1.Old English:
Beowulf- unknown author, 8 c. heroic poetry, preserved in Beowulf Manuscript form 10th c.; epic poem of 3182 lines, scyld, Hrothgar, Ecgtheow; variation, kennings, alliteration?
The wanderer- poem of 115 lines, -elegy or lament, 10 c. in Exeter Book; caesura(pause), four-stress lines in alliterative meter, kenning
The Dream of The rood-religious poem of 156 lines in Vercelli Book, dream-vision 8 c., crucifixion, Christ as a hero, prosopopeia of cross, alliteration, variations(Christ,) he hopes for salvation, doomsday cross glorified
2. Middle English period(1066-1485)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight-14 c. chivalric romance, bob-and-wheel, pentagle!, Gawain-poet
The Pearl: alliterative poem 14 c., allegory and dream vision, “pearl-poet” mourning but she's in heaven
Everyman: 15 c., morality play, confession, penance, discretion, five wits, beauty, strength, sacrament, personification, prosopopeia
The Vision of Piers Plowman: William Langland, 14 c., a dream vision, dungeon and a tower of truth, hermits, friars, pardoners, interpretation of his vision by Holy Truth, Lucifer, allegory-(plowman-Christ, journey-h. life), allegorical narrative, iambic pentameter, alliterative verse divided into `passus', unrhymed, personification
Morte d'arthur - Sir Thomas Malory, 15 c., chivalric romance
The Canterbury Tales-Geoffrey Chaucer, 14 c.
The General Prologue-fabliau, description of spring, Thomas Becket, knight, squire, yeoman, prioress, monk, friar; iambic pentameter, couplet, satire,
The pardoner's Tale- exemplum; personification, avarice, homiletic tradition
The nun's priest tale- beast fable - satire of courtly love, cock Chanticleer, Pertelote, never trust flattery
3. TheRrenaissance, 16c - Elizabethan Period, 17 c - Jacobean Period
I find no peace- Sir Thomas Wyatt, 16 c., petrarchan convention, lyrical poem-deals with emotions, oxymoron-contrary feelings but he won't give up this love; 3 quatrains, 1 closing couplet
My lute awake- Sir Thomas Wyatt, 16 c, refrain to emphasize, a waste effort, she proud of hic sorrow, beauty is sth transient
Astrophel and Stella- sir Philip Sidney, 16 c, I- petrarchan rhyme sheme, problems with expressing feelings, study of other poets look in heart, II- ideal image of love, he surrendered and is a slave, self-irony
Amoretti- Edmund Spencer, 16 c., I -to please the lady, happy pages, she superior, victorious, all to , Helicon-angel please her, LXXV- through poetry he wants to immortalize his beloved
Shakespearian sonnets: 16 c.
XVIII-she's more perfect than summer, immortalized her beauty in poetry, she won't die, 3 quatrains and a couplet, ababcdcdefefgg, personification
XXIX-he's, alone, fortune, but when think of her he's happy, singing of lark
CXVI-love true, doesn't change, a wandering bark, a star, beauty transient but love for ever , personification
CXXX- petrarchan conv- ugly woman but still he loves her
Macbeth- written in blank verse, no 3 unities, 1603-1606, tragedy
The good morrow- John Donne,17 c. metaphysical, secular, kazda miółosc pierwsza, mathematic, two ideal hemispheres, never die
Valediction: forbidding mourning -John Donne,17 c, four-line stanza iambic tetrameter, abab, moving of earth and hemispheres, compass, separation
Holy sonnets: VI- John Donne,17 c, death should not be proud, logic-death-sleep, final paradox- sleep past-we awake eternally, death die too X addressee is good to violent action, alliteration,
The collar- George Herbert 17 c., rebellion, about life and poetry calm ending, metaphysical poem
The pulley- George Herbert 17 c, restlessness, God tricky and jealous, metaphysical poem
Paradise Lost- John Milton, religious epic poem in blank verse 17 c., to join the classic and Christian tradition, Holy ghost, Moses
Sonnet- John Milton, on his blindness- his loss of sight, patience, undeserved suffering,
4. the restoration and the18 century
The pilgrim's progress- John Bunyan, the greatest achievement of 17 c prose allegory telling of the religious conversion and life of Christians presented as a pilgrimage in this world
An essay on man- Alexander Pope, 18 c, heroic couplets, man is the middle state, oxymorons to put contrast, the rape of the lock Augustan Age->the age of Pope
Elegy written in a country churchyard- Thomas Gray 18 c.,
Gulliver's Travels- Jonathan Swift, 1726, amended 1735) is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travelers' tales" literary sub-genre
John Dryden - restoration->the age of Dryden, poet, dramatist, critic, translator; heroic couplet, greatest achievement are his satires Absalom and Achitophel (political satire) and MacFlecknoe (satire against a rival poet). the new ideals in literary style and content can be found in his prose work - i.e. his literary criticism (An Essay of Dramatick Poesy). His best dramatic work is All for Love - tragedy in blank verse. His heroic dramas The Indian Empress, The Conquest of Granada as well as comedies Marriage a la Mode, were very popular. His last poetic work Fables ancient and Modern is a collection of translations from Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio and Chaucer
Alexander Pope - Augustan Age->the Age of Pope, the greatest verse satirist of the age and also the greatest poet of polite society. His Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, The Dunciad and The Rape of the Lock were the most popular satirical poems of the times. he used heroic couplet in all his important poems, including his translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Essay on Criticism and Essay on Man
Jonathan Swift - Augustan Age, the greatest satirist of the age in prose (called the greatest satirist in the English literature. His work includes literary satires (The Battle of the Books), religious satires (A tale of a Tub - an allegorical tale on the disputes within Christianity) and political satires (Drapier's Letters, A Modest Proposal - pamphlets dealing with Ireland's problems. His greatest satire - Gulliver's Travels - is characterized by rich topicality, universal quality; it is devastating satire on mankind in every age
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele - Augustan Age, edited the most famous periodical The Spectator
Daniel Defoe - Augustan Age, Robinson Crusoe (1719) - first novel?
Samuel Richardson - Augustan Age, Pamela (1740) - first novel
Henry Fielding - Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones - novels of manners
Laurence Sterne - Tristram Shandy - the first anti-novel in English
Henry Mackenzie - Age of Sensibility, The Man of the Feeling was the hero of the times
Thomas Gray - Age of Sensibility, Poet of Sensibility, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard - the finest of the meditative poems of the so called Graveyard School
Edward Young (Night Thoughts), William Collins (Odes), William Cowper (The Task), Oliver Goldsmith (The Deserted Village) - Age of Sensibility, Poets of Sensibility
Bishop Thomas Percy - The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry - collection of oral ballads and other oral poems published in 1765
James Macpherson - Ossian
Robert Burns - Age of Sensibility, the greatest Scottish national poet. His best known poems are sentimental lyrics (Auld Lang Syne), love songs ( O my love is like a red, red rose), comic satires ( To a Mouse, Tam O'Shanter)
Samuel Johnson - Age of Sensibility->the age of Johnson, although he belongs intellectually and emotionally to the Age of Reason. He was a critic (The Lives of the Poets), poet, lexicographer (the author of the first dictionary of the English language) and essayist (edited periodicals The Rambler and The Idler, wrote a philosophical tale on the `choice of life' - Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia). He was the greatest literary critic of his time