English literature Year II 2015/16
Study guide
Prerequisites: names (first names and surnames) of the authors, titles of the main works. Spelling mistakes in the names of the writers will result in point deduction. General chronology - the ability to place an author in the appropriate century.
Metaphysical poets - imagery, conceit, diction, oxymoron, formal devices, shaped verses. The secular Donne vs. religious Donne, allusions to science, geographical discoveries, astronomy; religious Herbert.
Cavalier Poets: `carpe diem' motto (Herrick, Marvell). Cavalier vs. Metaphysical poetry.
Jacobean Tragedy John Ford, `Tis Pity She is a Whore' (1633): Jacobean drama and theatre, tragedy of revenge, presentation of suffering and perversity, the theme of incest, the irony of the title. Intertextual echoes.
Milton: conventions of the EPIC POEM, features of Milton's verse (epic simile, blank verse), invocation to the Deity and statement of the author's theme, the presentation of Satan, light vs. darkness imagery. The theme of temptation and fall (Book 9).
The Augustan Age - the neoclassical ideals. Horatian and Juvenalian satire. The mock-epic- the definition and examples. Heroic couplet.
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock: heroi-comical poem, mock-heroic/ mock-epic conventions, the role of the Sylphs, zeugma, Belinda's dressing table, conventions of the epic poem ridiculed (invocation, statement of the theme, epic question and answer).
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto: gothic novel, the concept of the sublime, Gothic villain, Gothic representations of women, Catholic background, Gothic setting, ancient prophecy.
The birth of the novel. - social and historical context. The similarities and differences with the earlier genres (the epic, the romance). Picaresque. First vs. third-person narrative. Epistolary novel.
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders: narration, plot, picaresque novel, novel of character, reliability of the 1st person narration, themes. Analysis of the main character: Moll as a mother, thief, her act of penance towards the end of the novel. Realities of life in the 18th century England, crime, poverty, money, inequality between men and women. Realism as a mode of the presentation of the events in the novel - what is a realistic novel?
Samuel Richardson, Pamela: epistolary novel, bourgeois novel, (un)reliability of the 1st person narrative, presentation of the middle-class society (Pamela) vs. the rakish squire (Mr B.).
William Blake - innocence and experience, use of symbols.
Romanticism - Lyrical Ballads 1798, medievalism. Two generations of Romantic poets.
Wordsworth - nature, main subjects, folklore, ballad, poetry as `emotion recalled in tranquility'. `Supernaturalizing the natural'; insights of childhood, place of memory and imagination, attitude to Nature - as exemplified by the selected poems
Coleridge `naturalizing the supernatural' in The Ancient Mariner - the reasons for using the frame story and archaisms. Theme: crime and punishment, sin and redemption. Kubla Khan - sublime landscape, the role of the poet.
Byron and the Byronic hero.
P.B. Shelley. role of poetry, terza rima, political ideals.
John Keats - negative capability, medievalism, synaesthesia, Hellenism, the theme of art vs. life, mortality vs. immortality; permanence vs. impermanence.
Jane Austen - the novel of manners, the historical context, society's attitude towards women writing and reading. Love, marriage and money. Class and snobbery. Classical and Romantic values. Irony.
E. Brontë: multiple narration, Gothic elements in the novel, Romantic elements in the novel, the symbolism of the moors, revenge motif (revenge tragedy), the significance of the two houses: the Heights and the Grange, Heathcliff as a Romantic hero (Byronic hero), the significance of the story of Catherine in the story of Cathy: parallels and contrasts.
Sample questions:
“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?”
“How many? Seven in all,” she said,
And wondering looked at me.
1. Identify the name, the title and the literary era when the poem was written.
William Wordsworth, “We Are Seven”, Romanticism.
2. What is the main point of the argument between the speaker and the little girl?
The girl insists there are seven siblings in her family, even though two of them are dead.
3. What position, characteristic for these times, do the little girl's views illustrate?
Her insistence on the fact that the dead siblings are still a part of her family illustrates the Romantic belief that the people who are not members of the educated elite (country-folk, children, insane etc.) have direct access to more important truths about the world, something that the educated fail to see.
4. What is terza rima and what famous English poem uses it?
Terza rima is a three-line stanza with the rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc. It was used by Percy Bysshe Shelley in his “Ode to the West Wind”.
5. What were the neoclassical ideals of literature?
Neoclassicism derives its name from the fact that the ancient (classical) literature was considered to be the ideal all writers should aspire to. This era valued harmony and the golden mean, which could be achieved by following reason and nature. It believed in precise and elegant style as well as good taste. Neoclassical critics believed that literature was a kind of craft that had to be mastered - literary genres were strictly codified and writers had to learn how to write them.
6. Compare the following:
a) the presentation of children in the poems by Wordsworth and Blake
b) the fusion of the poet and the landscape (or some elements of natural landscape) in the poetry of Shelley and Keats
c) (un)rightful inheritance in The Castle of Otranto and in the Wuthering Heights
d) Isabella and Matilda
e) permanence and impermanence in Shelley's “Ozymandias” and Keat's “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
f) the presentation of autumn in Shelley's “Ode to the West Wind” and Keats's “To Autumn”
g) the depiction of the land on the Grecian urn (in Keats' “Ode”) and “faery lands forlorn” in “Ode to a Nightingale”?
(NB the options in question 6 are just examples - you will not be required to answer so many during the actual exam.)