The Epic Interactive Encyclopedia 1997/The_Epic_Interactive_Encyclopedia_97.iso/e/english_literature/infotext

Text File | 1992-09-02 | 6KB | 133 lines

The earliest surviving English literature is
in the form of Old English poems - Beowulf
and the epic fragments Finesburh, Waldhere,
Deor, and Widsith - that reflect the heroic
age and Germanic legends of the 4th-6th
centuries, although probably not written down
until the 7th century. Heroic elements
survive in elegiac lyrics, for example, The
Wanderer, The Seafarer, and in many poems
with a specifically Christian content, such
as The Dream of the Rood; and the Saints'
Lives, for example, Elene, by the 8th-century
poet Cynewulf. These poems are all written in
unrhymed alliterative metre. The great prose
writers of the early period were the Latin
scholars Bede, Aldhelm, and Alcuin. King
Alfred founded the tradition of English prose
with his translations and his establishment
of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. With the
arrival of a Norman ruling class at the end
of the 11th century, the ascendancy of
Norman-French in cultural life began, and it
was not until the 13th century that the
native literature regained its strength.
Prose was concerned chiefly with popular
devotional use, but verse emerged typically
in the metrical chronicles, such as Layamon's
Brut, and the numerous romances based on the
stories of Charlemagne, the Arthurian
legends, and the classical episodes of Troy.
First of the great English poets was Chaucer,
whose early work reflected the predominant
French influence, but later that of
Renaissance Italy. Of purely native
inspiration was The Vision of Piers Plowman
of Langland in the old alliterative verse,
and the anonymous Pearl, Patience, and
Gawayne and the Grene Knight. Chaucer's
mastery of versification was not shared by
his successors, the most original of whom was
Skelton. More successful were the anonymous
authors of songs and carols, and of the
ballads, which (for example those concerned
with Robin Hood) often formed a complete
cycle. Drama flowered in the form of miracle
and morality plays, and prose, although still
awkwardly handled by Wycliffe in his
translation of the Bible, rose to a great
height with Malory in the 15th century. The
Renaissance, which had first touched the
English language through Chaucer, came to
delayed fruition in the 16th century. Wyatt
and Surrey used the sonnet and blank verse in
typically Elizabethan forms and prepared the
way for Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, Campion, and
others. With Kyd and Marlowe, drama emerged
into theatrical form; it reached the highest
level in Shakespeare and Jonson. Elizabethan
prose is represented by Hooker, North,
Ascham, Holinshed, Lyly, and others, but
English prose achieved full richness in the
17th century, with the Authorized Version of
the Bible 1611, Bacon, Milton, Bunyan,
Taylor, Browne, Walton, and Pepys. Most
renowned of the 17th-century poets were
Milton and Donne; others include the
religious writers Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan,
and Traherne, and the Cavalier poets Herrick,
Carew, Suckling, and Lovelace. In the
Restoration period Butler and Dryden stand
out as poets. Dramatists include Otway and
Lee in tragedy. Comedy flourished with
Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar. The 18th
century is known as the Augustan Age in
English literature. Pope developed the poetic
technique of Dryden; in prose Steele and
Addison evolved the polite essay, Swift used
satire, and Defoe exploited his journalistic
ability. This century saw the development of
the novel, through the epistolary style of
Richardson to the robust narrative of
Fielding and Smollett, the comic genius of
Sterne, and the Gothic `horror' of Horace
Walpole. The Neo-Classical standards
established by the Augustans were maintained
by Johnson and his circle -- Goldsmith,
Burke, Reynolds, Sheridan, and others - but
the romantic element present in the work of
poets Thomson, Gray, Young, and Collins was
soon to overturn them. The Lyrical Ballads
1798 of Wordsworth and Coleridge were the
manifesto of the new Romantic age. Byron,
Shelley, and Keats form a second generation
of Romantic poets. In fiction Scott took over
the Gothic tradition from Mrs Radcliffe, to
create the historical novel, and Jane Austen
established the novel of the comedy of
manners. Criticism gained new prominence in
Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and De Quincey.
During the 19th century the novel was further
developed by Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontes,
George Eliot, Trollope, and others. The
principal poets of the reign of Victoria were
Tennyson, Robert and Elizabeth Browning,
Arnold, the Rossettis, Morris and Swinburne.
Among the prose writers of the era are
Macaulay, Newman, Mill, Carlyle, Ruskin, and
Pater. The transition period at the end of
the century saw the poetry and novels of
Meredith and Hardy; the work of Butler and
Gissing; and the plays of Pinero and Wilde.
Although a Victorian, Gerald Manley Hopkins
anticipated the 20th century with the
experimentation of his verse forms. Poets of
World War I include Sassoon, Brooke, Owen,
and Graves. A middle-class realism developed
in the novels of Wells, Bennett, Forster, and
Galsworthy while the novel's break with
traditional narrative and exposition came
through the Modernists James Joyce, D H
Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Somerset Maugham,
Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Evelyn
Waugh, and Graham Greene. Writers for the
stage include Shaw, Galsworthy, J B
Priestley, Coward, and Rattigan, and the
writers of poetic drama, such as T S Eliot,
Fry, Auden, Isherwood, and Dylan Thomas. The
1950s and 1960s produced the `kitchen sink'
dramatists, including Osborne and Wesker. The
following decade saw the rise of Harold
Pinter, John Arden, Tom Stoppard, Peter
Shaffer, Joe Orton, and Alan Ayckbourn.