Literature of B (English) Language Area - level 2 3200-L2-0LBA2

The aim of the class is to outline the history of English literature from the Enlightenment period to the 20th century English literature, with a focus on the history, social conditions and art of these periods; to present a discussion of the output of leading writers; to analyse and interpret selected literary works as evidence of cultural development and the worldview current in the periods in question.

I. THE ENLIGHTENMENT

CULTURAL CONTEXT: Augustan culture; neo-Classic style; the impact of middle class on the development of new literary genres

LITERARY PHENOMENA: Augustan poetry; 18th-century verse satire; prose satire; periodical essay – the first journalists; the rise of the novel: epistolary novel, memoir-novel, picaresque novel, the novel of manners; the Graveyard School and the Gothic novel

DISCUSSED TEXTS: Alexander Pope: “The Rape of the Lock; Jonathan Swift: “Modest Proposal”, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele (excerpts from essays); Excerpts from of novels by: Lawrence Sterne, Samuel Richardson, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen; Horace Walpole

II. THE ROMANTICISM

CULTURAL CONTEXT: French Revolution; development of Romantic aesthetics in opposition to Enlightenment aesthetics; Romantic individualism

LITERARY PHENOMENA: Primitivism and Pre-Romanticism; falsification and imitation of antique literary genres; the first generation of English Romantics; nature and folk culture in Romantic poetry; supernatural elements in Romantic poetry; the Byronic hero

DISCUSSED TEXTS: selected poems by William Blake, Robert Burns; Percy Bysshe Shelley; Lake Poets: selected works by William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge; John Keats; Lord Byron (excerpts)

III. VICTORIAN PERIOD

CULTURAL CONTEXT: Industrial Revolution; the reign of Queen Victoria; Gothic revival and the development of other revivalist styles; women in the Victorian period; Imperialism; colonialism; growing social divisions; emancipation movements

LITERARY PHENOMENA: historical novel; colonialism and imperialism in literature; Victorian novel; Victorian poetry; pre-raphaelite movement; Victorian comedy; detective novel

DISCUSSED AUTHORS AND TEXTS: Walter Scott: “Ivanhoe” (excerpt); Alfred, Lord Tennyson (selected poems); Elizabeth Barret Browning (selected poems); Christina Rossetti; Dante Gabriel Rossetti (selected poems); Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll (fragments); John Ruskin (selected works); Charles Dickens (selected fragments), Emily Bronte “Wuthering Heights” (fragments); Oscar Wilde „The Importance of Being Earnest” (fragments);

IV. 19th CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE

CULTURAL CONTEXT: slavery and abolitionist movement; transcendentalism;

LITERARY PHENOMENA: transcendentalism in literature; American novel; Dark Romanticism; Gothic fiction; horror novel; American poetry; realism and naturalism in literature

DISCUSSED AUTHORS AND TEXTS: Washington Irving „Rip van Winkle”; Ralph Waldo Emerson „Self-Reliance” (fragments); Nathaniel Hawthorne & Herman Melville (fragments); Samuel Langhorne Clemens (fragments); Emily Dickinson (selected poems); Edgar Allan Poe „The Raven” „The Fall of the House of Usher” (fragments); Ambrose Bierce (selected works); Stephen Crane "Red Badge of Courage" (fragments)

V. EDWARDIAN PERIOD AND THE GREAT WAR

CULTURAL CONTEXT: Belle Epoque and the Woman Suffrage Movement

LITERARY PHENOMENA: criticism of Victorian colonialism and imperialism; war poetry; realism in drama

DISCUSSED AUTHORS AND TEXTS: Joseph Conrad „Heart of Darkness” (fragments); Rudyard Kipling „The Man Who Would Be King” (fragments); George Bernard Shaw „Mrs. Warren’s Profession” (fragments); E.M. Forster; Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Alan Seeger (selected poems)

VI. MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

CULTURAL CONTEXT: mid-war period economic crisis; the socialist movement

LITERARY PHENOMENA: Theatre of the Absurd; internal monologue and the stream of consciousness; imagism and symbolism in poetry; poetic impressionism; revival of metaphysical wit; science fiction novel; political fiction

DISCUSSED AUTHORS AND TEXTS: D.H. Lawrence, Thomas S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, W.B. Yeats (selected works); James Joyce (selected excerpts); George Orwell „1984” (selected excerpts); Samuel Beckett „Waiting for Godot” (selected excerpts)
Student’s workload:

Contact hours (in-class): 30
Individual work:
- Reading assigned materials: 20 hrs.
- Preparation for exam: 5 hrs.
Total individual work: 25 hrs.

If classroom learning is impossible, the workshop will be conducted with the help of distance communication tools, most probably Google Meet and others recommended by the University.