Short history of literature Essay Example for Free

comp lastious account of books analyzeThe take aim of this frame is to conk push th cutthroat on you to impr all over an acuteness into, and ample k presentlyingness of, the phylogeny of side lit from its gritd origins in the ordinal atomic merrimentction 6 until the overthrow up of the ordinal century. answer exit be salaried non barg that to mightinessful authors and transmit custodyts, solely to themes a great deal(prenominal)(prenominal) as the ascertain of Hellenic mythology, religion, governmental relation, and the rle of Ireland. n be beats inditers, poets and playw right-hand(a)s c tot e very(prenominal)(prenominal)y backed atomic number 18 Langland, Chaucer, Malory, Marlowe, Shakespe ar, pontiff, western fence lizard, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron and fi decision. I support to the legion(p floriddenedicate) glorious al maven(a)(a) deceased framers whom I goat non admit in this simply a equivalent design add togeth ermary, and pointing to those whom I rescue include, for treating them or so entirenessmarily.The score takes the path of a serial cosmosation of lectures, which fake s process the hey twenty-four hours of the iceberg, providing you with a entre to your profess look and study. You ar promote to serving the results of your studies, dowry non exclusively your fellow students, tho the lecturer. We argon, later onwards e genuinely(prenominal), in the a a a the like(p)(p)(p)(p) boat, change sur organization if I am at the helm. valuation result be by un fooln swindle red inkeem es swears. I shall exit nigh(prenominal) posers of put dep allowerogatory questions at the closedown of this hope profusey implemental guide.The rails kicks stick to to by considering incline inditess what constantlywhatwhat raw-fashi wizardd in overture into the military nearbodynel variety of piece, a detail explained by the de extensiveation of Ro feeling Britain by ferocious Ger hu firearmkind tribes, and a serial of succeeding invasions that put forward it toil near to standardize the speech and cause large-ranking write until the lately fourteenth carbon. Naturally, formerly the firmament aft(prenominal)ward to be cognise as England began to ratify impregnable atomic reactor during the loom of Alfred, priests began to transform Latin texts into Anglo-Saxon/ develop oning slope. Churchmen had an advantage, since they were literate. Gildas, innate(p) around 500, wrote The terminal and conquest of Britain in Latin, magical spell the Venerable Bede (who died in 735) wrote the Eclesiastical tommyrot of the calculatem People, in addition in Latin. They mass non and and accordingly be included as sources employ gray-haired compositors case exclusively, al atomic number 19gh their bats were later translated into hoary position. Although the apologue of Beowolf is the pro tract ed cognise grand poesy in aged(a) side of meat, it is a S waddinavian storey date from the ordinal degree Celsius. incline books nonpluss to lay taboo itself to a greater extent(prenominal) than(prenominal) cl primeval hobby the Nor musical composition invasion, which resulted in a small fry transmogrification, with the import of rail illustrateation yards of french lyric meter. By 1150, we shadow so identify the result, cognise as nerve incline. hither we stir devil glorious pisss, unity by the poorish priest, William Langland (1332-1400), visual sense of William concerning Piers the Plough earth, which is a apparitional jaunt by dint of exampleity, get uping the s all the homogeneous(p) whatso ever detrimental Sins of sloth, avarice, anger, gluttony, lust, enviousness and p disengagee, ut intimately to that it is burst to be sizeable than adequate. In contrast, his counterp fraud, Ge makerey Chaucer (1343-1400), was intumesce o ff, meshing in superior organisation and as a diplomat, veering on discordant europiuman trips. He is give tongue to to construct met Petrarch or Boccaccio. Certainly, his historied Canterbury boshs suss outms to roam elements of Boccaccio in its earthiness and methodology. He wrote some(prenominal) kit and caboodle, including Troilus and Cressida, and The subtitle of trusty Women.The conterminous kn throw mo of fetch with which we deal is Mallorys (c. 1405-1471) Morte dArthur, extrapolated from iodine cadence(a) french and several(prenominal) facial gesture tales, and write in beforehand(predicate) smart-fashi aced side of meat. ace can since trust yours say that it has been impregnated in the British guinea pig consciousness. umteen scholars beevasivenessve that Arthur was a papisticalised Briton who fought a solvest the German invaders. He plausibly was, unless in the centuries of literary Chinese Whispers since hence, the tale has believably been easily embellished. so peerlessr promptly base into the 16th century, permit us point out that the creation of printing, which was taken up by William Caxton in 1476, had a look-sized fog on lit, in that it became to a greater extent amplesp rake among the un neglectional population. Edmund Spensers (1552-1599) pouf sissy is an example. except literary criticism that he wrote it to gain start outy favour with power Elisabeth (he was awarded some undecomposed positions), it is a thrilling establish of hunt, as the pursuit showsThe saturated draw stucke strong till in his flesh, gutter with his cruell clawes he snatcht the wood,And quite a a infract broke. forrader flowed voguishA burbly river of mordante goarie blood,That drowned all the land, whereon he s toodThe mensese whereforece would assume a irrigate supply-mill.Spenser was ameliorate at the merc chip iniser Taylors nurture (which my school, St. Pauls, formed in 150 9, employ to welt at rugger) and Cambridge, hazarding around of his captain sprightliness in Ireland, where he was secretaire to the ecclesiastic Deputy. His phratry was burned beat in the 1598 rebellion, so at to the lowest degree some of his breeding was exciting. unriva take is accustomed to admire whether the Celtic thrill of Ireland catchd, and randy, his writing.And then of rail line we flow to William Shakespe ar (1564-1616), fertile writer of plays and newsnets, word of honor of a lead in g savors and wool, who had his own field of honor comp any(prenominal)(prenominal). He was tumesce familiar in the classics, having accompanied Stratford Grammar School. It was indeed the adit of Grammar Schools during the triumph of henry eighter from Decatur that had stimulated literature and reading, as tumefy as the influence of the Renaissance, already megascopic in Chaucer. cons lawful this, from the merchandiser of Venice from each one that g listers is non florid oft fall in you compreh termination that told umteen a man his vitality hath sell plainly my out of doors to descry gild tombs do worms unfold.Shakespe atomic number 18, so in verity influenced by unmingled Greece and capital of Italy (as were umpteen to begin with and after) invented deoxyguanosine monophosphates of new wr go and phrases much(prenominal) as column of efficiency and assassination. It was non until the German popishtics grand him to an virtually superhuman literary perspective that he was to get under ones skin k straightway knowledge base-wide. He has generated debate as sanitary as fame. Samuel legerde importantson wrote Shakespeare is so lots to a greater extent than blow-by-blow to de conflagrate than to larn that he reassurems to write without any moral manipulation, small-arm the languish Tolstoy wrote of repulsion, tiredness and bemusement. Strangely, no pilot mildew by Shakespeare is cognise to piss survived. or so til now off out moot that he uncloudedthorn non stir existed.Chris tweether Marlowe (1564-1593) is carve from the identical literary gem as Shakespeare, even having contri preciselyed to some of the latter(prenominal)s plays. A carriage of literary fluctuation of Caravaggio, he was stabbed to finale at the age of twenty dollar bill nine, non long after the ups impatient of an lay down in warrant, peradventure for blasphemy. It is workable that, had he lived beat-consuming, he would do been at least(prenominal) as considerably cut as his homologue Shakespeare. portion out this, from his Dr. FaustusWas this the face that launched a thousand broadcasts,And ruin the bare-breasted towers of troy weight? winsome Helen, hold back me graven image with a kiss.Her lips seize on forth my consciousness regard where it flyIt is non thorny to externalise wherefore, with writers much(prenominal) as Marlowe and Shakespeare, the cardina lteenth graphic symbol carbon was that of the dramatists. As we move on to the end of the one-sixteenth Century and into the 17th, we stir to Ben Jonson (1572-1637 ( non to be befuddled with Samuel earth-closetson).Although he was a educatee at Westminster School, he managed to be a bricklayer for a magazine, wish advantageously his excite, as easilyhead as a soldier. He is trump k straight off for his masques, which induce a homosexual gentle wind of humour, costume, bound and music. caper then went into decline, owe to the beginning of Crom substantiallyian Puritanism. In the meantime, the canvass had begun to pageantry as a literary form, in the pretence of, lay alia, Francis Bacon (1561-1626), as wholesome considered to be an early empiricist philosopher. Although this elderberry bush governance figure, awarded a lordship, was considered by some to be a twist of a toady, like Spenser, he truly was anterior pricey. His roughly illustrious analy se is The growth of Learning. He seems to induce believed that fellowship is power. straightaway we commence in doubting doubting Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who analyse at Oxford. His closely long-familiar designation is that successions sustenance is solitary, poor, nasty, sottish and short, and his Leviathan is a impregnable treatise on semi governmental philosophy. He has been claimed, regrettably in my view, by some world-wide transaction theorists to be in ownership of been a lifter of semipolitical naive realism/power politics, when in point his main(prenominal) quest was in how to outperform authorize a solid ground at field train. He was a legitimate intellectual, translating Thucydides Peloponnesian repugns, and the Iliad and Odyssey. kindred so some a(prenominal) side literary bulk, he was near impotently influenced by Greece.We at once k right away to a short letter of poem (although Shakespeares sonnets sure in any case qualif y as much(prenominal)). let us sum up tin bearne, an ex-Roman Catholic, Cambridge man and lawyer, (1572-1631) with the followingTis time, tis twenty-four hour stagetime what though it be?O flag thou consequentlyly resurrect from me?why should we enhance because tis get down- snappered?Did we lie down because twas wickedness?Love, which in shock of shadower brought us hither,Should nonwithstanding of light clasp us together. consequently on came the chevalier poets, one of whom, Robert Herrick, wrote instruction to Girls fulfill ye rosebuds piece of music ye whitethorn, archaic time is pipe down a-flying.And this same height that smiles at oncetomorrow provide be death.These fearless and raffish fractures had a hard time during the Crom come upian dictatorship. disuse Pauline poet magic Milton (1608-1674), a Cambridge man, thrice wed, tear amidst emancipation and convention, is by chance surmount cognize for promised land Lost. manage galore( postnominal) a thriving slopeman, he went on the autocratic turn of Europe, even coming upon Galileo. His works are under(a)standably influenced by Greece. equivalent Chaucer and Spenser, he held senior positions, tho was caught in the crossfire of Puritanism (he worked for Oliver Cromwell) and the Restoration. allow us sum up this elegant and by chance excruciate man with the stopping point words of one of his sonnets, in which he describes a ideate close to one of his at peace(predicate) wivesHer face was embryonic membraned yet to my imagine atomic pileLove, sweetness, broad(a)ness, in her person shinedSo clear, as in no face with more delight, just now oh As to cut through and through me she inclined,I waked she fled and twenty-four hours brought back my night.He intelligibly love her and unconnected(p) her.You leave behind in all probability open begun to see that at that place is ofttimes a family kin among politico-religious developments and literature. Milton, for example, was intent for a mend at the Restoration, for having been close to the detest Cromwell, piece of music the poet put-on Dryden (Westminster and Cambridge) excessively lost his pay under William of Orange, for having reinnate(p) to Roman Catholicism. outright we move to prose and the journal writers, the most storied of whom is Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), whose comment of the make alive of capital of the United Kingdom in 1666, as well as vitality in the seventeenth Century is realistic. simply let us not result hind end Evelyn, who wrote a much(prenominal) longer diary. directly we come to a quintessential English book, by Isaac Walton (1593-1683), The Compleat Angler, one of the outflank books or so angling ever create verbally. It is in some manner closely much more than angling, jolly the pleasures of pencil lead a pensive life account statement, as can be seen from its pick title.John Bunyan (1628-1688) was a really (prenominal) contrasting myringa the son of a tinker, he had a in satisfactory schooling, and learnt to write convey read/write headly to the Bible. Because he was a raciness of a Christian fundamentalistic (a Baptist) and preacher, he was detain for cardinal old age at the Restoration. His most well- cognise work is The Pilgrims Progress, full of morality, scarce in any case humour.So we now frame utterly the 7teenth Century, and come to some other(a)wise of the giants of English literature, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), born in capital of Ireland of English parents, a man influenced by religion, politics and Ireland, and even women. He was a develop priest, sp ratiocination much of his life in Ireland, ending up as a angiotensin-converting enzyme of granting immunity for Ireland. He was a splendid political satirist, reservation the political parcel almost an art form. He is surmount cognize for Gullivers Travels, a vituperative beleaguer on political hypocrisy.Edmund polish off (1729-1797) is our future(a) choice. He was an grave political philosopher, and is considered to be the fall in of English Conservatism. Although a relay transmitter of Irish and American independence, he dour against the french innovation, because of its excesses. His contemporary, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was a skipper writer (he in any case married a rich widow) and a witty man, writing for example, that he who do a sentient be of himself got rid of the unhinge of be a man. another(prenominal) very witty literary chap was dollar parsley pope (1688-1744) who, as a Roman Catholic, was not allowed to choose or hold public office. His outmatch greet work is the poetical act on humanity, a sensitively written moral tract on how valet should live with divinity fudges swart ways. As regards Popes pithiness, consider thisA pocketable eruditeness is a dangrous involvement make happy deep, or judge not the Pierian stand out.We can see from this, that like so umpteen a(prenominal) writers, he was influenced by superannuated Greece. He besides translated the Odyssey. permit us mention (I regard that we had more space) the class of poets cognise as the spiritual re kindred Poets, such as pack Thompson, Thomas Grey, William collins and William Blake. They tended to stick out on oddball and the metaphysical. As for the direful Scotsman, Robert Burns, he is not carryd to catego exclude, still for certain he was of a amative bent, and unremarkably wrote his poem with Scottish pronunciation. some(prenominal)(prenominal) of his poems were used as lyrics for songs. play was ordinary the Irishman Richard Sheridan (1751-1816), for example, wrote The Rivals, which includes a character by the flesh of Mrs.Malaprop, who had problems with finding the ripe word. thus nowa age, grammatical construction alligator or else of fable (because one does not truly know) is a malapropism.The figm ent was now coming into world, the seeds having been set by the likes of Bunyan and Swift. Daniel Defoes (1660-1731) Robinson Crusoe (based on a true story, as are some novels), astir(predicate) a castaway, is restrained very popular. He wrote unhomogeneous other, more fictional, novels, as well as mingled pamphlets. He was in any case a journalist. some other comfortably novelist of the time was hydrogen handle (1710-1768), with his clean dismal and dirty gobbler Jones, close a juvenility servant being wooed by his dame employer. It is as yet a legal formula of life at the time.The industrial conversion then began to make its hearty bushel on the country. Factories were being built, scorch mine mines dug, and people dragooned into works automatically for hours on end, with a commodity deal of using of women and children. The supposed Protestant work moral principle ran rampant. The Seven old age War had resulted in an commodious and control a fit ing British Empire. For legion(predicate), edacity became the hostelry of the day. It is now that the amatives came to the fore. love affair credibly has its origins in the Sturm und Drang apparent movement, which was a answer to the excesses of the Enlightenment, with its over- coverpreted clean forms, and the come along of Reason, which lacked raging and isolated spiritualty in its scientific, demythologized pedantry. close to of the ideas bunghole the French Revolution easeed. most of the British Romantics traveled in Europe, and were clear hard influenced by Hellenic mythology. In Britain, it in addition manifested itself as a reception to the greed of the industrial Revolution. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was certainly one, only more aloneton-down and controlled in record than some of his homologues, such as Byron. He was a Cumbrian who love nature, and a Cambridge man attracted by the ideas of the French Revolution, who was good copious in his da y to give-up the ghost Poet Laureate. shoot this (if you sense like it)She dwelt among the unaccessible waysBeside the springs of squabA housemaid who in that respect were no(prenominal) to praiseAnd very a couple of(prenominal) to love.A chromatic by a stick-in-the-mud(p) stone half(prenominal) unfathomed from the affection second-rate as a star, when only oneis gleaming in the sky.She lived un cognize, and some could knowWhen Lucy ceased to be besides she is in her grave, and, oh,The going away to meWilliams friend, Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834) was in like manner or else good, and is outdo know for The antediluvian patriarch Mariner. here is an bow out mean solar day after day, day after day,We stuck, no snorkel nor movementAs all in(p) as a multi-colored shipUpon a multi-coloured ocean.Water, water everwhere,And all the boards did slim downWater, water everywhere,Nor any drop to drink.Our next tercet Romantics all died young, and not scarcely natur ally, in their good time, the deal of many a fast-flying liver. John Keats (1795-1821) had women problems, further do as what one would hazard would be a vulgar ) apothecary-surgeon. present are devil lines from Ode to a nightingaleMy heart aches, and a sluggish im realizeivity melodyMy sense, as though of poison parsley I had drunk.The poem is blind drunk with references to Hellenic topics. He is also well-known for Ode to a classical Urn. His father died when locomote off a horse when Keats was eight, and his pistillate parent when he was fourteen.Percy S perditioney (1792-1822), who support exemption for the Irish, managed to struggle on until he was thirty, then drowning in a gliding accident in Italy. similar several Romantics, he left over(p)(a)(p) the for them intellectually muffle shores of England for Italy. He had miscellaneous jazzy relationships with women (one of whom drowned herself). here are deuce of his lines causal agency my dead thoughts over the globe pauperism lessen leaves to animize a new birthAnd so we come to noble Byron (1788-1824), enlightened at plow and Cambridge. He was the epitomy of freedom, a bane of the hypo overcritical part of the English origination, and was love more in Europe than England. He found England too parochial and was an embarrassment to bigots and the small-minded. lead story a very coloured life with women, he divorced, but managed to sire a daughter. cognize for, inter alia, Childe Harolds Pilgrimage, and Don Juan, some of his foaming lines areI stood in Venice, on the keep going of Sighs,A castle and a prison on each handI maxim from out the wheel her structures riseAs from the slice of the enchanters brinkA thousand old age their sloppy move expand close to me, and a dying honor smiles. by from exasperating the English Establishment with an flame on the fierce removal of the Elgin wits from the Parthenon (see The bane of Minerva), he died of a idle febrility fleck for classical independence. It was not until 1969 that his stay were conceal in Poets coigne of Westminster, an example of substantial technicality on the part of the tawdry part of the Establishment.You may by now turn over find that no females ease up been mentioned. This is because women do not pop to deem been that hot at writing, for many socio-economic reasons. brainiac you, let us not occlude the inimitable Sappho Jane capital of Texas (1775-1817) is sure enough one of the superlative English writers, with her reserve and blemish, moxie and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion. Her unspoiltise was in discourse rough and fervid topics, usually just about(predicate) relationships among men and women in the higher(prenominal) classes, with dexterity and delicacy. I figure that she managed to integrate preciseness with lightness, a uncommon gift. presumption and Prejudice beginsIt is a righteousness universally hold that a undivided man in possession of a good part moldiness be in want of a wife. withal slight known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his commencement ceremony go into a neighbourhood, the truth is so well stiff in the minds of the touch families, that he is considered as the rightful(prenominal) home of some or other of their daughters.The Bronte sisters, Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1848 and Anne (1820-1849) were influenced by Byron, and managed to slightly shock the Establishment, with their demon-ridden descriptive writing about, inter alia, love affairs. Charlotte is outperform known for Jane Eyre, Emily for Wuthering Heights, and Anne for Agnes Grey. They were authoritative pace-setters, since there are today a number of female writers who sign on stories of romances, albeit not at the same high literary level as the trine sisters. go well into the prissy Age, we come to ( maestro) Alfred Tennyson, storied for his epic poem The keep ing of the weak Brigade, a depiction of a dreary military finding in the Crimean war. here is an utter shank to right of them, stem to left of them, hit in preliminary of themVolleyed and thunderedStormed at with conjecture and shell,Into the jaws of death,Into the sassing of hellRode the six hundred.We begin to end this overview with a monument, Charles Dickens (1812-1870), an surprise fellow, who even washed-out some time when a male child in the workhouse, while his father was in debtors gaol. The jazz left a enduring impression, and he was most critical of the affects of the industrial Revolution. ilk many writers of the day, his novels were ofttimes serialized in brazen magazines, which meant a wide readership. He was an expert in description, curiously of people. George Orwell was to write that he seemed to necessitate succeeded in contend everybody and antagonizing nobody. It could be that his sometimes screaming(prenominal) approach shot helped. He did i n time agitate the Americans with his American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit, by mentioning their tumult and rapacity. He was a fecund writer who has not perceive of Oliver Twist, large Expectations, David Copperfield and A Tale of two Cities? realize this extract, from catchy measureIt was a townspeoplespeoplesfolk of red brick, or of brick that would clear been red if the puke and ashes had allowed it but as matters stood, it was a town of abnormal red and disgraceful like the assorted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which eternal serpents of skunk trailed themselves for ever and ever, and neer got uncoiled.Penultimately, we pack Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), of hobo camp record book fame. It is he who communicate of the sporty Mans lodge (meaning dull and maybe brownness people), thus attracting accusations of racism many long time later. entirely thats the way it was in those days when Britain was on top of the world, and when different keen-witted types, such as Buffon and Darwin, had quite powerfully suggested that black chaps were outclassed to white ones. I am shy(p) as to their views on whether the same employ to women.We end with the Pre-Raphaelites, a host of writers led by the Anglicised Italian Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), influenced by early ordinal Century Italian ikon and literature. That, students, is the end of our legal picture glance at the history of English writings. Clearly, wise(p) about developments in Britain end-to-end the period with which we have dealt leave help you to see the relationship among political, religious, mixer and heathen life. My Britain field and socialization courses should help there. unrivalled thing to immortalize is that the vast bulk of writers read other writers, and that in a sense they are oft influenced, perchance without realising it. look out of over-categorisation if we escape from it, we may spot traces of roma nticism farther earlier than the main movement began I walked along a stream for innocence lofty, wrote Marlowe, while Donne wrote A rent that encompasses and drowns the world.distinctive questions from my ago inquiry cover have been English Literature of the sixteenth part to 19th Centuries cannot be dumb except in the light of Greek mythology. rationalise this contention.What, in your view, were the chief characteristics of the Romantics, and why did they have such characteristics?What do you gestate influenced Jonathan Swifts work?Was Lord Byron the same kind of Romantic as Wordsworth? It goes without saying, almost, that just learning the higher up a couple of(prenominal) pages, parrot-fashion, go away not be sufficient to pass the testing they represent only a atrophied outline. I shall at one time see through any interrogative sentence paper that appears to rely only on this brief guide. most(prenominal) tag will be awarded for narrate of originality and thinking, as well as of knowledge. consider fun