FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO OUR DAYS

Anglo-Saxon Period (5th – 10th centuries)

The British history is considered to begin in the 5th century, when the country was invaded from the Continent by the warlike tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. At the very end of the 5th century they settled in Britain and began to call themselves English.
In those early days epic poems were created in many countries, such as: “Iliad” and “Odyssey” by Homer.
The main literary forms of the period were: lyric, riddle, epic and prose.

Lyric Poems:
“Widsith”
“Seafarer”
“The Wanderer”
“Deor’s Complaint”
“The Wife’s Lament”
“The Husband’s Message”

Heroic epics:
The works were focused on the deeds of the brave and heroic warriors.
“The Song of Beowulf”
“The Battle of Brunanburgh”
“The Battle of Waldon”
“The Fight of Finnsburg”

Riddles:
“Hundred Riddles”
by St. Aldhelm.

POETRY
Poetry has survived in 4 manuscripts:
“The Song of Beowulf”
“Exeter Book”
“Caedmon Book”:
“Vercelli Book”
The earliest definitely known English poets are Caedmon and Cynewulf.

PROSE
The Venerable Bede:
“Ecclesiastical History of the English People”

Alfred The Great encouraged :
- “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”

Aelfric wrote religious talks:
1. “Homilies”
2. “Lives of Saints”

Alcuinus:
1. “Rhetoric”
2. “Grammar”
3. “Didactics”

Medieval Period
(11-15 cent)
Anglo-Norman
Period
(11-13 cent)
Pre-Renaissance
(14-15 cent)

Anglo-Norman Period
(11-13 cent)
The Normans came from the north-west of France. They brought the culture of their country and the French language. Very popular with the Normans were romances – tales in verse praising the bravery and nobleness of knights. Many romances were based on Celtic legends – about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Sir Thomas Malory:
“Morte D’Arthur “
(Death of Arthur)
Printed in 1485

The literature of the Church was scholastic, moralistic, and it supported the feudal system. The books written in Latin by monks taught the common people that their sufferings on earth would be rewarded in heaven.
Prosaic works started to appear in monasteries
(13th cent)

Pre-Renaissance (14th-15th centuries)

The 14th century was a difficult time for England. The country was waging the Hundred Year’s War with France. At the same time England suffered from three epidemics of the plague. But during this stormy period the English nation was being formed; English became the spoken language of the country; English literature was born.

William Langland:
“The Vision of Piers the Ploughman”

John Gower:
He wrote in three languages:
“Speculum Meditantis” – in French
“Vox Clamantis” – in Latin
“Confessio Amantis” –
in English

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 – 1400)
He was the greatest writer of the 14th century. He was born in London. He held a number of positions at the English king’s court and several times visited Italy and France on diplomatic missions. In Italy he got acquainted with the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, whose works were full of new optimistic ideas and love of life and had a great influence on Chaucer’s future works.

Chaucer’s art has three periods:
The French period – imitation of French romances
The Italian period – “The House of Fame”, “The Parliament of Fowls”, “The Legend of Good Women’’ and others.
The English period – “The Canterbury Tales”

LITERATURE OF THE RENAISSANCE
(16th-17th century)

In the 15th-16th centuries capitalist relations began to develop in Europe. The decay of feudalism and development of capitalist relations was followed by a great rise of the cultural life of Europe. It was then that great discoveries by Columbus, Magellan and other explorers were made, as well as astronomical discoveries by Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo. There was a revival of interest in the ancient culture of Greece and Rome. The progressive ideology of the Renaissance was humanism. Human life, the happiness of people and belief in man’s abilities became the main subjects in fine arts and literature. The Renaissance is divided into three periods:
The Rise of the Renaissance (1500-1558)
The Height of the Renaissance (1558-1603)
The Decline the Renaissance (1603-1649)

The Rise of the Renaissance
(1500-1558)
Thomas Wyatt and Henry Surrey introduced the sonnet in the English literature.
Thomas More wrote
“Utopia”

The Height of the Renaissance (1558-1603)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
His literary work can be divided into three periods:
1590 – 1600
1601 – 1608
1609 – 1612

1590 – 1600
This period was marked by optimism:
Comedies:
“The Comedy of Errors” (1592)
“The Taming of the Shrew” (1593)
“The Two Gentlemen of Verona” (1594)
“Love’s Labour’s Lost” (1594)
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1595)
“Much Ado About Nothing” (1598)
“The Merry Wives of Windsor” (1599)
“As You Like It” (1599)
“Twelfth Night, or What You Will” (1600)

The historical chronicles:
“King Henry VI” (part II) 1590
“King Henry VI” (part III) 1590
“King Henry VI” (part I) 1591
“The Tragedy of King Richard III” (1592)
“The Tragedy of King Richard II” (1595)
“The Life and The Death of King John” (1596)
“The King Henry IV” (part I) 1597
“The King Henry IV” (part II) 1597
“The Life of King Henry V” (1598)
Drama:
“The Merchant of Venice”
Tragedies:
“Romeo and Juliet”
“Julius Caesar”
Collection of sonnets
was edited in 1609

1601-1608
Four great tragedies:
The tragedies reflect the deep, insoluble contradictions of life, the falsehood, injustice and tyranny exiting in society. They show people who perish in the struggle against Evil.
“Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1601)
“Othello, the Moor of Venice” (1604)
“King Lear” (1605)
“Macbeth” (1605)

1609 – 1612
The plays of this period differ from everything Shakespeare wrote before. He still touches upon most important social and moral problems, but now suggests Utopian solutions to them.
Romantic dramas:
“Cymbeline” (1609)
“The Winter’s Tale” (1610)
“The Tempest” (1612)

The Decline of the Renaissance
(1603-1649)
John Milton (1608 – 1674):
“Paradise Lost”
“Paradise Regained”
“Samson Agonistis”
His other works:
“L’Allegro”,
“Il Penseroso”
“Comus”
“Lycidas”
“Aeropagitica”

Ben Jonson
(1572 –1637)
He wrote over 20 plays alone, and others with other playwrights. Among his famous comedies are:
Every Man in His Humour (performed 1598)
Every Man out of His Humour (performed 1599)
Volpone the Fox (1605-6)
Epicoene, The Silent Woman (performed 1609)
The Alchemist (performed 1610)
Bartholomew Fair (performed 1614)

John Donne
(1572 –1631)
A group of poets, known as the Metaphysical Poets, wrote less beautiful and less musical verse which contained tricks of style and unusual images. The group was led by John Donne, the greatest among them.

LITERATURE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT
(The 18th century)

The Enlighteners defended the interests of the common people – craftsmen, tradesmen and peasants. Their criticism was directed against social inequality and religious hypocrisy as well as the immorality of the aristocracy. The central philosophical problem was that of man and his nature. The Enlighteners believed in reason as well as in man’s inborn goodness.
In the period of Enlightenment the poetic forms of the Renaissance were replaced by prose. The didactic novel was born and became the leading genre of the period. Ordinary people, mostly representatives of the middle class, became the heroes of these novels. The characters, either good or bad, were accordingly, either rewarded or punished at the end of the novel. By these means the Enlighteners hoped to improve the morals of the people and society in general.

Early Enlightenment (1688-1740)
This period saw a flowering of journalism (J.Addison and R.Steele) and satirical genre.
Satirical poet – Alexander Pope, imitated the style of ancient Greek and Roman poets:
“The Rape of the Lock”
“The Dunciad”

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
He is rightly considered the father of the English and the European novel:
- “An Essay on Projects” (1697)
- “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters” (1702)
- “Hymn to the Pillory”
- “The Life and the Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” (1719)
- “Captain Singleton”
- “Moll Flanders”
- “Roxana”

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
He was the greatest satirist in English literature.
“Journal for Stella” (1710-1713) – letters to his faithful lifelong friend Stella.
The allegory:
- “A Tale of a Tub”
The satire:
- “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People of Ireland from Being a Burden to their Parents” (1729)
The novel:
- “Gulliver’s Travels” (1726)

Mature Enlightenment (1740-1750)
Sentimentalism
The didactic social novel was born in this period.
Samuel Richardson:
“Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded”
“Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady”
Henry Fielding:
“The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling”
“The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild,
the Great”
Tobias Smollett:
“The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker”

Late Enlightenment (1750-1790)
(Sentimentalism)
The writers expressed the democratic bourgeois tendencies of the time. They also tried to find a way out of the difficulties of the existing order.
Oliver Goldsmith:
“The Vicar of Wakefield”
Lawrence Sterne:
“Tristram Shandy”
“A Sentimental Journey
through France and Italy”
Richard Brinsley Sheridan:
“School for Scandal”

PRE-ROMANTISISM
(The end of the 18th century)

The Gothic School:
Horace Walpole:
“The Castle of Otranto”
Ann Randcliffe:
“The Mysteries of Udolpho”
Mathew G. Lewis:
“The Monk”
Mary Shelley:
“Frankenstein"

Robert Burns (1759-1796)
He is a national poet of both Scotland and England.
“The Scots Musical Museum”
“Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs”
- “Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect” (1786)
Poems:
- “My Heart’s in the Highlands”
- “Bruce’s Address to his Army at Bannockburn”
- “Is There for Honest Poverty”
- “Revolutionary Lyric”
- “The Tree of Liberty”
- “The Jolly Beggars”
- “John Barleycorn”
- “Oh, My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose”
- “Auld Lang Syne”
- “The Toadeater”

William Blake (1757-1827)
“Poetical Sketches”
“Songs of Innocence”
“Songs of Experience”
“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”
“Milton”, and others

LITERATURE OF THE EARLY 19th CENTURY
ROMANTICISM

Lakists
William Wordsworth (1770-1850),
Samuel T. Coleridge (1772-1834),
Robert Southey (1774-1843) formed the “Lake School”, so called because they all lived in the beautiful Lake District in the north-west of England.
They dedicated much of what they wrote to Nature.
W. Wordsworth and S. Coleridge published a collection of poems “Lyrical Ballads” (1798)

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
“Lyrical Ballads” (1798)
“Westminster Bridge”
“London, 1802”
“The Daffodils”
“The Prelude”( in 14 books)
“The Excursion” (in 9 books)

Samuel T. Coleridge (1772-1834)
“Lyrical Ballads” (1798)
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
“Christabel”
“Kubla Khan”

Robert Southey (1774-1843)
He was a poet who also wrote biographies, histories and left 109 volumes of his own works and one of the largest private collections of books in England .

George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824)
He is the greatest romantic revolutionary poet of England.
Byron’s creative work is usually divided into four periods:
The London Period (1812-1816)
The Swiss Period (May-October 1816)
The Italian Period (1816-1823)
The Greek Period (1823-1824)

The London Period (1812-1816)
“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” – the first two cantos.
“Hebrew Melodies”
“The Corsair”
“The Bride of Abydos”
“Lara”
“Ode to the Framers
of the Frame Bill”

The Swiss Period (May-October 1816)
“Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” – the third canto.
“The Prisoner of Chillon”
“Manfred”

The Italian Period (1816-1823)
“Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage” – the last canto.
“Cain”
“Beppo”
“Don Juan”

The Greek Period (1823-1824)
“On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year”
“Cephalonian Journal”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
“Queen Mab”
“Adonais”
“Prometheus Unbound”
“The Cloud”
“To a Skylark”
“The Indian Serenade”
“To the West Wind” and other lyrics.

John Keats (1795-1821)
He wrote poetry of rich detail.
1. “Poems by John Keats” (1817)
2. “Endymion”(1818)
3. “Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.Agness” (1820)

Romanticism in Prose
Thomas de Quincey
(1785 –1859)
Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 1822
On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, 1823
Walladmor, 1825
Lake Reminscences, 1834-40
The Logic of the Political Economy, 1844
Suspiria de Profundis, 1845
Autobiographical Sketches, 1853
Romances and Extravaganzas, 1877
Collected Writings, 1889
The Posthumous Works, 1891-93
Memorials, 1891
The Diary, 1928

Charles Lamb
(1775 –1834)
Blank Verse, poetry, 1798
Pride's Cure, poetry, 1802
Tales from Shakespeare, 1807
The Adventures Of Ulysses, 1808
Specimens of English dramatic poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare, 1808
On The Tragedies Of Shakepeare, 1811
Essays Of Elia, 1823
The Last Essays Of Elia, 1833

William Hazlitt
(1778 –1830)
An Essay on the Principles of Human Action (1805)
Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth and Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817)
Lectures on the English Poets (1818)
Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)·
The Spirit of the Age (1825)
On The Pleasure of Hating (c.1826)

Leigh Hunt
(1784 - 1859)
Amyntas, A Tale of the Woods (1820)·
The Seer, or Common-Places refreshed (2 pts., 1840-1841)
Stories from the Italian Poets (1846)
One Hundred Romances of Real Life (1843)

Walter Scott (1771-1832)
“The Mystrelsy of the Scottish Border” – legends and popular ballads of Scotland.
“The Lay of the Last Minstrel”
“Marmion”
“The Lady of the Lake”
Poetry:

His novels are divided into three groups
1. Novels devoted to the Scottish history:
“Waverley” (1814)
“The Antiquary”
“Old Mortality”
“Black Dwart”
“The Heart of Midlothian”,
and others

“Ivanhoe”
“The Abbot”
“The Pirate”
“The Monastery”,
and others
2. Novels which refer to the English history:

3. Novels based on the history of Europe
“Quentin Durward”
“The Talisman”
“Castle Dangerous”

Jane Austen (1775-1817)
“Emma”
“Pride and Prejudice”
“Sense and Sensibility”
“Persuasion”
“Mansfield Park”
“Northanger Abbey”

LITERATURE
FROM THE 1830s TO THE 1860s
VICTORIAN LITERATURE

Chartist Literature
The industrial power of Great Britain continued to grow. The number of factories increased, as well as the number of people who worked in them. The profits of the manufactories became larger from year to year, while the conditions of the working people grew worse and worse. Poets and writers described the position of the working people and shared their demands.
Thomas Hood (1799-1845):
“The Song of the Shirt” (1843)
Ernest Jones:
“The Song for the Lower Class”
Elizabeth B. Browning:
“The Cry of the Children”

Early Victorian Literature
Charles Dickens (1812-1870):
The first period:
“Sketches by Boz” (1836)
“The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club” (1837)
“American Notes”
“Oliver Twist”
“Nicholas Nickleby”
“Martin Chuzzlewit”
“A Christmas Carol”

The second period:
“David Copperfield”
“Dombey and Son”
“Bleak House”
“Little Dorrit”
“A Tale of Two Cities”
“Great Expectations”
“Our Mutual Friend”
“The Mystery of Edwin Drood”

Elizabeth Gaskell
(1810-1865)
She wrote the biographies of the Bronte sisters.
Novels:
“Mary Barton”
“Cranford”
“Ruth”
“North and South”

The Bronte Sisters:
Charlotte Bronte: “Jane Eyre”, “The Professor”, “Villette”, “Shirley”.
Emily Bronte: ”Wuthering Heights”, poems.
Anne Bronte: “Agnes Grey”, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
“The Book of Snobs”
“Vanity Fair, A Novel without a Hero”
“Pendennis”
“The Newcomes”
“Henry Esmond”
“The Virginians”

Poetry
G.A.Tennyson (1801-1892):
“Maud”
“The Death of Oenone”
“In Memorium”
“The Idylls of the King”
and other poems

Robert Browning (1812-1889)
“Paracelsus”
“The Ring and the Book”
and other poems

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
“The Cry of the Children”
“Sonnets from the Portuguese”
“Aurora Leigh”

Late Victorians
POSITIVISM
“Mill on the Floss”
“Middlemarch”
G. Eliot (Mary Ann Evans):

Novels:
“The Egoist”
“Beauchamp’s Career”
George Meredith (1829-1909)

Thomas Hardy (1814-1928)
“The Return of the Native”
“Tess of the D’Urbervilles”
“Jude the Obscure”

Samuel Butler :
“The Way of All Flesh”
“Erewhon”

LITERATURE OF THE LAST DECADES OF THE 19th CENTURY
In 1899 Great Britain unleashed the shameful colonial Boer War in the Transvaal, a province in South Africa inhabited by the Dutch settlers who fought for their independence. Puritanical hypocrisy became the accepted form of behaviour in society. It was accompanied by a degradation of moral and cultural values.
New literary trends – decadence, neoromanticism and socialist literature – were a reaction to the atmosphere in Britain.

Decadence
Manifested itself in impressionism, imagism, futurism, symbolism.

The most widely known manifestation of Decadence in the social life of England was Aestheticism – a movement in search of beauty. Aestheticism was governed by the principle of “Art for Art’s Sake”.
Aestheticists protested against the severe and vulgar reality, against bourgeois pragmatism.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
He was the most outstanding
representative of Decadence.
Novel:
“The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1890)
Three Essays of Intentions:
“The Decay of Lying”
“The Critic as an Artist”
“Pen, Pencil and Poison”

Comedies:
“An Ideal Husband” (1895)
“The Importance of Being Earnest”
“A Woman of No Importance”
“Lady Windermere’s Fan”

Tragedies
“Salome”
“The Duchess of Padua”
And also:
“De Profundis”
“The Ballad of the Reading Gaol”

Fairy tales:
“The Happy Prince and Other Tales” (1888)
“A House of Pomegranates” (1891)

Late Victorian Poetry
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
William Holman Hunt
John Everett Millais
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Alfred Edward
Housman
Gerard M. Hopkins
Matthew Arnold
Thomas Hardy

Neoromanticism
“Art in contemporary society is only necessary for entertainment”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
The novels:
“Treasure Island”
“Kidnapped”
“The Black Arrow”
“Catriona”
“The Master of Ballantrae”
Books of poems for little children:
“A Child’s Garden of Verse”
Story:
“The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Poetry:
“Departmental Ditties”
“Recessional”
“The Barrack Room Ballads”
Novels:
“Kim”
“The Light that Failed”
Two “Jungle Books”

Joseph Conrad
(1857 –1924)
“Lord Jim”
“Almayer’s Folly”
“An Outcast of the Islands”
“Heart of Darkness”
“Nostromo”
“The Secret Agent”
“The Rescue: A Romance of the Shallows”

Socialist Literature
William Morris (1834-1896)
“Unfair War”
Utopian novel:
“News from Nowhere”
“Poems:
“Chants for Socialists”
“March of the Workers”

LITERATURE OF THE EARLY 20th CENTURY

The Boer War lasted from October 1899 to May 1902. The English suffered many difficulties and losses at the beginning of the war, but they came out of it victors. However, this victory did not improve the negative attitude of progressive people in England towards bourgeois ideology and culture, towards its social life and economic development.

John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
“The Island of Pharisees” (1904)
Trilogies:
“The Forsyte Saga” consists of:
- “The Man of Property” (1906)
- “In Chancery” (1920)
- “To Let” (1921)
“A Modern Comedy” consists of:
- “The White Monkey” (1925)
- “The Silver Spoon” (1926)
- “Swan Song” (1928)
“End of the Chapter”
- “Maid in Waiting”
- “Flowering Wilderness”
- “Over the River”

John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
Each trilogy has Interludes connecting the novels that compose it.
In the first trilogy they are:
“The Indian Summer of a Forsyte” (1918)
“Awakening” (1920)
In the second trilogy they are:
“A Silent Wooing” (1928)
“Passers-By” (1928)

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946)
“Russia in the Shadows”
“The Time Machine”
“The Invisible Man”
“The War of the Worlds”
“The First Men on the Moon”
“The Island of Dr. Moreau”

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Comedies:
“Plays Unpleasant”:
“Widower’s Houses” (1892)
“The Philanderer” (1893)
“Mrs. Warren’s Profession” (1894)
“Plays Pleasant”:
“Arms and the Man” (1894)
“Candida” (1894)
“The Man of Destiny” (1895)
“You Never Can Tell” (1897)

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Three Plays for Puritans:
“The Devil’s Disciple” (1897)
“Caesar and Cleopatra” (1898)
“Captain Brassbound’s Conversion” (1899)
He wrote over 50 plays including “Pygmalion” (1913); the musical “My Fair Lady” is based on this play.

LITERATURE BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

English writers reacted differently to the complicated and constantly changing situation of the 1910-1930s. Some of them continued the traditions of social realism; others preferred to turn away from the acute topical issues. They were searching for new themes and modes of expression, and fell under the influence of Decadence, which at the beginning of the 20th century acquired the name of modernism. Modernism became the leading trend in this period.

Modernism
James Joyce (1882-1941)
“Dubliners” (1914)
“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (1916)
“Ulysses” (1922)
“Finnegans Wake” (1939)

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Mrs.Dalloway”(1925)
“To the Lighthouse” (1927)
“Orlando” (1928)
“The Waves” (1931)

D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
Novels:
“Sons and Lovers” (1913)
“The Rainbow” (1915)
“Women in Love” (1920)
“Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (1928)

Modernism in Poetry
Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”(1917)
“The Waste Land”(1922)
“Ash Wednesday” (1930)
“Four Quartets” (1944)

Critical Realism
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)
“In a German Pension” (1911)
“Rhythm”
“The Blue Review”
“A Birthday”
“Something Childish, but Very Natural”
“Indiscreet Journey”
“Bliss and Other Stories” (1920)

“The Garden Party and
Other Stories” (1922)
“Lady’s Maid”
“The Life of Ma Parker”
“The Daughters of the
Late Colonel”
“Sixpence”
“The Little Girl”
“The Doll’s House”

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
Novels:
“Liza of Lambeth” (1897)
“Of Human Bondage” (1915)
“The Moon and Sixpence” (1919)
“The Painted Veil” (1925)
“Cakes and Ale” (1930)
“The Theatre”(19)

Social Realism
Ralf Fox
(1900-1937)
An important event in the literary life of the 30-s was the formation of a group of Marxist writers, poets and critics led by Ralf Fox.
His main work – “The Novel and the People”, where he speaks about “death of the hero”.

There are many novels and poetry about war. These writers are known as “lost generation”.
There was a certain tendency in poetry – “Trench poetry”:
W. Owen
S. Sassoon
I. Rosenberg

Richard Aldington (1892-1962)
(Lost Generation)
“The Times Literary Supplement”
“Death of a Hero” (1929)
“The Colonel’s Daughter” (1931)
“All Men are Enemies” (1933)
“Images Old and New’ (1915)
“Very Heaven” (1937)

George Orwell
(Eric Arthur Blair)
(1903-1950)
He was one of the first British writers who realized that the 20th century was an age of struggle. His dissatisfaction with the status quo later became a commitment to fight fascism.
“Animal Farm” – 1946
“1984” – 1948

John Boynton Priestley
(1894-1984)
He wrote more than 40 plays, the most significant of them
“Dangerous Corner” (1932)
“Time of the Conways” (1937)
“An Inspector Calls” (1946)
Novels:
“The Good Companions”
“Angel Pavement”,and others

Aldous Huxley
(1894-1963)
“Crome Yellow” (1921)
“Antic Hay” (1923)
“Point Counter Point” (1928)
“Brave New World” (1932)
“Time Must Have a Step” (1944)
“The Island” (1962)

Archibald Joseph Cronin
(1896-1980)
“Hatter’s Castle” (1931)
“The Stars Look Down”
“The Citadel” (1935)
“The Keys of the Kingdom”
“The Green Years”
“Shannon’s Way”
“A Song of Sixpence”
“A Pocketful of Rye”

Charles Percy Snow (1905-1980)
“Death Under Sail” (1932)
“The Light and the Dark” (1947)
“Time of Hope” (1949)
“The Conscience of the Rich” (1958)
“The Affair” (1960)
“Corridors of Power” (1964)
“Strangers and Brothers” (1940)
“A Coat of Varnish” (1979)
“The Physicists” (1980)

Graham Greene(1904-1991)
The “serious novels”:
“The Man Within” (1929)
“England Made Me” (1935)
“The Power and the Glory” (1940)
“The Queen American” (1955)
“A Burnt-Out Case” (1961)
The “entertaining novels”:
“Stamboul Train” (1932)
“A Gun For Sale” (1936)
“The Confidential Agent” (1939)
“Loser Takes All” (1955)

Graham Greene (1904-1991)
“The Ministry of Fear” (1968)
“The Comedians” (1966)
“The Human Factor” (1978)
“Getting to Know the General:
the Story of an Involvement” (1984)
“The Captain and the Enemy” (1988)
“Monsignor Quixote” (1982)
“Doctor Fischer of Geneva,
or the Bomb Party” (1980)
Funny entertaining tales for children:
“The Little Fire Engine” (1950)
“The Little House Bus” (1952)
Collection of short stories:
“The Last Word” (1990)

James Aldridge (b. 1918)
“Signed with Their Honour” (1943)
“The Sea Eagle” (1944)
“The Diplomat” (1949)
“Heroes of the Empty View” (1964)
“I wish He Would Not Die” (1958)
“A Captive in the Land” (1962)
“The Statesman’s Game” (1966)
“Soldiers at War” (in the late 70s)
“One Last Glimpse” (1977)

LITERATURE FROM THE 1940s TO THE 1970s

The Second World War influenced greatly the ideological and economic life of Britain. During the war Great Britain suffered heavy financial losses. The post-war programme of the Labour Party became the only hope for a better future for the British people. It promised to do away with unemployment, to improve living conditions, to level out prices.
From 1946 Great Britain faced strong resistance on the part of the oppressed people of India and Egypt. Great Britain was losing one colony after another and becoming more dependent on the USA.
The failure of Labour Government that promised a lot and did nothing, the cold war and the atomic threat, the rapid intensification of the cultural and moral crisis – these were the factors in the 50s – 60s which influenced the minds of the British people.
Besides socialist literature, other literary tendencies appeared one after another: “the angry young men” (1953-1957), “new left” and “teenager’s literature (after 1958), the “working-class novel” and the “new wave drama”.

Socialist literature
Jack Lindsay
(1900-1990)
“Novels of the British Way”
“Betrayed Spring”

“The angry young men”
The English literature of the 1950s tended to reflect some of the difficulties faced by the younger generation of the time. Disillusionment and skepticism had become the main features of the young post-war generation. Those youngsters stood up against bourgeois morals, protested angrily against reality and tried to find new aims in life. The literature of the 50s reflected the “anger” of the young. The writers who dwelt on this problem became known as “the angry young men”: John Osborne, John Wain, John Braine, Kingsley Amis.

John Osborne (1929-1994)
Plays:
“Look Back in Anger” (1956)
“The Entertainer”
(1957)
“The World of Paul Slickey”
(1959)
“Inadmissible Evidence” (1964)
“A Sense of Detachment” (1973)

The New Wave Drama
J. Osborne’s play “Look Back in Anger” marked the beginning of a new era in British drama.
A.Wesker deals with the cultural poverty of the masses.
A.Bennet uses the technique of the play-within-a-play: “Forty Years On”.
H. Pinter is famous for his own literary technique, described as “Pinteresque”, in “The Caretaker”.

“Working-class novel”

The working-class novel of the 50s-60s brought new themes into the proletarian English literature. First of all, they introduced a new working class hero, with his aimless protest and passionate fury against everything and everybody. Another peculiarity of the working class novel is a strong emphasis on the workers’ private life.

Alan Sillitoe (b. 1928)
“Key to the Door”
“Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” (1958)
“The Open Door” (1989)
“The Death of William Posters” (1965)
“A Tree of Fire” (1967)
“”The Pit Strike” (1973)
“A Start in Life” (1970)

Alan Sillitoe (b. 1928)
“Travels in Nihilon” (1971)
“Raw Material” (1971)
“The Storyteller” (1976)
“The Broken Chariot” (1998)
“The German Numbers Woman” (1999)
“”Birthday” (2001)
“Collected Stories” (1995)

Sid Chaplin (1916-1986)
“The Thin Seam” (1951)
“The Leaping Lad”
“The Big Room” (1960)
“The Day of Sardine” (1961)
“The Watchers and the Watched” (1962)
“Sam in the Morning” (1965)
“The Alabaster Mines” (1971)

Stan Barstow (b. 1928)
“A Kind of Loving” (1960)
“Ask Me Tomorrow” (1962)
“The Watchers on the Shore”
(1965)
“The Right True End” (1976)
“Border-country”
(1960)
“Second Generation” (1964)

The philosophical novel

Many of the English writers of the period considered philosophical problems in their works: the future of mankind, the aim of man’s life, man’s place in society. Much of their work of the period was influenced by the philosophy of existentialism of the French modernists.

William Golding (1911-1993)
“Lord of the Flies” (1954)
“The Inheritors” (1955)
“Pincher Nartin” (1956)
“Free Fall” (1959)
“The Spire” (1964)
“The Pyramid” (1967)
“Darkness Visible” (1979)
“Rites of Passage” (1981)

William Golding (1911-1993)
“The Paper Man” (1984)
“Envoy Extraordinary” (1956)
“Scorpion God” (1971)
The Trilogy:
“Sea Trilogy”: - “Rites of Passage” (1980)
- “Close Quarters” (1987)
- “Fire Down Below” (1989)

Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)
“Under the Net” (1954)
“The Flight from the Enchanter” (1956)
“The Sandcastle” (1957)
“The Bell” (1958)
“The Red and the Green” (1965)
“The Nice and The Good” (1968)
“Bruno’s Dream” (1969)
“A Fairly Honourable Defeat” (1970)
“The Black Prince” (1973)

The satirical novel
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
“Decline and Fall” (1928)
“A Handful of Dust” (1934)
The Trilogy:
“The Sword of Honour”:
- “Men at Arms” (1952)
- “Officers and Gentlemen” (1955)
“Unconditional Surrender” (1961)

Muriel Spark
“The Public Image” (1968)
“The Abbess of Crewe” (1974)
“The Takeover” (1976)
“The Territorial Rights” (1979)
“The Only Problem” (1983)
“Loitering with Intent” (1984)
“A Far Cry from Kensington” (1983)
“Portobello Road”(2000)
Stories:
“The Black Madonna”

Science fiction

Science fiction is a try to foresee, to imagine the possible ways of human development, to predict the results of man’s activity.
Science fiction is very diverse in genres as well as in the aims that its writers pursue. The most traditional genre is the utopia – a story of a society with an ideal state of things. But the sordid reality of the 20th century with its devastating wars, antihuman dictatorships, and ecological problems has put an end to the fascinating dreams of a happy future at all. The genre of the utopian novel has undergone a change and in the works of many writers has turned into its opposite – the antiutopia, or distopia.

Arthur Clarke (1917-2004)
Space travels:
“The Sands of Mars” (1951)
“A Fall of Moondust” (1961)
“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)
“Rendezvous with Rama” (1973)
“The Songs of Distant Earth” (1986)
“2061: Odyssey Three” (1989)
“3001: The Final Odyssey” (1996)
Exploration of the ocean:
“The Deep Range” (1957)
“The Dolphin Island” (1963)

Colin Wilson (b. 1931)
“Necessary Doubt” (1966)
“The Mind Parasites” (1976)
“The Philosopher’s Stone” (1969)

John Wyndham (1903-1969)
“The Day of the Triffids” (1951)
“The Chrysalids” (1955)

Brian Aldiss (b. 1925)
Three “Helliconia” novels (1982-1985):
- “Spring”
- “Summer”
- “Winter”

LITERATURE OF THE LAST DECADES OF THE 20th CENTURY
Postmodernism

Peculiarities:
Re-evaluation of the past experience
Writers’ skepticism (the parodying of the works of predecessors)
Intertextuality
Pastiche
Metafictional character of the works
The idea of the interrelation of literature and historical works of the present and the past
“The death of the author”
“An open end”

John Fowles (b. 1926)
“The Collector” (1963)
“The Magus” (1966)
“The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1969)
“Eliduc” (1974)
“Mantissa” (1982)
“The Blinded Eye” (1975)
“Nature and the Nature of Nature” (1995)
“Wormholes” (1998)
“The Ebony Tower” (1974)
“Daniel Martin” (1977)
“A Maggot” (1985)

Martin Amis (b. 1949)
“The Rachel Papers” (1977)
“Dead Babies and Success” (1980)
“Money” (1984)
“Time’s Arrow” (1991)
“Koba the Dead: Laughter and the Twenty Million” (2002)