Literature of C (English) Language Area 3200-L2-0LCA

The aim of the class is to outline the history of English literature from the Old English period to to postmodernism 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. OLD ENGLISH PERIOD

CULTURAL CONTEXT: the pre-Celtic peoples; the Celts; the Romans; Christianisation of the British Isles; material culture of the period (Celtic art; Roman colonisation); culture and the beliefs of the German peoples; pagan and Christian elements combined in culture; devastation of the country and damage to learning caused by Viking raids; cultural development in the reign of Alfred the Great; everyday life in England in the early Middle Ages

LITERARY PHENOMENA: prosody of alliterative poetry; Caedmonian revolution; OE Christian poetry; Cynewulf: the first poet known by name; cult of the Holy Cross; OE prose

DISCUSSED TEXTS: pre-Christian OE poetry: “Widsith”, “Deor’s Lament”; the epic poem: “Beowulf” (fragments); Caedmon: “Hymn”; Cynewulf: “Dream of the Rood”; Venerable Bede, Alfred the Great (selected excerpts)

II. MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD

CULTURAL CONTEXT: Norman invasion 1066; cultural transformations and linguistic changes resulting from the domination of Norman French; chivalric culture

LITERARY PHENOMENA: early ME poetry; love lyric and religious poetry; allegorical narrative; early ME prose; the flourishing of ME poetry; narration types in “Canterbury Tales”; chivalric romance; medieval folk ballads

DISCUSSED TEXTS: Layamon’s “Brut” (excerpts); “The Pearl” (excerpts); Geoffrey Chaucer: excerpts from the General Prologue to “Canterbury Tales”; a selected tale; “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”;

III. THE RENAISSANCE

CULTURAL CONTEXT: the Tudor dynasty; the Reformation; dissolution of the monasteries; development of dramatic forms from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

LITERARY PHENOMENA: development of the sonnet as a lyrical form; mystery, miracle and morality plays; early Elizabethan tragedy; revenge tragedy; the building of an Elizabethan theatre (The Globe); development of comedy; a play: text – performance – film adaptation

DISCUSSED TEXTS: sonnets by Wyatt, Spenser, Shakespeare; “Everyman” (fragments); Christopher Marlowe: “Doctor Faustus” (excerpts); Shakespeare: selected play

IV. THE BAROQUE

CULTURAL CONTEXT: the Stuart dynasty; Charles I as art collector; the impact of great geographical and scientific discoveries on 17th-century worldview

LITERARY PHENOMENA: the first English literary school: the Sons of Ben; Cavalier poets; metaphysical poets

DISCUSSED TEXTS: selected poems by Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, John Suckling, Richard Lovelace; selected poems by John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell

V. THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE RESTORATION

CULTURAL CONTEXT: Puritanism; Cromwell’s Protectorate; culture of the Restoration; development of the Enlightenment aesthetics
LITERARY PHENOMENA: John Milton’s Christian epic; Restoration comedy; “The Age of Dryden” – the satire and critical essay; 17th-century prose

DISCUSSED TEXTS: Milton: “Paradise Lost” (selected fragments), “L’Allegro”, „Il Penseroso” (excerpts), sonnets; John Dryden: “McFlecknoe”, “An Essay on Dramatic Poesy” (excerpts); John Bunyan: “Pilgrim’s Progress” (excerpt);

VI. 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

VII. 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 Colerigde; John Keats; Lord Byron (excerpts)

VIII. 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);

IX. 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)

X. 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)

XI. 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): 60
Individual work:
- Reading assigned materials: 40 hrs.
- Preparation for exam: 10 hrs.
Total individual work: 50 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.