Unit One  History of English Literature

Warming-up 常识预习
1. What historical background of the British and American literature are you familiar with？
2. Who is the most widely read and the most quoted of poets in the history of English literature? What do you know about him?
3. Who influenced the recognition of English as a literary language by writing in English at a time when other poets were using French and Latin?
4.  Do you like English novels? Which ones have you ever read? Do you know their authors?
5.  American literature was largely influenced by that of Europe at the beginning period. Do you know why?
6.  Many works of Ernest Hemingway are regarded as classics of American literature. With which one did he win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954?
 
Lecturette专题讲座

                                History of English Literature
English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world. It has a history and this connects with cultural history more widely. Prose narratives were written in the 16th century, but the novel as we know it could not arise, in the absence of a literate public. The popular and very contemporary medium for narrative in the 16th century is the theatre. The earliest novels reflect a bourgeois view of the world because this is the world of the authors and their readers（working people are depicted, but patronizingly, not from inside knowledge. The growth of literacy in the Victorian era leads to enormous diversification in the subjects and settings of the novel. The test of time may be a cliché, but is a genuine measure of how a work of imagination can transcend cultural boundaries, we should, perhaps, now speak of the test of time and place, as the best works cross boundaries of both kinds. We may not like or enjoy works such as Wüthering Heights, or The Waste Land, but they are the perfect expression of particular ways of looking at the world; the author has articulated a view which connects with the reader's search for meaning. It is, of course, perfectly possible for a work of imagination to make sense of the world or of experience while also entertaining or delighting the reader or audience with the detail and eloquence of the work, as in A Midsummer Night's Dream, or Great Expectations.
Old English and Beowulf
The earliest written literature, mostly anonymous and narrative, was composed orally at first, and may have been passed on from speaker to speaker until they learned the Latin alphabet from Roman missionaries in the early Middle Ages. Much Old English verse in the extant manuscripts is probably a "milder" adaptation of the earlier Germanic war poems from the continent. When such poetry was brought to England it was still being handed down orally from one generation to another, and the constant presence of alliterative verse, or consonant rhyme (today's newspaper headlines and marketing abundantly use this technique such as in Big is Better) helped the Anglo-Saxon peoples remember it. Even without their crudest lines, the Old English war poems, and to a larger extent all Germanic war poems, still smell of blood feuds and their consonant rhymes sound like the smashing of swords under the gloomy northern sky: there is always a sense of imminent danger in the narratives. Such an Old English epic of unknown authorship is Beowulf, a heroic poem about a young warrior, set in Denmark and Sweden, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature. Sooner or later, all things must come to an end, as Beowulf eventually dies at the hands of the monsters he spends the tale fighting. The feelings of Beowulf that nothing lasts, that youth and joy will turn to death and sorrow entered Christianity and were to dominate the future landscape of English fiction.
Middle English and Chaucer
From 1066 onwards, the language is known to scholars as Middle English. Ideas and themes from French and Celtic literature appear in English writing at about this time. The term Middle English literature refers to the literature written in the form of the English language known as Middle English when a form of London-based English, became widespread and the printing press regularized the language. There are three main categories of Middle English Literature: Religious, Courtly love, and Arthurian. Though much of Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400)’s work stands outside these, he is the first great name in English literature. His greatest work is mostly narrative poetry, which we find in The Canterbury Tales.
Renaissance Drama and Shakespeare
The Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the field of drama. The English playwrights were intrigued by Italian model: a conspicuous community of Italian actors had settled in London and much of the Italian language and culture had been brought to England. Before the 16th century English drama meant the amateur performances of Bible stories by craft guilds on public holidays. William Shakespeare, very gifted and incredibly versatile, stands out in this period as playwright and a poet as yet unsurpassed. Shakespeare was not a man of letters by profession, and probably had only some grammar school education. He was neither a lawyer, nor an aristocrat as the "university wits" that had monopolized the English stage when he started writing. Shakespeare finds the medium of blank verse so productive. Shakespeare develops and virtually exhausts this form. All his dramas met with great success: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest, a tragicomedy that inscribes within the main drama a brilliant pageant to the new king. Shakespeare also popularized the English sonnet which made significant changes to Petrarch's model.
Well, had Marlowe (1564-1593) not been stabbed at twenty-nine in a tavern brawl, he might have rivaled, if not equaled Shakespeare himself for his poetic gifts. Remarkably, he was born only a few weeks before Shakespeare and must have known him well. Marlowe's subject matter, though, is different: it focuses more on the moral drama of the Renaissance man than any other thing. Marlowe was fascinated and terrified by the new frontiers opened by modern science. Drawing on German lore, he introduced Dr. Faustus to England, a scientist and magician who is obsessed by the thirst of knowledge and the desire to push man's technological power to its limits. He acquires supernatural gifts that even allow him to go back in time and wed Helen of Troy, but at the end of his twenty-four years' covenant with the devil he has to surrender his soul to him. His dark heroes may have something of Marlowe himself, whose death remains a mystery. He was known for being an atheist, leading a lawless life, keeping many mistresses, consorting with ruffians: living the 'high life' of London's underworld. But many suspect that this might have been a cover-up for his activities as a secret agent for Elizabeth I, hinting that the 'accidental stabbing' might have been a premeditated assassination by the enemies of the Crown.
Biblical Epic and John Milton
Long narrative poems on heroic subjects mark the best work of classical Greek and Roman poetry. John Milton（1608-1674）set out to write a great biblical epic.
Prose Fiction and Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift（1667-1745）, wrote satires in prose, best-known for the extended fiction Gulliver's Travels, in which a fantastic account of a series of travels is the vehicle for satirizing familiar English institutions, such as religion, politics and law.
Romanticism and Robert Burns
A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the revolt of the senses or passions against the intellect and of the individual against the consensus. The attempts to render the speech of ordinary people are not wholly convincing. Robert Burns（1759 1796） writes lyric verse in the dialect of lowland Scots（a variety of English）. After Shakespeare, Burns is perhaps the most often quoted of writers in English.
Victorian Novel and Dickens
In the 19th century, adult literacy increases markedly: attempts to provide education by the state,  and self-help schemes are partly the cause and partly the result of the popularity of the novel. The greatest of all time is Charles Dickens（1812-1870）. The complexity of his best work，the variety of tone, the use of irony and caricature create surface problems for the modern reader, who may not readily persist in reading.
And one of the major poets of the Victorian era is Alfred, Lord Tennyson（1809-1892）, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language. Tennyson makes extensive use of classical myth and Arthurian legend, and has been praised for the beautiful and musical qualities of his writing. Tennyson wrote a number of phrases that have become commonplaces of the English language, including: "Nature, red in tooth and claw", "Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all", "Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die", "My strength is as the strength of ten, / Because my heart is pure", "Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers", and "The old order changeth, yielding place to new".
Beginning of American Literature and Edgar Allan Poe
The early 19th century sees the emergence of American literature, with the stories of Edgar Allan Poe（1809-1849）, the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne （1804-64） and Mark Twain （1835-1910）, as well as the poetry of Walt Whitman（1819-92）.
Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television.
Modern Literature and Hemingway
Any list of "important" names is bound to be uneven and selective. Identifying broad movements leads to the exclusion of those who do not easily fit into schematic outlines of history. Ernest Hemingway（1899-1961）. During his lifetime he wrote and had published seven novels; six collections of short stories; and two works of non-fiction. Since his death three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction autobiographical works have been published. Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 for his novella The Old Man and the Sea. Hemingway's distinctive writing style is characterized by economy and understatement, and had a significant influence on the development of twentieth-century fiction writing. His protagonists are typically stoical men who exhibit an ideal described as "grace under pressure." Many of his works are now considered classics of American literature.

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alliteration: a literary or rhetorical stylistic device that consists in repeating the same consonant sound at the beginning of several words in close succession头韵法
blank verse：a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter 素体诗
Petrarch: an Italian poet (1304 –1374), “Father of Humanism”. His sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. 波特拉克
Renaissance：French for "rebirth " 文艺复兴
Renaissance man: related and used to describe a person who is well educated or who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields
Helen of Troy：the daughter of Zeus and Leda. Her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War. 海伦公主
Poet Laureate：a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for State occasions and other government events  桂冠诗人

Going-over复习反馈
Multiple-choice Questions
1. Beowulf, an Old English epic, emphasizes the sorrow and _________ of life, and the helplessness of humans before the power of fate.
A. ultimate futility       B. infinite possibilities        C. unexpected variables
2. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer was written in _________.
A. Old English   B. Middle English    C. Modern English
3. William Shakespeare is noted for his use of _____________ in his dramas to achieve special effects.
A. perfect rhyme   B. alliteration     C. blank verse
4. Who is not the character in the works of William Shakespeare?
A. Queen Cleopatra   B. King Lear     C. Dr. Faustus
5. The greatest novelist of the Victorian era is _____________.
A. John Milton   B. Charles Dickens    C. Jonathan Swift
6. “Tis better to have loved and lost/ Than never to have loved at all” was written by ______, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.
A. Alfred Tennyson   B. Ben Johnson    C. William Wordsworth
7. Who does not represent the emergence of American literature in the early 19th century?
A. Nathaniel Hawthorne  B. Walt Whitman    C. Ernest Hemingway
8. Who was the first well-known American man of letters to support himself as a professional writer?
A. Edgar Allan Poe   B. Mark Twain    C. Benjamin Franklin
9. Which does not describe the writing style of Hemingway?
A. economy    B. hyperbole     C. understatement
Essay Questions
10. What is Romanticism in terms of literature?
11. Compare Marlowe with Shakespeare.
12. What is the type of heroes in Hemingway’s novels?