History of British Literature

1. History of British Literature 19th Century Literature

2. Three Periods • Romanticism (1790-1830) • Victorianism (1830-1890) • Decadence (1890s)

3. Our Discussion • Historical Background • Literary Feature • Literary Device

4. The Return To Nature (1890-1830)Historical Background • The European War • Extinction of French republic • The rise and destruction of the power of Napoleon • The restoration of Bourbon Dynasty • Reaction • Social Conditions • Misery • Low wages • Unemployment

5. Literary Features • Abundant Output • Great Range of Subject • Treatment to Nature • Political and periodical writing • The influence of Germany • American Literature

6. Literary Devices : Poetry • William Wordsworth • its inequality and limitation • Its egoism • Lyrical gift • Treatment to Nature • Heroic couplet

7. Example: My Heart Leaps Up My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when life began; So it is now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old Or let me die! The child is father of the Man; And I could wish my day to be Bound each to each by natural piety

8. The Series of Lucy Poems She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise, And very few to love. A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!

9. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834) • Imaginative power • Witchery of language • Simplicity of diction • Epitaph

10. The Ancient Mariner : The song the Sirens Sang And now 'twas like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song, That makes the heavens be mute. It ceased: yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of tune, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune.

11. Epitaph Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be? By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch tree. The oak that in summer was sweet to hear. And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,

12. Frost at Midnight Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

13. Lord Byron • Lyrical gift • Satirical power • Style of Pope • His reputation • ottava rima

14. Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him, Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample, Catullus scarcely has a decent poem, I don't think Sappho's Ode a good example, Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample; But Virgil's songs are pure, except that horrid one Beginning with "Formosum Pastor Corydon."

15. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY • Lyrical power • Choice of subject • (the one consisting of his visionary, prophetic works such as Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, The Revolt of Islam, Prometheus Unbound, and similar poems, and the other of his shorter lyric) • Descriptive power • Simplicity

16. The Sensitive plant For Winter came; the wind was his whip; One choppy finger was on his lip; He had torn the cataracts from the hills, And they clanked at his girdle like manacles

17. The Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa We paused amid the pines that stood The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude With stems like serpents interlaced.

18. John Keats Death, beauty in art and Nature. Ex: Bright stars, the most beautiful English sonets, Hyperion, his best work

19. Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair; Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. A stream went voiceless by, still deaden'd more By reason of his fallen divinity Spreading a shade: the Naiad "mid her reeds Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips. Hyperion

20. Literary Device: Novels Sir Walter Scott • Rapidity of Production • Historical Novel, domestic Novel, Fresh fiction • His Shakespearian Qualities • Hits Style : lacks suppleness, but it is powerful, solid, and sure, employ Scottish dialect

21. Fergus, as the presiding judge was putting on the fatal cap of judgment, placed his own bonnet upon his head, regarded him with a steadfast and stern look, and replied in a firm voice: " I cannot let this numerous audience suppose that to such an appeal I have no answer to make. But what I have to say you would not bear to hear, for my defence would be your condemnation. Proceed, then, in the name of God, to do what is permitted to you. Yesterday and the day before you have condemned loyal and honourable blood to be poured forth like water. Spare not mine. Were that of all my ancestors in my veins, I would have perilled it in this quarrel." He resumed his seat, and refused again to rise.

22. Evan Maccombich looked at him with great earnestness, and, rising up, seemed anxious to speak; but the confusion of the court and the perplexity arising from thinking in a language, different from that in which he was to express himself, kept him silent. There was a murmur of compassion among the spectators, from the idea that the poor fellow intended to plead the influence of his superior as an excuse for his crime.

23. The judge commanded silence, and encouraged Evan to proceed. "I was only ganging to say, my lord," said Evan, in what he meant to be an insinuating manner, "that if your excellent Honour and the honourable court would let Vich Ian Vohr go free just this once, and let him gae back to France, and no to trouble King George's government again, that ony six o' the very best of his clan will be willing to be justified in his stead; and if you'll just let me gae down to Glennaquoich.I'll fetch them up to ye mysell, to head or hang, and you may begin wi me the very first man." Waverley

24. Jane Austen • Unromantic plots • Ordinary characters but convincingly alive • Place in history of fiction

25. Austen’ Works • Pride and Prejudice (1796-97), published 1813). • Sense and Sensibility (1797-98, published 1811) • Northanger Abbey (1798, published posthumously 1818). • Mansfield Park (1811-13, published 1814), • Emma (1815, published 1816) • Persuasion (1815-16, published 1818).

26. Other Novelists Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) Her works fall into three classes, short stories for children, such as Simple Susan, which were collected in The Parent's Assistant (1795-1800) and Early Lessons (1801-15); Irish tales, which include her best works, Castle Rackrent (1800), The Absentee (1809), and Ormond (1817); and fulllength novels, such as Belinda (180)), Leonora (1806), Patronage (1814), and Harrington (1817)

27. Michael Scott (1789-1835) - the sea Novelist • Washington Irving (1783-1859) -the first American novelist to establish a European reputation. -His works : History of New York (1809), The Sketch-book (1820)- a collection of short tales and sketches, Tales of a Traveller (1824), Legends of the Alhambra (1832),

28. MISCELLANEOUS PROSE • Charles Lamb -Essays of Elia(1823) - The Last Essays of Elia(1833) - Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821), appeared in The London Magazine

29. William Hazlitt (the lectures and essays on literary and general subjects) • His lectures on Characters of Shakespeare' s Plays (1817), The English Poets (1818), The English Comic Writers (1819), and The Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (1820). • His best essays were collected in The Round Table (1817), Table Talk; or, Original Essays on Men and Manners (1821-22), and The Spirit of the Age; or, Contemporary Portraits (1825)

30. What can you conclude? Can you answer these following questions? • What are the features of literature in romanticism period? • Mention two important poets? • What kind of novels popular in this period? • What are the miscellaneous prose ever produced in this period?