English Literature and American Literature

English Literature & American Literature，English Literature：Old and Medieval British Literature、British Literature of the Renaissance Period、The 18 th Century -The Age of Enlightenment in England……American Literature etc.

English Literature & American Literature

• English Literature
  • Old and Medieval British Literature
    • Background
      • The Anglo-Saxon Period (449-1066)
        • Roman Conquest, Anglo-Saxon Conquest,Norman Conquest
        • conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity
        • Transition from tribal society to feudalism
      • The Anglo-Norman Conquest (1066-1350)
    • Literary Achievement
      • Old British Literature (450-1066)
      • Medieval British Literature (1066-middle of the 14th century)
    • Literature Terms
      • Alliteration
      • Epic
      • Consonance
      • Couplet
      • Ballad
      • Imagery
      • Kenning
      • Legend
      • Ottava Rima
      • Romance
        • A popular literary form
        • Knightly adventures or other heroic deeds
        • Chivalry is the spirit of romance.
        • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
        • John Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes
          • metrical romances
        • 子主题
      • Simile
      • Understatement
    • Literature schools
    • Literature Movement
  • British Literature of the Renaissance Period
    • Background
    • Literary Achievement
      • the first period of the English renaissance was one of the imitation and assimilation .
        • Petrarch and his successors established the language of love poetry of the Renaissance and greatly influenced the British writers.
        • Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan sonnet into England ,Surrey brought in the blank verse,sidney followed with the sestina and tera rima and with various ecperiments in classic meters, and Marlowe gave new vigor to the blank verse with his "mighty lines"
      • Poetry was to be concentrated exercise of the mind,of craftsmanship, and of learning.
        • In the early stage of the Renaissance,poetry and poetic drama were the most outstanding literary forms and they were carried on especially by Shakespeare and Ben Jonson .But the poetry by John Donne ,Geroge Herbert and others represented a sharp break from the poetry by their predecessors and most of their contemporaries.
      • the real mainstream of the English Renaissance is the Elizabethan drama.
        • It drew influences from the Medieval Interludes and Morality Plays as well as the Greek and Roman classics.The lively,vivid native English content was well fused with the classical forms of tragedies and comedies,making English drama mature and artistic.
        • Christopher Marlowe was the greastest of the pioneers of the English drama.
      • Essay was another main literary form in the English Renaissance .
      • Francis Bacon was the best known essayist of this period.He was also the founder of modern science in England.His writing paved the way for the use of scientific method.
    • Literature Terms
      • Allegory
      • Aphorism
      • Blank Verse
      • Comedy
      • Essay
      • Foreshadowing
      • Humanism
      • Paradox
      • Morality Play
      • Meter
      • Miracle Play
      • Narrative poem
      • Pastoral
      • Poetry
      • Quatrain
      • Renaissance
      • Soliloquy
      • Sonnet
      • Spenserian Stanza
      • Stanza
      • Terza Rima
      • Tragedy
      • Trochee
      • University Wits
      • conceit
      • Narrative poem
      • metaphysical poetry
    • Literature schools
    • Literature Movement
  • The 17 th Century -The Period of Revolution and Restoration
    • Background
    • Literary Achievement
    • Literature Terms
      • Assonance
      • Carpe Diem 及时行乐
      • Didactic literature
      • Elegy
      • Genre
      • Metaphor
      • Metaphysical poetry
        • the poetry of John Donne and other 17th century poets who wrote in a similar style
        • characterized by verbal wit and excess .ingenious structure .irregular meter.colloquial language.elaborate imagery. and a drawing-together of dissimilar ideas.
      • Conceit
    • Literature schools
    • Literature Movement
  • The 18 th Century -The Age of Enlightenment in England
  • The Age of Romanticism
    • Background
    • Literary Achievement
      • Romantic Poetry
        • Romantic Period is the age of poetry
        • characteristic
          • starts as a rebellion against the Neoclassicism
          • places more emphasis on the individual feelings
          • Romantists and their works share a deep-rooted love for nature
          • use everyday language spoken by the common people instead of that used by classicists.
          • representative poets
            • William Wordsworth
            • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
            • Robert Southey
            • George Gordon Byron
            • Percy Bysshe Shelly
            • John Keats
      • Familiar Essays
        • prose achievements were not as fruitful as that of poetry, but there are some prose writers who exerted a great influence on that time.
          • Charles Lamb . William Hazlitt,Leigh Hunt ,Thomas De Quincey
      • Fictions
        • there are two novelists who gained an important place.
          • Jane Austen
          • Walter Scott
          • they have different literary features but they almost mark the transition from romanticism to Realism.
    • Literature Terms
      • Byronic Poetry
      • Canto
      • Fable
      • Lake Poets
      • Lyric
      • Ode
      • Romanticism
    • Literature schools
    • Literature Movement
  • The Victorian Period-English Critical Realism
    • Background
      • Economic and industrial development -economic prosperity,world power
      • Social problems:great disparity between the rich and the poor ;the problem of women
      • Decline of the empire:The passage of the Reform Bill in 1832; The Chartist Movement(1836-1848)
    • Literary Achievement
      • The critical novels
        • novels became the most widely read and the most vital and challenging expressions of progressive thoughts
        • like the realists of the 18th century ,critical realists of the 19th century made use of the broad cavas of the novels for full and detailed representations of the social and political events, and of the fate of individuals and of the whole social classes. In the 19th century ,the novel got much perfected by the critical realists.
      • Prose
        • also produced a host of prose writers.
          • Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Babington Macaulay,Matthew Arnold ,John Henry Newman,John Stuart Mill,John Ruskin and Thomas Henry Huxley
          • many of them joined forces with the critical realists novelists in exposing and criticizing the social reality,and some become very influencial in the ideological field.
      • Poetry
        • witness the "at least temporary decline of English poetry"
        • this age gives us few or no great poetries.
        • characterized by experiments with new styles and new ways of expressions.
        • Alfred Tennyson ,Matthew Arnold, the Rosettis .Swinburne,the Brownings,Edward Fitzgerald and so on.
    • Literature Terms
      • Allusion
      • Antagonist
      • Character
      • Critical Realism
      • Dramatic Monologue
      • Flashback
      • Narration
      • Narrator
      • Psychological Novel
      • Point of View
      • Plot
      • Protagonist
      • Bildungsroman
    • Literature schools
    • Literature Movement
  • The 20th Century British Literature
    • Background
    • Literary Achievement
    • Literature Terms
      • Aestheticism or the Aesthetic Movement
      • Black comedy or Black humor
      • Dadaism
      • Epiphany
      • Free indirect discourse
      • Modernism
      • Oedipus Complex
      • Parody
      • Stream of Consciousness
      • Faulkner
      • Surrealism
      • The Theater of Absurd
      • Tone
      • The Angry Young Men
    • Literature schools
    • Literature Movement
  • British Literature of the Modern Period
    • Background
    • Literary Overview
    • Literature Terms
      • Experimental novel
      • Open ending
      • Metafiction
      • The Movement
      • Kitchen-sink drama(kitchen -sink realism)
    • Literature schools
    • Literature Movement
• American Literature