Introduction to English Literature

WHAT IS LITERATURE?

Literature in its broadest sense is any written work. Although a part of literature is intangible heritage. Etymologically the term comes from Latin "Literratura/litteratura" which means "writing formed with letters". Although some definitions include spoken or sung texts. Literature can be clarified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction and whether it is poetry or prose. 

HOW DID LITERATURE DEVELOP?

The history of English Literature is the history of written work produced in the English Language by inhabitants of the British Isles and other regions. It begins with the Germanic tradition of the Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century, who used Old English as the earliest form of English. The most popular work in Old English Literature is Beowulf. After the Norman conquest of England, Middle English replaced Old English and was used by Geoffrey Chaucer (the father of English Literature) in his famous work, The Canterbury Tales. The history of English Literature is divided into different periods, such as the Renaissance, the Neo-Classical Age, the 19th Century Literature, and Modern Literature. William Shakespeare is considered the most iconic and greatest writer in the history of English Literature for his legendary plays and sonnets. 

IMPORTANCE OF LITERATURE

1. The study of English Literature enables us to gain insights into various dimensions of our world, encompassing its social, political, economic, and cultural facts, by exploring narratives, novels, poems, and plays.

2. Through literature, we can teleport to the past, gaining valuable knowledge about the lives of those who preceded us on this planet.

3. Literature encourages the development of empathy and comprehension of others by urging us to dive into the complexities of the human condition.

4. By engaging in literary works, we expand our understanding of diverse individuals, their unique journeys, and their interactions within the world.

LITERARY PERIODS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

1. The Classical Period (1200 BCE - 455 CE)

2. The Medieval Period (455 CE-1485 CE)

3.The Renaissance and Reformation (1485-1660 CE)

4. The Enlightenment (Neoclassical) Period (1660-1790 CE)

5. The Romantic Period (1790-1830 CE)

6. The Victorian Period and the 19th Century (1832-1901 CE)

7. The Modern Period (1914-1945 CE)

8. The Postmodern Period (1945 - onward)

Click any Literary Period listed for more elaborate descriptions of them.

WATCH THIS VIDEO TO SEE HOW LITERATURE WAS FORMED

HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

As the 21st century got underway, history remained the outstanding concern of English literature. Although contemporary issues such as global warming and international conflicts (especially the Second Persian Gulf War and its aftermath) received attention, writers were still more disposed to look back. Bennett’s play The History Boys (filmed in 2006) premiered in 2004; it portrayed pupils in a school in the north of England during the 1980s. Although Cloud Atlas (2004)—a far-reaching book by David Mitchell, one of the more ambitious novelists to emerge during this period—contained chapters that envisage future eras ravaged by malign technology and climactic and nuclear devastation, it devoted more space to scenes set in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In doing so, it also displayed another preoccupation of the 21st century’s early years: the imitation of earlier literary styles and techniques. There was a marked vogue for pastiche and revisionary Victorian novels (of which Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White [2002] was a prominent example). McEwan’s Atonement (2001) worked masterly variations on the 1930s fictional procedures of authors such as Elizabeth Bowen. On Saturday (2005), the model of Virginia Woolf’s fictional presentation of a war-shadowed day in London in Mrs. Dalloway (1925) stood behind McEwan’s vivid depiction of that city on February 15, 2003, a day of mass demonstrations against the impending war in Iraq. Heaney continued to revisit the rural world of his youth in the poetry collections Electric Light (2001) and District and Circle (2006) while also reexamining and reworking classic texts, a striking instance of which was The Burial at Thebes (2004), which infused Sophocles’ Antigone with contemporary resonances. Although they had entered into a new millennium, writers seemed to find greater imaginative stimulus in the past than in the present and the future.

-Peter Kemp-

 

  

HAS LITERATURE CHANGED FOR HISTORY?

Literature has changed quite visibly in form and intent over the last century. We can't argue that it has completely changed over this period (functionally, it remains a form of artistic storytelling and/or expression using language exclusively).

As cultures have changed and our world has changed, literature has adjusted to comment, predict, and contemplate these changes. With the emergence of Freud and psychoanalysis, the novel began to take up the subjectivity of experience as a major theme (Modernism).

A sense that the world was not a universal objective reality but instead an individually interpreted one can be seen across poetry and fiction from the first half of the 20th century (and continues to be seen today). This trend grew out of several circumstances and ideas from WWI and WWII to movements in the art world at large like Cubism and Surrealism.

The notion of distinct individual realities can be said to have moved from an intellectual concept to an emotional one with the advent of Magical Realism, where stories no longer adhered strictly to physical laws of time and space but were instead expressions of the spirit and a spiritual need to find meaning, dignity and integrity in a world that offered little opportunity for these discoveries.
Today, we see globalism on the bookshelves. Literature that is expressive of the universality of the human experience is popular (in direct contrast to the individuating literature mentioned above).

Formally speaking, books have gone digital - while remaining analog too - and many stylistic moves have been made, back and forth from linear storytelling to fragmentary and epistolary "conceptual" novels. These changes take into account the various perspectives available to us in a world where sociology, psychology, and physics have filtered into the communal "thought stream", lending laymen multiple ways to view experience and to construct meaning.

At nearly all levels except the most essentially basic one, literature has adapted itself to the 20th and 21st centuries. Appearing online, on eReaders, and on bookshelves; being written by hand, typed on typewriters, and typed on computers; addressing changing mental landscapes and changing commercial ones; emphasizing collectivity and individuality - literature has shown itself to be very flexible and able to articulate many of our deepest fears and desires that make up and result from a constantly changing world.

Thank you for reading!