Literature and theatre in the UK an outline

1. LITERATURE AND THEATRE IN THE UK an outline

2. OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE

Beowulf (8th century)
anonymous
Epic
LYRIC / PROSE / RIDDLES AND
CHARMS

3. MIDDLE AGES

1066 Norman invasion
ROMANCE (Morte d’Arthur)
BALLAD (Chevy Chase, Sir Patrick
Spens, Robin Hood)
DRAMA (mystery plays and morality
plays)

4.

5.

6. MIDDLE AGES

POETRY
SECULAR
The Cuckoo Song (Pieśń o Kukułce (13th c.)

7. MIDDLE AGES

religious
The Pearl
Piers Plowman
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales

8. RENAISSANCE

SONNET (Wyatt, Surrey, Spenser,
Shakespeare)
THE ITALIAN SONNET
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."
THE ENGLISH SONNET
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 fixed mark (c)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)
It is the star to every wand'ring barque, (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)

9. RENAISSANCE

Metaphysical poets
John Donne (The Flea)
MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

10.

Cavalier poets
Ben Jonson
To Celia
Robert Herrick
To The Virgins, To Make
Much Of Time
("Do dziewic, aby nie
traciły czasu„)
GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer ;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.

11.

ELIZABETHAN THEATRE

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)

17.

HISTORY PLAYS
King John
King Henry VI
King Richard III
King Henry V
King Henry IV
King Richard II
King Henry VIII or All Is True
COMEDIES
The Comedy of Errors
The Taming of The Shrew
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Much Ado about Nothing
As You Like It
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Measure for Measure
The Winter's Tale
The Tempest

18.

TRAGEDIES
Romeo and Juliet
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Othello
King Lear
Macbeth
Anthony and Cleopatra
POEMS
Sonnets (154)
Venus and Adonis
The Rape of Lucrece
The Phoenix and Turtle
A Lover's Complaint

19.

John Milton Paradise Lost

20. RESTORATION AND THE AUGUSTAN AGE (17th C.)

John DRYDEN
Alexander POPE
Essay on Man
Essay on Criticism

21.

First novels (18th century):
Daniel DEFOE Robinson Crusoe
Jonathan SWIFT Gulliver’s Travels
Modest Proposal - pamphlet

22. ROMANTICISM (19th c.)

First generation poets:
William BLAKE
Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE
William WORDSWORTH
Second generation poets:
John KEATS
Percy Bysshe SHELLEY
George Gordon BYRON

23. ROMANTICISM (19th c.)

Romantic novel:
Mary SHELLEY Frankenstein (Gothic
novel)
Jane AUSTEN
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
Emma
Sir Walter SCOTT (Scottish) Ivanhoe

24. VICTORIAN ERA (19th c.)

POETRY
Lord Alfred TENNYSON
Preraphaelites – D.G. ROSSETTI

25.

W. H. Hunt
Isabella and the Pot of Basil

26. VICTORIAN ERA (19th c.)

NOVEL
Charles DICKENS (1812-70)
The Pickwick Papers
Oliver Twist
A Christmas Carol
David Copperfield
Bleak House
Hard Times
Little Dorrit
A Tale of Two Cities
Great Expectations

27.

Emily BRONTË
Wuthering Heights
Charlotte BRONTË
George ELIOT (Marian Evans) The Mill on the Floss
Jane Eyre

28.

THEATRE AT THE TURN OF THE
CENTURIES (19th/20th)
Irish Playwrights:
Oscar WILDE
The Importance of Being Earnest
George Bernard SHAW
W.B. YEATS
Pygmalion
Countess Cathleen

29. MODERNISM

POETRY
Thomas Stearns ELIOT
The Waste Land
Ash Wednesday
Hollow Men
William Butler YEATS
The Second Coming

30.

T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965)
The Hollow Men
[…]
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

31.

Other 20th century poets
W.H. AUDEN
„the war poets”
Dylan THOMAS
Philip LARKIN
Ted HUGHES
Seamus HEANEY (Irish)

32.

MODERNIST AND LATER 20th
CENTURY NOVEL
Joseph CONRAD
Lord Jim
Heart of Darkness
Nostromo
James JOYCE
Virginia WOOLF Mrs Dalloway
Ulysses

33.

George ORWELL
1984;
Animal Farm
Graham GREENE
Our Man in Havana
Kingsley AMIS
William GOLDING
John FOWLES The Magus
Anthony BURGESS The Clockwork Orange
Dorris LESSING The Golden Notebook
Ian MCEWAN
Lucky Jim
Lord of the Flies
The Child in Time

34.

20th CENTURY DRAMA
”Angry Young Men”
John OSBORNE
Look Back in Anger
”Theatre of the Absurd”
Samuel BECKETT (Irish) Waiting for Godot
Harold PINTER The Birthday Party

35. NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE – WINNERS FROM THE UK AND IRELAND

1907
Rudyard Kipling
1932
John
Galsworthy
1948
1950
1953
1983
William Golding
2001
V. S. Naipaul
2005
Harold Pinter
2007
Doris Lessing
T. S. Eliot
Bertrand
Russell
Winston
Churchill

36. NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE – WINNERS FROM THE UK AND IRELAND

1923
William Butler Yeats
1925
George Bernard Shaw
1969
Samuel Beckett
1995
Seamus Heaney