British literature study guide
Prerequisites: names (first names and surnames) of the authors, titles of the main works. Spelling mistakes will not be tolerated. General chronology - the ability to place an author in the appropriate century. General knowledge about the subjects of the discussed works.
Metaphysical poets - imagery, conceit, wit, diction, oxymoron, formal devices.
Cavalier Poets: - historical/political background. The main themes and key values - love, honour.
John Ford and other representatives of the Jacobean/Carolinian theatre. The social attitudes to theatre. The revenge tragedy as a genre. Neo-Platonic ideology of love as reflected/undercut by Cavalier poetry and `Tis Pity... Shakespearian allusions. The heart and the tradition of the emblem poem. The role of the Church in the play.
John Milton's Paradise Lost. The conventions of the epic poetry - invocation, catalogue, epic simile, starting the narrative “in medias res”. The definition of the blank verse and Milton's arguments for using it. The relations between sexes as depicted in the poem. The role of Satan.
Augustan classicism and the main features of its literature. The Rape of the Lock as the mock epic.
The birth of the novel. - social and historical context. The origins and the genres that influenced it (epic poem, romance, picaresque). Defoe and the Puritan tradition. First vs. third-person narrative. Epistolary novel.
The Gothic novel. The meaning of the word “Gothic” and the role of architecture in the Gothic novel. The meaning and the use of the sublime.
Romanticism - 1798 (what happened then?), key subjects, medievalism
William Blake - innocence and experience, use of symbols.
Wordsworth - nature, main subjects, folklore, ballad, poetry as `emotion recalled in tranquility'. `Supernaturalizing the natural'
Coleridge `naturalizing the supernatural' `willing suspension of disbelief' Ancient Mariner - the reasons for using the frame story and archaisms. Kubla Khan - orientalism, sublime landscape, the role of the poet
Byron and the Byronic hero.
P.B. Shelley. terza rima, political ideals. The role of poetry.
John Keats - negative capability, medievalism, role of poetry, synaesthesia
Jane Austen - the historical context, society's attitude towards women writing and reading. Love, marriage and money. Class and snobbery. Classical and Romantic values. Irony.
Emily Brontë. Literary antecedents (Shakespeare, Milton, Romantic poetry). Romantic heroes in the Victorian novel. The role of religion (Joseph). The narrative structure of the novel (frame story, multiple narrators). The house as the metaphor for the novel.