绪章Introduction

For a better understanding of the literary history of English literature as well as the convenience of study, the making of England and the division of the periods of English literature are given in the introduction part.
From the making of England, we will know who were the ancestors of the English people, how English came into being, why English people are of mixed blood and so on. Besides, we will also get to know some historical events in the process. 
For the convenience of study, historians divided the continuity of English literature into periods. We adopt a popular one—six periods, though the exact number, names and dates of these periods vary: the Middle Ages, the English Renaissance, the Restoration and the 18th Century or the Neo-classical Period, the Age of Romanticism, the Victorian Age and the Twentieth Century.

●0.1The Making of England

From the making of England, we will know who were the ancestors of the English people, how English came into being, why English people are of mixed blood and so on. Besides, we will also get to know some historical events in the process.

●0.2 The Periods of the English Literary History

For convenience of study, historians divided the continuity of English literature into periods. We adopt a popular one—six periods, though the exact number, names and dates of these periods vary.

第一章The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages lasted from the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon invasion in 449 to the end of the War of Roses in 1485. It can be further divided into two periods: the Old English Period and the Middle English Period. The early English literature is introduced.

●1.1The Old English Period

The Old English Period lasted from the Anglo-Saxon invasion in 449 to the Norman invasion in 1066. The earliest forms of English literature have perished, but some relics are still preserved. Among them, Christian poetry occupies an important place. The earliest Christian poems were called Caedmonian poems by Caedmon. Then it was the epic The Song of Beowulf, which is regarded as the national epic of the English people. It is a folk legend brought to England by Anglo-Saxons from their continental homes.

●1.2The Middle English Period

The Middle English Period lasted from the Norman invasion in 1066 to the end of the War of Roses in 1485. The literature in this period is a combination of French and Anglo—Saxon elements. Romance was brought to England by the Normans, which was the most popular kind of literary form, belonging to the upper class literature. In the meanwhile, folk literature also developed, mainly ballads and early drama. The great poet in the period was Geoffrey Chaucer who is commonly regarded as the father of English poetry, whose life story, achievements, contributions, and especially his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales are briefly introduced.

第二章The English Renaissance

Renaissance reached England late. It was near the end of the l5th century that Italian influence came to be important, and it was not until the accession of Henry VIII to the throne that a notable Renaissance took place in England. English Renaissance may be roughly divided into three stages of development: the beginning of English Renaissance, the Elizabethan Age, the Puritan Revolution or the Seventeenth Century.

●2.1Renaissance

This chapter mainly introduces the origin and significance of Renaissance and the three stages of English Renaissance.
Through the study of this chapter, the students simply understand the origin and significance of Renaissance and the three stages of English Renaissance.

●2.2The Beginning of the English Renaissance

This chapter mainly introduces the beginning of English Renaissance, focusing on its representatives and their works.
Through the study of this chapter, the students can simply understand the beginning of English Renaissance.

●2.3 The Elizabethan Age

This chapter mainly introduces the background of the Elizabethan Age, and the literature of the Elizabethan Age, focusing on the introduction to its prevalent and dominant styles, and to its representatives and representative works, and influence.
Through the study of this chapter, the students can simply understand the literature of the Elizabethan Age, and its representatives and representative works.

●2.4The Seventeenth Century

This chapter mainly introduces the 17th century English literature, focusing on its representatives and representative works.
Through the study of this chapter, the students can simply understand the 17th century English literature, its representatives and representative works and some schools.

第三章The Neo-classical Period

The neo-classical period is between the return of the Stuart to the English throne in 1660 and the full development of Romanticism in 1798. Firstly, the background knowledge is shown, that is, the restoration and glorious revolution, as for the literary figure, John Dryden is the most important one in restoration period. Next, the general survey of 18 th century literature and neo-classical literary theory are introduced. And A. Pope and S. Johnson make great contribution to the neo-classical literary theory, so, they are introduced, while the main literary form in 18th century is novel, and in this chapter, four novelists are introduced, they are D. Defoe, S. Richardson, H. Fielding and J. Swift.

●3.1General Background

This chapter mainly introduces the background of English restoration period literature and 18th century literature.
Through the study of this chapter, the students simply understand the background of restoration period and 18th century literature, the main literary schools, literary forms and literary figures and their works.

●3.2Neoclassicism

This chapter mainly introduces the theory of neoclassicism, focusing on its characteristics. It also introduces three important periods and their representatives.
Through the study of this chapter, the students can simply understand the characteristics of neoclassicism and representatives.

●3.3The Rise of the Realistic Novel

This chapter mainly introduces the rise of 18th-century English realistic novels, focusing on the introduction to its representatives and representative works.
Through the study of this chapter, the students can simply understand the reasons for the rise of 18th-century English realistic novels, representatives and representative works of different novel forms.

第四章The Age of Romanticism

As a historical period in English literature, the Age of Romanticism extends from 1798, when William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published their Lyrical Ballads, to 1832 when all the major Romantic writers were either dead or no longer productive. Romanticism was expressed almost entirely in poetry.

●4.1Romanticism in England

Victor Hugo calls the Romantic Movement “liberalism in literature”, which is simply the expression of life as seen by the imagination rather than by prosaic “common sense”, which was the central doctrine of English philosophy in the 18th century. Romanticism is associated with vitality, powerful emotion, limitless and dreamlike ideas. Romanticism in England rose and grew under the impetus of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

●4.2Pre-Romanticism in England

Although the Romantic Movement started in 1798 with the publication of Lyrical Ballads, the romantic tendencies had appeared even when Neo-classicism was still in its full flower, which is usually called Pre-romanticism. In England, Pre-Romanticism in poetry was ushered in by Thomas Percy, James Macpherson and Thomas Chatterton, represented by William Blake and Robert Burns.

●4.3The First Generation of Romanticsm

The First Generation of the English Romanticism includes William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. They were also called Lake Poets because they had lived for a time in close association in the mountainous Lake District in the northwest of England, who traversed the same path in politics and in poetry, beginning as radicals and closing as conservatives. W. Wordsworth was a great poet of nature. He was also a master hand in searching and revealing the feelings of common people. S. T. Coleridge was a poet and literary critic. R. Southey was the Poet Laureate, a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, essay writer, historian and biographer.

●4.4The Younger Generation of Romanticism

The Younger Generation of Romanticism or the Second Generation of Romanticism refers to those young poets, who expressed the aspirations of the common people and held out an ideal of a future society free from oppression and exploitation. They were sometimes called “active romanticists” represented by George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. The poems by G. G. Byron and P. B. Shelley express the advanced bourgeois ideology of freedom, liberty and justice to all. They also involved themselves in the actual fight or struggle of the people against tyranny. Some scholars believe that J. Keats was close to Byron and Shelley, but strictly speaking, he was not really involved in promoting the cause of democracy and freedom.

●4.5Non-poetic Literature

With the development of the Romantic poetry, there was the rapid development of essays, especially the familiar essays, best represented by Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, Thomas De Quincey and Leigh Hunt.
Drama developed little, most were farce or melodrama. None of the plays written by professional playwrights have survived. The Romantic poets also tried their hands at poetical dramas, but few were successful.
Two new types of fiction were prominent which were the Gothic novel and the novel of purpose. Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen were the major novelists.

第五章The Victorian Age

The Victorian Age is one of the most creative periods in the history of English literature, standing only next to the Elizabethan Age and the Romantic Age. The age produced such great novelists as Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and George Eliot; such great poets as Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, and Matthew Arnold; and such great essayists as Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin.

●5.1A Survey of the Age

The Victorian age can be roughly divided into three periods: The early period, from 1832 to 1848, was a time of social unrest; the middle period, from 1848 to 1870, was a period of economic prosperity and religious controversy; the last period, from 1870 to 1901, a period of decay of the Victorian values. There were no dominant literary theory in the Victorian literature, and several literary trends existed side by side. The Victorian literature is also characterized by its variety in style and subject matter.

●5.2Victorian Novel

The outstanding achievement of the Victorian literature was its novel. From the publication of Pickwick Papers in 1837, to the publication of Jude the Obscure in 1895, there was a long line of novelists delighting their contemporaries and the readers today. Between Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, each decade of the 19th century witnessed the emergence of new novelists of importance. Most of the novelists were primarily realists who presented before the readers scenes and characters from their daily life. They were also critics of the society in which they lived. They exposed severely and truthfully the social evils and injustice of their time.

●5.3Victorian Poetry

In many ways, the Victorian poetry is a continuation of the Romantic poetry of the previous age. In the works of all the important Victorian poets, such as A. Tennyson, R. Browning, M. Arnold, G. D. Rossetti, T. Hardy, W. B. Yeats and so on, the influence of the romanticists can be easily traced. Yet, compared with that of the Romantic Age, the Victorian poetry is no more regular in form and metre and its allusions to nature become more scientific. It is marked by the search for perfect models, the experiment with new and unusual metrical patterns and the practice of the art of narrative poetry.

●5.4Victorian Prose

In the Victorian Age, both fictional prose and non-fictional prose were written in a variety of ways and in various styles. These prose works show the writers’ profound interest in a wide range of subjects—politics, religion, history, personal biography, as well as art and literature, but those prose writers were chiefly concerned with social problems. The age produced a number of prose writers, including Thomas Babington Macaulay, John Stuart Mill, John Henry Newman, Matthew Arnold and Thomas Henry Huxley. Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin are the most important of all.

第六章The Twentieth Century

In the 1890’s, the reaction against the value of the Victorian society and the theme of its literature began and was manifested in the early decades of the 20th century by drastic changes in form, vocabulary, and image, which developed into a movement called Modernism. Modernism itself is both wide and deep, extending into all the forms of literature and art. In England, the most important poets were William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Together with the American poet Ezra Pound, they led a revolution in the technique of modern poetry. In the novel, the modernist innovators were James Joyce with his “Stream of Consciousness” technique and D. H. Lawrence with his psychological penetration. The Modernist movement gradually faded into the Post Modernism in the mid-to late-20th century.

●6.1General Introduction

In a literary sense the 20th century can be said to have begun in the 1890’s, while in the political sense it was ushered by the First World War. There were radical changes in old traditions, in social standards and in men’s thoughts. These changes were not limited to England and gradually developed into a movement—Modernism, which was international in scope and extended into all the forms of literature and art.

●6.2The Twentieth Century Poetry

The 20th century produced a large number of both major and minor poets, many of them were novelists. The poets had tended to group themselves into schools. The century began with the publication of Thomas Hardy’s first volume of poetry, and then almost each decade emerged a new school of poets. For instance, William Butler Yeats was an important exponent of the modernist school, while Dylan Thomas represented a partial return to the themes of romanticism.

●6.3The Twentieth Century Fiction

The development of the 20th century fiction is characterized by two simultaneous but contrary tendencies: realism and modernism. Most critics today agree that the cross currents of the 20th century fiction moved like a pendulum swinging between these two poles. Realism was represented by such novelists as John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, and H. G. Wells, etc. while modernism was represented by D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Henry James, Joseph Conrad and so on.

●6.4 Twentieth Century Drama

This chapter mainly introduces the 20th century English drama, focusing on the 20th century drama schools and representatives and representative works.
Through the study of this chapter, the students can simply understand the development of English drama from the 16th to the 20th century, the drama school and representatives and representative works.