English, American and postcolonial literature

1. English, American and postcolonial literature

2. Literature in contexts • Generic or genre context • Poetry, drama, novel • Epic, tragedy, lyric, comedy, and satire • They tell us what sort of text we are dealing with • Historical context • Every work has a historical context • It belongs to a particular historical period

3. Old English/Anglo Saxon • --- before the Norman conquest (1066) • Beowulf (circa 700) • Order vs disorder

4. Middle English ? Medieval literature • 1066 – 1550 (approximately) • Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1400) • Markedly Christian • The Christian ideal vs the reality of life in this imperfect world

5. Renaissance • 1500-1660 • Rebirth • Modern literature • Great changes • Elizabethan • Puritan • Restoration • 17thcentury: God as the true source of order: Milton

6. Eighteenth century • Augustan/Neoclassic • Secularism • Religious poetry  social poetry • Pope and Dryden • Social life – individual life in society • Harmony and balance can be created within society • Order, logic, reason

7. Romantic period • Neoclassicism vs romanticism • Harmony is in natural life • Feeling, emotion, individualism, nature • French Revolution • Poetry

8. Victorian • Develops not reacts against romantic literature • Complex society • Novel than poetry • Industrial revolution • Dickens • realism

9. 20th century • Wars • Elliot • Innovative and experimental in form • Modernist • American literature • Postmodern literature • Postcolonial literature • African American literature

10. Each era = different values (figures)