BRITISH LITERATURE AN OUTLINE (up to 18th cent.)

I. OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE (5th century – 1066) II. MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE (1066 – 1st half of 16th century) III. MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE (2nd half of 16th century – now)

I. OLD ENGLISH (ANGLO-SAXON) LITERATURE epic poems Beowulf chronicles The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Beowulf a young Viking – a hero x a monster Grendel Grendel´s mother a dragon

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle during the reign of King Alfred the Great (871 – 901)

II. MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE religious literature John Wyckliffe: Middle English Bible translation heroic literature Sir Thomas Malory: Le Morte d´Arthur ballads about Robin Hood Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales

King Arthur a legendary British leader the Knights of the Round Table Merlin Guinevere Lancelot Mordred Excalibur Tintagel, Camelot, Avalon

Robin Hood another popular folk figure – an outlaw Sherwood Forest Sheriff of Nottingham

The Canterbury Tales end of the 14th century a collection of stories a story-telling contest in a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury

III. MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE 1558 – 1616 Elizabethan literature (English Renaissance) 17th cent. Revolution and Restoration (Baroque) 1700 – 1745 Augustan literature (Classicism)

Elizabethan literature (Renaissance) sonnets (Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spencer, William Shakespeare) drama (William Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kid))

English sonnet love poetry 3 quatrains and 1 couplet rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg

W.Shakespeare: Sonnet 116 Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a) Admit impediments, love is not love (b) Which alters when it alteration finds, (a) Or bends with the remover to remove. (b) O no, it is an ever fixéd mark (c) That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d) It is the star to every wand'ring bark, (c) Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d) Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e) Within his bending sickle's compass come, (f) Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e) But bears it out even to the edge of doom: (f) If this be error and upon me proved, (g) I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)

Elizabethan drama William Shakespeare comedies histories tragedies

Revolution and restoration (Baroque) metaphysical poetry (John Donne) philosophical literature (Sir Francis Bacon) religious literature (John Milton: Paradise Lost)

Augustan literature (Classicism) religious literature (John Bunyan) philosophical literature (John Locke) poetry (Alexander Pope) first novel (Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe) political satire (Jonathan Swift: Gulliver´s Travels) Gothic fiction (Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto)

Alexander Pope translation of Homer satirical verse - heroic couplet

Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe - the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre

Jonathan Swift Gulliver´s Travels - a satire on human nature 4 voyages to different fictional countries

Horace Walpole the beginning of Gothic novel (combination of horror and romance)

Scottish literature poetry (Robert Burns) historical novel (Sir Walter Scott)