English literature
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free encyclopedia
Selected English-language writers: (left to right, top to
bottom) Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie.
This
article is focused on English-language literature rather than
the literature of England,
so that it includes writers from Scotland, Wales, and the whole of Ireland, as well as literature in English from
countries of the former British Empire, including the United States. However, until the early 19th century, it
only deals with the literature of the United Kingdom and Ireland. It does not include literature written in the other languages of
Britain.
The English language has developed over the course of more
than 1,400 years.[1]The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the fifth century, are called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with
the Norman conquest of England.[2]Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of
the printing press to London and the King James Bible as well as the Great Vowel Shift.[3] Through the influence of the British Empire, the English language has spread around the
world since the 17th century.
Contents
[hide]
o 4.2Prose
o 4.3Drama
·
11Notes
Main article: Old English literature
The first page of Beowulf
Old English literature, or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses the surviving
literature written in Old English in Anglo-Saxon England, in the period after the settlement of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes in England (Jutes and the Angles) c. 450, after the withdrawal of the Romans, and "ending soon after the Norman
Conquest" in 1066.[4]These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bibletranslations, legal works, chronicles and riddles.[5] In all there are about 400
surviving manuscripts from
the period.[5]
Widsith, which appears in the Exeter Book of the late 10th century, gives a list
of kings of tribes ordered according to their popularity and impact on history,
with Attila King of the Huns coming first, followed by Eormanric of
the Ostrogoths.[6]:187 It may also be the oldest extant work that tells the Battle of the Goths and Huns, which is also told in such later Scandinavian works as Hervarar's saga and Gesta Danorum.[6]:179 Lotte Hedeager argues that the work is
far older, however, and that it likely dates back to the late 6th or early 7th
century, citing the author's knowledge of historical details and accuracy as
proof of its authenticity.[6]:184-186 She does note, however, that some authors, such as John Niles, have argued the work was invented in the 10th century.[6]:181-184
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English, from the 9th century, that chronicle the history of the Anglo-Saxons.[7] The poem Battle of Maldon also deals with history. This is a work
of uncertain date, celebrating the Battle of Maldon of 991, at which the Anglo-Saxons failed
to prevent a Viking invasion.[8]
Oral tradition was very strong in early English culture and most literary works were written to be performed.[9][10] Epic poemswere very popular, and some, including Beowulf, have survived to the present day. Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English,
and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in
Scandinavia. The only surviving manuscript is the Nowell Codex, the
precise date of which is debated, but most estimates place it close to the year
1000. Beowulf is
the conventional title,[11] and its composition is dated between the
8th[12][13] and the early 11th century.[14][pages needed]
Nearly
all Anglo-Saxon authors are anonymous: twelve are known by name from medieval
sources, but only four of those are known by their vernacular works with any
certainty: Cædmon, Bede, Alfred the Great, and Cynewulf. Cædmon is the earliest English poet whose
name is known,[15][pages needed] and his only known surviving work Cædmon's Hymn probably
dates from the late 7th century. The poem is one of the earliest attested
examples of Old English and is, with the runic Ruthwell
Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates
for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the
earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. The poem, The Dream of the Rood, was inscribed upon the Ruthwell Cross.[15][pages needed]
Two Old English poems from the late 10th century
are The Wanderer and The Seafarer. [16] Both have a religious theme, and Richard Marsden describes The Seafarer as
"an exhortatory and didactic poem, in which the miseries of winter
seafaring are used as a metaphor for the challenge faced by the committed
Christian […]".[17]
Classical
antiquity was not forgotten in Anglo-Saxon England, and several Old English
poems are adaptations of late classicalphilosophical texts. The longest is King Alfred's (849–99) 9th-century translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.[18]
Main article: Middle English literature
After
the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new
aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and
polite society. As the invaders integrated, their language and literature
mingled with that of the natives, and the Norman dialects of the ruling classes
became Anglo-Norman.
From then until the 12th century, Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition
into Middle English. Political power was no longer in English hands, so that the
West Saxon literary language had no more influence than any other dialect and
Middle English literature was written in the many dialects that corresponded to
the region, history, culture, and background of individual writers.[19]
In
this period religious literature continued to enjoy popularity and Hagiographies were written, adapted and translated:
for example, The Life of Saint Audrey, Eadmer's
(c. 1060 – c. 1126).[20] At the end of the 12th century, Layamon in Brut adapted the Norman-French of Wace to produce the first English-language work to present the
legends of King Arthur and
the Knights of the Round Table.[21] It was also the first historiography
written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Piers Ploughman from a 14th-century manuscript
Middle English Bible translations, notably Wycliffe's Bible, helped to establish English as a literary
language. Wycliffe's Bible is the name now given to a group of Bible translations into Middle English that were made under the direction of,
or at the instigation of, John Wycliffe. They appeared between about 1382 and 1395.[22] These Bible translations were the chief
inspiration and cause of the Lollard movement,
a pre-Reformation movement
that rejected many of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
Another
literary genre, that of Romances,
appears in English from the 13th century, with King Horn and Havelock the Dane, based on Anglo-Norman originals such as
the Romance of Horn (ca. 1170),[23] but it was in the 14th century that
major writers in English first appeared. These were William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer and the so-called Pearl Poet, whose most famous work is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.[24]
Langland's Piers Plowman (written ca. 1360–87) or Visio
Willelmi de Petro Plowman(William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is a
Middle English allegorical narrative poem, written in unrhymed alliterative verse.[25]
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English
alliterative romance. It is one of the better-known Arthurian
stories of an established type known as the "beheading game".
Developing from Welsh, Irish and English tradition, Sir Gawain highlights
the importance of honour and chivalry. Preserved in the same manuscript with
Sir Gawayne were three other poems, now generally accepted as the work of the
same author, including an intricate elegiac poem, Pearl.[26] The English dialect of these poems from
the Midlands is
markedly different from that of the London-based Chaucer and, though influenced by
French in the scenes at court in Sir Gawain, there are in the poems
also many dialect words, often of Scandinavian origin, that belonged to
northwest England.[26]
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Middle
English lasted until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard, a London-based form of English, became
widespread and the printing press started to standardise the language. Chaucer
is best known today for The Canterbury Tales. This is a collection of stories written in Middle English
(mostly in verse although some
are in prose), that are presented as part of a
story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from Southwark to the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Chaucer is a significant figure in the development of the
legitimacy of the vernacular,
Middle English, at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were
still French and Latin.
At
this time, literature in England was being written in various languages,
including Latin, Norman-French, and English: the multilingual nature of the
audience for literature in the 14th century is illustrated by the example
of John Gower (c.
1330 – October 1408). A contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Chaucer, Gower
is remembered primarily for three major works: the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis,
and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in Anglo-Norman,
Latin and Middle English respectively, which are united by common moral and
political themes.[27]
Significant
religious works were also created in the 14th century, including those of Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342 – ca. 1416) and Richard Rolle. Julian's Revelations of Divine Love (about 1393) is believed to be the first published book
written by a woman in the English language.[28]
A
major work from the 15th century is Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, which was printed by Caxton in 1485.[29] This is a compilation of some French and
English Arthurian romances, and was among the earliest books printed in
England. It was popular and influential in the later revival of interest in the
Arthurian legends.[30]
Main article: Medieval theatre
In
the Middle Ages,
drama in the vernacular languages of Europe may have emerged from enactments of
the liturgy. Mystery plays were presented in the porches of
cathedrals or by strolling players on feast days. Miracle and mystery plays, along with morality plays (or "interludes"), later
evolved into more elaborate forms of drama, such as was seen on the Elizabethan
stages. Another form of medieval theatre was the mummers' plays, a form of early street theatre associated
with the Morris dance,
concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood. These were folk tales re-telling old stories, and the actors travelled from town to town performing these for their
audiences in return for money and hospitality.[31]
Mystery
plays and miracle plays are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the
representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They developed from the 10th to
the 16th century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century
before being rendered obsolete by the rise of professional theatre.[32]
There
are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of
plays from the late medieval period. The most complete is the York cycle of 48 pageants. They were performed in the city of York, from the middle of the 14th century until 1569.[33] Besides the Middle English drama, there
are three surviving plays in Cornishknown as
the Ordinalia.[34]
Having
grown out of the religiously based mystery plays of the Middle Ages, the morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment, which
represented a shift towards a more secular base for European theatre.[35] Morality plays are a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to
choose a godly life over one of evil. The plays were most popular in Europe
during the 15th and 16th centuries.[36]
The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman) (c. 1509 – 1519),
usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century English morality
play. Like John Bunyan's
allegory Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Everyman examines the question
of Christian salvation through the use of allegorical characters.[37]
Main articles: Early Modern English, Early Modern Britain, English Renaissance, Elizabethan literature, and English Renaissance theatre
After William Caxton introduced the printing press in England
in 1476, vernacular literature flourished.[29] The Reformationinspired
the production of vernacular liturgy which led to the Book of Common Prayer (1549), a lasting influence on literary language.
The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th to
the 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in
Italy in the late 14th century. Like most of northern Europe, England saw
little of these developments until more than a century later. Renaissance style
and ideas were slow in penetrating England, and the Elizabethan era in the second half of the 16th century
is usually regarded as the height of the English Renaissance.[38]
This
Italian influence can also be found in the poetry of Thomas Wyatt (1503–42),
one of the earliest English Renaissance poets. He was responsible for many
innovations in English poetry, and alongside Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/1517–47) introduced the sonnet from Italy into England in the early
16th century.[39][40][41]
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–99) was one of the most
important poets of the Elizabethan period, author of The Faerie Queene(1590 and 1596), an epic poem and
fantastical allegory celebrating
the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. Another major figure, Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86), was an English poet, whose
works include Astrophel
and Stella, The Defence of Poetry, and The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia. Poems intended to be set to music as songs,
such as those by Thomas Campion (1567–1620), became popular as printed
literature was disseminated more widely in households.
Among
the earliest Elizabethan plays are Gorboduc (1561)
by Sackville and Norton, and Thomas Kyd's (1558–94) The Spanish Tragedy (1592). Gorboduc is
notable especially as the first verse drama in English to employ blank verse, and for the way it developed elements, from
the earlier morality plays and Senecan tragedy, in
the direction which would be followed by later playwrights.[42] The Spanish Tragedy[43] is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592, which was popular
and influential in its time, and established a new genre in English literature theatre, the revenge play.[44]
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as yet unsurpassed. Shakespeare wrote
plays in a variety of genres, including histories, tragedies, comedies and
the late romances, or tragicomedies. Shakespeare's career continues in the
Jacobean period.
Other
important figures in Elizabethan theatre include Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont.
In
the early 17th century Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays", as well as a number of his best known tragedies,
including Macbeth and King Lear.[45] In his final period, Shakespeare turned
to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays,
including The Tempest. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in
tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the
forgiveness of potentially tragic errors.[46]
After
Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson (1572–1637) was the leading literary
figure of the Jacobean era.
Jonson's aesthetics hark back to the Middle Ages and his characters embody
the theory of humours, which was based on contemporary medical
theory.[47] Jonson's comedies include Volpone (1605
or 1606)) and Bartholomew Fair (1614). Others who followed Jonson's style include Beaumont and Fletcher, who wrote the popular comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle(probably 1607–08), a satire of the rising
middle class.[48]
Another
popular style of theatre during Jacobean times was the revenge play, which was popularized in the Elizabethan era
by Thomas Kyd (1558–94),
and then further developed later by John Webster (?1578-?1632), The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (1613). Other revenge tragedies include The Changeling written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.[49]
George Chapman (c. 1559- c. 1634) is remembered chiefly
for his famous translation in 1616 of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into English verse.[50] This was the first ever complete
translations of either poem into the English language. The translation had a
profound influence on English literature and inspired John Keats's famous sonnet "On First Looking into
Chapman's Homer" (1816).
Shakespeare
popularized the English sonnet, which made significant changes to Petrarch's model. A collection of 154 by sonnets,
dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality,
were first published in a 1609 quarto.
Besides
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, the major poets of the early 17th century included
the Metaphysical poets: John Donne(1572–1631), George Herbert (1593–1633), Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, and Richard Crashaw.[51] Their style was characterized by wit and metaphysical conceits, that is far-fetched or unusual
similes or metaphors.[52]
The
most important prose work of the early 17th century was the King James Bible. This, one of the most massive translation
projects in the history of English up to this time, was started in 1604 and
completed in 1611. This represents the culmination of a tradition of Bible translation into English that began with the work of William Tyndale, and it became the standard Bible of the Church of England.[53]
The Metaphysical poets John Donne (1572–1631)
and George Herbert (1593–1633) were still alive after 1625, and later in the
17th century a second generation of metaphysical poets were writing,
including Richard Crashaw (1613–49), Andrew Marvell(1621–1678), Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637–1674) and Henry Vaughan (1622–1695). The Cavalier poets were
another important group of 17th-century poets, who came from the classes that
supported King Charles I during the English Civil War (1642–51). (King Charles
reigned from 1625 and was executed 1649). The best known of the Cavalier poets are Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew and Sir John Suckling. They "were not a formal group, but all were influenced
by" Ben Jonson. Most of the Cavalier poets were courtiers, with notable
exceptions. For example, Robert Herrick was not a courtier, but his style marks
him as a Cavalier poet. Cavalier works make use of allegory and classical
allusions, and are influenced by Latin authors Horace, Cicero and Ovid. John Milton (1608–74)
"was the last great poet of the English Renaissance"[54] and published a number of works before
1660, including A L'Allegro,1631; Il Penseroso, 1634; Comus (a
masque), 1638; and Lycidas,
(1638). However, his major epic works, including Paradise Lost (1667) were published in the Restoration
period.
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Restoration
literature includes both Paradise Lost and the Earl of Rochester's Sodom, the sexual
comedy of The Country Wifeand the moral wisdom of Pilgrim's Progress. It saw
Locke's Two Treatises on Government, the founding of the Royal Society, the experiments and the holy meditations
of Robert Boyle,
the hysterical attacks on
theatres from Jeremy Collier, the pioneering of literary criticism from
Dryden, and the first newspapers. The official break in literary culture caused
by censorship and radically moralist standards under Cromwell's Puritan regime
created a gap in literary tradition, allowing a seemingly fresh start for all
forms of literature after the Restoration. During the Interregnum, the royalist
forces attached to the court of Charles I went
into exile with the twenty-year-old Charles II.
The nobility who travelled with Charles II were therefore lodged for over a
decade in the midst of the continent's literary scene.
John Milton, one of the greatest English poets, wrote at
this time of religious flux and political upheaval. Milton is best known for
his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). Among other important poems include L'Allegro,
1631, Il Penseroso 1634, Comus (a
masque), 1638 and Lycidas.
Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for
freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence
of his day. His celebrated Areopagitica,
written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most
influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and freedom of the press.[55] The largest and most important poetic
form of the era was satire. In general, publication of satire was done
anonymously, as there were great dangers in being associated with a satire.
John Dryden (1631–1700) was an influential English
poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary
life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in
literary circles as the Age of Dryden. He established the heroic couplet as a
standard form of English poetry. Dryden's greatest achievements were in satiric
verse in works like the mock-heroic MacFlecknoe (1682).[56] Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was heavily influenced by
Dryden, and often borrowed from him; other writers in the 18th century were
equally influenced by both Dryden and Pope.
Prose
in the Restoration period is dominated by Christian religious writing, but the Restoration
also saw the beginnings of two genres that would dominate later periods, fiction and journalism. Religious writing often
strayed into political and economic writing, just as political and economic
writing implied or directly addressed religion. The Restoration was also the
time when John Locke wrote
many of his philosophical works. His two Treatises on Government, which
later inspired the thinkers in the American Revolution. The Restoration moderated most of the more strident sectarian
writing, but radicalism persisted after the Restoration. Puritan authors such
as John Milton were
forced to retire from public life or adapt, and those authors who had preached
against monarchy and who had participated directly in the regicide of Charles I were
partially suppressed. Consequently, violent writings were forced underground,
and many of those who had served in the Interregnum attenuated their positions
in the Restoration. John Bunyan stands out beyond other religious
authors of the period. Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of personal salvation and a guide to the
Christian life.
During
the Restoration period, the most common manner of getting news would have been
a broadsheet publication.
A single, large sheet of paper might have a written, usually partisan, account
of an event.
It
is impossible to satisfactorily date the beginning of the novel in English. However, long fiction and fictional
biographies began to distinguish themselves from other forms in England during
the Restoration period. An existing tradition of Romance fiction
in France and Spain was popular in England. One of the most significant
figures in the rise of the novel in the Restoration period is Aphra Behn, author
of Oroonoko (1688),
who was not only the first professional female novelist, but she may be among
the first professional novelists of either sex in England.
As
soon as the previous Puritan regime's ban on public stage representations was
lifted, dramarecreated
itself quickly and abundantly.[57] The most famous plays of the early
Restoration period are the unsentimental or "hard" comedies of John Dryden, William Wycherley, and George Etherege, which reflect the atmosphere at Court, and
celebrate an aristocratic macholifestyle
of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. After a sharp drop in both quality
and quantity in the 1680s, the mid-1690s saw a brief second flowering of the
drama, especially comedy. Comedies like William Congreve's The Way of the World (1700), and John Vanbrugh's The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697) were "softer" and more
middle-class in ethos, very different from the aristocratic extravaganza twenty years earlier, and aimed at a
wider audience.
uring
the 18th century literature reflected the worldview of the Age of Enlightenment (or Age of Reason): a rational and scientific approach to
religious, social, political, and economic issues that promoted a secular view
of the world and a general sense of progress and perfectibility. Led by the
philosophers who were inspired by the discoveries of the previous century by
people like Isaac Newton and
the writings of Descartes, John Locke and Francis Bacon. They sought to discover and to act upon
universally valid principles governing humanity, nature, and society. They
variously attacked spiritual and scientific authority, dogmatism, intolerance,
censorship, and economic and social restraints. They considered the state the
proper and rational instrument of progress. The extreme rationalism and
skepticism of the age led naturally to deism and also played a part in bringing
the later reaction of romanticism. The Encyclopédie of
Denis Diderot epitomized the spirit of the age.
The
term Augustan literature derives from authors of the 1720s and 1730s
themselves, who responded to a term that George I of England preferred for himself. While George I meant the title to
reflect his might, they instead saw in it a reflection of Ancient Rome's transition from rough and ready literature
to highly political and highly polished literature. It is an age of exuberance
and scandal, of enormous energy and inventiveness and outrage, that reflected
an era when English, Scottish, and Irish people found themselves in the midst
of an expanding economy, lowering barriers to education, and the beginnings of
the Industrial Revolution.
It
was during this time that poet James Thomson (1700–48) produced his melancholy The Seasons (1728–30) and Edward Young (1681–1765) wrote his poem Night Thoughts (1742), though the most outstanding poet
of the age is Alexander Pope(1688–1744). It is also the era that saw a serious competition
over the proper model for the pastoral. In criticism, poets struggled with a
doctrine of decorum, of matching proper words with proper
sense and of achieving a diction that matched the gravity of a subject. At the
same time, the mock-heroic was
at its zenith and Pope's Rape of the Lock (1712–17) and The Dunciad (1728–43) are still the greatest
mock-heroic poems ever written.[58] Pope also translated the Iliad (1715–20) and the Odyssey (1725–26). Since his death, Pope has
been in a constant state of re-evaluation.[59]
Drama
in the early part of the period featured the last plays of John Vanbrugh and William Congreve, both of whom carried on the Restoration comedy with some
alterations. However, the majority of stagings were of lower farces and much more serious and domestic tragedies. George Lillo and Richard Steele both produced highly moral forms of
tragedy, where the characters and the concerns of the characters were wholly
middle class or working class. This reflected a marked change in the audience
for plays, as royal patronage was no longer the important part of theatrical
success. Additionally, Colley Cibber and John Richbegan
to battle each other for greater and greater spectacles to present on stage.
The figure of Harlequin was
introduced, and pantomime theatre
began to be staged. This "low" comedy was quite popular, and the
plays became tertiary to the staging. Opera also began to be popular in London, and there was
significant literary resistance to this Italian incursion. In 1728 John Gay
returned to the playhouse with The Beggar's Opera. The Licensing Act 1737 brought an abrupt halt to much of the period's drama, as
the theatres were once again brought under state control.
In
prose, the earlier part of the period was overshadowed by the development of
the English essay. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele's The Spectator established the form of the British periodical essay.
However, this was also the time when the English novel was first emerging. Daniel Defoe turned from journalism and writing criminal lives for the press
to writing fictional criminal lives with Roxana and Moll Flanders. He also wrote Robinson Crusoe (1719).
If
Addison and Steele were dominant in one type of prose, then Jonathan Swift author of the satire Gulliver's Travels was in another. In A Modest Proposal and the Drapier Letters,
Swift reluctantly defended the Irish people from the predations of colonialism. This provoked riots and arrests, but Swift,
who had no love of Irish Roman Catholics, was outraged by the abuses he saw.
An
effect of the Licensing Act of 1737 was to cause more than one aspiring playwright to
switch over to writing novels. Henry Fielding (1707–54) began to write prose satire
and novels after his plays could not pass the censors. In the interim, Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) had produced Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), and Henry Fielding attacked, what he saw, as the
absurdity of this novel in, Joseph Andrews (1742) and Shamela.
Subsequently, Fielding satirised Richardson's Clarissa (1748) with Tom Jones (1749). Tobias Smollett (1721–71) elevated the picaresque novelwith works such as Roderick Random (1748) and Peregrine Pickle (1751).
Main article: Sentimental novel
This
period is also sometimes described as the "Age of Johnson".[60] Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), often referred to as Dr
Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English
literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor
and lexicographer. Johnson has been described as "arguably the most
distinguished man of letters in English history".[61] After nine years of work,
Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Languagewas published in 1755, and it had a
far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of
the greatest single achievements of scholarship."[62]
The
second half of the 18th century saw the emergence of three major Irish
authors: Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) and Laurence Sterne (1713–68). Goldsmith is the author
of The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), a pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770) and two plays, The Good-Natur'd Man (1768)
and She Stoops to Conquer(1773). Sheridan's first play, The Rivals (1775), was performed at Covent Garden and was an instant success. He went on
to become the most significant London playwright of the late 18th century with
a play like The School for Scandal. Both Goldsmith and Sheridan reacted against the sentimental
comedy of the 18th-century theatre, writing plays closer to the style of Restoration comedy.[63]
Sterne
published his famous novel Tristram Shandy in
parts between 1759 and 1767.[64] In 1778, Frances Burney (1752–1840) wrote Evelina, one of
the first novels of manners.[65] Fanny Burney's novels "were enjoyed
and admired by Jane Austen".[66]
The
Romantic movement in English literature of the early 19th century has its roots
in 18th-century poetry, the Gothic novel and the novel of sensibility.[67] This includes the graveyard poets, from the 1740s and later, whose works are
characterised by gloomy meditations on mortality. To this was added, by later
practitioners, a feeling for the 'sublime' and
uncanny, and an interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry.[68] The poets include Thomas Gray (1716–71), Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) i[69] and Edward Young (1683–1765), The Complaint,
or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality (1742–45).[70] Other precursors are James Thomson (1700–48) and James Macpherson (1736–96).[67] James Macpherson was the first Scottish
poet to gain an international reputation, with his claim to have found poetry
written by the ancient bard Ossian.[71]
The sentimental novel or "novel of sensibility" is a genre which developed during the second half of the
18th century. It celebrates the emotional and intellectual concepts of
sentiment, sentimentalism, and sensibility. Sentimentalism, which is to be distinguished
from sensibility, was a fashion in both poetry and prose fiction which began in
the 18th century in reaction to the rationalism of the Augustan Age.[72] Among the most famous sentimental novels
in English are Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), Oliver Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759–67),
and Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771).[73]
Significant
foreign influences were the Germans Goethe, Schiller and August Wilhelm Schlegel and French philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78).[74] Edmund Burke's A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) is another important influence.[75] The changing landscape, brought about by
the industrial and agricultural revolutions, was another influence on the growth of the
Romantic movement in Britain.
In
the late 18th century, Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto created the Gothic fiction genre, that combines elements of horror and romance.[76] Ann Radcliffe introduced the brooding figure of the
gothic villain which
developed into the Byronic hero. Her The Mysteries of Udolpho (1795) is frequently cited as the archetypal Gothic novel.[77]
Romanticism (1798–1837)
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and
intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th
century.[78]Romanticism arrived later in other parts of
the English-speaking world.
The
Romantic period was one of major social change in England and Wales, because of
the depopulation of the countryside and the rapid development of overcrowded
industrial cities, that took place in the period roughly between 1750 and 1850.
The movement of so many people in England was the result of two forces:
the Agricultural Revolution, that involved the Enclosure of the land, drove workers off the land,
and the Industrial Revolution which provided them employment.[79] Romanticism may be seen in part as a
reaction to the Industrial Revolution,[80]though it was also a revolt against
aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, as well a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.[81] The French Revolution was an especially important influence on
the political thinking of many of the Romantic poets.[82]
The
landscape is often prominent in the poetry of this period, so much so that the
Romantics, especially perhaps Wordsworth, are often described as 'nature
poets'. However, the longer Romantic 'nature poems' have a wider concern
because they are usually meditations on "an emotional problem or personal
crisis".[83]
Robert Burns (1759–1796) was a pioneer of the
Romantic movement, and after his death he became a cultural icon in Scotland.
The poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) was another of the early
Romantic poets. Though Blake was generally unrecognised during his lifetime, he
is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual
arts of the Romantic Age.
Among his most important works are Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) "and profound and difficult 'prophecies'
", such as "Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion"
(1804–c.1820).[84]
After
Blake, among the earliest Romantics were the Lake Poets, including William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), Robert Southey (1774–1843) and journalist Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859). However, at the time Walter Scott (1771–1832) was the most famous poet.[85]
The
early Romantic Poets brought a new emotionalism and introspection, and their
emergence is marked by the first romantic manifesto in English literature, the
"Preface" to Lyrical Ballads (1798). The poems in Lyrical Ballads were mostly by Wordsworth, though
Coleridge contributed "Rime of the Ancient Mariner".[86] Among Wordsworth's most important poems
are "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey", "Resolution and Independence", "Ode: Intimations of
Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" and the autobiographical epic The Prelude.[87]
Robert Southey (1774–1843) was another of the so-called
"Lake Poets",
and Poet Laureate for 30 years, although his fame has been long eclipsed
by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) is best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821),[88] Essayist William Hazlitt (1778–1830), friend of both Coleridge
and Wordsworth, is best known today for his literary criticism,
especially Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (1817–18).[89]
The
second generation of Romantic poets includes Lord Byron (1788–1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and John Keats (1795–1821). Byron, however, was still
influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps the least 'romantic' of
the three, preferring "the brilliant wit of Pope to what he called the 'wrong poetical system' of his
Romantic contemporaries".[90] Byron achieved enormous fame and
influence throughout Europe and Goethe called Byron "undoubtedly the
greatest genius of our century".[91]
Shelley
is perhaps best known for Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and Adonaïs, an
elegy written on the death of Keats. His close circle of admirers included the
most progressive thinkers of the day. A work like Queen Mab (1813)
reveals Shelley, "as the direct heir to the French and British
revolutionary intellectuals of the 1790s.[92] Shelley became an idol of the next three
or four generations of poets, including important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets such as Robert Browning, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as well as later W. B. Yeats.[93]
Though
John Keats shared Byron and Shelley's radical politics, "his best poetry
is not political",[94] but is especially noted for its sensuous
music and imagery, along with a concern with material beauty and the transience
of life.[95] Among his most famous works are "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn", ", "To Autumn". Keats has always been regarded as a
major Romantic, "and his stature as a poet has grown steadily through all
changes of fashion".[96]
Another
important poet in this period was John Clare (1793–1864), the son of a farm labourer,
who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English
countryside and his lamentation for the changes taking place in rural England.[97] His poetry has undergone a major
re-evaluation and he is often now considered to be among the most important
19th-century poets.[98]
George Crabbe (1754–1832) was an English poet who,
during the Romantic period, wrote "closely observed, realistic portraits
of rural life [...] in the heroic couplets of the Augustan age".[99] Modern critic Frank Whitehead has said
that "Crabbe, in his verse tales in particular, is an important–indeed, a
major–poet whose work has been and still is seriously undervalued."[100]
One
of the most popular novelist of the era was Sir Walter Scott, whose historical romances inspired a generation of painters, composers, and writers
throughout Europe. Scott's novel-writing career was launched in 1814 with Waverley, often called the first historical novel,[101]
Jane Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century
and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism.[102] Her plots, in novels such as Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1815), though fundamentally comic,
highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and
economic security.[103]
The Last of the
Mohicans
Illustration from 1896 edition,
by J.T. Merrill
Illustration from 1896 edition,
by J.T. Merrill
The
European Romantic movement reached America in the early 19th century. American
Romanticism was just as multifaceted and individualistic as it was in Europe.
Like the Europeans, the American Romantics demonstrated a high level of moral
enthusiasm, commitment to individualism and the unfolding of the self, an
emphasis on intuitive perception, and the assumption that the natural world was
inherently good, while human society was corrupt.[104]
Romantic Gothic literature made an early appearance with Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) and Rip Van Winkle (1819), There are picturesque
"local color" elements in Washington Irving's essays and especially
his travel books. From 1823 the prolific and popular novelist James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) began publishing his historical romances of frontier and Indian life. However, Edgar Allan Poe's tales of the macabre that first appeared in
the early 1830s, and his poetry were more influential in France than at home.[105][106]
Main article: Victorian literature
It
was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading literary genrein English.[107] Women played an important part in this
rising popularity both as authors and as readers,[108] and monthly serialising of fiction also
encouraged this surge in popularity, further apheavals which followed the Reform Act of 1832".[109] This was in many ways a reaction to
rapid industrialization, and the social, political, and economic issues associated with
it, and was a means of commenting on abuses of government and industry and the
suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England's economic
prosperity.[110] Significant early examples of this genre
include Sybil, or The Two Nations (1845) by Benjamin Disraeli, and Charles Kingsley's Alton Locke (1849).
Charles Dickens (1812–70) emerged on the literary scene
in the late 1830s and soon became probably the most famous novelist in the
history of English literature. Dickens fiercely satirised various aspects of
society, including the workhouse in Oliver Twist, the failures of the legal system in Bleak House,[111] An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63), who during the Victorian period ranked second
only to him, but he is now known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair (1847). The Brontë sisters,
Emily, Charlotte and Anne, were other significant novelists in the 1840s and
1850s.[112] Jane Eyre (1847), Charlotte Brontë's most famous work, was the first of the sisters' novels to
achieve success. Emily Brontë's (1818–48) novel was Wuthering Heights and, according to Juliet Gardiner, "the vivid sexual passion and power of
its language and imagery impressed, bewildered and appalled reviewers,"[113] and led the Victorian public and many
early reviewers to think that it had been written by a man.[114] The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) by Anne Brontë is now considered to be one of the
first feminist novels.[115]
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65) was also a successful writer
and her North and South contrasts the lifestyle in the
industrial north of England with the wealthier south.[116] Anthony Trollope's (1815–82) was one of the most successful,
prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Trollope's
novels portray the lives of the landowning and professional classes of early
Victorian England.[117] George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans (1819–80), was a
major novelist of the mid-Victorian period. Her works, especially Middlemarch (1871–72), are important examples
of literary realism, and are admired for their combination of high Victorian literary detail, with an intellectual breadth that removes them
from the narrow geographic confines they often depict.[118]
H. G. Wells studying in
London, taken c. 1890
George Meredith (1828–1909) is best remembered for his
novels The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), and The Egoist (1879).
"His reputation stood very high well into" the 20th-century but then
seriously declined.[119] An interest in rural matters and the
changing social and economic situation of the countryside is seen in the novels
of Thomas Hardy(1840–1928),
including The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and Tess of the d'Urbervilles(1891). Hardy is a Victorian realist, in the tradition of George Eliot,[120] and like Charles Dickens he was also
highly critical of much in Victorian society. Another significant
late-19th-century novelist is George Robert Gissing (1857–1903), who published 23 novels between 1880 and
1903. His best known novel is New Grub Street (1891).
Although
pre-dated by John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River in 1841, the history of the modern fantasy genre
is generally said to begin with George MacDonald, the influential author of The Princess and the Goblin and Phantastes (1858). Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Moonstone (1868), is generally considered the
first detective novel in the English language.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) was an important Scottish writer at the end of
the nineteenth century, author of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and the historical novel Kidnapped (1886). H. G. Wells's (1866–1946) writing career began in the
1890s with science fiction novels like The Time Machine (1895), and The War of the Worlds (1898) which describes an invasion of late Victorian
England by Martians,
and Wells is seen, along with Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905), as a major figure in the
development of the science fiction genre. He also wrote realistic fiction about
the lower middle class in novels like Kipps (1905).
Main article: American literature
(See
also the discussion of American literature under Romanticism above).
By
the mid-19th century, the pre-eminence of literature from the British Isles
began to be challenged by writers from the former American colonies. A major
influence on American writers at this time was Romanticism, which gave rise to New EnglandTranscendentalism, and the publication of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1836 essay Nature is usually considered the watershed
moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement.[104][121]
The
romantic American novel developed fully with Nathaniel Hawthorne's (1804–1864) The Scarlet Letter (1850), a stark drama of a woman cast out of her community
for committing adultery. Hawthorne's fiction had a profound impact on his
friend Herman Melville (1819–1891). In Moby-Dick (1851), an adventurous whaling voyage
becomes the vehicle for examining such themes as obsession, the nature of evil,
and human struggle against the elements. By the 1880s, however, psychological
and social realism were competing with Romanticism in the novel.
American
realist fiction has its beginnings in the 1870s with the works of Mark
Twain, William Dean Howells, and Henry James.
Mark
Twain (the pen name used by Samuel Langhorne
Clemens, 1835–1910) was the
first major American writer to be born away from the East Coast – in the border
state of Missouri.
His regional masterpieces were the novels Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Twain's style changed the way
Americans write their language. His characters speak like real people and sound
distinctively American, using local dialects, newly invented words, and
regional accents.
Henry James (1843–1916) was a major American
novelist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although born in New York
City, he spent most of his adult years in England. Many of his novels center on
Americans who live in or travel to Europe. James confronted the Old World-New
World dilemma by writing directly about it. His works include The Portrait of a Lady, The Bostonians (1886), The Princess Casamassima (1886).[122]
The
premier ghost story writer
of the 19th century was Sheridan Le Fanu. His works include the macabre mystery
novel Uncle Silas (1865), and his Gothic novella Carmilla (1872)
tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female
vampire. Bram Stoker's
horror story Dracula (1897)
belongs to a number of literary genres, including vampire literature, horror fiction, gothic novel and invasion literature.[123]
Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant London-based
"consulting detective", famous for his intellectual prowess. Conan
Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring Holmes, from 1880 to 1907,
with a final case in 1914. All but four Holmes stories are narrated by Holmes'
friend, assistant, and biographer, Dr. Watson. The Lost World literary
genre was inspired by real stories of archaeological discoveries by imperial
adventurers. H. Rider Haggard wrote one of the earliest
examples, King Solomon's Mines, in 1885. Contemporary European politics and diplomatic
manoeuvrings informed Anthony Hope's Ruritanian
adventure novel The Prisoner of Zenda (1894).
Literature for children developed as a separate genre. Some works become
internationally known, such as those of Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. Robert Louis Stevenson's (1850–94) Treasure Island (1883), is the classic pirate adventure. At the end of the Victorian
era and leading into the Edwardian era, Beatrix Potter was an author and illustrator, best
known for her children's books, which featured animal characters. In her
thirties, Potter published the highly successful children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902. Potter eventually went on to publish 23
children's books, and became a wealthy woman.
See also: English poetry § Victorian poetry
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ca 1863
The
leading poets during the Victorian period were Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92), Robert Browning (1812–89), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–61), and Matthew Arnold (1822–88). The poetry of this period was
heavily influenced by the Romantics, but also went off in its own directions.[124] Particularly notable was the development
of the dramatic monologue, a form used by many poets in this period, but perfected by
Robert Browning. Literary criticism in the 20th century gradually drew
attention to the links between Victorian poetry and modernism.[125]
Tennyson
was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign. He was described by T. S. Eliot, as
"the greatest master of metrics as well as melancholia", and as
having "the finest ear of any English poet since Milton".[126] Matthew Arnold's reputation as a poet has "within the
past few decades [...] plunged drastically."[127]
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82) was a poet, illustrator, painter and translator.
He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.[128]Rossetti's art was characterised by its
sensuality and its medieval revivalism.[129] Arthur Clough (1819–1861) and George Meredith (1828–1909) are two other important
minor poets of this era.[119][130]
Towards
the end of the 19th century, English poets began to take an interest in
French Symbolism and
Victorian poetry entered a decadent fin-de-siècle phase.[131] Two groups of poets emerged in the
1890s, the Yellow Book poets who adhered to the tenets of Aestheticism, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Symons and the Rhymers' Club group,
that included Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson and Irishman William Butler Yeats. Yeats went on to become an important modernist in the 20th
century.[132] Also in 1896 A. E. Housman published at his own expense A Shropshire Lad.[133]
Writers
of comic verse included the dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911), who is best known for his
fourteen comic operas,
produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S. Pinafore, and The Pirates of Penzance.[134]
Novelist Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) wrote poetry throughout his
career, but he did not publish his first collection until 1898, so that he
tends to be treated as a 20th-century poet. Now regarded as a major poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins's (1844–89) Poemswere published posthumously by
Robert Bridges in 1918.[135]
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