Englisch (Subject) / Literary Studies (Lesson)

Poetry, Narrative, Literary Studies, History, analysis, wrtiting a term paper

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• Renaissance (1460 - 1603): historical events Major political and cultural changes in England and Europe • 1476: first printing press in England (William Caxton)• 1492: Columbus "discovers" America (1492)• Reformation in Northern Europe– Luther, 1517– Henry VIII, 1534• European humanists in contact with each other (Th. More, Erasmus of Rotterdam …)• "Rediscovery" of Classical Learning Introduction of printing: one of the most significant events marking the end of the middle ages.More and cheaper books > ideas can travel faster and reach more people. (However „scribal publication“ does not suddenly die out with the introduction of printing.) Middle of the 15th century: Gutenberg invents a printing process using lead letters and aprinting press. 1477: first press in England (Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde)
• Renaissance: The English Reformation and its influence on literature 1517: Luther's reformation on the continent begins. Theological focus on Bible, abolition of old hierarchies in the church. From 1529: Reformation in England (Background: Henry VIII wants to a divorce. No theological motivation.) Long-term consequence of the reformation:widespread literacy. Basic idea in Protestant theology: all Protestants must be able to read the bible. Formation of a large reading public which is not limited to the social elites.Special scenario, very much unlike the catholic countries of the continent. Consequences in the field of English literature: many people write diaries. (protestant) -> to confess yourself (catholics have the chruch for confession) Disposition to analyse and to discuss texts. Text-centred culture. (nealing down texts, prescribed how to read a text)
• Renaissance poetry -Strong influence from Italy, where the Renaissance began ~ 200 years earlier-Petrarch (Francesco Petrarcha, 14th century) a major influence• Under Henry VIII (king from 1509-1547), Wyatt and Surrey "imported" the sonnet from Italy (1530s/1540s)• Cult of the sonnet form, usually a cycle of love sonnets (Sidney, Spenser, Watson …=> modified by Shakespeare)• The lady is beautiful but unreachable• Platonizing love, "sublimation" (Vergeistigung/ Veredelung)• Eros and agape ("sex" versus "love of soul") as a constant problem• Topoi (festes Schema) taken from the classical tradition.• Typical techniques such as the blazon.
• 17th century ( 1603-1688): historical events • In 1603, Queen Elizabeth dies => end of the Tudor line• James of Scotland becomes James I of England• Charles I becomes king in 1625 and rules without Parliament from 1629- 1640• Civil War 1642-1646 and 1648-1652• Charles I executed January 30th, 1649 (First revolution in Europe)• Under Oliver Cromwell, England a republic from 1649-1660 "Commonwealth")• 1660: Restoration of monarchy with Charles II (son of Charles I)• 1685: Catholic James II (brother of Charles II) becomes king• Has to leave the country in 1688, replaced by William of Orange and Mary ("Glorious Revolution")• At the end of the 17th century, the English political system has roughly reached is present-day form
• Early 17th century: poetry • Witty, complex, paradoxical poetry, formally innovative and inventive (suprising, difficult)• George Herbert (1593-1633): innovative religious poetry• John Donne (1572-1631), a preacher– daring, inventive and witty erotic poetry – but at the same also: religiouspoetry (the flea)
• John Milton (1606-1674) and his most popular work • Major political writer in favour of the English Revolution• Defended the execution of Charles I in 1649• Briefly imprisoned after 1660• Publication of Paradise Lost in 1667, an epic based on the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise (Genesis 1-3) Paradise Lost-Epic poem (genre that has been present since classical antiquity). Battles, speeches, digressions, epic similes,  journeys-Brings together ancient Greek/Roman conventions with Christian/ biblical subject matter.-Main theme: „to justify the ways of God to man“, why human banned from paradise-But: adds a new plot to the biblical story. Satan‘s rebellion
• 17th century: Restoration (1660) and its consequences Restoration: legitimises a new hedonism Poetry: fun after straight revolution John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. extremely drastic, erotic theatre Drama: From 1660: women on stage Comedy of manners: Sir John Vanbrugh, The Relapse William Wycherley, The Country Wife (sex as the topic) From 1694: no more censorship. (Hugely important condition for the development of English literature in general – and for the development of the novel in particular). No state interference in literature (exception: drama). Criticism possible
• 18th Century – the "Augustan Age" (~1688 – 1750): characteristics • "Augustan Age", named after emperor Augustus (63 BC-14 AD), during whose reign Roman literature flourished with writers such as Virgil, Horace and Ovid  • English literature between ~ 1688-1750 frequently goes back to literary ideas and ideals of this period. Classicism.• The major authorities are Aristotle and Horace • Major writers are John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift • The key poetic idea is “Mimesis“: imitation of nature rather than autonomous expression is to be the key aim of poetry• Heroic couplet as the key poetic form:– Iambic pentameter– aa bb cc dd
• 18th Century – the "Rise of the Novel": writers, phases, characteristics/ forms, social developments • In the 18th century, the novel becomes the dominant literary form (invented in England at this time)• Forerunners:– the epic (narrative poetry),– Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)– Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (1688) • Aphra Behn, Oroonoko/ The royal slave, a true history (1688) (First female professional writer) -> Overlap between novel and more established genres (Travel writing, History)• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719) -> Journalist, pamphleteer, wrote about 500 books and pamphlets (Flugblatt)• Jonathan Swift, Gulliver´s Travels (1726)• Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740), an epistolary novel (novel in letters, Briefroman), printer + author• John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill) (1748-9)• Henry Fielding, Tom Jones (1749)• Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759-1767, nine volumes), already a parodyof the novel form The novel: a revolution in storytelling; New type of narrative textBecame a dominant format in the book market. Extremely successful new product. Pre-modern narratives:Permanent recycling of old stories (classical mythology, Bible, history; Typical characters, settings, plots) like Paradise LostModern narratives: New story (suspense as a new element!), contemporary setting and characters, everyday people with everyday problems. Realism. Discussion about „the rise of the novel“; Starting point: Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (1957)Key argument: connection between developments in literary history and developments in social history / the history of ideas No monocausal explanation. Interplay of several factors. Significant developments with the rise of the novel:Literacy (from Reformation onwards), -> people can readMiddle classes: text-centered culture -> are interestedGender roles (more leisure for middleclass women) Growth of London (biggest city in the worl at this time)New pattern in real lives: life does not necessarily repeat patterns of one´s parents´ lives. Open-ended. Suspense. Life is now about re-inventing oneself (e.g by migration (colonies))All mirrored / taken up in the novel. The rise of the novel and the rise of the private sphere -> Novels are about private lives of ordinary people, so the novel vame into being with the private sphere (1666: fire -> terrace houses were built and made that development possible (seperation from the neighbours) Gothic fictionHorace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest (1791),The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796)
• Romanticism (~1790-1830): characteristics • Major shift in aesthetics in the 1780s and 1790s • New topics. Nature. History. (Background: the Industrial Revolution.) Nature and the sublime („das Erhabene“). The idea of the Romantic genius. • William Wordsworth in 1800: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings … recollected in tranquility" ("Preface to the Lyrical Ballads") • Key words: nature, heart/mind/soul, imagination, feeling • Wordsworth's The Prelude, > 10 000 lines of poetic autobiography and self-stylization, unthinkable in the 18th century
• Romanticism (~1790-1830): Major writers • The "Big Six" of Romantic Poetry:– First generation Romantics:• Blake (1757-1827),• Wordsworth (1770-1850)• Samuel Taylor Colderidge (1772-1834)– Second generation Romantics:• Lord Byron (1788-1824)• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)• John Keats (1795-1821)• Major novelists:– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)– Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)– Sir Walter Scott, Waverley (1814), Ivanhoe (1819)
• The Victorian period (1830 – 1901): Characteristics • The novel: firmly established as new leading genre (Dickens) William Butler Yeats • Crime fiction–Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868)– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes stories (A Study in Scarlet (1887), first published in the Strand Magazine Serial publication in magazines (often accompanied by Illustrations: important Victorian format, also for the novels of Dickens) Symbolism: reaction against realism/naturalism. Prefer suggestion and evocation to descriptive precision. Evocation of moods. Interest in the musical properties of language, possible connotations of sounds. (See article “Symbolism” in: Drabble (ed.), The Oxford Companion to English Literature). -> evoke emotion
• Modernism (1901 - 1945) - Major intellectual influences - • Sigmund Freud/psychoanalysis– power of the unconscious– human autonomy becomes problematic • Modern physics:– Einstein (theory of relativity),– Heisenberg (quantum physics; "uncertainty principle")– objectivity becomes problematic • de Saussure/modern linguistics– language is arbitrary– language cannot "reflect" reality but shapes the perception of reality– Reality becomes "unknowable"– language and representation become problematic -> "objective" representation becomes problematic; there can be no privileged perspective
• Modernism (1901 - 1945) - Developments in literature - • If objectivity is no longer possible, an omniscient narrator is no longer appropriate either • Perspective and subjectivity become central • Figural narrative perspective, interior monologue and stream of consciousness are central narrative techniques • Radically "psychological" novels (James Joyce, Virginia Woolf) • Break with traditional ideas of "poetry" (T.E. Hulme, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot)– Poetry no longer has to be "beautiful"– Playing with poetic conventions– Use of symbolism and mythology (T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats) • 1922 as "annus mirabilis" of Modernism– T.S. Eliot, Waste Land– James Joyce, Ulysses
• Literature since 1945 - Cultural Contexts - • Even more radical questioning of concepts such as "reality", "representation", "identity"– Simulation and simulacrum, the media "replace" reality– Language constructs rather than reflects reality– Individuality and the subject are questioned • De-Colonization, Post-Coloniality • Rapid technological innovation, strong sense of being overpowered by globalisation, technology etc.
• Literature since 1945 - Key trends in literature - • Hard to classify, many different branches and traditions • Radical formal experiments in all genres • Post-Moderninsm: Idea that everything has been tried and done, originality is no longer possible–only conscious recycling, parody, ironic playing with conventions remain possible–self-reflexivity: literature constantly foregrounds its own "constructedness" • The world as "text" • Distinction between "high" and "popular" culture questioned • New Literatures in English, Post-Colonial Literatures
• American Literature and Culture: Overview • Pre-Colonial Period (– ~ 1620)• Colonial Period (~ 1620 – 1800)• The American Renaissance (~ 1800 – 1865)• Realism and Naturalism (~ 1865 – 1914)• Modernism (~ 1914 – 1945)• Contemporary Literature (~ since 1945)
• Pre-Colonial Period (– ~ 1620): Characteristics, Cultural Context, Historical Context, Authors and works • oral literature: song-poems, tales, legends, tales, ritual drama; spoken texts accompanied by dance or performance;• texts passed on from one generation to the next for purposes of historiography, education, celebration • literature as a communal text (audience response; no individual authorship);• assumption of harmony and correspondence in the universe • much linguistic and cultural diversity;• rivalries and wars between different tribes • songs, poems and tales recorded in the 19th and 20th century and translated into English (available in numerous anthologies)
• Colonial Period (~ 1620 - 1800): Characteristics, Cultural Context, Historical Context, Authors and Works • religious and historical writing; sermons; journals and accounts of life in the New World (e.g. "captivity narratives");• political writing, especially in the 1770s;• autobiography (starting with Benjamin Franklin);• first American novels in the late 18th century • 17th century: Puritanism in New England; colonial inferiority complex toward England; popular culture and lack of literacy in the Southern colonies;• 18th century: birth of the "American Dream" ("from rags to riches"); search for a national identity; decline of Puritanism • 1607: founding of Jamestown, Virginia;• 1620: Mayflower
  Plymouth Plantation, Massachusetts;• 1630: Massachusetts Bay Colony• 1730s: "Great Awakening" (religious revival movement)• 1776: Declaration of Independence • John Winthrop ("city upon a hill" sermon)• Ann Bradstreet (poetry)• Phillis Wheatley (first African-American poet)• Benjamin Franklin (autobiography, essays)• Royall Tyler, The Contrast (1790, first American play)• Charles Brockden Brown (early novels)
• American Renaissance (~ 1800 - 1865): Characteristics, Cultural Context, Historical Context, Authors and works • influence of English romanticism, but search for truly American topics and settings• celebration of American landscapes and values; short story and novel are most important;• essay established as an American genre • struggle for cultural independence from Europe• desire to define a national identity of the U.S. and to establish avnational culture• Transcendentalism: romantic philosophy and mode of writing that values intuition as a guide to what lies underneath the surfaces • massive immigration & diversification;• westward expansion / "frontier"• slavery, abolitionist movement;• 1861-65: Civil War • William Cullen Bryant (romantic poetry);• Washington Irving (short stories)• James Fenimore Cooper, Leatherstocking novels• Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (Transcendentalism)• Edgar Allan Poe (poetry, short stories)• Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter• Herman Melville, Moby Dick• Walt Whitman (free verse)• Emily Dickinson (unconventional poetry)
• Realism and Naturalism (~ 1865-1914): Characteristics, Cultural Context, Historical Context, Authors and works Am. lit. dominated by the novel• realism: idea of representing average Americans truthfully (W.D. Howells)• starting in the 1870s: local color writing• psychological explorations in fiction:
  Henry James's use of "free indirect style" (erlebte Rede)• pessimism towards the end of the century • end of the century: in the wake of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution
  naturalism: pessimistic, dark realism that depicts life as a struggle• on stage: melodrama South: devastation after the Civil War,• struggle with Southern heritage and race division; North: growing industrialization and urbanization• mass immigration• westward expansion• discussion of the position of African Americans • Samuel Clemens [Mark Twain], The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn• William Dean Howells (realist fiction)• Henry James (fiction; psychological realism)• Kate Chopin (fiction)• Stephen Crane (naturalist fiction)• Theodore Dreiser (naturalist fiction)• Booker T. Washington (African American)• W.E.B. DuBois (African American)
• Modernism (~ 1914 - 1945) • Away from fixed concepts, statements, figures or perceptions• pessimism and uncertainty• no longer a belief in absolute truths• importance of perspective and limits of knowledge• processual quality of everything rather than stasis and stability• stream-of-consciousness• questioning of tradition • After World War I: pessimism, sense of alienation and vulnerability• Modern physics (Albert Einstein: Theory of relativity; Werner Heisenberg etc.: quantum physics): absolute positions become questionable• Following Sigmund Freud: explorations of the unconscious, of drives and motivations; complexity of the human mind and of thought processes• emphasis on perspective and on fragmentation• Growing importance of film; cubism in art• 1920s: Harlem Renaissance; expatriates in Paris and London 1914-1919: World War I; anti-immigrant sentiment1929: Depression1930s:• widespread poverty• rise of socialist and communist movements• social reform programs in the "New Deal"• uncertainty of the inter-war period • John Dos Passos (fiction; importance of perspective)• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby• William Faulkner (Southern fiction)• Ernest Hemingway (international fiction)• John Steinbeck (realism combined with symbolism)• Langston Hughes (poet of the Harlem Renaissance)• Zora Neale Hurston (Harlem Renaissance fiction)• Eugene O'Neill (psychological drama)• Modernist poetry: T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings
• Modernism: Text and Setting relation A text and its setting: Cannery Row and Monterey. text influenced by a setting. Later: setting influenced by text (if the text is wellknown: influences perception and economic value of a place). Literature as a key factor in constructing identities (Idea of life in Southern California? Who are we?) Literature as a key economic factor (Monterey as a tourist destination today).
• Contemporary Literature (~ since 1945) • Diversity of styles: realism, surrealism, postmodernism, parody, etc.• "Beat Poetry" and "Confessional Poetry"• Postmodernism: self-reflexivity; the world is treated as a text; total lack of certainty/fixedness; everything is constructed; widening concept of what can be considered "literature"; rise of popular culture• literary self-assertion of women and (ethnic) minorities• literature as social and political critique • Shock of World War II• 1950s: Conservatism and McCarthyism• constant change and fast progression• instability of identity and culture• globalization• post-colonialism• growing skepticism• uses of virtual reality • Cold War• Civil Rights Movement• Vietnam War; Watergate• conservative presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush• "Information Age," "Information Overload"• advent of the internet• "War on Terrorism" after September 11, 2001 • Lorraine Hansberry (African-American drama)• August Wilson (African-American drama)• mainstream drama: Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Arthur Miller• gay theater: Tony Kushner• postmodernism: John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme• Beat Literature: Allen Ginsberg (poetry), Jack Kerouac (fiction)• Jewish American Fiction: Philip Roth• suburban fiction: John Updike• Fiction by ethnic minority writers: Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich,Maxine Hong Kingston, Sandra Cisneros• African-American poetry: Gwendolyn Brooks• Confessional Poetry: Robert Lowell

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