Preamble:We will break the Course down as follows:
1.An outline of English Literature
2.Shakespearean Drama (Text for study, King Lear)
3.Neo-classical Literature (Text, John Milton's Paradise Lost Book 1)
4.The Romantics (Text, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner')
5.The Victorians (Text, Charles Dickens' Hard Times)
6.The Moderns (Text, William Golding's Lord of the Flies)
LECTURE 1: AN OUTLINE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
It is possible to classify English Literature into seven broad periods: the Old English, the Middle English, the Renaissance, the Neo-Classical, the Romantic, the Victorian and the Twentieth Century Period.
1. OLD ENGLISH PERIOD (2nd - 12th Century)
It is also known as the Anglo-Saxon period (450 - 1066 A.D.) The period lies between the invasion of Celtic England by the Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes, and the conquest of England by the Norman-French under William the Conqueror. Literature in the early part of this period was only oral since the English were heathen illiterates. Written literature developed only after the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity in the 7th century. The literature that emerged was both in Latin (the language of international scholarship at the time) and Runic (vernacular English) Literary works were in form of Christian hymns, amplified Bible books, homilies (artistic sermons) translations of Latin prose, chronicles of contemporary events and a number of biographies. There were also traditional works in form of pagan poetry, gnomic verses, the Beowulf epic (8th century) and romantic legends (like Orpheus and King Arthur)
The most distinct artistic characteristic of this period was probably the alliterative tradition. The period is actually more remarkable for its lack of literary excellence than for anything else. In fact, it is as from the 4th century till the end of this period that is classified in History as The Dark Ages.
2. MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (1100 - 1500)
This is the period known in History as The Middle Ages (12th - 15th Century). The first half of the period (1100 - 1350) is known as the Norman-French Period or the Early Middle English Period. This half saw the introduction of French as an elitist second language of Literature. Middle English (vernacular) was used only in functional writing like the homiletics. Prevalent literary forms were fairy tales, love and didactic lyrics (especially by the Friars)
The second half (1350 - 1500) is known as the Chaucerian Age. It saw the increasing use of Middle English in the secular literature of great writers like Chaucer and Thomas Mallory (author of Morte d'Arthur). Popular literature in form of songs, folkloric ballads, morality and miracle plays, flourished. There was a revival of the alliterative tradition and the introduction of the decasyllabic rhyme couplet. There was increase in continental and classical influence (e.g. the accessibility of the works of Dante and Petrach). The literature of the period reflected conventions of courtly love and used allegorical characters extensively. In the field of drama, there were many religious plays (especially the Miracle types) and the use of Spectacle (Masque tradition) was common. The best known works of the period are the Wakefield plays, Robin Hood and Everyman.
The Age ended with the discovery of printing (Caxton 1476) and the stabilization of the modern London language as the language of official and literary writings.
3. RENAISSANCE PERIOD (1510 - 1660)
The Period can be further broken down as follows:
i. Tudors Era 1500 - 1557
ii. Elizabethan Era 1558 - 1603
iii. Jacobean Era 1603 - 1625
iv. Caroline Era 1625 - 1649
v. Commonwealth/Puritan Era 1649 - 1660
The Renaissance period was one of rebirth and acceleration of knowledge in such a manner that the stable structures and dogmas of medieval civilization were radically altered. It was this period that prepared the philosophical grounds for the subsequent Age of Reason or Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. The main characteristics of the period were:
1.Incipient revival of interest in classical literature. These include the writings of Seneca, Horace, Cicero, Virgil, Socrates, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, etc. This led to an explosion of literary styles, the studied imitation of the works, the codification of literary rules and the introduction of the courtly and platonic (humanistic) hero in place of the Homeric (legendary and war-like)
2.Revival of interest in classical languages by renaissance scholars, especially linguistic growth in Latinism. Deliberate archaic and dialectal language.
3.Popularization of literacy and the subsequent rapid spread of new ideas and learning. Ppularization of pamphleteering.
4.Reformation (championed by clerics like Martin Luther, Calvin) and the establishment of the spirit of Protestantism. This meant the projection of individual experience rather than 'theocratic experience' in religious matters. With the Anglican break-away of Henry VIII in 1530, and the buying up of the abbeys, manors and friaries by Squires , art patronage emerged, providing inspiration for creativity. Elizabeth I took this to new heights, investing art with a lot of pageantry. Especially in the field of poetry, the individualism of Protestantism generated a lot of introspective works.
5.Expeditions (by Sailors like Vasco Da Gama and Christopher Colombus) and the discovery of the new worlds. This increased the vistas of literary imagination and produced works set in or referential to these exotic worlds. The picaresque tradition, pastoral romances
6.Challenge of received truth by secular intellectualism and philosophies due to a new air of freedom and skepticism. Notable philosophers were Machiavelli, Hobbes, Montaigne and the Epicureans. These provided literature with a touch of humanistic themes, as opposed to the overwhelming misanthropy and asceticism of the medieval era. The growth of a humanist school of semi-professional court- or noblemen-groups and the development of theatre houses (Rose, Swan, Fortune, and Globe) with scripts contributed by university wits.
7.Scientific questioning by scholars like Copernicus, Galileo, Bacon, subversive of the geocentric Ptolemaic world-view. Scientific fixing of the sun rather than the earth at the centre of the universe, accentuating thereby the diminution of man.
8.Naturalism and realism in the flourishing art of Michelangelo, Leanardo da Vinci, Erasmus, while in literature, dues ex machina and other slap-stick techniques became less fashionable.
The point has to be made, however, that the full impact of renaissance was to be felt after the age and that the renaissance literary world, especially, remained dominated by the occult sensibility of the medieval world.
Notable writers of the age were: William Shakespeare, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Spencer, Samuel Daniel, Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Campion, Phillip Sidney, Wyatt, Surrey, among others. Among the metaphysical poets were John Donne, George Herbert and Vaughn.
LECTURE 2
4. NEO-CLASSICAL ERA (1660 - 1800)
The period is referred to as neo-classical because of the strong respect accorded classical writings during this age. There was wide-spread studied imitation and translation of the classical models of Homer, Horace, Virgil, Juvenal, Ovid etc. and the application of the classical rules of Aristotle, Longinus, etc. in criticism. The period is also referred to as the Augustan Age, since it resembled the age of prosperity, peace and art (Pax Romana) that followed the civil wars in Rome after Julius Caesar's assassination. Charles II, who was restored to the throne in 1660 (from a France that was already neo-classical) after Cromwell's rebellion, thus resembled Augustus Caesar, Julius Caesar's foster son. The age can be further broken down into the following:
i.Restoration Period (Miltonic Age) 1660 - 1700
ii.Age of Swift or Age of Pope 1700 - 1745
iii.Age of Sensibility or Johnsonian Age 1745 - 1798
The literature of this period is characterized by the following:
1.Strict adherence to classical rules e.g. The Unities in drama, the heroic couplet (decasyllabic iambic) as in the works of Samuel Johnson and John Dryden
2.The prevalence of satire (mock-heroism, cynicism, wit) as an outcrop of the endless bickering between Tory (King's party of Courtiers, aristocrats, high churchmen) and Whigs (republicans of prosperous merchants and nouveau-riche Londoners)
3.The rise of the realistic and psychological novel as a result of the growth of a London middle class readership disdainful of the hypocrisy of the urbane upper class; growth in individualism and man as a sustained subject of focus.
4.The restoration of drama and its seemingly anti-Puritan avenging prurience. The main types were the heroic tragedy and the comedy of manners e.g. William Congreve
5.The sensibility movement towards the end of the period concerned with themes of sympathy and kindness (not sentimentality) e.g. Mackenzie, Richardson, and Fielding.
6.The growth of certain significant but minor features e.g. doctrinaire novels during the last decade of the period, responsive to the continental revolutions. Religious writings, journalistic writings and an intellectual climate fostered by a royal society of 'scientific' discussions, deism etc.
7.The stylistic prevalence of natural rhythm with little poetic diction or elaborate imagery; often classical impersonal diction (cf personal romantic diction of Keats, Crabbe, etc.) Parenthetical structures, classical rhetoric, parallelism, antithesis etc.
8.The emergence of great English writers of continental significance e.g. Swift, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Sterne, Smollet, Gay. Blake, Burns, etc. Also Webster, Middleton and George Chapman. The great thinkers of the age were philosophers like Locke, Voltaire, Diderot, Kant, Descartes, Bacon, Burke, Stuart, Gibbon, Addison, quite a number commenting extensively on literary styles and standards.
5. THE ROMANTIC PERIOD: 1790 - 1832
Romanticism was a movement away from the rather artificial world of neo-classicism towards cultural primitivism, visionary sublimity and a world of instincts and feelings. This was already discernible in the works of Goldsmith, Burke, Thomas Gray, Blake, Burns, Crabbe and a few others who wrote about simple natural things in plain language, while retaining the stereotype poetic forms of earlier years. These early writers are called the proto romantic writers.
Romanticism was actually a reaction against the effects of industrialization and neo-classicism. Industrialization had led to the growth of impersonal nature-destructive conglomerates in place of the former organic rural communities that had had an occult sense of nature, that is, that had mystified nature. Neo-classicism had, on its part, led to the suffocation of art by formalities and conventions. The Romantics reacted against these by concentrating on the following:
1.The subjective and imaginative aspects of nature and life (Its non-literary equivalent was the Methodist crusades and their unabashed expression of emotions) Romantics aimed at the building of a sentimental age to counter the age of reason. They, therefore, presented imagination as the noblest of all human faculties rather than reason. Nature was to them God's hieroglyph so it was their holy duty to evoke its supernaturalism, its transcendentalism, its divinity. Against urban sensationalism was placed rural permanence.
2.The spontaneous effusion of personal passion as a counter to the crafted nature of classical art. Closely related to this was the high premium placed on individual consciousness to counter the subsuming tendencies of the evolving mega-cultures of the industrial city.
These preoccupations made romantic writers evoke the beauty of English rural scenery; the native flora and fauna. The language used was plain, common, prose-like, rural diction and blank verse in form. They avoided the artificial language/diction of neo-classicism, especially the smug couplet. Some other qualities of romantic writing were the attacks on absolutism, identification with libertinism and revolution, morbidity (attraction to solitude, nostalgia, melancholy, dementia, idiocy, deaths etc)
Romantic poets could be divided into two groups, viz. the Lakeland poets, known for their intense display of emotion and imagery (Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott) and the libertines, distinguished by their seriousness and their musicality (Byron, Shelley, Keats) Other romantics were Lamb, Hazlitt, Quincy and John Stuart Mill.
6. THE VICTORIAN AGE: 1832 - 1901
This refers to the period of Queen Victoria's reign. Literature of this period was mainly concerned with the effects on economic and social life of the industrial revolution. Industrialization had led to rapid urbanization, exploitation of the working, poor masses, class conflicts, etc. Victorian literature was a commentary on these. Victorian writers were also known for their great decorum in sexual matters. The most well-known writers of this period were Lord Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, G.M. Hopkins, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens.
7. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
The Victorian Age had been one of realism, confidence in rationality, science and empire. Following this, an era of anti-climactic moral lassitude set in, accentuated by the series of wars that bedeviled the first half of the 20th century and the attendant socio-economic depression. The literature of this period, therefore, reflects a world of alienation, disillusionment, meaninglessness and emotional vacuity. It was as if the dogmas and philosophical certitudes of former ages along with established social values and norms had all but collapsed.
A series of enigmatic styles emerged in an attempt to convey the images of fragmented and meaningless experience that was the modern man's disordered inner state of being. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson and a number of Russian writers all experimented with a communication of non-coherence christened 'the stream of consciousness technique'. They attempted to present modern reality as an unpunctuated stream of experience. They evinced a sub-logical awareness of the collapse of civilization and the tragic destiny of progress. The new psychology of unconscious states made popular by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung gave pep to these new themes and styles.
There were also several literary Movements dedicated to communicating in a style of free association of words and private symbolism. They built up an aura of new and personal meaning for words or structures, so that poetry, for example, became imaginative shorthand. Exponents of this style were T.S. Eliot, Hulme, Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden and W.B. Yeats.
In the field of drama there were experiments with the theatre of the absurd by writers such as Thomas Beckett and Pinter. Other prominent 20th century world writers in English are: Wilfred Owen, Walter de la Mare, C. Day Lewis, Robert Lowell, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, E.E. Cummings (poets) George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller (dramatists) D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, Joseph Conrad, William Golding, George Orwell, Graham Greene and Mark Twain (novelists)
The twentieth century also saw the flowering of literature written in English by Africans, notable among whom are Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Dennis Brutus, Athol Fugard, Albert Camus and Ngugi.
The Period can also be further broken down as follows:
i. Edwardian Period 1901 - 1914
ii. Georgian Period 1910 - 1936
iii. Modern Period 1914 - date
iv. Post-Modern Period 1945 - date.
LECTURE 3
SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA
1. Shakespeare's Life and Works:
It is usual for literary scholars to seek to obtain clearer insight into a work of art by relating it to its intellectual and cultural sources. If Literature is a mirror of life/society, it is thought, the nature of the mirror/reflector held to society is of some significance. An author's class, social ideology, family background, and even the purpose for which he writes, would affect or influence the nature of the picture painted. For example, knowledge of Shakespeare's life history would yield insight into the themes of his plays and works.
Unfortunately, there is very little information available to the literary world on Shakespeare's life or philosophy. We do not even know when he was born. We know, however, that a certain William Shakespeare was baptized in the parish church at Statford-on-Avon on the 26th of April, 1564. William Shakespeare's father was a certain John Shakespeare who in five to ten years of sojourn in Statford had risen to the position of an alderman of the city and later, a mayor. He was also married to the daughter of a wealthy family. By 1577, John Shakespeare had, unfortunately, fallen into hard times. He sold a lot of his property, stopped attending city council meetings and church, and by 1587, had been removed from his post as alderman. It is often argued that the desire to reinstate his family economically and socially was the chief motivating factor in the writings of Shakespeare.
At 18, William Shakespeare married a local girl of 24. It is not clear what his main occupation was before 1592. Some have suggested that he went abroad either as a soldier or fortune-seeking sailor. This, they argue, is responsible for Shakespeare's in-depth knowledge of the soldier's psychology and for his realistic sea scenes. Shakespeare came to the limelight as a playwright at 28 with the 14-week run of his Henry VI by the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Theatre was a very competitive trade at the time but also very financially rewarding. The next two years saw Shakespeare established also as a poet. His two volumes were dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, suggesting that the Earl was his main sponsor. By 1596, John Shakespeare was able to acquire a coat of arms, thereby becoming a gentleman. By the following year, William Shakespeare was rich enough to buy a small estate. It is thought, therefore, that theatre helped to socially reinstate Shakespeare, although there us evidence that their financial difficulties persisted till 1600. CONTINUE