WHOLE MODULES - World Literature

ST.
ANTHONY COLLEGE WORLD LITERATURE
CALAPAN CITY, INC.
Information Sheet 1.3

Introduction to Literature
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this module, you must be able to:
1. Define literature
2.Realize the importance of literature
3. Cite seven literary standards
4. Describe literary approaches
5. Identify types of literature
6. Differentiate Prose and Poetry
7. Recognize Literary compositions that have influenced the world
Defining Literature
Literature, in its broadest sense, is any written work. Etymologically, the term derives from
Latin litaritura/litteratura “writing formed with letters,” although some definitions include
spoken or sung texts. More restrictively, it is writing that possesses literary merit. Literature
can be classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction and whether it is poetry or
prose. It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short
story or drama, and works are often categorized according to historical periods or their
adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (genre).
Taken to mean only written works, literature was first produced by some of the world’s
earliest civilizations—those of Ancient Egypt and Sumeria—as early as the 4th millennium
BC; taken to include spoken or sung texts, it originated even earlier, and some of the first
written works may have been based on a pre-existing oral tradition. As urban cultures and
societies developed, there was a proliferation in the forms of literature. Developments in
print technology allowed for literature to be distributed and experienced on an
unprecedented scale, which has culminated in the twenty-first century in electronic
literature.
Definitions of literature have varied over time. In Western Europe prior to the eighteenth
century, literature as a term indicated all books and writin. A more restricted sense of the
term emerged during the Romantic period, in which it began to demarcate “imaginative”
literature.
Contemporary debates over what constitutes literature can be seen as returning to the
older, more inclusive notion of what constitutes literature. Cultural studies, for instance,
takes as its subject of analysis both popular and minority genres, in addition to canonical
works.
Importance of Literature
 Sparks empathy and understanding
Reading a book is one of the best ways to fully immerse your mind into another person’s
dialogue and experiences. Being able to empathise and understand other people’s feelings
is a key aspect of helping you connect to different regions, races, societies, and periods of
ST. ANTHONY COLLEGE WORLD LITERATURE
CALAPAN CITY, INC.
time. They help a person take a closer look at the different facets of living aside from what
they know and live which can change perspectives.
 Learn about past lives
History plays a fundamental role in shaping literature, every novel, play, or poem you read
has been influenced by political context, or a time period, or a relationship from the time it
was written.
Not forgetting the pure history of literature itself with the first novel being penned in 2000
BC - The Epic of Gilgamesh. Being able to read first-hand something from so long ago is a
major aspect of learning the lives of historical figures and times.
 Escapism and possibilities
Reading can take us into different realms and see other people’s creative thought
processes. Whether it’s flying into Neverland, wandering through Middle Earth, battling at
Hogwarts, or rafting through the Mississippi River with Huck and Jim - books can take you
anywhere and any place. This is an amazing tool that few entertainment mediums can truly
give you and one of the reasons why literature is so beautiful. Whether you’re having a bad
day, stressed out with work, dealing with new life decisions - books can help you escape
into another world and live somewhere else for a short amount of time.
Novels provide knowledge, entertainment, encourage creativity and offer an escape for
readers - enriching our lives in more ways than one. It’s definitely much more than words in
a book, and even with the increasing popularity of eBooks, Kindles, Wattpad, and online
reading they create a conversation, a unique world, and new perspectives.
Seven Literary Standards
1. Universality – It appeals to everyone regardless of culture, race, sex, and time

which are considered significant.
2. Artistry – It has an aesthetic appeal to everyone and thus possesses a sense of
beauty.
3. Intellectual Value – It stimulates critical thinking that enriches the mental processes
of abstract and reasoning, making man realizes the fundamental truths of life and its
nature.
4. Suggestiveness – It unravels and conjures man’s emotional power to define
symbolism, nuances, implied meanings, images and message, giving and evoking
visions above and beyond the plane of ordinary life and experiences.
5. Spiritual Value – It elevates the spirit and the soul and thus have the power to
motivate and inspire, drawn from the suggested morals or lessons of the different literary
genres.
6. Permanence – It endures across time and draws out the time factor: TIMELINESS,
occurring at a particular time, and TIMELESSNESS, remaining invariably throughout
time.
7. Style – It presents peculiar ways on how man sees life as evidenced by the
formation of his ideas, forms, structures, and expressions which are marked by their
memorable substance.
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Critical Approaches to Literature
1. The formalist approach: literary analysis: what the work means (theme) and how it
conveys its meaning (style); the relation of theme to style. Good work is one that is
interesting because it conveys meaning in an interesting way, an intriguing way to say the
"same old thing" (Pope: "True wit is Nature to advantage dressed. . .")
2. The humanist/ethical approach: the effect the work has on the audience/ reader. The
larger function of literature is to teach morality and to probe philosophical issues. Literature
should instruct and delight
"Good" work has a positive, enriching, impact on the reader; "bad" work has negative,
dulling, impact.
Examples: Christian humanist, Marxist, feminist, "moral crusader " (censorship)
3. The historical approach: the relationship of the work to history. The impact of the work
on history and the importance of historical knowledge in understanding a work. How history
and literature inform and affect each other
1) Social / political history; 2) Literary history (the development of the literary tradition)
4. The biographical approach: the relationship of the writer's life to the work.
5. The psychological approach: what the work tells us about the human mind. Literature
as a tool of psychoanalysis.
Freudian literary analysis; e.g., the unconscious, dream interpretations, sexual motivation,
the importance of childhood on adult development, neuroses, the tripartite scheme of the
human mind (id, ego, superego), the "talking cure," etc.
6. The mythic approach: universal patterns of human behavior and thinking as conveyed
in literature.
Jungian literary analysis. Archetypal story patterns; e.g., stories of creation, of "the fall," of
social / sexual initiation, of the Quest. Archetypal image patterns, colors -- red, black =?)
7. The textual approach: 1) what is the actual text? changes in the history of a text; 2)
impact of translation 3) oral tradition 4) Changes in the text: substantive & accidental;
authorial v. those made by editor 5) Pre & post 1455
8. The linguistic approach: what the text tells us about the language of the time of the
work.
9. The subjective or personal approach: 1) Reader Based criticism -- the effect that the
differences of readers has on reading common "text"; 2) Personal reaction -- that which is
beyond literary analysis; did you enjoy the work?
Types of literature
I. Prose - “prosa” which means straightforward. It consists written works within the common flow of
conversation presented in a straightforward manner.
Types of Prose
a. Novel This is a long narrative divided into chapters. The events may be taken from true-
to-life stories and spans for a long period of time. There are many characters involved.
b. Short Story This is a narrative involving one ormore characters, one plot and one single
impression.Examples:
c. Plays This is presented on a stage, is divided into acts and each act has many scenes.
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d. Legends These are fictitious narratives, usually about origins. It provides historical
information regarding the culture and views of particular group of people or country.
Examples: The Bikol Legend Legend of Pineapple Legend of “Makahiya”
e. Folk tales A traditional narrative, usuallyanonymous, and handed down orally. Example:
The adventures of Juan The Hawk and the Hen Fairy Tales
f. Fables (special type of folk tale) These are also fictitious and they deal with animals and
inanimate things who speak and act like people. Their purpose is to enlighten the minds of
children to events that can mold their ways and attitudes.Examples: Aesop’s Fables The
Lion and the Mouse
g. Myths A traditional sacred story, typicallyrevolving around the activities of godsand
heroes, which aim to explain anatural phenomenon or cultural practice.Example: The Story
of Cupid and Psyche The Fall of Troy The Myth about Creation - Tagalog
h. Anecdotes These are merely products of the writer’s imagination and the main aim is to
bring out lessons to the reader. “The Moth and the Lamp” – Dr. Jose Rizal The Best Advice
I ever Had
i. Essay This expresses the viewpoint or opinion of the writer about a particular problem or
event. The best example of this is the Editorial page of a newspaper. Examples: Of Studies
– Francis Bacon On Doors – Christopher Morley
j. Biography This deals with the life of a person which may be about himself, his
autobiography or that of others. Example: Cayetano Arellano – Socorro O. Albert
k. News This is a report of everyday events in society, government, science and industry,
accidents etc., happening nationally or not.
l. Oration This is a formal treatment of a subject and is intended to be spoken in public. It
appeals to the intellect, to the will or to the emotions of the audience. Examples: “Because
of What We Are, and What We Believe” I have A Dream – Martin Luther King
II. Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and
rhythmic language choices as to evoke emotional response.
A. Narrative Poetry: This form describes important events in life either real or imaginary.
B. Epic It is an extended narrative about heroic exploits under supernatural control. It may
deal with heroes and gods. The hero/heroine usually has the following characteristics:
idealism, courage, wisdom, beauty, endurance, chivalry and justice.
Two Kinds of Epic poetry
a. Popular or ancient epic – often without a definite author and is of slow
growth.
b. Modern epic – with a definite author. Examples: Biag ni Lam-ang Epic
C. Metrical Tales This is a narrative which is written in verse and can be classified either
as a ballad or metrical romance. Examples of these are simple idylls or home tales, love
tales, or tales of the supernatural or tales written for a strong moral purpose in verse form.
“The Lady of Shallot” by Lord Alfred Tennyson
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D. Ballads This is considered as the shortest and simplest of the narrative poems. It has a
simple structure and tells of a single incident. Variations of these are: love ballads, war
ballads, sea ballads, humorous, moral, historical, or mythical ballads. Example: The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
E. Lyric Poetry: Originally, this refers to that kind of poetry meant to be sung to the
accompaniment of a lyre, but now, this applies to any type of poetry that expresses
emotions and feelings to the poet. They are usually short, simple and easy to understand.
Types of Lyric Poetry

1. Folksongs (Awiting Bayan) These are short poems intended to be sung. The
common theme is love, despair, grief, doubt, joy, hope, and sorrow.
2. Sonnets This is a lyric of poem of 14 lines dealing with an emotion, a feeling or an
idea. There are two types: the Italian and the Shakespearean.
3. Elegy This is a lyric poem which expresses feelings of grief and melancholy, and
whose theme is death. Angie No one knows what really happened to her all they
know that she was good and dead some people say it was foul play some people
say it was something wrong in her head but then I began to have these weird
dreams about her some beautiful some horrible,but how do we know whats real and
whats a fantasy when Angies not here to tell.
4. Ode This is a poem of a noble feeling, expressed with dignity, with no definite
number of syllables or definite number of lines in a stanza.
5. Psalms This is a song praising God or the Virgin Mary and containing a
philosophy of life.
6. Awit (Song) These have the measures of twelve syllables (dodecasyllabic) and
slowly sung to the accompaniment of a guitar or banduria. Example: Florante at
Laura(Francisco Balagtas) O pagsintang labis ng kapangyarihan, Sampung mag-
aama’y iyong nasasaklaw; Pag ikaw ang nasok sa puso ninuman, Hahamakin ang
lahat masunod ka lamang!
7. Corridos These have measures of eight syllables (octosyllabic)and recited to a
martial beat. The songs are often about oppressions, daily life of peasants, and other
socially important information.
F. . Dramatic Poetry: This is an emotional piece of literature which includes a story which
is recited or sung. Soliloquy and dramatic monologues are the main instruments of this form
of poetry.
1. Comedy This word comes from the Greek term “Komos” meaning festivity or
revelry. This form usually is light and written with a purpose of amusing, and usually
has a happy ending.
2. Melodrama This is usually seen in musical play with the opera. Today, this is
related to tragedy just as the farce to comedy. It arouses immediate and intense
emotion and is usually sad but there is a happy ending for the principal character.
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3. Tragedy This involves the hero struggling mightily against dynamic forces; he
meets death or ruin without success and satisfaction obtained by the protagonist in a
comedy. Examples: Romeo and Juliet Hamlet
4. Farce This is an exaggerated comedy. It seeks to arouse mirth by laughable
lines; situations are too ridiculous to be true; the characters seem to be caricatures
and the motives undignified and absurd.
5. Social Poems This form is either purely comic or tragic and its pictures the life of
today. it may aim to bring about changes in the social conditions.
Literary Compositions that have influenced the World

1. The Bible or the Sacred Writings: This has become the basis of Christianity originating From
Palestine and Greece.
2. Koran: The Muslim Bible originating from Arabia.
3. The Iliad and the Odyssey: These have been the source of myths and legends of Greece.
They were written by Homer.
4. The Mahabharata: The longest epic of the world. It contains the history of religion in India.
5. Canterbury Tales: It depicts the religion and customs of the English in the early days. This
originated from England and was written by Chaucer.
6. Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe of the U.S. This depicted the sad fate of
slaves; this became the basis of democracy later on.
7. The Divine Comedy: (by Dante of Italy) This shows the religion and customs of early Italians.
8. El Cid Compeador: This shows the cultural characteristics of the Spaniards and their national
history.
9. The Songs of Rolando: This includes Doce Pares and Roncesvalles of France. It tells about
the Golden Age of Christianity in France
10. The Book of the Dead: This includes the Cult of Iris and the mythology and theology of Egypt.
11. The Book of the Days: This was written by Confucius of China.12. One Thousand and One
Nights or the Arabian Nights: From Arabia and Persia (Iran). It shows the ways of governments, of
industries and of the society of the Arabs and Persians.
For further readings visit the following links:

https://www.slideshare.net/JelmaPerico/literary-approaches-7728550
TASK SHEET 1.3

Title : Writing a reflection paper
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Performance Objectives: Write reflection paper about the introduction to literature

Supplies/ Materials/ Equipment: Paper, laptop/computer set, ballpen, internet
connectivity
Steps and Procedures:

1. Write your reflection in paragraph form to answer the following questions:
 How has the introduction to literature either supported or changed your
authentic knowledge, attitudes, and/or beliefs?
 What trends are apparent in the introduction to literature and how do

these trends either support or negate your inferences and/or
predictions?
 What new knowledge or new understanding of previous knowledge have

you acquired from introduction to literature that you perceive will
influence your practice/s?
 Where did you disagree with the writers and author of introduction to
literature. What is your counter argument? Give specific examples.
Assessment Method: Performance Criteria Checklist

Prose and Its Elements
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this module, you must be able to:

1. Define prose
2. Identify the two major types of prose
3. Describe the elements of Fiction and Non Fiction
Prose is a form or technique of language that exhibits a natural flow of speech and grammatical

structure. Novels, textbooks and newspaper articles are all examples of prose. The word prose is
frequently used in opposition to traditional poetry, which is language with a regular structure and a
common unit of verse based on metre or rhyme. However, as T. S. Eliot noted, whereas "the
distinction between verse and prose is clear, the distinction between poetry and prose is
obscure"; developments in modern literature, including free verse and prose poetry, have led to
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the two techniques indicating two ends on a spectrum of ways to compose language, as opposed
to two discrete options.
 Follows natural patterns of speech and communication

 Has a grammatical structure with sentences and paragraphs
 Uses everyday language
 Sentences and thoughts continue across lines
Two major types of Prose

 Fiction
 Non Fiction
Fiction generally is a narrative form, in any medium, consisting of people, events, or places that
are imaginary—in other words, not based strictly on history or fact. In its most narrow usage,
fiction refers to written narratives in prose and often specifically novels, though
also novellas and short stories. More broadly, fiction has come to encompass imaginary narratives
expressed in any form, including not just writings but also live theatrical
performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video
games.
Fiction genres
✕ Science fictionFolk tales

✕ SatireFairytales
✕ FantasyFables
✕ MysteryTall Tales
✕ Horror
✕ Legend
✕ Suspense Thriller
There are six elements of fiction:
*Plot and Structure

*Characterization
*Theme
*Setting
*Point of View
*Style
Plot-
The sequence of incidents or events through which an author constructs a story. The plot is
not merely the action itself, but the way the author arranges the action toward a specific end
(structure).
Important elements of Plot:
A. Conflict- A clash of actions, ideas, desires, or wills

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Types of Conflict:
Person vs. Person
Person vs. Environment
Person vs. Self.
B. Protagonist- The central character in a conflict
C. Antagonist- Any force arranged against the protagonist- whether persons, things,
conventions of society, or the protagonists own personality traits.
D. Suspense- The quality in a story that makes readers ask “what’s going to happen
next?”. In more literary forms of fiction the suspense involves more “why” than “what”.
Usually produced through two devices; either mystery (an unusual set of circumstances for
which the reader craves an explanation) or dilemma (a position in which a character must
choose between two courses of action, both undesirable.)
Characterization
 Analyzing characterization is more difficult than describing plot; human nature is infinitely
complex, variable and ambiguous. It is much easier to describe what a person has done
instead of who a person is.
 In commercial fiction, characters are often two-dimensional, and act as vehicles to carry out
the plot. The protagonist must be easily identified with and fundamentally decent, if he has
vices they are of the more ‘innocent’ type, the kind the reader would not mind having.
 Characters are presented in two different ways- directly and indirectly.
 Direct Presentation- The reader is told straight out what the character is like.
 Indirect Presentation- The author shows the character through their actions; the reader
determines what the character is like by what they say or do.
 Dramatization- Characters are shown speaking and behaving, as in a play.
Types of Characters
Flat Characters- Usually have one or two predominant traits. The character can be
summed up in just a few lines.
Round Characters- Complex and many faceted; have the qualities of real people.
Stock Characters- A type of flat character. The type of character that appears so often in
fiction the reader recognizes them right away.
Static Character- A character that remains essentially the same throughout.
Theme
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 The theme of a piece of fiction is its controlling idea or its central insight. It is the
unifying generalization about life stated or implied by the story.
 While theme is central to a story, it is not the whole purpose. The function of a
literary writer is not to state a theme by to show and describe it.
 Theme does not equal “moral”, “lesson”, or “message”
 Theme should be expressible in the form of a statement with a subject and
predicate.
 The theme should be stated as a generalization about life.
Be careful not to make the generalization larger than is justified by the terms of the
story. Avoid terms like, every, all, always, in favor of words such as, some,
sometimes, may. 4.Theme is the central and unifying concept of a story. Therefore it
accounts for all the major details of the story, is not contradicted by any detail of the
story, and cannot rely upon supposed facts.
 There is no one way of stating the theme of a story. As long as the above
requirements are met the statement is valid.
Setting
The setting of a story is its overall context- where, when and in what circumstances
the action occurs.
 Setting as Place- The physical environment where the story takes place. The
description of the environment often points towards its importance.
 Setting as Time- Includes time in all of its dimensions. To determine the
importance, ask, “what was going on at that time?”
 Setting as Cultural Context- Setting also involves the social circumstances of the
time and place. Consider historical events and social and political issues of the
time.
Point of View
Point of View is simply who is telling the story. *To determine POV ask, “who is telling the story”,
and “how much do they know?”
Omniscient POV- The story is told in third person by a narrator who has unlimited
knowledge of events and characters.
Third Person Limited POV- The story is told in third person but from the view point of a
character in the story. POV is limited to the character’s perceptions and shows no direct
knowledge of what other characters are thinking, feeling, or doing.
First Person POV- The author disappears into one of the characters. Shares the
limitations of third person limited. Uses the pronouns “I” and “we”.
Second Person POV- Uses the pronoun “you”. Infrequently used.
Style
•Style is the manner in which an author uses words, constructs sentences, incorporates
non-literal expressions, and handles rhythm, timing, and tone.
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•When asked to discuss style, you are being asked to describe how or explain why the
words, sentences, and imaginative comparisons are effective in terms of what is being
created.
Diction- Central to an author’s style. Includes:
1. Vocabulary- Choice of words

a. Simple words- Everyday word choice. (“She was sick for a long time.)
b. Complex words
c. Concrete words- Things we can touch, see, etc. (Jeans, book,..)
d. Abstract words- Words that express intangible ideas (freedom, heritage, something)
2. Syntax- arrangement of words, their ordering, grouping and placement within phrases,
clauses, and sentences.
3. Rhythm- The pattern of flow and movement created by the choice of words and the
arrangement of phrases and sentences. Rhythm is directly affected by the length and
composition of sentences, the use of pauses within sentences, the use of repetition, and the
ease or difficulty in pronouncing the combinations of word sounds in the sentences.
Non-fiction – writing based on real people, places and events
Two broad categories of Nonfiction

1. Informative nonfiction
a. written to provide factual information
b. main purpose – to inform
c. includes: science and history texts, encyclopedias, pamphlets, brochures,
telephone books, maps, atlases, and most of the articles in magazines and
newspapers.
2. Literary nonfiction
a. written to be read and experienced in much the same way you experience fiction.
b. Different from fiction in that real people take the place of fictional characters, and
the settings and plots are not imaginary
c. Includes:
autobiography
– the true story of a person’s life, told by that person.
- almost always told in first-person point of view
- usually book length because it covers a long period of the writer’s life.
- Short autobiographical writings include: journals, diaries, and memoirs.
Biographies
– the true story of a person’s life told by someone else.
- the biographer interviews the subject if possible and also researches the
subjects life
- contains many of the same elements as fiction (character, setting, plot,
conflict).
Essays
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– a short piece of nonfiction writing that deals with one subject.

- often found in newspapers and magazines.
- The writer might share an opinion, try to entertain or persuade the reader, or
simply describe an incident that has special significance.
- Informal essays, or personal essays, explain how the author feels about a
subject.
- Formal essays are serious and scholarly and are rarely found in literature
textbooks.
Elements of Non Fiction
Four Major Elements of Nonfiction
1. Lay out
2. Information
3. Characterization
4. Style and Tone
Lay out
Layout should attract the reader and encourage reading and progression through the book.
 Format is interesting, attractive, magnetic

 Index
 Glossary, pronunciation key
 Table of contents
 Book size
 Photographs compliment text, located near the related text, captions accurate.
Illustrations are important but if the writer relies too much on pictures, the
reader/listener/viewer may not get a comprehensive understanding of the
information that would be better communicated with words.
Information
Information includes facts, little known information, and ideas that spark curiosity, create mystery,
and propel the listener/reader/viewer to discover and learn.
o Qualifications of the creator suggest appropriate experience or exceptionality

o Accurate - information can be verified with other sources-
o Includes source information
o Timely or current
o Supports the story
o Covers the topic in significant detail
o Moves from simple to complex and familiar to unfamiliar
o Creates a feeling of the setting
o Presents information in an organized sequence that enhances the topic
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o Non-biased - neutral position

o Is not overly didactic
o Includes safety precautions as needed
Characterization
o Characters are well developed

o No stereotype or biased characterization
o Creates empathy for the characters
o Uses quotations and anecdotes. Particularly in biographies it is important to use the
character's real words and anecdotes that originate from someone with first-hand
knowledge of the incidents.
Style and tone
Style should maintain the reader's interest. Nonfiction presents information, but the
listener/viewer/reader doesn't need to be bored by a collection of information in choppy sentences.
Good style adds interest to the story.
o Narration creates interest and understanding

o Clear
o Precise
o Distinguish between fact, theory, and opinion
o Vivid
o Could be personalized
o Objective non-biased or condensending or sarcastic
o Is not didactic
o Does not use propaganda techniques
o Builds suspense or sustains interest and encourages further investigation
o Moves from simple to complex and familiar to unfamiliar
o Presents information in an organized sequence that enhances the topic
o Scope is appropriate for the target audience and increases in complexity at an
appropriate rate
o Avoids anthropomorphism
o Vocabulary is relative
o Underlying themes are appropriate and helpful
o Presents ideas/topic in a unique manner or new perspective
o Illustrations compliment and don’t over power the message
o Includes a table of contents, glossary, and index
o Has a theme(s)
o Has a conclusion
Style and tone that presents information - interestingly

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Readers are attracted to nonfiction because they have a question or curiosity. With the question
answered or curiosity satiated what is there to keep the reader reading? Therefore, authors of
nonfiction sequence information to create wonder for the reader as s/he uncover facts that lead
from discovery to discovery. In doing so the scope of information must be presented from simple
to complex to provide the reader essential information for understanding ideas presented and
prepare them for more complex ideas to come.
The author must also decide the scope of information to present; giving enough detail for
comprehension but not so much as to overwhelm. Mary Lou Clark does this in You and Relativity,
she introduces the concept of relativity by saying: "relative to the sixth floor, the third floor is down,
but relative to the first floor, the third is up." Then describes frame of reference building the
vocabulary and associated concepts needed for later understanding of relativity.
Isaac Asimov, is very good in doing this in books he wrote for children and adults. An example is
when he tells the story of how Mendeleev spent years sorting, classifying, and arranging cards
that represented elements, until he arranged them in the order of the periodic table, Chemistry.
Jean George in Spring Comes to the Ocean creates curiosity by her descriptions of the animals.
"First he unhooked the muscle at the spiral end of his old shell. Then he pulled himself out and
stood vulnerable, so naked that even a wind-blown grain of sand could kill him. His exposed belly
was so delicate that a nodding grass blade could cut him in half... He slashed his tail through the
air and stuck it into the new shell. Backing carefully, he reached his tail down and around until he
felt the last coil of the shell. Then he hooked onto it with a grip so strong that few could pull him
out. When at last he had a firm hold, he contracted all his muscles and slammed himself deep into
the shell."
Rachel Carson in The Sea Around Us , increases wonder by telling no one was around when the
ocean was created long ago. We would expect it impossible to tell how, when she surprises us by
telling a us that it is possible.
"Beginnings are apt to be shadowy, and so it is with the beginnings of that great mother of life, the
sea. Many people have debated how and when the earth got its ocean, and it is not surprising that
their explanations do not always agree. For the plain and inescapable truth is that no one was
there to see, and in the absence of eyewitness accounts, there is bound to be a certain
disagreement. ... It must be a story pieced together from many sources and containing whole
chapters the details of which we can only imagine. The story is founded on the testimony of the
Earth's most ancient rocks which were young when the earth was young."
Style and tone of a narration
Many authors use a continuous narrative to join topics in books and sustain interest, Isaac Asimov
was an expert with this technique.
Another technique, to make facts interesting, is to personalize the readers' experiences by making
comparisons and using I and you. Why Can't I?; by Jeanne Bendick , compares the child's feet to
a flies and uses you.. "The bottoms of your feet are smooth and slippery. You can make them a
little sticky by wearing sneakers. But you're still too heavy to walk up a wall or across the ceiling."
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Another consideration in the narrative is the words. Many times authors will use smaller words,
because of readability tests or fear that children can't understand big words. But the size of the
word is less relevant than if the word is part of every child's vocabulary: like McDonald's,
hamburger, refrigerator, aluminum, dinosaur, telephone...
Another error is personification and sentimental distortion in animal stories. Authors should tell the
story through observation not how they think the animal thinks or feels. Yellow Eyes, by Rutherford
Montgomery gives very good and interesting descriptions.
Many children want stories that have real people telling the story, use of the pronouns we and you
achieve this.
Watch for condescension and sarcasm. Superstition in different cultures is often treated in this
manner. Edwin Tunis treats his subject this way:
"There was no Indian who was even reasonably free from superstition; it covered everything in the
world. When every animal and every tree, and every stream and every natural phenomenon was
possessed of a spirit, probably malevolent, it took a lot of finger-crossing and wood-knockin to
ward off evil. The Indian was afraid of everything ... of killing snakes and wolves ... of witchcraft
and of the owls he associated with it ... superstition ... pervade all Indian living."
Milton Meltzer in All Times, All Peoples: A World History of Slavery wrote: "white, black, brown,
yellow, red- no matter what [your] color, it's likely that someone in [your] family way back, was
once a slave." we’re told why: "It was hard for [the earliest peoples] to feed themselves... That is
why, when they raided other people, they killed them instead of taking them prisoner. If the
winners had spared the lives of the losers, they would have been unable to feed them." Then we
are told that as farming and food production grew, and it was possible for conquerors to feed
prisoners, they kept them as slaves.
Condescension in animal stories is often in the form of anthropomorphism, suggesting the animal
is so boring that the author has to make it human to create an exciting story.
Didacticism and propaganda - it is hard for some authors not to preach, especially when the
subject is as important as drug abuse. But if the facts are carefully arranged, the evidence
presented, ideas will build to prove the point. If not the book may cause students to dismiss it as
pure propaganda or to create doubt and mistrust in what the authors have written. The author is
obligated to present the information in a scientific manner. If there are differing theories or
evidence, then the author needs to address them.
Objective - Creators of nonfiction have the obligation of being objective. The creator must sort
through information and decide what to include or omit. How much fact and how much narration. If
the information should just be possible or probable and if controversial information should be
included.
Underlying themes are essential in nonfiction. The manner in which the information is presented

creates an underlying theme that may be positive, condescending, negative, curious... or what
ever. It is important to consider that the reader's/viewer's/listener's understanding and attitude will
develop with respect to the ideas, subjects, or people in the text; shaping the
reader's/viewer's/listener's understanding and attitude by the themes; shaping the ideas and
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emotions that they take from the piece, which may be carried with them for life. The Invincible
Louisa, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, and Up From Slavery, all have underlying themes which unify the
story. Again this is best done with reasoning and examples not by being didactic or preachy.
ACTIVITY
Prose and Its Elements
Instruction: After reading the information sheet on Prose and Its Elements, what are the
important things that you will remember to give proper attention to the identified elements of
Fiction and Non Fiction.
Fiction
1. Plot and Structure
2. Characterization
3. Theme
4. Setting
5. Point of View
6. Style
Non Fiction
1. Lay out
2. Information
3. Characterization
4. Style and Tone

Poetry and Its Elements
COMMON FEATURES OF POETRY
● It looks like a poem - if it looks like a poem and it reads like a poem, then the chances
are pretty good that it is, indeed, a poem. Poetry comes in lines, some of which are full
sentences, but many of which are not. Also, usually these lines don’t run out to the margins
consistently, like in, say, a novel. All this gives poetry a distinctive and recognisable look on the
page.
● It often has some underlying form holding things together - while this isn’t always true
(in some free verse, for example) a lot of poetry conforms to a prescribed structure such as in a
sonnet, a haiku etc.
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● It uses imagery - if the poet is worth his or her salt, they’ll endeavour to create images in
the reader’s mind using lots of sensory details and figurative language.
● It has a certain musicality - we could be forgiven for thinking that poetry’s natural
incarnation is the written word and its habitat the page, but the printed word is not where
poetry’s origins lie. The earliest poems were composed orally and committed to memory. We
can still see the importance the sound of language plays when we read poems out loud. We
can see it too in the attention paid to musical devices that are incorporated into the poem.
Devices such as alliteration, assonance, and rhyme, for example. We will look at many of these
later in this article.
THE STRUCTURE OF POETRY
It was mentioned already that though poetry’s origins lie in the spoken word, it does take a very
recognizable shape when put down on the page. This is largely due to the overall organization
of the lines on the page, often in the form of stanzas.
THE STANZA
Though some modern forms of poetry eschew traditional poetic conventions such as rhyme
schemes and meter etc, the stanza still plays an important role in the overall look of printed
poetry.
But, just what exactly is a stanza? - your students may well ask.
Stanzas are basically the poetic equivalent of a prose paragraph. They are a series of lines that
are grouped together and separated from other groups of lines or stanzas by a skipped line.
Stanzas come in a variety of lengths, dependent either on the whim of the poet or the
conventions of a particular poetic form. There is a variety of technical vocabulary often used to
refer to stanzas of specific lengths. Here are the most common of these,
Stanzas of:
● 2 lines are called a couplet

● 3 lines are called a tercet
● 4 lines are called a quatrain
● 5 lines are called a cinquain
● 6 lines are called a sestet, or occasionally a sexain
● 7 lines are called a septet
● 8 lines are called an octave
POEM STRUCTURES: TYPES OF POETRY AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS

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There are many different types of poetry, some of which we will look at below. But, regardless
of the specific type of poetry in question, most likely a poem will fit into one of these three
overarching types of poetry: lyric, narrative, and descriptive.
Lyric Poetry
Lyric poetry concerns itself largely with the emotional life of the poet, that is, it’s written in their
voice and expresses strong thoughts and emotions. There is only one voice in a lyric poem and
we see the world from that single perspective. Most modern poetry is lyric poetry in that it is
personal and introspective.
Narrative Poetry
As its name implies, narrative poetry is concerned with storytelling. Just as in a prose story, a
narrative poem will most likely follow the conventions of plot including elements such as conflict,
rising action, climax, resolution etc. Again, as in prose stories, narrative poems will most likely
be peopled with characters to perform the actions of the tale.
Descriptive Poetry
Descriptive poetry usually employs lots of rich imagery to describe the world around the poet.
While it most often has a single poetic voice and a strong emotional content, descriptive poetry
differs from lyric poetry in that its focus is more on the externalities of the world, rather than the
interior life of the poet.
We have mentioned that poetry often hangs on the conventions of specific underlying
structures. Let’s now take a look at some of the more common of these subtypes and their
defining characteristics.
SUBTYPES OF POETRY
Sonnet
Sonnets are predominantly concerned with matters of the heart. If you see a sonnet’s
recognisably blocky form on a page, there’s a good chance the theme will be love. There are
two common forms of sonnet: Shakespearean and Petrarchan. They differ slightly in their
internal structure, but both have 14 lines. Let’s take look at some more of the internal
characteristics of both forms:
Petrarchan
● Comprises 2 stanzas
● First 8 lines pose a question
● 2nd stanza answers the question posed
● Rhyme scheme is: ABBA, ABBA, CDECDE
Shakespearean
● Comprises 3 quatrains of 4 lines each
● Ends with a rhyming couplet which forms a conclusion
● Rhyme scheme is: ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG
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Haiku
The Haiku is a disciplined form of poetry that has its origins in 17th century Japanese poetry.
Usually it is concerned with nature and natural phenomenon such as the seasons, weather etc.
They are often quite meditative in tone.
However, there are no real rules regarding themes, the only real demands here relate to
structure:
● They are written in three line stanzas
● 1st line contains 5 syllables
● 2nd line contains 7 syllables
● 3rd line contains 5 syllables
Due to their short length and limited requirements, these are usually a lot of fun for students to
write. They can serve as a great introduction for students to attempt to write poetry according to
specific technical requirements of a form.
Elegy
Elegies are a type of poem that don’t really come with specific structural requirements, but still
constitute a recognisable form of poetry. What makes an elegy an elegy is its subject, that is,
death. Elegies are poems of lamentation - the word elegy itself comes from the Greek word
elegeia which means to ‘lament’.
● A poem of reflection on death, or on someone who has died
● Usually comes in three parts expressing loss:
○ grief
○ praise for the deceased
○ and, finally, consolation.

Limerick
Favorites of school children everywhere, the most defining characteristic of limericks are their
renowned humor. Given their well-deserved reputation for being funny and, on occasion, crude,
it’s easy to overlook the fact that beneath the laughs lie quite a tightly structured verse form.
● 5 lines in total
● Distinct verbal rhythm
● 2 longer lines of usually between 7 to 10 syllables
● 2 shorter lines of usually between 5 to 7 syllables
● 1 closing line containing the ‘punchline’
● Rhyme scheme is AABBA

Ballad
Ballads are a type of narrative poetry that has close ties to musical forms. Ballads written as
poetry can often easily be adapted as song lyrics. While ballads don’t have tight formal
constrictions like some other forms of poetry, there are enough in the way of distinguishable
features to identify it as a form.
● Tells a story, often using simple language
● Often romantic, adventurous, or humorous
● Arranged in groups of 4 lines or quatrains
● Often uses alternating 4 and 3 beat lines
● Rhyme scheme is usually ABAB or ABCB
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Ode
Another poetry form that traces its origins to Ancient Greece, odes were originally intended to
be sung. Nowadays, though no longer sung, the term ode still refers to a type of lyrical poem
that addresses and often praises a certain person, thing, or event.
● The author addresses a person, thing, or event
● Usually has a solemn, serious tone
● Explores universal elements of the theme
● Powerful emotional element, often involving catharsis

Odes written in the classical vein can follow very strict metrical patterns and rhyme schemes,
however, many modern odes are written in free verse involving irregular rhythm and without
adherence to a rhyme scheme.
Epic
These are long narrative poems that recount heroic tales, usually focused on a legendary or
mythical figure. Think of works of literature on a grand scale such as The Odyssey, The Cattle
Raid of Cooley, or Beowulf.
● Employs an objective and omniscient narrator
● Written in an elevated style
● Recounts heroic events
● Grand in scale

POETIC DEVICES
Though we refer to these devices here as ‘poetic devices’, the devices below are not the
exclusive domain of poetry alone. Many of these are to be found in other writing genres too,
particularly other creative forms such as short stories, novels, and creative nonfiction.
Many of these devices have their origins in poetry’s roots as a spoken literary form. They rely
on the musicality of words; their rhythm and rhyme. They focus on various sound effects that
can be created by the carefully chosen word.
Other devices are more concerned with imagery. They forge connections between various ideas
and conjure pictures in the minds of the readers. Together, these devices lift poetry into the
realm of art.
The following devices are organized into two sections. The first section titled Sound Devices
deals with the following devices: alliteration, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme,
and rhythm.
The second section Figurative Language deals with metaphor, personification, and simile.
These are not meant as an exhaustive list, but to give an indication of the possibilities for these
elements of poetry. You can find many more examples of these in our article on figurative
language.
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SOUND DEVICES
Alliteration
Meaning: This device involves the repetition of the initial consonant sound of a series of
words, often consecutively. Alliteration is most easily explained to students through looking
at a few simple tongue twisters, such as Peter Piper or She Sells Seashells.
Example:
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter
But, the bit of butter Betty Botter bought was bitter
So Betty Botter bought a better bit of butter

Assonance
Meaning: Similarly to alliteration, assonance involves the repetition of sounds in a series
of words, often consecutive words. However, rather than repeating the initial sounds,
assonance focuses on the internal vowel sounds that are repeated.
Example:
We can find many examples of assonance in poetry and song. Here’s an example from
the poetry of Edgar Allen Poe: Hear the mellow wedding bells
Consonance
Meaning: Consonance is the consonant-focused counterpart to assonance. It involves the
repetition of consonant sounds in the middle or at the end of words, as distinguished from
alliteration where the initial sound is repeated.
Example: The crow struck through the thick cloud like a rocket

Onomatopoeia
Meaning: Onomatopoeia refers to the process of creating words that sound like the very
thing they refer to. For many students, the first introduction to onomatopoeia goes back to
learning animal sounds as an infant. Words such as Oink! Chirp! Woof! and Meow! can all
be thought of as onomatopoeic.

Example: Aside from animal noises, the names of sounds themselves are often
onomatopoeic, for example:
Bang!
Thud!
Crash!
Rhyme
Meaning: Rhyme refers to the repetition of sounds in a poem. Various types of rhyme are
possible, however in English we usually use the term rhyme to refer to the repetition of the
final sounds in a line, or end rhyme. Letters are often used to denote a rhyme scheme. A
new letter is ascribed to each of the different sounds. For example, in the following
example the rhyme scheme is described as ABAB.

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Example:
The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.
[From Neither Out Far Nor In Deep by Robert Frost]

Rhythm
Meaning: Rhythm in poetry involves sound patterning. A lot of classical poetry conforms to
a systematic regularity of rhythm which is referred to as the poem’s meter. This involves
the combining of stressed and unstressed syllables to create a constant beat pattern that
runs throughout the poem. Each pattern of beats is called a foot. There are various
possible combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables, or feet, and these patterns
have their own names to describe them. While it is impossible to explore all of these in this
article, we take a look at one of the more common ones below.
Example:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
[Iambic pentameter i.e. five metrical feet of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables]
Figurative / Connotative Language
Metaphor
Meaning: Metaphors make comparisons between things by stating that one thing literally
is something else. Metaphors are used to bring clarity to ideas by forming connections.
Often, metaphors reveal implicit similarities between two things or concepts.
Example: We can find lots of examples of metaphors in our everyday speech, for
example:
She’s an old flame
Time is money
Life is a rollercoaster
Simile
Meaning: Unlike metaphors that make comparisons by saying one thing is something
else, similes work by saying something is similar to something else. They commonly come
in two forms. Those that make a comparison using ‘as’ and those that make a comparison
using ‘like’.
Example:
She is as strong as an ox
She sings like a nightingale

Personification
Meaning: Personification is a particular type of metaphor where a non-human thing or
idea is ascribed human qualities or abilities. This can be in the form of a single phrase or
line, or extended in the form of a stanza or the whole poem.
Example:
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The moon was shining sulkily,

Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done -
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun.”
[From the Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll]
The elements of poetry are many and while the elements explored above represent the most
important of these, it is not an exhaustive list of every element. It takes lots of exposure for
students to become comfortable recognizing each and confident employing these elements in
their own writing.
Read this!
Rhyme scheme is a poet's deliberate pattern of lines that rhyme with other lines in a poem or a stanza.
The rhyme scheme, or pattern, can be identified by giving end words that rhyme with each other the same
letter. For instance, take the poem 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star', written by Jane Taylor in 1806.
'Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
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Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are!'
The rhyme scheme of this poem can be determined by looking at the end word in each line. The
first line ends in the word 'star', and the second line ends in the word 'are'. Because the two
words rhyme, they both are given the letter 'A'. 'A' signifies that we have found the first rhyme in
the poem.
The third line ends in the word 'high', and the fourth line ends in 'sky'. These two words don't
rhyme with the first two words, 'star' and 'are', so they get the letter 'B'. So far, we have a rhyme
scheme of AABB.
Stay with me! It gets easier! The fifth ending word is a repeat, 'star', and so is the sixth end
word, 'are'. So, both of these words get the letter 'A', as well. The rhyme scheme for this stanza,
or first 'paragraph' of the poem is: AABBAA. Let's see if this poet follows suit in her second
stanza of the poem. Yes, there are further stanzas! Most of us just know the first one.
'When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!'
Try to figure out the rhyme scheme yourself. It is kind of like a puzzle. Remember that each time
you run into a new end rhyme, you give that line a new letter of the alphabet. What did you
come up with? Well, 'gone' and 'upon' don't match any earlier rhymes in the poem, so they both
get the letter 'C'. In the same way, 'light' and 'night' follow suit, and being new rhymes, receive
the letter 'D'.
So far, the rhyme scheme in the second stanza is: CCDD. But we find a repeat in the final two
lines of this second stanza in the words 'star' and 'are'. If we go back to the first stanza, we
notice that those words received the letter 'A'. So, the final rhyme scheme for this second stanza
is: CCDDAA, and the poem itself has a total rhyme scheme thus far of AABBAA, CCDDAA. It is
a little tricky to understand, at first, but it gets easier.
Exercises
I. Write your own tongue twisters about animals using alliteration. You may even wish
to employ the sounds animals make in your tongue twister e.g. The slithering snake
slid sideways through the grass…
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II. Examine the poem below. Identify the rhyme scheme used in the poem. Refer to
the example attached to further understand the analysis of rhyme scheme.
A Gift from God No matter where you are,

Love has a language all its own.
By John P. Read
Love is all around you.
There's plenty of love to spare.
Love can't be described. You cannot see or touch it,
It has no shape, it has no form. But love is everywhere.
Love is not an object.
Love does not conform. Love's the greatest power,
And yet it is so small.
Love enters our lives Love's a gift from God
The moment we are born. To be shared amongst us all.
From the cradle to the grave,
Love's in everyone.
Love burns like a candle

That sometimes flickers but never dies.
Love may be invisible,
Although it's right before your eyes,
Love can leave you empty,

Love can make you whole.
Love can make or break you,
Love is in your soul.
Love is in your heart,

Love is in your mind.
Love doesn't discriminate,

Love is always blind.
Love is universal,
It encompasses the globe.
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Literary Criticism
CRITICAL APPROACHES to literature reveal how or why a particular work is constructed and
what its social and cultural implications are. Understanding critical perspectives will help you to
see and appreciate a literary work as a multilayered construct of meaning. Reading literary
criticism will inspire you to reread, rethink, and respond. Soon you will be a full participant in an
endless and enriching conversation about literature.
POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM
A type of cultural criticism, postcolonial criticism usually involves the analysis of literary texts
produced in countries and cultures that have come under the control of European colonial
powers at some point in their history. Alternatively, it can refer to the analysis of texts written
about colonized places by writers hailing from the colonizing culture. In Orientalism (1978),
Edward Said, a pioneer of postcolonial criticism and studies, focused on the way in which the
colonizing First World has invented false images and myths of the Third (postcolonial) World—
stereotypical images and myths that have conveniently justified Western exploitation and
domination of Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures and peoples. In the essay "Postcolonial
Criticism" (1992), Homi K. Bhabha has shown how certain cultures (mis)represent other
cultures, thereby extending their political and social domination in the modern world order.
Postcolonial studies, a type of cultural studies, refers more broadly to the study of cultural
groups, practices, and discourses—including but not limited to literary discourses—in the
colonized world. The term postcolonial is usually used broadly to refer to the study of works
written at any point after colonization first occurred in a given country, although it is sometimes
used more specifically to refer to the analysis of texts and other cultural discourses that
emerged after the end of the colonial period (after the success of the liberation and
independence movements). Among feminist critics, the postcolonial perspective has inspired an
attempt to recover whole cultures of women heretofore ignored or marginalized—women who
speak not only from colonized places but also from the colonizing places to which many of them
fled.
Postcolonial criticism has been influenced by Marxist thought, by the work of Michel Foucault
(whose theories about the power of discourses have influenced the new historicism), and by
deconstruction, which has challenged not only hierarchical, binary oppositions such as
West/East and North/South but also the notions of superiority associated with the first term of
each opposition.
STRUCTURALISM
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Structuralism is a theory of humankind in which all elements of human culture, including

literature, are thought to be parts of a system of signs. Critic Robert Scholes has described
structuralism as a reaction to "’modernist’ alienation and despair."
European structuralists such as Roman Jakobson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes
(before his shift toward poststructuralism) attempted to develop a semiology, or semiotics
(science of signs). Barthes, among others, sought to recover literature and even language from
the isolation in which they had been studied and to show that the laws that govern them govern
all signs, from road signs to articles of clothing.
Structuralism was heavily influenced by linguistics, especially by the pioneering work of
Ferdinand de Saussure. Particularly useful to structuralists was Saussure’s concept of the
phoneme (the smallest basic speech sound or unit of pronunciation) and his idea that
phonemes exist in two kinds of relationships: diachronic and synchronic. A phoneme has a
diachronic, or "horizontal," relationship with those other phonemes that precede and follow it (as
the words appear, left to right, on this page) in a particular usage, utterance, or narrative—what
Saussure, a linguist, called parole (French for "word"). A phoneme has a synchronic, or
"vertical," relationship with the entire system of language within which individual usages,
utterances, or narratives have meaning—what Saussure called langue (French for "tongue," as
in "native tongue," meaning language). A means what it means in English because those of us
who speak the language are plugged into the same system (think of it as a computer network
where different individuals can access the same information in the same way at a given time).
Following Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, an anthropologist, studied hundreds of myths, breaking them
into their smallest meaningful units, which he called "mythemes." Removing each from its
diachronic relations with other mythemes in a single myth (such as the myth of Oedipus and his
mother), he vertically aligned those mythemes that he found to be homologous (structurally
correspondent). He then studied the relationships within as well as between vertically aligned
columns, in an attempt to understand scientifically, through ratios and proportions, those
thoughts and processes that humankind has shared, both at one particular time and across
time. Whether Lévi-Strauss was studying the structure of myths or the structure of villages, he
looked for recurring, common elements that transcended the differences within and among
cultures.
Structuralists followed Saussure in preferring to think about the overriding langue, or language
of myth, in which each mytheme and mytheme-constituted myth fits meaningfully, rather than
about isolated individual paroles, or narratives. Structuralists also followed Saussure's lead in
believing that sign systems must be understood in terms of binary oppositions (a proposition
later disputed by poststructuralist Jacques Derrida). In analyzing myths and texts to find basic
structures, structuralists found that opposite terms modulate until they are finally resolved or
reconciled by some intermediary third term. Thus a structuralist reading of Milton's Paradise
Lost (1667) might show that the war between God and the rebellious angels becomes a rift
between God and sinful, fallen man, a rift that is healed by the Son of God, the mediating third
term.
Although structuralism was largely a European phenomenon in its origin and development, it
was influenced by American thinkers as well. Noam Chomsky, for instance, who powerfully
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influenced structuralism through works such as Reflections on Language (1975), identified and
distinguished between "surface structures" and "deep structures" in language and linguistic
literatures, including texts.
MARXIST CRITICISM
Marxist criticism is a type of criticism in which literary works are viewed as the product of work
and whose practitioners emphasize the role of class and ideology as they reflect, propagate,
and even challenge the prevailing social order. Rather than viewing texts as repositories for
hidden meanings, Marxist critics view texts as material products to be understood in broadly
historical terms. In short, literary works are viewed as a product of work (and hence of the realm
of production and consumption we call economics).
Marxism began with Karl Marx, the nineteenth-century German philosopher best known for Das
Kapital (1867; Capital), the seminal work of the communist movement. Marx was also the first
Marxist literary critic, writing critical essays in the 1830s on such writers as Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe and William Shakespeare. Even after Marx met Friedrich Engels in 1843 and began
collaborating on overtly political works such as The German Ideology (1846) and The
Communist Manifesto (1848), he maintained a keen interest in literature. In The German
Ideology, Marx and Engels discuss the relationship between the arts, politics, and basic
economic reality in terms of a general social theory. Economics, they argue, provides the base,
or infrastructure, of society, from which a superstructure consisting of law, politics, philosophy,
religion, and art emerges.
The revolution anticipated by Marx and Engels did not occur in their century, let alone in their
lifetime. When it did occur, in 1917, it did so in a place unimagined by either theorist: Russia, a
country long ruled by despotic czars but also enlightened by the works of powerful novelists and
playwrights including Anton Chekhov, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor
Dostoyevsky. Russia produced revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin, who shared not only Marx's
interest in literature but also his belief in its ultimate importance. Leon Trotsky, Lenin's comrade
in revolution, took a strong interest in literary matters as well, publishing Literature and
Revolution (1924), which is still viewed as a classic of Marxist literary criticism.
Of those critics active in the Soviet Union after the expulsion of Trotsky and the triumph of
Stalin, two stand out: Mikhail Bakhtin and Georg Lukács. Bakhtin viewed language—especially
literary texts—in terms of discourses and dialogues. A novel written in a society in flux, for
instance, might include an official, legitimate discourse, as well as one infiltrated by challenging
comments. Lukács, a Hungarian who converted to Marxism in 1919, appreciated pre
revolutionary realistic novels that broadly reflected cultural "totalities" and were populated with
characters representing human "types" of the author's place and time.
Perhaps because Lukács was the best of the Soviet communists writing Marxist criticism in the
1930s and 1940s, non-Soviet Marxists tended to develop their ideas by publicly opposing his. In
Germany, dramatist and critic Bertolt Brecht criticized Lukács for his attempt to enshrine realism
at the expense not only of the other "isms" but also of poetry and drama, which Lukács had
largely ignored. Walter Benjamin praised new art forms ushered in by the age of mechanical
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reproduction, and Theodor Adorno attacked Lukács for his dogmatic rejection of nonrealist
modern literature and for his elevation of content over form.
In addition to opposing Lukács and his overly constrictive canon, non-Soviet Marxists took
advantage of insights generated by non-Marxist critical theories being developed in post—World
War II Europe. Lucien Goldmann, a Romanian critic living in Paris, combined structuralist
principles with Marx’s base superstructure model in order to show how economics determines
the mental structures of social groups, which are reflected in literary texts. Goldmann rejected
the idea of individual human genius, choosing instead to see works as the "collective" products
of "trans-individual" mental structures. French Marxist Louis Althusser drew on the ideas of
psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan and the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, who
discussed the relationship between ideology and hegemony, the pervasive system of
assumptions and values that shapes the perception of reality for people in a given culture.
Althusser’s followers included Pierre Macherey, who in A Theory of Literary Production (1966)
developed Althusser’s concept of the relationship between literature and ideology; Terry
Eagleton, who proposes an elaborate theory about how history enters texts, which in turn may
alter history; and Frederic Jameson, who has argued that form is "but the working out" of
content "in the realm of the superstructure."
FEMINIST CRITICISM
Feminist criticism became a dominant force in Western literary studies in the late 1970s, when
feminist theory more broadly conceived was applied to linguistic and literary matters. Since the
early 1980s, feminist literary criticism has developed and diversified in a number of ways and is
now characterized by a global perspective.
French feminist criticism garnered much of its inspiration from Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal
book, Lé Deuxiéme Sexe (1949; The Second Sex). Beauvoir argued that associating men with
humanity more generally (as many cultures do) relegates women to an inferior position in
society. Subsequent French feminist critics writing during the 1970s acknowledged Beauvoir’s
critique but focused on language as a tool of male domination, analyzing the ways in which it
represents the world from the male point of view and arguing for the development of a feminine
language and writing.
Although interested in the subject of feminine language and writing, North American feminist
critics of the 1970s and early 1980s began by analyzing literary texts—not by abstractly
discussing language—via close textual reading and historical scholarship. One group practiced
"feminist critique," examining how women characters are portrayed, exposing the patriarchal
ideology implicit in the so-called classics, and demonstrating that attitudes and traditions
reinforcing systematic masculine dominance are inscribed in the literary canon. Another group
practiced what came to be called "gynocriticism," studying writings by women and examining
the female literary tradition to find out how women writers across the ages have perceived
themselves and imagined reality.
While it gradually became customary to refer to an Anglo-American tradition of feminist criticism,
British feminist critics of the 1970s and early 1980s objected to the tendency of some North
American critics to find universal or "essential" feminine attributes, arguing that differences of
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race, class, and culture gave rise to crucial differences among women across space and time.
British feminist critics regarded their own critical practice as more political than that of North
American feminists, emphasizing an engagement with historical process in order to promote
social change.
By the early 1990s, the French, American, and British approaches had so thoroughly critiqued,
influenced, and assimilated one another that nationality no longer automatically signaled a
practitioner’s approach. Today’s critics seldom focus on "woman" as a relatively monolithic
category; rather, they view "women" as members of different societies with different concerns.
Feminists of color, Third World (preferably called postcolonial) feminists, and lesbian feminists
have stressed that women are not defined solely by the fact that they are female; other
attributes (such as religion, class, and sexual orientation) are also important, making the
problems and goals of one group of women different from those of another.
Many commentators have argued that feminist criticism is by definition gender criticism because
of its focus on the feminine gender. But the relationship between feminist and gender criticism
is, in fact, complex; the two approaches are certainly not polar opposites but, rather, exist along
a continuum of attitudes toward sex, sexuality, gender, and language.
Gender Criticism: What Isn't Gender
"Gender criticism" sounds like a euphemism for something. In practice it is a euphemism for
several things, and more than that. One of its subtexts is gay and lesbian criticism. There can
be no mystery about why that highly stigmatic label, though increasingly common, should be
self-applied with care--however proudly--by those of us who do this scholarship. For instance, I
almost never put "gay and lesbian" in the title of undergraduate gay and lesbian studies
courses, though I always use the words in the catalog copy. To ask students to mark their
transcripts permanently with so much as the name of this subject of study would have
unpredictably disabling consequences for them in the future: the military, most churches, the
CIA, and much of the psychoanalytic establishment, to mention only a few plausible
professions, are still unblinking about wanting to exclude suspected lesbians and gay men,
while in only a handful of places in the U.S. does anyone have even nominal legal protection
against the routine denial of employment, housing, insurance, custody, or other rights on the
basis of her or his perceived or supposed sexual orientation. Within and around academic
institutions, as well, there can be similarly persuasive reasons for soft-selling the challenge to an
oppression whose legal, institutional, and extrajudicial sanctions extend, uniquely, quite
uninterruptedly up to the present.
Besides code-naming a range of gay and lesbian-centered theoretical inquiries, "gender
studies" also stands in a usably unmarked relation to another rubric, "feminist studies." Feminist
studies might be defined as the study of the dynamics of gender definition, inequality,
oppression, and change in human societies. To the extent that gender is thus at the definitional
center of feminist studies, "gender studies" can sometimes be used as an alternative name for
feminist studies, euphemistic only in not specifying, as the "feminist" label more than implicitly
does, how far inequality, oppression, and struggle between genders may be seen as
differentially constituting gender itself. Women's studies today is commonly defined, at least in
practice, by the gender of its object of study (at my university, for instance, Women's Studies will
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not cross-list courses unless a majority of the texts read are by women); by contrast to women's
studies, feminist studies, whose name specifies the angle of an inquiry rather than the sex of
either its subject or its object, can make (and indeed has needed to make) the claim of having
as privileged a view of male as of female cultural production.
What, then, can or does distinguish the project of gender studies from that of feminist studies?
In some cases, as I have suggested, "gender studies" is another, equally appropriate way of
designating "feminist studies"--the reasons for offering the emollient name no more than tactical.
In other cases, however, "gender studies" can mean "feminist studies" minus feminism; or, in
another version of the same deadening equation, "women's studies" (in the most positivist
meaning of the term) plus some compensatory entity called "men's studies." Although they offer
an illusion of enhanced inclusiveness, these are the arithmetics that can give "gender studies" a
sinister sound to the very scholars most involved in active gender critique. The assumptions
behind these usages are intellectually as well as politically stultifying. To assume that the study
of gender can be definitionally detached from the analysis and critique of gender inequality,
oppression, and struggle (that is, from some form of feminism) ignores, among other things, the
telling fact that gender analysis per se became possible only under the pressure of the most
pointed and political feminist demand. It ignores, that is to say, the degree to which the
otherwise available analytic tools of Western culture had already been structured by precisely
the need to naturalize or to deny, and hence to allow the continuance of, a gender inequality
already assumed. To figure gender studies as a mere sum of women's studies plus something
called "men's studies," on the other hand, reduces both women's studies and the supposedly
symmetrical men's studies to static denominations of subject matter, and reduces any
understanding of relations between genders to something equally static and additive. That
genders are constituted as such, not only in dialectical relation to one another, but in relation to
the oppression historically exercised by one over the other, is a knowledge repressed by this
impulse toward the separate-but-equal. Things get even worse when the rationale for an
additive gender-studies agenda involves, not a nominally depoliticized and positivist study of
women-as-women and men-as-men, but rather the conscious promotion of masculist viewpoints
(under the men's-studies rubric) as a remedial "balance" against feminist ones.
One can only summon up the foundational feminist assertion that colleges don't need
something called "men's studies" because so much of the rest of the curriculum already fulfills
that function: the function, that is, not only of studying the cultural production of men, but of
furthering the interest many of them have in rationalizing, maintaining, or increasing their gender
privilege over women.
It seems, then, that insofar as "gender studies" actually is the study of gender, its most
substantive and intellectually respectable meanings make it coextensive with "feminist studies,"
and gender criticism coextensive with feminist criticism. Where, in that case, to look for the
distinctive projects of gender criticism beyond its overlap with feminist criticism? In the context
of this volume, where feminist criticism has its own topical assignment, distinct from this chapter
as it is from that devoted to women's literature, it seems particularly possible to insist on the
question. And where, for that matter, to look for the already fecund connection of gender
criticism with the agendas of gay and lesbian-centered critique to which I began by alluding?
Homosexual is not, after all, today understood as the name of a gender, though it alludes to
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gender and is defined by reference to it. Nor has the feminist analysis of mutually-constitutive
relations and oppressions between genders proven to have an adequate purchase on how
relations, identities, and oppressions are constituted, as in the exemplary gay instance, within
them. Yet so far the greatest success--institutionally as well as intellectually--of gender criticism
per se has been specifically in gay and lesbian criticism.
The most distinctive task of gender criticism-not-coextensive-with-feminist criticism may be, not
to do gender analysis, but to explore what resists it: to ask, with respect to certain categories
that can't be a prior disentangled from gender, nonetheless what isn't gender. "Gender criticism"
might here be taken to mean, then, not criticism through the categories of gender analysis, but
criticism of them, mapping of the fractal borderlines between gender and its others. And if gay
and lesbian criticism is so far the typifying site of such interrogations of gender analysis, then
the first other of gender would seem to be, in this defining instance, sexuality.
Standard critical thinking tools, so useful elsewhere, are readily adaptable to the study of
literature. It's possible to analyze, question, interpret, synthesize, and evaluate the literary works
you read in the course of pondering, analyzing and discussing them. Literary criticism is the field
of study which systematizes this sort of activity, and several critical approaches to literature are
possible. Some of the more popular ones, along with their basic tenants, are listed below:
FORMALIST CRITICISM
1. Literature is a form of knowledge with intrinsic elements--style, structure, imagery, tone, and
genre.
2. What gives a literary work status as art, or as a great work of art, is how all of its elements
work together to create the reader's total experience (thought, feeling, gut reactions, etc.)
3. The appreciation of literature as an art requires close reading--a careful, step-by-step
analysis and explication of the text (the language of the work). An analysis may follow from
questions like, how do various elements work together to shape the effect on the reader?
4. Style and theme influence each other and can't be separated if meaning is to be retained. It's
this interdependence in form and content that makes a text "literary." "Extracting" elements in
isolation (theme, character, ploy, setting, etc.) may destroy a reader's aesthetic experience of
the whole.
5. Formalist critics don't deny the historical, political situation of a work; they just believe works
of art have the power to transcend by being "organic wholes"--akin to a being with a life of its
own.
6. Formalist criticism is evaluative in that it differentiates great works of art from poor works of
art. Other kinds of criticism don't necessarily concern themselves with this distinction.
7. Formalist criticism is decidedly a "scientific" approach to literary analysis, focusing on "facts
amenable to "verification" (evidence in the text).
BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM
1. Real life experience can help shape (either directly or indirectly) an author's work.
2. Understanding an author's life can help us better understand the work.
3. Facts from the author's life are used to help the reader better understand the work; the
focus is always on the literary work under investigation.
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Biographical criticism begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual
people and that understanding an author’s life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend
the work. Anyone who reads the biography of a writer quickly sees how much an author’s
experience shapes—both directly and indirectly—what he or she creates. Reading that
biography will also change (and usually deepen) our response to the work. Sometimes even
knowing a single important fact illuminates our reading of a poem or story. Learning, for
example, that Josephine Miles was confined to a wheelchair or that Weldon Kees committed
suicide at forty-one will certainly make us pay attention to certain aspects of their poems we
might otherwise have missed or considered unimportant. A formalist critic might complain that
we would also have noticed those things through careful textual analysis, but biographical
information provided the practical assistance of underscoring subtle but important meanings in
the poems. Though many literary theorists have assailed biographical criticism on philosophical
grounds, the biographical approach to literature has never disappeared because of its obvious
practical advantage in illuminating literary texts.
It may be helpful here to make a distinction between biography and biographical criticism.
Biography is, strictly speaking, a branch of history; it provides a written account of a person’s
life. To establish and interpret the facts of a poet’s life, for instance, a biographer would use all
the available information—not just personal documents like letters and diaries, but also the
poems for the possible light they might shed on the subject’s life. A biographical critic,however,
is not concerned with recreating the record of an author’s life. Biographical criticism focuses on
explicating the literary work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the author’s life. Quite
often biographical critics, like Brett C. Millier in her discussion of Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,”
will examine the drafts of a poem or story to see both how the work came into being and how it
might have been changed from its autobiographical origins.
A reader, however, must use biographical interpretations cautiously. Writers are notorious for
revising the facts of their own lives; they often delete embarrassments and invent
accomplishments while changing the details of real episodes to improve their literary impact.
John Cheever, for example, frequently told reporters about his sunny, privileged youth; after the
author’s death, his biographer Scott Donaldson discovered a childhood scarred by a distant
mother, a failed, alcoholic father, and nagging economic uncertainty. Likewise, Cheever’s
outwardly successful adulthood was plagued by alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, and family
tension. The chilling facts of Cheever’s life significantly changed the way critics read his stories.
The danger in a famous writer s case—Sylvia Plath and F. Scott Fitzgerald are two modern
examples—is that the life story can overwhelm and eventually distort the work. A savvy
biographical critic always remembers to base an interpretation on what is in the text itself;
biographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with irrelevant
material.
HISTORICAL CRITICISM
1. Historical criticism investigates the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it.
This investigation includes the author's biography and the social milieu.
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2. Historical criticism often seeks to understand the impact of a work in its day, and it may
also explore how meanings change over time.
3. Historical criticism explores how time and place of creation affect meaning in the work.
Historical criticism seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and
intellectual context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography
and milieu. Historical critics are less concerned with explaining a work’s literary significance for
today’s readers than with helping us understand the work by recreating, as nearly as possible,
the exact meaning and impact it had on its original audience. A historical reading of a literary
work begins by exploring the possible ways in which the meaning of the text has changed over
time. The analysis of William Blake’s poem “London”, for instance, carefully examines how
certain words had different connotations for the poem’s original readers than they do today. It
also explores the probable associations an eighteenth— century English reader would have
made with certain images and characters, like the poem’s persona, the chimney-sweeper—a
type of exploited child laborer who, fortunately, no longer exists in our society.
Reading ancient literature, no one doubts the value of historical criticism. There have been so
many social, cultural, and linguistic changes that some older texts are incomprehensible without
scholarly assistance. But historical criticism can even help us better understand modern texts.
To return to Weldon Kees’s “For My Daughter,” for example, we learn a great deal by
considering two rudimentary historical facts—the year in which the poem was first published
(1940) and the nationality of its author (American)—and then asking ourselves how this
information has shaped the meaning of the poem. In 1940, war had already broken out in
Europe and most Americans realized that their country, still recovering from the Depression,
would soon be drawn into it; for a young man, like Kees, the future seemed bleak, uncertain,
and personally dangerous. Even this simple historical analysis helps explain at least part of the
bitter pessimism of Kees’s poem, though a psychological critic would rightly insist that Kees’s
dark personality also played a crucial role. In writing a paper on a poem, you might explore how
the time and place of its creation affected its meaning. For a splendid example of how to
recreate the historical context of a poem’s genesis, read the following account by Hugh Kenner
of Ezra Pound’s imagistic “In a Station of the Metro.”
PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM
1. These critics hold the belief that great literature truthfully reflects life and is a realistic
representation of human motivation and behavior.
2. Psychological critics may choose to focus on the creative process of the artist, the artist's
motivation or behavior, or analyze fictional characters' motivations and behaviors.
Modern psychology has had an immense effect on both literature and literary criticism. Sigmund
Freud’s psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behavior by exploring new or
controversial areas like wish-fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression. Freud also
expanded our sense of how language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to
reflect unconscious fears or desires. Freud admitted that he himself had learned a great deal
about psychology from studying literature: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Dostoevsky
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were as important to the development of his ideas as were his clinical studies. Some of Freud’s
most influential writing was, in a broad sense, literary criticism, such as his psychoanalytic
examination of Sophocles’ Oedipus.
This famous section of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) often raises an important question
for students: was Freud implying that Sophocles knew or shared Freud’s theories? (Variations
of this question can be asked for most critical approaches: does using a critical approach
require that the author under scrutiny believed in it?) The answer is, of course, no; in analyzing
Sophocles’ Oedipus, Freud paid the classical Greek dramatist the considerable compliment that
the playwright had such profound insight into human nature that his characters display the depth
and complexity of real people. In focusing on literature, Freud and his disciples like Carl Jung,
Ernest Jones, Marie Bonaparte, and Bruno Bettelheim endorse the belief that great literature
truthfully reflects life.
Psychological criticism is a diverse category, but it often employs three approaches. First, it
investigates the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and how does
it relate to normal mental functions? (Philosophers and poets have also wrestled with this
question, as you can see in selections from Plato and Wordsworth in the “Criticism: On Poetry” )
The second major area for psychological criticism is the psychological study of a particular
artist. Most modern literary biographies employ psychology to understand their subject’s
motivations and behavior. One recent book, Diane Middlebrook’s controversial Anne Sexton: A
Biography, actually used tapes of the poet’s sessions with her psychiatrist as material for the
study. The third common area of psychological criticism is the analysis of fictional characters.
Freud’s study of Oedipus is the prototype for this approach that tries to bring modern insights
about human behavior into the study of how fictional people act.
E.g.: Sigmund Freud (1856—1939)
THE DESTINY OF OEDIPUS
If Oedipus the King moves a modern audience no less than it did the contemporary Greek one,
the explanation can only be that its effect does not lie in the contrast between destiny and
human will, but is to be looked for in the particular nature of the material on which that contrast
is exemplified. There must be something which makes a voice within us ready to recognize the
compelling force of destiny in the Oedipus, while we can dismiss as merely arbitrary such
dispositions as are laid down in Die Ahnfrau or other modern tragedies of destiny. And a factor
of this kind is in fact involved in the story of King Oedipus. His destiny moves us only because it
might have been ours—because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as
upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother
and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us
that that is so. King Oedipus, who slew his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta, merely
shows us the fulfillment of our own childhood wishes. But, more fortunate than he, we have
meanwhile succeeded, insofar as we have not become psychoneurotics, in detaching our
sexual impulses from our mothers and in forgetting our jealousy of our fathers. Here is one in
whom these primeval wishes of our childhood have been fulfilled, and we shrink back from him
with the whole..........
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E. g. Hamlet’s Philosophical and Psychological Dilemma in His “To Be or Not to Be” Soliloquy;
MYTHOLOGICAL CRITICISM
1. Mythological criticism studies recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works (for
example, "the hero's journey").
2. It combines insights from a variety of academic disciplines--anthropology, psychology,
history, comparative religion...it concerns itself with demonstrating how the individual
imagination shares a common humanity by identifying common symbols, images, plots, etc.
3. Mythological critics identify "archetypes" (symbols, characters, situations, or images evoking
a universal response).
Mythological critics look for the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works.
(“Myth and Narrative,” for a definition of myth and a discussion of its importance to the literary
imagination.) Mythological criticism is an interdisciplinary approach that combines the insights of
anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion. If psychological criticism examines
the artist as an individual, mythological criticism explores the artist’s common humanity by
tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures
and epochs.
A central concept in mythological criticism is the archetype, a symbol, character, situation, or
image that evokes a deep universal response. The idea of the archetype came into literary
criticism from the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a lifetime student of myth and religion. Jung
believed that all individuals share a “collective unconscious,” a set of primal memories common
to the human race, existing below each person’s conscious mind.
Archetypal images (which often relate to experiencing primordial phenomena like the sun,
moon, fire, night, and blood), Jung believed, trigger the collective unconscious. We do not need
to accept the literal truth of the collective unconscious, however, to endorse the archetype as a
helpful critical concept. The late Northrop Frye defined the archetype in considerably less occult
terms as “a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable
as an element of one’s literary experience as a whole.”
Identifying archetypal symbols and situations in literary works, mythological critics almost
inevitably link the individual text under discussion to a broader context of works that share an
underlying pattern. In discussing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for instance, a mythological critic might
relate Shakespeare’s Danish prince to other mythic sons avenging their fathers’ deaths, like
Orestes from Greek myth or Sigmund of Norse legend; or, in discussingOthello, relate the
sinister figure of Iago to the devil in traditional Christian belief. Critic Joseph Campbell took such
comparisons even further; his compendious study The Hero with a Thousand Faces
demonstrates how similar mythic characters appear in virtually every culture on every continent.
E.g. Northrop Frye (1912—1991)
MYTHIC ARCHETYPES
We begin our study of archetypes, then, with a world of myth, an abstract or purely literary world
of fictional and thematic design, unaffected by canons of plausible adaptation to familiar
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experience. In terms of narrative, myth is the imitation of actions near or at the conceivable
limits of desire. The gods enjoy beautiful women, fight one another with prodigious strength,
comfort and assist man, or else watch his miseries from the height of their immortal freedom.
The fact that myth operates at the top level of human desire does not mean that it necessarily
presents its world as attained or attainable by human beings. . .
Eg. “Lucifer in Shakespeare’s Othello”；
MARXIST (SOCIOLOGICAL) CRITICISM
1. These critics examine literature in its cultural, economic, and political context; they explore
the relation between the artist and the soceity--how might the profession of authorship have
affected what's been written?
2. It is concerned with the social content of literary works, pursuing such questions as: What
cultural, economic or political values does the text implicitly or explicitly promote? What is the
role of the audience in shaping what's been written?
3. Marxist critics assume that all art is political.
4. Marxist critics judge a work's "ideology"--giving rise to such terms as "political correctness."
Sociological criticism examines literature in the cultural, economic, and political context in which
it is written or received. “Art is not created in a vacuum,” critic Wilbur Scott observed, “it is the
work not simply of a person, but of an author fixed in time and space, answering a community of
which he is an important, because articulate part.” Sociological criticism explores the
relationships between the artist and society. Sometimes it looks at the sociological status of the
author to evaluate how the profession of the writer in a particular milieu affected what was
written. Sociological criticism also analyzes the social content of literary works—what cultural,
economic or political values a particular text implicitly or explicitly promotes. Finally, sociological
criticism examines the role the audience has in shaping literature.
A sociological view of Shakespeare, for example, might look at the economic position of
Elizabethan playwrights and actors; it might also study the political ideas expressed in the plays
or discuss how the nature of an Elizabethan theatrical audience (which was usually all male
unless the play was produced at court) helped determine the subject, tone, and language of the
plays.
An influential type of sociological criticism has been Marxist criticism, which focuses on the
economic and political elements of art. Marxist criticism, like the work of the Hungarian
philosopher Georg Lukacs, often explores the ideological content of literature. Whereas a
formalist critic would maintain that form and content are inextricably blended, Lukacs believed
that content determines form and that therefore, all art is political. Even if a work of art ignores
political issues, it makes a political statement, Marxist critics believe, because it endorses the
economic and political status quo. Consequently, Marxist criticism is frequently evaluative and
judges some literary work better than others on an ideological basis; this tendency can lead to
reductive judgment, as when Soviet critics rated Jack London a novelist superior to William
Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the
principles of class struggle more clearly. But, as an analytical tool, Marxist criticism, like other
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sociological methods, can illuminate political and economic dimensions of literature other
approaches overlook.
E.g. Heathcliff: A Product of Social Environment; The American Dream in The Great Gatsby;
Collapse of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman; The Twisted Human Nature in
Wuthering Heights
READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM
1. This type of criticism attempts to describe the internal workings of the reader's mental
processes. it recognizes reading as a creative act, a creative process.
2. No text is self-contained, independent of a reader's interpretive design.
3. The plurality of readings possible are all explored. Critics study how different readers see the
same text differently, and how religious, cultural, and social values affect readings.
4. Instead of focusing only on the values embedded in the text, this type of criticism studies the
values embedded in the reader. Intersections between the two are explored.
Reader-response criticism attempts to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while
interpreting a text. If traditional criticism assumes that imaginative writing is a creative act,
reader-response theory recognizes that reading is also a creative process. Reader-response
critics believe that no text provides self-contained meaning; literary texts do not exist
independently of readers’ interpretations. A text, according to this critical school, is not finished
until it is read and interpreted. The practical problem then arises that no two individuals
necessarily read a text in exactly the same way. Rather than declare one interpretation correct
and the other mistaken, reader-response criticism recognizes the inevitable plurality of
readings. Instead of trying to ignore or reconcile the contradictions inherent in this situation, it
explores them.
The easiest way to explain reader-response criticism is to relate it to the common experience of
rereading a favorite book after many years. Rereading a novel as an adult, for example, that
“changed your life” as an adolescent, is often a shocking experience. The book may seem
substantially different. The character you remembered liking most now seems less admirable,
and another character you disliked now seems more sympathetic. Has the book changed? Very
unlikely, but you certainly have in the intervening years. Reader-response criticism explores
how the different individuals (or classes of individuals) see the same text differently. It
emphasizes how religious, cultural, and social values affect readings; it also overlaps with
gender criticism in exploring how men and women read the same text with different
assumptions.
While reader-response criticism rejects the notion that there can be a single correct reading for
a literary text, it doesn’t consider all readings permissible. Each text creates limits to its possible
interpretations. As Stanley Fish admits in the following critical selection, we cannot arbitrarily
place an Eskimo in William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily” (though Professor Fish does
ingeniously imagine a hypothetical situation where this bizarre interpretation might actually be
possible) poem would be forthcoming. This poem is not only a “refusal to mourn,” like that of
Dylan Thomas, it is a refusal to elegize. The whole elegiac tradition, like its cousin the funeral
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oration, turns finally away from mourning toward acceptance, revival, renewal, a return to the
concerns of life, symbolized by the very writing of the poem. Life goes on; there is an audience;
and the mourned person will live through accomplishments, influence, descendants, and also
(not least) in the elegiac poem itself. Merwin rejects all that. If I wrote an elegy for X, the person
for whom I have always written, X would not be alive to read it; therefore, there is no reason to
write an elegy for the one person in my life who most deserves one; therefore, there is no
reason to write any elegy, anymore, ever.
DECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM (deconstruction)
1. Deconstructive critics believe that language does not accurately reflect reality because it's an
unstable medium; literary texts therefore have no stable meaning.
2. Deconstructive criticism resembles formalist criticism in its close attention to the text, its
close analysis of individual words and images. There the similarity ends, because their aims are
in fact opposite. Whereas formalist criticism is interested in "aesthetic wholes" or constructs,
deconstructionists aim to demonstrate irreconcilable positions--they destruct (or deconstruct)--
by proving the instability of language, its inability to express anything definite.
Deconstructionist criticism rejects the traditional assumption that language can accurately
represent reality. Language, according to deconstructionists, is a fundamentally unstable
medium; consequently, literary texts, which are made up of words, have no fixed, single
meaning. Deconstructionists insist, according to critic Paul de Man, on “the impossibility of
making the actual expression coincide with what has to be expressed, of making the actual
signs coincide with what is signified.” Since they believe that literature cannot definitively
express its subject matter, deconstructionists tend to shift their attention away from what is
being said to how language is being used in a text.
Paradoxically, deconstructionist criticism often resembles formalist criticism; both methods
usually involve close reading. But while a formalist usually tries to demonstrate how the diverse
elements of a text cohere into meaning, the deconstructionist approach attempts to show how
the text “deconstructs,” that is, how it can be broken down—by a skeptical critic— into mutually
irreconcilable positions. A biographical or historical critic might seek to establish the author’s
intention as a means to interpreting a literary work, but deconstructionists reject the notion that
the critic should endorse the myth of authorial control over language. Deconstructionist critics
like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have therefore called for “the death of the author,” that
is, the rejection of the assumption that the author, no matter how ingenious, can fully control the
meaning of a text. They have also announced the death of literature as a special category of
writing. In their view, poems and novels are merely words on a page that deserve no privileged
status as art; all texts are created equal—equally untrustworthy, that is.
Deconstructionists focus on how language is used to achieve power. Since they believe, in the
words of critic David Lehman, that “there are no truths, only rival interpretations,”
deconstructionists try to understand how some “interpretations come to be regarded as truth. A
major goal of deconstruction is to demonstrate how those supposed truths are at best
provisional and at worst contradictory.
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Deconstruction, as you may have inferred, calls for intellectual subtlety and skill, and isn’t for a
novice to leap into. If you pursue your literary studies beyond the introductory stage, you will
want to become more familiar with its assumptions. Deconstruction may strike you as a
negative, even destructive, critical approach, and yet its best practitioners are adept at exposing
the inadequacy of much conventional criticism. By patient analysis, they can sometimes open
up the most familiar text and find in it fresh and unexpected significance.
Task Sheet 2.1

Literary Criticism
Let’s do this!
Take a video of yourself sharing your reflections about the different approaches in
literary criticism. Include at least two major characteristics of each approach. You may
also share your most favorite approaches among the identified approaches given to you
in the information sheet.

American Literature
American Literature is literature predominantly written or produced in English in
the United States of America and its preceding colonies. Before the founding of the
United States, the British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States
were heavily influenced by English literature. The American literary tradition thus began
as part of the broader tradition of English literature. However, a small amount of
literature exists in other immigrant languages and Native American tribes have a rich
tradition of oral storytelling.
The American Revolutionary Period (1775-83) is notable for the political writings
of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton,Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. An
early novel is William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy published in 1791.
Writer and critic John Neal in the early-mid nineteenth century helped advance
America's progress toward a unique literature and culture, by criticizing predecessors
like Washington Irving for imitating their British counterparts and influencing others
like Edgar Allan Poe. Ralph Waldo Emerson pioneered the
influential Transcendentalism movement, Henry David Thoreau author of Walden, was
influenced by this movement. The political conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired the
writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe. These efforts were supported by the continuation of
slave narratives.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) is an early American classic novel and

Hawthorne influenced Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick (1851). Major American
poets of the nineteenth century include Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Edgar Allan
Poe was another significant writer who greatly influence later authors. Mark Twain was
the first major American writer to be born away from the East Coast. Henry
James achieved international recognition with novels like The Portrait of a Lady (1881).
American writers expressed both disillusionment and nostalgia following World War I.
The short stories and novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the mood of the 1920s,
and John Dos Passos wrote about the war. Ernest Hemingway became famous
with The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms; in 1954, he won the Nobel Prize in
Literature. William Faulkner was another major novelist. American poets also included
international figures: Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, and E. E.
Cummings. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel Prize. In the mid-twentieth
century, drama was dominated by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, as well as
the musical theatre.
Depression era writers included John Steinbeck, author of The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
America's involvement in World War II influenced works such as Norman Mailer's The
Naked and the Dead (1948), Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut
Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).
One of the developments in late 20th century and early 21st century has been an
increase in the literature written by ethnic, Native American,
and LGBT writers; Postmodernism has also been important during the same period.
Colonial literature
The British colonies have often been regarded as the center of early American
literature. However, the first European settlements in North America had been founded
elsewhere many years earlier, and the dominance of the English language was not
inevitable. The first item printed in Pennsylvania was in German and was the largest
book printed in any of the colonies before the American Revolution. Spanish and French
had two of the strongest colonial literary traditions in the areas that now comprise the
United States, and discussions of early American literature commonly include texts
by Samuel de Champlain alongside English language texts by Thomas Harriot and John
Smith. Moreover, a wealth of oral literary traditions already existing on the continent
among the numerous different Native American tribes. Political events, however, would
eventually make English the lingua franca for the colonies at large as well as the literary
language of choice, and when the English conquered New Amsterdam in 1664, they
renamed it New York and changed the administrative language from Dutch to English.
From 1696 to 1700, only about 250 separate items were issued from the major printing
presses in the American colonies. This is a small number compared to the output of the
printers in London at the time. London printers published materials written by New
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England authors, so the body of American literature was larger than what was published
in North America. However, printing was established in the American colonies before it
was allowed in most of England. In England, restrictive laws had long confined printing
to four locations, where the government could monitor what was published: London,
York, Oxford, and Cambridge. Because of this, the colonies ventured into the modern
world earlier than their provincial English counterparts
Back then, some of the American literature were pamphlets and writings extolling the
benefits of the colonies to both a European and colonist audience. Captain John
Smith could be considered the first American author with his works: A True Relation of
Such Occurrences and Accidents of Noate as Hath Happened in Virginia... (1608)
and The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624).
Other writers of this manner included Daniel Denton, Thomas Ashe, William
Penn, George Percy, William Strachey, Daniel Coxe, Gabriel Thomas, and John
Lawson.
The religious disputes that prompted settlement in America were important topics of
early American literature. A journal written by John Winthrop, The History of New
England, discussed the religious foundations of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Edward
Winslow also recorded a diary of the first years after the Mayflower's arrival. "A modell
of Christian Charity" by John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, was a
Sermon preached on the Arbella (the flagship of the Winthrop Fleet) in 1630. This work
outlined the ideal society that he and the other Separatists would build in an attempt to
realize a "Puritan utopia". Other religious writers included Increase Mather and William
Bradford, author of the journal published as a History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–47.
Others like Roger Williams and Nathaniel Ward more fiercely argued state and church
separation. And still others, like Thomas Morton, cared little for the church; Morton's The
New English Canaan mocked the religious settlers and declared that the Native
Americans were actually better people than the British.
Other late writings described conflicts and interaction with the Indians, as seen in
writings by Daniel Gookin, Alexander Whitaker, John Mason, Benjamin Church,
and Daniel J. Tan. John Eliot translated the Bible into the Algonquin language (1663)
as Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God.[8] It was the first complete Bible
printed in the Western hemisphere; Stephen Daye printed 1,000 copies on the first
printing press in the American colonies.
Of the second generation of New England settlers, Cotton Mather stands out as a
theologian and historian, who wrote the history of the colonies with a view to God's
activity in their midst and to connecting the Puritan leaders with the great heroes of the
Christian faith. His best-known works include the Magnalia Christi Americana (1702),
the Wonders of the Invisible World and The Biblia Americana.
Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield represented the Great Awakening, a religious
revival in the early 18th century that emphasized Calvinism. Other Puritan and religious
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writers include Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, John Wise, and Samuel Willard.

Less strict and serious writers included Samuel Sewall (who wrote a diary revealing the
daily life of the late 17th century), and Sarah Kemble Knight.
New England was not the only area in the colonies with a literature: southern literature
was also growing at this time. The diary of William Byrd and his The History of the
Dividing Line (1728) described the expedition to survey the swamp between Virginia
and North Carolina but also comments on the differences between American
Indians and the white settlers in the area.In a similar book, Travels through North and
South Carolina, Georgia, East and West, William Bartram described the Southern
landscape and the Indian tribes he encountered; Bartram's book was popular in Europe,
being translated into German, French and Dutch.
As the colonies moved toward independence from Britain, an important discussion of
American culture and identity came from the French immigrant J. Hector St. John de
Crèvecœur, whose Letters from an American Farmer (1782) addresses the question
"What is an American?" by moving between praise for the opportunities and peace
offered in the new society and recognition that the solid life of the farmer must rest
uneasily between the oppressive aspects of the urban life and the lawless aspects of
the frontier, where the lack of social structures leads to the loss of civilized living.
This same period saw the beginning of black literature, through the poet Phillis
Wheatley and the slave narrative of Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789). At this time American Indian literature also began to
flourish. Samson Occom published his A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses
Paul and a popular hymnbook, Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, "the first Indian
best-seller".
Revolutionary Period
The Revolutionary period also contained political writings, including those by
colonists Samuel Adams, Josiah Quincy, John Dickinson, and Joseph Galloway, the
last being a loyalist to the crown. Two key figures were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas
Paine. Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac and The Autobiography of Benjamin
Franklin are esteemed works with their wit and influence toward the formation of a
budding American identity. Paine's pamphlet Common Sense and The American
Crisis writings are seen as playing a key role in influencing the political tone of the time.
During the Revolutionary War, poems and songs such as "Nathan Hale" were popular.
Major satirists included John Trumbull and Francis Hopkinson. Philip Morin
Freneau also wrote poems about the War.
During the 18th century, writing shifted from the Puritanism of Winthrop and Bradford to
Enlightenment ideas of reason. The belief that human and natural occurrences were
messages from God no longer fit with the budding anthropocentric culture. Many
intellectuals believed that the human mind could comprehend the universe through the
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laws of physics as described by Isaac Newton. One of these was Cotton Mather. The
first book published in North America that promoted Newton and natural theology was
Mather's The Christian Philosopher (1721). The enormous scientific, economic, social,
and philosophical, changes of the 18th century, called the Enlightenment, impacted the
authority of clergyman and scripture, making way for democratic principles. The
increase in population helped account for the greater diversity of opinion in religious and
political life as seen in the literature of this time. In 1670, the population of the colonies
numbered approximately 111,000. Thirty years later it was more than 250,000. By 1760,
it reached 1,600,000.[5] The growth of communities and therefore social life led people to
become more interested in the progress of individuals and their shared experience in
the colonies. These new ideas can be seen in the popularity of Benjamin
Franklin's Autobiography.
Even earlier than Franklin was Cadwallader Colden (1689 - 1776), whose book The
History of the Five Indian Nations, published in 1727 was one of the first texts critical of
the treatment of the Iroquois in upstate New York by the English. Colden also wrote a
book on botany, which attracted the attention of Carl Linnaeus, and he maintained a
long term correspondence with Benjamin Franklin.
Post-independence
In the post-war period, Thomas Jefferson established his place in American literature
through his authorship of the United States Declaration of Independence, his influence
on the United States Constitution, his autobiography, his Notes on the State of Virginia,
and his many letters. The Federalist essays by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison,
and John Jay presented a significant historical discussion of American government
organization and republican values. Fisher Ames, James Otis, and Patrick Henry are
also valued for their political writings and orations.
Early American literature struggled to find a unique voice in existing literary genre, and
this tendency was reflected in novels. European styles were frequently imitated, but
critics usually considered the imitations inferior.
The First American Novel
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the first American novels were published.
These fictions were too lengthy to be printed as manuscript or public reading.
Publishers took a chance on these works in hopes they would become steady sellers
and need to be reprinted. This scheme was ultimately successful because male and
female literacy rates were increasing at the time. Among the first American novels
are Thomas Attwood Digges's Adventures of Alonso, published in London in 1775
and William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy published in 1789. Brown's novel
depicts a tragic love story between siblings who fell in love without knowing they were
related.
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In the next decade important women writers also published novels. Susanna Rowson is
best known for her novel Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, published in London in 1791. [12] In
1794 the novel was reissued in Philadelphia under the title, Charlotte Temple. Charlotte
Temple is a seduction tale, written in the third person, which warns against listening to
the voice of love and counsels resistance. She also wrote nine novels, six theatrical
works, two collections of poetry, six textbooks, and countless songs. Reaching more
than a million and a half readers over a century and a half, Charlotte Temple was the
biggest seller of the 19th century before Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Although Rowson
was extremely popular in her time and is often acknowledged in accounts of the
development of the early American novel, Charlotte Temple often is criticized as a
sentimental novel of seduction.
Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette: Or, the History of Eliza Wharton was published
in 1797 and was extremely popular. Told from Foster's point of view and based on the
real life of Eliza Whitman, the novel is about a woman who is seduced and abandoned.
Eliza is a "coquette" who is courted by two very different men: a clergyman who offers
her a comfortable domestic life and a noted libertine. Unable to choose between them,
she finds herself single when both men get married. She eventually yields to the artful
libertine and gives birth to an illegitimate stillborn child at an inn. The Coquette is
praised for its demonstration of the era's contradictory ideas of womanhood. even as it
has been criticized for delegitimizing protest against women's subordination. [15]
Both The Coquette and Charlotte Temple are novels that treat the right of women to live
as equals as the new democratic experiment. These novels are of the Sentimental
genre, characterized by overindulgence in emotion, an invitation to listen to the voice of
reason against misleading passions, as well as an optimistic overemphasis on the
essential goodness of humanity. Sentimentalism is often thought to be a reaction
against the Calvinistic belief in the depravity of human nature. [16] While many of these
novels were popular, the economic infrastructure of the time did not allow these writers
to make a living through their writing alone.[17]
Charles Brockden Brown is the earliest American novelist whose works are still
commonly read. He published Wieland in 1798, and in 1799 published Ormond, Edgar
Huntly, and Arthur Mervyn. These novels are of the Gothic genre.
The first writer to be able to support himself through the income generated by his
publications alone was Washington Irving. He completed his first major book in 1809
titled A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch
Dynasty.
Of the picaresque genre, Hugh Henry Brackenridge published Modern Chivalry in 1792-
1815; Tabitha Gilman Tenney wrote Female Quixotism: Exhibited in the Romantic
Opinions and Extravagant Adventure of Dorcasina Sheldon in 1801; Royall Tyler
wrote The Algerine Captive in 1797.
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Other notable authors include William Gilmore Simms, who wrote Martin Faber in

1833, Guy Rivers in 1834, and The Yemassee in 1835. Lydia Maria
Child wrote Hobomok in 1824 and The Rebels in 1825. John Neal wrote Keep Cool in
1817, Logan, A Family History in 1822, Seventy-Six in 1823, Randolph in
1823, Errata in 1823, Brother Jonathan in 1825, and Rachel Dyer (earliest use of
the Salem witch trials as the basis for a novel[19]) in 1828. Catherine Maria
Sedgwick wrote A New England Tale in 1822, Redwood in 1824, Hope Leslie in 1827,
and The Linwoods in 1835. James Kirke Paulding wrote The Lion of the West in
1830, The Dutchman's Fireside in 1831, and Westward Ho! in 1832. Omar ibn Said, a
Muslim slave in the Carolinas, wrote an autobiography in Arabic in 1831, considered an
early example of African-American literature.[20][21][22] Robert Montgomery
Bird wrote Calavar in 1834 and Nick of the Woods in 1837. James Fenimore
Cooper was a notable author best known for his novel The Last of the Mohicans written
in 1826.[16] George Tucker produced in 1824 the first fiction of Virginia colonial life
with The Valley of Shenandoah. He followed in 1827 with one of the country's first
science fictions: A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Manners and
Customs, Science and Philosophy, of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians.
19th century – Unique American style

John Neal
After the War of 1812, there was an increasing desire to produce a uniquely American
literature and culture, and a number of literary figures emerged, among
them Washington Irving, William Cullen Bryant, and James Fenimore Cooper. Irving
wrote humorous works in Salmagundi and the satire A History of New York, by Diedrich
Knickerbocker (1809). Bryant wrote early romantic and nature-inspired poetry, which
evolved away from their European origins. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales about Natty
Bumppo (which includes The Last of the Mohicans, 1826) were popular both in the new
country and abroad.
John Neal's early works in the 1810s and 1820s played a formidable role in the
developing American style of literature. [23] He criticised Irving and Cooper for relying on
old British conventions of authorship to frame American phenomena, [24] arguing that “to
succeed...[the American writer] must resemble nobody…[he] must be unlike all that
have gone before [him]” and issue “another Declaration of Independence, in the great
Republic of Letters. As a pioneer of the literary device he alternately referred to as
“talk[ing] on paper” or "natural writing Neal was “the first in America to be natural in his
diction’ and his work represents “the first deviation from...Irvingesque graciousness.
In 1832, Edgar Allan Poe began writing short stories – including "The Masque of the
Red Death", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Fall of the House of Usher", and "The
Murders in the Rue Morgue" – that explore previously hidden levels of human
psychology and push the boundaries of fiction toward mystery and fantasy.
Humorous writers were also popular and included Seba Smith and Benjamin Penhallow
Shillaber in New England and Davy Crockett, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson J.
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Hooper, Thomas Bangs Thorpe, and George Washington Harris writing about the

American frontier.
The New England Brahmins were a group of writers connected to Harvard
University and Cambridge, Massachusetts. They included James Russell Lowell, Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a former minister, published his essay Nature, which
argued that men should dispense with organized religion and reach a lofty spiritual state
by studying and interacting with the natural world. Emerson's work influenced the writers
who formed the movement now known as Transcendentalism, while Emerson also
influenced the public through his lectures.
Among the leaders of the Transcendental movement was Henry David Thoreau, a
nonconformist and a close friend of Emerson. After living mostly by himself for two
years in a cabin by a wooded pond, Thoreau wrote Walden (1854), a memoir that urges
resistance to the dictates of society. Thoreau's writings demonstrate a strong American
tendency toward individualism. Other Transcendentalists included Amos Bronson
Alcott, Margaret Fuller, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, and Jones Very.[30]
As one of the great works of the Revolutionary period was written by a Frenchman, so
too was a work about America from this generation. Alexis de Tocqueville's two-
volume Democracy in America (1836&1840)described his travels through the young
nation, making observations about the relations between American politics,
individualism, and community.
The political conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired the writings of William Lloyd
Garrison and his paper The Liberator, along with poet John Greenleaf
Whittier and Harriet Beecher Stowe in her world-famous Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).
These efforts were supported by the continuation of the slave narrative autobiography.
In 1837, the young Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) collected some of his stories
as Twice-Told Tales, a volume rich in symbolism and occult incidents. Hawthorne went
on to write full-length "romances", quasi-allegorical novels that explore the themes of
guilt, pride, and emotional repression in New England. His masterpiece, The Scarlet
Letter (1850), is a drama about a woman cast out of her community for committing
adultery.
Hawthorne's fiction had a profound impact on his friend Herman Melville (1819–1891),
who first made a name for himself by turning material from his seafaring days into exotic
sea narrative novels. Inspired by Hawthorne's focus on allegories and psychology,
Melville went on to write romances replete with philosophical speculation. In Moby-
Dick (1851), an adventurous whaling voyage becomes the vehicle for examining such
themes as obsession, the nature of evil, and human struggle against the elements.
In the short novel Billy Budd, Melville dramatizes the conflicting claims of duty and
compassion on board a ship in time of war. His more profound books sold poorly, and
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he had been long forgotten by the time of his death. He was rediscovered in the early
20th century.
Anti-transcendental works from Melville, Hawthorne, and Poe all comprise the Dark
Romanticism sub-genre of popular literature at this time.
Ethnic, African American and Native American writers
Slave narrative autobiography from this period include Frederick Douglass's Narrative of

the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and Harriet
Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). At this time, American Indian
autobiography develops, most notably in William Apess's A Son of the Forest (1829)
and George Copway's The Life, History and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (1847).
Moreover, minority authors were beginning to publish fiction, as in William Wells
Brown's Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853), Frank J. Webb's The Garies and
Their Friends, (1857) Martin Delany's Blake; or, The Huts of America (1859-62
and Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a Free Black(1859) as early
African American novels, and John Rollin Ridge's The Life and Adventures of Joaquín
Murieta (1854), which is considered the first Native American novel but which also is an
early story about Mexican American issues.
Late 19th century Realist fiction
Mark Twain (the pen name used by Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) was
among the first major American writers to be born away from the East Coast – in the
border state of Missouri. His regional masterpieces were the memoir Life on the
Mississippi and the novels Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn (1884). Twain's style – influenced by journalism, wedded to the vernacular, direct
and unadorned but also highly evocative and irreverently humorous – changed the way
Americans write their language. His characters speak like real people and sound
distinctively American, using local dialects, newly invented words, and regional accents.
Other writers interested in regional differences and dialect were George W.
Cable, Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris, Mary Noailles Murfree (Charles
Egbert Craddock), Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Henry Cuyler Bunner,
and William Sydney Porter (O. Henry). A version of local color regionalism that focused
on minority experiences can be seen in the works of Charles W. Chesnutt (African
American), of María Ruiz de Burton, one of the earliest Mexican American novelists to
write in English, and in the Yiddish-inflected works of Abraham Cahan.
William Dean Howells also represented the realist tradition through his novels,
including The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) and his work as editor of The Atlantic
Monthly.
Henry James (1843–1916) confronted the Old World-New World dilemma by writing
directly about it. Although he was born in New York City, James spent most of his adult
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life in England. Many of his novels center on Americans who live in or travel to Europe.
With its intricate, highly qualified sentences and dissection of emotional and
psychological nuance, James's fiction can be daunting. Among his more accessible
works are the novellas Daisy Miller (1878), about an American girl in Europe, and The
Turn of the Screw (1898), a ghost story.
Stephen Crane (1871–1900), best known for his Civil War novel The Red Badge of
Courage (1895), depicted the life of New York City prostitutes in Maggie: A Girl of the
Streets (1893). And in Sister Carrie (1900), Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) portrayed a
country girl who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman. Frank Norris's (1870 –
1902) fiction was predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works
include McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899), The Octopus: A Story of
California (1901) and The Pit (1903). Norris along with Hamlin Garland (1860 – March
1940) wrote about the problems of American farmers and other social issues from a
naturalist perspective. Garland is best known for his fiction involving hard-
working Midwestern farmers.[31] (Main-Travelled Roads (1891), Prairie
Folks (1892), Jason Edwards (1892).[32])
Social novel
20th century prose

At the beginning of the 20th century, American novelists were expanding fiction to
encompass both high and low life and sometimes connected to the naturalist school of
realism. In her stories and novels, Edith Wharton (1862–1937) scrutinized the upper-
class, Eastern-seaboard society in which she had grown up. One of her finest
books, The Age of Innocence (1920), centers on a man who chooses to marry a
conventional, socially acceptable woman rather than a fascinating outsider.
Social issues and the power of corporations was the central concern of some writers at
this time. Upton Sinclair, most famous for his muckraking novel The Jungle (1906),
advocated socialism. Other political writers of the period included Edwin
Markham and William Vaughn Moody. Journalistic critics, including Ida M.
Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens, were labeled "The Muckrakers". Henry Brooks Adams's
literate autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1907) also depicted a stinging
description of the education system and modern life.
Race was a common issue as well, as seen in the work of Pauline Hopkins, who
published five influential works from 1900 to 1903. Similarly, Sui Sin Far wrote about
Chinese-American experiences, and Maria Cristina Mena wrote about Mexican-
American experiences.
Prominent among mid-western and western American writers were Willa
Cather and Wallace Stegner, both of whom had a major opus set largely in their
regions.
1920s
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Experimentation in style and form soon joined the new freedom in subject matter. In
1909, Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), by then an expatriate in Paris, published Three
Lives, an innovative work of fiction influenced by her familiarity with cubism, jazz, and
other movements in contemporary art and music. Stein labeled a group of American
literary figures who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s the "Lost Generation".
The 1920s brought sharp changes to American literature. Many writers had direct
experience of the First World War, and they used it to frame their writings. [33] . Writers
like Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and poets Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot demonstrate
the growth of an international perspective in American literature. American writers had
long looked to European models for inspiration, but whereas the literary breakthroughs
of the mid-19th century came from finding distinctly American styles and themes, writers
from this period were finding ways of contributing to a flourishing international literary
scene, not as imitators but as equals. Something similar was happening back in the
States, as Jewish writers (such as Abraham Cahan) used the English language to reach
an international Jewish audience.
The period of peace and debt-fueled economic expansion that followed WWI was the
setting for many of the stories and novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940).
Fitzgerald's work captured the restless, pleasure-hungry, defiant mood of the 1920s, a
decade he named the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald's characteristic theme, expressed poignantly
in his masterpiece The Great Gatsby, is the tendency of youth's golden dreams to
dissolve in failure and disappointment. Fitzgerald also dwells on the collapse of long-
held American Ideals, such as liberty, social unity, good governance and peace,
features which were severely threatened by the pressures of modern early 20th century
society.[34] Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson also wrote novels with critical
depictions of American life. John Dos Passos wrote a famous anti-war novel, Three
Soldiers, describing scenes of blind hatred, stupidity, and criminality; and the suffocating
regimentation of army life.[35] He also wrote about the war in the U.S.A. trilogy which
extended into the Depression.[36] Experimental in form, the U.S.A. trilogy weaves
together various narrative strands, which alternate with contemporary news reports,
snatches of the author's autobiography, and capsule biographies of public figures
including Eugene Debs, Robert La Follette and Isadora Duncan.
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) saw violence and death first-hand as an ambulance
driver in World War I, and the carnage persuaded him that abstract language was
mostly empty and misleading. He cut out unnecessary words from his writing, simplified
the sentence structure, and concentrated on concrete objects and actions. He adhered
to a moral code that emphasized grace under pressure, and his protagonists were
strong, silent men who often dealt awkwardly with women. The Sun Also Rises and A
Farewell to Arms are generally considered his best novels; in 1954, he won the Nobel
Prize in Literature.
William Faulkner (1897–1962) won the Nobel Prize in 1949, after Hitler was defeated in
World War II: Faulkner encompassed an enormous range of humanity
in Yoknapatawpha County, a Mississippian region of his own invention. He recorded his
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characters' seemingly unedited ramblings in order to represent their inner states, a

technique called "stream of consciousness". (In fact, these passages are carefully
crafted, and their seemingly chaotic structure conceals multiple layers of meaning.) He
also jumbled time sequences to show how the past – especially the slave-holding era of
the Deep South – endures in the present. Among his great works are Absalom,
Absalom!, As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August.[38]
1930s – Depression-era
Depression era literature was blunt and direct in its social criticism. John

Steinbeck (1902–1968) was born in Salinas, California, where he set many of his
stories. His style was simple and evocative, winning him the favor of the readers but not
of the critics. Steinbeck often wrote about poor, working-class people and their struggle
to lead a decent and honest life. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), considered his
masterpiece, is a strong, socially-oriented novel that tells the story of the Joads, a poor
family from Oklahoma and their journey to California in search of a better life.
Other popular novels include Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, and East of
Eden. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Steinbeck's
contemporary, Nathanael West's two most famous short novels, Miss
Lonelyhearts, which plumbs the life of its eponymous antihero, a reluctant (and, to
comic effect, male) advice columnist, and the effects the tragic letters exert on it,
and The Day of the Locust, which introduces a cast of Hollywood stereotypes and
explores the ironies of the movies, have come to be avowed classics of American
literature.
In non-fiction, James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men observes and depicts the
lives of three struggling tenant-farming families in Alabama in 1936. Combining factual
reporting with poetic beauty, Agee presented an accurate and detailed report of what he
had seen coupled with insight into his feelings about the experience and the difficulties
of capturing it for a broad audience. In doing so, he created an enduring portrait of a
nearly invisible segment of the American population.
Henry Miller assumed a unique place in American Literature in the 1930s when his
semi-autobiographical novels, written and published in Paris, were banned from the US.
Although his major works, including Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Black Spring, would
not be free of the label of obscenity until 1962, their themes and stylistic innovations had
already exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of American writers, and
paved the way for sexually frank 1960s novels by John Updike, Philip Roth, Gore
Vidal, John Rechy and William Styron.
Post-World War II fiction

Novel
The period in time from the end of World War II up until, roughly, the late 1960s and
early 1970s saw the publication of some of the most popular works in American history.
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The period was dominated by the last few of the more realistic modernists along with
the wildly Romantic beatniks, This included the highly popular To Kill a
Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee that deals with racial inequality and novels that
responded to America's involvement in World War II.
Though born in Canada, Chicago raised Saul Bellow would become one of the most
influential novelists in America in the decades directly following World War II. In works
like The Adventures of Augie March (1953) and Herzog,(1964) Bellow painted vivid
portraits of the American city and the distinctive characters that peopled it. Bellow went
on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.
World War II was the subject of several major novels: Norman Mailer's The Naked and
the Dead (1948), Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) and Kurt Vonnegut
Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). While the Korean war was a source of trauma for the
protagonist of The Moviegoer (1962), by Southern author Walker Percy, winner of the
National Book Award; his attempt at exploring "the dislocation of man in the modern
age."
Other noteworthy novels are J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Sylvia
Plath's The Bell Jar (1963), and Russian-American Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955).
In the 1950s the poetry and fiction of the "Beat Generation" developed, initially from a
New York circle of intellectuals and then established more officially later in San
Francisco. The term Beat referred to the countercultural rhythm of the Jazz scene, to a
sense of rebellion regarding the conservative stress of post-war society, and to an
interest in new forms of spiritual experience through drugs, alcohol, philosophy, and
religion (specifically Zen Buddhism). Allen Ginsberg set the tone with his Whitmanesque
poem Howl (1956), a work that begins: "I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness..." Among the achievements of the Beats, in the novel, are Jack
Kerouac's On the Road (1957), the chronicle of a soul-searching travel through the
continent, and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959), a more experimental work
structured as a series of vignettes relating, among other things, the narrator's travels
and experiments with hard drugs.
In contrast, John Updike approached American life from a more reflective but no less
subversive perspective. His 1960 novel Rabbit, Run, the first of four chronicling the
rising and falling fortunes of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of four decades
against the backdrop of the major events of the second half of the 20th century, broke
new ground on its release in its characterization and detail of the American middle class
and frank discussion of taboo topics such as adultery. Notable among Updike's
characteristic innovations was his use of present-tense narration, his rich, stylized
language, and his attention to sensual detail. His work is also deeply imbued
with Christian themes. The two final installments of the Rabbit series, Rabbit is
Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990), were both awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Other notable works include the Henry Bech novels (1970–98), The Witches of
Eastwick (1984), Roger's Version (1986) and In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996), which
literary critic Michiko Kakutani called "arguably his finest.
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Frequently linked with Updike is the novelist Philip Roth. Roth vigorously

explores Jewish identity in American society, especially in the postwar era and the early
21st century. Frequently set in Newark, New Jersey, Roth's work is known to be highly
autobiographical, and many of Roth's main characters, most famously the Jewish
novelist Nathan Zuckerman, are thought to be alter egos of Roth. With these
techniques, and armed with his articulate and fast-paced style, Roth explores the
distinction between reality and fiction in literature while provocatively examining
American culture. His most famous work includes the Zuckerman novels, the
controversial Portnoy's Complaint (1969), and Goodbye, Columbus (1959). Among the
most decorated American writers of his generation, he has won every major American
literary award, including the Pulitzer Prize for his major novel American Pastoral (1997).
In the realm of African-American literature, Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man was
instantly recognized as among the most powerful and important works of the immediate
post-war years. The story of a black Underground Man in the urban north, the novel laid
bare the often repressed racial tension that still prevailed while also succeeding as
an existential character study. Richard Wright was catapulted to fame by the publication
in subsequent years of his now widely studied short story, "The Man Who Was Almost a
Man" (1939), and his controversial second novel, Native Son (1940), and his legacy was
cemented by the 1945 publication of Black Boy, a work in which Wright drew on his
childhood and mostly autodidactic education in the segregated South, fictionalizing and
exaggerating some elements as he saw fit. Because of its polemical themes and
Wright's involvement with the Communist Party, the novel's final part, "American
Hunger", was not published until 1977.
Perhaps the most ambitious and challenging post-war American novelist was William
Gaddis, whose uncompromising, satiric, and large novels, such as The
Recognitions (1955) and J R (1975) are presented largely in terms of unattributed dialog
that requires almost unexampled reader participation. Gaddis's primary themes include
forgery, capitalism, religious zealotry, and the legal system, constituting a sustained
polyphonic critique of modern American life. Gaddis's work, though largely ignored for
years, anticipated and influenced the development of such ambitious "postmodern"
fiction writers as Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, Joseph McElroy, William H.
Gass, and Don DeLillo. Another neglected and challenging postwar American novelist,
albeit one who wrote much shorter works, was John Hawkes, whose surreal visionary
fiction addresses themes of violence and eroticism and experiments audaciously with
narrative voice and style. Among his most important works is the short nightmarish
novel The Lime Twig (1961).
Short fiction
In the postwar period, the art of the short story again flourished. Among its most
respected practitioners was Flannery O'Connor, who developed a distinctive Southern
gothic esthetic in which characters acted at one level as people and at another as
symbols. A devout Catholic, O'Connor often imbued her stories, among them the widely
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studied "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Everything That Rises Must Converge", and
two novels, Wise Blood (1952); The Violent Bear It Away (1960), with deeply religious
themes, focusing particularly on the search for truth and religious skepticism against the
backdrop of the nuclear age. Other important practitioners of the form include Katherine
Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, and the
more experimental Donald Barthelme.
Contemporary fiction
Though its exact parameters remain disputable, from the early 1990s to the present day
the most salient literary movement has been postmodernism. Thomas Pynchon, a
seminal practitioner of the form, drew in his work on modernist fixtures such as temporal
distortion, unreliable narrators, and internal monologue and coupled them with distinctly
postmodern techniques such as metafiction, ideogrammatic characterization, unrealistic
names (Oedipa Maas, Benny Profane, etc.), plot elements and hyperbolic humor,
deliberate use of anachronisms and archaisms, a strong focus on postcolonial themes,
and a subversive commingling of high and low culture. In 1973, he published Gravity's
Rainbow, a leading work in this genre, which won the National Book Award and was
unanimously nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction that year. His other major works
include his debut, V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Mason & Dixon (1997),
and Against the Day (2006).
Toni Morrison, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, writing in a distinctive lyrical
prose style, published her controversial debut novel, The Bluest Eye, to critical acclaim
in 1970. Coming on the heels of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the novel,
widely studied in American schools, includes an elaborate description of incestuous
rape and explores the conventions of beauty established by a historically racist society,
painting a portrait of a self-immolating black family in search of beauty in whiteness.
Since then, Morrison has experimented with lyric fantasy, as in her two best-known later
works, Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987), for which she was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; along these lines, critic Harold Bloom has drawn favorable
comparisons to Virginia Woolf,[41] and the Nobel committee to "Faulkner and to the Latin
American tradition [of magical realism]." Beloved was chosen in a 2006 survey
conducted by The New York Times as the most important work of fiction of the last 25
years.
Writing in a lyrical, flowing style that eschews excessive use of the comma and
semicolon, recalling William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway in equal
measure, Cormac McCarthy seizes on the literary traditions of several regions of the
United States and includes multiple genres. He writes in the Southern Gothic aesthetic
in his Faulknerian 1965 debut, The Orchard Keeper, and Suttree (1979); in the Epic
Western tradition, with grotesquely drawn characters and symbolic narrative turns
reminiscent of Melville, in Blood Meridian (1985), which Harold Bloom styled "the
greatest single book since Faulkner's As I Lay Dying", calling the character of Judge
Holden "short of Moby Dick, the most monstrous apparition in all of American
literature"; in a much more pastoral tone in his celebrated Border Trilogy (1992–98)
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of bildungsromans, including All the Pretty Horses (1992), winner of the National Book

Award; and in the post-apocalyptic genre in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road (2007).
His novels are noted for achieving both commercial and critical success, several of his
works having been adapted to film.
Don DeLillo, who rose to literary prominence with the publication of his 1985
novel, White Noise, a work broaching the subjects of death and consumerism and
doubling as a piece of comic social criticism, began his writing career in 1971
with Americana. He is listed by Harold Bloom as being among the preeminent
contemporary American writers, in the company of such figures as Philip Roth, Cormac
McCarthy, and Thomas Pynchon. His 1997 novel Underworld chronicles American life
through and immediately after the Cold War and is usually considered his masterpiece.
It was also the runner-up in a survey that asked writers to identify the most important
work of fiction of the last 25 years. Among his other important novels
are Libra (1988), Mao II (1991) and Falling Man (2007).
Seizing on the distinctly postmodern techniques of digression, narrative fragmentation

and elaborate symbolism, and strongly influenced by the works of Thomas
Pynchon, David Foster Wallace began his writing career with The Broom of the System,
published to moderate acclaim in 1987. His second novel, Infinite Jest (1996), a
futuristic portrait of America and a playful critique of the media-saturated nature of
American life, has been consistently ranked among the most important works of the
20th century, and his final novel, unfinished at the time of his death, The Pale
King (2011), has garnered much praise and attention. In addition to his novels, he also
authored three acclaimed short story collections: Girl with Curious Hair (1989), Brief
Interviews with Hideous Men (1999) and Oblivion: Stories (2004). Jonathan Franzen,
Wallace's friend and contemporary, rose to prominence after the 2001 publication of
his National Book Award-winning third novel, The Corrections. He began his writing
career in 1988 with the well-received The Twenty-Seventh City, a novel centering on his
native St. Louis, but did not gain national attention until the publication of his
essay, "Perchance to Dream," in Harper's Magazine, discussing the cultural role of the
writer in the new millennium through the prism of his own frustrations. The Corrections,
a tragicomedy about the disintegrating Lambert family, has been called "the literary
phenomenon of [its] decade" and was ranked as one of the greatest novels of the past
century. In 2010, he published Freedom to great critical acclaim.
Other notable writers at the turn of the century include Michael Chabon, whose Pulitzer
Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) tells the story of two
friends, Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, as they rise through the ranks of
the comics industry in its heyday; Denis Johnson, whose 2007 novel Tree of
Smoke about falsified intelligence during Vietnam both won the National Book Award
and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was called by critic Michiko
Kakutani "one of the classic works of literature produced by [the Vietnam
War]"; and Louise Erdrich, whose 2008 novel The Plague of Doves, a distinctly
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Faulknerian, polyphonic examination of the tribal experience set against the backdrop of
murder in the fictional town of Pluto, North Dakota, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize,
and her 2012 novel The Round House, which builds on the same themes, was awarded
the 2012 National Book Award.
Poetry
Puritan poetry was highly religious, and one of the earliest books of poetry published
was the Bay Psalm Book (1640), a set of translations of the biblical Psalms; however,
the translators' intention was not to create literature, but to create hymns that could be
used in worship.[7] Among lyric poets, the most important figures are Anne Bradstreet,
who wrote personal poems about her family and homelife; pastor Edward Taylor, whose
best poems, the Preparatory Meditations, were written to help him prepare for leading
worship; and Michael Wigglesworth, whose best-selling poem, The Day of
Doom (1660), describes the time of judgment. It was published in the same year that
anti-Puritan Charles II was restored to the British throne. He followed it two years later
with God's Controversy With New England. Nicholas Noyes was also known for
his doggerel verse.
18th century
The 18th century saw an increasing emphasis on America itself as fit subject matter for
its poets. This trend is most evident in the works of Philip Freneau (1752–1832), who is
also notable for the unusually sympathetic attitude to Native Americans. sometimes
reflective of a skepticism toward Anglo-American culture and civilization. [52] However,
this late colonial poetry generally was influenced by contemporary British poetry. The
work of Rebecca Hammond Lard (1772–1855), is still relevant today, writing about the
environment as well as also human nature.
19th century
The Fireside Poets (also known as the Schoolroom or Household Poets) were some of

America's first major poets domestically and internationally. They were known for their
poems being easy to memorize due to their general adherence to poetic form
(standard forms, regular meter, and rhymed stanzas) and were often recited in the
home (hence the name) as well as in school (such as "Paul Revere's Ride"), as well as
working with distinctly American themes, including some political issues such as
abolition. They included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John
Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.. Longfellow
achieved the highest level of acclaim and is often considered the first internationally
acclaimed American poet, being the first American poet given a bust in Westminster
Abbey's Poets' Corner.[54]
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Walt Whitman (1819–1892) and Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), two of America's

greatest 19th-century poets could hardly have been more different in temperament and
style. Walt Whitman was a working man, a traveler, a self-appointed nurse during
the American Civil War (1861–1865), and a poetic innovator. His magnum opus
was Leaves of Grass, in which he uses a free-flowing verse and lines of irregular length
to depict the all-inclusiveness of American democracy. Taking that motif one step
further, the poet equates the vast range of American experience with himself without
being egotistical. For example, in Song of Myself, the long, central poem in Leaves of
Grass, Whitman writes: "These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands,
they are not original with me ..."
In his words Whitman was a poet of "the body electric". In Studies in Classic American
Literature, the English novelist D. H. Lawrence wrote that Whitman "was the first to
smash the old moral conception that the soul of man is something 'superior' and 'above'
the flesh."
By contrast, Emily Dickinson lived the sheltered life of a genteel unmarried woman in
small-town Amherst, Massachusetts. Her poetry is ingenious, witty, and penetrating.
Her work was unconventional for its day, and little of it was published during her lifetime.
Many of her poems dwell on the topic of death, often with a mischievous twist. One,
"Because I could not stop for Death", begins, "He kindly stopped for me." The opening
of another Dickinson poem toys with her position as a woman in a male-dominated
society and an unrecognized poet: "I'm nobody! Who are you? / Are you nobody
too?" [55]
20th century
American poetry arguably reached its peak in the early-to-mid-20th century, with such
noted writers as Wallace Stevens and his Harmonium (1923) and The Auroras of
Autumn (1950), T. S. Eliot and his The Waste Land (1922), Robert Frost and his North
of Boston (1914) and New Hampshire (1923), Hart Crane and his White
Buildings (1926) and the epic cycle, The Bridge (1930), Ezra Pound,The Cantos (1917–
1969). William Carlos Williams and his epic poem about his New Jersey
hometown, Paterson, Marianne Moore, E. E. Cummings, Edna St. Vincent
Millay and Langston Hughes.
Pound's poetryis complex and sometimes obscure, with references to other art forms
and to a vast range of literature, both Western and Eastern. [56] He influenced many other
poets, notably T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), another expatriate. Eliot wrote spare, cerebral
poetry, carried by a dense structure of symbols. In The Waste Land, he embodied a
jaundiced vision of post–World War I society in fragmented, haunted images. Like
Pound's, Eliot's poetry could be highly allusive, and some editions of The Waste
Land come with footnotes supplied by the poet. In 1948, Eliot won the Nobel Prize in
Literature.
Post-World War II
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Among the most respected of the postwar American poets are John Ashbery, the key
figure of the surrealistic New York School of poetry, and his celebrated Self-portrait in a
Convex Mirror (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1976); Elizabeth Bishop and her North &
South (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1956) and "Geography III" (National Book Award,
1970); Richard Wilbur and his Things of This World, winner of both the Pulitzer Prize
and the National Book Award for Poetry in 1957; John Berryman and his The Dream
Songs, (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1964, National Book Award, 1968); A.R. Ammons,
whose Collected Poems 1951-1971 won a National Book Award in 1973 and whose
long poem Garbage earned him another in 1993; Theodore Roethke and his The
Waking (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1954); James Merrill and his epic poem of
communication with the dead, The Changing Light at Sandover (Pulitzer Prize for
Poetry, 1977); Louise Glück for her The Wild Iris (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1993); W.S.
Merwin for his The Carrier of Ladders (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1971) and The Shadow
of Sirius (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 2009); Mark Strand for Blizzard of One (Pulitzer Prize
for Poetry, 1999); Robert Hass for his Time and Materials, which won both the Pulitzer
Prize and National Book Award for Poetry in 2008 and 2007 respectively; and Rita
Dove for her Thomas and Beulah (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1987).
In addition, in this same period the confessional, whose origin is often traced to the
publication in 1959 of Robert Lowell's Life Studies,and beat schools of poetry enjoyed
popular and academic success, producing such widely anthologized voices as Allen
Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Gary Snyder, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, among
many others.
Drama
Although the American theatrical tradition can be traced back to the arrival of Lewis
Hallam's troupe in the mid-18th century and was very active in the 19th century, as seen
by the popularity of minstrel shows and of adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin, American
drama attained international status only in the 1920s and 1930s, with the works
of Eugene O'Neill, who won four Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel Prize.
American dramatic literature, by contrast, remained dependent on European models,
although many playwrights did attempt to apply these forms to American topics and
themes, such as immigrants, westward expansion, temperance, etc. At the same time,
American playwrights created several long-lasting American character types, especially
the "Yankee", the "Negro" and the "Indian", exemplified by the characters
of Jonathan, Sambo and Metamora. In addition, new dramatic forms were created in
the Tom Shows, the showboat theater and the minstrel show. Among the best plays of
the period are James Nelson Barker's Superstition; or, the Fanatic Father, Anna Cora
Mowatt's Fashion; or, Life in New York, Nathaniel Bannister's Putnam, the Iron Son of
'76, Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana, and Cornelius
Mathews's Witchcraft; or, the Martyrs of Salem.
Realism began to influence American drama, partly through Howells, but also through
Europeans such as Ibsen and Zola. Although realism was most influential in set design
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and staging—audiences loved the special effects offered up by the popular melodramas
—and in the growth of local color plays, it also showed up in the more subdued, less
romantic tone that reflected the effects of the Civil War and continued social turmoil on
the American psyche.
The most ambitious attempt at bringing modern realism into the drama was James
Herne's Margaret Fleming (1890), which addressed issues of social determinism
through realistic dialogue, psychological insight, and symbolism. The play was not
successful, and both critics and audiences thought it dwelt too much on unseemly topics
and included improper scenes, such as the main character nursing her husband's
illegitimate child onstage.
In the middle of the 20th century, American drama was dominated by the work of
playwrights Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, as well as by the maturation of the
American musical, which had found a way to integrate script, music and dance in such
works as Oklahoma! and West Side Story. Later American playwrights of importance
include Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, August Wilson and Tony Kushner.
Ethnic, African American, LGBT & Native American writers

One of the developments in late-20th-century American literature was the increase of
literature written by and about ethnic minorities beyond African Americans and Jewish
Americans. This development came alongside the growth of the Civil Rights Movement
and its corollary, the ethnic pride movement, which led to the creation of Ethnic
Studies programs in most major universities. These programs helped establish the new
ethnic literature as worthy objects of academic study, alongside such other new areas of
literary study as women's literature, gay and lesbian literature, working-class
literature, postcolonial literature, and the rise of literary theory as a key component of
academic literary study.
Ethnic Literature
The twentieth century saw the emergence of American Jewish writers such as Saul
Bellow, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Chaim Potok, and Bernard
Malamud. Potok's novels about a young New York Jewish boy's coming of age, The
Chosen and The Promise figured prominently in this movement. Sandra Cisneros best
known for her first novel The House on Mango Street (1983) and her subsequent short
story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (1991). She is the recipient of
numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is
regarded as a key figure in Chicana literature. After being relegated to cookbooks and
autobiographies for most of the 20th century, Asian American literature achieved
widespread notice through Maxine Hong Kingston's fictional memoir, The Woman
Warrior (1976), and her novels China Men (1980) and Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake
Book. Chinese-American author Ha Jin in 1999 won the National Book Award for his
second novel, Waiting, about a Chinese soldier in the Revolutionary Army who has to
wait 18 years to divorce his wife for another woman, all the while having to worry about
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persecution for his protracted affair, and twice won the PEN/Faulkner Award, in 2000
for Waiting and in 2005 for War Trash.
Other notable Asian-American novelists include Amy Tan, best known for her
novel, The Joy Luck Club (1989), tracing the lives of four immigrant families brought
together by the game of Mahjong, and Korean American novelist Chang-Rae Lee, who
has published Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, and Aloft. Such poets as Marilyn
Chin and Li-Young Lee, Kimiko Hahn and Janice Mirikitani have also achieved
prominence, as has playwright David Henry Hwang. Equally important has been the
effort to recover earlier Asian American authors, started by Frank Chin and his
colleagues; this effort has brought Sui Sin Far, Toshio Mori, Carlos Bulosan, John
Okada, Hisaye Yamamoto and others to prominence.
Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut
collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), and went on to write a well-
received novel, The Namesake (2003), which was shortly adapted to film in 2007. In her
second collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth, released to widespread commercial
and critical success, Lahiri shifts focus and treats the experiences of the second and
third generation.
Hispanic literature also became important during this period, starting with acclaimed
novels by Tomás Rivera (...y no se lo tragó la tierra) and Rudolfo Anaya (Bless Me,
Ultima), and the emergence of Chicano theater with Luis Valdez and Teatro
Campesino. Latina writing became important thanks to authors such as Sandra
Cisneros, an icon of an emerging Chicano literature whose 1983 bildungsroman The
House on Mango Street is taught in schools across the United States, Denise
Chavez's The Last of the Menu Girls and Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera:
The New Mestiza.
Dominican-American author Junot Díaz, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his
2007 novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which tells the story of an
overweight Dominican boy growing up as a social outcast in Paterson, New Jersey.
Another Dominican author, Julia Alvarez, is well known for How the García Girls Lost
Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies. Cuban American author Oscar
Hijuelos won a Pulitzer for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, and Cristina
García received acclaim for Dreaming in Cuban.
Celebrated Puerto Rican novelists who write in English and Spanish include Giannina
Braschi, author of the Spanglish classic Yo-Yo Boing! and Rosario Ferré, best known
for "Eccentric Neighborhoods"[60][61] Puerto Rico has also produced important playwrights
such as René Marqués, Luis Rafael Sánchez, and José Rivera and New York based
poets such as Julia de Burgos, Giannina Braschi and Pedro Pietri, as well as various
members of the Nuyorican Poets Café.
Spurred by the success of N. Scott Momaday's Pulitzer Prize–winning House Made of
Dawn, Native American literature showed explosive growth during this period, known as
the Native American Renaissance, through such novelists as Leslie Marmon
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Silko (e.g., Ceremony), Gerald Vizenor (e.g., Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles and

numerous essays on Native American literature), Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine and
several other novels that use a recurring set of characters and locations in the manner
of William Faulkner), James Welch (e.g., Winter in the Blood), Sherman
Alexie (e.g., The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven), and poets Simon
Ortiz and Joy Harjo. The success of these authors has brought renewed attention to
earlier generations, including Zitkala-Sa, John Joseph Mathews, D'Arcy
McNickle and Mourning Dove.
More recently, Arab American literature, largely unnoticed since the New York Pen
League of the 1920s, has become more prominent through the work of Diana Abu-
Jaber, whose novels include Arabian Jazz and Crescent and the memoir The Language
of Baklava.
Nobel Prize in Literature winners (American authors)
 1930: Sinclair Lewis (novelist)
 1936: Eugene O'Neill (playwright)
 1938: Pearl S. Buck (biographer and novelist)
 1948: T. S. Eliot (poet and playwright)
 1949: William Faulkner (novelist)
 1954: Ernest Hemingway (novelist)
 1962: John Steinbeck (novelist)
 1976: Saul Bellow (novelist)
 1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer (novelist, wrote in Yiddish)
 1987: Joseph Brodsky (poet and essayist, wrote in English and Russian)
 1993: Toni Morrison (novelist)
 2016: Bob Dylan (songwriter)
American literary awards
 American Academy of Arts and Letters

 Pulitzer Prize (Fiction, Drama and Poetry, as well as various non-fiction and
journalist categories)
 National Book Award (Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry and Young-Adult Fiction)
 American Book Awards
 PEN literary awards (multiple awards)
 United States Poet Laureate
 Bollingen Prize
 Pushcart Prize
 O. Henry Award
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List of literary critics
 John Neal: Early American literary nationalist and regionalist

 Edgar Allan Poe: Dark Romanticism, Short-Story Theory
 T. S. Eliot: Modernism
 Harold Bloom: Aestheticism
 Susan Sontag: Against Interpretation, On Photography
 John Updike: Literary realism/modernism and aestheticist critic
 M. H. Abrams: The Mirror and the Lamp (study of Romanticism)
 F. O. Matthiessen: originated the concept "American Renaissance"
 Perry Miller: Puritan studies
 Henry Nash Smith: founder of the "Myth and Symbol School" of American
criticism
 Leo Marx: The Machine in the Garden (study of technology and culture)
 Leslie Fiedler: Love and Death in the American Novel
 Stanley Fish: Pragmatism
 Henry Louis Gates: African American literary theory
 Gerald Vizenor: Native American literary theory
 William Dean Howells: Literary realism
 Stephen Greenblatt: New Historicism
 Geoffrey Hartman: Yale school of deconstruction
 John Crowe Ransom: New Criticism
 Cleanth Brooks: New Criticism
 Kenneth Burke: Rhetoric studies
 Elaine Showalter: Feminist criticism
 Sandra M. Gilbert: Feminist criticism
 Susan Gubar: Feminist criticism
 Alicia Ostriker: feminist criticism
 J. Hillis Miller: Deconstruction
 Edward Said: Postcolonial criticism
 Jonathan Culler: Critical theory, deconstruction
 Judith Butler: Post-structuralist feminism
 Gloria E. Anzaldúa: Latina literary theory
 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: Queer theory
 Fredric Jameson: Marxist criticism
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Top Ten Works by American Authors

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925). Perhaps the most searching fable of
the American Dream ever written, this glittering novel of the Jazz Age paints an
unforgettable portrait of its day — the flappers, the bootleg gin, the careless, giddy
wealth. Self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby, determined to win back the heart of the girl he
loved and lost, emerges as an emblem for romantic yearning, and the novel’s narrator,
Nick Carroway, brilliantly illuminates the post–World War I end to American innocence.
2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884). Hemingway proclaimed, “All
modern American literature comes from . . . ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ ” But one can read it
simply as a straightforward adventure story in which two comrades of conve nience, the
parentally abused rascal Huck and fugitive slave Jim, escape the laws and conventions
of society on a raft trip down the Mississippi. Alternatively, it’s a subversive satire in
which Twain uses the only superficially naïve Huck to comment bitingly on the evils of
racial bigotry, religious hypocrisy, and capitalist greed he observes in a host of other
largely unsympathetic characters. Huck’s climactic decision to “light out for the Territory
ahead of the rest” rather than submit to the starched standards of “civilization” reflects a
uniquely American strain of individualism and nonconformity stretching from Daniel
Boone to Easy Rider.
3. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851). This sweeping saga of obsession, vanity, and
vengeance at sea can be read as a harrowing parable, a gripping adventure story, or a
semiscientific chronicle of the whaling industry. No matter, the book rewards patient
readers with some of fiction’s most memorable characters, from mad Captain Ahab to
the titular white whale that crippled him, from the honorable pagan Queequeg to our
insightful narrator/surrogate (“Call me”) Ishmael, to that hell-bent vessel itself, the
Pequod.
4. The stories of Flannery O’Connor (1925–64). Full of violence, mordant comedy, and
a fierce Catholic vision that is bent on human salvation at any cost, Flannery O’Connor’s
stories are like no others. Bigots, intellectual snobs, shyster preachers, and crazed
religious seers —a full cavalcade of what critics came to call “grotesques”—careen
through her tales, and O’Connor gleefully displays the moral inadequacy of all of them.
Twentieth-century short stories often focus on tiny moments, but O’Connor’s stories,
with their unswerving eye for vanity and their profound sense of the sacred, feel
immense.
5. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929). A modernist classic of Old
South decay, this novel circles the travails of the Compson family from four different
narrative perspectives. All are haunted by the figure of Caddy, the only daughter, whom
Faulkner described as “a beautiful and tragic little girl.” Surrounding the trials of the
family itself are the usual Faulkner suspects: alcoholism, suicide, racism, religion,
money, and violence both seen and unseen. In the experimental style of the book,
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Quentin Compson summarizes the confused honor and tragedy that Faulkner
relentlessly evokes: “theres a curse on us its not our fault is it our fault.”
6. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (1936). Weaving mythic tales of biblical
urgency with the experimental techniques of high modernism, Faulkner bridged the past
and future. This is the story of Thomas Sutpen, a rough-hewn striver who came to
Mississippi in 1833 with a gang of wild slaves from Haiti to build a dynasty. Almost in
reach, his dream is undone by plagues of biblical (and Faulknerian) proportions: racism,
incest, war, fratricide, pride, and jealousy. Through the use of multiple narrators,
Faulkner turns this gripping Yoknapatawpha saga into a profound and dazzling
meditation on truth, memory, history, and literature itself.
7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960). Tomboy Scout and her brother Jem are
the children of the profoundly decent widower Atticus Finch, a small-town Alabama
lawyer defending a black man accused of raping a white woman. Although Tom
Robinson’s trial is the centerpiece of this Pulitzer Prize–winning novel —raising
profound questions of race and conscience —this is, at heart, a tale about the fears and
mysteries of growing up, as the children learn about bravery, empathy, and societal
expectations through a series of evocative set pieces that conjure the Depression-era
South.
8. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952). This modernist novel follows the bizarre, often
surreal adventures of an unnamed narrator, a black man, whose identity becomes a
battleground in racially divided America. Expected to be submissive and obedient in the
South, he must decipher the often contradictory rules whites set for a black man’s
behavior. Traveling north to Harlem, he meets white leaders intent on controlling and
manipulating him. Desperate to seize control of his life, he imitates Dostoevsky’s
underground man, escaping down a manhole where he vows to remain until he can
define himself. The book’s famous last line, “Who knows, but that on the lower
frequencies I speak for you,” suggests how it transcends race to tell a universal story of
the quest for self-determination.
9. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939). A powerful portrait of Depression-era
America, this gritty social novel follows the Joad family as they flee their farm in the
Oklahoma dust bowl for the promised land of California. While limping across a crippled
land, Ma and Pa Joad, their pregnant daughter Rose of Sharon, and their recently
paroled son Tom sleep in ramshackle Hoovervilles filled with other refugees and
encounter hardship, death, and deceit. While vividly capturing the plight of a nation,
Steinbeck renders people who have lost everything but their dignity.
10. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881). James’s Portrait is of that superior
creature Isabel Archer, an assured American girl who is determined to forge her destiny
in the drawing rooms of Europe. To this end, she weds the older and more cultivated
Gilbert Osmond, and eventually finds that she is less the author of her fate than she
thought. Throughout, James gives us a combination of careful psychological refraction
and truly diabolical plotting. The result is a book at once chilling and glorious.
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English Literature
English literature is literature from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. This article covers British literature in
the English language. Anglo-Saxon (Old English) literature is included, and there is
some discussion of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature, where literature in these
languages relate to the early development of the English language and literature. There
is also some brief discussion of major figures who wrote in Scots, but the main
discussion is in the various Scottish literature articles.
The article Literature in the other languages of Britain focuses on the literatures written
in the other languages that are, and have been, used in Britain. There are also articles
on these various literatures: Latin literature in Britain, Anglo-
Norman, Cornish, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Latin, Manx, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, etc.
Irish writers have played an important part in the development of literature in England
and Scotland, but though the whole of Ireland was politically part of the United
Kingdom between January 1801 and December 1922, it can be controversial to
describe Irish literature as British. For some this includes works by authors
from Northern Ireland.
British identity
The nature of British identity has changed over time. The island that
contains England, Scotland, and Wales has been known as Britain from the time of
the Roman Pliny the Elder (c. AD 23–79).[1] English as the national language had its
beginnings with the Anglo-Saxon invasion which started around AD 450.[2] Before that,
the inhabitants mainly spoke various Celtic languages. The various constituent parts of
the present United Kingdom joined at different times. Wales was annexed by
the Kingdom of England under the Acts of Union of 1536 and 1542. However, it was not
until 1707 with a treaty between England and Scotland, that the Kingdom of Great
Britain came into existence. This merged in January 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to
form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Until fairly recent times Celtic
languages continued to be spoken widely in Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland,
and these languages still survive, especially in parts of Wales.
Subsequently, Irish nationalism led to the partition of the island of Ireland in 1921; thus
literature of the Republic of Ireland is not British, although literature from Northern
Ireland is both Irish and British.[3]
Works written in the English language by Welsh writers, especially if their subject matter
relates to Wales, has been recognised as a distinctive entity since the 20th century. The
need for a separate identity for this kind of writing arose because of the parallel
development of modern Welsh-language literature.[4]
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Because Britain was a colonial power the use of English spread through the world; from
the 19th century or earlier in the United States, and later in other former colonies, major
writers in English began to appear beyond the boundaries of Britain and Ireland; later
these included Nobel laureates.[5][6]
The coming of the Anglo-Saxons: 449–c.1066

The other languages of early Britain
Although the Romans withdrew from Britain in the early 5th century, Latin literature,
mostly ecclesiastical, continued to be written, including Chronicles by Bede (672/3–
735), Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum; and Gildas (c. 500–570), De Excidio et
Conquestu Britanniae.
Various Celtic languages were spoken by many British people at that time. Among the
most important written works that have survived are Y Gododdin and the Mabinogion.
From the 8th to the 15th centuries, Vikings and Norse settlers and their
descendants colonised parts of what is now modern Scotland. Some Old Norse
poetry survives relating to this period, including the Orkneyinga saga an historical
narrative of the history of the Orkney Islands, from their capture by the Norwegian king
in the 9th century until about 1200. [7]
Old English literature: c. 658–1100
Old English literature, or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses the surviving literature
written in Old English in Anglo-Saxon England, from the settlement of the Saxons and
other Germanic tribes in England (Jutes and the Angles) around 450, until "soon after
the Norman Conquest" in 1066; that is, c. 1100–50. These works include genres such
as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles,
riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period
Oral tradition was very strong in early English culture and most literary works were
written to be performed. Epic poems were thus very popular, and some,
including Beowulf, have survived to the present day. Beowulf is the most famous work
in Old English and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in
Scandinavia.
Nearly all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous: twelve are known by name from
medieval sources, but only four of those are known by their vernacular works with any
certainty: Cædmon, Bede, Alfred the Great, and Cynewulf. Cædmon is the earliest
English poet whose name is known. Cædmon's only known surviving work is Cædmon's
Hymn, which probably dates from the late 7th century.
Chronicles contained a range of historical and literary accounts, and a notable example
is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The poem Battle of Maldon also deals with history. This is
the name given to a work, of uncertain date, celebrating the real Battle of Maldon of
991, at which the Anglo-Saxons failed to prevent a Viking invasion.
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Classical antiquity was not forgotten in Anglo-Saxon England, and several Old English
poems are adaptations of late classical philosophical texts. The longest is King Alfred's
(849–99) translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.
Late medieval literature: 1066–1485

Sir Bedivere casts King Arthur's sword Excalibur back to the Lady of the Lake.
The Arthurian Cycle has influenced British literature across languages and down the
centuries.
The linguistic diversity of the islands in the medieval period contributed to a rich variety
of artistic production, and made British literature distinctive and innovative.
Some works were still written in Latin; these include Gerald of Wales's late-12th-century
book on his beloved Wales, Itinerarium Cambriae. After the Norman Conquest of
1066, Anglo-Norman literature developed, introducing literary trends from Continental
Europe, such as the chanson de geste. However, the indigenous development of Anglo-
Norman literature was precocious in comparison to continental Oïl literature
Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100 – c. 1155) was one of the major figures in
the development of British history and of the popularity of the tales of King Arthur. He is
best known for his chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)
of 1136, which spread Celtic motifs to a wider audience. Wace (c. 1110 – after 1174),
who wrote in Norman-French, is the earliest known poet from Jersey; he also developed
the Arthurian legend.) At the end of the 12th century, Layamon in Brut adapted Wace to
make the first English-language work to use the legends of King Arthur and the Knights
of the Round Table. It was also the first historiography written in English since
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Middle English
Interest in King Arthur continued in the 15th century with Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte
d'Arthur (1485), a popular and influential compilation of some French and English
Arthurian romances. It was among the earliest books printed in England by Caxton.
In the later medieval period a new form of English now known as Middle
English evolved. This is the earliest form which is comprehensible to modern readers
and listeners, albeit not easily. Middle English Bible translations, notably Wycliffe's
Bible, helped to establish English as a literary language. Wycliffe's Bible is the name
now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the
direction of, or at the instigation of, John Wycliffe. They appeared over a period from
about 1382 to 1395.
Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman)
(written c. 1360–1387) is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William
Langland. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called
"passūs" (Latin for "steps"). Piers is considered by many critics to be one of the early
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great works of English literature along with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain

and the Green Knight during the Middle Ages.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late-14th-century Middle
English alliterative romance. It is one of the better-known Arthurian stories, of an
established type known as the "beheading game". Developing from Welsh, Irish and
English tradition Sir Gawain highlights the importance of honour and chivalry.
"Preserved in the same manuscript with Sir Gawayne were three other poems, now
generally accepted as the work of its author, including the intricate elegiac poem, Pearl.”
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is widely
considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have
been buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer is best known today
for The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories written in Middle English (mostly written
in verse although some are in prose), that are presented as part of a story-telling
contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to
the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Chaucer is a crucial figure
in developing the legitimacy of the vernacular, Middle English, at a time when the
dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.
The multilingual nature of the audience for literature in the 14th century can be
illustrated by the example of John Gower (c. 1330 – October 1408). A contemporary of
Langland and a personal friend of Chaucer, Gower is remembered primarily for three
major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long
poems written in Anglo-Norman, Latin, and Middle English respectively, which are
united by common moral and political themes.[20]
Women writers were also active, such as Marie de France in the 12th century
and Julian of Norwich in the early 14th century. Julian's Revelations of Divine
Love (around 1393) is believed to be the first published book written by a woman in the
English language.[21] Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – after 1438) is known for writing The
Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the
English language.
Major Scottish writers from the 15th century
include Henrysoun, Dunbar, Douglas and Lyndsay. The works of Chaucer had an
influence on Scottish writers.
Medieval drama
In the Middle Ages, drama in the vernacular languages of Europe may have emerged
from religious enactments of the liturgy. Mystery plays were presented on the porches
of the cathedrals or by strolling players on feast days. Miracle and mystery plays, along
with moralities and interludes, later evolved into more elaborate forms of drama, such
as was seen on the Elizabethan stages. Another form of medieval theatre was
the mummers' plays, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris dance,
concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood. These
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were folk tales re-telling old stories, and the actors travelled from town to town
performing these for their audiences in return for money and hospitality. [22]
Mystery plays and miracle plays are among the earliest formally developed plays in
medieval Europe. Mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in
churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They developed from the
10th to the 16th century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century
before being rendered obsolete by the rise of professional theatre. [23]
Nineteenth-century engraving of a performance from the Chester mystery play cycle.
There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays
from the late medieval period. The most complete is the York cycle of forty-eight
pageants. They were performed in the city of York, from the middle of the 14th century
until 1569.[24] Besides the Middle English drama, there are three surviving plays
in Cornish known as the Ordinalia.[25]
Having grown out of the religiously based mystery plays, the morality play is a genre of
medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment, which represented a shift towards a
more secular base for European theatre. Morality plays are a type of allegory in which
the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt
him to choose a godly life over one of evil. The plays were most popular in Europe
during the 15th and 16th centuries.
The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman) (c. 1509 – 1519), usually
referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century English morality play. Like John
Bunyan's allegory Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Everyman examines the question
of Christian salvation through the use of allegorical characters.
The Renaissance: 1485 –1660

The English Renaissance and the Renaissance in Scotland date from the late 15th
century to the early 17th century. Italian literary influences arrived in Britain:
the sonnet form was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century,
and was developed by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, (1516/1517 – 1547), who also
introduced blank verse into England, with his translation of Virgil's Aeneid in c. 1540.
The spread of printing affected the transmission of literature across Britain and Ireland.
The first book printed in English, William Caxton's own translation of Recuyell of the
Historyes of Troye, was printed abroad in 1473, to be followed by the establishment of
the first printing press in England in 1474
Latin continued in use as a language of learning long after the Reformation had
established the vernaculars as liturgical languages for the elites.
Utopia is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Thomas More (1478–1535)
published in 1516. The book, written in Latin, is a frame narrative primarily depicting a
fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs.
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Elizabethan era: 1558–1603

Poetry
In the later 16th century, English poetry used elaborate language and extensive
allusions to classical myths. Sir Edmund Spenser (1555–99) was the author of The
Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor
dynasty and Elizabeth I. The works of Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586), a poet, courtier
and soldier, include Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poetry, and Arcadia. Poems
intended to be set to music as songs, such as those by Thomas Campion, became
popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in households (see English
Madrigal School).
Drama
During the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and then James I (1603–25), a London-
centred culture that was both courtly and popular, produced great poetry and drama.
The English playwrights were intrigued by Italian model: a conspicuous community of
Italian actors had settled in London. The linguist and lexicographer John Florio (1553–
1625), whose father was Italian, was a royal language tutor at the Court of James I, and
a possible friend and influence on William Shakespeare, had brought much of the Italian
language and culture to England. He was also the translator of Montaigne into English.
The earliest Elizabethan plays include Gorboduc (1561), by Sackville and Norton,
and Thomas Kyd's (1558–94) revenge tragedy The Spanish Tragedy (1592). Highly
popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in
English literature theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Jane Lumley (1537–
1578) was the first person to translate Euripides into English. Her translation
of Iphigeneia at Aulis is the first known dramatic work by a woman in English. [
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as
yet unsurpassed. Shakespeare wrote plays in a variety of genres,
including histories, tragedies, comedies and the late romances, or tragicomedies. Works
written in the Elizabethan era include the comedy Twelfth Night, tragedy Hamlet, and
history Henry IV, Part 1.
Jacobean period: 1603-1625
Drama
Shakespeare's career continued during the reign of King James I, and in the early 17th
century he wrote the so-called "problem plays", like Measure for Measure, as well as a
number of his best known tragedies, including King Lear and Anthony and Cleopatra.
[31]
The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on fatal errors or flaws, which
overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. [32] In his final period,
Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed four major plays,
including The Tempest. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in
tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the
forgiveness of potentially tragic errors.[33]
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Other important figures in Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre include Christopher

Marlowe (1564–1593), Thomas Dekker (c. 1572 – 1632), John Fletcher (1579–1625)
and Francis Beaumont (1584–1616). Marlowe's subject matter is different from
Shakespeare's as it focuses more on the moral drama of the renaissance man. His
play Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), is about a scientist and magician who sells his soul to the
Devil. Beaumont and Fletcher are less known, but they may have helped Shakespeare
write some of his best dramas, and were popular at the time. Beaumont's comedy, The
Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), satirises the rising middle class and especially
the nouveaux riches.
After Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson (1572–1637) was the
leading literary figure of the Jacobean era. Jonson's aesthetics hark back to the Middle
Ages and his characters embody the theory of humours, based on contemporary
medical theory, though the stock types of Latin literature were an equal influence
Jonson's major plays include Volpone (1605 or 1606) and Bartholomew Fair (1614).
A popular style of theatre in Jacobean times was the revenge play, which had been
popularised earlier by Thomas Kyd (1558–94), and then developed by John
Webster (1578–1632) in the 17th century. Webster's most famous plays are The White
Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1613). Other revenge tragedies include The
Changeling written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.
Poetry
Shakespeare also popularised the English sonnet, which made significant changes
to Petrarch's model. A collection of 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the
passage of time, love, beauty and mortality, were first published in a 1609 quarto.
Besides Shakespeare the major poets of the early 17th century included
the metaphysical poets John Donne (1572–1631) and George Herbert (1593–1633).
Influenced by continental Baroque, and taking as his subject matter both Christian
mysticism and eroticism, Donne's metaphysical poetry uses unconventional or
"unpoetic" figures, such as a compass or a mosquito, to achieve surprise effects.
George Chapman (?1559-?1634) was a successful playwright who is remembered
chiefly for his translation in 1616 of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into English verse. This
was the first ever complete translation of either poem into the English language and it
had a profound influence on English literature.
Prose
Philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626) wrote the utopian novel New Atlantis, and
coined the phrase "Knowledge is Power". Francis Godwin's 1638 The Man in the
Moone recounts an imaginary voyage to the moon and is now regarded as the first work
of science fiction in English literature.[35]
At the Reformation, the translation of liturgy and the Bible into vernacular languages
provided new literary models. The Book of Common Prayer (1549) and the Authorised
King James Version of the Bible have been hugely influential. The King James Bible,
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one of the biggest translation projects in the history of English up to that time, was
started in 1604 and completed in 1611. It continued the tradition of Bible translation into
English from the original languages that began with the work of William Tyndale.
(Previous translations into English had relied on the Vulgate). It became the standard
Bible of the Church of England, and some consider it one of the greatest literary works
of all time.
Late Renaissance: 1625–1660
The metaphysical poets continued writing in this period. Both John Donne and George
Herbert died after 1625, but there was a second generation of metaphysical
poets: Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637–1674) and Henry
Vaughan (1622–1695). Their style was witty, with metaphysical conceits — far-fetched
or unusual similes or metaphors, such as Marvell's comparison of the soul with a drop of
dew;[36] or Donne's description of the effects of absence on lovers to the action of a pair
of compasses.[37]
Another important group of poets at this time were the Cavalier poets. They were an
important group of writers, who came from the classes that supported King Charles
I during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–51). (King Charles reigned from 1625
and was executed in 1649). The best known of these poets are Robert Herrick, Richard
Lovelace, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling. They "were not a formal group, but all
were influenced" by Ben Jonson.[38] Most of the Cavalier poets were courtiers, with
notable exceptions. For example, Robert Herrick was not a courtier, but his style marks
him as a Cavalier poet. Cavalier works make use of allegory and classical allusions, and
are influenced by Latin authors Horace, Cicero, and Ovid.
John Milton (1608–74) is one of the greatest English poets, who wrote at a time of
religious flux and political upheaval. He is generally seen as the last major poet of the
English Renaissance, though his major epic poems were written in the Restoration
period, including Paradise Lost (1671). Among these are L'Allegro, 1631; Il Penseroso,
1634; Comus (a masque), 1638; and Lycidas, (1638). His later major works
are Paradise Regained, 1671 and Samson Agonistes, 1671. Milton's works reflect deep
personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent
issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, he
achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his
celebrated Areopagitica (1644), written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship,
is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of free
speech and freedom of the press. William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the
"greatest English author",[40] and he remains generally regarded "as one of the
preeminent writers in the English language"
Thomas Urquhart (1611–1660) translation of Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel into
English has been described as "the greatest Scottish translation since Gavin
Douglas's Eneados".
The Restoration: 1660–1700

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Drama
The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 launched a fresh start for literature, both in
celebration of the new worldly and playful court of the king, and in reaction to it.
Theatres in England reopened after having been closed during the protectorship
of Oliver Cromwell, Puritanism lost its momentum, and the bawdy "Restoration comedy"
became a recognisable genre. Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written
and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. In addition, women were
allowed to perform on stage for the first time.
The Restoration of the monarchy in Ireland enabled Ogilby to resume his position as
Master of the Revels and open the first Theatre Royal in Dublin in 1662 in Smock Alley.
In 1662 Katherine Philips went to Dublin where she completed a translation of Pierre
Corneille's Pompée, produced with great success in 1663 in the Smock Alley Theatre,
and printed in the same year both in Dublin and London. Although other women had
translated or written dramas, her translation of Pompey broke new ground as the first
rhymed version of a French tragedy in English and the first English play written by a
woman to be performed on the professional stage. Aphra Behn (one of the women
writers dubbed "The fair triumvirate of wit") was a prolific dramatist and one of the first
English professional female writers. Her greatest dramatic success was The
Rover (1677).
Poetry
Behn's depiction of the character Willmore in The Rover and the witty, poetry-reciting
rake Dorimant in George Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676) are seen as a satire
on John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680), an English libertine poet, and a wit
of the Restoration court. His contemporary Andrew Marvell described him as "the best
English satirist", and he is generally considered to be the most considerable poet and
the most learned among the Restoration wits. [44] His A Satyr Against Reason and
Mankind is assumed to be a Hobbesian critique of rationalism. Rochester's poetic work
varies widely in form, genre, and content. He was part of a "mob of gentlemen who
wrote with ease", who continued to produce their poetry in manuscripts, rather than in
publication. As a consequence, some of Rochester's work deals with topical concerns,
such as satires of courtly affairs in libels, to parodies of the styles of his contemporaries,
such as Sir Charles Scroope. He is also notable for his impromptus, Voltaire, who spoke
of Rochester as "the man of genius, the great poet", admired his satire for its "energy
and fire" and translated some lines into French to "display the shining imagination his
lordship only could boast".[48]
John Dryden (1631–1700) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright
who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period
came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. He established the heroic
couplet as a standard form of English poetry by writing successful satires, religious
pieces, fables, epigrams, compliments, prologues, and plays with it; he also introduced
the alexandrine and triplet into the form. In his poems, translations, and criticism, he
established a poetic diction appropriate to the heroic couplet. Dryden's greatest
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achievements were in satiric verse in works like the mock-

heroic MacFlecknoe (1682). W. H. Auden referred to him as "the master of the middle
style" that was a model for his contemporaries and for much of the 18th century. [49] The
considerable loss felt by the English literary community at his death was evident from
the elegies that it inspired. [50] Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was heavily influenced by
Dryden, and often borrowed from him; other writers in the 18th century were equally
influenced by both Dryden and Pope.
Though Ben Jonson had been poet laureate to James I in England, this was not then a
formal position and the formal title of Poet Laureate, as a royal office, was first conferred
by letters patent on John Dryden in 1670. The post then became a regular British
institution.
Prose
Diarists John Evelyn (1620–1706) and Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) depicted everyday
London life and the cultural scene of the times. Their works are among the most
important primary sources for the Restoration period in England, and consists
of eyewitness accounts of many great events, such as the Great Plague of
London (1644–5), and the Great Fire of London (1666).
The publication of The Pilgrim's Progress (Part I:1678; 1684), established
the Puritan preacher John Bunyan (1628–88) as a notable writer. Bunyan's The
Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of personal salvation and a guide to the Christian life.
Bunyan writes about how the individual can prevail against the temptations of mind and
body that threaten damnation. The book is written in a straightforward narrative and
shows influence from both drama and biography, and yet it also shows an awareness of
the grand allegorical tradition found in Edmund Spenser.
18th-century
The Augustan age: 1701–1750
The late 17th, early 18th century (1689–1750) in English literature is known as the
Augustan Age. Writers at this time "greatly admired their Roman counterparts, imitated
their works and frequently drew parallels between" contemporary world and the age of
the Roman emperor Augustus (27 AD – BC 14) [51] (see Augustan literature (ancient
Rome) ). Some of the major writers in this period were John Dryden (1631–1700),
the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), William Congreve, (1670–
1729), Joseph Addison (1672–1719), Richard Steele (1672–1729), Alexander
Pope (1688–1744), Henry Fielding (1707–54), Samuel Johnson (1709–84).
1707: Birth
The Union of the Parliaments of Scotland and England in 1707 to form a
single Kingdom of Great Britain and the creation of a joint state by the Acts of Union had
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little impact on the literature of England nor on national consciousness among English
writers. The situation in Scotland was different: the desire to maintain a cultural identity
while partaking of the advantages offered by the English literary market and English
literary standard language led to what has been described as the "invention of British
literature" by Scottish writers. English writers, if they considered Britain at all, tended to
assume it was merely England writ large; Scottish writers were more clearly aware of
the new state as a "cultural amalgam comprising more than just England" James
Thomson's "Rule Britannia!" is an example of the Scottish championing of this new
national and literary identity. With the invention of British literature came the
development of the first British novels, in contrast to the English novel of the 18th
century which continued to deal with England and English concerns rather than
exploring the changed political, social and literary environment. [52] Tobias
Smollett (1721–71) was a Scottish pioneer of the British novel, exploring the prejudices
inherent within the new social structure of the country through comic picaresque novels.
His The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) is the first major novel written in
English to have a Scotsman as hero, [52] and the multinational voices represented in the
narrative confront Anti-Scottish sentiment, being published only two years after
the Battle of Culloden. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) brings together
characters from the extremes of Britain to question how cultural and linguistic
differences can be accommodated within the new British identity, and
influenced Charles Dickens. Richard Cumberland wrote patriotic comedies depicting
characters taken from the "outskirts of the empire,". His most popular play, "The West
Indian" (1771) was performed in North America and the West Indies.
Prose, including the novel
In prose, the earlier part of the period was overshadowed by the development of the
English essay. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's The Spectator established the
form of the British periodical essay, inventing the pose of the detached observer of
human life who can meditate upon the world without advocating any specific changes in
it. However, this was also the time when the English novel, first emerging in the
Restoration, developed into a major art form. Daniel Defoe turned from journalism and
writing criminal lives for the press to writing fictional criminal lives with Roxana and Moll
Flanders.
The English novel has generally been seen as beginning with Daniel Defoe's Robinson
Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722), though John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's
Progress (1678) and Aphra Behn's, Oroonoko (1688) are also contenders. Other major
18th-century British novelists are Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), author of
the epistolary novels Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and Clarissa (1747–
48); Henry Fielding (1707–54), who wrote Joseph Andrews (1742) and The History of
Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749).
If Addison and Steele were dominant in one type of prose, then Jonathan Swift author of
the satire Gulliver's Travels was in another. In A Modest Proposal and the Drapier
Letters, Swift reluctantly defended the Irish people from the predations of colonialism.
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This provoked riots and arrests, but Swift, who had no love of Irish Roman Catholics,
was outraged by the abuses he saw.
The English pictorial satirist and editorial cartoonist William Hogarth (1697–1764) has
been credited with pioneering Western sequential art. His work ranged
from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral
subjects". Much of his work satirises contemporary politics and customs. [57]
Drama[edit]
See also: Restoration Comedy
Although documented history of Irish theatre began at least as early as 1601, the
earliest Irish dramatists of note were William Congreve (1670–1729), one of the most
interesting writers of Restoration comedies and author of The Way of the World (1700)
and playwright, George Farquhar (?1677–1707), The Recruiting Officer (1706).
(Restoration comedy refers to English comedies written and performed in
the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. Comedy of manners is used as a synonym of
Restoration comedy).[43]
Anglo-Irish drama in the 18th century also includes Charles Macklin (?1699–1797),
and Arthur Murphy (1727–1805).[3]
The age of Augustan drama was brought to an end by the censorship established by
the Licensing Act 1737. After 1737, authors with strong political or philosophical points
to make would no longer turn to the stage as their first hope of making a living, and
novels began to have dramatic structures involving only normal human beings, as the
stage was closed off for serious authors. Prior to the Licensing Act 1737, theatre was
the first choice for most wits. After it, the novel was [58]
Poetry
The most outstanding poet of the age is Alexander Pope (1688–1744), whose major
works include: The Rape of the Lock (1712; enlarged in 1714); a translation of
the Iliad (1715–20); a translation of the Odyssey (1725–26); The Dunciad (1728; 1743).
Since his death, Pope has been in a constant state of re-evaluation. His high artifice,
strict prosody, and, at times, the sheer cruelty of his satire were an object of derision for
the Romantic poets, and it was not until the 1930s that his reputation was revived. Pope
is now considered the dominant poetic voice of his century, a model of prosodic
elegance, biting wit, and an enduring, demanding moral force. The Rape of the
Lock and The Dunciad are masterpieces of the mock-epic genre.
It was during this time that poet James Thomson (1700–48) produced his
melancholy The Seasons (1728–30) and Edward Young (1681–1765) wrote his
poem Night-Thoughts (1742).
The roots of Romanticism: 1750–1798
Robert Burns inspired many vernacular writers across Britain and Ireland.
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The second half of the 18th century is sometimes called the "Age of Johnson". Samuel
Johnson (1709–1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English author who
made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary
critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson has been described as "arguably
the most distinguished man of letters in English history". After nine years of work,
Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755; it had a far-
reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest
single achievements of scholarship.". Through works such as the "Dictionary, his edition
of Shakespeare, and his Lives of the Poets in particular, he helped invent what we now
call English Literature".
This period of the 18th century saw the emergence of three major Irish authors Oliver
Goldsmith (1728–1774), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816), and Laurence
Sterne (1713–68). Goldsmith settled in London in 1756, where he published the
novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), a pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770) and
two plays, The Good-Natur'd Man 1768 and She Stoops to Conquer 1773. Sheridan
was born in Dublin, but his family moved to England in the 1750s. His first play, The
Rivals 1775, was performed at Covent Garden and was an instant success. He went on
to become the most significant London playwright of the late 18th century with plays
like The School for Scandal and The Critic. Sterne published his famous novel Tristram
Shandy in parts between 1759 and 1767.[64]
The sentimental novel or the novel of sensibility is a genre which developed during the
second half of the 18th century.[65] Among the most famous sentimental novels in
English are Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), Oliver
Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and Laurence Sterne's Tristram
Shandy (1759 – 67).
Another novel genre also developed in this period. In 1778, Frances Burney (1752–
1840) wrote Evelina, one of the first novels of manners. Fanny Burney's novels' indeed
"were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen".
The graveyard poets were a number of pre-Romantic English poets, writing in the 1740s
and later, whose works are characterised by their gloomy meditations on mortality,
"skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms" in the context of the graveyard, To this was
added, by later practitioners, a feeling for the 'sublime' and uncanny, and an interest in
ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry. They are often considered precursors of
the Gothic genre. The poets include; Thomas Gray (1716–71), Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard (1751); William Cowper (1731–1800); Christopher Smart (1722–
71); Thomas Chatterton (1752–70); Robert Blair (1699–1746);[73] and Edward
Young (1683–1765), The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and
Immortality (1742–45).[74]
Other precursors of Romanticism are the poets James Thomson (1700–48) and James
Macpherson (1736–96), the Gothic novel and the novel of sensibility.
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Also foreshadowing Romanticism was Gothic fiction, in works such as Horace Walpole's

1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. The Gothic fiction genre combines elements
of horror and romance. A pioneering Gothic novelist was Ann Radcliffe author of The
Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). The Monk (1796), by Matthew Lewis, is another notable
early work in both the Gothic and horror genres.
James Macpherson (1736–96) was the first Scottish poet to gain an international
reputation. Claiming to have found poetry written by the ancient bard Ossian, he
published translations that acquired international popularity, being proclaimed as a
Celtic equivalent of the Classical epics. Both Robert Burns (1759–96) and Walter
Scott (1771–1832) were highly influenced by the Ossian cycle.
Robert Burns (1759–1796) was a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his
death he became a cultural icon in Scotland. Among poems and songs of Burns that
remain well known across the world are, "Auld Lang Syne"; "A Red, Red Rose"; "A
Man's A Man for A' That"; "To a Mouse"; "Tam o' Shanter" and "Ae Fond Kiss".
Romanticism: 1798–1837
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in

Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Various dates are given for the Romantic
period in British literature, but here the publishing of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is taken as
the beginning, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end, even though, for
example, William Wordsworth lived until 1850 and William Blake published before 1798.
The writers of this period, however, "did not think of themselves as 'Romantics'", and
the term was first used by critics of the Victorian period.
The Romantic period was one of major social change in England, because of the
depopulation of the countryside and the rapid development of overcrowded industrial
cities, that took place in the period roughly between 1785 and 1830. The movement of
so many people in England was the result of two forces: the Agricultural Revolution, that
involved the enclosure of the land, drove workers off the land, and the Industrial
Revolution which provided them employment, "in the factories and mills, operated by
machines driven by steam-power". Indeed, Romanticism may be seen in part as a
reaction to the Industrial Revolution though it was also a revolt against aristocratic social
and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, as well a reaction against the
scientific rationalisation of nature. The French Revolution was an especially important
influence on the political thinking of many of the Romantic poets.
The landscape is often prominent in the poetry of this period, so that the Romantics,
especially perhaps Wordsworth, are often described as 'nature poets'. However, the
longer Romantic 'nature poems' have a wider concern because they are usually
meditations on "an emotional problem or personal crisis".
Romantic poetry
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The poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) was one of the first of the
English Romantic poets. Largely disconnected from the major streams of the literature
of the time, Blake was generally unrecognised during his lifetime, but is now considered
a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.
Among his most important works are Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of
Experience (1794) "and profound and difficult 'prophecies' " such as Visions of the
Daughters of Albion (1793), The First Book of Urizen (1794), and "Jerusalem: the
Emanation of the Giant Albion" (1804–?20).
After Blake, among the earliest Romantics were the Lake Poets, a small group of
friends, including William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–
1834), Robert Southey (1774–1843) and journalist Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859).
However, at the time, Walter Scott (1771–1832) was the most famous poet. Scott
achieved immediate success with his long narrative poem The Lay of the Last
Minstrel in 1805, followed by the full epic poem Marmion in 1808. Both were set in the
distant Scottish past.[85]
The early Romantic Poets brought a new emotionalism and introspection, and their
emergence is marked by the first romantic manifesto in English literature, the "Preface"
to Lyrical Ballads (1798). The poems in Lyrical Ballads were mostly by Wordsworth,
although Coleridge contributed the long "Rime of the Ancient Mariner".[86] Among
Wordsworth's most important poems, are "Michael", "Lines Composed a Few Miles
Above Tintern Abbey", "Resolution and Independence", "Ode: Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections of Early Childhood" and the long, autobiographical, epic The
Prelude.
Robert Southey (1774–1843) was another of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet
Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame has been long
eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) was an English essayist, best
known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821), an autobiographical
account of his laudanum and its effect on his life.
Second generation
The second generation of Romantic poets includes Lord Byron (1788–1824), Percy
Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and John Keats (1795–1821). Byron, however, was still
influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps, the least "romantic" of the three,
preferring "the brilliant wit of Pope to what he called the 'wrong poetical system' of his
Romantic contemporaries".
Though John Keats shared Byron and Shelley's radical politics, "his best poetry is not
political" but is especially noted for its sensuous music and imagery, along with a
concern with material beauty and the transience of life. Among his most famous works
are: "The Eve of St Agnes", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Ode to a Nightingale", "To
Autumn".
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Percy Shelley, known to contemporaries for his radical politics and association with
figures such as Byron and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, daughter of radical thinkers
William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, was the third major romantic poet of the
second generation. Generally regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English
language, Shelley is perhaps best known for poems such as Ozymandias, Ode to the
West Wind, To a Skylark and Adonaïs, an elegy written on the death of Keats. Mary
Shelley (1797–1851) is remembered as the author of Frankenstein (1818), an
important Gothic novel, as well as being an early example of science fiction.
Other poets
Another important poet in this period was John Clare (1793–1864). Clare was the son of
a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the
English countryside and his lamentation for the changes taking place in rural England.
George Crabbe (1754–1832) was an English poet who, during the Romantic period,
wrote "closely observed, realistic portraits of rural life [...] in the heroic couplets of
the Augustan age". Crabbe's works include The Village (1783), Poems (1807), The
Borough (1810).
Romanticism and the novel
Major novelists in this period were Jane Austen (1775–1817) and the Scotsman Sir
Walter Scott (1771–1832), while Gothic fiction of various kinds also flourished. Austen's
works satirise the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are
part of the transition to 19th-century realism. Austen's works include Pride and
Prejudice (1813) Sense and Sensibility (1811), Mansfield
Park (1814), Emma (1815) and Persuasion (1818).
Sir Walter Scott, 1822
The most important British novelist at the beginning of the early 19th century was Sir
Walter Scott, who was not only a highly successful British novelist, but "the greatest
single influence on fiction in the 19th century [...] [and] a European figure". [97] Scott's
novel writing career was launched in 1814 with Waverley, often called the first historical
novel, and was followed by Ivanhoe. The Waverley Novels, including The Antiquary, Old
Mortality, The Heart of Midlothian, and whose subject is Scottish history, are now
generally regarded as Scott's masterpieces.[98]
Victorian literature: 1832–1900

Victorian fiction
The novel
It was in the Victorian era (1832–1900) that the novel became the leading literary
genre in English. Women played an important part in this rising popularity both as
authors and as readers. Monthly serialising of fiction encouraged this surge in
popularity, due to a combination of the rise of literacy, technological advances in
printing, and improved economics of distribution. Circulating libraries, that allowed
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books to be borrowed for an annual subscription, were a further factor in the rising
popularity of the novel.
Charles Dickens (1812–70) emerged on the literary scene in the late 1830s and soon
became probably the most famous novelist in the history of British literature. Dickens
fiercely satirised various aspects of society, including the workhouse in Oliver Twist, the
failures of the legal system in Bleak House. In more recent years Dickens has been
most admired for his later novels, such as Dombey and Son (1846–48), Bleak
House (1852–53) and Little Dorrit (1855–57), Great Expectations (1860–1), and Our
Mutual Friend (1864–65).[102]
An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63), who during the
Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now much less read and is known
almost exclusively for Vanity Fair (1847).
The Brontë sisters, Emily, Charlotte and Anne, were other significant novelists in the
1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they were first published but
were subsequently accepted as classics. Charlotte Brontë's (1816–55) work was Jane
Eyre, broke new ground in being written from an intensely first-person female
perspective. Emily Brontë's (1818–48) novel was Wuthering Heights and, according
to Juliet Gardiner, "the vivid sexual passion and power of its language and imagery
impressed, bewildered and appalled reviewers". The third Brontë novel of 1847
was Anne Brontë's (1820–49) Agnes Grey, which deals with the lonely life of a
governess.
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65) was also a successful writer and North and
South contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of England with the wealthier south.
Anthony Trollope's (1815–82) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected
English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works are set in the
imaginary west country county of Barsetshire, including The Warden (1855)
and Barchester Towers (1857). Trollope's novels portray the lives of the landowning and
professional classes of early Victorian England.
George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans (1819–80) was a major novelist of the mid-Victorian
period. Her works, especially Middlemarch 1871-2), are important examples of literary
realism, and are admired for their combination of high Victorian literary detail, with an
intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow geographic confines they often
depict, that has led to comparisons with Tolstoy.
George Meredith (1828–1909) is best remembered for his novels The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel (1859) and The Egoist (1879). "His reputation stood very high well into" the 20th
century but then seriously declined.
An interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the
countryside is seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). A Victorian realist, in
the tradition of George Eliot, he was also influenced both in his novels and poetry by
Romanticism, especially by William Wordsworth. He gained fame as the author of such
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novels as, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of

Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895).
Another significant late 19th-century novelist is George Gissing (1857–1903), who
published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best-known novel is New Grub
Street (1891). Also in the late 1890s, the first novel of Polish-born immigrant Joseph
Conrad (1857–1924), an important forerunner of modernist literature, was published.
Conrad's Heart of Darkness was published in 1899.
The short story
There are early European examples of short stories published separately between 1790
and 1810, but the first true collections of short stories appeared between 1810 and 1830
in several countries around the same period. [110] The first short stories in the United
Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland's "remarkable narrative" "The
Poisoner of Montremos" (1791). Major novelists like Sir Walter Scott and Charles
Dickens also wrote some short stories.
Genre fiction
Adventure novels were popular, including Sir John Barrow's descriptive 1831 account of
the Mutiny on the Bounty. The Lost World literary genre was inspired by real stories of
archaeological discoveries by imperial adventurers. Sir Henry Rider Haggard wrote one
of the earliest examples, King Solomon's Mines, in 1885. Contemporary European
politics and diplomatic manoeuvrings informed Anthony Hope's
swashbuckling Ruritanian adventure novels The Prisoner of Zenda (1894). Robert Louis
Stevenson (1850–94) also wrote works in this genre, including Kidnapped (1886),
an historical novel set in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745, and Treasure
Island (1883), the classic pirate adventure.
Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Moonstone (1868) is generally considered the
first detective novel in the English language, and soon after Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle began his Sherlock Holmes series about a London-based "consulting detective".
Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring Holmes, from 1880 up to
1907, with a final case in 1914.
H. G. Wells's (1866–1946) writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels
like The War of the Worlds (1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian England
by Martians, and Wells is, along with Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905), as a major
figure in the development of the science fiction genre.
The history of the modern fantasy genre is generally said to begin with George
MacDonald, the influential author of The Princess and the
Goblin and Phantastes (1858). William Morris was a popular English poet who also
wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
The vampire genre fiction began with John William Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819).
This short story was inspired by the life of Lord Byron and his poem The Giaour. Irish
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writer Bram Stoker was the author of seminal horror work Dracula (1897) with the

primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula.
Penny dreadful publications were an alternative to mainstream works, and were aimed
at working class adolescents, introducing the infamous Sweeney Todd. The
premier ghost story writer of the 19th century was the Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu.
Children's literature
Literature for children developed as a separate genre during the Victorian era, and
some works became internationally known, such as Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland (1865). At the end of nineteenth-century, the author and illustrator Beatrix
Potter was known for her children's books, which featured animal characters,
including The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902). In the latter years of the 19th century,
precursors of the modern picture book were illustrated books of poems and short stories
produced by illustrators Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane, and Kate Greenaway.
These had a larger proportion of pictures to words than earlier books, and many of their
pictures were in colour. Vice Versa (1882) by F. Anstey, sees a father and
son exchange bodies — body swaps have been a popular theme in various media since
the book was published.
Victorian poetry
The leading poets during the Victorian period were Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–
1892), Robert Browning (1812–89), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61), and Matthew
Arnold (1822–88). The poetry of this period was heavily influenced by the Romantics,
but also went off in its own directions. Particularly notable was the development of
the dramatic monologue, a form used by many poets in this period, but perfected by
Browning.[112]
Tennyson was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's
reign. He was described by T. S. Eliot, as "the greatest master of metrics as well as
melancholia", and as having "the finest ear of any English poet since Milton".[113]
While Elizabeth Barrett Browning was the wife of Robert Browning she had established
her reputation as a major poet before she met him. Her most famous work is the
sequence of 44 sonnets "Sonnets from the Portuguese" published in Poems (1850).
[114]
Matthew Arnold's reputation as a poet has declined in recent years and he is best
remembered now for his critical works, like Culture and Anarchy (1869), and his 1867
poem "Dover Beach".
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) was a poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He
founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John
Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of
artists and writers influenced by the movement, most notably William
Morris and Edward Burne-Jones.[115]
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While Arthur Clough (1819–61) was a more minor figure of this era, he has been
described as "a fine poet whose experiments in extending the range of literary language
and subject were ahead of his time".[116]
George Meredith (1828–1909) is remembered for his innovative collection of
poems Modern Love (1862).[108]
In the second half of the century, English poets began to take an interest in
French Symbolism. Two groups of poets emerged in the 1890s, the Yellow Book poets
who adhered to the tenets of Aestheticism, including Algernon Charles
Swinburne, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Symons and the Rhymers' Club group, that
included Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson and Irishman William Butler Yeats. Irishman
Yeats went on to become an important modernist in the 20th century. Also in the
1890s A. E. Housman (1859–1936) published at his own expense A Shropshire Lad.
The poems' wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, in spare
language and distinctive imagery, appealed strongly to late Victorian and Edwardian
taste.[117]
The nonsense verse of Edward Lear, along with the novels and poems of Lewis Carroll,
is regarded as a precursor of surrealism.[118] In 1846 Lear published A Book of
Nonsense, a volume of limericks that went through three editions and helped popularise
the form.
Writers of comic verse included the dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator W. S.
Gilbert (1836–1911), who is best known for his fourteen comic operas produced
in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous
include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently
performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado.[119]
Victorian drama
For much of the first half of the 19th century, drama in London and provincial theatres
was restricted by a licensing system to the Patent theatre companies, and all other
theatres could perform only musical entertainments (although magistrates had powers
to license occasional dramatic performances). The passing of the Theatres Act
1843 removed the monopoly on drama held by the Patent theatres.
Irish playwright Dion Boucicault (1820–90) was an extremely popular writer of comedies
who achieved success on the London stage with works like London Assurance, (1841),
in the middle of the 19th century. However, drama did not achieve importance as a
genre in the 19th century until the end of the century, and then the main figures were
also Irish-born. In the last decade of the century major playwrights emerged,
including George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Arms and the Man (1894), and Oscar
Wilde (1854–1900), The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Both of these Irish writers
lived mainly in England and wrote in English, with the exception of some works in
French by Wilde.
Twentieth-century
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The year 1922 marked a significant change in the relationship between Great

Britain and Ireland, with the setting up of the (predominantly Catholic) Irish Free State in
most of Ireland, while the predominantly Protestant Northern Ireland remained part of
the United Kingdom. This separation also leads to questions as to what extent Irish
writing prior to 1922 should be treated as a colonial literature. There are also those who
question whether the literature of Northern Ireland is Irish or British. Nationalist
movements in Britain, especially in Wales and Scotland, also significantly influenced
writers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Modernism and cultural revivals: 1901–1945
From around 1910 the Modernist movement began to influence British literature. While
their Victorian predecessors had usually been happy to cater to mainstream middle-
class taste, 20th-century writers often felt alienated from it, so responded by writing
more intellectually challenging works or by pushing the boundaries of acceptable
content.
First World War
The experiences of the First World War were reflected in the work of war poets such
as Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, and Siegfried
Sassoon. In Parenthesis, an epic poem by David Jones first published in 1937, is a
notable work of the literature of the First World War, that was influenced by Welsh
traditions, despite Jones being born in England. In non-fiction prose. T. E. Lawrence's
(Lawrence of Arabia) autobiographical account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom of the Arab
Revolt against the Ottoman Empire is important.
Poetry: 1901–1945
Two Victorian poets who published little in the 19th century, Thomas Hardy (1840–
1928) and Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89), have since come to be regarded as
major poets. While Hardy first established his reputation the late 19th century with
novels, he also wrote poetry throughout his career. However he did not publish his first
collection until 1898, so that he tends to be treated as a 20th-century poet. [120] Gerard
Manley Hopkins's Poems were posthumously published in 1918 by Robert Bridges.
Free verse and other stylistic innovations came to the forefront in this era, with which T.
S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were especially associated. T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was born
American, migrated to England in 1914, and he was "arguably the most important
English-language poet of the 20th century." [121] He produced some of the best-known
poems in the English language, including "The Waste Land" (1922) and Four
Quartets (1935–1942).[122]
The Georgian poets like Rupert Brooke, Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) and John
Masefield (1878–1967, Poet Laureate from 1930) maintained a more conservative
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approach to poetry by combining romanticism, sentimentality and hedonism. Edward

Thomas (1878–1917) is sometimes treated as another Georgian poet. [123]
In the 1930s the Auden Group, sometimes called simply the Thirties poets, was an
important group of politically left-wing writers, that included W. H. Auden (1907–73) and
two Anglo-Irish writers, Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–72) and Louis MacNeice (1907-1963).
Auden was a major poet who had a similar influence on subsequent poets as W. B.
Yeats and T. S. Eliot had had on earlier generations. [124]
Keith Douglas (1920–1944) was noted for his war poetry during World War II and his
wry memoir of the Western Desert Campaign, Alamein to Zem Zem. He was killed in
action during the invasion of Normandy. Alun Lewis (1915–1944), born in South Wales,
was one of the best-known English-language poets of the war [125] The Second World
War has remained a theme in British literature.
Modernist novel
While modernism was to become an important literary movement in the early decades
of the new century, there were also many fine writers who, like Thomas Hardy, were not
modernists. Novelists include: Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), who was also a successful
poet; H. G. Wells (1866–1946); John Galsworthy (1867–1933), (Nobel Prize in
Literature, 1932), whose novels include The Forsyte Saga (1906–21); Arnold
Bennett (1867–1931) author of The Old Wives' Tale (1908); G. K. Chesterton (1874–
1936); E.M. Forster (1879–1970). The most popular British writer of the early years of
the 20th century was arguably Rudyard Kipling, a highly versatile writer of novels, short
stories and poems, and to date the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for
Literature (1907).[126]
H. G. Wells was a highly prolific author who is now best known for his work in the
science fiction genre.[127] His most notable science fiction works include The War of the
Worlds, and The Time Machine, written in the 1890s. Forster's A Passage to India 1924,
reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier works such as A Room with a
View (1908) and Howards End (1910), examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of
Edwardian society in England.
Writing in the 1920s and 1930s Virginia Woolf was an influential feminist, and a major
stylistic innovator associated with the stream-of-consciousness technique. Her novels
include Mrs Dalloway 1925, and The Waves 1931, and A Room of One's Own 1929,
which contains her famous dictum; "A woman must have money and a room of her own
if she is to write fiction". [128] Woolf and E. M. Forster were members of the Bloomsbury
Group, an enormously influential group of associated English writers, intellectuals,
philosophers and artists.[129]
Other early modernists were Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957), whose novel Pointed
Roof (1915), is one of the earliest example of the stream of consciousness technique
and D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), who wrote with understanding about the social life of
the lower and middle classes, and the personal life of those who could not adapt to the
social norms of his time. Sons and Lovers 1913, is widely regarded as his earliest
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masterpiece. There followed The Rainbow 1915, and its sequel Women in

Love published 1920.[130]
An important development, beginning really in the 1930s and 1940s, was a tradition of
working class novels that were actually written by writers who had a working-class
background.
An essayist and novelist, George Orwell's works are considered important social and
political commentaries of the 20th century, dealing with issues such as poverty in The
Road to Wigan Pier (1937) and in the 1940s his satires of totalitarianism
included Animal Farm (1945). Malcolm Lowry published in the 1930s, but is best known
for Under the Volcano (1947). Evelyn Waugh satirised the "bright young things" of the
1920s and 1930s, notably in A Handful of Dust, and Decline and Fall, while Brideshead
Revisited 1945, has a theological basis, aiming to examine the effect of divine grace on
its main characters.[131] Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) published his
famous dystopia Brave New World in 1932, the same year as John Cowper Powys's A
Glastonbury Romance. In 1938 Graham Greene's (1904–91) first major novel Brighton
Rock was published.
Late modernism: 1946–2000
Though some have seen modernism ending by around 1939, [132] with regard to English
literature, "When (if) modernism petered out and postmodernism began has been
contested almost as hotly as when the transition from Victorianism to modernism
occurred". In fact a number of modernists were still living and publishing in the 1950s
and 1960, including T. S. Eliot, Dorothy Richardson and John Cowper Powys.
Furthermore, Northumberland poet Basil Bunting, born in 1901, published little
until Briggflatts in 1965.
Novel
In 1947 Malcolm Lowry published Under the Volcano. George Orwell's satire
of totalitarianism, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published in 1949. An essayist and
novelist, Orwell's works are important social and political commentaries of the 20th
century. Evelyn Waugh's Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–61) was
published in this period.
Graham Greene's works span the 1930s to the 1980s. He was a convert to Catholicism
and his novels explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world.
Other novelists writing in the 1950s and later were: Anthony Powell, A Dance to the
Music of Time; Nobel Prize laureate Sir William Golding; Anglo-Irish philosopher Dame
Iris Murdoch (who was a prolific writer of novels dealing with sexual relationships,
morality, and the power of the unconscious); and Scottish novelist Dame Muriel
Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961). Anthony Burgess is especially
remembered for his dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange 1962. Mervyn Peake (1911–
68) published his Gothic fantasy Gormenghast trilogy between 1946 and 1959. Angela
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Carter (1940–1992) was a novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical

realism, and picaresque works. Writing from the 1960s until the 1980s.
Sir Salman Rushdie is among a number of post Second World War writers from former
British colonies who permanently settled in Britain. Rushdie achieved fame
with Midnight's Children (1981). His most controversial novel The Satanic Verses (1989)
was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad.
Doris Lessing from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) published her first novel The
Grass is Singing in 1950, after immigrating to England. She initially wrote about her
African experiences. Lessing soon became a dominant presence in the English literary
scene, publishing frequently, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Sir V. S.
Naipaul (1932– ) was another immigrant, born in Trinidad, who won the Nobel Prize in
Literature. Also from the West Indies is George Lamming (1927– ) who wrote In the
Castle of My Skin (1953), while from Pakistan came Hanif Kureshi (1954–), a
playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, novelist and short story writer. 2017 Nobel
Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro (1954– ) was born in Japan, but his parents immigrated to
Britain when he was six,[134] and he became a British citizen as an adult. Martin
Amis (1949) is one of the most prominent British novelists of the end of the 20th,
beginning of the 21st century. Pat Barker (1943–) has won many awards for her fiction.
English novelist and screenwriter Ian McEwan (1948– ) is a highly regarded writer.
Drama
An important cultural movement in the British theatre that developed in the late 1950s
and early 1960s was Kitchen sink realism (or "kitchen sink drama"), art, novels, film,
and television plays.[135] The term angry young men was often applied members of this
artistic movement. It used a style of social realism which depicts the domestic lives of
the working class, to explore social issues and political issues. The drawing room
plays of the post war period, typical of dramatists like Sir Terence Rattigan and Sir Noël
Coward, were challenged in the 1950s by these Angry Young Men, in plays like John
Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956).
Again in the 1950s the Theatre of the Absurd profoundly affected British dramatists,
especially Irishman Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, Among those influenced
were Harold Pinter (1930–2008), (The Birthday Party, 1958), and Tom Stoppard (1937–
) (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,1966).[136]
The Theatres Act 1968 abolished the system of censorship of the stage that had existed
in Great Britain since 1737. The new freedoms of the London stage were tested
by Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain, first staged at the National Theatre during
1980, and subsequently the focus of an unsuccessful private prosecution in 1982.
Other playwrights whose careers began later in the century are: Sir Alan
Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular, 1972), Michael Frayn (1933–) playwright and
novelist, David Hare (1947– ), David Edgar (1948– ). Dennis Potter's most distinctive
dramatic work was produced for television.
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During the 1950s and 1960s many major British playwrights either effectively began
their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio. Many major British
playwrights in fact, either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works
adapted for radio, including Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard whose "first professional
production was in the fifteen-minute Just Before Midnight programme on BBC Radio,
which showcased new dramatists".[137] John Mortimer made his radio debut as a
dramatist in 1955, with his adaptation of his own novel Like Men Betrayed for
the BBC Light Programme. Other notable radio dramatists included Brendan Behan,
from Ireland, and novelist Angela Carter.
Among the most famous works created for radio, are Dylan Thomas's Under Milk
Wood (1954), Samuel Beckett's All That Fall (1957), Harold Pinter's A Slight
Ache (1959) and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (1954).
Poetry
While poets T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas were still publishing after 1945,
new poets started their careers in the 1950s and 1960s including Philip Larkin (1922–
85) (The Whitsun Weddings,1964) and Ted Hughes (1930–98) (The Hawk in the Rain,
1957). Northern Ireland has produced a number of significant poets, the most famous
being Nobel prize winner Seamus Heaney. However, Heaney regarded himself as Irish
and not British. Others poets from Northern Ireland include Derek Mahon, Paul
Muldoon, James Fenton, Michael Longley, and Medbh McGuckian.
In the 1960s and 1970s Martian poetry aimed to break the grip of 'the familiar', by
describing ordinary things in unfamiliar ways, as though, for example, through the eyes
of a Martian. Poets most closely associated with it are Craig Raine and Christopher
Reid. Martin Amis, an important novelist in the late twentieth and twentieth centuries,
carried into fiction this drive to make the familiar strange. [139] Another literary movement
in this period was the British Poetry Revival, a wide-reaching collection of groupings and
subgroupings that embraces performance, sound and concrete poetry. Leading poets
associated with this movement include J. H. Prynne, Eric Mottram, Tom
Raworth, Denise Riley and Lee Harwood. It reacted to the more conservative group
called "The Movement".
The Liverpool poets were Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough. Their work
was a self-conscious attempt at creating an English equivalent to the Beats. Tony
Harrison (1937 – ), who explores the medium of language and the tension between
native dialect (in his case, that of working-class Leeds) and acquired
language, and Simon Armitage.
Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) has been considered to be among the most distinguished
English poets of his generation, Charles Tomlinson (1927–2015) is another important
English poet of an older generation, though "since his first publication in 1951, has built
a career that has seen more notice in the international scene than in his native England.
[143]
Literature for children and young adults[edit]

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J. K. Rowling, 2010
Roald Dahl is a prominent author of children's fantasy novels, like Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory in 1964, which are often inspired from experiences from his
childhood, with often unexpected endings, and unsentimental, dark humour.
[144]
Popular school stories from this period include Ronald Searle's St Trinian's.
J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter fantasy series is a sequence of seven novels that chronicle
the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter is the best selling book-series in
history. The series has been translated into 67 languages, [145][146] placing Rowling among
the most translated authors in history. [147] Cressida Cowell wrote How to Train Your
Dragon, a series of twelve books set in a fictional Viking world.
Scottish literature
Scotland has in the late 20th century produced several important novelists,
including James Kelman who like Samuel Beckett can create humour out of the most
grim situations; A. L. Kennedy whose 2007 novel Day was named Book of the Year in
the Costa Book Awards. Alasdair Gray whose Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981) is
a dystopian fantasy set in his home town Glasgow.
Highly anglicised Lowland Scots is often used in contemporary Scottish fiction, for
example, the Edinburgh dialect of Lowland Scots used in Trainspotting by Irvine
Welsh to give a brutal depiction of the lives of working class Edinburgh drug
users. In Northern Ireland, James Fenton's poetry is written in contemporary Ulster
Scots. The poet Michael Longley (born 1939) has experimented with Ulster Scots for
the translation of Classical verse, as in his 1995 collection The Ghost Orchid.
Twentieth-century genre fiction
Early twentieth-century
Among significant writers in this genre in the early twentieth-century were Erskine
Childers' The Riddle of the Sands (1903), who wrote spy novels, Emma
Orczy (Baroness Orczy) author of The Scarlet Pimpernel, an historical romance which
recounted the adventures of a member of the English gentry in the French
Revolutionary period. The title character established the notion of a "hero with a secret
identity" into popular culture. John Buchan wrote adventure novels like Prester
John (1910). Novels featuring a gentleman adventurer were popular between the wars,
exemplified by the series of H. C. McNeile with Bulldog Drummond (1920), and Leslie
Charteris, whose many books chronicled the adventures of Simon Templar, alias The
Saint.
The medieval scholar M. R. James wrote highly regarded ghost stories in contemporary
settings.
This was called 'the Golden Age of Detective Fiction'. Dame Agatha Christie, a writer of
crime novels, short stories and plays, is best remembered for her 80 detective novels
and her successful West End theatre plays. Other female writers dubbed "Queens of
crime" include Dorothy L. Sayers (gentleman detective, Lord Peter Wimsey), Margery
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Allingham (Albert Campion – supposedly created as a parody of Sayers' Wimsey [152])

and New Zealander Dame Ngaio Marsh (Roderick Alleyn). Georgette Heyer created
the historical romance genre, and also wrote detective fiction.
A major work of science fiction, from the early 20th century, is A Voyage to Arcturus by
Scottish writer David Lindsay, first published in 1920,[153] and was a central influence
on C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.[154]
From the early 1930s to late 1940s, an informal literary discussion group associated
with the English faculty at the University of Oxford were The Inklings. Its leading
members were the major fantasy novelists; J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Lewis is
known for The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space
Trilogy, while Tolkien is best known as the author of The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the
Rings, and The Silmarillion.
Later twentieth-century
Among important writers of genre fiction in the second half of the twentieth-century
are thriller writer Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond 007. Fleming chronicled Bond's
adventures in twelve novels, including Casino Royale (1953).
In contrast to the larger-than-life spy capers of Bond, John le Carré was an author
of spy novels who depicted a shadowy world of espionage and counter-espionage, and
his best known novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), is often regarded as
one of the greatest in the genre.
Frederick Forsyth writes thriller novels and Ken Follett writes spy thrillers as well as
historical novels, notably The Pillars of the Earth (1989).
War novels include Alistair MacLean thriller's The Guns of Navarone (1957), Where
Eagles Dare (1968), and Jack Higgins' The Eagle Has Landed (1975). Patrick
O'Brian's nautical historical novels feature the Aubrey–Maturin series set in the Royal
Navy.
Ronald Welch's Carnegie Medal winning novel Knight Crusader is set in the 12th
century and gives a depiction of the Third Crusade, featuring the Christian leader and
King of England Richard the Lionheart. Nigel Tranter also wrote historical novels of
celebrated Scottish warriors; Robert the Bruce in The Bruce Trilogy.
The murder mysteries of both Ruth Rendell and P. D. James are popular crime fiction.
Science fiction
John Wyndham wrote post-apocalyptic science fiction, his most notable works
being The Day of the Triffids (1951), and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957). Other important
writers in this genre are Sir Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey, Brian Aldiss,
and Michael Moorcock. Moorcock was involved with the 'New Wave' of science fiction
writers "part of whose aim was to invest the genre with literary merit" Similarly J. G.
Ballard (1930–2009) "became known in the 1960s as the most prominent of the 'New
Wave' science fiction writers". A later major figure in science fiction was Iain M.
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Banks who created a fictional anarchist, socialist, and utopian society the Culture. Nobel
prize winner Doris Lessing also published a sequence of five science fiction novels
the Canopus in Argos: Archives between 1979 and 1983.
Fantasy
Sir Terry Pratchett is best known for his Discworld series of comic fantasy novels, that
begins with The Colour of Magic (1983), and includes Night Watch (2002). Philip
Pullman's is famous for his fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, which follows the coming-
of-age of two children as they wander through a series of parallel universes against a
backdrop of epic events. While Neil Gaiman is a writer of both science fiction, and
fantasy including Stardust (1998). Douglas Adams is known for his five-volume science
fiction comedy series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Twentieth-century children's literature
Significant writers of works for children include, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the
Willows, Rev W Awdry, The Railway Series, A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, and P. L.
Travers' Mary Poppins. Prolific children's author Enid Blyton chronicled the adventures
of a group of young children and their dog in The Famous Five. T. H. White wrote
the Arthurian fantasy The Once and Future King, the first part being The Sword in the
Stone (1938). Mary Norton wrote The Borrowers, featuring tiny people who borrow from
humans. Inspiration for Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel The Secret Garden. In
Kent. Hugh Lofting created the character Doctor Dolittle who appears in a series
of twelve books, while Dodie Smith's The Hundred and One Dalmatians featured the
villainous Cruella de Vil.
21st century literature

Novel
In the 21st century an outstanding concern with historical fiction has been noted.
[157]
Dame Hilary Mantel is a highly successful writer of historical novels winning the
Booker Prize twice, for Wolf Hall 2009, and Bring Up the Bodies. One of the more
ambitious novelists to emerge in this period is David Mitchell whose far-reaching
novel Cloud Atlas (2004) spans from the 19th century into the future. Influences from
earlier literary styles and techniques in English literature is notable by writers such
as Ian McEwan in his 2002 novel Atonement. Julian Barnes (1946– ) is another
prominent writer and he won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his book The Sense of an
Ending.
Theatre
The theatrical landscape has been reconfigured, moving from a single national theatre
at the end of the twentieth-century to four as a result of the devolution of cultural policy.
Genre fiction
E. L. James' erotic romance trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty
Shades Freed, along with the companion novel Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by
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Christian, have sold over 100 million copies globally, and set the record in the United
Kingdom as the fastest selling paperback of all time. [159][160] The perceived success and
promotion of genre fiction authors from Scotland provoked controversy in 2009 when
James Kelman criticised, in a speech at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the
attention afforded to "upper middle-class young magicians" and "detective fiction" by the
"Anglocentric" Scottish literary establishment. .
Literary institutions
Original literature continues to be promoted by institutions such as the Eisteddfod in
Wales and the Welsh Books Council. The Royal Society of Edinburgh includes literature
within its sphere of activity. Literature Wales is the Welsh national literature promotion
agency and society of writers, which administers the Wales Book of the Year award.
The imported eisteddfod tradition in the Channel Islands encouraged recitation and
performance, a tradition that continues today.
Formed in 1949, the Cheltenham Literature Festival is the longest-running festival of its
kind in the world. The Hay Festival in Wales attracts wide interest, and the Edinburgh
International Book Festival is the largest festival of its kind in the world.
The Poetry Society publishes and promotes poetry, notably through an annual National
Poetry Day. World Book Day is observed in Britain and the Crown Dependencies on the
first Thursday in March annually.
Literary prizes
British recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature include Rudyard Kipling (1907), John
Galsworthy (1932), T. S. Eliot (1948), Bertrand Russell (1950), Winston
Churchill (1953), William Golding (1983), V. S. Naipaul (2001), Harold
Pinter (2005) Doris Lessing (2007), and Kazuo Ishiguro (2017).
Literary prizes for which writers from the United Kingdom are eligible include:
 Man Booker Prize

 Commonwealth Writers' Prize
 International Dublin Literary Award
 Carnegie Medal
 Costa Book Awards (formerly the Whitbread Awards)
 Orange Prize for Fiction
 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry

Greek and Roman Literature
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Greek literature refers to literature written in Ancient Greek dialects. These works
range from the oldest surviving written works in the Greek language until works from the
fifth century AD. The Greek language arose from the proto-Indo-European language. A
number of alphabets and syllabaries had been used to render Greek, but surviving
Greek literature was written in a Phoenician-derived alphabet that arose primarily in
Greek Ionia and was fully adopted by Athens by the fifth century BC.
Ancient Greek literature was written in an Ancient Greek dialect. This literature
ranges from the oldest surviving written works until works from approximately the fifth
century AD. This time period is divided into the Preclassical, Classical, Hellenistic, and
Roman periods.
Preclassical (800 BC-500 BC)

The Greeks created poetry before making use of writing for literary purposes.
Poems created in the Preclassical period were meant to be sung or recited (writing was
little known before the 7th century BC). Most poems focused on myths, legends that
were part folktale and part religion. Tragedies and comedies emerged around 600 BC.
At the beginning of Greek literature stand the works of Homer; the Iliad and
the Odyssey. Though dates of composition vary, these works were fixed around 800
BC. Another significant figure was the poet Hesiod. His two surviving works are Works
and Days and Theogony.
Classical (500 BC-323 BC)

During the classical period, many of the genres of western literature became
more prominent. Lyrical poetry, odes, pastorals, elegies,epigrams arose in this period.
One of the major lyrical poets was Sappho. Sappho was an archaic Greek poet
from the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung and
accompanied by a lyre. Most of Sappho's poetry is now lost, and what is extant has
survived only in fragmentary form, except for one complete poem – the "Ode to
Aphrodite".
Of the hundreds of tragedies written and performed during this time period, only
a limited number of plays survived. These plays are authored by Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides.
Aeschylus was an ancient Greek tragedian. He is often described as the Father
of Tragedy. Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived, and
there is a long standing debate regarding his authorship of one of these
plays, Prometheus Bound, which some believe his son Euphorion actually wrote.
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived.
The most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedipus and also Antigone.
Euripides, also known as the “most tragic poet”, was a tragedian of classical
Athens. Some ancient scholars attributed 95 plays to him but, according to the Suda, it
was 92 at most. Of these, 18 or 19 have survived more or less complete (there has
been debate about his authorship of Rhesus, largely on stylistic grounds).
The comedy arose from a ritual in honor of Dionysus, the god of the grape-
harvest, winemaking and wine, of fertility, ritual madness, religious ecstasy and theatre
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in ancient Greek religion and myth. These plays were full of obscenity, abuse, and
insult.
Two influential historians of this age are Herodotus (Father of History)
and Thucydides.
The greatest prose achievement of the 4th century BC was in philosophy. Greek
philosophy flourished during the classical period. Of the philosophers, Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle are the most famous.
Hellenistic (323 BC-31 BC)

The Hellenistic age is defined as the time between the death of Alexander the
Great and the rise of Roman domination. After the 3rd century BC, the Greek colony of
Alexandria in northern Egypt became the center of Greek culture.
Greek poetry flourished with significant contributions
from Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. Theocritus, who lived from
about 310 to 250 BC, was the creator of pastoral poetry, a type that
the Roman Virgil mastered in his Eclogues.
Drama was represented by the New Comedy, (everyday life, rather than of public
affairs).
One of the most valuable contributions of the Hellenistic period was the
translation of the Old Testament into Greek. This work was done at Alexandria and
completed by the end of the 2nd century BC.
Roman Age (31 BC-284 AD)

Roman literature was written in Latin and contributed significant works to the
subjects of poetry, comedy, history, and tragedy. A large proportion of literature from
this time period were histories.
Significant historians of the period were Timaeus, Polybius, and Diodorus
Siculus. The period of time they cover extended from late in the 4th century BC to the
2nd century AD.
Eratosthenes of Alexandria wrote on astronomy and geography, but his work is
known mainly from later summaries. The physician Galen pioneered developments in
various scientific disciplines including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology,
and neurology.
The New Testament, written by various authors in varying qualities of Koine
Greek (the common dialect during Hellenistic and Roman periods), hails from this
period. The Gospels and the Epistles of Saint Paul were written in this time period as
well.
Roman Literature
Formal Latin literature began in 240 BC, when a Roman audience saw a Latin
version of a Greek play. The adaptor was Livius Andronicus, a Greek who had been
brought to Rome as a prisoner of war in 272 BC. Andronicus also translated Homer's
Greek epic the Odyssey into an old type of Latin verse called Saturnian.
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The first Latin poet to write on a Roman theme was Gnaeus Naevius during the
3rd century BC. He composed an epic poem about the first Punic War, in which he had
fought. Naevius's dramas were mainly reworkings of Greek originals, but he also
created tragedies based on Roman myths and history.
Other epic poets followed Naevius. Quintus Ennius wrote a historical epic,
the Annals (soon after 200 BC), describing Roman history from the founding of Rome to
his own time. He adopted Greek dactylic hexameter (also known as "heroic hexameter"
and "the meter of epic"), which became the standard verse form for Roman epics. He
also became famous for his tragic dramas.
In this field, his most distinguished successors were Marcus
Pacuvius and Lucius Accius.
Considerably more is known about early Latin comedy, as 26 Early Latin
comedies are extant – 20 of which Plautus wrote, and the remaining six of
which Terence wrote. These men modeled their comedies on Greek plays known
as New Comedy. But they treated the plots and wording of the originals freely.
Asinaria, which has been translated as The One with the Asses, is a comic play
written in Latin by the Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus and is known as one of
the great works of ancient Roman comedy. It is famous for containing the lines "A man
is a wolf rather than a man to another man, when he hasn't yet found out what
he's like." and "Practice yourself what you preach."
Terence's plays were more polite in tone, dealing with domestic situations. His
works provided the chief inspiration for French and English comedies of the 17th
century AD, and even for modern American comedy.
Phormio is a Latin comic play by the early Roman playwright Terence, based on
a play by Apollodorus of Carystus. . The play is named after the character Phormio, who
is a cunning "parasite".
The prose of the period is best known through On Agriculture (160 BC) by Cato
the Elder. Cato also wrote the first Latin history of Rome and of other Italian cities. He
was the first Roman statesman to put his political speeches in writing as a means of
influencing public opinion.
Early Latin literature ended with Gaius Lucilius, who created a new kind of
poetry in his 30 books of Satires. He wrote in an easy, conversational tone about books,
food, friends, and current events.
The Augustan Age

The emperor Augustus took a personal interest in the literary works produced
during his years of power. This period is sometimes called the Augustan Age of Latin
Literature. Virgil published his pastoral Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid, an epic
poem describing the events that led to the creation of Rome. Virgil told how the Trojan
hero Aeneas became the ancestor of the Roman people. Virgil also provided divine
justification for Roman rule over the world. Although Virgil died before he could put the
finishing touches on his poem, it was soon recognized as the greatest work of Latin
literature.
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Virgil's friend Horace wrote Epodes, Odes, Satires, and Epistles. The perfection

of the Odes in content, form, and style has charmed readers for hundreds of years.
The Satires and Epistles discuss ethical and literary problems in an urbane, witty
manner. Horace's Art of Poetry, probably published as a separate work, greatly
influenced later poetic theories. It stated the basic rules of classical writing as the
Romans understood and used them. After Virgil died, Horace was Rome's leading poet.
The Latin elegy reached its highest development in the works of Ovid. Most of
this poetry is concerned with love. One of the most notable works of Ovid is the
Heroides.
The Golden Age

Traditionally, the height of Latin literature has been assigned to the period from 81 BC to
AD 17, although recent scholarship has questioned the assumptions that privileged the works of
this period over both earlier and later works. This period is usually said to have begun with the
first known speech of Cicero and ended with the death of Ovid.
Cicero has traditionally been considered the master of Latin prose.
Julius Caesar and Sallust were outstanding historical writers of Cicero's time.
The Imperial Period

During the reign of Nero from 54 to 68, the Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote a
number of dialogues and letters on such moral themes as mercy and generosity. In
his Natural Questions, Seneca analyzed earthquakes, floods, and storms. Seneca's
tragedies greatly influenced the growth of tragic drama in Europe.
The Satyricon (about 60) by Petronius was the first Latin novel. Only fragments
of the complete work survive. It describes the adventures of various low-class
characters in absurd, extravagant, and dangerous situations, often in the world of petty
crime.
Latin in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Early Modernity

Pagan Latin literature showed a final burst of vitality in the late 3rd century
through 5th centuries. Ammianus Marcellinus in history, Quintus Symmachus in
oratory, and Ausonius and Rutilius Claudius Namatianus in poetry all wrote with
great talent. The Mosella by Ausonius demonstrated a modernism of feeling that
indicates the end of classical literature as such.
At the same time, other men laid the foundations of Christian Latin
literature during the 4th century and 5th century. They included the church
fathers Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, and Ambrose, and the first great Christian
poet, Prudentius.
During the Renaissance there was a return to the Latin of Classical times, called
for this reason Neo-Latin. This purified language continued to be used as the lingua
among the learned throughout Europe, with the great works of Descartes, Francis
Bacon, and Baruch Spinoza all being composed in Latin. Among the last important
books written primarily in Latin prose were the works
of Swedenborg, Linnaeus, Euler, Gauss, and Isaac Newton, and Latin remains a
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necessary skill for modern readers of great early modern works of linguistics, literature,
and philosophy.
Several of the leading English poets wrote in Latin as well as English. Milton's
1645 Poems are one example, but there were also Thomas Campion, George Herbert
and Milton's colleague Andrew Marvell. They indeed wrote chiefly in Latin and were
valued for the elegance and Classicism of their style.
The Greek and Roman Gods and Goddesses
Greek Roman Functions and attributes
King of the gods and ruler of Mount Olympus; god of the sky,
Zeus Jupiter lightning, thunder, law, order and justice. Youngest child of the
Titans Cronus and Rhea.
Queen of the gods and the goddess of marriage, women,

Hera Juno
childbirth and family.
Neptun God of the seas, water, storms, hurricanes, earthquakes and

Poseidon
e horses.
Hades Ceres God of Wealth, he was also the ruler of the underworld.
Goddess of wisdom, knowledge, reason, intelligent activity,

Athena Minerva
literature, handicrafts, science, defense and strategic warfare.
God of light, the sun, prophecy, philosophy, truth, inspiration,

Apollo Apollo
poetry, music, arts, medicine, healing, and plague.
Goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, virginity, the moon, archery,

Artemis Diana
childbirth, protection and plaque.
Ares Mars God of war, violence, bloodshed and manly virtues.
Goddess of love, pleasure, passion, procreation, fertility, beauty

Aphrodite Venus
and desire.
Hephaestus Vulcan Master blacksmith and craftsman of the gods; god of the forge,
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craftsmanship, invention, fire and volcanoes.
Messenger of the gods; god of travel, commerce, communication,

Hermes Mercury
borders, eloquence, diplomacy, thieves and games.
Goddess of the hearth, fire and of the right ordering of domesticity and the
Hesti Vest
family; she was born into the first Olympian generation and was one of the
a a
original twelve Olympians.

Spanish Literature
Spanish literature
Spanish literature generally refers to literature (Spanish poetry, prose, and drama) written in
the Spanish language within the territory that presently constitutes the state of Spain. Its
development coincides and frequently intersects with that of other literary traditions from
regions within the same territory, particularly Catalan literature, Galician intersects as well
with Latin, Jewish, and Arabic literary traditions of the Iberian peninsula.
Pre Medieval literature

While actual written evidence has never been found, it is almost certain that the distinctive
peoples inhabiting the Iberian Peninsula from as far back as the last Paleolithic era (30,000-
15,000 BC) engaged in a variety of oral lyric traditions. Originally, these lyrical songs would
have been closely associated with fertility rites, the hunt, or other key life stages. Later,
primitive love ballads and heroic tales would have arisen.
Medieval Spanish literature

Medieval Spanish literature consists of the corpus of literary works written in medieval
Spanish between the beginning of the 13th and the end of the 15th century. Traditionally, the
first and last works of this period are taken to be respectively the Cantar de Mio Cid, an epic
poem whose manuscript dates from 1207, and La Celestina (1499), a work commonly
described as transitional between the medieval period and the Renaissance.
The kharjas
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The earliest recorded examples of a vernacular Romance-based

literature date from the same time and location, the rich mix of
Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cultures in Muslim Spain, in which
Maimonides, Averroes, and others worked. The kharjas, dating from
the 9th to the 12th centuries C.E., were short poems spoken in local
colloquial Hispano-Romance dialects, known as Mozarabic, but
written in Arabic script. The kharjas appeared at the end of longer
poetry written in Arabic or Hebrew known as muwashshah, which
were lengthy glosses on the ideas expressed in the kharjas.
Cantar de Mio Cid

The Cantar de Mio Cid is the oldest preserved Spanish cantar de
gesta
The epic poem Cantar de Mio Cid was written about a real man—his
battles, conquests, and daily life. The poet, name unknown, wrote
the epic in about 1140 and Cid supposedly died forty years before in
1099. This epic represents realism, because nothing was
exaggerated and the details are very real, even the geography
correctly portrays the areas in which Cid traveled and lived. Unlike
other European epics, the poem is not idealized and there is no
presence of supernatural beings. It has assonance instead of rhyme
and its lines vary in length, the most common length being fourteen
syllables. This type of verse is known as mester de juglaria (verse
form of the minstrels). The epic is divided into three parts, also
known as cantos.
Renaissance
During the 15th century the pre-Renaissance occurs. Literary
production increases very greatly. Some outstanding poets of this
century are Juan de Mena and Íñigo López de Mendoza (Marquess
of Santillana). The Spanish literature of the Middle Ages concludes
with the work La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas.
In the Renaissance important topics are Renaissance poetry, with

Garcilaso de la Vega and Juan Boscán; religious literature, with Fray
Luis de León, San Juan de la Cruz, and Santa Teresa de Jesús; and Renaissance prose, with
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the anonymous El Lazarillo de Tormes. The principal features of the Renaissance were the
revival of learning based on classical sources, the rise of courtly patronage, the development of
perspective in painting, and the advances in science.
The most important characteristics of the Renaissance are:
 The language in this age is dominated by naturalness and simplicity, which avoids
affectation, amaneramiento and the over-searched phrase. Thus the vocabulary and the
syntax will be simple.
 The preferred themes are, fundamentally, love, conceived from the platonic point of
view; nature, as somewhat idyllic (bucolic); pagan mythology, from which the histories of
gods and the female beauty are reflected, following always the same classical ideal. In
relation to these themes mentioned, various Renaissance points exist, some of them
taken from the classical world:
 Carpe Diem, whose translation would be "seize the day" or "take advantage of the
moment". It advises the enjoyment of life before the arrival of old age.
 Collige, virgo, rosas which literary means "Pick virgin the roses" and is a metaphor
similar to Carpe Diem but applied to female beauty, described always following the same
plan: a young blonde, with serene, clear eyes, white skin, red lips, rosy cheeks, etc.
 The Beatus Ille or praise of life in the country, apart from material things, as opposed to
life in the city, with its dangers and intrigues.
 The Locus Amoenus or description of a perfect and idyllic nature.
Baroque
In the Baroque of the 17th century important topics are the
prose of Francisco de Quevedo and Baltasar Gracián; the
theater is notable (Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca,
and Tirso de Molina); and poetry with Luis de Góngora (who is
a Culteranist) and Francisco de Quevedo (who VV is
a Conceptist). In the works of Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra notable novels are La Galatea and Don Quixote de la
Mancha. The Baroque style used exaggerated motion and clear,
easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance,
and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music.
The Baroque is characterized by the following points:

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 Pessimism: The Renaissance had not achieved its purpose of imposing

harmony and perfection in the world, as the humanists intended, nor had it made man
happier; wars and social inequality continued to be present; pain and calamities were
commonplace throughout Europe. An intellectual pessimism took hold, which
increased as time passed. This was shown by the angry character of the comedies of
that epoch, and by rascal characters on which the picaresque novels are based.
Disillusionment: As the Renaissance ideals failed, and, in the case of Spain, political
power was being dispelled, disillusionment continued to arise in literature. Many cases
recall those of two centuries before, with the Danza de la Muerte or Manrique's Coplas
a la muerte de su padre. Quevedo said that life is formed by "successions of
deceased". Newborns turn into the deceased, and diapers into the shroud that covers
lifeless bodies. This leads to the conclusion that nothing is important except obtaining
eternal salvation.
 Worry about the passing of time.
 Loss of confidence in the Renaissance ideals.
Enlightenment
In the Enlightenment of the 18th century, with the arrival of "the
lights" to Spain, important topics are the prose of Fray Benito
Jerónimo Feijoo, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, and José
Cadalso; the lyric of the Salmantine school (with Juan Meléndez
Valdés), the lyric of the Madrilenian group (with the story-tellers
Tomás de Iriarte and Félix María Samaniego), and the lyric of the
Sevillian school; and also the theater, with Leandro Fernández de
Moratín, Ramón de la Cruz and Vicente García de la Huerta.
Enlightenment thinkers sought to apply systematic thinking to all
forms of human activity, carrying it to the ethical and governmental
spheres in exploration of the individual, society and the state.
Three phases in the Spanish literature of the 18th century are

distinguished:
 Anti-Baroquism (until approximately 1750): It fights against the style of the preceding
Baroque, which is considered excessively rhetorical and twisted. The recreational literature is
not cultivated, but they are more interested in the essay and satire, utilizing the language with
simplicity and purity.
 Neoclassicism (until the end of the 18th century): It is strongly influenced by French and
Italian classicism. The writers also imitate the old classics (Greek and Roman); its boom
extended since the reign of Fernando VI until the end of the century.
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 Pre-Romanticism (end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century): The influence of
the English philosopher John Locke, together with that of the French Étienne Bonnot of
Condillac, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Denis Diderot, will cause a new feeling,
dissatisfaction with the tyranny of reason, that emphasizes the right of the individuals to
express their personal emotions (repressed then by the neoclassicals), among which figures
fundamentally love. This current announces the decline of Neoclassicism and opens the door
to Romanticism.
Realism
In Realism (end of the 19th century), which is mixed with Naturalism, important topics
are the novel, with Juan Valera, José María de Pereda, Benito Pérez Galdós, Emilia
Pardo Bazán, Leopoldo Alas (Clarín), Armando Palacio Valdés, and Vicente Blasco
Ibáñez; poetry, with Ramón de Campoamor, Gaspar Núñez de Arce, and other poets;
the theater, with José Echegaray, Manuel Tamayo y Baus, and other dramatists; and
the literary critics, emphasizing Menéndez Pelayo. Realism offered depictions of
contemporary life and society 'as they were'. In the spirit of general "Realism," Realist
authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead
of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation.
The realistic works of this period are characterized by:
 Objective vision of reality through the direct observation of customs or

psychological characters. They eliminate any subjective aspect, fantastic events, and
every feeling that moves away from reality: "The novel is the image of life" (Galdós),
"an artistic copy of reality" (Clarín).
 Defense of a thesis: the narrators write their works approaching reality from their
moral conception. They are the so-called omniscient narrators. The defense of a thesis
usually compromises the objectivity of the novel.
 Themes that are familiar to the reader: marital conflicts, infidelity, defense of
ideals, etc.
 The popular and colloquial language acquires great importance since it situates
the characters in their real environment.
Modernist literature
In Modernism several currents appear: Parnasianism, Symbolism, Futurism, and Creationism.
Literary Modernism in Spain was influenced by the "disaster of '98", Regenerationism, and the
Free Institution of Education (founded by Giner de los Ríos). Modernism was rooted in the idea
that "traditional" forms of art, literature, religious faith, social organization, and daily life had
become outdated; therefore it was essential to sweep them aside. The intellectual movement that
thinks objectively and scientifically about the causes of the decadence of Spain as a nation
between the 19th and the 20th century is called Regenerationism. It expresses a pessimist
judgement about Spain. The regenerationist intellectuals divulgated their studies in journals with a
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big diffusion, so the movement expanded. Some important Modernist authors are Salvador
Rueda, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Miguel de Unamuno and Rubén Darío.
INFORMATION SHEET 3.3

ITALIAN LITERATURE
The rise of a literature, both written and spoken, in the vernacular began in the 13th century; a
period of great political and civil revival in the Italian cities and a lively renaissance in art and
culture after the difficult centuries following barbarian domination. There were a great number of
trends in 13th-century literature: religious poetry (which thrived in Umbria partly as a result of
the activity of Saint Francis, especially with the work of Jacopone da Todi); poetry made popular
by the French jongleurs; the comic-satirical poetry of Cecco Angiolieri; chivalric literature (the
chansons de geste derived from the French); didactic and moralistic prose in which Brunetto
Latini was prominent, and, the most widespread, love poetry.
The first Italian poetry written with literary pretensions emerged, and flourished in Sicily at the
Court of the Emperor Frederick II, starting from around 1220 and inspired by the Provencal love
lyrics. The poets of the Sicilian school (Guido delle Colonne, Pier dela Vigna, Cielo Dalcamo)
treated their single theme of love according to the courtly model. In this way a poetic tradition
was begun in which the vernacular Italian was increasingly cleansed of dialectical excess. Later
this trend spread to central Italy, especially Tuscany where the poets (Chiaro Davanzati,
Compiuta Donzella) expanded and enriched the Sicilian lyric by confronting moral and political
themes which reflected the ideals of Communal life.
The most important literary movement of the latter half of the 13th century was what Dante
called the "dolce stil novo". The dominant theme of the poets (Guido Guinizelli, Guido
Cavalcanti) was the basic experience of the conscience and the life of the soul. What was new
about the style was not simply a more spiritual conception of woman, exalted as an angel of
salvation, but a deeper intellectual and philosophical examination of love as the source of moral
virtue, and a more refined searching of the psyche.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321): The 14th century was a period of gradual change in Medieval life
and culture which gave rise to a new concept of existence. It also saw a maturing of the literary
tradition which was given its greatest expression by the Florentine Dante Alighieri. Dante's work
was the origin to the modern Italian literary and linguistic tradition. The early lyrics are collected
in the "Vita Nuova", an idealized autobiography in which the poet sings of his love for Beatrice
whilst at the same time transcending that love for a higher one: the love of God. In the other
works prior to the "Divine Comedy" ("Convivio","De vulgari eloquentia", "De monarchia"), Dante
deals with contemporary themes of the spirit, culture, and politics.
Dante's major work, and the greatest in Italian literature is the "Divine Comedy": a complex and
highly poetic work treating a vast subject. The content unites the culture and spirit of the Middle
Ages and expresses a religious faith in a universe built and run by God's will. Dante's vision is of
a journey in the afterlife through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise where he encounters the souls of
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the great men of the past and discusses with them the most important themes of humanity:
philosophy, religion and morality, politics and culture.
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375):
Boccaccio can be ranked alongside Dante and Petrarch as one of the three great Italian literary
figures of the 14th century who were also prominent on the European Scene. He can be
distinguished from them, however by his greater concentration on earthly themes and subjects
and his relative disinterest in moral, religious, theological and political issues. Boccaccio's
greatest work is "The Decameron", a collection of 100 tales linked in a narrative framework,
where he masterfully portrays different characters and their various passions, thus creating a
vivacious image of life in all its many facets.
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304-1374): Petrarch differed from Dante in that he actively

confronted the division between austere Medieval religion and the enjoyment of worldly goods,
particularly love and fame. In this he was a precursor of the Humanist thought of the
Renaissance with its full evaluation of earthly existence. Petrarch was the author of numerous
philosophical, religious and poetic works in Latin, but his major works, I Trionfi, and Il
Canzoniere, are written in the vernacular. In the latter collection of poems, he examines his
soul, analyses his unrequited love for Laura (whoever the lady may have been) and probes his
inner - unresolved - crises.

French Literature
THE FRENCH LITERATURE, ITS FAMOUS WRITERS & GREAT MASTERPIECES
"A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It
is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream."
- Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), French scientist, philosopher, literary theorist.
French literature
 Written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France
 France itself ranks first in the list of Nobel Prizes in literature by country
 French language is a romance dialect derived from Vulgar Latin
 Beginning in the 11th century, literature written in medieval French was one of
the oldest vernacular (non-Latin) literatures in western Europe
 French literature came to dominate European letters in the 17th century
 In the 18th century, French became the literary lingua franca and diplomatic
language of western Europe
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Famous French Writers
1. Honoré de Balzac, 1799-1850

 French novelist and playwright.
 one of his most famous works, La Comédie Humaine - was a
commentary on all aspects of life, a collection of all the works that he
penned under his own name
 considered by many literary critics as one of the "founding fathers" of
realism
2. Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989

 actually Irish, however, he did his writing primarily in French
 considered the last great modernist and some would argue that he was
the first post-modernist
 perhaps best known for the theatre of the absurd and in particular his
play, En attendant Godot, (Waiting for Godot).
3. Albert Camus, 1913-1960

 Algerian born author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957
 first African born author to do so, and he was the second youngest writer
to do so in literary history
 best known for two novels of the absurd L'Étranger (The Stranger) and
Le Mythe de Sisyphe.
 He was perhaps best known as a philosopher and his works certainly
reflected his commentary on life at the time.
4. Victor Hugo, 1802-1885

 would describe himself first as a humanitarian who used literature as a
means to describe the human conditions and the injustices of society.
 his two most famous works: Les Misèrables (The Miserables), and Notre-
Dame de Paris (referred to by the popular title, The Hunchback of Notre
Dame).
5. Alexandre Dumas, père 1802-1870

 considered the most widely read French author in history.
 known for historical novels that chronicle the wild adventures of his
characters
 was prolific in writing and many of his tales are retold today – The Three
Musketeers, The Count of Montecristo, The Man in the Iron Mask (the last
in a series of stories from The Vicomte de Bragelonne), The Nutcracker
(made famous by Tchaikovsky's version as a ballet)
6. Gustave Flaubert 1821-1880

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 his first published novel, Madame Bovary, was perhaps his most well known
work. It was originally published as a serialized novel, and the French
government consequently brought a suit against Flaubert for immorality
 he is also well known for his very close and probably amorous relationship
with George Sand.
7. Jules Verne 1828-1905

 notable because he is one of the first authors to write about science fiction
 in fact, by many literary critics he is considered one of the founding fathers of
the genre.
 wrote many novels but a few of his most notable are: Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Around
the World in 80 Days
8. Blaise Pascal, June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662

 his earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences
 also wrote in defense of the scientific method
 his two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provincials
(The Provincial Letters) and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict
between Jansenists and Jesuits
9. François de La Rochefoucauld, 15 September 1613 – 17 March 1680

 was a noted French author of maxims and memoirs.
 considered an exemplar of the accomplished 17th-Century nobleman
 until 1650, he bore the title of Prince de Marcillac.
 his literary work consists of three parts — his Memoirs, the Maximes and his
letters.
10. Jean-Paul Sartre, 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980

 was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter,
political activist, biographer, and literary critic
 one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, existentialism,
and Marxism
 also noted for his long polyamorous relationship with the feminist author and
social theorist Simone de Beauvoir
 was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused the honor
11. Edmond Rostand, 1 April 1868 – 2 December 1918

 was a French poet and dramatist
 associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play Cyrano de
Bergerac
 his romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular
during the late nineteenth century
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 another of his works, Les Romanesques, was adapted to the musical

comedy, The Fantasticks.
12. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, January 15, 1622 – February 17, 1673

 known by his stage name Molière
 was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the
greatest masters of comedy in Western literature
 among his best-known works are Le Misanthrope (The Misanthrope), L'École
des femmes (The School for Wives), Tartuffe ou L'Imposteur, (Tartuffe or the
Hypocrite), L'Avare ou L'École du mensonge (The Miser), Le Malade
imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid), and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The
Bourgeois Gentleman).
13. Émile Zola, 2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902

 the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism
 important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism
 was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the
exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus,
which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'Accuse.
14. Voltaire, 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778

 François-Marie Arouet better known by the pen name Voltaire
 famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of
religion and free trade
 was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws
and harsh penalties for those who broke them
 as a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize
intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day
15. Marie-Henri Beyle, 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842

 better known by his pen name Stendhal
 known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology
 he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in
his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La
Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839).
16. Alfred de Musset, 11 December 1810 – 2 May 1857

 was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist
 along with his poetry, he is known for writing La Confession d'un enfant du
siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century, autobiographical) from 1836
17. Marcel Proust, 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922

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 was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À
la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as
Remembrance of Things Past)
 it was published in seven parts between 1913 and 1927.
18. Madame de La Fayette,18 March 1634 – 25 May 1693

 the author of La Princesse de Clèves, France's first historical novel and one
of the earliest novels in literature
19. Sully Prudhomme, 16 March 1839 – 6 September 1907

 was a French poet and essayist, winner of the first Nobel Prize in Literature,
in 1901
 born in Paris, Prudhomme originally studied to be an engineer, but turned to
philosophy and later to poetry
 he declared poetry as his intent to create scientific poetry for modern times
20. Anatole France, 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924

 born François-Anatole Thibault
 was a French poet, journalist, and novelist
 successful novelist, with several best-sellers
 ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of
letters
 was a member of the Académie française, and won the Nobel Prize for
Literature
21. Simone de Beauvoir, January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986

 was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist
 is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay
and The Mandarins, and for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed
analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary
feminism
 also noted for her lifelong polyamorous relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre
22. Charles Baudelaire, April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867

 was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic,
and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.
23. Guy de Maupassant, 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893

 Born Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant)
 was a popular 19th-century French writer
 considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's
finest exponents.
 A protégé of Flaubert, Maupassant's stories are characterized by their
economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouement
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 also wrote six novels
Great French Masterpieces
1. Les Misérables (literally "The Miserable Ones)

 is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one
of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century
 the novel focuses on the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his
experience of redemption
 examines the nature of law and grace, and expounds upon the history of
France, architecture of Paris, politics, moral philosophy, antimonarchism,
justice, religion, and the types and nature of romantic and familial love
2. The Necklace or The Diamond Necklace (French: La Parure)

 is a short story by Guy de Maupassant, first published in 1884 in the French
newspaper Le Gaulois
 The story has become one of Maupassant's popular works and is well known
for its twist ending
 tells the story of Madame Mathilde Loisel and her husband
 Mathilde always imagined herself in a high social position with wonderful
jewels. However she has nothing and marries a low paid clerk who tries his
best to make her happy
 Mathilde confesses about that night and how she worked so hard to return
her necklace. Mme. Forestier, deeply moved, tells Mathilde that the one she
had borrowed was fake and that it was worth at most 500 francs.
3. Candide
 is a French satire written in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of
Enlightenment
 it begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an
Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism (or simply
Optimism) by his mentor, Pangloss
 the work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's
slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great
hardships in the world
4. Madame Bovary
 is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece
 the story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous
affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and
emptiness of provincial life
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 though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies
in its details and hidden patterns
 Flaubert was notoriously a perfectionist about his writing and claimed always
to be searching for le mot juste ("the right word")
5. The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo)

 is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, père
 often considered to be, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas' most
popular work
 the writing of the work was completed in 1844\
 like many of his novels, it is expanded from the plot outlines suggested by his
collaborating ghostwriter Auguste Maquet
 the story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean and the
Levant during the historical events of 1815–1838 (from just before the
Hundred Days through to the reign of Louis-Philippe of France)
 the historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. It is an adventure
story primarily concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy and
forgiveness.
Other French Writings
A. Middle Ages
 Chrétien de Troyes - Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain, the Knight of the

Lion), Lancelot, ou le Chevalier à la charrette (Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart)
 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung - Roman de la Rose ("Romance of the
Rose")
B. 16th century
 François Rabelais - Gargantua, Pantagruel ("Gargantua and Pantagruel")

 Michel de Montaigne - Les Essais
C. 17th century
 Madame de Lafayette - La Princesse de Clèves
D. 18th century
 Abbé Prévost - Manon Lescaut

 Voltaire - Candide
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse
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E. 19th century
 Benjamin Constant - Adolphe

 Honoré de Balzac - La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy)
 Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers
 Victor Hugo - Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Les
Misérables
 Théophile Gautier - Mademoiselle de Maupin
 Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
 Guy de Maupassant - Bel Ami, La Parure (The Necklace), other short stories
F. 20th century
 André Gide - Les Faux-monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters), The Immoralist
 Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time)
 Gaston Leroux - Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera)
 Louis-Ferdinand Céline - Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of
the Night)
 Albert Camus - L'Étranger (The Stranger)
 Michel Butor - La Modification
 Robert Pinget - Passacaille
 Jean-Paul Sartre - L´Âge de Raison (The Age of Reason)
French Theatre
 Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac
 Jean Giraudoux - The Trojan War Will Not Take Place
 Jean Anouilh - Becket, Antigone
 Jean-Paul Sartre - No Exit
 Eugène Ionesco - The Bald Soprano, Rhinoceros
 Jean Genet - The Maids, The Balcony
French Nonfiction
 Michel de Montaigne - The Essays

 Blaise Pascal - Les Pensées
 François de La Rochefoucauld - The Maxims
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, The Social
Contract, Les Confessions
 François-René de Chateaubriand - Genius of Christianity, Memoirs from Beyond
Grave
 Alexis de Tocqueville - Democracy in America
 Jules Michelet - Histoire de France, La Sorcière
 Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
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 Jean-Paul Sartre - Existentialism is a Humanism, Being and Nothingness
"Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an
author."
- Jean de La Bruyère (1645-96), French writer, moralist.

German Literature
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AFRO ASIAN LITERATURE
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PHILIPPINE LITERATURE
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TASK SHEET
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Let’s do this!
Part I.
Directions: Have a summary of the following literatures through a table below
Literature of the Poetry Prose Notable Writer Important

World Characteristics/Features
Greek Literature
Roman Literature
Spanish Literature
Italian Literature
Afro Asian
Literature
Philippine
Literature
Part II. Analyze the following literary pieces. Write your analysis.
1. Greek Literature
Title: Iliad and Odyssey

Author: Homer
2. Roman
Title: Aeneid
Author:Virgil
3. Spanish
Title: Don Quixote
Author: Miguel de Cervantes
4. Italian Literature
Title: Divine Comedy
Author: Dante Alighieri
5. Afro-Asian Literature
Title: The Cock

Author: Tao Kim Hai
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Title: American Guests Come To Our House

Author: Aziz Nesin
Title: Instant Injustice

Author: Tewfik al-Hakim
Title: A Meeting in the Dark

Author: James Ngugi
6. Philippine Literature
Title: We Filipinos are Mild Drinkers
Author: Alejandro Roces

WHOLE MODULES - World Literature

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ST.

ANTHONY COLLEGE WORLD LITERATURE

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Information Sheet 1.3

 Sparks empathy and understanding

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 Learn about past lives

 Escapism and possibilities

Seven Literary Standards

1. Universality – It appeals to everyone regardless of culture, race, sex, and time

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Critical Approaches to Literature

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Types of Lyric Poetry

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Literary Compositions that have influenced the World

For further readings visit the following links:

TASK SHEET 1.3

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Performance Objectives: Write reflection paper about the introduction to literature

Steps and Procedures:

 What trends are apparent in the introduction to literature and how do

 What new knowledge or new understanding of previous knowledge have

Information Sheet 1.4

At the end of this module, you must be able to:

Prose is a form or technique of language that exhibits a natural flow of speech and grammatical

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 Follows natural patterns of speech and communication

Two major types of Prose

✕ Science fictionFolk tales

There are six elements of fiction:

*Plot and Structure

Important elements of Plot:

A. Conflict- A clash of actions, ideas, desires, or wills

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Person vs. Person

Person vs. Environment

Person vs. Self.

B. Protagonist- The central character in a conflict

Static Character- A character that remains essentially the same throughout.

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Second Person POV- Uses the pronoun “you”. Infrequently used.

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Diction- Central to an author’s style. Includes:

1. Vocabulary- Choice of words

Non-fiction – writing based on real people, places and events

Two broad categories of Nonfiction

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– a short piece of nonfiction writing that deals with one subject.

Elements of Non Fiction

Four Major Elements of Nonfiction

 Format is interesting, attractive, magnetic

o Qualifications of the creator suggest appropriate experience or exceptionality

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o Non-biased - neutral position

o Characters are well developed

Style and tone

o Narration creates interest and understanding

Style and tone that presents information - interestingly

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Style and tone of a narration

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