English literature Year II

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.

1. Old English literature. Titles, genres and themes. Formal feature - alliterative verse, accentual system, caesura; rhetorical devices - kenning. Anglo-Saxon values: Wergild, Wyrd. Scops. Christian and pagan influences - scribes. Caedmon - his story and his poetry. Epic poem, elegiac poem, dream-vision poem, perceptions of transience, gnomic verses (riddles)

2. Middle English literature - three languages. Chivalric romance. Code of chivalry. Courtly love. Alliterative revival and Sir Gawain. Knight errant. The conflicting codes of behaviour (“courtesy” vs. “fellowship”). Dream-vision technique. The use of allegory.

3. Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales. The estate satire. Frame story. Gender relationships.

4. Medieval drama - origins, evolution from the trope. Pageant cycles - the method of staging, the participation of trade guilds. The 3M of medieval drama: mystery plays, miracle plays, morality plays. Other staging methods - place-and-scaffold, theatre-in-the round. Morality plays - the use of allegory, psychomachia.

5. Sonnet. Petrarchan/Italian sonnet vs. English sonnet - rhyme patterns, octave, sestet, couplet, quatrain, volta. Wyatt and Surrey, their role in developing the English sonnet. Edmund Spenser - blazon. Shakespeare's sonnets - main themes. Renaissance humanism: individualism, carpe diem (instead of memento mori),

6. Elements of Elizabethan theatre: soliloquy, aside etc. University Wits. Christopher Marlowe - main themes of his plays. Overreacher. Shakespeare's romances - the difference between them and comedies or tragedies. Shakespeare's tragedies - features. Dramatic irony.

7. Metaphysical poets - imagery, conceit, paradox, oxymoron, formal devices, shaped verses. The secular Donne vs. religious Donne, allusions to science, geographical discoveries, astronomy; George Herbert and religion. Andrew Marvell and carpe diem motto.

Sample questions:

1. Identification of the passage:

Identify the following quotations giving the name of the author (when applicable), title and literary period.

Then answer the questions that follow:

a) If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if the other do.

1. Author, title, epoch:

John Donne, “A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning” 17^th c./metaphysical poets

2. What literary device is used in the passage? Define it.

It's a metaphysical conceit, which is a long, extended metaphor, using unusual combination of images in order to startle or impress the reader. The conceit often used imagery from various branches of learning, for instance from geometry in this passage.

3. What point is the poet trying to illustrate by using the image of “twin compasses”?

Twin compasses are a device used to draw circles. John Donne uses it to portray the lovers being temporarily separated in order to show that even though they are physically apart, spiritually they stay together, like the two arms of twin compasses, which always move synchronically.

III Open questions (to be answered in 3 - 4 sentences)

1. What is the kenning, in what era was it used? Define, using examples.

Kenning is a compound metaphor, a fixed expression made of two words in order to replace another noun, for example “whale-road” for sea or “earth-stepper” for wanderer. It was used in Old English poetry.

2. What is volta in the sonnet and what role does it play?

Volta means literally “a jump” in Italian and it means a turn of thought in the sonnet. For instance in the first part of the sonnet the poet can argue for an idea, and after the volta they can argue against it. In the Italian sonnet it happens after the octave. In the Shakespearean sonnet it can happen anywhere.

3. What is psychomachia, in what kind of texts does it appear and in what period?

Psychomachia means in Greek “soul-fight”. It means the fight for the soul of man between the forces of good and evil. It was particularly popular in medieval morality plays, where the forces of good (represented by Angel or Virtue) fought with the forces of evil (represented by Devil or Vice) for the soul of the main character, who was meant to represent the whole humankind. We can see its elements also in later drama, for instance in Christopher Marlowe's “Doctor Faustus”.

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