Реферат: Литература Великобритании и США

1. Обыкновенноначало английской литературы относят к началу Англосаксонскогопериода. Первые крупные памятники англосаксонской литературы — памятникилатинские — принадлежат представителям духовенства: Альдгельм, живший во второйполовине VII века, автор витиеватой прозы и стихов, Бид — автор знаменитой «Церковнойистории англов», Алкуин— учёный монах, знаток грамматики, риторики,диалектики, переехавший в 60-летнем возрасте ко двору Карла Великого).Чтокасается древнейших памятников англо-саксонского языка, то крупные поэтическиепроизведения доходят до нас от XI века, если не считать памятниковдокументального характера, хроник, текстов законов.Самым замечательным памятникомдревней английской поэзии является поэма о Беовульфе. В ней описываютсясобытия, относящиеся к первой половине VIвека, эпохе борьбы франков с готами.

Themain protagonist, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar,the king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monsterGrendel. Beowulf kills both Grendel and Grendel's mother, the latter with amagical sword.Later in his life, Beowulf is himself king of the Geats, andfinds his realm terrorized by a dragon whose treasure had been stolen from hishoard in a burial mound. He attacks the dragon with the help of his thegns, butthey do not succeed. Beowulf decides to follow the dragon into its lair, atEarnanæs, but only his young Swedish relative Wiglaf dares join him.Beowulf finally slays the dragon, but is mortally wounded. He is buried in atumulus by the sea.Beowulf is considered an epic poem in that the maincharacter is a hero who travels great distances to prove his strength atimpossible odds against supernatural demons and beasts. The poem also begins inmedias res («into the middle of affairs») or simply, «in themiddle», which is a characteristic of the epics of antiquity. Although thepoem begins with Beowulf's arrival, Grendel's attacks have been going on forsome time. The poet who composed Beowulf, while objective in telling the tale,nonetheless utilizes a certain style to maintain excitement and adventurewithin the story. An elaborate history of characters and their lineages are spokenof, as well as their interactions with each other, debts owed and repaid, anddeeds of valor.is it a Christian work set in a Germanic pagan context? Thequestion suggests that the conversion from the Germanic pagan beliefs toChristian ones was a very slow and gradual process over several centuries, andit remains unclear the ultimate nature of the poem's message in respect toreligious belief at the time it was written. The poem is set in pagan times,and none of the characters is demonstrably Christian.

«Золотой век»англо-саксонской литературы до нашествия норманнов—эпоха Альфреда Великого,победителя датчан, в течение почти двух веков опустошавших Британию. Альфредмного сделал для восстановления разрушенной культуры, для поднятияобразованности, сам был писателем и переводчиком (перевёл, в том числе, наангло-саксонский язык «Церковную историю» Бида,написаннуюналатыни).

TheBattle of Maldon' is the name conventionally given to a surviving 325-linefragment of Old English poetry. Linguistic study has led to the conjecture thatinitially the complete poem was transmitted orally, then in a lost manuscriptin the East Saxon dialect and now survives as a fragment in the West Saxonform, possibly that of a scribe active at the Monastery of Worcester late inthe 11th century. At the time of battle, English royal policy of responding toViking incursions was split. Some favoured paying off the Viking invaders withland and wealth, while others favoured fighting to the last man. Recentscholarship[citation needed] suggests that Byrhtnoth held this latter attitude,hence his moving speeches of patriotism in the poem.The Vikings sailed up theBlackwater (then called the Panta), and Byrhtnoth called out his levy. The poembegins with him ordering his men to stand and how to hold weapons. His men,except for his household guard, were peasants and householders from the area.He ordered them to «send steed away and stride forwards»: theyarrived on horses but fought on foot. The Vikings sailed up to a small island inthe river. At ebb, the river leaves a land bridge from this island to theshore; the description seems to have matched the Northey Island causeway atthat time. This would place the site of the battle about two miles southeast ofMaldon. Olaf addressed the Saxons, promising to sail away if he was paid withgold and armour from the lord. Byrhtnoth replied, «We will pay you withspear tips and sword blades.»Olaf's forces could not make headway againstthe troops guarding the small land bridge, and he asked Byrhtnoth to allow hiswarriors onto the shore. Byrhtnoth, for his ofermōde (line 89b), let allthe Vikings cross to the mainland. Battle was joined, but an Englishman calledGodrīc fled riding Byrhtnoth's horse. Godrīc's brothers Godwine andGodwīg followed him. Then many English fled, recognizing the horse andthinking that its rider was Byrhtnoth fleeing. The Vikings overcame the Saxonsafter losing many men, killing Byrhtnoth. After the battle Byrhtnoth's body wasfound with its head missing, but his gold-hilted sword was still with his body.The only known survivor from Cædmon's oeuvre is his Hymn. Cædmon'sHymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of God whichhe supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is known from 21manuscript copies making it the best-attested Old English poem after Bede'sDeath Song (with 35 witnesses) and the best attested in the poetic corpus inmanuscripts copied or owned in the British Isles during the Anglo-Saxon period.The Hymn also has by far the most complicated known textual history of anysurviving Anglo-Saxon poem. It is found in two dialects. It is one of theearliest attested examples of written Old English and one of the earliestrecorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. Together with therunic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, Cædmon's Hymn is oneof three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old Englishpoetry.There is continuing critical debate about the status of the poem as it isnow available to us. While some scholars accept the texts of the Hymn as moreor less accurate transmissions of Cædmon's original, others argue thatthey originated as a back-translation from Bede's Latin, and that there is nosurviving witness to the original text.

2. IV-VI- переход от античности к средним векам (476 — императора убили, падение Рима) V- X/XI- распад цивилизации, темные века, раннее средневековьеXI-XIII- высокое средневековье. Это культура христианская, отрицая языческое отношениек миру, тем не менее, сохранила осн достижения античной культуры. Средневековаялитература носит религиозный характер, преобл произведения, построенные набиблейских мифах, посвященные Богу, жития святых, их пишут на лат языке.Светская литература выступает не отражением действительности, а воплощениемидеальных представлений о человеке, типизацией его жизни.Основная черта — героический эпос, лирика, романы. Поэты создавали поэмы о военных подвигах иделах феодалов. в средневек культурепрослеживается постоянное стремление к самосовершенствованию и избавлению отгреховности. Чем древнее — тем подлиннее — воткредо связи нового и старого в духовной жизни. Новаторство считали проявлениемгордыни, отступление от архетипа рассматривалось как отдаление от истины. Отсюдаанонимность произведений, ограничение свободы творчества рамками теологическинормированного мировоззрения, каноничность.

Особым явлением быларыцарская литература, воспевающая дух войны, вассального служения, поклоненияпрекрасной даме. Трубадуры говорили о приключениях, любви, победах, этипроизведения использовали живой разговорный язык.

GeoffreyChaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier anddiplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinishedframe narrative The Canterbury Tales. Sometimes called the father of Englishliterature, Chaucer is credited by some scholars as the first author todemonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular Middle English, ratherthan French or Latin. Chaucer'sworks are sometimes grouped into first a French period, then an Italian periodand finally an English period, with Chaucer being influenced by thosecountries' literatures in turn. Chauceris best known as the writer of The Canterbury Tales, which is a collection ofstories told by fictional pilgrims on the road to the cathedral at Canterbury;these tales would help to shape English literature.The Canterbury Talescontrasts with other literature of the period in the naturalism of itsnarrative, the variety of stories the pilgrims tell and the varied characterswho are engaged in the pilgrimage. Many of the stories narrated by the pilgrimsseem to fit their individual characters and social standing, although some ofthe stories seem ill-fitting to their narrators, perhaps as a result of theincomplete state of the work. Chaucer drew on real life for his cast ofpilgrims: the innkeeper shares the name of a contemporary keeper of an inn inSouthwark, and real-life identities for the Wife of Bath, the Merchant, the Manof Law and the Student have been suggested. The many jobs that Chaucer held inmedieval society—page, soldier, messenger, valet, bureaucrat, foreman andadministrator—probably exposed him to many of the types of people he depictedin the Tales. He was able to shape their speech and satirise their manners inwhat was to become popular literature among people of the same types.

Chauceris sometimes considered the source of the English vernacular tradition and the«father» of modern English literature. His achievement for thelanguage can be seen as part of a general historical trend towards the creationof a vernacular literature after the example of Dante in many parts of Europe.A parallel trend in Chaucer's own lifetime was underway in Scotland through thework of his slightly earlier contemporary, John Barbour, and was likely to havebeen even more general, as is evidenced by the example of the Pearl Poet in thenorth of England.Although Chaucer's language is much closer to modern Englishthan the text of Beowulf, it differs enough that most publications modernisehis idiom.

3. The Renaissance wasa cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in theearly modern period. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe bythe 16th century, its influence affected literature, philosophy, art, politics,science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissancescholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism andhuman emotion in art. Thenew ideals of humanism, although more secular in some aspects, developedagainst a Christian backdrop, especially in the Northern Renaissance. Indeed,much (if not most) of the new art was commissioned by or in dedication to theChurch.However, the Renaissance had a profound effect on contemporary theology,particularly in the way people perceived the relationship between man andGod.Many of the period's foremost theologians were followers of the humanistmethod, including Erasmus, Zwingli, Thomas More, Martin Luther, and JohnCalvin. This era in English cultural history is sometimes referred to as«the age of Shakespeare» or «the Elizabethan era», thefirst period in English and British history to be named after a reigningmonarch. Sir Thomas More was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author,statesman and noted Renaissance humanist.More once seriously contemplated abandoning hislegal career in order to become a monk. Although he deeply admired the piety ofthe monks, he ultimately decided on the life of a layman upon his marriage andelection to Parliament in 1504. In spite of his choice to pursue a secularcareer, More continued to observe certain ascetical practices for the rest ofhis life, wearing a hair shirt next to his skin and occasionally engaging inflagellation. Moresketched out his most well-known and controversial work, Utopia (completed andpublished in 1516), a novel in Latin. In it a traveller, Raphael Hythlodeaus(in Greek, his name and surname allude to archangel Raphael, purveyor of truth,and mean «speaker of nonsense»), describes the political arrangementsof the imaginary island country of Utopia (Greek pun on ou-topos [no place],eu-topos [good place]) to himself and to Pieter Gillis. At the time, mostliterate people could understand the actual meaning of the word«utopia» because of the relatively widespread knowledge of the Greeklanguage. This novel describes the city of Amaurote by saying, «Of themall this is the worthiest and of most dignity». Utopia contrasts thecontentious social life of European states with the perfectly orderly,reasonable social arrangements of Utopia and its environs (Tallstoria,Nolandia, and Aircastle). In Utopia, with communal ownership of land, privateproperty does not exist, men and women are educated alike, and there is almostcomplete religious toleration. Moresupported the Catholic Church and saw the Reformation as heresy, a threat tothe unity of both church and society. Believing in the theology, polemics, andecclesiastical laws of the Church, More «heard Luther's call to destroythe Catholic Church as a call to war. Morerefused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as the Queen of England.Technically, this was not an act of treason, as More had written to Henryacknowledging Anne's queenship and expressing his desire for the king'shappiness and the new queen's health.[38] Despite this, his refusal to attendwas widely interpreted as a snub against Anne and Henry took action againsthim. Morewas asked to appear before a commission and swear his allegiance to theparliamentary Act of Succession. More accepted Parliament's right to declareAnne Boleyn the legitimate queen of England, but he steadfastly refused to takethe oath of supremacy of the Crown in the relationship between the Kingdom andthe Church in England. Holding fast to the ancient teaching of Papal supremacy,More refused to take the oath and furthermore publicly refused to upholdHenry's annulment from Catherine. His head was fixed upon a pike over LondonBridge for a month, according to the normal custom for traitors. His daughterMargaret (Meg) Roper rescued it, possibly by bribery, before it could be thrownin the River Thames. SirThomas Wyatt wasa 16th-century English lyrical poet credited with introducing the sonnet intoEnglish was not only a poet, but also an ambassador in the service of HenryVIII. Wyatt was imprisoned in the Tower of London for allegedly committingadultery with Anne Boleyn. He was released from the Tower later that year

Wyatt'sprofessed object was to experiment with the English tongue, to civilise it, toraise its powers to those of its neighbours.[5] and although a significantamount of his literary output consists of translations of sonnets by theItalian poet Petrarch, he wrote sonnets of his own. Wyatt's sonnets firstappeared in Tottle's Miscellany, now on exhibit in the British Library inLondon.In addition to imitations of works by the classical writers Seneca andHorace, he experimented in stanza forms including the rondeau, epigrams, terzarima, ottava rima songs, satires and also with monorime, triplets withrefrains, quatrains with different length of line and rhyme schemes, quatrainswith codas, and the French forms of douzaine and treizaine [6] in addition tointroducing contemporaries to his poulter's measure form (Alexandrine coupletsof twelve syllable iambic lines alternating with a fourteener, fourteensyllable line).[7] and is acknowledged a master in the iambic tetrameter[8].While Wyatt's poetry reflects classical and Italian models, he also admiredthe work of Chaucer and his vocabulary reflects Chaucer’s (for example, his useof Chaucer’s word newfangleness, meaning fickle, in They flee from me thatsometime did me seek). His best-known poems are those that deal with the trialsof romantic love. Others of his poems were scathing, satirical indictments ofthe hypocrisies and flat-out pandering required of courtiers ambitious toadvance at the Tudor court. HenryHoward, Earl of Surrey was an Englisharistocrat, and one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry.He and his friend Sir Thomas Wyatt were the firstEnglish poets to write in the sonnet form that Shakespeare later used, andHenry was the first English poet to publish blank verse in his translation ofthe second and fourth books of Virgil's Aeneid. Together, Wyatt and Surrey, dueto their excellent translations of Petrarch's sonnets, are known as»Fathers of the English Sonnet." While Wyatt introduced the sonnetinto English, it was Surrey who gave them the rhyming meter and the divisioninto quatrains that now characterizes the sonnets variously named English,Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnets.

4. William Shakespeare was an English poetand playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English languageand the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He wrote Comedies, histories, tragedies,poems, apocrypha. He is often called England's national poet and the «Bardof Avon».His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist ofabout 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems.His plays have been translated into every major living language and areperformed more often than those of any other playwright.It is not known exactly when Shakespeare beganwriting, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show thatseveral of his plays were on the London stage by 1592From 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed onlyby the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, includingShakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London. After thedeath of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by thenew king, James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.In 1599, apartnership of company members built their own theatre on the south bank of theThames, which they called the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took overthe Blackfriars indoor theatre. Records of Shakespeare's property purchases andinvestments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man.[34] In 1597, hebought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, heinvested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford.Shakespeare's early classical and Italianatecomedies, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give wayin the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his greatest comedies.His characters become more complex and tender as heswitches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, andachieves the narrative variety of his mature work.[84] This period begins andends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy ofsexually charged adolescence, love, and death;[85] and Julius Caesar—based onSir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—whichintroduced a new kind of drama. In1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespearepublished two narrative poems on erotic themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rapeof Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. InVenus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus;while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustfulTarquin.[118] Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses,[119] the poems show the guiltand moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust.[120] Both provedpopular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A thirdnarrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments herseduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of theSonnets in 1609. theSonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed.Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression onlater theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potentialof characterisation, plot, language, and genre.[144] Until Romeo and Juliet,for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy.[145]Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters orevents; but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds.[146] His workheavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to reviveShakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steinerdescribed all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as «feeblevariations on Shakespearean themes.»In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling andpronunciation were less standardised than they are now,[151] and his use oflanguage helped shape modern English. Samuel Johnson quoted him more often thanany other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first seriouswork of its type.Expressions such as «with bated breath» (Merchant ofVenice) and «a foregone conclusion» (Othello) have found their wayinto everyday English speech.

5. John Donnewas an English poet, preacher and a major representative of the metaphysicalpoets of the period. His works are notable for their realistic and sensualstyle and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations,epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. His poetry is noted for itsvibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially as compared tothat of his contemporaries. John Donne's masculine, ingenious style ischaracterized by abrupt openings, paradoxes, dislocations, argumentativestructure, and «conceits»--images which yoke things seemingly unlike.These features in combination with his frequent dramatic or everyday speechrhythms, his tense syntax, and his tough eloquence were both a reaction againstthe smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation intoEnglish of European baroque and mannerist techniques. Donne's earliest poemsshowed a developed knowledge of English society coupled with sharp criticism ofits problems. His satires dealt with common Elizabethan topics, such as corruptionin the legal system, mediocre poets, and pompous courtiers. His images ofsickness, vomit, manure, and plague assisted in the creation of a stronglysatiric world populated by all the fools and knaves of England. His thirdsatire, however, deals with the problem of true religion, a matter of greatimportance to Donne. He argued that it was better to examine carefully one'sreligious convictions than blindly to follow any established tradition, fornone would be saved at the Final Judgment, by claiming «A Harry, or aMartin taught [them] this. Donne's early career was also notable for his eroticpoetry, especially his elegies, in which he employed unconventional metaphors,such as a flea biting two lovers being compared to sex.[12] In Elegy XIX: ToHis Mistress Going to Bed, he poetically undressed his mistress and comparedthe act of fondling to the exploration of America. In Elegy XVIII, he comparedthe gap between his lover's breasts to the Hellespont.[12] Donne did notpublish these poems, although did allow them to circulate widely in manuscriptform. Somehave speculated that Donne's numerous illnesses, financial strain, and thedeaths of his friends all contributed to the development of a more somber andpious tone in his later poems.[12] The change can be clearly seen in „AnAnatomy of the World“ (1611), a poem that Donne wrote in memory ofElizabeth Drury, daughter of his patron, Sir Robert Drury. This poem treatsElizabeth's demise with extreme gloominess, using it as a symbol for the Fallof Man and the destruction of the universe. The poem „A Nocturnal upon Lucy'sDay, Being the Shortest Day“,, concerns the poet's despair at the death ofa loved one. In it Donne expresses a feeling of utter negation andhopelessness, saying that „I am every dead thing...re-begot / Of absence,darkness, death.“ This famous work was probably written in 1627 when bothDonne's friend Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and his daughter Lucy Donne died.Three years later, in 1630, Donne wrote his will on Saint Lucy's day (* December),the date the poem describes as „Both the year's, and the day's deepmidnight.“The increasing gloominess of Donne's tone may also be observedin the religious works that he began writing during the same period. His earlybelief in the value of skepticism now gave way to a firm faith in thetraditional teachings of the Bible. Having converted to the Anglican Church,Donne focused his literary career on religious literature. He quickly becamenoted for his sermons and religious poems. The lines of these sermons wouldcome to influence future works of English literature, such as ErnestHemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, which took its title from a passage inMeditation XVII of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Thomas Merton’s NoMan is an Island, which took its title from the same source.Towards the end ofhis life Donne wrote works that challenged death, and the fear that it inspiredin many men, on the grounds of his belief that those who die are sent to Heavento live eternally. One example of this challenge is his Holy Sonnet X, fromwhich come the famous lines „Death, be not proud, though some have calledthee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.“ Even as he lay dyingduring Lent in 1631, he rose from his sickbed and delivered the Death's Duelsermon, which was later described as his own funeral sermon. Death’s Duelportrays life as a steady descent to suffering and death, yet sees hope insalvation and immortality through an embrace of God, Christ and theResurrection. JohnMilton wasan English poet, polemicist, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England.He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. Milton is considered to beamong the most learned of all English poets; in addition to his years ofprivate study, Milton had command of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, andItalian from his school and undergraduate days; he also added Old English tohis linguistic repertoire in the 1650s while researching his History ofBritain, and probably acquired proficiency in Dutch soon afterParadise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 inten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse. Asecond edition followed in 1674, redivided into twelve books (in the manner ofthe division of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note onthe versification; the majority of the poem was written while Milton was blind,and was transcribed for him. The poem Paradise Lost concerns the Christianstory of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angelSatan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated inBook I, is to „justify the ways of God to men“[2] and elucidate theconflict between God's eternal foresight and free will.Milton incorporatesPaganism, classical Greek references, and Christianity within the poem. Itdeals with diverse topics from marriage, politics (Milton was politicallyactive during the time of the English Civil War), and monarchy, and grappleswith many difficult theological issues, including fate, predestination, theTrinity, and the introduction of sin and death into the world, as well asangels, fallen angels, Satan, and the war in heaven. Milton draws on hisknowledge of languages, and diverse sources – primarily Genesis, much of theNew Testament, the deuterocanonical Book of Enoch, and other parts of the OldTestament. Milton's epic is generally considered one of the greatest literaryworks in the English language. Characters:Satan:Satan is the first major character introduced in the poem. A beautiful youth,he is a tragic figure best described by his own words „Better to reign inHell than serve in Heaven“

Therole of Satan as a driving force in the poem has been the subject of muchscholarly debate. Positions range from views of William Blake who stated Milton»wrote in fetters when [he] wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty whenof Devils and Hell, [because] he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party withoutknowing it"[5] to critic William H. Marshall's interpretation of the poemas a Christian morality tale.,Adam,Eve,The Son of God: The Son of God inParadise Lost is Jesus Christ, though he is never named explicitly, since hehas not yet entered human form.,God the Father, Raphael, Raphael is an angelwho is sent by God to warn Adam about Satan's infiltration of Eden and to warnhim that Satan is going to try to curse Adam and Eve.Michael…Milton first presents Adam and Eve in Book IV withimpartiality. The relationship between Adam and Eve is one of «mutualdependence, not a relation of domination or hierarchy.» While the authordoes place Adam above Eve in regard to his intellectual knowledge, and in turnhis relation to God, he also grants Eve the benefit of knowledge throughexperience. Hermine Van Nuis clarifies that although there is a sense ofstringency associated with the specified roles of the male and the female, eachunreservedly accepts the designated role because it is viewed as an asset.[11]Instead of believing that these roles are forced upon them, each uses theobligatory requirement as a strength in their relationship with each other.These minor discrepancies reveal the author’s view on the importance ofmutuality between a husband and a wife.When examining the relationship betweenAdam and Eve, critics tend to accept an either Adam- or Eve-centered view interms of hierarchy and importance to God. David Mikics argues, by contrast,these positions «overstate the independence of the characters' stances,and therefore miss the way in which Adam and Eve are entwined with eachother».[12] Milton's true vision reflects one where the husband and wife(in this instance, Adam and Eve) depend on each other and only through eachother’s differences are able to thrive.[12] While most readers believe thatAdam and Eve fail because of their fall from paradise, Milton would argue thatthe resulting strengthening of their love for one another is truevictory.Although Milton does not directly mention divorce, critics posittheories on Milton's view of divorce based on inferences found within the poem.Other works by Milton suggest he viewed marriage as an entity separate from thechurch. Discussing Paradise Lost, Biberman entertains the idea that«marriage is a contract made by both the man and the woman».[13]Based on this inference, Milton would believe that both man and woman wouldhave equal access to divorce, as they do to marriage.

Feministcritics of Paradise Lost suggest that Eve is forbidden the knowledge of her ownidentity. Moments after her creation, before Eve is led to Adam, she becomesenraptured by an image reflected in the water (her own, unbeknownst toEve).[14] God urges Eve to look away from her own image, her beauty, which isalso the object of Adam’s desire. Adam delights in both her beauty andsubmissive charms, yet Eve may never be permitted to gaze upon her individualform. Critic Julia M. Walker argues that because Eve «neither recognizesnor names herself… she can know herself only in relation to Adam.»[15] «Eve’ssense of self becomes important in its absence… [she] is never allowed toknow what she is supposed to see.»[16] Eve therefore knows not what sheis, only what she is not: male. Starting in Book IV, Eve learns that Adam, the maleform, is superior and «How beauty is excelled by manly grace/ And wisdomwhich alone is truly fair.»[17] Led by his gentle hand, she yields, awoman without individual purpose, destined to fall by «free will.»Milton's 17th century contemporaries by and largecriticized Milton’s ideas and considered him as a radical, mostly because ofhis well-known Protestant views on politics and religion. One of Milton'sgreatest and most controversial arguments centers on his concept of what isidolatrous; this topic is deeply embedded in Paradise Lost.Milton's firstcriticism of idolatry focuses on the practice of constructing temples and otherbuildings to serve as places of worship. In Book XI of Paradise Lost, Adamtries to atone for his sins by offering to build altars to worship God. Inresponse, the angel Michael explains Adam does not need to build physicalobjects to experience the presence of God.[18] Joseph Lyle points to thisexample, explaining «When Milton objects to architecture, it is not a qualityinherent in buildings themselves he finds offensive, but rather their tendencyto act as convenient loci to which idolatry, over time, will inevitablyadhere.»[19] Even if the idea is pure in nature, Milton still believesthat it will unavoidably lead to idolatry simply because of the nature ofhumans. Instead of placing their thoughts and beliefs into God, as they should,humans tend to turn to erected objects and falsely invest their faith. WhileAdam attempts to build an altar to God, critics note Eve is similarly guilty ofidolatry, but in a different manner. Harding believes Eve's narcissism andobsession with herself constitutes idolatry.[20] Specifically, Harding claimsthat "… under the serpent’s influence, Eve’s idolatry andself-deification foreshadow the errors into which her 'Sons' willstray."[20] Much like Adam, Eve falsely places her faith into herself, theTree of Knowledge, and to some extent, the Serpent, all of which do not compareto the ideal nature of GodFurthermore, Milton makes his views on idolatry moreexplicit with the creation of Pandemonium and the exemplary allusion toSolomon’s temple. In the beginning of Paradise Lost, as well as throughout thepoem, there are several references to the rise and eventual fall of Solomon'stemple. Critics elucidate that «Solomon’s temple provides an explicitdemonstration of how an artifact moves from its genesis in devotional practiceto an idolatrous end.»[21] This example, out of the many presented,conveys Milton’s views on the dangers of idolatry distinctly. Even if onebuilds a structure in the name of God, even the best of intentions can becomeimmoral. In addition, critics have drawn parallels between both Pandemonium andSaint Peter's Basilica,[citation needed] and the Pantheon. The majority ofthese similarities revolve around a structural likeness, but as Lyle explains,they play a greater role. By linking Saint Peter’s Basilica and the Pantheon toPandemonium—an ideally false structure, the two famous buildings take on afalse meaning.[22] This comparison best represents Milton's Protestant views,as it rejects both the purely Catholic perspective and the Pagan perspective.In addition to rejecting Catholicism, Milton revolted against the idea of amonarch ruling by divine right. He saw the practice as idolatrous. BarbaraLewalski concludes that the theme of idolatry in Paradise Lost «is anexaggerated version of the idolatry Milton had long associated with the Stuartideology of divine kingship».[23] In the opinion of Milton, any object, humanor non-human, that receives special attention befitting of God, is consideredidolatrous.

6. Daniel Defoewas an English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for hisnovel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliestproponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and isamong the founders of the English novel.[2] A prolific and versatile writer, hewrote more than 500 books, pamphlets and journals on various topics (includingpolitics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He wasalso a pioneer of economic journalism. The extent and particulars of Defoe'swriting in the period from the Tory fall in 1714 to the publication of RobinsonCrusoe in 1719 is widely contested. Defoe comments on the tendency to attributetracts of uncertain authorship to him in his apologia Appeal to Honour andJustice (1715), a defence of his part in Harley's Tory ministry (1710–14).Other works that are thought to anticipate his novelistic career include: TheFamily Instructor (1715), an immensely successful conduct manual on religiousduty; Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsr. Mesnager (1717), in which heimpersonates Nicolas Mesnager, the French plenipotentiary who negotiated theTreaty of Utrecht (1713) and A Continuation of the Letters Writ by a TurkishSpy (1718), a satire on European politics and religion, professedly written bya Muslim in Paris.From 1719 to 1724, Defoe published the novels for which he isfamous (see below). In the final decade of his life, he also wrote conductmanuals, including Religious Courtship (1722), The Complete English Tradesman(1726) and The New Family Instructor (1727). He published a number of booksdecrying the breakdown of the social order, such as The Great Law ofSubordination Considered (1724) and Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business(1725) and works on the supernatural, like The Political History of the Devil(1726), A System of Magick (1726) and An Essay on the History and Reality ofApparitions (1727). His works on foreign travel and trade include A GeneralHistory of Discoveries and Improvements (1727) and Atlas Maritimus andCommercialis (1728). Perhaps his greatest achievement with the novels is themagisterial A tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–27), whichprovided a panoramic survey of British trade on the eve of the IndustrialRevolution.Daniel Defoe died on April 24, 1731, probably while in hiding fromhis creditors. He was interred in Bunhill Fields, London, where his grave canstill be visited.Defoe is known to have used at least 198 pen namesDefoe's novel Robinson Crusoe (1719) tells of aman's shipwreck on a deserted island and his subsequent adventures. The authormay have based part of his narrative on the story of the Scottish castawayAlexander Selkirk. He may have also been inspired by the Latin or Englishtranslation of a book by the Andalusian-Arab Muslim polymath Ibn Tufail, whowas known as «Abubacer» in Europe. The Latin edition of the book wasentitled Philosophus Autodidactus and it was an earlier novel that is also seton a deserted island. No fewer than 545 titles, ranging from satirical poems,political and religious pamphlets and volumes have been ascribed to Defoe. Thenovel Robinson Crusoe has been variously read as an allegory for thedevelopment of civilisation, as a manifesto of economic individualism and as anexpression of European colonial desires but it also shows the importance ofrepentance and illustrates the strength of Defoe's religious convictions. Earlycritics, such as Robert Louis Stevenson admired it saying that the footprintscene in Crusoe was one of the four greatest in English literature and mostunforgettable.[3] It has inspired a new genre, the RobinsonadeRobinson Crusoe marked the beginning of realisticfiction as a literary genre [14]. Its success led to many imitators andcastaway novels became quite popular in Europe in the 18th and early 19thcenturies. Most of these have fallen into obscurity but some became establishedincluding The Swiss Family Robinson. Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels,published seven years after Robinson Crusoe, may be read as a systematicrebuttal of Defoe's optimistic account of human capability. In The UnthinkableSwift: The Spontaneous Philosophy of a Church of England Man Warren Montagargues that Swift was concerned to refute the notion that the individual precedessociety, as Defoe's novel seems to suggest. Swift regarded such thought as adangerous endorsement of Thomas Hobbes' radical political philosophy and forthis reason Gulliver repeatedly encounters established societies rather thandesolate islands. The captain who invites Gulliver to serve as a surgeon aboardhis ship on the disastrous third voyage is named Robinson.the true symbol of the British conquest is RobinsonCrusoe: «He is the true prototype of the British colonist. … The wholeAnglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconsciouscruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexualapathy, the calculating taciturnity.»In a sense Crusoe attempts toreplicate his society on the island. This is achieved through the use ofEuropean technology, agriculture and even a rudimentary political hierarchy.Several times in the novel Crusoe refers to himself as the 'king' of theisland, whilst the captain describes him as the 'governor' to the mutineers. Atthe very end of the novel the island is explicitly referred to as a 'colony'.The idealized master-servant relationship Defoe depicts between Crusoe andFriday can also be seen in terms of cultural imperialism. Crusoe represents the'enlightened' European whilst Friday is the 'savage' who can only be redeemedfrom his barbarous way of life through assimilation into Crusoe's culture.Nonetheless Defoe also takes the opportunity to criticize the historic Spanishconquest of South America. According to J.P. Hunter, Robinson is not a hero butan everyman. He begins as a wanderer, aimless on a sea he does not understandand ends as a pilgrim, crossing a final mountain to enter the promised land.The book tells the story of how Robinson becomes closer to God, not throughlistening to sermons in a church but through spending time alone amongst naturewith only a Bible to read.Robinson Crusoe is filled with religious aspects.Defoe was a Puritan moralist and normally worked in the guide tradition,writing books on how to be a good Puritan Christian, such as The New FamilyInstructor (1727) and Religious Courtship (1722). While Robinson Crusoe is farmore than a guide, it shares many of the themes and theological and moralpoints of view. «Crusoe» may have been taken from Timothy Cruso, aclassmate of Defoe's who had written guide books, including God the Guide ofYouth (1695), before dying at an early age — just eight years before Defoewrote Robinson Crusoe. Cruso would have been remembered by contemporaries andthe association with guide books is clear. It has even been suggested that Godthe Guide of Youth inspired Robinson Crusoe because of a number of passages inthat work that are closely tied to the novel though this is speculative.TheBiblical story of Jonah is alluded to in the first part of the novel. LikeJonah, Crusoe neglects his 'duty' and is punished at sea.A leitmotif of thenovel is the Christian notion of Providence. Crusoe often feels guided by adivinely ordained fate, thus explaining his robust optimism in the face ofapparent hopelessness. His various fortunate intuitions are taken as evidenceof a benign spirit world. Defoe also foregrounds this theme by arranging highlysignificant events in the novel to occur on Crusoe's birthd.When confrontedwith the cannibals, Crusoe wrestles with the problem of cultural relativism.Despite his disgust, he feels unjustified in holding the natives morallyresponsible for a practice so deeply ingrained in their culture. Neverthelesshe retains his belief in an absolute standard of morality; he regardscannibalism as a 'national crime' and forbids Friday from practicing it. Modernreaders may also note that despite Crusoe's superior morality, he uncriticallyaccepts the institution of slavery. In classical, neoclassical and Austrianeconomics, Crusoe is regularly used to illustrate the theory of production andchoice in the absence of trade, money and prices.[11] Crusoe must allocateeffort between production and leisure and must choose between alternativeproduction possibilities to meet his needs. The arrival of Friday is then usedto illustrate the possibility of and gains from trade.The classical treatmentof the Crusoe economy has been discussed and criticised from a variety ofperspectives. JonathanSwift was an Anglo-Irish[1] satirist,essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories),poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.Gulliver's Travels, a large portion of which Swiftwrote at Woodbrook House in County Laois, was published in 1726. It is regardedas his masterpiece. As with his other writings, the Travels was published undera pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon and later a seacaptain. Some of the correspondence between printer Benj. Motte and Gulliver'salso-fictional cousin negotiating the book's publication has survived. Thoughit has often been mistakenly thought of and published in bowdlerized form as achildren's book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based onSwift's experience of his times. Gulliver's Travels is an anatomy of humannature, a sardonic looking-glass, often criticized for its apparentmisanthropy. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has adequatelycharacterized human nature and society. Each of the four books—recounting fourvoyages to mostly-fictional exotic lands—has a different theme, but all areattempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflectionon the shortcomings of Enlightenment thought.Broadly, the book has three themes:a satirical viewof the state of European government, and of petty differences betweenreligions. an inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt or whether theybecome corrupted. a restatement of the older «ancients versusmoderns»

7. the Enlightenment is the era in Westernphilosophy, intellectual, scientific and cultural life, centered upon the 18thcentury, in which reason was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy andauthority. he«Enlightenment» was not a single movement or school of thought, forthese philosophies were often mutually contradictory or divergent. TheEnlightenment was less a set of ideas than it was a set of values. At its corewas a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals,and a strong belief in rationality and science. Thus, there was still aconsiderable degree of similarity between competing philosophies.The Enlightenment is held to be the source ofcritical ideas, such as the centrality of freedom, democracy, and reason asprimary values of society. This view argues that the establishment of acontractual basis of rights would lead to the market mechanism and capitalism,the scientific method, religious tolerance, and the organization of states intoself-governing republics through democratic means. In this view, the tendencyof the philosophes in particular to apply rationality to every problem isconsidered the essential change. SamuelRichardson wasan 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his threeepistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the Historyof a Young Lady (1748) and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753).Richardson was an established printer and publisher for most of his life andprinted almost 500 different works, with journals and magazines.After Richardson started the work on 10 November1739, his wife and her friends became so interested in the story that hefinished it on 10 January 1740.[32] Pamela Andrews, the heroine of Pamela,represented «Richardson's insistence upon well-defined feminineroles» and was part of a common fear held during the 18th century thatwomen were «too bold».[33] In particular, her «zeal forhousewifery» was included as a proper role of women in society.[34]Although Pamela and the title heroine were popular and gave a proper model forhow women should act, they inspired «a storm of anti-Pamelas» (likeHenry Fielding's Shamela and Joseph Andrews) because the character«perfectly played her part»Henry Fielding asan English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour andsatirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones.Aside from hisliterary achievements, he has a significant place in the history oflaw-enforcement, having founded (with his half-brother John) what some havecalled London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners, using his authorityas a magistrate. Fieldingnever stopped writing political satire and satires of current arts and letters.His Tragedy of Tragedies of Tom Thumb (for which Hogarth designed thefrontispiece) was, for example, quite successful as a printed play. He alsocontributed a number of works to journals of the day.Almost by accident, in anger at the success ofRichardson's Pamela, Fielding took to writing novels in 1741 and his firstmajor success was Shamela, an anonymous parody of Samuel Richardson'smelodramatic novel. It is a satire that follows the model of the famous Torysatirists of the previous generation (Jonathan Swift and John Gay, inparticular). Shamelais written as a shocking revelation of the true events which took place in thelife of Pamela Andrews, the main heroine of Pamela. From Shamela we learn that,instead of being a kind, humble, and chaste servant-girl, Pamela (whose truename turns out to be Shamela) is in fact a wicked and lascivious creature,scheming to entrap her master, Squire Booby, into marriage.Samuel Johnson oftenreferred to as Dr Johnson, was a British author who made lasting contributionsto English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic,biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican andcommitted Tory, and has been described as «arguably the most distinguishedman of letters in English history»The Vanity of Human Wishes, was written with such«extraordinary speed» that Boswell claimed Johnson «might havebeen perpetually a poet».[97] The poem is an imitation of Juvenal's SatireX and claims that «the antidote to vain human wishes is non-vain spiritualwishes».[98] In particular, Johnson emphasises «the helplessvulnerability of the individual before the social context» and the«inevitable self-deception by which human beings are led astray».[99]The poem was critically celebrated but it failed to become popularn 1746, a group of publishers approached Johnsonabout creating an authoritative dictionary of the English language. JaneAusten was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, setamong the gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers inEnglish literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing herhistorical importance among scholars and critics.Austen wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel,usually described as her most ambitious and sophisticated early work.[46] It isunlike any of Austen's other works. Austen biographer Claire Tomalin describesthe heroine of the novella as a sexual predator who uses her intelligence and charmto manipulate, betray, and abuse her victims, whether lovers, friends orfamily. Tomalin writes: «Told in letters, it is as neatly plotted as aplay, and as cynical in tone as any of the most outrageous of the Restorationdramatists who may have provided some of her inspiration....It stands alone inAusten's work as a study of an adult woman whose intelligence and force ofcharacter are greater than those of anyone she encounters.»After finishing Lady Susan, Austen attempted herfirst full-length novel—Elinor and Marianne. Her sister Cassandra laterremembered that it was read to the family «before 1796» and was toldthrough a series of letters. Without surviving original manuscripts, there isno way to know how much of the original draft survived in the novel publishedin 1811 as Sense and Sensibility. afterfinishing revisions of Elinor and Marianne, Austen began writing a third novelwith the working title Susan—later Northanger Abbey—a satire on the popularGothic novel whileliving in Bath, Austen started but did not complete a new novel, The Watsons.The story centres on an invalid clergyman with little money and his fourunmarried daughters. Sutherland describes the novel as «a study in theharsh economic realities of dependent women's lives»During her time at Chawton, Jane Austen successfullypublished four novels, which were generally well-received. Through her brotherHenry, the publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility,[D]which appeared in October 1811. Reviews were favourable and the novel becamefashionable among opinion-makers;[74] the edition sold out by mid-1813.[E]Austen's earnings from Sense and Sensibility provided her with some financialand psychological independence.[75] Egerton then published Pride and Prejudice,a revision of First Impressions, in January 1813. He advertised the book widelyand it was an immediate success, garnering three favourable reviews and sellingwell. Sequels,prequels, and adaptations of almost every sort have been based on the novels ofJane Austen

8. Romanticism(or the Romantic Era) was a complex artistic, literary, and intellectualmovement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, andgained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution.[1] In part, it was arevolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age ofEnlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalisation ofnature.[2] It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, andliterature. Themovement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aestheticexperience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror andterror and awe—especially that which is experienced in confronting thesublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aestheticcategories. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble.In literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes inthe evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of «sensibility»with its emphasis on women and children, the heroic isolation of the artist ornarrator, and respect for a new, wilder, untrammeled and «pure»nature. Furthermore, several romantic authors, such as Edgar Allan Poe andNathaniel Hawthorne, based their writings on the supernatural/occult and humanpsychology. Romanticism also helped in the emergence of new ideas and in theprocess led to the emergence of positive voices that were beneficial for themarginalized sections of the society. Romanticismin British literature developed in a different form slightly later, mostlyassociated with the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whoseco-authored book Lyrical Ballads (1798) sought to reject Augustan poetry infavour of more direct speech derived from folk traditions. Both poets were alsoinvolved in utopian social thought in the wake of the French Revolution. Thepoet and painter William Blake is the most extreme example of the Romanticsensibility in Britain, epitomised by his claim «I must create a system orbe enslaved by another man's.» Blake's artistic work is also stronglyinfluenced by Medieval illuminated books. The painters J. M. W. Turner and JohnConstable are also generally associated with Romanticism. Lord Byron, PercyBysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats constitute another phase ofRomanticism in Britain. WilliamBlake was an English poet, painter, andprintmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered aseminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of theRomantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form «what is inproportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the Englishlanguage».His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic toproclaim him «far and away the greatest artist Britain has everproduced». His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part ofboth the Romantic movement and «Pre-Romantic»,for its largeappearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Churchof England, Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French andAmerican revolutions. aforerunner of the subsequent 19th century «free love» movement, abroad reform tradition starting in the 1820s that held that marriage isslavery, and advocated for removal of all state restrictions on sexual activitysuch as homosexuality, prostitution, and even adultery, culminating in thebirth control movement of the early 20th century.His poetry suggests that external demands formarital fidelity reduce love to mere duty rather than authentic affection, anddecries jealousy and egotism as a motive for marriage laws. Poems such as«Why should I be bound to thee, O my lovely Myrtle-tree?» and«Earth's Answer» seem to advocate multiple sexual partners. His poem«London» speaks of «the Marriage-Hearse». Visions of theDaughters of Albion is widely (though not universally) read as a tribute tofree love since the relationship between Bromion and Oothoon is held togetheronly by laws and not by love. Blakeopposed the sophistry of theological thought that excuses pain, admits evil andapologises for injustice. He abhorred self-denial, which he associated withreligious repression and particularly sexual repression: «Prudence is arich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. / He who desires but acts not, breedspestilence.» Blake'swork was neglected for a generation after his death and was almostforgotten.Блейк питал отвращение к рабству и верил в половое и расовоеравенство. Несколько его стихов и картин выражают идею всеобщейгуманности: «все люди похожи (хоть они и бесконечно разные)». В одномстихотворении, написанном от лица чёрного мальчика, белые и чёрные телаописываются как тенистые рощи и облака, которые существуют только до тех пор,пока не растают, «чтобы озариться лучами любви».Robert Burns ,Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bardof Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard, was a Scottish poet and alyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and iscelebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in theScots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a «light»Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote instandard English, and in these pieces, his political or civil commentary isoften at its most blunt.He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement,and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders ofboth liberalism and socialism. A cultural icon in Scotland and among theScottish Diaspora around the world, celebration of his life and work becamealmost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and hisinfluence has long been strong on Scottish literature. As well as makingoriginal compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland,often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) Auld Lang Syne is often sungat Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and Scots Wha Hae served for a longtime as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs ofBurns that remain well-known across the world today include A Red, Red Rose; AMan's A Man for A' That; To a Louse; To a Mouse; The Battle of Sherramuir; Tamo' Shanter, and Ae Fond Kiss. Hiscasual love affairs did not endear him to the elders of the local kirk andcreated for him a reputation for dissoluteness amongst his neighbours. InEdinburgh, he was received as an equal by the city's brilliant men of lettersand was a guest at aristocratic gatherings, where he bore himself withunaffected dignity. Hisliterature success had started from thefirst Edinburgh edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect. As hishealth began to give way, Burns began to age prematurely and fell into fits ofdespondency. The habits of intemperance are said to have aggravated hislong-standing possible rheumatic heart condition. Robert Burns died in Dumfriesat the age of 37.

9. The Lake Poets area group of English poets who all lived in the Lake District of England at theturn of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single«school» of thought or literary practice then known .They are considered part of the Romantic Movement.The three main figures of what has become known as the Lakes School are WilliamWordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey. They were associatedwith several other poets and writers, including Dorothy Wordsworth, CharlesLloyd, Hartley Coleridge, John Wilson, and Thomas De Quincey.William Wordsworthwas a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped tolaunch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publicationLyrical Ballads. Wordsworth'smagnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographicalpoem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It wasposthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as thepoem «to Coleridge.» Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843until his death in 1850. Inhis «Preface to Lyrical Ballads», which is called the«manifesto» of English Romantic criticism, Wordsworth calls his poems«experimental.» Wordsworth first published poetry is the collectionsAn Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. He received a legacy of £900from Raisley Calvert so that he could pursue writing poetry. He met SamuelTaylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets quickly developed a closefriendship. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved to Alfoxton House,Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey.Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy) producedLyrical Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement. Thevolume gave neither Wordsworth's nor Coleridge's name as author. One ofWordsworth's most famous poems, «Tintern Abbey», was published in thework, along with Coleridge's «The Rime of the Ancient Mariner». ThePreface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literarytheory. In it, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new typeof poetry, one based on the «real language of men» and which avoidsthe poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry. Here, Wordsworth giveshis famous definition of poetry as «the spontaneous overflow of powerfulfeelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.»Wordsworth had for years been making plans to writea long philosophical poem in three parts, which he intended to call TheRecluse. He had in 1798–99 started an autobiographical poem, which he nevernamed but called the «poem to Coleridge», which would serve as anappendix to The Recluse. In 1804, he began expanding this autobiographicalwork, having decided to make it a prologue rather than an appendix to thelarger work he planned. By 1805, he had completed it, but refused to publishsuch a personal work until he had completed the whole of The Recluse.His Poems in Two Volumes were published, including«Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of EarlyChildhood». Up to this point Wordsworth was known publicly only forLyrical Ballads, and he hoped this collection would cement his reputation. Itsreception was lukewarm, however. For a time (starting in 1810), Wordsworth andColeridge were estranged over the latter's opium addiction. he published TheExcursion as the second part of the three-part The Recluse. He had notcompleted the first and third parts, and never would. He did, however, write apoetic Prospectus to «The Recluse» in which he lays out the structureand intent of the poem. The Prospectus contains some of Wordsworth's mostfamous lines on the relation between the human mind and nature. SamuelTaylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic andphilosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of theRomantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probablybest known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, aswell as for his major prose work Biographia Literaria. He coined many familiarwords and phrases, including the celebrated suspension of disbelief. He was amajor influence, via Emerson, on American transcendentalism.Throughout his adult life, Coleridge suffered fromcrippling bouts of anxiety and depression; it has been speculated that hesuffered from bipolar disorder, a mental disorder which was unknown during hislife. Coleridge chose to treat these episodes with opium, becoming an addict inthe process. This addiction would afftect him in the future. Despite notenjoying the name recognition or popular acclaim that Wordsworth or Shelleyhave had, Coleridge is one of the most important figures in English poetry. Hispoems directly and deeply influenced all the major poets of the age. He wasknown by his contemporaries as a meticulous craftsman who was more rigorous inhis careful reworking of his poems than any other poet, and Southey andWordsworth were dependent on his professional advice. His influence onWordsworth is particularly important because many critics have creditedColeridge with the very idea of «Conversational Poetry». The idea ofutilizing common, everyday language to express profound poetic images and ideasfor which Wordsworth became so famous may have originated almost entirely inColeridge’s mind. It is difficult to imagine Wordsworth’s great poems, TheExcursion or The Prelude, ever having been written without the direct influenceof Coleridge’s originality. As important as Coleridge was to poetry as a poet,he was equally important to poetry as a critic. Coleridge's philosophy ofpoetry, which he developed over many years, has been deeply influential in thefield of literary criticism. Coleridgeis probably best known for his long poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner andChristabel. Even those who have never read the Rime have come under itsinfluence: its words have given the English language the metaphor of analbatross around one's neck, the quotation of «water, water everywhere,nor any drop to drink» (almost always rendered as «but not a drop todrink»), and the phrase «a sadder and a wiser man» (again,usually rendered as «sadder but wiser man»). Christabel is known forits musical rhythm, language, and its Gothic tale. Kubla Khan, or, A Vision ina Dream, A Fragment, although shorter, is also widely known. Both Kubla Khanand Christabel have an additional «romantic» aura because they werenever finished. TheEolian Harp (1795) Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement (1795) ThisLime-Tree Bower my Prison (1797) Frost at Midnight (1798)         Fears inSolitude (1798) The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem (1798) Dejection: An Ode(1802) To William Wordsworth (1807)The eight of Coleridge's poems listed aboveare now often discussed as a group entitled «Conversation poems».Description of Conversation poems: «The speaker begins with a descriptionof the landscape; an aspect or change of aspect in the landscape evokes avaried by integral process of memory, thought, anticipation, and feeling whichremains closely intervolved with the outer scene. In the course of thismeditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss,comes to a moral decision, or resolves an emotional problem. Often the poemrounds itself to end where it began, at the outer scene, but with an alteredmood and deepened understanding which is the result of the interveningmeditation.»The term itself was coined in 1928 by George McLean Harper,who borrowed the subtitle of The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem (1798) todescribe the seven other poems as well.Coleridge's The Eolian Harp and The Nightingalemaintain a middle register of speech, employing an idiomatic language that iscapable of being construed as un-symbolic and un-musical: language that letsitself be taken as 'merely talk' rather than rapturous 'song'."In addition to his poetry, Coleridge also wroteinfluential pieces of literary criticism including Biographia Literaria, acollection of his thoughts and opinions on literature which he published in1817. The work delivered both biographical explanations of the author's life aswell as his impressions on literature. The collection also contained ananalysis of a broad range of philosophical principles of literature rangingfrom Aristotle to Immanuel Kant and Schelling and applied them to the poetry ofpeers such as William Wordsworth. Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poemsis a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge,first published in 1798 (see 1798 in poetry) and generally considered to havemarked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. Theimmediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark,changing the course of English literature and poetry.Most of thepoems in the 1798 edition were written by Wordsworth, with Coleridgecontributing only four poems to the collection, including one of his mostfamous works, «The Rime of the Ancient Mariner». (Additionally, thoughonly the two writers are credited for the works, William's sister DorothyWordsworth's diary which held powerful descriptions of everyday surroundingsinfluenced William's poetry immensely). A second edition was published in 1800,in which Wordsworth included additional poems and a preface detailing thepair's avowed poetical principles. Another edition was published in 1802,Wordsworth added an appendix titled Poetic Diction in which he expanded theideas set forth in the preface. Wordsworthand Coleridge set out to overturn what they considered the priggish, learnedand highly sculpted forms of 18th century English poetry and bring poetrywithin the reach of the average person by writing the verses using normal,everyday language. They place an emphasis on the vitality of the living voicethat the poor use to express their reality. Using this language also helpsassert the universality of human emotions. Even the title of the collectionrecalls rustic forms of art — the word «lyrical» links the poems withthe ancient rustic bards and lends an air of spontaneity, while«ballads» are an oral mode of storytelling used by the commonpeople.In his famous «Preface» (1800, revised 1802) Wordsworthexplained his poetical concept --The majority of the following poems are tobe considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view toascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classesof society is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure.--If the experimentwith vernacular language was not enough of a departure from the norm, the focuson simple, uneducated country people as the subject of poetry was a signalshift to modern literature. One of the main themes of «LyricalBallads» is the return to the original state of nature, in which peopleled a purer and more innocent existence. Wordsworth subscribed to Rousseau'sbelief that humanity was essentially good but was corrupted by the influence ofsociety. This may be linked with the sentiments spreading through Europe justprior to the French Revolution.Although the lyrical ballads is a collaborativework, only four of the poems in it are by Coleridge. Coleridge devoted much ofhis time to crafting 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' Many of Coleridge'spoems were unpopular with the audience (and with Wordsworth) due to theirmacabre or supernatural nature.

10. George Gordon Byronwas a British poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron'sbest-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted,and So, we'll go no more a roving, in addition to the narrative poems ChildeHarold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. He is regarded as one of the greatest Britishpoets and remains widely read and influential.Byron's notability rests not onlyon his writings but also on his life, which featured aristocratic excesses,huge debts, numerous love affairs, and self-imposed exile. He was famouslydescribed as «mad, bad and dangerous to know».He travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire inthe Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero.Byron wrote prolifically.Although Byron falls chronologically into the periodmost commonly associated with Romantic poetry, much of his work looks back tothe satiric tradition. Byron's magnum opus, Don Juan, a poem spanning 17cantos, ranks as one of the most important long poems published in England sinceJohn Milton's Paradise. The masterpiece, often called the epic of its time, hasroots deep in literary tradition and, although regarded by early Victorians assomewhat shocking, equally involves itself with its own contemporary world atall levels — social, political, literary and ideological.

Byronpublished the first two cantos anonymously in 1819 after disputes with hisregular publisher over the shocking nature of the poetry; by this time, he hadbeen a famous poet for seven years, and when he self-published the beginningcantos, they were well received in some quarters. The figure of the Byronichero pervades much of his work, and Byron himself is considered to epitomisemany of the characteristics of this literary figure. Scholars have traced theliterary history of the Byronic hero from John Milton, and many authors andartists of the Romantic movement show Byron's influence during the 19th centuryand beyond, including Charlotte and Emily Brontë. The Byronic heropresents an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include[citationneeded]: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and socialinstitutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although they possessboth); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile;an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and,ultimately, a self-destructive manner. Percy Bysshe Shelley wasan English poet of the early nineteenth century. He is widely thought of as oneof most important poets of the Romantic movement in English literature. Some ofhis poems, like Ozymandias and Ode to the West Wind, are among the most famousin English.Shelley was the son of a member of Parliament. He attended theUniversity of Oxford, for only one year; he was expelled for being an atheist.In his own time Shelley was very unpopular for his political and religiousviews and for his personal conduct. He married young, but left his wife to runaway with Mary Godwin. After Shelley's first wife committed suicide, Shelleymarried Mary Godwin; she later became famous as Mary Shelley, the author of thenovel Frankenstein.Shelley left England and spent much of his life travellingin Europe, especially in Italy. He became a close friend of the poet LordByron, who also left England and travelled in Europe because of controversy athome. Shelley continued to write poetry throughout this time; he wrote severalmajor works, like the verse drama The Cenci and long poems like Alastor andAdonais, as well as many shorter poems.About a month before his 30th birthday,Shelley drowned in a boating accident off the coast of Italy. He was one of atrio of important English Romantic poets of the same generation who died young;the other two were Lord Byron and John Keats. was an English poetranked as one of the five most important poets of the Romantic movement inEnglish literature; the other four are William Wordsworth, Samuel TaylorColeridge, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Though Keats was the youngestof these poets, he also died before the others: he suffered from tuberculosisand died in Rome at the age of 25.Keats was the son of an inn-keeper who diedwhen Keats was nine years old; and his mother died of tuberculosis in 1810. Theyoung Keats began studying to be a surgeon, though his interest in literaturegrew stronger than his interest in medicine. He became a friend and follower ofthe poet and editor James Henry Leigh Hunt, and made his first attempts towrite his own poetry. Keats's active writing life lasted only about six years,from the spring of 1814 through 1819.His short life meant that he wrote lessthan many other poets. His longest poems, Endymion and Hyperion, tell storiesfrom ancient Greek mythology. Many of his shorter poems are among the bestknown in English literature, including «La Belle Dame Sans Merci» andhis Sonnets and Odes.Keats was an active letter-writer throughout his life,like many people of his time. Hundreds of his letters to friends and relativeshave survived, and Keats is often called one of the great letter writers in theEnglish language.

11. Крити́ческий реали́зм— художественный метод и литературное направление, сложившееся в XIXвеке. Главная его особенность — изображение человеческого характера ворганической связи с социальными обстоятельствами, наряду с глубоким социальныманализом внутреннего мира человека. CharlesDickens — was the most popular Englishnovelist of the Victorian era and he remains popular, responsible for some ofEnglish literature's most iconic characters.Many of his novels, with their recurrent concern forsocial reform, first appeared in magazines in serialised form, a popular formatat the time. Unlike other authors who completed entire novels beforeserialisation, Dickens often created the episodes as they were beingserialized. The practice lent his stories a particular rhythm, punctuated bycliffhangers to keep the public looking forward to the next instalment.The continuing popularity of his novels and shortstories is such that they have never gone out of print. His work has beenpraised for its mastery of prose and unique personalities, though it wascriticized by Virginia Woolf for sentimentality and implausibility.He worked in a blacking factory there while hisfather went to prison for debt. Dickens's hard times in this blackening factoryserved as the base of ideas for many of his novels. Many like Oliver Twist soonbecame famous. Charles did not like working and wished to stop working afterhis father was released but he was forced to continue working. Charles thenfinished his schooling, and got a job as an office boy for an attorney. Afterfinding that job dull, he taught himself shorthand and became a journalist thatreported on the government. His first book was Sketches by Boz in 1836, a collectionof the short pieces he had been writing for the Monthly Magazine and theEvening Chronicle. This was followed by the The Posthumous Papers of thePickwick Club in 1837. Both these books became popular as soon as they wereprinted. AngelaBurdett Coutts, heir to the Coutts banking fortune, approached Dickens aboutsetting up a home for the redemption of «fallen» women. Couttsenvisioned a home that would differ from existing institutions, which offered aharsh and punishing regimen for these women, and instead provide an environmentwhere they could learn to read and write and become proficient in domestichousehold chores so as to re-integrate them into society. After initiallyresisting, Dickens eventually founded the home, named Urania Cottage, in theLime Grove section of Shepherds Bush. He became involved in many aspects of itsday-to-day running, setting the house rules, reviewing the accounts andinterviewing prospective residents, some of whom became characters in hisbooks. Dickens loved the style of 18th century Gothic romance, although it hadalready become a target for parody. One «character» vividly drawnthroughout his novels is London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirtsof the city to the lower reaches of the Thames, all aspects of the capital aredescribed over the course of his body of work. His writing style is florid andpoetic, with a strong comic touch. His satires of British aristocraticsnobbery—he calls one character the «Noble Refrigerator»—are oftenpopular. Comparing orphans to stocks and shares, people to tug boats, ordinner-party guests to furniture are just some of Dickens's acclaimed flightsof fancy. Many of his characters' names provide the reader with a hint as tothe roles played in advancing the storyline, such as Mr. Murdstone in the novelDavid Copperfield, which is clearly a combination of «murder» andstony coldness. His literary style is also a mixture of fantasy and realism.Dickens is famed for his depiction of the hardships of the working class, his intricateplots, and his sense of humour. But he is perhaps most famed for the charactershe created. His novels were heralded early in his career for their ability tocapture the everyday man and thus create characters to whom readers couldrelate. Dickensian characters—especially their typically whimsical names—areamong the most memorable in English literature( Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim,Pip), All authors might be said to incorporate autobiographical elements intheir fiction, but with Dickens this is very noticeable, even though he tookpains to mask what he considered his shameful, lowly past. Dickens's novelswere, among other things, works of social commentary. He was a fierce critic ofthe poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. Dickens's secondnovel, Oliver Twist (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty andcrime and was responsible for the clearing of the actual London slum, Jacob'sIsland, that was the basis of the story. In addition, with the character of thetragic prostitute, Nancy, Dickens «humanised» such women for thereading public; women who were regarded as «unfortunates», inherentlyimmoral casualties of the Victorian class/economic system.Dickens is often described as using 'idealised'characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his caricatures andthe ugly social truths he reveals. Many of his novels are concerned with socialrealism, focusing on mechanisms of social control that direct people's lives(for instance, factory networks in Hard Times and hypocritical exclusionaryclass codes. William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelistof the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly VanityFair, a panoramic portrait of English society.

Thackeraybegan as a satirist and parodist,writing papers with a sneaking fondness forroguish upstarts like Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Barry Lyndon in The Luck ofBarry Lyndon and Catherine in Catherine. In his earliest works, writing undersuch pseudonyms as Charles James Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh andGeorge Savage Fitz-Boodle, he tended towards the savage in his attacks on highsociety, military prowess, the institution of marriage and hypocrisy. Hiswriting career really began with a series of satirical sketches now usuallyknown as The Yellowplush Papers, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine beginningin 1837. These were adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2009, with Adam Buxton playingCharles Yellowplush.Between May 1839 and February 1840, Fraser's published thework sometimes considered Thackeray's first novel, Catherine, originallyintended as a satire of the Newgate school of crime fiction but ending up moreas a rollicking picaresque tale in its own right.In The Luck of Barry Lyndon, anovel serialized in Fraser's in 1844, Thackeray explored the situation of anoutsider trying to achieve status in high society, a theme he developed muchmore successfully in Vanity Fair with the character of Becky Sharp, theartist's daughter who rises nearly to the heights by manipulating the othercharacters.He is best known now for Vanity Fair, with its deft skewerings ofhuman foibles and its roguishly attractive heroine. His large novels from theperiod after this, once described unflatteringly by Henry James as examples of«loose baggy monsters», have faded from view, perhaps because theyreflect a mellowing in the author, who became so successful with his satires onsociety that he seemed to lose his zest for attacking it.The later worksinclude Pendennis, a sort of bildungsroman depicting the coming of age ofArthur Pendennis, a kind of alter ego of Thackeray's who also features as thenarrator of two later novels: The Newcomes and The Adventures of Philip. TheNewcomes is noteworthy for its critical portrayal of the «marriage market»,while Philip is noteworthy for its semi-autobiographical look back atThackeray's early life, in which the author partially regains some of his earlysatirical zest.Also notable among the later novels is The History of HenryEsmond, in which Thackeray tried to write a novel in the style of theeighteenth century. In fact, the eighteenth century held a great appeal forThackeray. Not only Esmond but also Barry Lyndon and Catherine are set then, asis the sequel to Esmond, The Virginians, which takes place in America andincludes George Washington as a character who nearly kills one of theprotagonists in a duel.

12. Literary realism mostoften refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-centuryFrench literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-centuryauthors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life andsociety «as they were.» In the spirit of general «realism,»Realist authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities andexperiences, instead of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation.In literature, Romanticism foundrecurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of«sensibility» with its emphasis on women and children, the heroicisolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for a new, wilder, untrammeledand «pure» nature.Charlotte Brontë -an English novelist and poet, the eldest of thethree Brontë sisters whose novels are English literature standards. Shewrote Jane Eyre under the pen name Currer Bell.Charlotte was sent with three of her sisters, Emily,Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School (which she would describeas Lowood School in Jane Eyre). Its poor conditions, Charlotte maintained,permanently affected her health and physical development and hastened thedeaths of her two elder sisters, Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815),who died of tuberculosis in June 1825 soon after their father removed them fromthe school on 1 June. Perhaps, she wasn’t very beautiful, and this makes thinkof parallels with Jane Eyre, Sheheld high moral principles, and, despite her shyness in company, she was alwaysprepared to argue her beliefs. Else with the survived children in her childhoodshe wrote about the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of their imaginarykingdoms. Dueto the enormous success of Jane Eyre, she was persuaded by her publisher tovisit London occasionally, where she become friends with William MakepeaceThackeray. Her book had sparked a movement in regards to feminism inliterature. The main character, Jane Eyre, in her novel Jane Eyre, was aparallel to herself, a woman who was strong.Jane Eyre is a love story. It tells about a youngwoman called Jane Eyre who was an orphan and goes to teach a girl named AdeleVarens in a far-away house. The master of the house is Mr. Rochester. Jane andMr. Rochester fall in love, but Jane is horrified when she finds out Mr. Rochesteris already married to a crazy woman. She leaves the house, believing thatmarrying him would now be the same as adultery and that she would be hismistress, not his wife. When she goes away, she becomes sick and almost dies.Three people, Diana, Mary, and St. John Rivers, find her and let her live withthem. There, she becomes a teacher and finds out that they are her cousins. Sheis very happy until St. John wants her to marry him and be a missionary withhim. She knows that he does not really love her and thinks she is simplyuseful, so she says no. However, he continues to ask her, and she is finallyalmost persuaded that it is her duty to marry him when she hears Mr. Rochestercrying, «Jane! Jane!» She feels that something has happened to him,and quickly goes back to see him. His crazy wife had put his house on fire anddied in it. Mr. Rochester, because of the fire, had become blind and wounded.Jane, now that his wife is dead, is happy to marry him, and they get marriedand have a son. Emily Brontë — English author and poet. Hermost famous book is Wuthering Heights. Itis the only novel by Emily Brontë. It was first published in 1847 underthe pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by hersister Charlotte. The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on themoors on which the story. The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassingand passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw,and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.It’s considered to be more original than Jane Eyre.

13. Poetry in a sense settled down from theupheavals of the romantic era and much of the work of the time is seen as abridge between this earlier era and the modernist poetry of the next century.Comic verse abounded in the Victorian era. Magazines teemed withhumorous invention and were aimed at a well-educated readership. The mostfamous collection of Victorian comic verse is the Bab Ballads. The husband andwife poetry team of the Brownings conducted their love affair through verse andproduced many tender and passionate poems. Some poets drew inspiration fromverse forms of Old English poetry such as Beowulf. The reclaiming of the pastwas a major part of Victorian literature with an interest in both classicalliterature but also the medieval literature of England. The Victorians lovedthe heroic, chivalrous stories of knights of old and they hoped to regain someof that noble, courtly behaviour and impress it upon the people both at homeand in the wider empire. In drama, farces, musical burlesques, extravaganzasand comic operas competed with Shakespeare productions and serious drama. AfterW. S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde became the leading poet and dramatist of the lateVictorian period. Wilde's plays, in particular, stand apart from the many nowforgotten plays of Victorian times and have a much closer relationship to thoseof the Edwardian dramatists such as George Bernard Shaw, many of whose mostimportant works were written in the 20th century. Wilde's 1895 comicmasterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, was the greatest of the plays inwhich he held an ironic mirror to the aristocracy while displaying virtuosicmastery of wit and paradoxical wisdom. It has remained extremely popular. TheVictorians are sometimes credited with 'inventing childhood', partly via theirefforts to stop child labour and the introduction of compulsory education. Aschildren began to be able to read, literature for youngpeople became a growth industry, with not only established writers producingworks for children (such as Dickens' A Child's History of England) but also anew group of dedicated children's authors. Writers like Lewis Carroll wrotemainly for children, although they had an adult following. Other genres includenonsense verse, poetry which required a child-like interest (e.g. Edward Lyr).School stories flourished: Kipling's Stalky & Co, Mawgly. LewisCarroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, British writer,logician (maths expert), Anglican clergyman, and photographer. He is mostfamous for his story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which he told to a youngfriend, Alice Liddel, when he took the girl and two of her sisters on a boattrip. Alice enjoyed the story and asked Dodgson to write it down. Carroll thenwrote a second story about Alice called Through the Looking Glass. Both storiesare still popular with people all over the world. Dodgson's friendships withyoung girls and psychological readings of his work – especially his photographsof nude or semi-nude girls – have all led to speculation that he was apaedophile. This possibility has underpinned numerous modern interpretations ofhis life and work. Cohen and other biographers argue that Dodgson may havewanted to marry the 11-year-old Alice Liddell, and that this was the cause ofthe unexplained «break» with the family in June 1863. But there hasnever been significant evidence to support the idea, and the 1996 discovery ofthe «cut pages in diary document» (see above) seems to make it highlyprobable that the 1863 «break» had nothing to do with Alice, but wasperhaps connected with rumours involving her older sister Lorina, or possiblytheir governess. Edward Lear -was an English artist, illustrator, author, andpoet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose,and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised. Lear suffered fromhealth problems. From the age of six he suffered frequent grand mal epilepticseizures, and bronchitis, asthma, and in later life, partial blindness. Learexperienced his first seizure at a fair near Highgate with his father. Theevent scared and embarrassed him. Lear felt lifelong guilt and shame for hisepileptic condition. Lear published A Book of Nonsense, a volume of limericksthat went through three editions and helped popularize the form. In The Historyof the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple was published, and in his mostfamous piece of nonsense, The Owl and the Pussycat, which he wrote for thechildren of his patron Edward Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby. Many other worksfollowed. Lear's nonsense books were quite popular during his lifetime, but arumour circulated that «Edward Lear» was merely a pseudonym, and thebooks' true author was the man to whom Lear had dedicated the works, his patronthe Earl of Derby. Supporters of this rumour offered as evidence the facts thatboth men were named Edward, and that «Lear» is an anagram of«Earl». Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility ofverbal invention and a poet's delight in the sounds of words, both real andimaginary. A stuffed rhinoceros becomes a «diaphanous doorscraper». A«blue Boss-Woss» plunges into «a perpendicular, spicular,orbicular, quadrangular, circular depth of soft mud». His heroes areQuangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. Though famous for his neologisms, Learemployed a number of other devices in his works in order to defy readerexpectations. For example, «Cold Are The Crabs», adheres to thesonnet tradition until the dramatically foreshortened last line. Limericks areinvariably typeset as four plus one lines today, but Lear's limericks werepublished in a variety of formats. It appears that Lear wrote them inmanuscript in as many lines as there was room for beneath the picture. In thefirst three editions most are typeset as, respectively, two, five, and threelines.

14. Victorian Era is the age ofthousand literature streams. In the Victorian or modern age the divineright of kings is as obsolete as a suit of armor; the privileges of royalty andnobility are either curbed or abolished, and ordinary men by theirrepresentatives in the House of Commons are the real rulers of England. With achange in government comes a corresponding change in literature. In former agesliterature was almost as exclusive as politics in the hands of the few and supportedby princely patrons, reflecting the taste of the upper classes. Now the massesof men begin to be educated, begin to think for themselves, and a host ofperiodicals appear in answer to their demand for reading matter. Poets,novelists, essayists, historians,--all serious writers feel the inspiration ofa great audience, and their works have a thousand readers where formerly theyhad but one. In a word, English government, society and literature have allbecome more democratic. This is the most significant feature of modernhistory.The second tendency may be summed up in the word «scientific.»At the basis of this tendency is man’s desire to know the truth, if possiblethe whole truth of life; and it sets no limits to the exploring spirit.Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), which laid the foundation for a generaltheory of evolution, is one of the most famous books of the age, and of theworld. Associated with Darwin were Wallace, Lyell, Huxley, Tyndall and manyothers, whose essays are, in their own way, quite as significant as the poemsof Tennyson or the novels of Dickens. It would be quite as erroneous to allegethat modern science began with these men as to assume that it began with theChinese or with Roger Bacon; the most that can be said truthfully is, that thescientific spirit which they reflected began to dominate our thought, to influenceeven our poetry and fiction, even as the voyages of Drake and Magellanfurnished a mighty and mysterious background for the play of human life on theElizabethan stage. A third tendency of the Victorian age in England isexpressed by the word «imperialism.» In earlier ages the work ofplanting English colonies had been well done; in the Victorian age thescattered colonies increased mightily in wealth and power, and were closelyfederated into a world-wide Empire of people speaking the same noble speech,following the same high ideals of justice and liberty. Thomas Hardy wasan English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to theNaturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romanticand Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with thesupernatural. He’sknown for his novels, such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles andFar from the Madding Crowd, which earned him a reputation as a great novelist.The bulk of his fictional works, initially published as serials in magazines,were set in the semi-fictional land of Wessex and explored tragic charactersstruggling against their passions and social circumstances. Hardy’s idea offate in life gave way to his philosophical struggle with God. Although Hardy’sfaith remained intact, the irony and struggles of life led him to question thetraditional Christian view of God. Hardy's first novel, The Poor Man and theLady, finished by 1867, failed to find a publisher and Hardy destroyed themanuscript so only parts of the novel remain. A Pair of Blue Eyes, a noveldrawing on Hardy's courtship of his first wife, was published under his ownname. The term «cliffhanger» is considered to have originated withthe serialized version of this story in which Henry Knight, one of theprotagonists, is left literally hanging off a cliff. Tess of the d'Urbervilles(1891) attractedcriticism for its sympathetic portrayal of a «fallen woman» and wasinitially refused publication. Its subtitle, A Pure Woman: FaithfullyPresented, was intended to raise the eyebrows of the Victorian middle-classes.Jude the Obscure, published in 1895, met with evenstronger negative outcries from the Victorian public for its frank treatment ofsex, and was often referred to as «Jude the Obscene». Hardy critiquescertain social constraints that hindered the lives of those living in the 19thcentury. Considered a Victorian Realist writer, Hardy examines the socialconstraints that are part of the Victorian status quo, suggesting these ruleshinder the lives of all involved and ultimately lead to unhappiness.Hardy’s stories take into consideration the eventsof life and their effects. Fate plays a significant role as the thematic basisfor many of his novels. Characters are constantly encountering crossroads, whichare symbolic of a point of opportunity and transition.Once things have been put into motion, they willplay out. Hardy's characters are in the grips of an overwhelming fate.Hardy divided his novels and collected short storiesinto three classes:1)Novels of Character and Environment2)Romances and Fantasies3)Novels of Ingenuity.

15. Oscar Wilde wasan Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete who, after writing in differentforms throughout the 1880s, became one of London's most popular playwrights inthe early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the tragedyof his imprisonment, followed by his early death. Wilde's parents weresuccessful Dublin intellectuals and from an early age he was tutored at home,where he showed his intelligence, becoming fluent in French and German. he wasdeeply interested in the rising philosophy of aestheticism (led by two of histutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin) though he also profoundly explored RomanCatholicism and finally converted on his deathbed.As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his handat various literary activities; he published a book of poems, lectured Americaand Canada on the new «English Renaissance in Art» and then returnedto London to work prolifically as a journalist for four years. Known for hisbiting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde was one of thebest known personalities of his day. Wilde'stwo plays during the 1880s, Vera; or, The Nihilists and The Duchess of Padua,had not met with much success. He had continued his interest in the theatre andnow, after finding his voice in prose, his thoughts turned again to thedramatic form as the biblical iconography of Salome filled his head.it tells the story of Salome, the stepdaughter ofthe tetrarch Herod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but mother'sdelight, requests the head of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver platteras a reward for dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils. Wilde, who had first setout to irritate Victorian society with his dress and talking points finallyfound a way to critique society on its own terms. Lady Windermere's Fan wasfirst performed on 20 February 1892 at St James Theatre, packed with the creamof society. Theplay was enormously popular, touring the country for months, but largelythrashed by conservative critics. He wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray, and theplays Salomé, The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband, andLady Windermere's Fan. Wilde was bisexual. He was married, and had twochildren. Wilde's lover was the son of the Marquess of Queensbury, who wasknown for his outspoken atheism, brutish manner and creation of the modernrules of boxing. Queensberry, who feuded regularly with his son, confrontedWilde and Lord Alfred as to the nature of their relationship. He said: «IfI catch you and my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you»His downfall At the height of his fame and success Wilde sued his lover'sfather for libel. After a series of trials, Wilde was convicted of grossindecency with other men and sentenced to two years of hard labour in ReadingGoal (jail). In prison he wrote De Profundis, a long letter which discusses hisspiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to hisearlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately forFrance, never to return to the British Isles. There he wrote his last work, TheBallad of Reading Gaol, a long poem commemorating prison life. Living in aParis hotel, he was destitute, with little money and few friends. His lastmemorable words were: «My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.One of us has got to go». He died of cerebral meningitis at the age offorty-six. The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published book written byOscar Wilde. It was first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. ThePicture of Dorian Gray is about a young man named Dorian Gray who has aportrait painted of himself. The artist, Basil Hallward, thinks that DorianGray is very beautiful, and becomes obsessed with him. One day in Basil'sgarden, Dorian Gray meets a man named Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry Wottonmakes Dorian Gray believe that the only thing important in life is beauty.However, he realizes that as he grows older, he will become less beautiful. Hewishes that the portrait Basil painted would become old in his place. Dorianthen sells his soul so that he can be beautiful forever. Dorian's wish comestrue. However, every time he does something bad, mean, or selfish, his pictureages. For 18 years, Dorian does not age. He does many bad things, and his portraitbecomes more and more aged. However, one day he decides to stop doing badthings. He hopes that this will make his portrait become beautiful again, butit only makes it worse. Dorian thinks that only a full confession will make theportrait become beautiful again. However, he does not feel guilty for anythinghe has done. So Dorian picks up a knife and stabs the portrait.When hisservants hear a scream come from Dorian's room, they call the police. Thepolice find Dorian's body on the floor with a stab wound in his heart. His bodyhas become very aged. However, the portrait has returned to the way it was whenit was first painted.

16. Neo-romanticism emerged strongly in theperiod from about 1880 to about 1910, in Britain.Characteristic themes include longing for perfectlove, utopian landscapes, nature reclaiming ruins, romantic death, andhistory-in-landscape. Amore persuasive criticism is that neo-romanticism lacks an adequate conceptionof evil in the modern world.Neo-romanticism tended to shed somewhat theemphasis of Romanticism on 'the hero' and romantic nationalism. This wasparticularly so in the decades after both of the world wars. JosephRudyard Kipling was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelistchiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poemsof British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received theNobel Prize for Literature in 1907. Traveled a lot, In London, had severalstories accepted by various magazine editors. He also found a place to live forthe next two years, then he produced, in addition to the Jungle Books, theshort story collection The Day's Work, the novel Captains Courageous, and aprofusion of poetry, including the volume The Seven Seas. He enjoyed writingthe Jungle Books—both masterpieces of imaginative writing—and enjoyed toocorresponding with the many children who wrote to him about them. Two poems,«Recessional» (1897) and «The White Man's Burden» wereregarded by others as propaganda for brazenfaced imperialism and its attendantracial attitudes; still others saw irony in the poems and warnings of theperils of empire. A prolific writer—nothing about his work was easilylabelled—during his time in Torquay, he also wrote Stalky & Co., acollection of school whose juvenile protagonists displayed a know-it-all,cynical outlook on patriotism and authority. According to his family, Kiplingenjoyed reading aloud stories from Stalky & Co. to them, and often wentinto spasms of laughter over his own jokes. His children's stories remainpopular; and his Jungle Books have been made into several movies. The first wasmade by producer Alexander Korda, and other films have been produced by theWalt Disney Company. A number of his poems were set to music by Percy Grainger.A series of short films based on some of his stories was broadcast by the BBCin 1964. Kipling's work continues to be highly popular today. His poem«If—» was voted The Nation's Favourite Poem in a BBC 1995 opinionpoll. Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson — was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayistand travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, andthe Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.Stevenson made friends with two people who were tobe of great importance to him, Sidney Colvin and Fanny (Frances Jane) Sitwell.Sitwell was a woman of thirty four with a young son who was separated from herhusband. Stevenson'sfirst paid contribution is an essay entitled «Roads,» in ThePortfolio. All his energies were now spent in travel and writing. One of hisjourneys, a canoe voyage in Belgium and France with Sir Walter Simpson, afriend from the Speculative Society and frequent travel companion, was thebasis of his first real book, An Inland Voyage. Fanny Vandegrift Osbourneinspired him on essay, «On falling in love». For 7 years Stevensonsearched in vain for a place of residence suitable to his state of health.In spite of his ill health, he produced the bulk ofhis best-known work during these years: Treasure Island, his first widelypopular book; Kidnapped; Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the story whichestablished his wider reputation; The Black Arrow; and two volumes of verse, AChild's Garden of Verses and Underwoods.«The proudest moments of my life,» hewrote, «have been passed in the stern-sheets of a boat with that romanticgarment over my shoulders.» Stevensonpurchased four hundred acres (about 1.6 square kilometres) of land in Upolu,one of the Samoan islands. Stevensonwas loved by the Samoans and the engraving on his tombstone was translated to aSamoan song of grief.

17. Herbert George Wells wasan English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. Hewas also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels,history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books. Together withJules Verne, Wells has been referred to as «The Father of ScienceFiction». Wells was an outspoken socialist and sympathetic to pacifistviews, although he supported the First World War once it was under way, and hislater works became increasingly political and didactic. His middle-periodnovels (1900–1920) were less science-fictional; they covered lower-middle classlife. «I was never a great amorist», Wells wrote in Experiment inAutobiography (1934), «though I have loved several people very deeply.»Some of his books are interesting for their hits (trains and cars resulting inthe dispersion of population from cities to suburbs; moral restrictionsdeclining as men and women seek greater sexual freedom; the defeat of Germanmilitarism, and the existence of a European Union) and its misses (he did notexpect successful aircraft before 1950, and averred that «my imaginationrefuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocate its crew andfounder at sea»), radioactive decay. From quite early in his career, hesought a better way to organise society, and wrote a number of Utopian novels.The first of these was A Modern Utopia (1905), which shows a worldwide utopiawith «no imports but meteorites, and no exports at all»; twotravellers from our world fall into its alternate history. The others usuallybegin with the world rushing to catastrophe, until people realise a better wayof living: whether by mysterious gases from a comet causing people to behaverationally and abandoning a European war (In the Days of the Comet (1906)), ora world council of scientists taking over, as in The Shape of Things to Come(1933, which he later adapted for the 1936 Alexander Korda film, Things toCome). This depicted, all too accurately, the impending World War, with citiesbeing destroyed by aerial bombs. He also portrayed the rise of fascistdictators in The Autocracy of Mr Parham (1930) and The Holy Terror (1939),though in the former novel, the tale is revealed at the end to have been MrParham's dream vision. Wells contemplates the ideas of nature versus nurtureand questions humanity in books such as The Island of Doctor Moreau. Not allhis scientific romances ended in a happy Utopia, and in fact, Wells also wrotethe first dystopia novel, When the Sleeper Wakes (1899, rewritten as TheSleeper Awakes, 1910), which pictures a future society where the classes havebecome more and more separated, leading to a revolt of the masses against therulers. The Island of Doctor Moreau is even darker. The narrator, having beentrapped on an island of animals vivisected (unsuccessfully) into human beings,eventually returns to England; like Gulliver on his return from the Houyhnhnms,he finds himself unable to shake off the perceptions of his fellow humans asbarely civilised beasts, slowly reverting back to their animal natures. GeorgeBernard Shaw an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London Schoolof Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literarycriticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces ofjournalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays.Nearly all his writings deal sternly with prevailing social problems, but havea vein of comedy to make their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examinededucation, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.Hewas most angered by what he perceived as the exploitation of the working class,and most of his writings censure that abuse. An ardent socialist, Shaw wrotemany brochures and speeches for the Fabian Society. He became an accomplishedorator in the furtherance of its causes, which included gaining equal rightsfor men and women, alleviating abuses of the working class, rescinding privateownership of productive land, and promoting healthy lifestyles. WilliamMorris — was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialistassociated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and CraftsMovement. Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations ofancient and medieval texts throughout his life. Morris begun to take an activeinterest in politics, abandonedthe Liberal Party and advanced into socialist politics.his creative efforts sprang from his socialistpolitics. In March 1883 he gave an address at Manchester on «Art, Wealthand Riches»; in May he was elected upon the executive of the federation.In September he wrote the first of his «Chants for Socialists.» Aboutthe same time he shocked the authorities by pleading in University Hall for thewholesale support of socialism among the undergraduates at Oxford.Morris himself being perhaps the greatest Britishrepresentative of what has come to be called libertarian socialism. WilliamSomerset Maugham English playwright, novelist and short story writer.He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highestpaid author during the 1930s Maugham was miserable both at the vicarage and atschool. As a result, he developed a talent for making wounding remarks to thosewho displeased him. This ability is sometimes reflected in Maugham's literarycharacters. He recalled the literary value of what he saw as a medical student:«I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope lookedlike, fear and relief ...» OfHuman Bondage (1915) initially received adverse criticism both in England andAmerica, with the New York World describing the romantic obsession of the mainprotagonist Philip Carey as «the sentimental servitude of a poorfool».

18. The «Lost Generation»is a term used to refer to the generation, actually an age cohort, that came ofage during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who usedit as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, «The Sun AlsoRises.» Wilfred Edward Salter Owen(гомосек)was a Britishpoet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War. Hisshocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare washeavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and sat in stark contrast toboth the public perception of war at the time. He was killed in action at theBattle of the Sambre a week before the war ended. The telegram from the WarOffice announcing his death was delivered to his mother's home as her town'schurch bells were ringing in celebration of the Armistice when the war ended.However, Owen's outlook on the war was to be changed dramatically after twotraumatic experiences. Firstly, he was blown high into the air by a trenchmortar, landing in the remains of a fellow officer. Soon after, he becametrapped for days in an old German dugout. After these two events, Owen wasdiagnosed as suffering from shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospitalin Edinburgh for treatment. Hehad been writing poetry for some years before the war, himself dating hispoetic beginnings to a stay at Broxton by the Hill, when he was ten years old.The Romantic poets Keats and P.B. Shelley influenced much of Owen's earlywriting and poetry. Owen was to take both Sassoon's gritty realism and his ownromantic notions and create a poetic synthesis that was both potent andsympathetic, as summarised by his famous phrase 'the pity of war'. In this way,Owen's poetry is quite distinctive, and he is, by many, considered a greaterpoet than Sassoon. Nonetheless, Sassoon contributed to Owen's popularity by hisstrong promotion of his poetry, both before and after Owen's death, and hisediting was instrumental in the making of Owen as a poet. Owen was homosexual,and homoeroticism is a central element in much of Owen's poetry.The account of Owen's sexual development has beensomewhat obscured because his brother, Harold Owen, removed what he considereddiscreditable passages in Owen's letters and diaries after the death of theirmother. Owen also requested that his mother burn a sack of his personal papersin the event of his death, which she did.Robert Ranke Graves (блядун)wasan English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced morethan 140 works. Graves' poems — together with his translations and innovativeinterpretations of the Greek Myths, his memoir of his early life, including hisrole in the First World War, Good-bye to All That, and his historical study ofpoetic inspiration, The White Goddess — have never been out of print. He earnedhis living from writing, particularly popular historical novels such as I,Claudius; King Jesus; The Golden Fleece; and Count Belisarius. He also was aprominent translator of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek texts; his versionsof The Twelve Caesars and The Golden Ass remain popular today for their clarityand entertaining style. Through Sassoon, Graves also became friends withWilfred Owen, whose talent he recognised.Robert Graves published, together with OmarAli-Shah, a new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The translationwas a critical disaster, and Graves' reputation suffered severely due to whatthe public perceived as his gullibility in falling for the Shah brothers'deception. During the early 1970s Graves began to suffer from increasinglysevere memory loss, and by his eightieth birthday in 1975 he had come to theend of his working life. By this time he had published more than 140 works. Hesurvived for ten more years in an increasingly dependent condition until hedied from heart failure. Richard Aldington (неповезлоспервойженой-лесбиянкой)-was an English writer and poet. Aldingtonwas best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, andthe controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A BiographicalInquiry. His 1946 biography, Wellington, was awarded the James Tait BlackMemorial Prize. is poetry was associated with the Imagist group, and his workforms almost one third of the Imagists' inaugural anthology. He joined the armyin 1916, was commissioned in the Royal Sussexs in 1917 and was wounded on theWestern Front. Aldington never completely recovered from his war experiences,and may have continued to suffer from the then-unrecognised phenomenon of PostTraumatic Stress Disorder. He helped T. S. Eliot in a practical way, bypersuading Harriet Shaw Weaver to appoint Eliot as his successor at The Egoist(helped by Pound), and later in 1919 with an introduction to the editor BruceRichmond of the Times Literary Supplement, for which he reviewed Frenchliterature. Aldington made an effort with A Fool I' the Forest (1924) to replyto the new style of poetry launched by The Waste Land. He was being publishedat the time, for example in The Chapbook, but clearly took on too much hackwork just to live. He suffered some sort of breakdown in 1925. His interest inpoetry waned, and he was straighforwardly jealous of Eliot's celebrity,savagely satirized her husband as «Jeremy Cibber» in SteppingHeavenward (Florence 1931). Death of a Hero, published in 1929, was hisliterary response to the war, commended by Lawrence Durrell as 'the best warnovel of the epoch'. It was written while he was living on the island ofPort-Cros in Provence as a development of a manuscript from a decade before.Opening with a letter to the playwright Halcott Glover, the book takes avariable but generally satirical, cynical and critical posture, and belaboursVictorian and Edwardian cant.[23] He went on to publish several works offiction. In 1930, he published a bawdy translation of The Decameron. In 1933,his novel titled All Men are Enemies appeared; it was a romance, as the authorchose to call it, and a brighter book than Death of a Hero, even thoughAldington took an anti-war stance again. In 1942, having moved to the UnitedStates with his new wife Netta Patmore, he began to write biographies. Thefirst was one of Wellington (The Duke: Being an Account of the Life &Achievements of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, 1943). It wasfollowed by works on D. H. Lawrence (Portrait of a Genius, But..., 1950),Robert Louis Stevenson (Portrait of a Rebel, 1957), and T. E. Lawrence (Lawrenceof Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry, 1955). An obituary described him as an«angry young man», and an '«angry old man to the end».

19. James Joyce wasan Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influentialwriters in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is bestknown for Ulysses (1922), a landmark novel which perfected his stream ofconsciousness technique and combined nearly every literary device available ina modern re-telling of The Odyssey. Other major works are the short-storycollection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a YoungMan. Dubliners, is a penetrating analysis of the stagnation and paralysis ofDublin society. The stories incorporate epiphanies, a word used particularly byJoyce, by which he meant a sudden consciousness of the «soul» of athing. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a nearly complete rewrite ofthe abandoned novel Stephen Hero. Joyce attempted to burn the originalmanuscript in a fit of rage during an argument with Nora, though to hissubsequent relief it was rescued by his sister. A Künstlerroman, Portraitis a heavily autobiographical coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood andadolescence of protagonist Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artisticself-consciousness. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed inlater works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, andreferences to a character's psychic reality rather than to his externalsurroundings, are evident throughout this novel.Despite early interest in the theatre, Joycepublished only one play, Exiles, begun shortly after the outbreak of World WarI in 1914 and published in 1918. A study of a husband and wife relationship,the play looks back to The Dead (the final story in Dubliners) and forward toUlysses, which Joyce began around the time of the play's composition. Joycealso published a number of books of poetry. His first mature published work wasthe satirical broadside «The Holy Office» (1904), in which heproclaimed himself to be the superior of many prominent members of the Celticrevival. His first full-length poetry collection Chamber Music (referring,Joyce explained, to the sound of urine hitting the side of a chamber pot)consisted of 36 short lyrics. InUlysses, Joyce employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, andvirtually every other established literary technique to present his characters.He sets the characters and incidents of the Odyssey of Homer in modern Dublinand represents Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope and Telemachus in the characters ofLeopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, parodically contrastedwith their lofty models. The book explores various areas of Dublin life,dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Nevertheless, the book is also anaffectionately detailed study of the city, and Joyce claimed that if Dublinwere to be destroyed in some catastrophe it could be rebuilt, brick by brick,using his work as a model.AdelineVirginia Woolf was an English author,essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of theforemost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century.

Duringthe interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society.Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse(1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own(1929), with its famous dictum, «A woman must have money and a room of herown if she is to write fiction.» Recently,studies of Virginia Woolf have focused on feminist and lesbian themes in herwork. Woolf'sfiction is also studied for its insight into shell shock, war, class and modernBritish society. Her best-known nonfiction works, A Room of One's Own (1929)and Three Guineas (1938), examine the difficulties female writers andintellectuals face because men hold disproportionate legal and economic powerand the future of women in education and society.Throughout her life, Woolf was plagued by periodicmood swings and associated illnesses. Though this instability often affectedher social life, her literary productivity continued with few breaks until hersuicide. Woolf came to know Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell, Rupert Brooke, SaxonSydney-Turner, Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf and Roger Fry, who together formedthe nucleus of the intellectual circle of writers and artists known as theBloomsbury Group. The ethos of the Bloomsbury group encouraged a liberalapproach to sexuality, and in 1922, met the writer and gardener VitaSackville-West, wife of Harold Nicolson. After a tentative start, they began asexual relationship, which, according to Sackville- West, was only twiceconsummated. [8] In 1928, Woolf presented Sackville-West with Orlando, afantastical biography in which the eponymous hero's life spans three centuriesand both genders. Nigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West's son, wrote «Theeffect of Vita on Virginia is all contained in Orlando, the longest and mostcharming love letter in literature, in which she explores Vita, weaves her inand out of the centuries, tosses her from one sex to the other, plays with her,dresses her in furs, lace and emeralds, teases her, flirts with her, drops aveil of mist around her». [9] After their affair ended, the two women remainedfriends until Woolf's death in 1941. Woolfis considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. In herworks she experimented with stream-of-consciousness and the underlyingpsychological as well as emotional motives of characters. Woolf's reputationdeclined sharply after World War II, but her eminence was re-established withthe surge of Feminist criticism in the 1970s. Her work was criticised forepitomising the narrow world of the upper-middle class English intelligentsia.Some critics judged it to be lacking in universality and depth,without the power to communicate anything ofemotional or ethical relevance to the disillusioned common reader. She was alsocriticised by some as an anti-semite, despite her being happily married to aJewish man. This anti-semitism is drawn from the fact that she often wrote ofJewish characters in stereotypical archetypes and generalisations, includingdescribing some of her Jewish characters as physically repulsive and dirty.Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to obscure hercentral strength: Woolf is arguably the major lyrical novelist in the Englishlanguage. Her novels are highly experimental: a narrative, frequentlyuneventful and commonplace, is refracted—and sometimes almost dissolved—in thecharacters' receptive consciousness. Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosityfuse to create a world overabundant with auditory and visual impressions. DavidLawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist and literarycritic. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon thedehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrenceconfronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, andinstinct. Lawrence'sopinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution,censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the secondhalf of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his«savage pilgrimage.» Atthe time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer.Lawrence is perhaps best known for his novels Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow,Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover. Within these Lawrence explores thepossibilities for life and living within an industrial setting. In particularLawrence is concerned with the nature of relationships that can be had withinsuch settings. Though often classed as a realist, Lawrence's use of hischaracters can be better understood with reference to his philosophy. His useof sexual activity, though shocking at the time, has its roots in this highlypersonal way of thinking and being. It is worth noting that Lawrence was veryinterested in human touch behaviour (see Haptics) and that his interest inphysical intimacy has its roots in a desire to restore our emphasis on thebody, and re-balance it with what he perceived to be western civilisation'sslow process of over-emphasis on the mind. In his later years Lawrencedeveloped the potentialities of the short novel form in St Mawr, The Virgin andthe Gypsy and The Escaped Cock.

20. Fantasy .Stories involving magic, paranormal magic and terrible monsters have existed inspoken forms before the advent of printed literature. Homer's Odyssey satisfiesthe definition of the fantasy genre with its magic, gods, heroes, adventuresand monsters. Fantasy literature, as a distinct type, emerged in Victoriantimes, with the works of writers such as William Morris and George MacDonald.J. R. R. Tolkien played a large role in the popularization of the fantasy genrewith his highly successful publications The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.Tolkien was largely influenced by an ancient body of Anglo-Saxon myths,particularly Beowulf, as well as modern works such as The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison. It was after the publication of his work that the genre began toreceive the moniker «fantasy» (often applied retroactively to theworks of Eddison, Carroll, Howard, et al.). Tolkien's close friend C. S. Lewis,author of The Chronicles of Narnia and a fellow English professor with asimilar array of interests, also helped to publicize the fantasy genre. JohnRonald Reuel Tolkien is an English writer, poet, philologist, anduniversity professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasyworks which form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories,invented languages, and literary essays about an imagined world called Arda,and Middle-earth. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the«father» of modern fantasy literature[6][7]—or, more precisely, ofhigh fantasy. Beginningwith The Book of Lost Tales, written while recuperating from illnessescontracted during The Battle of the Somme, Tolkien devised several themes thatwere reused in successive drafts of his legendarium. The two most prominentstories, the tale of Beren and Lúthien and that of Túrin, werecarried forward into long narrative poems (published in The Lays of Beleriand).Tolkien wrote a brief «Sketch of the Mythology» which included thetales of Beren and Lúthien and of Túrin, and that sketcheventually evolved into the Quenta Silmarillion, an epic history that Tolkienstarted three times but never published. Tolkien desperately hoped to publishit along with The Lord of the Rings, but publishers (both Allen & Unwin andCollins) got cold feet. Inaddition to his mythopoeic compositions, Tolkien enjoyed inventing fantasystories to entertain his children.[136] He wrote annual Christmas letters fromFather Christmas for them, building up a series of short stories (latercompiled and published as The Father Christmas Letters). Other stories includedMr. Bliss and Roverandom (for children), and Leaf by Niggle (part of Tree andLeaf), The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, On Fairy-Stories, Smith of Wootton Majorand Farmer Giles of Ham. Roverandom and Smith of Wootton Major, like TheHobbit, borrowed ideas from his legendarium.The Hobbit.Tolkien neverexpected his stories to become popular, but by sheer accident a book called TheHobbit, which he had written some years before for his own children, came in1936 to the attention of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the London publishingfirm George Allen & Unwin, who persuaded Tolkien to submit it forpublication. However, the book attracted adult readers as well as children, andit became popular enough for the publishers to ask Tolkien to produce a sequel.TheLord of the Rings. Even though he felt uninspired, the request for a sequelprompted Tolkien to begin what would become his most famous work: the epicnovel The Lord of the Rings (originally published in three volumes 1954–1955).Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendicesfor The Lord of the Rings, during which time he received the constant supportof the Inklings, in particular his closest friend Lewis, the author of TheChronicles of Narnia. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set againstthe background of The Silmarillion, but in a time long after it.Tolkien atfirst intended The Lord of the Rings to be a children's tale in the style ofThe Hobbit, but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing.[137]Though a direct sequel to The Hobbit, it addressed an older audience, drawingon the immense back story of Beleriand that Tolkien had constructed in previousyears, and which eventually saw posthumous publication in The Silmarillion andother volumes. Tolkien's influence weighs heavily on the fantasy genre thatgrew up after the success of The Lord of the Rings.The Lord of the Rings becameimmensely popular in the 1960s and has remained so ever since, ranking as oneof the most popular works of fiction of the 20th century, judged by both salesand reader surveys.[138] In the 2003 «Big Read» survey conducted bythe BBC, The Lord of the Rings was found to be the «Nation's Best-lovedBook». Australians voted The Lord of the Rings «My FavouriteBook» in a 2004 survey conducted by the Australian ABC.[139] In a 1999poll of Amazon.com customers, The Lord of the Rings was judged to be theirfavourite «book of the millennium».[140] In 2002 Tolkien was votedthe 92nd «greatest Briton» in a poll conducted by the BBC, and in2004 he was voted 35th in the SABC3's Great South Africans, the only person toappear in both lists. His popularity is not limited to the English-speakingworld: in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK's «Big Read» survey, about250,000 Germans found The Lord of the Rings to be their favourite work ofliterature.

21. Literary postmodernism wasofficially inaugurated in the United States with the first issue of boundary 2,subtitled «Journal of Postmodern Literature and Culture», whichappeared in 1972. David Antin, Charles Olson, John Cage, and the Black MountainCollege school of poetry and the arts were integral figures in the intellectualand artistic exposition of postmodernism at the time. Although Jorge LuisBorges and Samuel Beckett are sometimes seen as important influences, novelistswho are commonly counted to postmodern literature include William Burroughs,Giannina Braschi, Kurt Vonnegut, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, E.L. Doctorow,Jerzy Kosinski, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Ishmael Reed, Kathy Acker, AnaLydia Vega, and Paul Auster. Postmodernists generally challengethe notion that imperialism is primarily economic and place a greater stress oncultural and social exploitation. Originating in continental Europe in the mid20th century postmodernists emphasise the essentially pluralistic nature ofsociety as people move away from a dependency on manufacturing and industry foreconomic and social status. This shift in focus is a reason for praise fromscholars as it gives a 'respect for difference', incorporating the views of theWestern population on the ground often overlooked by other theorists (Griffithsand O'Callaghan, 2004). They thus argue that anti-imperialism must involve thepromotion of non-dominant cultures as well as non-dominant economic interests.Postcolonial literature isa body of literary writings that reacts to the discourse of colonization.Post-colonial literature often involves writings that deal with issues ofde-colonization or the political and cultural independence of people formerlysubjugated to colonial rule. It is also a literary critique to texts that carryracist or colonial undertones. Postcolonial literature, finally in its mostrecent form, also attempts to critique the contemporary postcolonial discoursethat has been shaped over recent times. It attempts to re-read this veryemergence of postcolonialism and its literary expression itself. The authorJean Rhys made a significant contribution to postcolonial literature in hernovel Wide Sargasso Sea, which describes a Creole (mixed-race) woman whosewhite British husband maltreats her based on his perceptions of her racialheritage. The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood is also a post-colonial writer whodealt with themes of identity-seeking through her Southern Ontario Gothic styleof writing. Postcolonial literature can be identified by its discussion ofcultural identity. The piece of literature, be it a novel, poem, short storyetc. may be about the change that has taken place or question the currentchange. Postcolonial literature tends to ask the question: Now that they’vefinally achieved independence, what can they do? After so much change has takenplace, their culture cannot return to its original state. Postcolonialliterature tends to answer the following question: Should there be an attemptto restore the original culture, conformity to the culture presented by thesettlers or the creation of a new culture which combines both? If a novel answersand explores any of the above questions it may be considered postcolonialliterature. When trying to identify post colonial literature, it is importantto recognize whether the ex-colony in question is actually independent orconsidered independent, but reliant on its former colonist. Henry GrahamGreene was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His worksexplore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greenewas notable for his ability to combine serious literary acclaim with widespreadpopularity. Several works such as The Confidential Agent, The Third Man, TheQuiet American, Our Man in Havana and The Human Factor also show an avidinterest in the workings of international politics and espionage. Greenesuffered from bipolar disorder, which had a profound effect on his writing andpersonal life. In a letter to his wife Vivien he told her that he had «acharacter profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life», and that «unfortunately,the disease is also one's material». Greene originally divided his fictioninto two genres: thrillers (mystery and suspense books), such as The Ministryof Fear, which he described as entertainments, often with notable philosophicedges, and literary works, such as The Power and the Glory, which he describedas novels, on which he thought his literary reputation was to be based. As hiscareer lengthened, both Greene and his readers found the distinction betweenentertainments and novels increasingly problematic. The last book Greene termedan entertainment was Our Man in Havana in 1958. When Travels with My Aunt waspublished eleven years later, many reviewers noted that Greene had designatedit a novel, even though, as a work decidedly comic in tone, it appeared closerto his last two entertainments, Loser Takes All and Our Man in Havana, than toany of the novels. Greene also wrote short stories and plays, which werewell-received, although he was always first and foremost a novelist. Hecollected the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Heart of the Matter.In 1986, he was awarded Britain's Order of Merit. The literary style of GrahamGreene was described by Evelyn Waugh in Commonweal as «not a specificallyliterary style at all. The words are functional, devoid of sensuous attraction,of ancestry, and of independent life». Commenting on this lean, realisticprose and its readability, Richard Jones wrote in the Virginia Quarterly Reviewthat «nothing deflects Greene from the main business of holding thereader's attention.» His novels often have religious themes at the centre.In his literary criticism he attacked the modernist writers Virginia Woolf andE. M. Forster, for having lost the religious sense, which, he argued, resultedin dull, superficial characters, who «wandered about like cardboardsymbols through a world that is paper-thin». Only in recovering thereligious element, the awareness of the drama of the struggle in the soulcarrying the infinite consequences of salvation and damnation, and of theultimate metaphysical realities of good and evil, sin and divine grace, couldthe novel recover its dramatic power. Suffering and unhappiness are omnipresentin the world Greene depicts; and Catholicism is presented against a backgroundof unvarying human evil, sin, and doubt. he novels often powerfully portray theChristian drama of the struggles within the individual soul from the Catholicperspective. Greene was criticised for certain tendencies in an unorthodoxdirection — in the world, sin is omnipresent to the degree that the vigilantstruggle to avoid sinful conduct is doomed to failure, hence not central toholiness. The better he came to know the socio-political realities of the thirdworld where he was operating, and the more directly he came to be confronted bythe rising tide of revolution in those countries, the more his doubts regardingthe imperialist cause grew, and the more his novels shifted away from anyidentification with the latter."[22] The supernatural realities thathaunted the earlier work declined and were replaced by a humanisticperspective, a change reflected in his public criticism of orthodox Catholicteaching. Left-wing political critiques assumed greater importance in hisnovels: for example, years before the Vietnam War, in The Quiet American heprophetically attacked the naive and counterproductive attitudes that were tocharacterize American policy in Vietnam.

22. George Orwellwas an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligenceand wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense, revolutionaryopposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a beliefin democratic socialism. Consideredperhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture,Orwell wrotefiction, polemical journalism, literary criticism and poetry. He is best knownfor the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (published in 1949) and thesatirical novella Animal Farm (1945). Orwell'sinfluence on contemporary culture, popular and political, continues. Several ofhis neologisms, along with the term Orwellian, now a byword for any draconianor manipulative social phenomenon or concept inimical to a free society, haveentered the vernacular. Duringmost of his career, Orwell was best known for his journalism, in essays,reviews, columns in newspapers and magazines and in his books of reportage:Down and Out in Paris and London (describing a period of poverty in thesecities), The Road to Wigan Pier (describing the living conditions of the poorin northern England, and the class divide generally) and Homage to Catalonia.Modern readers are more often introduced to Orwellas a novelist, particularly through his enormously successful titles AnimalFarm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The former is often thought to reflect degenerationin the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism; thelatter, life under totalitarian rule. Nineteen Eighty-Four is often compared toBrave New World by Aldous Huxley; both are powerful dystopian novels warning ofa future world where the state machine exerts complete control over sociallife. Inhis essay Politics and the English Language (1946), Orwell wrote about theimportance of honest and clear language and said that vague writing can be usedas a powerful tool of political manipulation. In Nineteen Eighty-Four hedescribed how the state controlled thought by controlling language, makingcertain ideas literally unthinkable. The adjective Orwellian refers to thefrightening world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the state controls thoughtand misinformation is widespread. Several words and phrases from NineteenEighty-Four have entered popular language. Newspeak is a simplified andobfuscatory language designed to make independent thought impossible.Doublethink means holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The ThoughtPolice are those who suppress all dissenting opinion. Prolefeed is homogenized,manufactured superficial literature, film and music, used to control andindoctrinate the populace through docility. Big Brother is a supreme dictatorwho watches everyone. From Orwell's novel Animal Farm comes the sentence,«All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others»,describing theoretical equality in a grossly unequal society.In «Politics and the English Language»,Orwell provides six rules for writers:

Neveruse a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeingin print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible tocut a word out, always cut it out.Never use the passive where you can use theactive. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if youcan think of an everyday English equivalent.Break any of these rules soonerthan say anything outright barbarous.

23. Sir William Gerald Golding wasa British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate,best known for his novel Lord of the Flies. He was also awarded the BookerPrize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book ofthe trilogy To the Ends of the Earth. Golding's often allegorical fiction makesbroad use of allusions to classical literature, mythology, and Christiansymbolism. No distinct thread unites his novels (unless it be a fundamentalpessimism about humanity), and the subject matter and technique vary. Howeverhis novels are often set in closed communities such as islands, villages,monasteries, groups of hunter-gatherers, ships at sea or a pharaoh's court. Hisfirst novel, Lord of the Flies (1954; film, 1963 and 1990; play, adapted byNigel Williams, 1995), dealt with an unsuccessful struggle against barbarismand war, thus showing the ambiguity and fragility of civilization. It has alsobeen said that it is an allegory of World War II. The Inheritors (1955) lookedback into prehistory, advancing the thesis that humankind's evolutionaryancestors, «the new people» (generally identified with Homo sapienssapiens), triumphed over a gentler race (generally identified withNeanderthals) as much by violence and deceit as by natural superiority. TheSpire 1964 follows the building (and near collapse) of a huge spire onto amedieval cathedral church (generally assumed to be Salisbury Cathedral); thechurch and the spire itself act as a potent symbols both of the dean's highestspiritual aspirations and of his worldly vanities. His 1954 novel PincherMartin concerns the last moments of a sailor thrown into the north Atlanticafter his ship is attacked. The structure is echoed by that of the later BookerPrize winner by Yann Martel, Life of Pi. The 1967 novel The Pyramid comprisesthree separate stories linked by a common setting (a small English town in the1920s) and narrator. The Scorpion God (1971) is a volume of three novellas setin a prehistoric African hunter-gatherer band ('Clonk, Clonk'), an ancientEgyptian court ('The Scorpion God') and the court of a Roman emperor ('EnvoyExtraordinary'). The last of these is a reworking of his 1958 play The BrassButterfly.Golding's later novels include Darkness Visible (1979), The Paper Men(1984), and the comic-historical sea trilogy To the Ends of the Earth (BBC TV2005), comprising the Booker Prize-winning Rites of Passage (1980), CloseQuarters (1987), and Fire Down Below (1989).John Robert Fowles Duringlate 1960, though he had already drafted The Magus, Fowles began working on TheCollector. He finished his first draft in a month, but spent more than a yearmaking revisions before showing it to his agent. Michael S. Howard, thepublisher at Jonathan Cape was enthusiastic about the manuscript. The book waspublished during 1963 and when the paperback rights were sold in the spring ofthat year it was «probably the highest price that had hitherto been paidfor a first novel,» according to Howard. The success of his novel meantthat Fowles was able to stop teaching and devote himself full-time to aliterary career. The Collector was also optioned and became a film in1965.Against the counsel of his publisher, Fowles insisted that his second bookpublished be The Aristos, a non-fiction collection of philosophy. Afterward, heset about collating all the drafts he had written of what would become his moststudied work, The Magus (1965), based in part on his experiences inGreece.During 1965 Fowles left London, moving to a farm, Underhill, in Dorset,where the isolated farm house became the model for «The Dairy» in thebook Fowles was then writing, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). The farmwas too remote, «total solitude gets a bit monotonous,» Fowlesremarked, and during 1968 he and his wife moved to Lyme Regis in Dorset, wherehe lived in Belmont House, also used as a setting for parts of The FrenchLieutenant's Woman. In the same year, he adapted The Magus for cinema. The filmversion of The Magus (1968) was generally considered awful; when Woody Allenwas asked whether he'd make changes in his life if he had the opportunity to doit all over again, he jokingly replied he'd do «everything exactly thesame, with the exception of watching The Magus.» The French Lieutenant'sWoman was made into a film during 1981 with a screenplay by the Britishplaywright Harold Pinter (subsequently a Nobel laureate in Literature) and wasnominated for an Oscar. Fowles lived the rest of his life in Lyme Regis. Hisworks The Ebony Tower (1974), Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1981), and AMaggot (1985) were all written from Belmont House. Fowles became a member ofthe Lyme Regis community, serving as the curator of the Lyme Regis Museum from1979–1988, retiring from the museum after having a mild stroke. Fowles wasinvolved occasionally in politics in Lyme Regis, and occasionally wrote lettersto the editor advocating preservation. Despite this involvement, Fowles wasgenerally considered reclusive.[13] In 1998, he was quoted in the New York TimesBook Review as saying, «Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice,but of human obligation.» Fowles, with his second wife Sarah by his side,died in Axminster Hospital, 5 miles from Lyme Regis on 5 November 2005.

24. Early Americans, who set their faces toone of the most heroic tasks ever undertaken by man, were too busy with greatdeeds inspired by the ideal of liberty to find leisure for the epic or drama inwhich the deeds and the ideal should be worthily reflected. They left that workof commemoration to others, and they are still waiting patiently for theirpoet. Meanwhile we read the straightforward record which they left as theironly literary memorial, not as we read the imaginative story of Beowulf orUlysses, but for the clear light of truth which it sheds upon the fathers andmothers of a great nation. The literature of the Revolution is dominated bypolitical and practical interests; it deals frankly with this present world,aims to find the best way through its difficulties, and so appears in markedcontrast with the theological bent and pervasive «other worldliness»of Colonial writings. BENJAMINFRANKLIN. Standing between the two eras, andmarking the transition from spiritual to practical interests, is BenjaminFranklin (1706-1790), a «self-made» man, who seems well content withhis handiwork. During the latter part of his life and for a century after hisdeath he was held up to young Americans as a striking example of practicalwisdom and worldly success.The narrative of Franklin’s patriotic servicebelongs to political rather than to literary history; for though his pen wasbusy for almost seventy years, during which time he produced an immense amountof writing, his end was always very practical rather than aesthetic; that is,he aimed to instruct rather than to please his readers. Only one of his worksis now widely known, the incomplete Autobiography, which is in the form of aletter telling a straightforward story of Franklin’s early life, of thedisadvantages under which he labored and the industry by which he overcamethem. For some reason the book has become a «classic» in ourliterature, and young Americans are urged to read it; though they often show anindependent taste by regarding it askance. As an example of what may beaccomplished by perseverance, and as a stimulus to industry in the prosaicmatter of getting a living, it doubtless has its value; but one will learnnothing of love or courtesy or reverence or loyalty to high ideals by readingit; neither will one find in its self-satisfied pages any conception of themoral dignity of humanity or of the infinite value of the human soul. The chieftrouble with the Autobiography and most other works of Franklin is that in themmind and matter, character and reputation, virtue and prosperity, are for themost part hopelessly confounded.On the other hand, there is a sincerity, aplain directness of style in the writings of Franklin which makes thempleasantly readable. Unlike some other apostles of «common sense» heis always courteous and of a friendly spirit; he seems to respect the reader aswell as himself and, even in his argumentative or humorous passages, is almostinvariably dignified in expression. The poetry of the Revolution, an abundantbut weedy crop, was badly influenced by two factors: by the political strifebetween Patriots and Loyalists, and by the slavish imitation of Pope and other formalistswho were then the models for nearly all versifiers on both sides of theAtlantic. The former influence appears in numerous ballads or narrative poems,which were as popular in the days of Washington as ever they were in the timeof Robin Hood. Every important event of the Revolution was promptly celebratedin verse; but as the country was then sharply divided, almost every ballad hada Whig or a Tory twist to it. In consequence we must read two differentcollections, such as Moore’s Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution andSargent’s Loyalist Poetry of the Revolution, for supplementary views of thesame great struggle. Byfar the best poet of the Revolution was Philip Freneau(1752-1832). In his early years he took Milton instead of Pope for his poeticmaster; then, as his independence increased, he sought the ancient source ofall poetry in the feeling of the human heart in presence of nature or humannature. In such poems as «The House of Night,» «Indian BuryingGround,» «Wild Honeysuckle,» «Eutaw Springs,» «Ruinsof a Country Inn» and a few others in which he speaks from his own heart,he anticipated the work of Wordsworth, Coleridge and other leaders of what isnow commonly known as the romantic revival in English poetry.

Whenthe Revolution drew on apace Freneau abandoned his poetic dream and exercised aferocious talent for satiric verse in lashing English generals, native Tories,royal proclamations and other matters far removed from poetry. In later yearshe wrote much prose also, and being a radical and outspoken democrat he becamea thorn in the side of Washington and the Federal party. The bulk of his work,both prose and verse, is a red-peppery kind of commentary on the politicalhistory of the age in which he lived.

25. Those who imagine that American fictionbegan with Irving or Cooper or Poe, as is sometimes alleged, will be interestedto learn of Susanna Rowson (daughter of an English father and an Americanmother), whose later stories, at least, belong to our literature. In 1790 shepublished Charlotte Temple, a romance that was immensely popular in its own dayand that has proved far more enduring than any modern «best seller.»Washington Irving wasan American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19thcentury. He was best known for his short stories «The Legend of SleepyHollow» and «Rip Van Winkle», both of which appear in his bookThe Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works includebiographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and severalhistories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as ChristopherColumbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra. Hemade his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to theMorning Chronicle, written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. After movingto England for the family business in 1815, he achieved international fame withthe publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819. Hecontinued to publish regularly—and almost always successfully—throughout hislife, and completed a five-volume biography of George Washington just eightmonths before his death, at age 76, in Tarrytown, New York.Irving, along withJames Fenimore Cooper, was among the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe,and Irving encouraged American authors. As America's first genuineinternationally best-selling author, Irving advocated for writing as alegitimate profession, and argued for stronger laws to protect American writersfrom copyright infringement. Avery pleasant writer is Irving, a man of romantic and somewhat sentimentaldisposition, but sound of motive, careful of workmanship, invincibly cheerfulof spirit. The genial quality of his work may be due to the fact that fromjoyous boyhood to serene old age he did very much as he pleased, that he livedin what seemed to him an excellent world and wrote with no other purpose thanto make it happy. In summarizing his career an admirer of Irving is reminded ofwhat the Book of Proverbs says of wisdom: «Her ways are ways ofpleasantness, and all her paths are peace.’The historian sees another side ofIrving’s work. Should it be asked, „What did he do that had not been aswell or better done before him?“ the first answer is that the importanceof any man’s work must be measured by the age in which he did it. A schoolboynow knows more about electricity than ever Franklin learned; but that does notdetract from our wonder at Franklin’s kite. So the work of Irving seemsimpressive when viewed against the gray literary dawn of a century ago. At thattime America had done a mighty work for the world politically, but had addedlittle of value to the world’s literature. She read and treasured the bestbooks; but she made no contribution to their number, and her literary impotencegalled her sensitive spirit. As if to make up for her failure, the writers ofthe Knickerbocker, Charleston and other „schools“ praised eachother’s work extravagantly; but no responsive echo came from overseas, whereEngland’s terse criticism of our literary effort was expressed in the scornfulquestion, „Who reads an American book?“Irving answered that questioneffectively when his Sketch Book, Bracebridge Hall and Tales of a Travellerfound a multitude of delighted readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Hisgraceful style was hardly rivaled by any other writer of the period; andEngland, at a time when Scott and Byron were playing heroic parts, welcomed himheartily to a place on the literary stage. Thus he united the English and theAmerican reader in a common interest and, as it were, charmed away the sneerfrom one face, the resentment from the other. He has been called „fatherof our American letters“ for two reasons: because he was the first to wina lasting literary reputation at home and abroad, and because of the formativeinfluence which his graceful style and artistic purpose have ever since exertedupon our prose writers.LIFE. Two personal characteristics appear constantly inIrving’s work: the first, that he was always a dreamer, a romance seeker; thesecond, that he was inclined to close his eyes to the heroic present and openthem wide to the glories, real or imaginary, of the remote past. Though helived in an American city in a day of mighty changes and discoveries, he wasfar less interested in the modern New York than in the ancient New Amsterdam;and though he was in Europe at the time of the Napoleonic wars, he apparentlysaw nothing of them, being then wholly absorbed in the battles of thelong-vanished Moors. Only once, in his books of western exploration, did heseriously touch the vigorous life of his own times; and critics regard thesebooks as the least important of all his works. James Fenimore Cooper wasa prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is bestremembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historicalnovels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo.Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans,often regarded as his masterpiece. eanonymously published his first book, Precaution (1820). He soon issued severalothers. In 1823, he published The Pioneers; this was the first of theLeatherstocking series, featuring Natty Bumppo, the resourceful Americanwoodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and especially their chiefChingachgook. Cooper's most famous novel, Last of the Mohicans (1826), becameone of the most widely read American novels of the 19th century. The book waswritten in New York City, where Cooper and his family lived. Then Cooper movedhis family to Europe, where he sought to gain more income from his books aswell as provide better education for his children. While overseas he continuedto write. His books published in Paris include The Red Rover and The WaterWitch—two of his many sea stories. Asa writer he began without study or literary training, and was stilted orslovenly in most of his work. He was prone to moralize in the midst of anexciting narrative; he filled countless pages with „wooden“ dialogue;he could not portray a child or a woman or a gentleman, though he was confidentthat he had often done so to perfection. He did not even know Indians orwoodcraft, though Indians and woodcraft account for a large part of our interestin his forest romances.

Onemay enjoy a good story, however, without knowing or caring for its author’speculiarities, and the vast majority of readers are happily not critical butreceptive. Hence if we separate the man from the author, and if we read The RedRover or The Last of the Mohicans „just for the story,“ we shalldiscover the source of Cooper’s power as a writer. First of all, he has a taleto tell, an epic tale of heroism and manly virtue. Then he appeals strongly tothe pioneer spirit, which survives in all great nations, and he is a master atportraying wild nature as the background of human life. The vigor of elementalmanhood, the call of adventure, the lure of primeval forests, the surge andmystery of the sea,--these are written large in Cooper’s best books. They makeus forget his faults of temper or of style, and they account in large measurefor his popularity with young readers of all nations; for he is one of the fewAmerican writers who belong not to any country but to humanity. At present he isread chiefly by boys; but half a century or more ago he had more readers of allclasses and climes than any other writer in the world.

26. Poe offers a hard nut for criticism tocrack. The historian is baffled by an author who secretes himself in the shadow,or perplexed by conflicting biographies, or put on the defensive by the factthat any positive judgment or opinion of Poe will almost certainly bechallenged. At the outset, therefore, we are to assume that Poe is one of themost debatable figures in our literature. His life may be summed up as apitiful struggle for a little fame and a little bread. When he died few missedhim, and his works were neglected. Following his recognition in Europe came arevival of interest here, during which Poe was absurdly overpraised and theAmerican people berated for their neglect of a genius. Then arose a literarycontroversy which showed chiefly that our critics were poles apart in theirpoints of view. Though the controversy has long endured, it has settled nothingof importance; for one reader regards Poe as a literary poseur, a writer ofmelodious nonsense in verse and of grotesque horrors in prose; while anotherexalts him as a double master of poetry and fiction, an artist without a peerin American letters. Somewhere between these extremes hides the truth; but weshall not here attempt to decide whether it is nearer one side or the other. Wenote merely that Poe is a writer for such mature readers as can appreciate hisuncanny talent. What he wrote of abiding interest or value to young peoplemight be printed in a very small book.BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Notwithstanding allthat has been written about Poe, we do not and cannot know him as we know mostother American authors, whose lives are as an open book. He was always asecretive person, „a lover of mystery and retreats,“ and suchaccounts of his life as he gave out are not trustworthy. He came from a goodMaryland family, but apparently from one of those offshoots that are not trueto type. His literary career began in 1833 when his „Manuscript Found in aBottle“ won for him a prize offered by a weekly newspaper. The same „Manuscript“brought him to the attention of John Pendleton Kennedy, who secured for him aposition on the staff of the Southern Literary Messenger. He then settled inRichmond, and in his grasp was every thing that the heart of a young authormight desire. He had married his cousin, Virginia Clem, a beautiful young girlwhom he idolized; he had a comfortable home and an assured position; Kennedy andother southern writers were his loyal friends; the Messenger published his workand gave him a reputation in the literary world of America. Fortune stoodsmiling beside him, when he quarreled with his friends, left the Messenger andbegan once more his struggle with poverty and despair. Most people read Poe’spoetry for the melody that is in it. To read it in any other way, to analyze orexplain its message, is to dissect a butterfly that changes in a moment from adelicate, living creature to a pinch of dust, bright colored but meaningless.It is not for analysis, therefore, but simply for making Poe more intelligiblethat we record certain facts or principles concerning his verse. Perhaps thefirst thing to note is that Poe is not the poet of smiles and tears, of joy andsorrow, as the great poets are, but the poet of a single mood,--a dull,despairing mood without hope of comfort. Next, he had a theory (a strangetheory in view of his mood) that the only object of poetry is to give pleasure,and that the pleasure of a poem depends largely on melody, on sound rather thanon sense. Finally, he believed that poetry should deal with beauty alone, thatpoetic beauty is of a supernal or unearthly kind, and that such beauty isforever associated with melancholy. To begin with the personal element, Poe wasnaturally inclined to morbidness. He had a childish fear of darkness andhobgoblins; he worked largely „on his nerves“; he had an abnormalinterest in graves, ghouls and the terrors which preternatural subjects inspirein superstitious minds. As a writer he had to earn his bread; and the fictionmost in demand at that time was of the „gothic“ or Mysteries ofUdolpho kind, with its diabolical villain, its pallid heroine in a hauntedroom, its medley of mystery and horror. Poe’s numerous tales may be grouped inthree or four classes. Standing by itself is „William Wilson,“ astory of double personality (one good and one evil genius in the same person),to which Stevenson was indebted in his Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.Next are the tales of pseudo-science and adventure, such as „Hans Pfaall“and the „Descent into the Maelstrom,“ which represent a type ofpopular fiction developed by Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and many others, all ofwhom were more or less influenced by Poe. A third group may be called theingenious-mystery stories. One of the most typical of these is „The GoldBug,“ a tale of cipher-writing and buried treasure, which contains thegerm, at least, of Stevenson’s Treasure Island. To the same group belong „TheMurders in the Rue Morgue“ and other stories dealing with the wondrousacumen of a certain Dupin, who is the father of „Old Sleuth,“ „SherlockHolmes“ and other amateur detectives who do such marvelous things infiction,--to atone, no doubt, for their extraordinary dullness in real life.Still another group consists of phantom stories,--ghastly yarns that serve nopurpose but to make the reader’s spine creep. The mildest of these horrors is „TheFall of the House of Usher,“ which some critics place at the head of Poe’sfiction. It is a „story of atmosphere“; that is, a story in which thescene, the air, the vague „feeling“ of a place arouse an expectationof some startling or unusual incident. Many have read this story and foundpleasure therein; but others ask frankly, „Why bother to write or to readsuch palpable nonsense?“ With all Poe’s efforts to make it real, Usher’shouse is not a home or even a building in which dwells a man; it is a vacuuminhabited by a chimera. Of necessity, therefore, it tumbles into melodramaticnothingness the moment the author takes leave of it.»The House of Usher" may be recommended asthe least repulsive of the tales of horror. To the historian the chief interestof all these tales lies in the influence which they have exerted on a host ofshort-story writers at home and abroad.he aimed to produce an effect or impression in thereader’s mind, an impression of unearthly beauty in his poems and of unearthlyhorror in his prose. Some writers (Hawthorne, for example) go through life asin a dream; but if one were to judge Poe by his work, one might think that hehad suffered a long nightmare.

27. Emersonis the mountaineer of American literature; to read him is to have theimpression of being on the heights. It is solitary there, far removed fromordinary affairs; but the air is keen, the outlook grand, the heavens near.It is still a question whether Emerson should beclassed with the poets or prose writers. There is a ruggedness in Emerson’sverse which attracts some readers while it repels others by its unmelodiousrhythm. It may help us to measure that verse if we recall the author’scriticism thereof. In 1839 he wrote:«I am naturally keenly susceptible tothe pleasures of rhythm, and cannot believe but one day I shall attain to thatsplendid dialect, so ardent is my wish; and these wishes, I suppose, are everonly the buds of power; but up to this hour I have never had a true success insuch attempts.»One must be lenient with a poet who confesses that hecannot attain the «splendid dialect,» especially so since we areinclined to agree with him. The most readable of Emerson’s poems are those inwhich he reflects his impressions of nature, such as «Seashore,» «TheHumble-Bee,» «The Snow-Storm,» «Days,» «Fable,»«Forbearance,» «The Titmouse» and «Wood-Notes.»In another class are his philosophical poems devoted to transcendentaldoctrines. The beginner will do well to skip these, since they are more of apuzzle than a source of pleasure. themost typical of Emerson’s prose works is his first book, to which he gave thename Nature (1836). In this he records not his impressions of bird or beast orflower, as his neighbor Thoreau was doing in Walden, but rather his philosophyof the universe. «Nature always wears the colors of the spirit»; «Everyanimal function, from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to manthe laws of right and wrong, and echo the ten commandments»; «Thefoundations of man are not in matter but in spirit, and the element of spiritis eternity,»—scores of such expressions indicate that Emerson deals withthe soul of things, not with their outward appearance. Does a flower appeal tohim? Its scientific name and classification are of no consequence; likeWordsworth, he would understand what thought of God the flower speaks.none is easy to read; even the best of them isbetter appreciated in brief instalments, since few can follow Emerson longwithout wearying. English Traits is a keen but kindly criticism of «ourcousins» overseas, which an American can read with more pleasure than anEnglishman. Representative Men is a series of essays on Plato, Shakespeare,Napoleon and other world figures, which may well be read in connection withCarlyle’s Heroes and Hero Worship, since the two books reflect the same subjectfrom widely different angles. Carlyle was in theory an aristocrat and aforce-worshiper, Emerson a democrat and a believer in ideals. One author wouldrelate us to his heroes in the attitude of slave to master, the other in therelation of brothers and equals. Of the shorter prose works, collected invarious volumes of Essays, we shall name only a few in two main groups, whichwe may call the ideal and the practical. In the first group are such typicalworks as «The Over-Soul,» «Compensation,» «SpiritualLaws» and «History»; in the latter are «Heroism,» «Self-Reliance,»«Literary Ethics» (an address to young collegians), «Character»and «Manners.» thematerialist, looking outward, sees that the world is made up of force-drivenmatter, of gas, carbon and mineral; and he says, «Even so am I made up.»He studies an object, sees that it has its appointed cycle of growth and decay,and concludes, «Even so do I appear and vanish.» To him the world isthe only reality, and the world perishes, and man is but a part of the world.The idealist, looking first within, perceives thatself-consciousness is the great fact of life, and that consciousness expresses itselfin words or deeds; then he looks outward, and is aware of another Consciousnessthat expresses itself in the lowly grass or in the stars of heaven. Lookinginward he finds that he is governed by ideas of truth, beauty, goodness andduty; looking outward he everywhere finds evidence of truth and beauty andmoral law in the world. He sees, moreover, that while his body changesconstantly his self remains the same yesterday, to-day and forever; and againhis discovery is a guide to the outer world, with its seedtime and harvest,which is but the symbol or garment of a Divine Self that abides without shadowof change in a constantly changing universe. To him the only reality is spirit,and spirit cannot be harmed by fire or flood; neither can it die or be buried,for it is immortal and imperishable. Such, in simple words, was the idealism ofEmerson, an idealism that was born in him and that governed him long before hebecame involved in transcendentalism, with its scraps of borrowed Hinduphilosophy. It gave message or meaning to his first work, Nature, and to allthe subsequent essays or poems in which he pictured the world as a symbol orvisible expression of a spiritual reality. In other words, nature was toEmerson the Book of the Lord, and the chief thing of interest was not the bookbut the idea that was written therein. THOREAU. Along the manysecondary writers of the period the most original and most neglected was HenryD. Thoreau (1817-1862), a man who differed greatly from other mortalsin almost every respect, but chiefly in this, that he never was known to «gowith the crowd,» not even on the rare occasions when he believed the crowdto be right. He was one of the few persons who select their own way throughlife and follow it without the slightest regard for the world’sopinion.Numerous examples of Thoreau’s oddity might be given, but we note hereonly his strange determination to view life with his own eyes. This may appeara simple matter until we reflect that most men measure life by what others havesaid or written concerning life’s values. They accept the standards of theirancestors or their neighbors; they conform themselves to a world in whichgovernments and other long-established institutions claim their allegiance;they are trained to win success in such a world by doing one thing well, and tomeasure their success by the fame or money or office or social position whichthey achieve by a lifetime of labor and self-denial.Thoreau sharply challengedthis whole conception of life, which, he said, was more a matter of habit thanof reason or conviction. He saw in our social institutions as much of harm asof benefit to the individual. He looked with distrust on all traditions, sayingthat he had listened for thirty years without hearing one word of sound advicefrom his elders. He was a good workman and learned to do several things passingwell; but he saw no reason why a free man should repeat himself daily in aworld of infinite opportunities. Also he was a scholar, versed in classical loreand widely read in oriental literature; but unlike his friend Emerson he seldomquoted the ancients, being more concerned with his own thoughts of life than bythe words of philosophers, and more fascinated by the wild birds that atecrumbs from his table than by all the fabled gods of mythology. As for success,the fame or money for which other men toiled seemed to him but empty bubbles;the only wealth he prized was his soul’s increase in love and understanding: «Ifthe day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits afragrance like sweet-scented herbs—is more elastic, starry and immortal—that isyour success.»There are other interesting matters in Thoreau’s philosophy,but these will appear plainly enough to one who reads his own record. Hisbest-known work is Walden (1854), a journal in which he recorded what he saw orthought or felt during the two years when he abandoned society to live in a huton the shore of Walden Pond, near his native village of Concord. If there beany definite lesson in the book, it is the proof of Thoreau’s theory thatsimplicity is needed for happiness, that men would be better off with fewerpossessions, and that earning one’s living should be a matter of pleasurerather than of endless toil and anxiety. What makes Walden valuable, however,is not its theories but its revelation of an original mind fronting the factsof life, its gleams of poetry and philosophy, its startling paradoxes, itsfirst-hand impressions of the world, its nuggets of sense or humor, andespecially its intimate observation of the little wild neighbors in feathers orfur who shared Thoreau’s solitude. It is one of the few books in Americanliterature that successive generations have read with profit to themselves andwith increasing respect for the original genius who wrote it.

28. The mental ferment of the period wasalmost as intense as its political agitation. Thus, the antislavery movement,which aimed to rescue the negro from his servitude, was accompanied by awidespread communistic attempt to save the white man from the manifold evils ofour competitive system of industry. Brook Farm [Footnote: This was aMassachusetts society, founded in 1841 by George Ripley. It included Hawthorne,Dana and Curtis in its large membership, and it had the support of Emerson,Greeley, Channing, Margaret Fuller and a host of other prominent men and women]was the most famous of these communities; but there were more than thirtyothers scattered over the country, all holding property in common, working on abasis of mutual helpfulness, aiming at a nobler life and a better system oflabor than that which now separates the capitalist and the workingman.Thisbrave attempt at human brotherhood, of which Brook Farm was the visible symbol,showed itself in many other ways: in the projection of a hundred socialreforms; in the establishment of lyceums throughout the country, where everyman with a message might find a hearing. In education our whole school systemwas changed by applying the methods of Pestalozzi NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE(1804-1864) Some great writers belong to humanity, others to their own land orpeople. Hawthorne is in the latter class apparently, for ever since Lowellrashly characterized him as «the greatest imaginative genius sinceShakespeare» our critics commonly speak of him in superlatives. Meanwhilemost European critics (who acclaim such unequal writers as Cooper and Poe,Whitman and Mark Twain) either leave Hawthorne unread or else wonder whatAmericans find in him to stir their enthusiasm.There is an air of reserve about Hawthorne which nobiography has ever penetrated. A schoolmate who met him daily once said, «Ilove Hawthorne; I admire him; but I do not know him. He lives in a mysteriousworld of thought and imagination which he never permits me to enter.» Thatcharacterization applies as well to-day as when it was first spoken, almost acentury ago. To his family and to a very few friends Hawthorne was evidently agenial man. Love brought him out of his retreat, as it has accomplished manyanother miracle. When he became engaged his immediate thought was to find work,and one of his friends secured a position for him in the Boston customhouse,where he weighed coal until he was replaced by a party spoilsman. When hisBoston experience was repeated at Salem he took his revenge in the openingchapter of The Scarlet Letter, which ridicules those who received politicaljobs from the other party.] There were no civil-service rules in those days. Hopingto secure a home, he invested his savings in Brook Farm, worked there for atime with the reformers, detested them, lost his money and gained theexperience which he used later in his Blithedale Romance. Then he married, andlived in poverty and great happiness for four years in the «Old Manse»at Concord. Another friend obtained for him political appointment as surveyorof the Salem customhouse; again he was replaced by a spoilsman, and again hecomplained bitterly. The loss proved a blessing, however, since it gave himleisure to write The Scarlet Letter, a novel which immediately placed Hawthornein the front rank of American writers. Hewas now before an appreciative world, and in the flush of fine feeling thatfollowed his triumph he wrote The House of the Seven Gables, A Wonder Book andThe Snow Image. Literature was calling him most hopefully when, at the veryprime of life, he turned his back on fortune. His friend Pierce had beennominated by the Democrats (1852), and he was asked to write the candidate’sbiography for campaign purposes. It was hardly a worthy task, but he acceptedit and did it well. When Pierce was elected he «persuaded» Hawthorneto accept the office of consul at Liverpool. The emoluments, some seventhousand dollars a year, seemed enormous to one who had lived straitly, and inthe four years of Pierce’s administration our novelist saved a sum which, withthe income from his books, placed him above the fear of want.Almost the first thing we notice in Hawthorne is hisstyle, a smooth, leisurely, «classic» style which moves along, like ameadow brook, without hurry or exertion. Gradually as we read we becomeconscious of the novelist’s characters, whom he introduces with a veil ofmystery around them. They are interesting, as dreams and other mysteriousthings always are, but they are seldom real or natural or lifelike. At times weseem to be watching a pantomime of shadows, rather than a drama of living menand women. Herman Melville was an American novelist, short storywriter, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and theposthumous novella Billy Budd. His first three books gained much contemporaryattention (the first, Typee, becoming a bestseller), but after a fast-bloomingliterary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously inthe mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime. When he died in 1891, hewas almost completely forgotten. It was not until the «MelvilleRevival» in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, especiallyMoby-Dick which was hailed as one of the literary masterpieces of both Americanand world literature. in his tales we can see elements of imagination andadventure. Typee, White Jacket, Moby Dick,--these are capital tales of thedeep, the last-named especially.Typee (a story well known to Stevenson,evidently) is remarkable for its graphic pictures of sailor life afloat andashore in the Marquesas Islands, a new field in those days. The narrative iscontinued in White Jacket, which tells of the return from the South Pacificaboard a man-of-war. In Moby Dick we have the real experience of a sailormanand whaler (Melville himself) and the fictitious wanderings of a stout captain,a primeval kind of person, who is at times an interesting lunatic and again aranting philosopher. In the latter we have an echo of Carlyle, who was making astir in America in 1850, and who affected Melville so strongly that the lattersoon lost his bluff, hearty, sailor fashion of writing, which everybody liked,and assumed a crotchety style that nobody cared to read.

29. Realist of a very different kind is SamuelL. Clemens (1835-1910), who is more widely known by his pseudonymof Mark Twain. The remaining works of Mark Twain are, with one or twoexceptions, of very doubtful value. Their great popularity for a time was duelargely to the author’s reputation as a humorist,--a strange reputation itbegins to appear, for he was at heart a pessimist, an iconoclast, a thrower ofstones, and with the exception of his earliest work, The Celebrated JumpingFrog (1867), which reflected some rough fun or horseplay, it is questionablewhether the term «humorous» can properly be applied to any of hisbooks. Thus the blatant Innocents Abroad is not a work of humor but of ridicule(a very different matter), which jeers at travelers who profess admiration forthe scenery or institutions of Europe,--an admiration that was a sham to MarkTwain because he was incapable of understanding it. So with the grotesquecapers of A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court, with the sneering spiritof The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, with the labored attempts to be funny ofAdam’s Diary and with other alleged humorous works; readers of the nextgeneration may ask not what we found to amuse us in such works but how we couldtolerate such crudity or cynicism or bad taste in the name of Americanhumor.The most widely read of Mark Twain’s works are Tom Sawyer and HuckleberryFinn. The former, a glorification of a liar and his dime-novel adventures, hasenough descriptive power to make the story readable, but hardly enough todisguise its sensationalism, its lawlessness, its false standards of boy lifeand American life. In Huckleberry Finn, a much better book, the author depictsthe life of the Middle West as seen by a homeless vagabond. With a runawayslave as a companion the hero, Huck Finn, drifts down the Mississippi on araft, meeting with startling experiences at the hands of quacks and impostersof every kind. One might suppose, if one took this picaresque record seriously,that a large section of our country was peopled wholly by knaves and fools. Theadventures are again of a sensational kind; but the characters are powerfullydrawn, and the vivid pictures of the mighty river by day or night are among thebest examples of descriptive writing in our literature. John GriffithLondon was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He wasa pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and wasone of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a largefortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of WhiteFang and Call of the Wild, set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the shortstories «To Build a Fire», «An Odyssey of the North», and«Love of Life». London's«strength of utterance» is at its height in his stories, and they arepainstakingly well-constructed. JackLondon was an uncomfortable novelist, that form too long for his naturalimpatience and the quickness of his mind. His novels, even the best of them,are hugely flawed.

30. Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser — wasan American novelist and journalist. Dreiser was involved in several campaignsagainst social injustice. Dreiserwas a committed socialist, and wrote several non-fiction books on politicalissues. These included Dreiser Looks at Russia (1928), the result of his 1927trip to the Soviet Union, and two books presenting a critical perspective oncapitalist America, Tragic America (1931) and America Is Worth Saving (1941).His vision of capitalism and a future world order with a strong Americanmilitary dictate combined with the harsh criticism of the latter made him unpopularwithin the official circles. Although less politically radical friends, such asH.L. Mencken, spoke of Dreiser's relationship with communism as an«unimportant detail in his life,» Dreiser's biographer Jerome Lovingnotes that his political activities since the early 1930s had «clearlybeen in concert with ostensible communist aims with regard to the workingclass.» He pioneered the naturalist school and is known for portrayingcharacters whose value lies not in their moral code, but in their persistenceagainst all obstacles, and literary situations that more closely resemblestudies of nature than tales of choice and agency. His first novel, SisterCarrie (1900), tells the story of a woman who flees her country life for thecity (Chicago) and there lives a life far from a Victorian ideal. It soldpoorly and was not widely promoted largely because of moral objections to thedepiction of a country girl who pursues her dreams of fame and fortune throughrelationships to men. The book has since acquired a considerable reputation. Ithas been called the «greatest of all American urban novels.» [7] (Itwas made into a 1952 film by William Wyler, which starred Laurence Olivier andJennifer Jones.) He was a witness to a lynching in 1893 and wrote the short story,«Cracker,» which appeared in Ainslee's Magazine in 1901.His secondnovel, Jennie Gerhardt, was published in 1911. Many of Dreiser's subsequentnovels dealt with social inequality. His first commercial success was AnAmerican Tragedy (1925), which was made into a film in 1931 and again in 1951(as A Place in the Sun). Already in 1892, when Dreiser began work as anewspaperman he had begun «to observe a certain type of crime in theUnited States that proved very common. It seemed to spring from the fact thatalmost every young person was possessed of an ingrown ambition to be somebodyfinancially and socially.» «Fortune hunting became a disease»with the frequent result of a peculiarly American kind of crime, a form of«murder for money», when «the young ambitious lover of somepoorer girl» found «a more attractive girl with money orposition» but could not get rid of the first girl, usually because ofpregnancy.Dreiser claimed to have collected such stories every year between1895 and 1935. The murder in 1911 of Avis Linnell by Clarence Richesonparticularly caught his attention. By 1919 this murder was the basis of one oftwo separate novels begun by Dreiser. The 1906 murder of Grace Brown by ChesterGillette eventually became the basis for An American Tragedy. Though primarilyknown as a novelist, Dreiser published his first collection of short stories,Free and Other Stories in 1918. The collection contained 11 stories. Aparticularly interesting story, «My Brother Paul», was a briefbiography of his older brother, Paul Dresser, who was a famous songwriter inthe 1890s. This story was the basis for the 1942 romantic movie, «My GalSal».Other works include The «Genius» and Trilogy of Desire (athree-parter based on the remarkable life of the Chicago streetcar tycoonCharles Tyson Yerkes and composed of The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914),and The Stoic). The latter was published posthumously in 1947. Dreiser wasoften forced to battle against censorship because of his depiction of someaspects of life, such as sexual promiscuity, offended authorities and popularopinion.

31. The American Dreamis the hope that in the United States of America, anyone can become rich orfamous if they work hard and try their very best. Many migrants, people whocome to America from other countries, come to America because they hope for abetter life. America is attractive to migrants, because often there is morefreedom to become rich or famous than the country that they leave. WithAmerican Dream is also meant to live free and equal with all other people inthe USA. The term is used in popular discourse, and scholars have traced itsuse in American literature ranging from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,to Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), F. ScottFitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925). Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald wasan American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmwritings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded asone of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. is considered amember of the «Lost Generation» of the 1920s. He finished fournovels, This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Nightand his most famous, the celebrated classic, The Great Gatsby. A fifth,unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon was published posthumously.Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promisealong with despair and age. Fitzgerald’sfriendship with Hemingway was quite vigorous, as many of Fitzgerald’srelationships would prove to be. Hemingway did not get on well with Zelda. Inaddition to describing her as «insane» he claimed that she «encouragedher husband to drink so as to distract Scott from his ‘’ work on hisnovel,» the other work being the short stories he sold to magazines. This «whoring»,as Fitzgerald, and subsequently Hemingway, called these sales, was a sore pointin the authors’ friendship. Fitzgerald claimed that he would first write hisstories in an authentic manner but then put in «twists that made them intosaleable magazine stories.» AlthoughFitzgerald's passion lay in writing novels, only his first novel sold wellenough to support the opulent lifestyle that he and Zelda adopted as New Yorkcelebrities. As did most professional authors at the time, Fitzgeraldsupplemented his income by writing short stories for such magazines as TheSaturday Evening Post, Collier's Weekly, and Esquire, and sold his stories andnovels to Hollywood studios. Fitzgerald began working on his fourth novelduring the late 1920s but was sidetracked by financial difficulties thatnecessitated his writing commercial short stories, and by the schizophreniathat struck Zelda in 1930. Her emotional health remained fragile for the restof her life. In 1932, she was hospitalized in Baltimore, Maryland. Scott rentedthe «La Paix» estate in the suburb of Towson, Maryland to work on hislatest book, the story of the rise and fall of Dick Diver, a promising youngpsychiatrist who falls in love with and marries Nicole Warren, one of hispatients. The book went through many versions, the first of which was to be astory of matricide. Some critics have seen the book as a thinly-veiledautobiographical novel recounting Fitzgerald's problems with his wife, thecorrosive effects of wealth and a decadent lifestyle, his own egoism andself-confidence, and his continuing alcoholism.Fitzgerald died before he could complete The Love ofthe Last Tycoon. His manuscript, which included extensive notes for theunwritten part of the novel's story, was edited by his friend, the literarycritic Edmund Wilson, and published in 1941 as The Last Tycoon. In 1994 thebook was reissued under the original title The Love of the Last Tycoon, whichis now agreed to have been Fitzgerald's preferred title.

32. Ernest Miller Hemingway wasan American author and journalist. His distinctive writing style, characterizedby economy and understatement, influenced 20th-century fiction, as did his lifeof adventure and public image. He produced most of his work between themid-1920s and the mid-1950s. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.Hemingway's fiction was successful because the characters he presentedexhibited authenticity that resonated with his audience. Many of his works areclassics of American literature. He published seven novels, six short storycollections, and two non-fiction works during his lifetime; a further threenovels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works werepublished posthumously. After leaving high school he worked for a few months asa reporter for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front tobecome an ambulance driver during World War I, which became the basis for hisnovel A Farewell to Arms. He was seriously wounded and returned home within theyear. In Paris he met and was influenced by modernist writers and artists ofthe 1920s expatriate community known as the «Lost Generation». Hisfirst novel, The Sun Also Rises, was written in 1924.World War I hewas stationed at the Italian Front, and on his first day in Milan was sent tothe scene of a munitions factory explosion where rescuers retrieved theshredded remains of female workers. He described the incident in hisnon-fiction book Death in the Afternoon: «I remember that after wesearched quite thoroughly for the complete dead we collected fragments».Inhis 18 he was seriously wounded by mortar fire, having just returned from thecanteen to deliver chocolate and cigarettes to the men at the front line.Hemingway said of the incident: «When you go to war as a boy you have agreat illusion of immortality. Other people get killed; not you… Then whenyou are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion and you know it canhappen to you.» In hospital he inloved with a red-cross nurse, they wereplanning to get married, but she married another man, and Hemingway describedthe incident in the short and bitter work «A Very Short Story».Thewar had created in him a maturity at odds with living at home without a job andthe need for recuperation. Hecould not say how scared he was in another country with surgeons who could nottell him in English if his leg was coming off or not."World War2 In1937 Hemingway agreed to report on the Spanish Civil War for the North AmericanNewspaper Alliance (NANA) Hemingway wrote his only play, The Fifth Column, asthe city was being bombarded. Hemingwaywas present at heavy fighting in the Hürtgenwald near the end of 1944. OnDecember 17, a feverish and ill Hemingway had himself driven to Luxembourg tocover what would later be called The Battle of the Bulge. However, as soon ashe arrived, Lanham handed him to the doctors, who hospitalized him withpneumonia, and by the time he recovered a week later, the main fighting wasover. In1947 Hemingway was awarded a Bronze Star for his bravery during World War II.He was recognized for his valor in having been «under fire in combat areasin order to obtain an accurate picture of conditions», with thecommendation that «through his talent of expression, Mr. Hemingway enabledreaders to obtain a vivid picture of the difficulties and triumphs of the front-linesoldier and his organization in combat».

33. The Great Depressionhas been the subject of much writing, as authors have sought to evaluate an erathat caused financial as well as emotional trauma. Perhaps the most noteworthyand famous novel written on the subject is The Grapes of Wrath, published in1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded both the Nobel Prize forliterature and the Pulitzer Prize for the work. The novel focuses on a poorfamily of sharecroppers who are forced from their home as drought, economichardship, and changes in the agricultural industry occur during the GreatDepression. Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is another important novel about ajourney during the Great Depression. Additionally, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbirdis set during the Great Depression. Margaret Atwood's Booker prize-winning TheBlind Assassin is likewise set in the Great Depression, centering on aprivileged socialite's love affair with a Marxist revolutionary. The eraspurred the resurgence of social realism, practiced by many who started theirwriting careers on relief programs, especially the Federal Writers' Project inthe U.S.John Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He wrotethe Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and East of Eden(1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). He wrote a total of twenty-sevenbooks, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and five collections ofshort stories. In 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature.Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, published in 1929, is based on the lifeand death of privateer Henry Morgan. It centers on Morgan's assault and sackingof the city of Panama, sometimes referred to as the 'Cup of Gold', and on thewoman, fairer than the sun, who was said to be found there.

AfterCup of Gold, between 1931 and 1933 Steinbeck produced three shorter works. ThePastures of Heaven, published in 1932, comprised twelve interconnected storiesabout a valley near Monterey, that was discovered by a Spanish corporal whilechasing runaway American Indian slaves. In 1933 Steinbeck published The RedPony, a 100-page, four-chapter story weaving in memories of Steinbeck'schildhood. Steinbeckbegan to write a series of «California novels» and Dust Bowl fiction,set among common people during the Great Depression. These included In DubiousBattle, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. Of Mice and Men is a tragedythat was written in the form of a play in 1937. The story is about twotraveling ranch workers, George and Lennie, trying to work up enough money tobuy their own farm/ranch. It encompasses themes of racism, loneliness,prejudice against the mentally ill, and the struggle for personal independence.Along with Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and The Pearl, Of Mice and Men is oneof Steinbeck's best known works. TheGrapes of Wrath was written in 1939 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. Thebook is set in the Great Depression and describes a family of sharecroppers,the Joads, who were driven from their land due to the dust storms of the DustBowl. The title is a reference to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The book wasunpopular amongst some critics who found it too sympathetic to the worker'splight and too critical of aspects of capitalism; but it found quite a largeaudience amongst the working class.

34. The effects of World War II hadfar-reaching implications for most of the world, trails of millions raped womenand children, mountains of bloody human flesh lingered in the minds of evident,all this influenced the mentality and the system of values.Jerome David Salinger wasan American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, aswell as his reclusive nature. Salingerwas assigned to a counter-intelligence division, where he used his proficiencyin French and German to interrogate prisoners of war. He was also among thefirst soldiers to enter a liberated concentration camp.Salinger's experiencesin the war affected him emotionally. He was hospitalized for a few weeks forcombat stress reaction after Germany was defeated, and he later told hisdaughter: «You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of yournose entirely, no matter how long you live.»Both of his biographers speculate that Salinger drewupon his wartime experiences in several stories,such as «For Esmé –with Love and Squalor», which is narrated by a traumatized soldier.Salinger continued to write while serving in the army, and published severalstories in slick magazines. After Germany's defeat, Salinger signed up for asix-month period of «Denazification» duty in Germanyfor theCounterintelligence Corps. nthe 1940s, Salinger confided to several people that he was working on a novelfeaturing Holden Caulfield, the teenage protagonist of his short story«Slight Rebellion off Madison,»and The Catcher in the Rye waspublished on July 16, 1951. The novel's plot is simple,detailingsixteen-year-old Holden's experiences in New York City following his expulsion,and departure, from an elite prep school. Not only was he expelled from hiscurrent school, he had also been expelled from three previous schoolsThe bookis more notable for the iconic persona and testimonial voice of its first-personnarrator, Holden.He serves as an insightful but unreliable narrator whoexpounds on the importance of loyalty, the «phoniness» of adulthood,and his own duplicity.In a 1953 interview with a high-school newspaper,Salinger admitted that the novel was «sort of» autobiographical,explaining that «My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy inthe book… It was a great relief telling people about it.»The book's initial success was followed by a brieflull in popularity, but by the late 1950s, according to Ian Hamilton, it had«become the book all brooding adolescents had to buy, the indispensablemanual from which cool styles of disaffectation could be borrowed.»at the age of 53, Salinger had a year-longrelationship with 18-year-old Joyce Maynard, already an experienced writer forSeventeen magazine. The New York Times had asked Maynard to write an articlefor them which, when published as «An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back OnLife» made her a celebrity. Salinger wrote a letter to her warning aboutliving with fame. After exchanging 25 letters, Maynard moved in with Salingerthe summer after her freshman year at Yale University Maynard did not return toYale that fall, and spent ten months as a guest in Salinger's Cornish home. Therelationship ended, as he was too old. Salinger'slanguage, especially his energetic, realistically sparse dialogue, wasrevolutionary at the time his first stories were published, and was seen byseveral critics as «the most distinguishing thing» about his work.Salinger identified closely with his characters,andused techniques such as interior monologue, letters, and extended telephonecalls to display his gift for dialogue. Such style elements also "[gave]him the illusion of having, as it were, delivered his characters' destiniesinto their own keeping.«Recurring themes in Salinger's stories alsoconnect to the ideas of innocence and adolescence, including the „corruptinginfluence of Hollywood and the world at large,“ the disconnect betweenteenagers and „phony“ adultsand the perceptive, precociousintelligence of children. RayDouglas Bradbury is an Americanfantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for hisdystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction storiesgathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man(1951), Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th and 21st centuryAmerican writers of speculative fiction. Having been influenced by sciencefiction heroes like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, Bradbury began to publishscience fiction stories in fanzines in 1938. Although he is often described asa science fiction writer, Bradbury does not box himself into a particularnarrative categorization: First of all, I don't write science fiction. I'veonly done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality.Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal.So Martian Chronicles is not science fiction, it's fantasy. It couldn't happen,you see? That's the reason it's going to be around a long time—because it's aGreek myth, and myths have staying power.On another occasion, Bradbury observed that the noveltouches on the alienation of people by media: In writing the short novelFahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four orfive decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husbandand wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutelystunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, itsantenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a daintycone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog,listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helpedup and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. Thiswas not fiction. Besideshis fiction work, Bradbury has written many short essays on the arts andculture, attracting the attention of critics in this field. Bradbury alsohosted „The Ray Bradbury Theater“ which was based off his shortstories. Criticalopinion of Bradbury's work is sharply divided.Critics:Hisis a very great and unusual talent. Althoughhasa large following among science fiction readers, there is at least an equallylarge contingent of people who cannot stomach his work at all… Hisimagination is mediocre; he borrows nearly all his backgrounds and props, anddistorts them badly; wherever he is required to invent anything—a planet, aMartian, a machine—the image is flat and unconvincing.

35. John Hoyer Updike(March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short storywriter, art critic, and literary critic. Updike's most famous work is hisRabbit series (the novels Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit AtRest; and the novella „Rabbit Remembered“) which chronicled the lifeof Harry „Rabbit“ Angstrom over the course of several decades, fromyoung adulthood to his death. Both Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit At Rest(1990) received the Pulitzer Prize. He is one of only three authors (the othersbeing Booth Tarkington and William Faulkner) to win the Pulitzer Prize forFiction more than once. Updike published more than twenty novels and more thana dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literarycriticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poemsappeared in The New Yorker, starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for TheNew York Review of Books. Describing his subject as „the American smalltown, Protestant middle class“, Updike was well recognized for his carefulcraftsmanship, his unique prose style, and his prolificness. He wrote onaverage a book a year. Updike populated his fiction with characters who»frequently experience personal turmoil and must respond to crisesrelating to religion, family obligations, and marital infidelity. His fictionis distinguished by its attention to the concerns, passions, and suffering ofaverage Americans; its emphasis on Christian theology; and its preoccupationwith sexuality and sensual detail. His work has attracted a significant amountof critical attention and praise, and he is widely considered to be one of thegreat American writers of his time. Updike's highly distinctive prose stylefeatures a rich, unusual, sometimes arcane vocabulary as conveyed through theeyes of «a wry, intelligent authorial voice» that extravagantlydescribes the physical world, while remaining squarely in the realisttradition.Updike famously described his own style as an attempt «to givethe mundane its beautiful due.» SaulBellow –jew-was a Canadian-born American writer.His best-known works include The Adventures of AugieMarch, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, Seize the Day, Humboldt's Gift andRavelstein. Hiswriting exhibited «exuberant ideas, flashing irony, hilarious comedy andburning compassion… the mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysisof our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quicksuccession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by acommentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer andinner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and thatcan be called the dilemma of our age. Theauthor's works speak to the disorienting nature of modern civilization, and thecountervailing ability of humans to overcome their frailty and achievegreatness (or at least awareness). Bellow saw many flaws in moderncivilization, and its ability to foster madness, materialism and misleadingknowledge.[20] Principal characters in Bellow's fiction have heroic potential, andmany times they stand in contrast to the negative forces of society. Oftenthese characters are Jewish and have a sense of alienation or otherness. Jewishlife and identity is a major theme in Bellow's work, although he bristled atbeing called a „Jewish writer.“ Bellow's work also shows a greatappreciation of America, and a fascination with the uniqueness and vibrancy ofthe American experience.Bellow's work abounds in references and quotes from thelikes of Marcel Proust and Henry James, but he offsets these high-culturereferences with jokes. Bellow interspersed autobiographical elements into hisfiction, and many of his principal characters were said to bear a resemblanceto him. Bill(Merl. W, Jr.) Baldwin isan American science fiction writer. He writes militaristic space opera. Hismain series is about a male protagonist named Wilf Ansor Brim.The Helmsman Saga:The Helmsman ,Galactic Convoy ,TheTrophy ,The Mercenaries ,The Defenders ,The Siege ,The Defiance.Mario Gianluigi Puzowas born in a poor family of Neapolitan immigrantsliving in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York. Many of his books drawheavily on this heritage. VladimirVladimirovich Nabokov wasa multilingual Russian-American novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrotehis first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as amaster English prose stylist. He also made contributions to entomology and hadan interest in chess problems. Lolita is frequently cited as among hismost important novels and is his most widely known, exhibiting the love ofintricate word play and synesthetic detail that characterised all his works.The novel was ranked at #4 in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels.Toni Morrisonis a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, andprofessor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, andrichly detailed black characters. Among her best known novels are The BluestEye, Song of Solomon and Beloved. Morrisonbegan writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers atHoward University who met to discuss their work. She went to one meeting with ashort story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. The story laterevolved into her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), which she wrote whileraising two children and teaching at Howard. Grant Morrisonis a Scottish comic book writer and playwright. Heis best-known for his nonlinear narratives and counter-cultural leanings, aswell as his successful runs on titles like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, TheInvisibles, New X-Men, Fantastic Four, All Star Superman, and Batman.