History of English Literature: Unit-I Chaucer and Elizabethan Age

U.ELAMPARITHI., M.A.,M.Phil.
HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
Unit-I CHAUCER AND ELIZABETHAN AGE
 Poetry: Chaucer, Wyatt and Surrey

 Prose: Bacon and his Essays
 Drama: University Wits, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson
Unit II THE AGE OF MILTON
 Milton
 The Metaphysical Poets- Donne and his followers
 Dryden and Pope
Unit III THE RESTORATION AGE
 Prose-Addison, Steele, Dr. Johnson

 Fiction- Swift, Fielding
 Drama- Congreve, Sheridan
Unit IV THE ROMANTIC AGE AND THE VICTORIAN AGE
 Romantic Poets- Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley & Keats

 Romantic Novelists- Scott, Jane Austen
 Romantic Prose Writers- Charles Lamb, Hazlitt
 Victorian Poets- Tennyson, Browning
 Victorian Novelists- Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy
 Victorian Prose Writers- John Ruskin, Arnold
Unit-V TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE
 Twentieth Century Poetry- G.M.Hopkins, T.S. Eliot

 Twentieth Century Prose - A.G.Gardiner, Chesterton
 Twentieth Century Drama- Oscar Wilde, G.B.Shaw
 Twentieth Century Fiction- Virginia Woolf, D.H.Lawrence
UNIT I-CHAUCER AND ELIZABETHAN AGE

POETRY - CHAUCER, WYATT AND SURREY
THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1340-1400) - INTRODUCTION

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in the reign of Edward III, lived through that
of Richard II and died the year after Henry IV ascended the throne. His period
was full of social contrasts and political changes. The king and his nobility led a
very gay and debonair life but the common people lived in deplorable misery.
The French wars, famine and plague led to heavy burdens of taxation and hence
common folk rose up for agitation under Wat Tyler, Jack Straw and John Ball.
Political troubles resulted in discord and confusion. The corruption of church was
obvious and there was little spiritual zeal and energy. The greedy, profligate lived
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U.ELAMPARITHI., M.A.,M.Phil.,
in a godless and worldly way. Fat, pleasure-loving monk, the merry and wanton friar, and that clever rogue,
the pardoner, who wanders about hawking indulgences and relics show that he was alive to the shocking
state of things of his time. John Wycliffe revived the spiritual Christianity and was called ‘The morning star
of reformation’. Social unrest and beginnings of new religious movements were the two chief active forces
in England. It was a period of new learning and intellectual expansion. Renaissance spirit of Italy and moral
ideas of Greece and Rome brought a great revival in England and leaders were Italian writers Petrarch and
Boccaccio. The influence of humanism, sense of beauty and delight in life began to appear in literature.
CHAUCER’S LIFE
Geoffrey Chaucer was born about 1340 in London. At seventeen he was a page to the wife of Duke
of Clarence. Later, he was with English army in France. His diplomatic missions brought him closer to
Italian culture. He was also granted a royal pension in Henry IV’s reign. He was buried in Westminster
Abbey which was later known as Poet’s corner. He was the man of the world and of affairs. He had a keen
eye for everything dramatic and picturesque.
CHAUCER’S WORKS
Chaucer’s literary career can be divided in to three periods- French, Italian and English.
 His early works were modelled on French poetry, romance of court and cultivated society. Chaucer
wrote two major poems - ‘Roman de la Rose’, describing the pleasures of love symbolised by the
rose and ‘The book of Duchess’, an allegory on the death of Blanche, John Gaunt’s wife.
 His second period has Italian influences. The Parliament of Fowles, is in the form of a dream vision
in rhyme royal stanza (ababbcc) and is interesting in that it is the first reference to the idea that St.
Valentine's Day was a special day for lovers.The house of fame is another dream allegory celebrating
the wedding of Richard II with Anne and it owes much to Dante. Troilus and Cressida narrate how
Troilus, the Trojan prince falls in love with a Greek girl, Cressida and it is based on Boccaccio’s
Filostrato. The Legend of Good Women tells the stories of the faithful lovers of nine heroines.
 In the last period, Chaucer becomes independent. The Canterbury tales is remarkable for Chaucer’s
gift of storytelling and skill in characterisation.
THE CANTERBURY TALES

The prologue to Canterbury tales explains that a number of pilgrims including Chaucer on the eve of
their departure meet at the Tabard Inn in Southwark. The pilgrimage is to the shrine of the murdered St.
Thomas Becket at Canterbury. The jolly Host of the Tabard, Harry Bailey gives them a hearty welcome and
best supper. Then he makes a proposal that each member of the party shall tell two tales on the way to
Canterbury and two on the way back. He himself will be the judge and the one who tells the best tale shall
be treated by all the rest to a supper. The pilgrims hail from different places and belong to different
professions.
Military profession- a knight, a squire, a yeoman
Ecclesiastic - a prioress, a nun, a monk, a friar, a summoner, a pardoner, a poor parson, a clerk of Oxford.
Miscellaneous – A lawyer, a physician, a franklin, a merchant, a shipman, a miller, a cook, a manciple, a
reeve, a haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer, a tapycer, a ploughman, clothmaker named Alison(wife
of Bath)
The Canterbury tales is merely a fragment of twenty four tales and it is a masterpiece of insight, sureness of
touch, fine discrimination and subtle humour. The chivalrous epic of knight, farcical stories of the Miller and
Reeve, the wife of Bath’s tale are the good examples. His finest work as a narrative poet is the Knight’s Tale.
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CHARACTERISTICS OF CHAUCER’S POETRY

 Chaucer has been called as the Father of English Poetry.
 Chaucer was a court poet who wrote for cultured readers and a refined society.
 He wanted his audience to be amused by comedy or touched by pathos or moved by romantic
sentiment.
 He never reflected on painful reminders of plague and popular discontent. He has mentioned the
peasant’s revolt in nun’s priest’s Tale- the Cock and the fox. He has also drawn the satiric portraits of
unworthy churchmen.
 Humour is the life and soul of Chaucer’s works. He neither views at folly with a revolutionary favour
nor lashes them.
 His style was an easy-going, genial and tolerant nature. He is influenced by Italian humanism and
expressed free secular spirit in his poetry. He is called as ‘the morning star of the Renaissance’.
The proses written by Chaucer are his translation of Boethius and treatise on the Astrolabe. Wycliffe’s
Bible and the Travels of Sir John Mandeville are other important works of his period. The other
contemporaries of Chaucer are John Gower (Speculum Meditantis in French; Vox Clamantis in Latin and
Confessio Amantis in English), William Langland (the vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman) and
John Barbour (The Brus).
POETRY AND PROSE OF 15TH CENTURY

After the death of Chaucer, there was a long period of barrenness. Religion continued to degenerate in
spite of the fact that Wycliffe and the Oxford reformers tried their best. The political struggle between
houses of York and Lancaster resulted in the Wars of the Roses. The most important fifteenth century poets
were Thomas Occleve and John Lydgate.
The important works in poetry are

 Thomas Occleve – The Governail of Princes
 John Lydgate – The story of Thebes, the Falles of princes and The Temple of Glass.
 James I of Scotland – The king’s Quair
 William Dunbar – The Thistle and the Rose, Dance of Seven deadly sins
The form of prose was used for instruction and entertainment. The most popular prose work is Sir Thomas
Malory’s Morte D’Arthur.
RENAISSANCE AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

The revival of learning began with Petrarch and Boccaccio in the 14 th century. The age of Italian
humanism actually started in the 15th century. The Renaissance worked in two ways in the development of
literature- it liberated thought from the bondage of theology and the writers had literary masterpieces as
models. The English scholars visited Italy for education. The new learning was established in Oxford and
Cambridge. It was helped by the introduction of the printing press in 1476 by William Caxton. In prose,
William Tyndale’s English New Testament and Coverdale’s The Complete English Bible and Cromwell’s
Great Bible showed the growing interest of scriptures. Thomas More’s Utopia and Roger Ascham’s the
Schoolmaster are other important works.
THOMAS WYATT AND SURREY

The Renaissance English poetry was influenced directly by Italy. Poets like Stephen Hawes and John
Skelton carried on the Chaucerian tradition. But the new movement in poetry began at the court of Henry
VIII. Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey were filled with the spirit of new culture and
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polished the English poetry. Together they bought from Italy the love poetry, which Petrarch called ‘Sonnet’
in Italy. Surrey was the first person to use blank verse in his translation of the Aeneid. He used unrhymed ten
syllable verse. They are the chief poets represented in a collection of Songs and Sonnets, which is popularly
known as Tottel’s Miscellany, published in 1557. It marks the dawn of the new age in literature.
DRAMA - INTRODUCTION
Originally, drama was merely part of the church service. Performance was given in the church and
only the priests figured as actors. Later the stage was removed from to the churchyard and then to the village
greens. At first the Miracle and Market plays came in to being. The Mystery plays dealt with subjects taken
from the Bible and the Miracle plays dealt with the lives of saints. The Moralities were religious dramas in
which the characters were personified abstractions such as vice or virtue. Five senses, Seven Deadly sins and
Good and Evil were some characters. ‘Everyman’ is an anonymous play of excellence. The Interlude was
late product of Morality play. They were far less serious in tone and purpose. The first real comedy is
Nicholas Udall’s ‘Roister Doister’. The first tragedy was ‘Gorboduc’ written by Thomas Sackville and
Thomas Norton.
AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
The Age of Shakespeare is from the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 to the death of James I in 1625.
England now felt the full effect of the revival of learning and innumerable translations were carried out.
Renaissance aroused the intellect and Reformation awakened the spiritual nature. It is an age in which ‘men
lived intensely, thought intensely and wrote intensely’. Edmund Spenser is known as ‘the poet’s poet’ and
his contribution to English poetry is immense. ‘The Faery Queene’ is his master piece.
ELIZABETH ROMANTIC DRAMA

The Elizabethan dramatists opposed the classical principles-i) unity of subject and tone ii) no
dramatic action and iii) three unities of time, place and action. The romantic drama makes free use of variety
in theme and tone, often blending tragic and comic. The romantic drama is a drama of action and much
action is shown on the stage. It repudiates the three classical unities of time, place and action. E.g.
Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra takes place in three countries – Egypt, Rome and Greece.
UNIVERSITY WITS
Taking Shakespeare as the central figure, Elizabethan dramatists divided three periods - Pre-
Shakespearean drama, Shakespeare and post- Shakespearean drama. The predecessors of Shakespeare are
usually known as ‘University Wits’ as most of them had university education. They developed the drama to
the extent that Shakespeare took over from them. Shakespeare was influenced by them. The successors of
Shakespeare were called Jacobeans dramatists and they were influenced by Shakespeare.
The University Wits worked together and shared common materials. They were actors as well as
dramatists. They are John Lyly, Thomas Kyd, George Peele, Thomas Lodge, Robert Greene, Christopher
Marlowe and Thomas Nashe. Shakespeare was influenced by Marlowe and Lyly.
John Lyly- The celebrated author of Euphues and Endymion.he wrote for court performance. Lyly was
Shakespeare’s master in comedy like Love’s Labour Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Thomas Kyd- He is specialised in Revenge tragedies. The Spanish Tragedy is his masterpiece. Kyd’s
influence is seen in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
George Peele- He has given different types of drama. His best play The Old Wives’ Tale is a satire on
drama. He is favoured by Elizabethan Romantic dramatists.
Thomas Lodge- He is famous for his prose romances. His Rosalynd suggested to Shakespeare the plot for
his As You Like It.
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Robert Greene- He is known for his prose works and plays. His best play is Orlando and Furioso.
Thomas Nashe- He finished Marlowe’s unfinished Dido. His prose tale The Unfortunate Traveller played a
major role in the development of English Novel.
Christopher Marlowe- He is the greatest of the Pre-Shakespearean dramatists. He was a man of fiery
imagination. He is known for his one-man tragedies- usually called ‘Marlowesque plays’. He is known for
Blank Verse. His characters are filled with pride and arrogance and their fall is unavoidable. His plays are
 Tamburlaine the Great- Military glory
 The Jew of Malta- Power of Wealth
 Doctor Faustus- Power of Intellect
 Edward II- Political power
PROSE- INTRODUCTION
Though the genius of the Elizabethan age was drama, considerable achievement was made in the field of
prose fiction. It was a fictitious narrative. These were the sources for Elizabethan dramatists from which
they drew the plots. The important prose romances were
i. John Lyly's 'Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit'
ii. Sir Philip Sidney's 'Areadia'
iii. Lodge's 'rosalynde' (As You like it- Shakespeare)
iv. Greene's 'Pandasto' ( The Winter's Tale-Shakespeare)
v. Nash's 'Unfortunate Traveller' or 'The Life of Jack Wilton'
FRANCIS BACON
The age of Shakespeare was not entirely an age of drama. It was an age of prose as well. Francis Bacon
was the principal prose master of the Elizabethan period.
LIFE OF BACON
Bacon, the son of famous lawyer was educated in Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a lawyer and
was made Attorney General later. His last years were spent in scholarly pursuits.
CHARACTERISTICS OF BACON'S WORKS

 Francis Bacon is rightly called 'the father of the English essays'. His essays are the product of his vast
learning experiences and accurate observation of men and maters.
 His major contribution is his little collection of 'Essays' or Council Civil and Moral. The essays deal
with common topics like friendship, studies, revenge, ambition, married life and parents and
children.
 The Essays are brief, filled with aphorisms. Aphorism is a short, witty
statement that contains a common truth. For example, in Bacon's 'Of
Studies' we find “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed
and few to be chewed and digested"
 He has written 58 essays in all dealing with subjects relating to political,
moral, philosophical, social, religious and domestic fields.
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 The writing of the Essays was suggested by Montaigne, the great French thinker. The matter and
manner are Bacon's own and he uses the essay in its sense- a trial or attempt.
 Bacon defines the essay as 'dispersed meditations'. The density of thought and expression shows that
Bacon is a grave teacher and legal adviser.
 His essays are practical in character and concern themselves for the conduct of life in private and
public affairs.
 Extra ordinary insight and sagacity are their salient features. Bacon's style is marked by ornate
imagery, love of analogy and metaphor.
 Bacon employed a clear, simple, effective and flexible style which was more than enough to deal
with profound as well as ordinary thoughts.
 In his 'Novum Organum', Bacon advocates true science. True science is not a speculation but
collection of facts and observation.
 Another important work of him is 'The advancement of Learning'.
 His essays are 'infinite riches in a little room'.
 In the words of William Hazlitt, he says "his style is equally sharp and sweet, flowing and pithy,
expressive and condensed, expressing volumes in a sentence, or amplifying a single thought into
pages of rich glowing and delightful eloquence.
DRAMA
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE( 1564-1616)
LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE
William Shakespeare was born on 23rd April, 1564 at Stratford-on-Avon. He never had a university
education. He became first an actor and then a playwright. He worked hard for twenty years and was greatly
admired for his literary production including plays and poems.
SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS
Shakespeare’s works are broadly classified under two categories - non dramatic poetry and plays. His non
dramatic poetry consists of two narrative poems; Venus and Adonis' and 'The Rape of Lucrece' and a
sequence of 154 sonnets, the first 126 addressed to a man and the remaining 28 addressed to a woman. They
contain the finest lyrical poetry.
Shakespeare's dramatic work comprises 37 plays. He wrote for 24 years - 1588 to 1612.
FIRST PERIOD: 1588-1593

It is a period of early experimental work. The plays are the three parts of 'Henry VI', 'Titus Andronicus'
and the comedies, 'Love's Labour Lost', 'The Two Gentleman of Verona', 'The Comedy of Errors' and 'A
Midsummer-Night's Dream'. He also wrote the chronicle drama 'Richard III' and the youthful tragedy
'Romeo and Juliet'. These plays clearly show signs of immaturity. There is no depth of thought and the
treatment of life is superficial. There are puns, conceits and other affectations.
SECOND PERIOD: 1594-1600

This is a period of great comedies and chronicles plays. Shakespeare’s
Romantic Comedies- 'The Merchant of Venice', 'Much Ado About Nothing', 'The
Taming of the Shrew', 'The Merry Wives of Windsor', 'As You Like It', 'Twelfth
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Night' and chronicle plays- 'Richards II', 'King John', two parts of 'Henry IV', 'Henry V' belong to this
period.
His works become independent and reveals immense development in power and technique. There is
depth of thoughts and powerful characterization. Rhyme is abandoned in prose and blank verse. The blank
verse has become free and flexible.
THIRD PERIOD: 1601-1608

This is a period of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies and bitter comedies. The tragedies are 'Julius Caesar',
'Hamlet', 'Othello', 'King Lear', 'Macbeth', 'Antony and Cleopatra' and 'Coriolanus'. The bitter comedies are
Measure for Measure', 'Troilus and Cressida', 'All's well that Ends well' and 'Timon of Athens'.
His power of poetic expression, intellectual power and dramatic vision had perfection. His plays proceed
from the destructive passions of the human mind and the weakness of men from the staple of his plots.
FOURTH PERIOD: 1608-1612

This is the period of later comedies or dramatic romances, 'Cymbeline', 'The Tempest' and 'The Winter's
Tale' belong to the group. 'Pericles' and 'Henry VIII' may be added. These show the decline of Shakespeare’s
dramatic powers. They are often careless in construction and unsatisfactory in characterization.
All the plays prove a record of Shakespeare's intellectual and artistic history.
CHARACTERISTICS OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS:
 Shakespeare's plays constitute the greatest single body of work.
 The most salient feature is their astonishing variety.
 None has ever rivalled him in the range and versatility of his power.
 He is master of comedy and tragedy.
 He is not only a great dramatist but also a great poet.
 He is the most often quoted of all writers as he translates thoughts into
words in an excellent way.
 He has created characters alive with strong passions and actions.
 He was essentially a man of his time. His plays are remarkable for their
general truth to what is permanent in human nature.
 His plays were designed for the stage.
 Sometimes his psychology is crude, his style is vicious, his wit forced and his language bombastic.
BEN JONSON
Among the junior contemporaries of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson was the most important. He was
the greatest in power and volume of his genius. His aim and principles of his work were fundamentally
different from Shakespeare's. His plays fall into three groups- his court masques; his historical tragedies,
'Sejanus and Catiline' and his numerous comedies like 'The Alchemist", 'Volpone or the Fox' and
'Epicoene or the Silent Woman'.
COMEDY OF HUMOURS
This is a type of comedy produced by Ben Jonson based on the physiological theory of the four
humours. The human body was supposed to have four primary fluids-blood, phlegm, choler (or yellow bile)
and melancholy (or black bile). If the fluids were in ideal proportion in a body, the person would be perfect.
If one humour is more than the other, the character of the person would be abnormal. The four humours are:
i. Sanguine (blood) - person is enthusiastic, happy and hopeful
ii. Phlegmatic (phlegm) - person is cold and unexcited
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iii. Choleric (yellow bile) - person is angry

iv. Melancholic (black bile) - person is sad
The comedy of humours is a drama in which the characters have too much of one humour and therefore
have abnormal characteristics.
CHARACTERISTICS OF BEN JONSON'S WORK
 Ben Jonson is a realist. The world of his comedy is not the world of romance.
 He gives a picture of contemporary London life with its manners, types and affectations
 His aim is not only to depict but also to amuse. He seeks to teach and correct his audience.
 His realism is didactic realism.
 He rejects Elizabethan romantic drama and takes Latin comedy as his model.
 His characterisation is based on the idea that each man is possessed by some particular humour.
 His men and women are not complex individuals like Shakespeare's but types. Anxious father,
miserly merchant, jealous lover and bragging soldier are some of his characters.
 Intellect predominant in his comedies. They are product of learning, skill and careful effort than of
creative power.
 Though the comedies are clever and rich, they lack charm and spontaneity.
 Jonson is a great genius and may be called the real founder of the comedy of manners.
UNIT - II THE AGE OF MILTON
JOHN MILTON
MILTON AS A PURITAN
If Renaissance is the rebirth of learning, Puritanism is the rebirth of moral literature. Puritanism
aimed at its two objects- personal righteousness and civil and religious liberty. Milton, the greatest product
of this age stands for these two ideals. In him, the Reformation and Renaissance were found in the right
proportion. Milton's poetry is hard and austere, written move to instruct rather than to delight the readers.
MILTON'S LIFE
John Milton was born in London. He was born to a classical scholar and musician. He was a
supporter of the puritan cause against the king. He wrote number of pamphlets supporting the Common
Wealth. With the restoration of monarchy in 1660, Milton had to go into political obscurity. By this time
Milton had become blind and it was in darkness and sorrow that he had written his great epics.
MILTON'S EARLIER POETRY
Milton's work falls naturally into four periods:-
i. The College period, closing with the end of his Cambridge career in 1632.
ii. The Horton period, closing with his departure for the continent in 1638.
iii. The period of his Prose writing, from 1640 to 1660.
iv. The late poetic period or period of his greatest achievements.
THE COLLEGE PERIOD:
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His college poems Latin and English receive only a very little importance. The remarkable poem of
this period is the ode 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity'. It reveals his unique style and it was written
when he was just twenty-one.
THE HORTON PERIOD:

Four of his minor poems- L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus and Lycidas belong to this period.
"L'Allegro" and "Il'Penseroso" are purely artistic creations without a trace of Puritanism. Being a
puritan, he also dwells frankly upon the pleasures of rustic sports and upon the beauty of church
architecture and music. "Comus", his first didactic poem with a puritan philosophy is cast in the form of
Masque. His next poem "Lycidas" shows puritanical elements since by then Milton had become a
staunch puritan poet. It is a pastoral elegy on the death of his friend, Edward King.
MILTON'S PROSE WRITINGS:

On his return to England from the continent, he involved himself in the controversies of his time. He
concentrated in the public welfare. He spent his next twenty years in prose writings. The greatest prose work
is Areopagitica. This is a plea for freedom of thought and speech.
MILTON'S LATER POETRY:

Milton's greatness as a poet rest on the poems he had written in the last period when he was totally
blind. His great poems are "Paradise Lost", "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes".
THE PARADISE LOST

The subject of Paradise Lost accounts for his universality. It is the greatest English poem of the
highest intellectual energy and creative power. It is the greatest epic in the English Language unsurpassed
for supplementary of thought and sustained grandeur of style and diction. Paradise Lost portrays the revolt
of Satan against The God, the war in Heaven, the fall of rebel angels, the creation of the world and man, the
temptation of Eve and Adam and their expulsion from Eden. The famous quote of Satan- "Better to reign in
Hell than to serve in Heaven" is noted.
PARADISE REGAINED
Paradise Regained deals with a sublime theme of man, man's hope of getting redemption. Though there
is nothing here equal the magnificence of Paradise Lost, still there are some powerful passages in Paradise
Regained.
SAMSON AGONISTES
Samson Agonistes is the last work of Milton which is a tragedy based on the Greek model of Sophocles.
It is written in the blank verse of a looser type with occasional rhymes here and there. The story is taken
from the Old Testament which spells out Samson's betrayal to his enemies.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MILTON'S WORK
 After Shakespeare, Milton is the great English poet.
 He has a wonderful union of intellectual and creative power.
 Milton's poetry has the quality of sublimity and his poetry is called Miltonic.
 He is the greatest scholar and his poems are loaded with a lot of classical learning and allusions.
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 He lacks humour. In his work, the moral and religious influences of

Puritanism are combined with the generous culture of Renaissance.
THE METAPHYSICAL POETS - JOHN DONNE AND HIS FOLLOWERS

Caroline poets include a number of verse writers under the reign of
Charles I. Some of them were secular and some religious poets. Few Caroline
poets were Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, Richard Lovelace
and Andrew Marvell.
A new kind of poetry was beginning during the Jacobean period. The name
'metaphysical' was first applied to these poets by Dr. Johnson. According to
Johnson, the metaphysical poets were men of learning and to show their learning was their whole endeavour.
They neither copied nature nor life. Their thoughts are often new but seldom natural.
CHARACTERISTICS
 It is highly intellectualised poetry.
 It is packed with affectation and conceits. (A conceit is a forced juxtaposition of apparently
unconnected ideas)
 It has strained metaphors, far-fetched similes and the most extravagant hyperbole.
 It is marked by complexity, subtlety, ingenuity and thus they are in general violent, harsh, cold and
obscure.
JOHN DONNE
John Donne is the leading figure in the metaphysical school of poetry. He is
noted for his excellent love poetry, his religious verse and his sermons. His works
include The songs and Sonnets, The Canonization and The Extasie. His lines from
Cannoniziation-
"What merchant's ship have my sighs drowned?
who says my tears have overflowed his ground?”
OTHER FOLLOWERS
Crashaw, Herbert and Vaughan were the chief 17th century metaphysical poets. Crashaw was fired
by a religious zeal. He abandoned the Anglican faith for Roman Catholicism. One of his examples is
"Two walking baths, two weeping motions,
Portable and compendious oceans"
Here, he uses the earth and heaven for emblems of the eyes of the sorrowing Mary Magdalene.
George Herbert was a major metaphysical poet noted for his mastery of metrical form, his use of allegory
and his unwavering theme of religious devotion. His notable poems are 'The Altar' and 'Eastern Wings'.
The other interesting poet was Henry Vaughan. He was influenced by Herbert and wrote many
poems. Thomas Traherne is another 17th century metaphysical poet whose collections 'Poems' and
'Centuries of Meditations' are notable.
Thus the metaphysical poetry has much beauty and eloquence as well as profundity of thought and
spiritual feeling.
DRYDEN AND POPE

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AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700)
In the year1660, the Puritanism came to an end and Charles II was restored to the throne of England.
This great event is known as Restoration. The age of Dryden refers to the Restoration Literature. The moral
ideals of Puritanism were turned into jest. The literature was defiantly corrupt and become pedestrian.
Literature was intellectual rather than emotional. French influence was strong and poetry became the vehicle
of argument, controversy, personal and political satire.
DRYDEN AS A POET (1631-1700)

John Dryden is the greatest exponent of Restoration literature. His first poems were 'The Heroic
Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell' and 'Astrea Redux' in celebration of the happy restoration of
Charles II. He was also made a poet laureate in 1670. The writer's genius is shown in the lucidity of the
poem 'Annus Mirabilis', which portrays the war with Holland and the Fire of London.
Dryden's poetry can be grouped under three heads:- political satires, doctrinal poems and Fables.
POLITICAL SATIRES
Dryden has written three major satires, He is the most representative poet of his age since he
formulated the entire political system in his poetry. The restoration period witnessed political strife in the
form of the Whigs and the Tories. It is in Dryden's poetry that he had made a clear picture of these
controversies in decorative verse.
‘Absalom and Achitophel’ was exclaimed for its brilliant satiric portrait of contemporary figure-'The
Earl of Shaftesbury'. He used the Biblical parallelism of Absalom and Achitophel found in the Book of
Samuel II. It is a political satire to defend the King Charles II against the Earl of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury is
given the name 'Achitophel' and Duke of Buckingham 'Zimri'.
'The Medal' is a further invective against Shaftesbury. 'Macflecknoe' is an attack on his old friend
Thomas Shadwell who had replied to his 'The Medal' in a poem. He criticizes Shadwell and represents him
as deprived of any wit and good sense. He is also charged with plagiarism.
DOCTRINAL POEMS
The two great doctrinal poems are 'Religio Laici' and 'The Hind and the Panther'. They are
theological and controversial. They show Dryden's mastery in the conduct of argument in verse. Religio
Laici was written in defence of the Anglican Church. A few years later, Dryden became a Roman Catholic
and then he wrote the poem 'The Hind and the Panther'. This poem was written in defence of his new faith.
He describes the Church of Rome as "milk-white Hind" and the Church of England as the "Fearful, cunning
Panther".
THE FABLES AND ODES

The fables are fine tales of Dryden's last years. He is also an excellent story-teller in verse. The
Palamon and Arcite was based on Chaucer's Knight's Tale. He has also written two remarkable odes - To the
Memory of Mrs Anne Killegrew and Alexander's feast.
DRYDENS PROSE WORK

John Dryden is the greatest man of a little age. He is a complete representative and exponent of
restoration age. The Restoration marks the real moment of birth of our modern English prose, says Matthew
Arnold. Dryden’s prose works consist mainly of essays and prefaces dealing with poetry and drama. The age
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of restoration saw the rise of modern criticism. Dryden, the first great modern prose writer is also the father
of modern English criticism.
As a critic, Dryden criticizes on the forms and methods of the dramatic elements of heroic and epic
poetry, the relations of art and nature and qualities of the great writers of Greece and Rome.
Dryden’s best criticism is to be found in the critical piece, The Essay of Dramatic Poesy. In this
work, he discusses the respective principles and the merits of the three chief types of drama-
 The Classical drama of the Greeks and Romans,
 The Neo-classical drama of the French and
 The Romantic drama of the English.
He undertakes to justify the use of rhyme in the place of blank verse and to vindicate the honour of the
English writers from the criticism of those who prefer the French dramatists.
The essay is historically important but has slight permanent value. Dryden’s sagacity and the wisdom are
remarkable. His prose style is characterized by clearness, vigour, felicity of phrasing and a colloquial ease.
To conclude, Dryden is remembered for the three reasons:
i. He established the heroic couplet as the literary fashion for satire, didactic and descriptive poetry.
ii. He developed a clear prose style for his poetry.
iii. His contribution to the art of criticism is also highly remarkable.
DRYDEN’S DRAMATIC WORKS:

Heroic drama was popular in which love, gallantry and courage were depicted on a gigantic scale
with a little reference to life and the dialogue filled with sonorous rant and bombastic extravagance.
‘Tyrannic Love’ and the two parts of Conquest of Granada are perfect examples. Dryden reverted to blank
verse in his All for Love which is based on Antony and Cleopatra.
AGE OF POPE (1700- 1745)
The Age of Pope is called the Classical Age and sometimes the Augustan Age of English Literature.
It is called the Classical Age because Latin writers as their models. The Age of Pope was the golden age of
English Literature. During the age of pope, manners were coarse, politics was corrupt and the general tone
of the society was brutal. Religion was considered to be a necessary thing for the well being of the society. It
was a literature of intelligence, wit and fancy. Spontaneity and simplicity were scarified to elegance and
correctness.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL OF POETRY
i. Classical poetry was mainly the product of the intelligence playing upon the surface of the life. It
was deficient in emotion and imagination. It was didactic and satiric. It was poetry of argument,
criticism of politics and personalities.
ii. It was almost a town poetry made out of the interests of society in the great centres of culture.
The humbler aspects of the life were neglected. It showered no real love of nature, landscape or
country, things and people.
iii. In the age of pope, there was a distrust of emotion. The classical poetry was opposed to all that is
romantic. There were even unsympathetic towards Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare.
iv. The classical poets paid extreme devotion to form and superficial polish. They established a
highly artificial and conventional style. Simplicity and naturalness disappeared.
‘God rest his soul’ is beautifully translated into “Eternal blessings on his shade attend”.
v. Classic poetry adhered to the closed couplet as the only possible form for serious work in verse.
It paid greater attention to the didactic side of literature. To them, poetry should first instruct the
readers rather than please them.
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POPE’S LIFE AND WORKS

Alexander Pope is considered as a greatest poet of the classical period. Prof. Eton calls him as a
prince of classicism. He was an invalid of small stature and delicate constitution whose bad nerves and cruel
headache made his life, in his own phrase “are long disease”. In spite of his manifold handicaps, this small
ugly man left a permanent mark on the literature of his age. He was highly intellectual, extremely ambitious
and capable of tremendous hard work. He was considered as a model poet and the first rank of men of
letters.
Popes poetic career falls into three periods:
 Early works (the poems composed before 1715)
His early work consists of Four Pastorals - short poems on spring, summer, autumn and winter. The Messiah
is a poetic rendering of the messianic passage in Isaiah, imitating Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue. Windsor Forest is
inspired by Denham’s Coopers Hill.
The main quality of Pope’s poetry is its correctness. It was at the age of 21, he published his “Essay
on Criticism” which has excellent epigrammatic ideas and quotable verse. In this essay, Pope insists on
following the rules of classical style and heroic couplet.
The Rape of the Lock is a heroic comical poem written at the request of his friend John Caryl. This
mock epic is Pope’s masterpiece. It celebrates the theme of stealth by Lord Peter of a lock of hair from the
head of Miss Arabella Fermor. Though the poem is written in jest and deals with a very insignificant event, it
is given in the form of an epic investing this frivolous event with mock seriousness and dignity.
 Later poetry and translations
Pope had perfected the Heroic Couplet and had made use of this technical skill in translating Homer’s
Iliad and Odyssey. He translated The Iliad alone but The Odyssey was completed by two Cambridge
scholars. In his translation, we see more of Pope than of Homer.
 Satire and didactic poetry
During the last years of his life, Pope confined himself to satiric works. His principal satires are Satires
and Epistles of Horace Imitated and the Dunciad. In Dunciad, Pope attacked all his enemies for his literary
incompetence. It is full of cruel and insulting couplets on his enemies.
“Yes, I can bear that envy, hate and spite
And cold contempt attend on all I write”
“The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” is another great satire where Pope wrecks his anger and vengeance on the
hack writers of his time. His Essay on Man is the most quoted of all his work. Like Milton, he wants to
vindicate the ways of God to men, but it is not a good poetry.
Though Pope is called the embodiment of wit, he is not one of the great poets. He has neither
imaginative power nor depth of feeling. After Shakespeare, he is most
frequently quoted of English poets. He was a moralist to some extent for he
believed that poetry was a great instrument of moral improvement. Some of his
familiar lines are
 A little learning is a dangerous thing.
 To err is human, to forgive is God.
 And fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
UNIT III- RESTORATION AGE

PROSE
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ADDISON AND STEELE
Addison and Steele are always associated with periodical essays. Both studied in the same school,
Charterhouse and then at Oxford. In later life, Addison gained a high reputation for classical scholarship.
Addison was an urbane and polished gentleman and a little remote and austere. Steele was a thorough
Bohemian, easy going, thriftless but full of generosity and sympathy and with an honest love of what is pure
and good.
THE TATLER AND THE SPECTATOR
A new kind of reading public emerged in the 18 th century. There was mushroom growth of journals.
Addison and Steele published a number of periodicals in The Tatler and The Spectator. Their main was to
bring philosophy out of closets, libraries, schools and colleges, clubs and assemblies, tea tables and
coffeehouses. Their essays serve distinctly a social and moral purpose and wanted to enliven morality.
The Tatler was published by Steele in 1709. It was a periodical published in March and September.
Though Addison has written a few articles for Tatler, the large portion was from the more originate genius,
Steele. The Tatler was didactic and proved to be moral monitor of the times. Through this Steele desired to
bring about a reformation in the manners virtues, gentlemanly courtesy, chivalry and good taste.
The Spectator was the next periodical started by Addison and Steele together. In the Spectator,
Addison was the dominating writer. He contributed 274 essays out of 635 totally.
The Spectator had two principle aims:-
i. Its first object was to present the essays in a true and faithful picture of the 18th century.
ii. It was to bring about a moral and social reform in the condition of the time.
Sir Roger de Coverley essays have been really interesting. The imaginary characters like Sir Andrew
Freeport, Sir William Honeycomb were painted admirably and thus the figures of the Spectator club were
faithful reflection of their times.
CHARACTERISTICS
 Their method was significant as they set themselves to break down loose living, Puritan ideals and
bigotry.
 They did not condemn the society but wrote with good humour and satire.
 There essays were like novels claiming decency and sound sense.
 A better appreciation of Milton and his work happened when Addison published his series of 18
papers on paradise Lost.
 They exposed the vanities and vices of their time with gentle humour and thereby refine the taste of
the public.
 The essays taught the 18th century how it should behave in public places and churches, what books it
should like and how it should treat its lovers, husbands, wives, parents and friends.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
INTORDUCTION- AGE OF JOHNSON

The age of Johnson witnessed a reaction against the
tendencies of the age of Pope. Tired of their artificiality,
they thirsted for something natural and spontaneous in
thought and expression. The age saw the rapid growth of
dramatic ideals. The poets began to turn towards Nature.
LIFE OF Dr. JOHNSON
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Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) was the greatest English man of letters between Pope and
Wordsworth. He had good memory, wider knowledge, common sense and deep insight into human nature.
He was a delightful companion. He married a widow, twenty years older than himself. He went to London to
try his fortune. He became very popular with the publication of his Dictionary.
JOHNSON’S POETRY
His first poem is London and the other one is The Vanity of Human Wishes. Both are typical
Augustan poems.
HIS DRAMA
He has written a tragedy - Irene based on the classical model.
HIS PROSE
Johnson’s merit lies in his powerful prose. His first truly great work is his Dictionary of English
Language. He undertook to define every word and illustrate the definitions with quotations from the whole
range of English literature. He is remembered for his systematic work he has done as a Lexicographer.
His Rasselas was a Philosophical Novel In 1759. In 1765, he wrote “An edition of Shakespeare”
where he meant to correct what is corrupt. His masterpiece of critical work is “Lives of the most Eminent
English Poets with critical observations on their work”. It was a series of introductions to the work of 52
poets from Cowley to his contemporaries.
Johnson started a periodical “the Rambler”, an imitation of The Spectator. This was followed by two
other series The Adventure and The Idler.
BIOGRAPHY OF DR. JOHNSON
Johnson is well remembered by the biography of James Boswell’s “Life of
Johnson”. This biography is one of the greatest books in literature, where
Boswell beautifully exhibits an account of Johnson as a man and a writer, his wit,
his wisdom, his dexterity, his tenderness of heart and his prodigious memory.
CHARACTERISTICS
 Johnson is a great critic of literature. He is always penetrating and
stimulating in spite of strong prejudices.
 He failed to appreciate the values of Milton’s religion and politics.
 As a moralist, he is characterised by remarkable sanity and massive
commonsense.
 He is a pessimist. He declared: Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to
enjoyment.
 The tone of his philosophy is sad but the message remains hopeful and courageous.
 Macaulay observes about Johnson: “The memory of other authors is kept alive by their works, but
memory of Johnson keeps many of his works alive”.
 As a prose writer, he did not follow the Augustan masters but gave a style which is highly latinised in
vocabulary. Macaulay calls it Johnsonese as his way of writing is pompous and heavy but never
obscure.
FICTION
EVOLUTION OF PROSE FICTION IN THE 18TH CENTURY

The prose fiction which is also called novel is derived from the Latin word Novella which means a
new story. A novel is a fictional story. Realism is its main characteristics and it deals with contemporary
social life.
i. During the Elizabethan age, prose romances were written by Sidney, Lodge, Greene and Lyly.
ii. The puritan period produced Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress.
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iii. Defoe’s fictional autobiographies Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders came then.
iv. Swifts Gulliver’s Travel has an interesting story.
v. Addison and Steele have created fine characters in their essays.
In all these works, one may find the elements of realism but they are novels. The first novel is published by
Samuel Richardson, the father of English novel. Pamela is the first English novel.
REASONS FOR THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

i. The educated middle class people demanded a new type of literature, which would tell about
them their thoughts, motives and struggles.
ii. The rise of the novel is the result of democratic movement. The decline of drama initiated the
novel writing.
iii. Realism dominated both the life and literature of the 18th century.
iv. Novel was a mixture of romance, adventure, realism, morality and thus it satisfied the hunger of
miscellaneous reading public.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Jonathan Swift is generally considered to be one of the most powerful and original geniuses of the
age. He is remembered as a master of simple, direct, colloquial style in which he had few rivals and no
superiors. His special field is satire and his favourite instrument is irony.
HIS WORKS
The most popular of Swift’s satires are The Battle of Books, A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver’s Travel.
They rank among the finest prose satires in English. The Battle of Books concerns the merits of the ancient
and modern literature. A Tale of a Tub is an allegorical story designed to champion the protestant church
against the pretensions of the Catholic Church, extravagance of the dissenters and to expose the corruptions
of the modern Christianity.
Gulliver’s Travel is one of the well-read books in literature. It is one of the bitterest satires on
mankind ever penned. The book is divided into four parts explaining the four voyages of Gulliver.
i. In the first voyage of Lilliput, Gulliver meets tiny dwarfs. These dwarfs represent the infinite
littleness and absurd pretension of politicians.
ii. In the second voyage to Brobdingnag, Gulliver becomes a pigmy and appears before the giants.
Swifts contempt is more marked here.
iii. In the third voyage to Laputa, Swift attacks the philosophers and inventors who waste their time
and energy in the pursuit of visionary and fantastic things.
iv. In the final voyage to the land of Houyhnhnms and Yahoos, Swift degrades man to the level of an
animal.
CHARACTERISTICS
 Swift’s satire is so strong that his moral are clouded with
bitterness and venom.
 He saw that the world was inhabited by monsters of errors end
follies.
 His life was a continuous misery. Unfulfilled ambition,
neglected writ, physical ill health all contributed towards the
making of Swift as the prince of satirist.
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 The narrative quality in his works, his sense of humour and his artistic quality have earned him a
permanent place in literature.
 Swift used the element of bitter satire to lash the world which had failed to reward him. His age
was an age of shallow optimism but he was a profound pessimist.
HENRY FIELDING
Fielding is by far the greatest of the 18th century novelists. He was a vigorous man; his knowledge of
life was wide. Richardson’s judgement of Fielding that his writings were “wretchedly low and dirty” brings
out the fundamental contrast between the two.
Fielding had his literary apprenticeship in drama. This taught him a lot regarding structure and
exposition of character. He came to novel writing because he did not share the general enthusiasm about
Pamela. He laughed at Pamela by turning it into burlesque and thus “The Adventure of Joseph Andrews”
was originated. Fielding began by reversing the initial situation in Pamela. Richardson’s heroine had been
tempted by her master; here the hero is tempted by his mistress. The book is a comic epic in prose.
The humour that Fielding revealed in Joseph Andrews became vehement and ironic in Jonathan Wild. It
was The History of Tom Jones that really made him famous. It has been considered the greatest novel of
18th century noted for its well-proportioned plot, its broad humanity and the extraordinary vividness of
characterization.
i. His hero is foundling, who is brought up in the west of England by a squire named Allworthy.
ii. He soon falls out with the squire and runs away to London. He is followed by the attractive Sophia.
iii. Things work out in such a way that the hero and his love reunited.
iv. Country men and manners come in the first part. The metropolitan men and
manners come in the second part. The whole look gives us the richest picture of
English life about the middle of the 18th century.
Fielding’s third greatest novel is Amelia. As the title indicates the interest centres around
the character of a woman, Amelia. It is a story of the courage and patience of a devoted
wife and of the ill-doings of her weak-willed husband.
CHARACTERISTICS
 Fielding was much concerned about the structural principles of prose fiction.
 To him, the novel was a form of art as the epic or drama.
 As a social satirist and a teacher, he depicts vice and exposes some of the evils which infect the
country.
 He is greater artist than Richardson.
 He is very good in the skilful presentation of the picaresque tradition.
 He exhibits quick sense of humour and intelligence and his characters are wholesome than
Richardson.
DRAMA--INTRODUCTION
The Restoration period starts from 1660, the year when Charles II returned from exile in France and
ascended the throne of England. He was hailed and welcomed like a hero. He brought with him all the
manners, fashions and tastes of the French court culture and people in general.
The advent of French fashions and tastes through Charles II was responsible for the kind of drama
produced in the restoration period. Love for luxury, fashion, voluptuousness became the order of the day
which reflected openly in the literature of period.
FEATURES
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 Restoration drama was different from the Elizabethan drama, which is

confined to the courtly class only.
 It is also called Comedy of Manners as it ridicules the follies and vices
of the concerned characters.
 The idea of a “gentleman” and a “well bred” refined man gained
prominence over other fundamental human virtues.
 The Comedy of Manners turned out to be obscene and even highly
immoral.
 It is replete with rakes, lady killers, womanisers called gentleman and
often having the title “Sir”.
 There is excessive stress on manners, fashions, ways of speech and expression, witty dialogues and
conversation than on depth of thought or profundity of feeling and emotion.
 They generally depict sensual life of young fashionable men and women who are otherwise idle but
have to pass their time in mutual rumour mongering, mudslinging and intriguing.
 The common themes are failure in marriage, problem of widowhood, love affairs between young
fashionable men and often widows.
 The scenes are found in clubs, gambling houses, coffee and chocolate houses, drawing rooms, the
street and gardens of London.
 There is excessive stress on promiscuous love in a permissive society than on firm marital bound in
these comedies.
 Another reason for the low standard of the drama was the writers aim to make easy and quick money
rather than truly refine manners and morals of people.
WILLIAM CONGREVE
William Congreve was the brilliant writer of the Comedy of Restoration. After public stage performances
had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime; the re-opening of theatres in 1660 signalled a
renaissance of English Drama. The licentiousness of the age affected the theatre and society. Many of the
Restoration plays were vulgar and far below the literary standards of Shakespeare and Marlow. Restoration
theatres depended upon the patronage of the royal court and theatre the plays reflected the degenerate taste
of Charles’s Court.
William Congreve was educated in Trinity College in Dublin, where he met Jonathan Swift, who
were friends throughout his life. He was pulled towards literature and he became a disciple of John Dryden.
HIS WORKS
Congreve has written Love for Love and The Way of the World and one tragedy The Mourning
Bride. The first two comedies carry the interest of dialogue, of the verbal fence
between characters to its extreme development. No more brilliant comic dialogue
exists than that of Congreve in The Way of the World.
Congreve was strongly opposed by a critic, Jeremy Collier. Later, Congreve
shifted to the political career as a Whig. His most famous phrase from The
Mourning Bride is “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast”.
R.B.SHERIDAN
Richard Brinsley Sheridan was an Irish born playwright and poet. He was
known for his plays such as “The Rivals”, “The School for Scandal” and “The
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Critic”. Opposed to Goldsmiths idealism, Sheridan’s dramas are written in the mood of satirical observation
of life which the 18th century novel expressed. He was born at Dublin and after a romantic run away
marriage, he settled in London.
ANALYSIS OF HIS WORKS

In “The Rivals” we have the immortal Mrs. Malaprop: her niece Lydia Languish, the romantic
heroine. The plot is fertile in its amusing situation and clever dialogues. The plot centres on the two young
lovers, Lydia and Jack. To court Lydia, Jack pretends to be Ensign Beverley, the poor officer. Sheridan’s
satirical masterpiece surrounds us with sympathy of exuberant laughter, youth and romance, played out with
wit and wisdom in 18th century Bath.
“The Rivals” is Sheridan’s first play and a classic example of comedy of manners. The play reflects
the life, ideals and manners of the upper class society. The characters strive to maintain a mask of social
etiquette. In Sheridan’s work, it is also recognition of the importance of women’s education and the need to
acknowledge the intelligence and ambition of young over the mere pretentiousness and traditions of the
young over the established generation.
“The School for Scandal” open in the 18 th century world of fashion. This is an amusing mock world,
where the principles, moral and social, on which the human life is conducted. Sheridan’s society is light,
trifling, and frivolous and it is not fundamentally and flagrantly immoral. The School for Scandal is widely
admired and it is the most original faultless comedy.
UNIT IV- ROMANTIC AND VICTORIAN AGE
ROMANTIC POETS
CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC POETRY
 The growth of love of nature and of a feeling for the picturesque is one of the marked characteristics
in the history of English poetry between Pope and Wordsworth. The return to nature affected the later
18th century poetry in subject, tone and style.
 During the age of Johnson, there was the general revolt against the hard temper, the dry
intellectuality, the hatred of fantastic, the visionary and the mystical which were the characteristics of
the Augustan school. This revolt is called the Romantic Movement or Romantic Revival.
 The publication of “The Lyrical Ballads” by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798 set a new taste in
literature and art. This is called the romanticism or liberalism in literature.
 A particular mood and temper-passion, sensibility, aspiration and melancholy are widely recognised
as component elements. It is the renaissance of wonder and mystery.
 In the poetry of Romantic revolt, the interest was transferred from town to the country life and to the
natural beauty and liveliness of nature. A feeling of humanitarianism coloured the poetry of
Wordsworth, Shelley and Byron.
 The Romantic Movement was the expression of individual genius rather than of established values.
Reason and intellect were subdued and their place was taken by imagination, emotion and passion.
Spontaneity and simplicity predominate in fine number of lyrics.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
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Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) is one of the oldest romantic poets born in 1770 at Cocker mouth. He
spent much of his boyhood among the shepherds of his native country. This influence was profound and
lasting. After his education in Cambridge, he visited France twice. He was a herald of Romanticism who
devoted himself to poetry.
His friendship with Coleridge stimulated his genius and together they brought out “The Lyrical
Ballads”. He married Mary Hutchinson and with his sister Dorothy, all three settled in the Lake District. He
was made the Poet Laureate after Robert Southey.
His poems marked a clear departure from the conventional ones. He dealt with ordinary men and
women and common things. “Solitary Reaper”, “The Daffodils”, “Michael”, “Tintern Abbey” are some of
his well-known poems. “The Prelude” is a record of the growth of Wordsworth’s mind and soul.
WORDSWORTHS THEORY OF POETRY

The lyrical Ballads is an epoch-making book. It is universally admitted that a new chapter in the history of
English poetry opens with its publication. It marks the full development of both romanticism and naturalism.
The collaboration of Wordsworth and Coleridge include two different kinds of poetry. Coleridge was to
choose subjects supernatural and make it appear natural but Wordsworth chose subjects from natural
ordinary life to make it appear extraordinary.
Romanticism was represented by Coleridge’s “The Ancient Mariner”, naturalism by Wordsworth “The
Thorn” and “the Idiot Boy”. In this preface to second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth explained
the aims and objectives of his poetry.
i. Wordsworth’s choice of subject is humble and rustic life. E.g.,
Michael.
ii. He employs a simple and natural style of actual life in the place of
the pompous language of the 18th century.
iii. He specially guards himself against the accusation of absolute
realism by emphasising the use of imagination.
CHARACTERISTICS
 According to Wordsworth, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflowing of powerful emotion recollected
in tranquillity”.
 He admired nature for its in-depth and inner meaning. He spiritualises nature and refers to nature as
the greatest of all teachers.
 His love of nature was boundless and he considered nature as the embodiment of divine spirit.
 The greatest contribution to the poetry of nature is his unqualified Pantheism. He believes that God
shines through all the objects of nature shining of the stars and flowering of the fields.
 He penetrates into the realities and simplicities of human life and hence he was called “a poet of
man”.
 He becomes a moralist by showing that happiness is not the result of chance or circumstances but
won by work, sincerity, service, duty, patience and sacrifice.
 He had no humour and passion and was deficient in dramatic power. Sometimes, his poetry seems to
be the dullest and most prosaic kind.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Coleridge (1772 - 1834) is one of the oldest romantic poets, whose poetry represented romanticism
in its purest form. He was a unique poet and he collaborated with Wordsworth in the publication of “The
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Lyrical Ballads”. Even as a small boy, he was interested in poetry. He got the friendship of Southey and
Wordsworth and settled down in the Lake District.
COLERIDGE AS A POETS POET

 He is the high priest of Romanticism.
 In the pictorial power, felicity of phrasing and word music he is one of those great poets who stands
almost alone.
 He is a master of cadence and in this sense he is called a poets poet.
COLERIDGE’S SUPERNATURALISM
Coleridge revived the supernaturalism as a literary force. He has been a master of poetry and his
delicate workmanship is evident in his poems like “The Ancient Mariner”, “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan”.
These poems marked the triumph of romanticism as much as Wordsworth’s poems marked the triumph of
spiritualism.
“The Ancient Mariner” is the story of a sailor who meets with number of strange and unnatural
experiences on a voyage. It is the greatest single and complete achievement of Coleridge as a poet. It is the
most sustained piece of imagination and has almost every merit of
supernaturalism in it.
“Christabel” may be regarded as the most complete representative of the

English Romantic Poetry. “Kubla khan” is a fragment, which recaptures a series
of visions, which the poet saw in a dream. The dreamlike quality of the poem is
its great virtue.
Coleridge’s personal poems like “Ode to Dejection” and “work without

hope” have a pathetic interest. Only a poet with a mind like Coleridge could
capture the dream images in all the strangeness. In his well-known work of
criticism, “Biographia Literaria”, he exercised a profound influence in the
established of romantic principle in literature. “Ode to Dejection” is a lamentation song of infinite pathos for
the loss of his imagination. This poem is a death-kneel and he sympathises with his gloomier self.
Coleridge was a man of gigantic genius, divinely gifted to write poetry of remarkable beauty. His dreams
were great but were never realised. He dreamt of great books but were never written. All his work is
fragmentary. Though his poetry is very small in amount, it is of rare excellence.
YOUNGER ROMANTIC POETS

The Romantic Poets generally fall into two groups - the older romantics and the younger romantics.
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Scott are older poets and Shelley, Keats and Byron are younger poets. Though
the younger poets lived in the same atmosphere, their poetry differs in quality and temper.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

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Shelley (1792- 1822) was a revolutionary idealist, a prophet of hope, faith and a dreamer of
unrealizable dreams. He represents all the wild fancy, revolutionary zeal and idealism. Shelley, the son of a
Tory squire, was born in 1792. He was sent to Eton School where he was nicknamed mad Shelley. Later, he
was sent to Oxford from where he was expelled for publishing a pamphlet “The Necessity of Atheism”. He
left England for Italy and was drowned in the Bay of Spezzia.
HIS WORKS
Two of Shelley’s poems stand outside any general classification. One is “Adonais”, a splendid elegy
on the death of Keats. The other poem, “The Cenci” is a romantic drama which has heights of tragic
intensity. All other poems can be divided into two divisions.
 Personal poems -The Skylark, The Cloud, Ode to the West wind, A Lament.
 Impersonal poems -The Revolt of Islam, Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound.
PERSONAL POEMS
Shelley’s genius was essentially lyrical, his moods, impressions, thoughts and emotions embodied
themselves in verse. He is the greatest lyric poet whose lyrics are of exquisite beauty and grandeur. Ecstasy
of feeling, the lightness and grace, the felicity of phrase and verbal magic of his poems “The Skylark, The
Cloud, and Ode to the West wind” make him unforgotten.
“Ode to Skylark” is one of the marvels of English romantic poetry. The
theme of the lyric is the contrast human life and the life of Skylark. The beauty
of nature is brought out admirably in the lines which describes the hectic climb
of the Skylark at dawn
“Higher still and higher, from the earth thou springest” are haunting words of
melody.
“Ode to the West wind” describes the mighty force of the west wind
which destroys and preserves. He believes that his poetic mission was to spread
his good thoughts throughout the universe. Shelley sings like a prophet of a
golden age that is to come. He becomes sublimely prophetic when he says that the old world must go and a
new world must come with fresh sweet promises for suffering humanity.
“Oh wind! If winter comes can spring be far behind?”
The theme of the ode is the belief of a new day with fresh hopes and promises for mankind.
IMPERSONAL POEMS
Shelley was a dreamer of dreams. He wished to be an inspirer and guide of men. He had a passion
for reforming the world. Queen Mab, his violent and aggressive poem proclaims an individualistic
philosophy. He condemns all institutions: kings and government, church, property and marriage.
“The Revolt of Islam” is a long narrative in Spenserian stanza. It is charged with the hope of young
poets for the future generation of the world. As a story it is confused and unintelligible. It helps to
understand the fundamental difference between Shelley and Byron as interpreters of the revolution. Byron’s
heroes Lara, Manfred, Child Harold, and Don Juan are self-engrossed egoists and mere rebels against
society. The fullest and finest expression of Shelley’s faith and hope is found in his lyrical drama
“Prometheus Unbound, a re-adaptation of the famous old Greek myth:. Shelley will remain the perfect
inventor of lyric harmonies with irresistible melody.
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JOHN KEATS
Keats (1795-1821) was only the last but the most perfects of the younger romantics. He is the most
short-lived of them all. He was neither a rebel nor a utopian dream and thus he is contrasted with both Byron
and Shelley. Keats did not take much notice of the social turmoil but devoted himself to the worship of
beauty and writing of poetry. He was endowed with a purely artistic nature.
Historically, Keats is important for three reasons:-
i. On the side of form and style, he is the most romantic poet, handling even his Greek themes with
the luxuriance of language.
ii. He represents the exhaustion of the impulses generated by the social upheaval. With him, poetry
breaks away from the interests of contemporary life, returns to the past and devotes itself to the
service of beauty.
iii. His influence was very strong upon the succeeding generation.
HIS WORKS
Keats’s four long poems, a few miscellaneous lyrics and his magnificent odes are proof of his
poetic excellence. Endymion, Hyperion, Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes, Isabella, La Belle Dame Sans Merci
and the odes -- Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn, On Melancholy and To Psyche are
some of his well-known poems.
In Ode to Nightingale, we find a love to a sensuous beauty and a touch
of pessimism. In Ode on a Grecian Urn, we see Keats’s love for mythology and
art. In Ode to Autumn, he brings out the beauties of the autumn season, which
is otherwise a dull and uninteresting season.
CHARACTERISTICS
 Keats is the greatest lover of beauty, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”
is Keats’s poetic creed.
 According to him, poetry should not be the vehicle of philosophy,
religious teaching or social and political theories but the incarnation of
beauty.
 He is sensuous poet. Sensuousness means enjoyment through senses. He
derived utmost pleasure from five senses - sight, hearing, smell, taste
and touch. Ode to a Nightingale is a good example for this.
 He has abundant love for past. He became familiar with Greek art, paganism and the customs and
superstitions of the middle Ages. His poems Endymion, Hyperion and the Eve of St, Agnes take us to
past times and reveal to us the beauties of the past.
 The language of Keats is remarkable for its richness of compound adjectives, imagery and other
beauties “Sylvan Historian” and “full-throated ease” are good examples.
 Keats is best remembered for his odes. He is a worshipper of beauty. He says “beauty is truth, truth,
beauty”. Keats died of consumption before he was 26 and is therefore,
in Shelley’s phrase, one of the inheritors of unfulfilled renown.
ROMANTIC NOVELISTS
SIR WALTER SCOTT
Walter Scott (1771-1832) was the son of a lawyer and was educated at
the Edinburgh University to become a lawyer and later he worked as an
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apprentice to his father but was not interested in his profession. He had a special interest for border tales,
ballads, stories and myth of the past.
He travelled widely in these border countries and collected as much literature as he could. He was
the writer of verse and then turned into prose fiction (novel) making use of his vast knowledge of history.
Scott is considered as the greatest historical novelist in English. His historical novels deal with the
bygone ages of the world which are now dead and no more.
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS NOVELS
Scott’s work in fiction represents the amalgamation of the 18 th century novel of manners and the 18th
century historical romance. The Waverly Novels, the work of 18 years of extraordinary creative activity,
consist of 27 novels and five tales. They covers 8 centuries totally and some of the are The Talisman,
Ivanhoe, The Monastery, The Abbot, Kenilworth, Old Morality, Rob Roy, The Heart of Midlothian, Waverly
and Guy Mannering.
 Waverly deals with the Jacobite rising in 1745.
 Guy Mannering, Old Morality and Rob Roy deal with the history of Scotland and also have lovable
Scottish characters.
 In Ivanhoe, Scott chooses the history of England as his subject for the first time.
 The Talisman deals with the history of England with the rising of the crusades.
 The main feature of Scott’s novel is his genius of revitalising the past.
 He was a born story teller and he could improvise history into his novels.
JANE AUSTEN
Jane Austen (1775-1818) was born in Hampshire to a clergy man of the village.
She grew up in a friendly atmosphere and never lived in London. If Sir Walter Scott
portrays the Scottish life in his novels, his contemporary, Jane Austen presents the life
of the English country society.
Even though she wrote her novels during the Romantic period, she was not
affected by the violent passion of the time. She lived a simple country life and was
content in her limited world.
She wrote a type of fiction called Domestic Novels since she had great power
and mastery over the material she was dealing with. Her novels are also called Regional Novels wherein she
describes South England.
She has written six famous novels-
i. Pride and Prejudice
ii. Sense and Sensibility
iii. Mansfield Park
iv. Emma
v. Northanger Abbey
vi. Persuasion
 Pride and Prejudice is a perfect comedy of manners.
 Emma deals with the heroine’s attempts to find husbands for her friend.
 Sense and Sensibility is a satire and ridicules the sentimentalists.
 Mansfield Park is a study of the members of the house, Mansfield Park.
 Northanger Abbey is modelled on Gothic Novels.
 Persuasion is a moving love story of Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth.
CHARACTERISTICS
i. Some very common occurrences in her novels are picnics, dances, elopement and matchmaking.
ii. With her keen power of observation, she drew a simple life of the country people of life.
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iii. She is a supreme realist. Her characters are free from mighty passion,
ambitious and tragic struggle of life.
iv. She had difficulty in creating male characters.
v. Her female characters are perfect in finish. They are ordinary people but
are convincingly alive.
vi. Her lovers are not very passionate. Her novels are simply tea-table
novels.
vii. She records accurately the manners, charms and tricks of speech of her
characters.
viii. She is neither a satirist nor a novelist. She always likes good taste, sense
and virtue.
ix. Her plots are very well constructed.
x. Her method of portrayal is based on acute observation and a quite but incisive irony.
ROMANTIC PROSE WRITERS
CHARACTERISTICS OF PROSE
The age of Wordsworth is marked by the rise of the modern review and magazine. The Edinburgh
Review, edited by Jeffrey Brougham and Sydney Smith of the Whig party came first. Seven years later, the
Quarterly Review was started by Tories. William Gifford was the first editor and was succeeded by
Lockhart. These two magazines were followed by two important magazines -- Blackwood’s Edinburgh
magazine, a Tory monthly launched by Wilson, Lockhart and Hogg. The London magazine then followed
whose popular contributors were Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey and Carlyle. Frasers was found in 1830. Most
of the prose writers of the period contributed to this new form of literature.
The magazine gave great encouragement to essay writing and hence most of the prose writers of the
period were essayists. The magazines offered a fresh field of criticism, a criticism of contemporary
literature.
CHARLES LAMB
Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was educated at Christ’s hospital in spite of living in dire poverty. He had
a lifetime friendship with Coleridge. The most interesting chapter in the literary life of Lamb began in 1820.
He started his essays under the pen name Elia. “The Essays of Elia” was published in 1823. “Last Essays of
Elia” was published in 1833.
Lamb is one of the best beloved of English authors, whose memory will retain its fragrance. He is
rightly called the “Prince of English Essayists”. He was influenced by Montaigne and Bacon. He followed
the path of Thomas Browne, whose essays were characterised by excess of personal elements.
He was a master of humour and pathos. He combined them the finest tenderness with quaintest
fancies. This is unique in literature and can be called Lambish. The substance of what he writes is almost
wholly drawn from himself, his experiences, likes, dislikes, whims and prejudices.
His humour ranges from civilized joy to uncivilized laughter. Another feature of his humour is that
there is a vein of sadness running throughout the essays Dream Children and New Years Eve. He was not a
wild sentimentalist. His essays are a device to escape from the gloom that enveloped his life. Lamb is a
visualiser of memories. On the critical side, Lambs influence was strong in the development of romanticism.
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His sympathies with the Elizabethan literature are seen in his “Tales from Shakespeare”
(collaboration with his sister, Mary Lamb). As he himself said, he wrote neither for the present, nor for the
future but for antiquity. He is definitely the “prince of personal essayists”.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Hazlitt (1778-1830) is one of the best essayists of the Romantic period and a very well-known
contemporary of Lamb. He was moody and capricious in nature. He had a tremendous enthusiasm and a
youthful capacity. Two greatest influences on the intellectual life of young Hazlitt were whose of Burke and
Coleridge. He began writing mostly on political subject and his essays are mostly critical.
He was also a great painter. He wrote mainly for magazine, lectured on literary topics and published
art and dramatic criticism. He contributed to the magazines - Morning Chronicle, Edinburgh Review and
The Examiner.
His best criticism is contained in four collections of lectures or essays-
 Characters of Shakespeare’s plays

 The English Poets
 The English Comic Writers
 The Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth
He has been called the “critic’s critic”. His insight discrimination and sureness of taste justify the title.
Hazlitt is meditative observer of human life. He has a strong passion for analysing human nature. He is a
psychologist. Another important aspect of his essay is a sense of enjoyment of life. His essays like “Going
on a journey”, “On the pleasure of painting” are interesting. He is a fine Romantic essayist. He has all the
major characteristics of Romanticism, love of beauty, art and life. His contribution to English literature is
immense.
VICTORIAN AGE
VICTORIAN POETS--AGE OF TENNYSON

i. The age of Tennyson embodies the spirit of Victorian England.
ii. The Reform Bill of 1832 had already destroyed the political supremacy of the aristocracy.
iii. Chartism kept England in a state of political unrest.
iv. Queen Victoria’s reign is an anxious and critical time in modern English history.
v. The outcome of the social consciousness was the philanthropic energy and the spirit of
humanitarianism.
vi. The progress of science kept pace with the progress of democracy.
vii. The Victorian Age was marked throughout by the prominence of the spirit of inquiry and criticism,
scepticism and religious uncertainty, spiritual struggle and unrest.
viii. Science affected literature and it tended to materialism.
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON

Tennyson is the most representative poet of the Victorian Age. He won the
Chancellor’s Medal in the university for his poem Timbuctoo. He was appointed as the
poet laureate in 1850 after the death of Wordsworth.
His poetry appealed to his contemporaries because he had successfully combined
romantic idealism and love of nature with the new temper of scientific materialism.
HIS WORKS
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Tennyson’s poems are thoroughly enjoyable. In the Princess (1847), he undertakes to grapple with
one of the major questions of the day- the education of women and the place of women in the fast changing
society.
Another work Maud, a monodrama deals with the story of a lover who passes from horror to ecstasy
and then anger and murder. It deals with the patriotic passion of the Crime War.
Tennyson wrote an elegy “In Memoriam” on the death of his closest friend Arthur Henry Hallum.
The poem contains numerous meditations of Life and Death. It was the outcome of nearly seventeen years of
thought and craftsmanship. The poem also expresses the key note of late Victorian taste and sentiments. The
following lines
“It’s better to be loved and lost
Then never to have loved at all”.
leave lasting impression in the minds of the readers. The poet expresses his grief for his dead friend and his
desire to meet him. The poem also has a sense of mystic or spiritual vision. It has great conflict of doubt and
faith.
Enoch Arden was the most popular poem of Tennyson. It deals with the seaman Enoch supposed to
be drowned who returns to find his wife happily married. The sailor Enoch goes back without making
himself known to his wife. On the death bed he says,
“When you shall see her tell her that I died
Blessing her, praying for her, loving her”.
His Idylls of the King was based on the story of King Arthur and the
round table. He has written three historical plays - Queen Mary, Harold and
Becket. His remarkable philosophical poems are The Ancient Sage, Vastness
and Akbar’s Drama. His superb lyric was crossing the bar.
Tennyson’s Ulysses is a great monologue in which Ulysses, the old
warrior asked the utmost use of short life remaining to them. The poem
advocates the philosophy of action against the life of lethargy. It ends with a
popular note “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield”.
His poem Lotus Eaters was suggested by a passage from Homer’s epic
poem Odyssey. It expresses the mood of tiredness and weariness. The poem contains plenty of facts, doubts
about religion and God.
Tennyson is noted for his vision of eternity presented in the poem “The Brook”
“Men may come and men may go
But I go on forever”
His Locksley Hall is full of the restless spirit of young England. Its sequel Locksley Hall Sixty Years After
shows the revulsion of feeling which occurred in many when the rapid development of science seemed to
threaten the foundations of religion.
In “The Ancient Sage”, the poet challenged the current materialism and asserted the eternal verities of
God and immorality.
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS POETRY

 The artistic quality of Tennyson is remarkable as his poetry is marked by a perfect control of the
sounds of English and a consummate choice and taste of words.
 The spiritual philosophy weighs in every poem. He very strongly believes in the progress of science.
He is the poetic exponent of Victorian liberalism.
 His poetry is often the vehicle for spreading democratic sympathies of Victorian England. He was
interested in common people and things.
 His poetry is a record of the intellectual and spiritual life of the time.
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 Wordsworth has seen nature only with the eyes of the poet while Tennyson sees it with the eyes of
scientist also.
 He loves the beauties of nature and also he feels its indifference and cruelty.
 His poetry expresses his faith and doubts of the period. He represents the historical, social, political,
philosophical and religious views of period.
 He is not only a poet but a voice of the people.
 Tennyson suggests the qualities of England’s greatest poets. He has the dreaminess of Spenser,
majesty of Milton, simplicity of Wordsworth, fantasy of Coleridge and Blake, the melody of Keats
and the narrative of Scott and Byron.
 He is a poetic exponent of the cautious spirit of Victorian liberalism.
 He was absolutely faithful in his rendering of even the minute detail.
 His keen sense of the cosmic struggle was one of the most disturbing elements in his thoughts.
 He represents the curious sensitiveness to the tendencies of his time.
 The sanguine temper of his early manhood, the doubts, misgivings and reactionary utterances of his
middle age and the chastened hopefulness of his last years reflected his successive moods in poetry.
ROBERT BROWNING
Browning (1812-1889), a poet of Victorian time is considered a rival to Tennyson. Primarily, he was
a poet of man and his business was “soul dissential” as he tells us in the preface to “Sordello”. He stresses
on the incidence in the development of soul”.
He was born in 1812. He began to write poetry at the age of 12. He was an ardent admirer of Shelly.
He met Elizabeth Barrett, eloped with her to France and the fifteen years of happy married life were spent in
Italy. After her death, he returned to England and he died in the year 1889.
HIS WORKS: HIS POETRY
Browning devoted his long life entirely to literature. His earliest work “Pauline” shows the
influence of Shelley. This monologue is autobiographical and it reveals Browning as an artist and thinker.
His next poem Paracelsus (1835) expresses his predominant ideal “A life without love must be a failure”
and “God is working all things beyond human comprehension”.
He published Strafford, a tragedy produced by Macredy at Coventgarden in 1837 and Sordello in
1840. Sordello is an attempt to decide the relationship between art and life. He published a collection of
dramatic and miscellaneous poems entitled Bells and Pomegranates between 1841 and 1846. Most of his
beautiful lyrics were fruits of his happy married life with Elizabeth.
While he was in Italy, he wrote Christmas Eve and Easter Day and Men and Women. Men and
Women (1855) contain most famous poems like “Fralippolipi” and “Andrea Del Sarto”. His collection of
poems entitled Dramatic Personae contains famous poems like “Rabbi Ben Ezra” and “Abt Vogler”. His
enormous dramatic-narrative poem, “The Ring and the Book” in four volumes was published in 1868-
1869. It is the story of a young wife Pomphilia murdered by her
worthless husband. The story is told by different people. His last
volume, Asolando was published on the very day that he died.
HIS LOVE POEMS

Realism is the central force of Browning’s love poetry.
Browning gives importance to the physical charm of love than the
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spiritual qualities of love. Some of his love poems are “The Last Ride Together”, “By the Fireside” and
“Porphyrias Lover”.
Porphyrias Lover is Browning’s first dramatic monologue. In the poem, a man strangles his lover-
Porphyria with her hair. Porphyria’s Lover then talks of the corpse’s blue eyes, golden hair and describes the
feeling of perfect happiness the murder gives him. It tells the vivid story of love and violence. “My Last
Duchess” is another famous dramatic monologue. It tells how the duke had murdered his duchess.
“I gave Commands
Then all smiles stopped together”
These poems have both the charm of a rare beauty and peculiar interest.
HIS OPTIMISM
Browning is well-known for his optimism. He believed in the existence of God and immorality of
the soul. According to him, man must fight against others. He believed that man’s work “Here on Earth is a
broken arc, these in heaven a perfect round”. He taught the Victorians “All is well with the world for God is
in heaven”.
HIS OBSCURITY
Browning is a difficult poet to understand. His poetry appears to be obscure and formless. There are so
many allusions and references in his poems.
HIS DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES
Dramatic monologue is a type of poem that was perfected by Browning. It has the following
characteristics,
 A single person, who is not the poet himself, utters the entire poem.
 From the discourse of the single speaker, we know of the silent listener’s presence.
 The focus in on the temperament and character of the speaker.
His dramatic monologue reveals his psychological insight, analytical ability and power of dramatic
interpretation. The poet exposes the extreme and usual morbid state of mind. His most famous dramatic
monologues are “Rabbi Ben Ezra”, “Abt Vogler”, “Fra Lippo Lippi”, “Andrea Del Sarto” and “My Last
Duchess”.
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS POETRY
 Browning was bold, rugged and altogether unconventional in matter and style.
 He was never careless in his writing.
 He was too vehement and too impatient to bestow time and effort upon the polishing of his verse.
 It is often marred by harshness and crudities of expression and by fault in taste.
 His genius was essentially dramatic. He used the art form of detached speech to reveal the innermost
secrets of one’s life.
 As a moralist and religious teacher, Browning held a very distinct place among the writers of the
Victorian Age.
 He was against scientific materialism.
 He preached God and immorality as the central truths of his philosophy of life.
 His poetry was a protest against the pessimistic mood as he had a robustly optimistic faith.
 “Hope hard in the subtle thing that’s spirit” was his message to his generation.
VICTORIAN NOVELISTS
CHARLES DICKENS
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Charles Dickens (1812-1870) occupies a unique place among the Victorian
novelists. He established himself as a popular writer. When he was 25 years old, he sprang suddenly into
fame with the “Pickwick Papers”, a supreme comic novel.
His works fall into two chronological divisions. In the first division, Dickens is seen as a follower of
the traditions of Smollett, whom he regarded as his master. Pickwick Papers established him as a comic
novelist. Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son and David Copperfield
belong to the first division.
“Oliver Twist” highlighted the problems of the poor city children who ended up in the workhouse.
He presents the pathos of innocent childhood. One of the most memorable images in the novel is where
Oliver asks the work master for more to eat.
“He rose from the table and advancing to the master,
Basin and spoon in hand said,
Sir, I want some more”.
The moral sense of Dickens triumphs at the end.
In the second period, we find Dickens’s systematic attempt to gather all the diverse threads of story
into a coherent plot. This changed structural method is seen in his novel. Bleak House, Little Dorrit, A Tale
of Two Cities, Great Expectation, Our Mutual Friend and the unfinished Edwin Drood.
DICKENS AS A SOCIAL REFORMER

Dickens was a great story teller and a great social reformer. His aim was to satirise the upper class
and to point out the follies of town life and evils that existed in the society.
Many novels of Dickens expose the evil and injustice of the institutions of the time. The
administration of the laws, the upkeep of jails, the absurdities of the private school and boarding schools
were highlighted in his novels.
i. Bleak House attacked the law delayed.
ii. Nicholas Nickleby has a message against the abuses of the charity school masters.
iii. Oliver Twist exposes the cruelties to which children were subjected.
iv. Little Dorrit attacks the inhumanity to which the poor borrower was often subjected.
v. In Great Expectations, Dickens criticises the contemporary society with its class distribution.
vi. The experiences of David Copperfield are the experience of Dickens himself through all the trials
and tribulations of his chequered life. It is a semi-autobiographical novel.
CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS NOVELS

Like Shakespeare, Dickens has also created a world of characters. His characters can be classified
into four types. There are innocent characters like Oliver, Joe, Paul and David. There are horrible characters
like Fagin or Uriah Heep. There are humorous characters like Mr. Pickwick and company. There are few
powerfully drawn characters like Sydney carton in A Tale of Two Cities.
 He was known for his overflowing irresistible humour, his unsurpassed descriptive power and the
astonishing vitality of his characterisation.
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 The range of his success was very limited. His humorous creations belong to the world of
realities. With him character was heightened into caricature.
 Dickens’s fault was the overwrought quality of his emotion.
 He was able to mingle humour and pathos. He could describe a very pathetic incident in a most
humorous manner.
 He was an optimist who thought that the world was good in spite of its defects.
 Compton Rickett says, “He took the trivialities of everyday life, the little worries, the little
pleasure, the little hardships, the little comedies, the little tragedies and irradiated them with his
glorious humour and ever flowing sympathy.
 His novels belong to the humanitarian movement of the Victorian Movement of the Victorian
Era. He was a novelist with a purpose.
 He was a man of buoyant temper. And unflagging energy. He put his unwavering optimism into
everything he wrote.
 With the growth of industrialisation several crimes were committed by people. Poor become
poorer. It is the poor society, which is treated sympathetically by Dickens.
 He was an outstanding novelist with zeal to reform the society. He educates as well as entertains
his readers.
THOMAS HARDY
From the beginning to end, the Victorians devoted themselves to a literature of purpose. During the
1890s a new group of writer began to demonstrate that “all art is useless”. They wanted to be free from
following ideas of morality and standards of conduct. These writers are generally called the Decadents.
LIFE OF HARDY
The forty years between 1887 and 1928 are called the Age of Hardy. Though Hardy was not a great
spiritual leader or intellectual director, he was admired by the juniors as a man of outstanding genius. At the
death of Tennyson in 1892, there was no dominant writer to represent the sentiments of the Victorians to the
nation. The minor writers either imitated slavishly or revolted arrogantly. Hardy was born in the century of
Dorset in 1840. With the publication of his sensational novel Desperate Remedies, he became popular as a
writer.
HARDY’S NOVELS
Hardy was a novelist and a poet. Some of his popular novels are-
 Under the Greenwood Tree
 Far from the Madding Crowd
 The Return of the Natives
 The Mayor of Casterbridge
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 The Woodlanders
 Tess of the d’Urbervilles
 Jude the Obscure
 A Pair of Blue Eyes
Under the Greenwood Tree was set in a rural area. Far from Madding Crowd was a tragicomedy set in
Wessex. The Return of the Natives was a study of man’s helplessness before the all-powerful fate. Jude the
Obscure the novel is full of ruthlessness.
HARDY’S POETRY
Owing to the animosity gained by Tess and Jude, Hardy gave up novel writing. He continued to write
poems. Much of Hardy’s verse consists of short lyrics. Wessex Poems includes collections of his poems.
Dynasts is an epic drama. It is a masterly example of Hardy’s genius in organisation and control of literary
material. Hardy holds that there is no active intelligence, no just and loving God behind human destiny.
FEATURES OF HARDY’S NOVELS
 In Hardy’s novel, we come across the picture of despair and dejection.
 He distrusted modern civilization because it only destroyed the enduring human spirit.
 He believed that the universe is controlled by a mindless cruel power that is indifferent to the misery
and sufferings of mankind.
 He considered men and women as mere puppets in the hands of an unsympathetic first cause which
is personified as “President of the immortals”.
 His characters are mostly men and women living close to the soil who represent his philosophy of
life.
 His novels revealed his awareness of the immortality of nature and nature laws.
 Hardy’s city women are cunning, sophisticated and hypocritical. Tess, Elizabeth Jane and Marty
South are noble and gentle because they have been brought up in rural surroundings. Eustoria Vye
and Lucetta have been spoiled by their contact with their artificial life of the city.
 Hardy’s knowledge of the country side stands supreme. He had an alert and sensitive observation of
nature. Many of his characters are created with the fullness, vigour and assurance of a Shakespeare
or a Dickens.
 Hardy’s novels and poems are the work of a writer painfully dissatisfied with the age in which he
lived.
 He is great story teller with extraordinary inventive power.
 His description of the village, fields, peasant roads and country side are filled with sense of realism.
 In the use of pathos, he is unsurpassed. His description of Tess, christening of her child candlelight in
the bedroom is an example of his exquisite handling of sorrow.
 Hardy is also called the Wessex Novelist as he set all his major novels in the South and Southwest of
England. He described Wessex as “a merely realistic dream country”.
 The woods, heaths, barrows, barns and byres of Wessex stood in memory of a noble antiquity
making mute protest against invading aggressive modernity.
 His novels are abound with descriptions of nature, rural life, pathos, humour, characterisation,
psychological insights, revolt against society and social injustice. Hardy is rightly called the last and
greatest of the Victorians.
PROSE IN THE AGE OF TENNYSON

The greatest figure in the general prose literature of his age was Thomas Carlyle. John Ruskin is
entitled to rank next after Carlyle. Macaulay is known for his contemporary opinion. Arnolds prose deals
with life and literature. W.H. Pater and John Henry Newman were known for their works in prose.
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JOHN RUSKIN
John Ruskin (1819-1900) is entitled to be called the second important
prose writer of the Victorian period, next to Carlyle, by the virtue of the
variety of his style, his originality, his influence on art and the beauty of his
style.
As a young boy, he enjoyed all the advantages wealth could give him.
His early training was Puritan. He studied at Oxford and he won a prize with a
poem entitled “Salsette and Elephanta” and later published his first volume of
“Modern Painters”. The main purpose of writing that book was to vindicate
the genius of Turner and to expound the general principles of landscape painting. It went onto six volumes.
In the meantime he became occupied with architecture and produced “The Seven lamps of
Architecture” and “The Stone of Venice”. “The Two Paths” is the study of the history of art which led to the
study of the social conditions. He was interested in the practical problems of his day.
From study of art, he passed on to social propaganda. He wrote “Unto this Last”, “Munera
Pulveris”, “Time and Tide by Wear and Tyne” and a series of letters to the working men of England, Fors
Clavigera. His more general ethical teaching may be found in Sesame and Lillies and The Crown of Wild
Olive.
In Unto This last Ruskin attacked all those economists who suppressed the poor by their theories
and though they did not do any harm consciously to them. Sesame and Lillies
stands as a classic 19th century statement on the natures and duties of men and
women.
FEATURES OF RUSKIN’S WORKS

i. Ruskin’s work falls into two divisions - his writing on art and his
writings on social, economic and ethical questions.
ii. His later teachings were the logical outcome of his teachings on art. His
aesthetics rested ultimately on moral foundation.
iii. According to Ruskin, true art can be produced by a nation, which is
inspired by noble national aims and lives a pure righteous and happy life.
iv. The artist must abandon the stereotyped formalism of various schools and try to reproduce what he
finds there. It was this part of philosophy that inspired the Pre-Raphaelites.
v. He laid emphasis on the need of a constant, direct first-hand of nature. He advocated Gothic art
against classic art. His strong romantic bias connected him to Scott and Carlyle.
vi. He applied the principles of Christianity directly to the practical business of life, national and
individual. His violent attack was upon the accepted political economy of the time.
vii. As a writer Ruskin is whimsical and capricious. His temper is dogmatic and his manner petulant and
aggressive.
viii. He is fantastic in his thoughts and phrase. His inconsistencies were numerous and glaring. His spirit
was pure, noble and chivalrous.
ix. Ruskin had a fine ornate prose. His style calls for the highest praise. A special feature of his style is
his marvellous power of word-painting.
x. He was disgusted with the sleeping tide of materialism and industrialism. He was undoubtedly a
front rank writer of our literature.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
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Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), who was a professor of poetry at Oxford, was also a famous prose
writer. He was the son of the famous headmaster of Rugby School, Dr. Thomas Arnold. His prose writings
were mainly the work of his middle and later years and they deal with the entire fabric of English
civilization and culture of his days.
Arnold’s prose falls into two divisions- the one deals with literature and the other with life. His
writings on literature are to be found in two volumes of Essays in Criticism, Mixed essays and Oxford
Lectures on Translating Homer.
They are marked by the same qualities of insight, acumen and delicacy of perception and fitness of
taste. His view was literature as Criticism of Life. He was mainly concerned with the moral values of the
writers. He was not a great scholar. He was neither profound nor systematic. His literary criticism is
wonderfully full, suggestive and illuminating.
In On Translating Homer, Arnold spoke of the grand style. He develops his earlier criticism on
English intellect. As a critic of life, Arnold wanted to devote his time to enlarging the mental and moral
horizon of the English public.
Culture and Anarchy, Friendship’s Garland, Literature and Dogma and God and the Bible were his
books dealing with life. In Culture and Anarchy, Arnold believed that culture directs us to a good life. He
condemned the three main classes of England. He nicknamed the aristocracy as Barbarians, the middle class
as Philistines and the lower class as Populace.
Arnold’s ideas on religion are expressed in Literature and Dogma and God and the Bible. According
to him Religion is Morality touched with emotions. Arnold’s prose has the needful qualities for a fit prose -
regularity, uniformity, precision and balance. His delicate satire and delightful humour saved him from
priggishness. In these works he undertook to reconstruct essential Christianity on a basis of pure naturalism.
The one pre-eminent virtue of his prose style is lucidity. Arnold had an extraordinary gift of
crystallising his ideas in telling memorable phrases. He occasionally irritates the readers by his mannerism
and a trick of repetition. He was one of the most stimulating writers of his time. He carried on his attack on
the materialism of modern life.
UNIT V- TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE
INTRODUCTION
i. When Thomas Hardy died in 1928, the world appeared to be recovering from the consequences of
the First World War. The recovery was slow and painful.
ii. Poverty and social unrest persisted in many places.
iii. The poetry and prose of the nineteen thirties returned therefore to the serious mood.
iv. The writings of the 1930s were much preoccupied with the condition of the whole world.
v. It was hoped some particular political doctrine will be the means to the world salvation.
vi. Politics was the art of the possible and poetry was the art of the desirable.
vii. A poet crippled his own imagination if he had to bring the current practical problems. Much
literature in the 1930s was conscience-ridden in that way.
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TWENTIETH CENTURY POETRY
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
G. M. Hopkins is one of the pioneers in modern poetry. He is a strange

poet, who became very famous 19 years after his death. Hailing from an artist’s family in London, he was
converted to Roman Catholicism. Later, he became a Catholic priest. On becoming a Jesuit priest, he
decided not to write poetry.
When a shipwreck caused the drowning of five Franciscan nuns, he composed his outstanding poem,
The Wreck of Deutschland. Being deeply religious, he was a profound scholar with an exceptionally austere,
subtle and complex mind.
He loved the beauties of nature. He turned away from the romantic style of poetry which was
practised throughout the 19th century.
ORIGINAL POET
Hopkins is an original poet. He is an innovator in the technique of poetry. He is influenced by Donne
and other metaphysical poets; he has developed a fresh and individual vocabulary.
HIS INNOVATIONS
He has introduced the sprung rhythm in his poetry. Sprung rhythm is a speech rhythm in which the
number of stresses is calculated instead of the syllables. He coined new words like instress and inscape.
Inscape means the essence, the individual quality that makes up a thing and instress is the force of energy
which sustains inscape. He also reduced the 14 lines sonnet to 10 ¼ lines and are called curtal sonnets.
RELIGIOUS POET
Hopkins’s poems are filled with the sense of the glory of God. E.g.,“Glory to God for dappled
things” in Pied beauty. His poems were recognized as the work of a spiritual explorer.
CONCLUSION
Hopkins is a genius noted for his poetic innovations. A peculiar blend of thought and emotion finds a
full expression in Hopkins’s poetry. His poetic language has paved the way for a new class of poetry of
modern techniques and innovations.
T.S.ELIOT
T. S. Eliot is the central figure the poetic revolution in the beginning of 20 th century. His influence
was G. M. Hopkins and he published his first poems “Prufrock and Other Observations” before Hopkins.
SENSE OF TRADITION
Eliot as a stern realist deals with the challenging and baffling problems of the modern age. He
brought back the past and he believes that classicism is only a training for order and discipline.
CLASSICIST
The main impulse behind his poetry is to give a new and perfect expression to truth. The French
symbolists, imagists and the metaphysical poets are his influences. His love of classical discipline, interest in
the Jacobean dramatists and Sanskrit and the oriental philosophy have given him an approach to poetic
conception.
THE WASTELAND
Page | 35
With the publication of “The Wasteland”, T.S. Eliot became famous. It made him the leading poet of
the English speaking world. The Wasteland presented a disturbing vision of the state of the contemporary
world in free verse. It has a variety of literary allusions and quotations. It has a prophetic tone but there is no
sound of Christian hope.
It was like a Jeremiah like vision of human society as Eliot saw it after the war: confused, dirty,
barren in spirit and altogether horrible. The imagery was deliberately unromantic. Imagery was drawn from
the shabby side of city life. Its purpose was to shock its readers seeing its wasteland. The Wasteland was a
symbol of spiritually dry and materially littered place.
The poem was very little understood for some years. It was disliked by those who desired romantic poetry.
It also shocked by its manner and style. His images such as a bare tree, a whitened fossil shape have their
ascetic beauty.
HIS STYLE AND PESSIMISM

He also wrote two short piece of verse - The Journey of Magi, Ash Wednesday. His plays in the form
of poetic drama are The Cocktail Party and confidential Clerk. His other plays are Murder in Cathedral and
The Family Reunion. Eliot’s development into a religious poet can be found after The Wasteland. It has been
culminated into the s equence of poems collected as Four quartets.
Eliot is obsessed with a sense of loss and views things in a negative way. Loss of vision, lost purpose, lost
glory, lost self are his themes. His work is strongly individual and creatively personal.
His diction is unique and original.
CONCLUSION
T. S. Eliot, a profound scholar and thinker is a product of literary,
anthropological and philosophical influences.
TWENTIETH CENTURY PROSE
Prose has developed well in the 20th century. The essays of his period are personal and provided a
criticism of life. The modern essay is witty and humorous and its style is simple. E. V. Lucas, A. G.
Gardiner, G. K. Chesterton, Hilarie Belloc and J. B. Priestly are some of the well-known essayists of the
period.
A.G GARDINER
Alfred George Gardiner is a British journalist and author. His pen name is Alpha of the Plough. He
was also an editor of the leading journal-The Daily News.His essays are uniformly elegant, graceful and
humorous. His uniqueness lay in his ability to teach the basic truths of life in an
easy and amusing manner. The Pillars of Society, Pebbles on the Shore, Many
Furrows and Leaves in the Wind are some of his best known writing.
He has the charm and gentleness of Lamb. His style is easy, clear, lucid,
flexible and dignified. He is one of the greatest stylists of the English language. He
brings out the importance of the most trivial things in an informal, intimate and
delightful style.
Page | 36
G.K.CHESTERTON
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the versatile genius holds a highest rank among the modern English
essayists. He wrote on philosophy, poetry, plays, biography, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary
and art criticism, fiction including fantasy and detective fiction.
Chesterton is often referred to as the prince of paradox. He was a literary and social critic, historian,
playwright, novelist, debater and mystery writer. His well-known essays are Heretics, All Things Considered
and Tremendous Trifles. His writing displayed wit and sense of humour. He employed paradox, while
making serious comments on the world, government, politics, economics, philosophy and theology.
Chesterton’s style and thinking were of his own and his conclusions were often opposed to those of Wilde
and Shaw. His biography of Charles Dickens was largely responsible for creating a popular reconsideration
of Dickens by scholars.
TWENTIETH CENTURY DRAMA
MODERN DRAMA
The renaissance of drama that began towards the end of the 19 th century
reached its peak during the early period of the 20 th century. In the 20th century,
the prose drama that dealt with contemporary social problems was developed
by George Bernard Shaw. Another important development in the 20 th century drama is the revival of poetic
drama.
DECADENTS
In the 1890s, the literary men insisted the fact that literature is only for a sensations and it must be
separated from moral control. These writers are called decadents.
MODERN DRAMA
There was a revival of drama towards the middle of the 19 th century. There were plays with the idea
of serious theme. The dramatists introduced naturalism into the English drama. Shaw dealt with the social,
domestic and personal problems in his plays.
English drama of the 20th century can be divided into realistic prose drama and poetic drama. The
experimental drama also influenced the English drama. Expressionist drama was
concerned with man and not with the society. The cinema and television have
superseded the theatre and hence many writers started writing for the small screen
rather than for the stage.
OSCAR WILDE
Oscar Wilde is a brilliant poet, essayist, novelist and dramatist of the last
twenty years of the 19th century.
Page | 37
AESTHETIC MOVEMENT
In the last decade of the 19 th century, a group of writers and artists felt that art is for art’s sake and
that should be diverted from moral control. They believed that art is only for the sake of enjoyment and
sensation.
THE PLAYS OF WILDE
Supporting art for art’s sake, Wilde has produced brilliant comedies. They are in the tradition of
Comedy of Manners. His plays are
 Lady Windermere’s Fan
 A Woman of No Importance
 An Ideal Husband
 The Important of Being Earnest
Wilde has combined the sense of comedy and a brilliant wit.
OTHER WORKS
Wilde’s collection of short stories (The Happy Prince and Others) is mostly fairy tales. His writings
include De Profundis and The ballad of Reading Gaol. Intentions is a series of dialogues on art and literature
written in a polished prose style.
CONCLUSION
Wilde was good in creating humorous situations. He is known for his witty and paradoxical
statements.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Shaw is next to Shakespeare in drama of English literature. He is the creator of the drama of ideas
and drama of social criticism. He used the stage to perform the society.
HIS PLAYS
The early plays of Shaw were not successful. His best known plays are Widowers houses, man and
Superman, Major Barbara, Back to Methuselah, Candida, You Never Can Tell, Saint Joan, Heartbreak
House, The Apple cart, Pygmalion and Arms and the Man.
THE DRAMA OF IDEAS
Shaw started writing plays dealing with social and political problems. Such plays are called as drama
of ideas or problem plays. He developed from a propagandist to a playwright dealing with real problems like
housing conditions, religion, finance and prostitution.
CHARACTERISTICS
 Shaw’s characters acts as the mouthpiece of his own political and social thoughts.
 All his characters are equally intelligent and they are full of thoughts and high ideas.
 Shaw presents a combination of lively wit and strong commonsense in his plays.
 His plays are full of witty dialogues.
 Shaw used the drama to express his views of the abuses and false of the social order.
 The theme of all his plays is Life Force.
 His plays still survive because of their theatrical qualities.
TWENTIETH CENTURY FICTION

 In the 19th century, novel surpassed poetry and drama.
 The prominent feature of the modern novel is its immense variety and
complexity.
 The realism of the modern novel is seen in its frank treatment of love,
sex and marriage.
Page | 38
 The modern novelist probes deeply into the human consciousness and
moves freely backward and forward in time.
 The modern novel is concerned with the individual and it is mostly
psychological in approach.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Virginia Woolf, who belongs to the school of stream of
consciousness novelists, is one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The stream of consciousness techniques is perfected in Woolf’s novels
though it is founded by James Joyce. She has given form and order to the novels of subjectivity. She
analyses the mental states of characters.
INTERIOR MONOLOGUE
Woolf rejected the realistic novels as she considered the realities of life as outward and material. She
concentrates entirely on the rendering the spiritual and inner reality. She portrays the hidden motives and
impulses of men and women. The souls and minds of the characters are presented.
PLOT AND THEME
The plot of her novels is thin. Past, present and future are all mingled together. Impressions of the
mind are recorded well. She thinks and writes as a woman. She has a woman’s dislike of the world of
societies. She represents the feminisation of the English Novel.
HER STYLE
Woolf is gifted prose writer. Her style is scholarly, poetic, artistic and
richly figurative and symbolic. Being a significant member of the Bloomsbury
Group, she is deeply influenced by literature, aesthetics, criticism and
feminism.
HER WORKS
 To the Lighthouse  Mrs.

 Orlando: A Biography Dalloway
 The Voyage Out  A Room of One’s Own
 The Waves  The Common Reader (critical essay)
 The Years
CONCLUSION
Her range is limited to the upper middle class life and she could portray only certain types of
characters. Within her limitations, there is perfection. She is a great writer but not a great novelist.
D. H. LAWRENCE
David Herbert Lawrence is one of the recognized geniuses in the history of modern English novel.
He is both excessively praised and excessively abused.
A GREAT ARTIST
His works are mostly autobiographical and he finds out solutions to his own inner problems. His
works are filled with his passions and convictions and his stories are sometimes spoiled by excessive
emotions.
Page | 39
CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and
industrialisation. He attacks the upper classes in a bullying and jeering tone.
PSYCHOANALYTICAL NOTE
Lawrence’s early poems reflect the influence of Ezra Pound. He finds symbolic meanings for
ordinary words. He expresses the unconscious and tries to find a new synthesis between mind and matter,
flesh and spirit and male and female.
PLOT AND CHARACTER
His novels have neither plot nor character in the conventional style. He has no sense of humour. He
aims at exposing the feelings of the soul or the psyche.
HIS STYLE
Lawrence’s style is poetical and symbolical and his symbols are suggestive.
HIS WORKS
NOVELS: The White Peacock, Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Women in Love.
SHORT STORIES: odour of Chrysanthemums, The Rocking Horse Winner.
POEM: Snake.
CONCLUSION
D. H. Lawrence, the greatest imaginative novelist is a visionary thinker and significant representative of
modernism in English literature.
Page | 40

History of English Literature: Unit-I Chaucer and Elizabethan Age

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U.ELAMPARITHI., M.A.,M.Phil.

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

Unit-I CHAUCER AND ELIZABETHAN AGE

 Poetry: Chaucer, Wyatt and Surrey

Unit II THE AGE OF MILTON

Unit III THE RESTORATION AGE

 Prose-Addison, Steele, Dr. Johnson

Unit IV THE ROMANTIC AGE AND THE VICTORIAN AGE

 Romantic Poets- Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley & Keats

Unit-V TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE

 Twentieth Century Poetry- G.M.Hopkins, T.S. Eliot

UNIT I-CHAUCER AND ELIZABETHAN AGE

THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1340-1400) - INTRODUCTION

THE CANTERBURY TALES

CHARACTERISTICS OF CHAUCER’S POETRY

POETRY AND PROSE OF 15TH CENTURY

The important works in poetry are

RENAISSANCE AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

THOMAS WYATT AND SURREY

ELIZABETH ROMANTIC DRAMA

CHARACTERISTICS OF BACON'S WORKS

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE( 1564-1616)

FIRST PERIOD: 1588-1593

SECOND PERIOD: 1594-1600

THIRD PERIOD: 1601-1608

FOURTH PERIOD: 1608-1612

iii. Choleric (yellow bile) - person is angry

UNIT - II THE AGE OF MILTON

THE COLLEGE PERIOD:

THE HORTON PERIOD:

MILTON'S PROSE WRITINGS:

MILTON'S LATER POETRY:

THE PARADISE LOST

 He lacks humour. In his work, the moral and religious influences of

THE METAPHYSICAL POETS - JOHN DONNE AND HIS FOLLOWERS

DRYDEN AND POPE

AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700)

DRYDEN AS A POET (1631-1700)

THE FABLES AND ODES

DRYDENS PROSE WORK

DRYDEN’S DRAMATIC WORKS:

AGE OF POPE (1700- 1745)

POPE’S LIFE AND WORKS

UNIT III- RESTORATION AGE

ADDISON AND STEELE

INTORDUCTION- AGE OF JOHNSON

EVOLUTION OF PROSE FICTION IN THE 18TH CENTURY

REASONS FOR THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

 Restoration drama was different from the Elizabethan drama, which is

ANALYSIS OF HIS WORKS

UNIT IV- ROMANTIC AND VICTORIAN AGE

CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMANTIC POETRY

WORDSWORTHS THEORY OF POETRY

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

COLERIDGE AS A POETS POET

“Christabel” may be regarded as the most complete representative of the

Coleridge’s personal poems like “Ode to Dejection” and “work without

YOUNGER ROMANTIC POETS

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

SIR WALTER SCOTT

ROMANTIC PROSE WRITERS

 Characters of Shakespeare’s plays

VICTORIAN POETS--AGE OF TENNYSON