Victorian literature (1837-1901)
Unit 3. Literature. What do the UK people write?
Pre-reading task. Background test.
1. In turns name the books (one at a time) by the UK writers that you have read. The person who will be the last to “drop off” is the winner.
2. Group work. Match the photos of most famous English authors with their names and works. Name some more titles for each writer. Remember the century in which he/she worked. The group that will give more correct answers and more titles, wins.
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Authors:
Robert Burns, Roald Dahl, William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charlotte Brontë, C.S. Lewis, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jane Austen, William Blake, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Galsworthy, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Wilkie Collins.
Works:
“Murder on the Orient Express”, “The Canterbury Tales”, “Jane Eyre”, “The Tempest”, “The Forsyte Saga”, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”, “The Chronicles of Narnia”, “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”, “A Red, Red Rose”, “Great Expectations”, “The Moonstone”, “To a Skylark”, “Emma”, “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, “Pygmalion”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage”.
Discussion club. Get in pairs and discuss:
-) What genre of literature do you find the most (the least) profound/ the most (the least) difficult to write/ the most (the least) interesting to read?
-) Who do you consider the most brilliant English writer?
-) Have you ever tried your hand in writing any literature?
Reading. Read the text carefully and be ready to discuss it.
Part 1. English literature from the 5th to the 19th centuries
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English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh and Vladimir Nabokov was Russian, but all are considered important writers in the history of English literature. In other words, English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world in countries originally colonized by the British.
Old English literature: 450-1153
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The first works in English, written in Old English, appeared in the early Middle Ages, the oldest surviving text being the Hymn of Cædmon. The oral tradition was very strong in the early English culture and most literary works were written to be performed. Epic poems were thus very popular, and many, including Beowulf, have survived to the present day in the rich corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature. Much Old English verse in the manuscripts is probably adapted from the earlier Germanic war poems from the continent. When such poetry was brought to England it was still being handed down orally from one generation to another, and the constant presence of alliterative verse, or consonant rhyme helped the Anglo-Saxon people to remember it. The first written literature dates to the early Christian monasteries founded by Augustine of Canterbury and his disciples and it was somehow adapted to suit the needs of Christian readers.
Middle English literature: 1154-1485
In the 12th century, a new form of English now known as Middle English appeared. This is the earliest form of English literature. Middle English lasts up until the 1470s. Middle English Bible translations helped to establish English as a literary language.
There are three main categories of Middle English Literature: Religious, Courtly love, and Arthurian. The most significant Middle English author was Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote in the late 14th century. Often regarded as "the Father of English Literature". The Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus, and a towering achievement of Western culture. The multilingual audience for literature in the 14th century can be illustrated by the example of John Gower, who wrote in Latin, Middle English and Anglo-Norman. Since at least the 14th century, poetry in English has been written in Ireland and by Irish writers abroad.
Renaissance literature: 1486-1625
Following the introduction of a printing press into England by William Caxton in 1476, vernacular literature flourished. The Reformation inspired the production of vernacular Liturgy which led to the Book of Common Prayer, a lasting influence on literary English language. The poetry, drama, and prose produced under both Queen Elizabeth I and King James I constitute what is today labelled as Early modern (or Renaissance).
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Elizabethan era (1558-1603)
The English playwrights were intrigued by Italian model: a community of Italian actors had settled in London and brought much of the Italian language and culture to England. It is also true that the Elizabethan Era was a very violent age with high incidence of political assassinations in Renaissance Italy. As a result, representing that kind of violence was brought on stage. Following earlier Elizabethan plays such as The Spanish Tragedy (1592) by Kyd (1558–94) provided much material for Hamlet. William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as yet unsurpassed. Shakespeare was not a man of letters by profession, and probably had only some grammar school education. He was neither a lawyer, nor an aristocrat as the "university wits" that had monopolised the English stage when he started writing. But he was very gifted and incredibly versatile, and he surpassed "professionals". Though most dramas met with great success, it was in his later years, marked by the early reign of James I, that he wrote what have been considered his greatest plays: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest. Shakespeare also popularized the English sonnet which made significant changes to Petrarch's model.
Other important figures in Elizabethan theatre include Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont. The sonnet was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. In the later 16th century English poetry was characterised extensive allusion to classical myths. One of the most important poets of this period is Edmund Spenser author of The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. Elizabeth I also produced occasional poems such as On Monsieur’s Departure. Poems intended to be set to music as songs, became popular as printed literature was spread more widely in households.
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Jacobean literature (1603-25)
After Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson was the leading literary figure of the Jacobean era. Jonson's characters embody the theory of humours. According to this contemporary medical theory, behavioral differences result from a prevalence of one of the body's four "humours" (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) over the other three; these humours correspond with the four elements of the universe: air, water, fire, and earth. Jonson tends to create types or caricatures. He is a master of style, and a brilliant satirist.
Others who followed Jonson's style include Beaumont and Fletcher, who wrote the brilliant comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a mockery of the rising middle class and especially of those nouveaux riches who pretend to dictate literary taste without knowing much literature at all.
The King James Bible, one of the most massive translation projects in the history of English up to this time, was started in 1604 and completed in 1611. It represents the culmination of a tradition of Bible translation into English that began with the work of William Tyndale. It became the standard Bible of the Church of England. This project was headed by James I himself, who supervised the work of forty-seven scholars. Although many other translations into English have been made, some of which are widely considered more accurate, many aesthetically prefer the King James Bible, whose meter is made to mimic the original Hebrew verse.
Besides Shakespeare the major poets of the early 17th century included the Metaphysical poets John Donne (1572–1631) and George Herbert (1593–1633). Influenced by continental Baroque, Donne's metaphysical poetry uses unconventional or "unpoetic" figures, such as a compass or a mosquito, to reach surprise effects. For example, in "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", one of Donne's Songs and Sonnets, the points of a compass represent two lovers, the woman who is home, waiting, being the centre, the farther point being her lover sailing away from her. But the larger the distance, the more the hands of the compass lean to each other: separation makes love grow fonder. George Chapman (?1559-?1634) wrote a couple revenge tragedies, but is remembered chiefly for his famous translation in 1616 of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into English verse. This was the first ever complete translations of either poem into the English language. The translation had a profound influence on English literature and inspired a sonnet from John Keats. The highly popular tale of the Trojan War had previously only been available to English readers in Medieval epic retellings.
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The Restoration period (1625-1689)
The Metaphysical poets John Donne (1572–1631) and George Herbert (1593–1633 were still alive after 1625, and later in the 17th century a second generation of metaphysical poets were writing, including Richard Crashaw (1613–49), Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637–1674) and Henry Vaughan (1622–1695). The Cavalier poets were another important group of 17th century poets, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War (1642–51). The best known of the Cavalier poets are Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling.
The official break in literary culture caused by radically moralist standards under Cromwell's Puritan regime created a gap in literary tradition, allowing a seemingly fresh start for all forms of literature after the Restoration. The royalist forces attached to the court of Charles I went into exile with the twenty-year-old Charles II.
John Milton is one of the greatest English poets who wrote at this time. Milton is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1671). Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination. Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime. The largest and most important poetic form of the era was satire. In general, publication of satire was done anonymously. There were great dangers in being associated with a satire so a great many poems are unpublished and largely unknown.
John Dryden (1631-1700) was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. He established the heroic couplet as a standard form of English poetry by writing successful satires, fables, epigrams, compliments, prologues, and plays with it;
Prose in the Restoration period is dominated by Christian religious writing, but the Restoration also saw the beginnings of two genres that would dominate later periods: fiction and journalism. The Restoration was also the time when John Locke wrote many of his philosophical works. During the Restoration period, the most common manner of getting news would have been a broadsheet publication. However, the period saw the beginnings of the first professional and periodical journalism in England.
It is impossible to satisfactorily date the beginning of the novel in English. However, long fiction and fictional biographies began to distinguish themselves from other forms in England during the Restoration period.
Augustan literature (1689-1750)
During the 18th century literature reflected the worldview of the Age of Enlightenment. The term Augustan literature derives from authors of the 1720s and 1730s themselves, who responded to a term that George I of England preferred for himself. Because of the aptness of the metaphor, the period from 1689 – 1750 was called "the Augustan Age" by critics throughout the 18th century.
The most outstanding poet of the age is Alexander Pope. In prose, the earlier part of the period was overshadowed by the development of the English essay. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's The Spectator established the form of the British periodical essay, inventing the pose of the detached observer of human life who can meditate upon the world without advocating any specific changes in it. Periodical essays bloomed into journalistic writings. However, this was also the time when the English novel, first emerging in the Restoration, developed into a major art form. Daniel Defoe turned from journalism and writing criminal lives for the press to writing fictional criminal lives. He also wrote a fictional treatment of the travels of Alexander Selkirk called Robinson Crusoe (1719). In mid-century many more authors would begin to write novels.
Vocabulary
thus – таким образом
verse – стих
disciples – ученики, последователи
towering achievement – величественное (возвышающееся) достижение
vernacular literature – народная литература
to constitute – составлять
violence – насилие
stage – сцена
provide – предоставлять
playwright – драматург
yet unsurpassed – до настоящего времени непревзойденный
a man of letters – профессиональный литератор
gifted – одаренный
incredibly versatile – невероятно разносторонний
to surpass – превзойти
extensive allusion to classical myths – развернутые аллюзии на классическую мифологию
household – хозяйство, дом
to embody – воплощать
behavioral differences – разница в поведении
prevalence – привалирование
phlegm – лимфа
black bile – черная желчь
yellow bile – желтая желчь
mockery – насмешка
nouveaux riches – «новые богатые»
to supervise – надзирать, следить за работой, руководить
scholars – ученые
is widely considered – повсеместно считается
unconventional – нетрадиционный
"Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" – «Прощальное слово, запрещающее печаль»
the hands of the compass – стрелки компаса
to lean – клониться
a profound influence – основательное влияние
to inspire – вдохновлять
a seemingly fresh start – кажущееся свежее начало
exile – изгнание
to reflect deep personal convictions – отражать глубокие личные убеждения
self-determination – самоопределение
to achieve international renown – достичь международного признания
influential – влиятельный
fables – басни
broadsheet – крупноформатная газета
aptness – пригодность, соответствие
meditate upon the world – размышлять о мире
to bloom – расцветать
emerging – возникающий
PART 1.
Text-based tasks.
1) Produce 5 sentences of your own, using the vocabulary. Read your sentences out in Russian and ask any of your friends to translate them back into English. Check if your sentences sound the same.
2) Text-based questions.
1. When did the first works in English appear?
2. How do we call the language of the 7th century English literature?
3. What literature was popular in the Old English period?
4. What is the date of the first written English literature?
5. What is the new form of English since the 12th century?
6. How long did this period last?
7. What helped to establish English as a literary language?
8. What are the main categories of Middle English Literature?
9. Who is named "the Father of English Literature" and why?
10. How do we call the period in English literature under Queen Elizabeth I and King James I?
11. To what period is Shakespeare related? What literature was popular in his times?
12. Name as many Shakespeare’s works as you can remember.
13. When was the sonnet introduced into English literature?
14. Name one of the most massive translation projects in the history of English.
15. What metaphysical poets can you remember and in what epoche did they work?
16. Who were the Cavalier poets?
17. Who and when made the first complete translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into English?
18. In what period was satire especially popular and why was it dangerous to write it?
19. What time is considered to be the beginning of fiction and journalism?
20. When did the form of essay appear?
21. When did the English novel develop into a major art form?
3) Put 5 more questions to the text and write them down on a separate sheet of paper. Exchange your papers with your partner and answer each other’s questions in writing.
4) Explain these words and expressions in English.
o most literary works were written to be performed
o to be handed down orally from one generation to another
o alliterative verse or consonant rhyme
o Liturgy
o a literary language
o Courtly love
o magnum opus
o multilingual audience
o to flourish
o The Reformation
o high incidence of political assassinations
o to stand out
o "university wits"
o to be intended to be set to music
o the leading literary figure
o the theory of humours
o aesthetically prefer
o to mimic the original Hebrew verse
o separation makes love grow fonder
o anonymously
o the Age of Enlightenment
5) Underline all the irregular verbs in the text and give the three forms of them.
Part 2
The 19th century literature
Romanticism (1798-1837)
Various dates are given for the Romantic period in British literature. Here the publishing of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is taken as the beginning and the start of Queen Victoria's reign in 1837 as its end, even though, for example, William Wordsworth lived until 1850 and William Blake published before 1798. Robert Burns (1759-1796) was another pioneer of the Romantic movement. As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was published in 1786. Among poems and songs of Burns that remain well known across the world are, "Auld Lang Syne"; "A Red, Red Rose"; "A Man's A Man for A' That"; "To a Louse"; "To a Mouse"; "The Battle of Sherramuir"; "Tam o' Shanter" and "Ae Fond Kiss".
The poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757-1827) was one of the first of the Romantic poets. Although Blake was largely unrecognised during his lifetime, he is now considered a great figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. Among his most important works are Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), The First Book of Urizen (1794), Milton (1804–?11]), and "Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion" (1804–?20).
Among the earliest Romantics were the Lake Poets, a small group of friends, including William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834),Robert Southey (1774-1843) and journalist Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859). Coleridge and Wordsworth understood romanticism in two entirely different ways: while Coleridge sought to make the supernatural "real", Wordsworth sought to stir the imagination of readers through his down-to-earth characters taken from real life, or the beauty of nature, especially the Lake District. Among Wordsworth's most important poems, are "Michael", "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey", "Resolution and Independence", and the long, autobiographical, epic The Prelude.
The second generation of Romantic poets includes Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) and John Keats (1795-1821). Byron, however, was still influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps the least 'romantic' of the three. His first trip to Europe resulted in the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812), a mock-heroic epic of a young man's adventures in Europe but also a sharp satire against London society. Shelley is perhaps best known for poems such as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy and Adonaïs, an elegy written on the death of Keats.
The plot for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is said to have come from a nightmare she had during stormy nights on Lake Geneva in the company of Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori. Her idea of making a body with human parts stolen from different corpses and then animating it with electricity was perhaps influenced by Alessandro Volta's invention and Luigi Galvani's experiments with dead frogs. Frankenstein's chilling tale also suggests modern organ transplants, reminding us of the moral issues raised by today's medicine. But the creature of Frankenstein is incredibly romantic as well. Although "the monster" is intelligent, good and loving, he is shunned by everyone because of his ugliness and deformity, and the desperation and envy that result from social exclusion turn him against the very man who created him.
John Keats did not share Byron's and Shelley's extremely revolutionary ideals. Keats was in love with the ancient stones of the Parthenon that Lord Elgin had brought to England from Greece. Keats's great attention to art, especially in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1818) is quite new in romanticism.
One of the most popular novelists of the era was Sir Walter Scott, whose grand historical romances inspired a generation of painters, composers, and writers throughout Europe. Scott's novel-writing career was launched in 1814 with Waverley, often called the first historical novel, and was followed by Ivanhoe. His popularity in England and further abroad did much to form the modern stereotype of Scottish culture.
Jane Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th century realism. Austen brings to light the hardships women faced, who usually did not inherit money, could not work and where their only chance in life depended on the man they married. She reveals not only the difficulties women faced in her day, but also what was expected of men and of the careers they had to follow. This she does with wit and humour and with endings where all characters, good or bad, receive exactly what they deserve. Her work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become accepted as a major writer. Austen's works include Pride and Prejudice (1813) Sense and Sensibility (1811), Mansfield Park, Persuasion and Emma.
Victorian literature (1837-1901)
It was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. Another important fact is the number of women novelists who were successful in the 19th century, even though they often had to use a masculine pseudonym. The majority of readers were of course women. At the beginning of the 19th century most novels were published in three volumes. However, monthly serialization was revived with the publication of Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers in twenty parts between April 1836 and November 1837. Demand was high for each episode to introduce some new element, whether it was a plot twist or a new character, so as to maintain the readers' interest.
The 1830s and 1840s saw the rise of social novel, also known as social problem novel. This was in many ways a reaction to rapid industrialization and was a means of commenting on the suffering of the poor. Stories of the working class poor were directed toward middle class to help create sympathy and promote change. An early example is Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1837-8). Dickens wrote vividly about London life and struggles of the poor, but in a good-humoured fashion, accessible to readers of all classes. Dickens has been most admired for his later novels, such as Dombey and Son (1846-8), Great Expectations (1860-1), Bleak House (1852-3) and Little Dorrit (1855-7) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-5). An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray, who during the Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now much less read and is known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair (1847).
The Brontë sisters were other significant novelists in the 1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation. They had written from early childhood and were first published in 1846 as poets under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The sisters returned to prose, producing a novel each the following year: Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Emily's Wuthering Heights and Anne's Agnes Grey.
Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone (1868), is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language, while The Woman in White is regarded as one of the finest sensation novels. H. G. Wells's (1866-1946) writing career began in the 1890s with science fiction novels like The Time Machine (1895), and The War of the Worlds (1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians.
Genre fiction
Bram Stoker's horror story Dracula (1897), belongs to a number of literary genres, including vampire literature, horror fiction and gothic novel.
Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant London-based "consulting detective". Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring Holmes, from 1880 up to 1907, with a final case in 1914. All but four Conan Doyle stories are narrated by Holmes' friend, assistant, and biographer, Dr. Watson.
Literature for children developed as a separate genre. Some works became internationally known, such as those of Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. Adventure novels, such as those of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94), are generally classified as for children. Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), depicts the dual personality of a kind and intelligent physician. His Treasure Island 1883, is the classic pirate adventure. At the end of the Victorian era and leading into the Edwardian era, Beatrix Potter was an author and illustrator, best known for her children’s books, which featured animal characters. In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902. Potter went on to publish 23 children's books and become a wealthly woman.
Victorian poetry
The leading poets during the Victorian period were Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), Robert Browning (1812–89), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61), and Matthew Arnold (1822–88). The poetry of this period was heavily influenced by the Romantics, but also went off in its own directions. Particularly notable was the development of the dramatic monologue, a form used by many poets in this period, but perfected by Browning. Literary criticism in the 20th century gradually drew attention to the links between Victorian poetry and modernism. Tennyson was described as "the greatest master of metrics as well as melancholia", and as having "the finest ear of any English poet since Milton".
Oscar Wilde became the leading poet and dramatist of the late Victorian period. Wilde's plays, in particular, stand apart from the many now forgotten plays of Victorian times and have a much closer relationship to those of theEdwardian dramatists such as Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), whose career began in the last decade of the nineteenth century, Wilde's 1895 comic masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, holds an ironic mirror to the aristocracy and displays a mastery of wit and paradoxical wisdom.
Vocabulary
unrecognised – непризнанный
contemporaries – современники
is held in high regard – высоко оценивается
undercurrents – подводные течения
to stir – возбуждать
canto – песнь
nightmare – ночной кошмар
corps – труп
shunned – избегаемый
career was launched – карьера началась
further – в дальнейшем
hardships – трудности
inherit – наследовать
fame – слава
monthly serialization – ежемесячное издание рассказа по частям
demand – спрос
rapid – скорый
sympathy – сочувствие
to rank second – стоять на втором месте
accessible – доступный
is generally considered – повсеместно считается
sequel – продолжение
Text-based tasks (continued)
1) Produce 5 sentences of your own, using the vocabulary. Read your sentences out in Russian and ask any of your friends to translate them back into English. Check if your sentences sound the same.
2) Explain these words and expressions in English.
o idiosyncratic views
o entirely different
o supernatural
o down-to-earth characters
o a mock-heroic epic
o moral issues
o a masculine pseudonym
o a plot twist
o dual personality
3) Text-based questions.
1. Which of the Romantic poets collected Scottish folk songs?
2. Name as many Lake poets as you can remember.
3. How was Byron different from other poets of his time?
4. Who wrote “the first historical novel”?
5. When did Jane Austen become recognized by critics and audience?
6. When did the novel become the leading literary genre?
7. What author revived monthly serialization?
8. What period was marked by the rise of social novel?
9. What is Beatrix Potter famous for?
4) Put 5 more questions to the text and write them down on a separate sheet of paper. Exchange your papers with your partner and answer each other’s questions in writing.
5) Make a crosswords based on the words from the text.
6) Word-building. Create new words based on the one given in the table.
| Noun | verb | adjective / present (past) participle |
| expressiveness | ||
| sharp | ||
| to imagine | ||
| character | ||
| to critique | ||
| animating | ||
| deformity | ||
| to experiment | ||
| chilling | ||
| to inspire | ||
| romanticism | ||
| leading | ||
| ending | ||
| to use | ||
| publication | ||
| to demand | ||
| dramatist |
7) Choose one of the following extracts for retelling:
1. Old and Middle English literature, Renaissance literature and Elizabethan era
2. Jacobean literature, the Caroline, Interregnum and Restoration periods, Augustan literature
3. Romanticism
4. Victorian literature, Genre fiction and Victorian poetry
8) Humour. Read, understand and enjoy the humour.
v Dick is introduced to an author at a party. ‘My last book was terribly difficult,’ the author says. ‘It took me over six years to complete.’ ‘I can sympathise,’ replies Dick. ‘I’m a slow reader myself.’
v A writer sends his manuscript to a publisher with a note saying, ‘None of the characters in this story bear any resemblance to any person living or dead.’ The publisher sends back the book with a note saying, ‘That’s what’s wrong with it.’
v A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
v A man walks into a book shop and says, ‘Can I have a book by Shakespeare?’ ‘Of course, sir,’ says the salesman. ‘Which one?’ The man replies, ‘William.’
v A young man professed a desire to become a great writer. When asked to define ‘great’ he said, ‘I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!’ He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.
PART 2.
Discussion.
1) The “why”-questions. Provocative thinking.
1. Why do we include some works by writers of different nationalities into the notion “English literature”?
2. Why are some most talented writers misunderstood by their contemporaries?
3. Why do people now tend to read less than before?
2) Research questions. Choose the issue that interests you most and search for more information. Prepare a report and deliver it to your classmates.
1. “The Hymn of Cædmon” – the oldest surviving English text
2. The introduction of a printing press into England
3. The history of the sonnet
4. Humour in the English literature
5. Children literature by English authors
6. Fantazy genre in the English literature
7. The most interesting contemporary English writer
3) Search for more information about the Old English epic poem named Beowulf
4) The theory of humours is mentioned in the text. Find out more information about it and share it with your group-mates.
5) Choose one of your favourite books (or poems) by an English writer and make a short presentation according to the following plan:
- The book title, the year when it was written and a short description of its plot
- The reason why it is special for you (why would you recommend it to your friends?)
- Some interesting facts about its author
- Are there any movies based on this book? Are they successful?
- An axtract from the book (in original) for artistic reading
- A literary translation of the chosen passage (do not forget to mention the name of the translator)
6) Look through the text again and make a list of English authors for each century, add their most important works apart from those mentioned in the text. Arrange the information chronologically in a form of the table:
| Author | Life dates | Works of literature |
7) Split into pairs or small groups, act out these extracts from English literature and try to recognize the author and the book title:
1.
"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?"
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it."
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
"Do not you want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.
"You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it."
This was invitation enough.
"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week."
"What is his name?"
"Bingley."
"Is he married or single?"
"Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
"How so? how can it affect them?"
"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Is that his design in settling here?"
"Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes."
"I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better; for, as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party."
2.
MRS. PEARCEThis is the young woman, sir.
The flower girl enters. She has a hat with three ostrich feathers, orange, sky-blue, and red. She has a nearly clean apron, and the shoddy coat has been tidied a little.
HIGGINS Why, this is the girl I jotted down last night. She's no use: I've got all the records I want of the Lisson Grove lingo; and I'm not going to waste another cylinder on it. [To the girl] Be off with you: I don't want you.
THE FLOWER GIRL. Don't you be so saucy. You ain't heard what I come for yet. [To Mrs. Pearce, who is waiting at the door for further instruction] Did you tell him I come in a taxi?
MRS. PEARCE. Nonsense, girl! What do you think a gentleman like Mr. Higgins cares what you came in?
THE FLOWER GIRL. Oh, we are proud! He ain't above giving lessons, not him: I heard him say so. Well, I ain't come here to ask for any compliment; and if my money's not good enough I can go elsewhere.
HIGGINS. Good enough for what?
THE FLOWER GIRL. Good enough for ye--oo. Now you know, don't you? I'm come to have lessons, I am. And to pay for em too: make no mistake.
HIGGINSWELL!!! [Recovering his breath with a gasp] What do you expect me to say to you?
THE FLOWER GIRL. Well, if you was a gentleman, you might ask me to sit down, I think. Don't I tell you I'm bringing you business?
HIGGINS. Pickering: shall we ask this baggage to sit down or shall we throw her out of the window?
THE FLOWER GIRL [running away in terror to the piano, where she turns] Ah--ah--ah--ow--ow--ow--oo! I won't be called a baggage when I've offered to pay like any lady.
3.
They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they did. They did that just to show you what they could do, and to get you interested. Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon.
And then it was George's turn, and he trod on the butter. I didn't say anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table and watched them. It irritated them more than anything I could have said. I felt that. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and put things behind them, and then couldn't find them when they wanted them; and they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in.
They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! I never saw two men do more with one-and-twopence worth of butter in my whole life than they did. After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. It wouldn't go in, and what was in wouldn't come out. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking for it all over the room.
"I'll take my oath I put it down on that chair," said George, staring at the empty seat.
"I saw you do it myself, not a minute ago," said Harris.
Then they started round the room again looking for it; and then they met again in the centre, and stared at one another.
"Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of," said George.
"So mysterious!" said Harris.
Then George got round at the back of Harris and saw it.
"Why, here it is all the time," he exclaimed, indignantly.
"Where?" cried Harris, spinning round.
"Stand still, can't you!" roared George, flying after him.
And they got it off, and packed it in the teapot.
4.
Jack. Charming day it has been, Miss Fairfax.
Gwendolen. Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me so nervous.
Jack. I do mean something else.
Gwendolen. I thought so. In fact, I am never wrong.
Jack. And I would like to be allowed to take advantage of Lady Bracknell’s temporary absence…
Gwendolen. I would certainly advise you to do so. Mamma has a way of coming back suddenly into a room that I have often had to speak to her about.
Jack. [Nervously.] Miss Fairfax, ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl… I have ever met since… I met you.
Gwendolen. Yes, I am quite well aware of the fact. And I often wish that in public, at any rate, you had been more demonstrative. For me you have always had an irresistible fascination. Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you. [Jack looks at her in amazement.] We live, as I hope you know, Mr Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact is constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines, and has reached the provincial pulpits, I am told; and my ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Ernest. There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence. The moment Algernon first mentioned to me that he had a friend called Ernest, I knew I was destined to love you.
Jack. You really love me, Gwendolen?
Gwendolen. Passionately!
Jack. Darling! You don’t know how happy you’ve made me.
Gwendolen. My own Ernest!
8) Make a creative literary translation of the following piece into beautiful Russian
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