" was written in the midland dialect giving an outline of his wide travels.
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The Age of Elizabeth
The period between the later part of the sixteenth and the earlier part of seventeenth centuries is called the "Age of Elizabeth" which produced many excellent prose works, although it is essentially an age of poetry.
During this age, the emergence of the first national poet (since Chaucer's death in 1400) of Edmund Spenser, along with Christopher Marlow, Philip Sydney, William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, and Francis Bacon is noticed. Spencer produced "Shepherd's Calendar", "The Faerie Queen"; Marlowe's poem "Hero and Leander", and his translation of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are remarkable. And besides his poems, Philip Sydney wrote his romance prose "Arcadia", and The Defense of Poisie, a critical essay.
William Shakespeare's appearance as a great force in the literary arena of English Literature secured him the foremost place in the world's literature, he is over the ages a universal poet and dramatist. His famous works are "Henry VI", "Richard III", "The Comedy of Errors", "Titus Andronicus", "The Taming of the Shrew", "Love's Labour's Lost", "Romeo and Juliet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", "King John", "Richard II", "The Merchant of Venice", "Henry IV", "Henry IV (Part Two)", "Much Ado about Nothing", "Henry V", "Julius Caesar", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "As You Like It", "Hamlet", "Twelfth Night", "Trollus and Cressida', "All's Well that Ends Well", "Measure for Measure", "Othello", "Macbeth", "King Lear", "Antony and Cleopatra", "Timon of Athens", "Pericles", "Cymbeline", "The Winter's Tale", "The Tempest", and "Henry VIII".
Ben Johnson's powerful dramas, like "Every Man in His Humor", "Cyntia's Revels", "The Poetster", "The Alchemist", "The Volpone", "The Silent Woman" etc. and Bacon's "The Advancement of Learning", "Novum Organum", "The Instauratio" and his famous "Essays" accelerated immensely the steps of growth of the English literature of the age.
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The Puritan Age
The period between 1625 and 1675 is known as the "Puritan Age (or John Milton's Age)", because during the period, Puritan standards prevailed in England, and also because the greatest literary figure John Milton (1608-1674) was a Puritan. The Puritans struggled for righteousness and liberty.
Puritanism became a great national movement which included English Churchman as well as extreme Separatists. While the Catholic Church had always held true to the ideal of the united church, the possibility of the ideal of a purely national Protestantism grew.
The political upheaval of the period is summed up in the struggle between the King and the Parliament, the blasphemy of a man's divine right to rule his fellowmen was ended. Thus the age marked the beginning of the reformation.
In literature also, the age created a sort of confusion due to breaking up of old ideas. Some of the literary men had the tendencies to look backward for the old golden age, and some wanted to look forward for a better world with the throbs of hope and fresh vitality and youth. And in John Milton, the indomitable Puritan spirit finds its noblest expression. There was Samuel Daniel, John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Carew, Robert Herick, Sir John Suckling, Sir Richard Lovelace, John Bunyan, Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter, Izaak Walton among other important writers of the age.
Milton's "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" , his sonnets and other works; Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress", and "Faerie Queene", Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy", Browne's "Religio Medici", Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying", and Walton's "Complete Angler" are known as remarkable works of the age.
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The Restoration Period
During 1660-1700, there were tremendous social reactions from the restraint of parliament. A wild delight in the pleasures and varieties of the world like performances of dramas and theaters, the revival of bull and bear baiting, sports, music, dancing etc. replaced the absorption in other "other-worldliness",. The writers turned from Italian influence of imagination to French objective repression of emotions.
The greatest literary figure of the Restoration period is John Dryden (1631-1700) whose book provides an excellent reflection of both good and evil tendencies of age. He is best known for his narrative poem "Annus Mirabilis", "All for love", "Religio Laici", "A'eneid", "Fables" etc.
Samuel Butler, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke were among others prominent writers of the age. Butler's "Hudibras", Hobbe's "Leviathan", Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" etc. add glory to the literature of the age.
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Eighteenth-Century Literature
The literature of the century may be classified under three categories: the trend of classicism, the revival of romantic poetry, and the beginning of the "modern novel". Modern newspapers like "Chronicle", "Post", and "Times" and the literary magazines like "Tatler" and "Spectator" had greatly influenced the development of the prose style.
Alexander Pope (1688-1774), a unique figure during the period, was, for a generation, "the poet" of a great nation. Pope's "Pastorals", "Windsor", "Forest Messiah", "Essays on Criticism", "Tamburlaine", "Eloise to Abelard", "the Rape of the Lock", "Dunciad", "Moral Epistles" are well known.
Besides, Jonathan Swift's (1667-1745) famous work "Bickerstaff Almanac" containing "Predictions for the year 1708, as Determined by the Unerring Stars", , his two great satires are "Tale of a Tub", and "Gulliver's Travels".
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) seized upon the new social life and made it the subject of many of his essays based upon types of men and manners. The most interesting work of Addison's early life is his "Account of the Greatest English Poets". His "Cato" is one of his popular poems. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is remembered chiefly for his "Dictionary", an English lexicon, the "Lives of the Poets", and "Rasselas", "Prince of Abyssinia". Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is best known for essays, like "Reflections of the French Revolution", "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful". Edward Gibbon's (1737-1794) "Memoirs" and "The Decline and Fall of Roman Empire" are two remarkable works. Thomas Gray's (1716-1771) "The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is the most perfect poem of the age, although his "Letters" and the "Journal" are also noteworthy.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) is famous for his "The Deserted Village" (poem), although he was also noted essayist, dramatist and novelist. His "The Vicar of Wakefield", "The Citizen of The World", "The Good-Natured Man" and "She Stoops to Conquer" brought him more fame. William Cowper (1731-1800) wrote his largest poem, "The Task". Robert Burns (1759-1796) is better known as a great song-writer. William Blake (1759-1796) is perhaps the most original romantic poet of the age. His last huge prophetic works, prophetic works; "Jerusalem" and "Milton", the "Poetical Sketches", "Songs of Experience" reflect different views of human soul. His other famous works are "Urizen", "Gates of Paradise", "Marri age of Heaven and Hell", "The French Revolution", "The Vision of the Daughters of Albion".
James Thomson's (1700-1748) poems, like "Rule Britannia" (one of the national songs of Britain), "The Castle of Indolence", "The Seasons"; William Collins' (1721-1759) "Oriental Eclogems", George Crabbe's (1721-1759) poetical works, like "The Village", "The Parish Register", "The Borough", "Tales in Verse", "Tales of the Hall" ; James Macpherson's (1736-1796) "Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands", "Fingal", "Temora" are wonderful works of the age.
Other prominent writers of the age were Thomas Chatterton, Thomas Percy, the author of "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry", "Northern Antiquities", Daniel Defoe, famous for his "Robinson Crusoe", "Journal of the Plague Year", "Memoirs of a Cavalier", "Captain Singleton", "Colonel Jack", "Moll Flanders", "Roxana" etc.; Samuel Richardson, a noted writer of "Family Letters", "Pamela", "Clarissa", "Sir Charles Grandison" etc.; Henry Fielding, the author of "Joseph Andrews", "Jonathan Wilde", "The History of Tom Tones", "A Foundling", "Amelia" etc.; Tobias Smollett, The author of "Roderick Random", "Peregrine Pickle", "Humphrey Clinker" etc.; Lawrence Sterne, the author of "Tristram Shandy", "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy".
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The Age of Romanticism
During the first half of the nineteenth century, known as "Age of Romanticism", the literature in England was largely political in form, and mainly romantic in spirit. In the early works of Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley the political turmoil in England and the triumph of democracy are reflected. The age is marked by the first appearance of some women novelists, like Anne Radcliffe, Jane Porter, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen, in addition to many prominent poets, like William Wordsworth (170-1850) who is famous for his "Lyrical Ballads" (in the partnership with Coleridge), "The Prelude", "The Excursion", "The Recluse", "The Home at Grasmere", especially for poems, "Lucy", "Intimations of Immortality", etc.
Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834), a powerful poet and a contemporary of Wordsworth, was a great man of grief who made the world glad. His chief contribution is "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to the "Lyrical Ballads". His other famous poems are "A Day Dream", "The Devil's Thoughts", "The Suicide's Argument", "The Day Wandering of Cain", "Kubla Khan", "Christabal" etc.; and his prose works include "Biographia Literaria", or "Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions", "Lectures on Shakespeare", "Aids to Reflection" etc.
Robert Southey (1774-1843) is famous for his "Thalaba", "The Curse of Kehama", "Madoc", "Roderick", "Life of Nelson", "Lives of British Admirals" etc. Walter Scott (1771-1883) is poet of "Marmion", "Lady of the Lake", "Ministrelsy of the Scottish Border", "The Lady of the Last Ministrel" etc. His novels, "Waverley", "Guy Mannering", "The Antiquary", "Black Dwarf", "Old Mortality", "Rob Roy", "The Heart of Midlothian" etc. are successful. But is most popular work is "Ivanhoe" which was followed by "Kenilworth", "Nigel", "Peveril", "Woodstock", "Count Robert", "The Talisman" etc.
George Gordon, Lord Byron's (1788-1824) famous works are "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", "Manfred", "Cain", "Mazeppa", "The prisoner of Chillon", "The Corsair", "The Giaour", "Don Juan" etc. Percy Bysshe Shelley's (1792-1822) noteworthy works are "Alastor", or "the Spirit of Solitude", "Prometheus Unbound", "Queen Mab", "The Revolt of Islam", "Hellas", "The Witch of Atlas", "Adonais", etc. Shelley's popular poems are "The Cloud", "To a Skylark", "Ode to the West Wind", "To Night" etc.
John Keats (1795-1821), a poet devoted to his ideal, who lived for poetry, has produced wonderful poetry: Poems, "Endymion", "Lamia, Isabella", "The Eve of St. Agnes", and "Other Poems" etc. Charles Lamb (1775-1835) is renowned chiefly for his "Tales from Shakespeare", in addition to "Rosamund Gray", "John Woodvil", "Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare", "Last Essays of Elia" etc.
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) is recognized as an established author for his prose works, like "Confessions of an English Opium Eater", "Literary Reminiscences", "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth", "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts", "Letters to a Young Man", "Joan of Arc", "The Revolt of The Tartars", "The English Mail-coach", "Autobiographical Sketches" etc. He wrote on wide range subjects: "Klosterheim", a novel, "Logic of Political Economy", "The Essays on Style and Rhetoric", "Philosophy of Herodotus" etc.
Jane Austen (1775-1817), who is a powerful author, was famous for her novels, like "Pride and Prejudice", "Sense and Sensibility", "Emma", "Mansfield Park", "Northanger Abbey" etc.
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The Victorian Age
The later part of the nineteenth century is said to be the "Victorian Age" of English literature, because Victoria became queen of England in 1837, and there was rapid growth of democracy and splendid progress in all branches of art and science. The age produced two great poets, Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) and Robert Browning (1812-1889). Tennyson is famous for his works, like "Poems", "The Princes", "a Medley", "Maud", "In Memoriam", "The Idylls of the King", "Ballads", "Demeter" etc. Robert Browning's works, like "Paulin", "Paracelsus", "Stafford", "Sordello", "Bells and Pomegranates", "Letters", "The Ring and The Book", "Dramatic Lyrics", "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics", "Men and Women", "Dramatic Personae", "The Inn Album", "Jocoseria Colombe's Birthday", "In a Balcony", "Fifine at the Fair", "Red Cotton Night-Cap Country", and of all "The Last Ride Together", established him as a great poet of the age.
Besides the said two poets, there were few other prominent writers of the age. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was the leading writer of all of them. Her "Piers Plowman", "The Seraphim and Other Poems", "Sonnets from the Portuguese", "Casa Guide Windows", "Aurora Leigh", "Poem Before Congress", "Last Poems" are remarkable. Robert Browning married this invalid talented lady whose fame spread much before her husband in the literary field.
Other writers were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Moris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. Among the novelists of the Victorian age, the most prominent was Charles Dickens (1812-1870) whose major works included "Pickwick Papers", "Oliver Twist", "Nicholas Nickleby", "Bleak Dorrit", "Davis Copperfield", "The Chimes", "The Cricket on the Hearth", "Charismas Carol", "Dombey and Son", "Our Mutual Friend", "Old Curiosity Shop" etc.
Another successful novelist of the age was William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) whose important works are "Henry Esmond", "Pendennis", "The Newcomes", "The Virginians", and of all of them the most popular "Vanity Fair" that brought him instant fame. His essays, like "English Humorists" and "The Four Georges", are among finest essays of the period.
In the Victorian Age, the prominent writers, like Mary Ann Evans, George Eliot produced a few worthy novels, like "Scenes of Clerical Life", "Adam Bede", "Mill on the Floss", "Silas Marner", "Romola", "Felix Halt", "Middlemarch", "Daniel Deronda" etc., the drama-poem, "Spanish Gypsy", and a volume of essays, "the Impressions of Theophrastus Such" etc.
Among other writers of the Victorian Age, there were Charles Reade, Anthony Trollope, Charlotte Bonti, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Charles Kingsley, Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson, Richard Doddridge Blackman, George Meredith, Thomas Babington Macaulay, an essayist, Thomas Carlyh, John Ruskin, Mathew Arnold, John Henry Newman etc.
Thomas Hardy's "Under the Greenwood Tree", "A Pair of Blue Eyes", "Far from the Madding Crowd", "The Return of Nature", "The Woodlanders", "Tess of the D'Urbervillas", "Jude the Obscure" are his best works.
Stevenson's wonderful novels, such as "Treasure Island", "Dr. Jekyll and Hyde", "Kidnapped", "The Master of Ballantrae", "David Balfour", and his remarkable essays, namely "Virginibus Puerisque", "Familiar Studies of Men and Books", and "Memoirs and portraits", and his sketches of travels, like "An Island Voyage", "Travels with a Donkey", "Across the Plains", "The Amateur Emigrant", and also volumes of poems, "Underwoods", "A Child's Garden of Verses" make him a great author.
Macaulay is famous in literature for his essays, such as History of England, Essays on Milton, etc. His poetical work "Lays of an Ancient Rome" is a collection of ballads. Ruskin's major essays are "Ethics of the Dust", "Crown of Wild Olive", "Sesame and Lilies", "Fors Clavigera", "Unto the Last", and of his books of art, "Seven Lamps of Architecture", "Stones of Venice", "Modern Painters" established him as prominent writer of the age.
Mathew Arnold's popular works are "The Strayed Reveller and other poems", "Balder Dead", "Sohrab and Rustam", "Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems"; His essays: "The Study of Poetry", "On Translating Homer", "Essays in Criticism", "Friendship's Garland", "Culture and Anarchy" and books on religious subjects, like "St. Paul and Protestantism", "Liberation and Dogma", "God and the Bible", "Last Essays on Church and Religion", "Discourses in America" etc. are equally adored.
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Twentieth Century Literature
During the twentieth-century, English literature took a new turn, bringing a noticeable sign of development in almost all its branches, especially in novel-writing. The World-War II left an unavoidable influence on the contemporary literature. The signs of rapidly grown modernity are noticed in prose and poetry, not only in England but also in America.
The prominent writers during the century were Rudyard Kipling (1856-1936), Herbert G. Wells (1866-1946), John Galsworthy (1867-1933), James M. Barrie (1860-1937), Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), Samuel Butler (1835-1902), John Masefield, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), George W. Russell (1867-1935), John Millington Synge (1871-1909), Walter de la Mare (1873-1956), among others.
Kipling's verses possess ballad-like quality. Some of them are "Departmental Ditties", "Barrack-Room Ballads" etc. Some of his best verses are "Ballad of East and West", "Gunga Din", "Fuzzy Wuzzy" etc. His short story collection include "A Diversity of Creatures", "Soldiers Three", and also his fictions, "The Brushwood Boy", "Captain's Courageous", "Kim", "The Jungle Book" etc. make him a great writer.
H.G. Wells is known mainly for his unique style of writing. His famous works are "An Experiment in Autobiography", "Tono-Bungay", "The New Machiavelli", "The Soul of a Bishop", "Joan and Peter", "Outline of History", "A Year of Prophesying", "The Shape of Things to Come", "The Time Machine", "Mr. Britling Sees it Through", "The Wheel of Chance" etc.
Galsworthy's novels, "The Man of Property", "Flowing Wilderness and Indian Summer of a Forsyle" raised him to the level of front rank novelists. His plays, "The Island Pharisees", "Justice", "Loyalties", "Escape", "The Silver Box", etc are also popular. Masefield's "Collected Poems", "Salt-Water Ballads", "Ballads and Poems", "The Everlasting Mercy", "The Widow in the Bye Street", "The Daffodil Fields", "End and Beginning" etc. are masterpieces.
Barnard Shaw is perhaps the most dynamic dramatist of modern English literature. His famous dramas are "Windows' Houses", "Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles", "Caesar and Cleopatra", "The Devil's Disciples", "The Doctor's Dilemma", "Candida", "John Bull's Other Island", "Divorcee", "Getting Married" etc. W.B. Yeats is a renowned essayist, editor, poet, playwright of the modern age. His famous works are "The Seven Woods", "Wild Swans at Coole", "The wind among the Reeds", "Collected Poems" etc. and his plays, like "Land of Heart's Desire", "The Shadowy Waters" etc. are notable. Walter dela Mare is a famous modern poet. Some of his poetical works are "The Listeners and Other Poems", "Peacock Pie", "The Fleeting and Other Poems", "Bells and Grass", "Collected Poems" etc.
The inter-war years (World War II) produced many bold writers in English literature. Some of them are David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930), James Joyce (1882-1941), Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), Edward Morgan Foster (1879-1970), Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973), Stephen Spender (1909-1977), C. Day Lewis (1904-1972), Louis MacNiece (1907-1967), Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), Sean O'case'y (1884-1964), Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973), William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), J.B. Priestley(1894- ), James Bridie (1888-1951) etc.
Among the writers of miscellaneous prose, Winston Churchill (1874-1965) stands supreme. His speeches and non-fictional works include "Into Battle", "The Second World War" etc.
During the forties and the later period of the twentieth-century, there was a remarkable growth of the American novels in English language. The works of the American novels are found to be realistic with picture of contemporary life and society, indicating lack of moral values, exposure of corruption, emotional crises etc. The famous writer in this respect is Earnest Hemmingway (1898-1962) whose noteworthy novels are "The Sun Also Rises", "Men Without Women", "A Farwell to Arms", "To Have and Have Not" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
William Faulkner (1897-1962) is the author of "Soldier's Pay", "The Sound and Fury", "Sanctuary" etc. Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was a famous imagist poet; his works include "The Pisan Cantons" which indicate vast survey of history from his personal emotional sustenance.
Among the modern outstanding writers of prose in England are Henry Miller (1891- ), John Steinbeck (1902-1968), Nelson Allgren (1909- ), James Baldwin (1924- ), V.S. Naipaul (1932- ), Graham Greene (1904- ), Charles Percy Snow (1905- ), Evelyn Wamgh (1903-1950), etc. and in the field of poetry, Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-1953), George Barker (1913- ), Robert Conquest (1917- ), Ted Hughes (1930- ), Dominic Frank (Dom) Moraes (1938- ), etc. As dramatists, Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), the foremost, Samuel Beckett (1906- ), John James Osborne (1929- ), Arnold Wesker (1932- ), Harold Pinter (1930- ), etc. are famous.
Popular scientific literature has also grown during the post-war period. The names of Julian Huxley, Jacob Bronowski, J.D. Bernal etc. are noteworthy in this respect. Huxley's "Man in the Modern World" and Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" are very popular.
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