An outline of English Literature

1. An outline of English Literature Chapter 11, 13, 14 and 15

2. 19th c. novelists (Victorian Novelists) • Read about Jane Austin (p. 115,116) • Read about Mary Shelley (p.117) • Read about Charles Dickens (p. 120-122) • Read about William Makepeace Thackeray (p. 123,124) • Read about Charlotte and Emily Bronte (p.124-126) • Read about Joseph Conard –a Polish famous writer- (p. 129-130)

3. The Commonest characteristics of this period include :- • Applying Ezra Pound’s outcry “Make it new!” poets in England and America broke out of the established forms and meters. • Free verse to match rhythm with meaning in a modern way. • Psychological realism is fused with literature. • Writers showed both how and what they thought and felt. • The use of the stream of consciousness technique: “A continuous flow of thoughts, feelings, images, observations, and memories. The author seldom speaks directly to the reader but allows characters to reveal themselves through their thoughts. (Originated by the American Psychologist William James, and it was excessively used to by both James Joyce in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Youngman” and Virginia Wolf in “New Dress”. • Changes in subject matters to suite the shocks of the wars, technological advances, and great social freedom.

4. In modern poetry • William Butler Yeats (W.B. Yeats) (Irish) introduced more realistic and direct romantic texts with commitment to politics and mysteries. • T.S Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot) wrote “The Waste Land” as a fragmented poem of disillusion and the difficulty of human communication in the modern world. • A new liberal spirit of reform was developed on the hands of Wystan Hugh Auden (W.H Auden) and Stephen Spender (among others). • The inclination to use non-poetic language and subject matters; Ted Hughes’s fascination with animals and the uses of myths.

5. In modern drama:- • William Butler Yeats started the trend of poetic drama with plays based on Irish folklore, mixing cynical comedy with stark realism. • George Bernard Shaw introduced a satiric wit in themes of war, religion and women’s rights (Pygmalion). • The well-made plots of the plays became less important than mood and characters. • Samuel Beckett combined philosophy and comedy, reason and absurdity in his plays, making them controversial and influential.

6. In modern Prose:- • Authors reflected the changes of human nature and the way human beings perceived one another. • The use of stream of consciousness, lyric imagery and sophisticated wit was rife and apparent (Virginia Wolf and James Joyce). • New themes of honor, fate, identity, and disillusion were raised and explored in modern prose (Joseph Conard). • Also, new definitions of human relationships and intense psychological insight into the working classes were produced (David Herbert Lawrence, known as D. H. Lawrence). • In America, Edgar Allen Poe described the short story as “a fiction written to be read in one sitting and intended to create a single effect.” • The emergence of science fiction. P162 • Literature remains a major source of understanding and entertainment.

7. In ch. 13 :- • Read about Rudyard Kipling p.143. • Read about Edward Morgan Foster p. 144 • Read about D. H. Lawrence p. 146,147 • Read about James Joyce p148-149. • Read about Virginia wolf, p. 150. • Read about George Orwell p.156-158.

8. In ch. 14:- • Read about George Bernard Shaw p.165-167 • Read about Samuel Beckett p.171,172. • Read about Harold Pinter p.173,174 • Read about Oscar Wilde p.174,175 • Read about T. S. Eliot p.177,178

9. In ch. 15 • Read about W. B. Yeats p.181-182 • Read about Thomas Hardy p.182,183 • Read about T. S. Eliot p.187,189 • Read about Wystan Hugh Auden (W. H. Auden) p.189 • Read about Ted Hughes p.193-194 • Read about Robert Graves p.194.