BRITISH

LITERATURE

1 www.skolapelican.com
THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD
(7TH - 11TH CENTURY)
Literature started to appear in the UK after the Anglo-Saxon invasion. In the 5th century, Angles and
Saxons came from north-western Europe, drove the Celtic tribes to the western and northern regions
and settled in the UK. They brought no written literature with them. Their war songs and sagas were
not written down and handed down orally. Only after the introduction of Christianity into Britain in the
6th century, did monks from various monasteries start to write the songs down and the monasteries
became centres of culture. The language, in which this literature
was written, is called Old English. It was a synthetic language; an inflected language, belonging to the
west-Germanic group of languages and its written form did not differ from the pronunciation. The
literature of this time consisted of stories, which the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from their
continental Germanic homes, and of Christian stories. They were mostly elegies, war poems and heroic
epic and many of them are preserved in fragments only.
The best preserved Old English heroic poem is Beowulf. It appeared in the 7th century but its origin is
much older. It consists of more than 3,000 lines and tells us how King Hrothgar builds a great hall for
his warriors. However, a monster called Grendel visits it for a period of twelve years, murdering the
men asleep there. Beowulf, the nephew of a king in the south of Sweden, crosses the sea to the hall
and in a bitter struggle tear off Grendel's arm. After having killed Grendel, Beowulf is attacked by
Grendel ’s mother and then he kills her too. When he returns home, he becomes
a king. He reigns for fifty years, but then he is mortally wounded in a battle when killing a dragon. The
poem is valuable due to its vivid description of tribal life and like all Anglo-Saxon poems is based on
alliteration.
The earliest known authors and poets were Caedmon [kædm n] and Cynewulf living in the 7th
century. In the 9th century, during the reign of King Alfred the Great (849-901), King of Wessex,
Anglo-Saxon poetry reached its peak. Alfred was a great scholar, law-giver and defender of his country.
He established schools and monasteries and invited scholars from abroad to teach in them. The Anglo-
Saxon poetry included poetic riddles, war songs, songs of the sea, and, after the acceptance of
Christianity, poetic paraphrases of Biblical events. Prose was represented by the Angio-Saxon Chronicle,
a year-by-year historical account of events.

THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD (1066 - 15TH CENTURY)

The Anglo-Norman literature reflects a period of strengthening of the feudal order and its first conflicts. During the 13th
1

and 14th century, both language and literature came under a strong French influence. Norman French became the spoken
language of people of culture and Latin was established as the language of the written word. From the conflict of old English
and Norman French, Middle English developed. At the beginning, this new language was broken into many dialects, but
little by lite the dialect of London, the capital, and Oxford and Cambridge, the two centres of leaming, gained predominance.
During this period, the English language underwent two important changes. It was converted from an inflected to a non-
inflected language and its vocabulary was enriched by many Roman words. This means that English was gradually changing
into an analytical language that replaced the grammatical endings with separate words and altered the pronunciation of the
graphic signs.
In literature, new subjects and new forms were adopted. The court delighted in romances, which were brought to England
from France by medieval poets, called minstrels. They celebrated adventures of knights or of legendary heroes of ancient
times, especially Alexander the Great. The minstrels also created many romances based on Celtic legends, especially
those concerning King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table which first appeared in The History of the Knights of
Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100-1154). The poetry of this period reflected feudal ideals and ways of life. It was
about heroic adventures and the gallant deeds of kings, knights or saints; it portrayed the moral problems of being a
Christian, the conflicts of virtue and sin, of soul and body, of lofty spiritual thought and sensuous beauty and pleasure.
These attitudes were often expressed through allegory.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) is probably the most remarkable author of this period. He marks the first turning point
between the medieval and the modern age. His great poetic work, The Canterbury Tales, gives a realistic, precise and lively
picture of the various classes, trades and professions of that time. But this style, modern in spirit and form, was progressive
back then as well and remained the single outstanding work of literature for two centuries, with the exception of excellent
popular ballads (e.g, about the outlaw Robin Hood).

2 www.skolapelican.com
Chaucer was a court poet. He held up a mirror to life, but he was not a reformer. His
criticism was very mild, mostly humorous. He did not express the popular discontent of
his time, on the contrary, his characteristic tone was that of frank pleasure in the good
things of life. Therefore, he may be called “the morning star of the renaissance”.
Chaucer
enriched English literature not only with new subjects and ideas but also with new
forms. He took over the French method of regular metres, he laughed at the Old
English irregular lines and alliterations. Moreover, he was the first known poet who
wrote in the London dialect, thus making it the national language. That is why he is also
called "the father of English poetry and language".
‘One of the prominent authors of the court romance was Sir Thomas Malory. (1408-
1471). As a result of disorders, he spent almost twenty years in prison, where he
translated French stories about King Arthur and wrote Le Morte d’Arthur (Arthur’s
Death), a compilation of Arthurian legends and the first novel in English literature. It
was written in a simple, rather monotonous, but very poetic way and the legends
narrated there were later used by many writers, such as Spencer and Mark Twain. In
1485, Le Morte d'Arthur was printed by William Caxton, who introduced letter-
printing into England in 1474.

RENAISSANCE AND HUMANIST PROSE

(16TH CENTURY-1642)
At the end of the 15th century, English literature was influenced by the Renaissance, which originated in Italy and found its
home at’ Oxford University and from there it spread quickly because of the invention of the printing press. It was a period
of great geographical discoveries and development in trade when the transition from feudalism to capitalism started. It
was the: rediscovery of the ancient Roman and Greek cultures that stimulated a reaction against the medieval way of
thinking and a revolt against the church's authority. Humanism represented human endeavour to declare idividual rights
and spiritual freedoms.
The greatest English humanist, and also scientist, statesman and philosopher Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). His lectures
made him very popular, he entered the King’s service and became Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII. But he resigned to the
post in 1532 in protest against Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. He was therefore imprisoned in the Tower of
London and later beheaded. More's chief work is his Utopia, which he wrote for the young king, Henry VIII. This fiction gave
More an opportunity to express his opposition to the existing political systems of France and England. It was originally
written in Latin, but translated into English in 1551 and it describes the best form of government in an ideal state, which is
situated on an imaginary island called Utopia. In Utopia, everybody has the same rights, shares their possession and leads
a happy life. 1

The reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), was a period when English national literature and the modern English
language were formed. All literature, but especially poetry and drama, were taken to a very high artistic level. Characteristic
features of Elizabethan literature, in general, were the emphasis on emotions and fancy. In form, this literature was
smooth, melodious and pleasant. The interest in the individual led to great development in lyrical verse, new literary forms
were adopted, one of which the most favoured was a sonnet.
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) was the first master of the new English language and his aim was to create purely English
national poetry. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Spencer’s friend, put sonnet form on a very high artistic level. William
Shakespeare (1564-1616) would have been famous as one of the outstanding Renaissance poets even if he had never
written a single play. His most beautiful examples of poetry are his sonnets, most of which tell of his affection for a young
patron and of a dark beauty loved by the poet. Although the personal details of the sonnets remain a mystery, they are
quite comprehensible.

BRITISH LITERATURE IN THE 17TH CENTURY

John Milton (1608-1674), a leading poet of the English revolution, actively supported the ideas of Puritanism in his works.
After the execution of Charles I, he was appointed Latin secretary to the newly formed Council of State in Cromwell’s
government. He was arrested and fined when the monarchy had been restored, but released, probably because he was
blind and very old. At the end of his life, Milton bought a cottage near London and dictated his poems to his daughter.
During this period, he wrote his masterpiece, Paradise Lost, dealing with the biblical theme of man’s disobedience and
thereupon the loss of paradise. The main hero in this complicated epic is Adam, representing humanity, Nevertheless, the
most fascinating passages are those dealing with the revolt of Satan against heaven and against God, the almighty creator
of life. In Satan‘s speeches, God is presented as despotic and unjust in his treatment of Satan; God and his angels reflect
the attitudes of an absolute monarch and his court. Satan, in his discussions with fallen angels, supports the principles of
independence and freedom of will and evokes a sympathetic response in the reader. Milton wrote immediately the sequel
of Paradise Lost, called Paradise Regained in 1671.
3 www.skolapelican.com
BRITISH LITERATURE
IN THE 18TH CENTURY
The 18th century is a century of the Enlightenment, the “Age of Reason”. All branches of science
were
developed and this resulted in great technical progress. The beginning of the 18th century is marked
by classicism continuing in poetry and realism which appears in prose. Classicism sets strict rules on
the form and themes of poetry, uses many complicated stylistic figures. Thus, poetry was limited to
the educated reader. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is well known for his satirical poem The Rape of
the Lock. John Gay's (1685-1732) play The Beggar's Opera met with remarkable success not only in
his time – it was also an inspiration for other writers in the following centuries (Bertolt Brecht, Václav
Havel, etc.), and it remains popular as a musical even today. It is a musical play as well as a social
satire, the characters of the play come from the underworld in London.
The 18th century also led to growing popularity of reading among the middle class and prose was
the most accessible form for new readers, so that essays, letters and later novels became prevailing
genres. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was a sharp and embittered satirist and a critic of British
society. His most popular work is a fictional novel, Gulliver's Travels (1726). In the first part, the
captain Lemuel Gulliver is shipwrecked and comes to an island inhabited by six-inch-high Lilliputians.
Swift uses their miniature size to ridicule the pomp of the court and useless wars and to satirise the
political and religious controversies of contemporary Britain. (e.g. the disputes between Lilliputians
who wear high heels and low heels). In the second book, Gulliver appears in Brobdingnag, the land
of giants. Here, Swift attacks again the European style of life. In the third book, Gulliver visits Laputa,
a flying island, and this offers Swift a chance to satirise contemporary philosophers and scientists.
The fourth book describes the country of Houyhnhnms, clever horses whose virtues are superior to
those of the Yahoos, beasts resembling humans. While in the first three books Swift's satire is
directed against politics in Britain, corrupt courts and armies, bad politicians and unjust judges, in
the last book, he attacks the corruption of the human race in general.
Daniel Defoe (1660?-1731) started his literary career as a journalist and a pamphleteer.
Nevertheless, his most popular book, published in 1719, was Robinson Crusoe. It tells the story of a
man shipwrecked on a lonely island. Robinson embodied the qualities which the middle class
needed in capitalist competition — he was energic, hardworking and skillful, and on a deserted
island, he created a miniature civilisation with his own hands.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was a satirical novelist and playwright and his masterpiece is a novel
called The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Samuel Richardson (1789-1761) was the author of
epistolary novels (i.e. written in a form of series of letters), a popular genre, especially for women. He
1

showed his instinctive and deep understanding of women's sensibilities in his Pamela or Virtue
Rewarded. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is a dominant personality in British literature of the 18th
century moestly because of his central work, Dictionary of the English Language.

ROMANTICISM AND REALISM (19TH CENTURY)

The 19th century can be characterised by rapid economic development in Britain, which became a leading power and a rich
colonial empire. In 1837, Queen Victoria came to the throne at the age of eighteen and gave her name to the era, the "Victorian
Age". During that time, the British Empire was very prosperous and the Queen was the symbol of the continuity and stability of
the British way of life. However, Victorian England is also remembered for growing social discrepancies in towns, where slums
appeared, and for hypocritical Victorian morality. These changes and social tensions are reflected in the realistic prose of the
leading British novelists.
At the beginning of the 19th century, poets turned again to senses and sentiments. They were preoccupied by folk traditions,
ancient history and natural mysticism. The writers were influenced by J.J.Rousseau and his ideas of returning to nature and
setting humans free from the harmful influence of civilisation.
Pre-romantic lyrical poetry was written by William Blake (1757-1827). His most beautiful poems are very simple in form, inspired
by songs for children. His Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience were not appreciated in his time and were rediscovered in
the 20th century.
The Romantic period can be divided into two parts. The first was dominated by the so-called Lake poets, i.e. William
Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), and Robert Southey (1774-1843) who took their inspiration
from the Lake District in England. Wordsworth and Coleridge were close friends and their influence on each other was very
fruitful. Together they published The Lyrical Ballads, an experiment which marked a turning point in British poetry but was not
favourably received by critics. The Romatinc movement culminated in the works of G.Byron, P.B.Shelley and J.Keats.

4 www.skolapelican.com
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), was the son of a nobleman. He was physically disabled
from birth and his physical blemish made him bitter and cynical. He became a member of the House
of Lords and might have become a charismatic politician if he had not devoted himself to poetry.
After publishing Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812, he became famous overnight. The poem bears
many autobiographical features: tired of life, Childe Harold travels all over Europe, him being a noble
genius is contrasting with the hypocritical society around him. Another poem, Don Juan, is a satirical
one, written in very complicated stanzas.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was also a rebel against convention but he rejected the
romantic melancholy and despair characteristic of Byron. In his great epic Prometheus Unbound he is
inspired by Aeschylus tragedy Prometheus Bound and makes some crucial changes in the old Greek
legend — Shelley’s Prometheus is also chained to a rock but in the end, is saved by Demogorgon,
the symbol of rebellion.
Mary Shelley (1797-1851), who was married to Percy B. Shelley, wrote Frankenstein, a novel that
remains famous to this day, and has been the subject of many films.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) is the author of many romantic and historical novels (Ivanhoe). Scott's
novels can be divided into three major groups: stories of English history in the Tudor and Stuart
periods, such as Kenilworth and Old Mortality, and lastly stories from Scottish history, such as Waverly
or Rob Roy.
While the Romantics were engaged mostly in lyrical poetry, epics on historical or mythological topics,
and dramas in verse, the novel was becoming a dominant genre later in the 18th century. Novelists
were more interestéd in contemporary problems and their works often expressed sharp social
criticism. Realistic tendencies can be traced in the novels of Jane Austen (1775-1817), such as Pride
and Prejudice, who depicts the quiet everyday life of relatively rich people, mostly from country
gentry. The major concern of her characters is to become rich, find a spouse, run their households
and educate children.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was one of the best narrators of this century. He wrote about the real
Victorian England and many of his characters were not rich, middle-class ladies and gentlemen, but
poor and hungry people. His family was poor and Charles worked in a factory where he washed
bottles. Dickens hated the experience and used it in many novels, especially David Copperfield and
Oliver Twist. His characters are popular for being portrayed as full of colour and life. He later became
a successful journalist and spent a lot of time abroad.
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) ‘was a journalist whose antipathy towards snobbery,
hypocrisy and the nature of the British social system forms the basis of his best novel, Vanity Fair. In
1

his novel, Thackeray describes and analyses a range of various social types and criticises their
pursuit of money and hypocrisy.
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) is famous for her novel Jane Eyre, which is based on her own
experience as a governess. Her sister, Emily Brontë (1818-1848) is the author of another novel of
world's fame called Wuthering Heights, a passionate story full of mystery and dark stormy scenes.
Influenced by Émil Zola, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is the most important representative of the
naturalistic trend in British literature. His most famous novels are The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess
of the D'Urberville.
Of the many poets of the second half of the 19th century, Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892),
Robert Browning (1812-1889) and his wife Elizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861) must be
mentioned.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was inspired by a small map to write his masterpiece full of
adventures, pirates and dangers at sea. Treasure Island made him famous throughout the world,
though he wrote many other books, such as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or The New
Arabian Nights.

LITERATURE IN THE 20TH CENTURY

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) was a man of two continents (born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family,
but moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and went on to settle, work, and marry there), a prodigious poet who
wrote relatively few creative works, a prolific literary critic, a bank employee, and a Nobel laureate. His name, alongside a
few others, has come to define British modernist fiction. Eliot’s most famous pieces, such as The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock and The Waste Land, are among the most widely taught and studied poems in English literature, and he remains
one of the most influential poets of the 20th century.
5 www.skolapelican.com
James Joyce (1882-1941), one of the most recognised and seminal figures of the Modernist
movement, was born in Dublin. He became convinced that the only way to achieve his literary
ambitions was through self-exile. In December 1902, Joyce left Ireland for the first time. He
would spend the next years living in France, Italy and Switzerland, where he would write for
Italian newspapers and give lectures on British literature. Although he wrote mainly in
continental Europe, Joyce’s writing remained firmly grounded in his home city of Dublin.
Dubliners were Joyce’s first major work. It is a collection of short stories portraying what he saw
as Dublin’s inhabitants’ various forms of paralysis. The work Joyce is most famous for, Ulysses, is
a novel, taking place entirely on June 16, 1904. It is a dissection of the mind of Leopold Bloom
as he wanders about Dublin. Joyce’s final work, Finnegan’s Wake, which took him seventeen
years to write, is his most impressive and difficult work. In it, Joyce reached the fullest
expression of his stream-of-conscious style through equivocal and seemingly nonsensical
sentences.
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), was born to an upper-class family in London and was home-
schooled. Woolf was sexually abused by her half-brothers and her mother Julia died when
Woolf was only 13 years old. After her mother’s death, she experienced her first, of many,
nervous breakdowns. She continued to struggle with mental health issues throughout her life,
and concern for sanity versus madness appears throughout her writing. Woolf innovated the
form of the novel and experimented with stream of consciousness narrative techniques. Her
most famous works include The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. Despite
Woolf’s success, she struggled with her mental health and as World War II began, Woolf
committed suicide.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) was born in Dublin to a prosperous businessman and the
daughter of a gentleman. From a young age, Beckett exhibited reckless behaviour. He wrote
plays (Waiting for Godot), poetry (Poèmes) and novels (Malone Dies). Beckett was honored with
the Nobel Prize for Literature. A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, he wrote in both
French and English and was a literary translator. His bleak, tragicomic outlook on existence
and experience, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. His writing became
increasingly minimalist in his later career, involving more aesthetic and linguistic
experimentation.
W.B.Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist from Dublin. Throughout his life, he
spent time in different places and so was able to incorporate many themes into his poetry,
including religion, politics, love, and social class. His early work was mainly a body devoted to
Irish culture, some poems derived from his own personal experiences in the west of Ireland.
1

He then also began to include English, European, and Asian cultures into his work as well. He
was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His accomplishments include The Wanderings of
Oisin and Other Poems (1889), The Countess Cathleen and Deirdre, The Tower and Words for Music
Perhaps and Other Poems.
George Orwell (1903-1950) was born in India. He was an English novelist, essayist, and critic
famous for his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, the latter a profound anti-utopian
novel that examines the dangers of totalitarian rule.
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is the best-selling author of all time, outsold only by the Bible
and Shakespeare. She is the best-selling novelist of all time. She is best known for her 66
detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional
detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, as well as the world’s longest-running play – The
Mousetrap. Christie is regularly referred to as the "Queen of Crime" or "Queen of Mystery", and
is considered a master of suspense, plotting, and characterisation.

LITERATURE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Kate Atkinson (1951-present) is a writer of short stories, plays, and novels, including the Jackson Brodie mystery series.
She has won numerous awards. Her most famous novels include Case Histories and Life After Life.
Kazuo Ishiguro (1954-present) is one of the UK's most celebrated living writers. Ishiguro’s award-winning novels are
almost all written in the first person and cover genres from historical fiction to speculative fiction. His most famous works
are The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go.
Doris Lessing (1919-2013) was the oldest writer to ever receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, at the age of 88. Although her
books covered several genres, Lessing is best known for taking on social issues. Her most famous works include The Golden
Notebook and The Good Terrorist.

6 www.skolapelican.com
v.S. Naipaul (1932-2018) is a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Naipaul published
almost three dozen books, some of which were considered controversial, over five decades.
They range from his early comedic novels to more serious dramatic works later in his career.
His most famous works include A House for Mr Biswas and In a Free State.
Salman Rushdie's (1947-present) novels are largely set in India and examine post-
colonialism with allegory and magical realism. Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses are
his most celebrated works.
Zadie Smith (1975-present) is arguably the most popular British writer of the 21st century.
Her novels have won many accolades. Her most famous works include her wildly popular
debut novel, White Teeth, along with NW and Grand Union.
Sarah Waters (1966-present) is one of the greatest writers of historical fiction working today.
Waters has penned several novels, many of which feature lesbian protagonists in Victorian
times. Quite a few of her works have been adapted for stage and screen. Her popular and
highly praised novels include Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith and The Little Stranger.

7 www.skolapelican.com