Dr hab. Andrzej Diniejko

UW UKKNJA

Zaliczenie 2011/2012

Semester III & IV

Topics and Reading List

Old English literature

1. Main genres of Anglo-Saxon literature - riddles, charms, epic poems, laments.

2. Anglo-Saxon laments - define laments as a genre and discuss chosen poems.

3. Presentation of the Anglo-Saxon ideals in Beowulf.

4. Christian and pagan elements in Anglo-Saxon literature.

5. Stylistic devices in Anglo-Saxon poetry.

(You should be able to discuss the following works: Caedmon's “Hymn”, “The Dream

of the Rood”, “Beowulf”, “Deor's Lament”, “The Wanderer”).

Middle English literature

1. Medieval literary genres: romance, fabliau, beast story, exemplum, debate. Give examples of works.

2. Mystery and miracle plays - themes and the way of staging. Morality plays: Everyman.

3. Medieval romances: “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”)

4. Alliterative revival - “The Pearl” and “Piers Plowman”.

5. The Canterbury Tales : the frame narrative, genres, the presentation of medieval society.

6. Prose: Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Artur.

(Read: one tale from The Canterbury Tales and The General Prologue; and “Sumer is

Icumen In”).

(You should be able to discuss the following works: one tale from The Canterbury

Tales,e.g. “The Nun's Priest's Tale; “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”; “The

Pearl” and “Piers Plowman”).

Tudor literature

1. The English sonnet - the stages of development from the Italian to the English sonnet (Wyatt, Howard, Spenser, Shakespeare). Read: Thomas Wyatt's “I Find No Peace”; Edmund Spenser's Sonnet 75 from Amoretti; William Shakespeare's Sonnets 18, 130, 138.

2. Tudor pastoral poetry - representatives and texts (Marlowe and Raleigh). Definition of Arcadia and idyll (bucolic). Read: Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd” and Raleigh's “The Nymph's Reply”.

3. Poetry of Edmund Spenser - main themes and titles, poetic devices (Spenserian stanza), language (use of archaisms). Read: Sonnet 75 from Amoretti

4. Shakespeare. Read: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, and optionally The Tempest.

1. Shakespeare's four great tragedies, written between 1599 and 1605. Show how the

protagonists of the tragedies bring about their own downfall.

2. Features of Shakespeare's comedies. Discuss e.g. subject matter, plot pattern,

characters, themes, language, etc.

3. Features of Shakespeare's last plays, such as The Tempest.

4. Name some of Shakespeare's chronicles/ histories.

5. Shakespeares Sonnets. Discuss three sonnets, rhyme scheme, subject matter.

5. The Elizabethan Theatre. Shakespeare's contemporary dramatists (Marlowe, Kyd,

Ben Jonson).

English poetry of the 17th c.

1. Features of Metaphysical poetry Donne, Herbert). Metaphysical conceit. (Read: John

Donne's “The Flea”; “The Good Morrow”; George Herbert's “The Collar”.

2. Cavalier poets and the carpe diem theme of their poetry (Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick,

Andrew Marvell). Read: Jonson: “To Celia”; Herrick: “To Virgins”; Marvell: “To

His Coy Mistress”

3. John Milton's Paradise Lost. Discuss its genre, theme and form. Read a brief fragment

at the beginning of the poem. Read : a brief fragment from Paradise Lost)

18th century literature

1. Daniel Defoe's contribution to the early development of the English novel. Read: Robinson Crusoe.

2. Major satirists - Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. Satire as the dominant poetic genre of the 18th century. Read: “The Rape of the Lock” (fragment); Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Traves..

3. Discuss the use of irony and parody in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

4. Samuel Richardson's contribution to the early development of the English novel.

5. Features of the novel genre. Narrative strategies of the novel. Henry Fielding and the introduction of the third-person narrative. Lawrence Sterne and sentimentalism. Read: two fragments of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. Define Bildungsroman.

6. Features of the Gothic novel, describe its history as a genre and give examples.

Read a fragment of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

The Romantic Period

1. Is Jane Austen a Romantic or an Augustan writer? Discuss, using examples. What view of marriage does Austen present in her novels? Read: Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice.

2. The two generations of English Romantic poets.

3. The poetry of Wiliam Blake. Read: “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”.

4. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the main themes of his poetry.

5. Discuss the role of the natural and the supernatural in the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Explain the “naturalizing the supernatural” (Coleridge) and “supernaturalizing the natural” (Wordsworth). Read: Wordsworth's “Daffodils” and Coleridge's “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” or “Kubla Khan”.

6. George Gordon Lord Byron and the Byronic hero” - how is he reflected in Byron's work? Read: “She Walks in Beauty”, “When We Two Parted” and a fragment of Don Juan.

7. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Read and discuss the major motifs of “Ode to the West Wind”.

8. Read and discuss the role of nature and art in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats.

Semester Fourth

Pre-Victorian literature

1. Read and discuss the themes and form of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice or Great Expectations.

2. Read about Sir Walter Scott's literary output.

Victorian literature

1. Read and discuss the themes and form of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations.

2. William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair as a social satire.

3. The achievement of the Brontë sisters. Read: Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre.

4. Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

1. Discuss general features of Victorian poetry: major poets, themes and form. Read: Alfred Tennyson' Mariana; Dante Gabriel Rossetti's “The Blessed Damozel”.

2. What technical innovations and unconventional devices did Hopkins use? Discuss the role of nature in Hopkins's poetry. Discuss the notions of `inscape' and `sprung rhythm' in Hopkins. Read: Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Pied Beauty”, “God's Grandeur”, “The Windhover

5. Oscar Wilde - main themes (aestheticism, decadence), style (paradoxes). Read: The Picture of Dorian Grey.

The Modernist British novel

1. The key themes in Joseph Conrad's fiction. Read: Heart of Darkness.

2. Modernist British literature - “stream of consciousness” as a literary technique

1. Discuss various planes of interpretation of James Joyce's Ulysses.

2. Read and discuss Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

3. Themes in D. H. Lawrence's fiction. Read: Sons and Lovers.

Modernist revolution in British poetry

3. The main features and recurrent themes of William Butler Yeats's poetry? Read:”Sailing to Byzantium”.

1. How and why did T. S. Eliot revolutionise English poetry? What are its main features? What are the recurrent themes in Eliot's poetry? What role does religion play in it? Why are Eliot's poems (The Waste Land in particular) full of allusions to other religions and cultures? What role do they play in the poem? How does T.S. Eliot describe the condition of European civilisation in the aftermath of WWI in The Waste Land? Read: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.

20th-c. poetry and drama

1. What is the „Theatre of the Absurd”? How is absurdity represented in the selected plays of Samuel Beckett? Read: Waiting for Godot.

2. W. H. Auden - the central themes of his poetry. Read:

3. What was “The Movement'? Name its major representatives and discuss themes.

4. Dylan Thomas - the central themes of his poetry. Read: “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”

5. In what respects can be Larkin seen as an essentially English poet? Read: “Church Going”

6. Nature in the poetry of Ted Hughes. Read: ”Hawk Roosting”

7. The poetry of Seamus Heaney. Read:

The 20th c. British novel

1. How are religious matters reflected in Graham Greene's novels? What makes Greene a Christian existentialist? Read: Brighton Rock.

2. Define the word “dystopia”, explain its origins and give examples of literary texts employing this mode of writing. Read: Aldous Huxley: Brave New World; or George Orwell: Ninety Eighty-Four.

3. Explain the major features of postmodernist fiction. Read: John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman.

4. Postcolonial literature - discuss the phenomenon, using examples of contemporary writers writing in English. Read: Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day.

Bibliography

David Daiches: A Critical History of English Literature.

Andrzej Diniejko, Introduction to the Study of Literature and Film in English.Warszawa,2010.

Margaret Drabble (ed.) The Oxford Companion to English Literature

Frank Kermode et al. (ed.): Oxford Anthology of English Literature.

Ian Ousby (ed.): The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English

Liliana Sikorska: An Outline History of English Literature

Krystyna Stamirowska (ed).: Współczesna powieść brytyjska

---