Review for British Literature Final Exam.

Our brief review for Bri.Liter. will follow the following outline:

I.

William Langland---Piers the Plowman

Edmund Spenser--- The Faerie Queen

Thomas Malory---Le Morte D’Arthur

Thomas More---Utopia

Francis Bacon---- Of Marriage and Single Life; The New Instrument

John Donne---- The Flea; Death, Be Not Proud

Alfred Tennyson---- Crossing the Bar; In Memorian

Alexander Pope---An Essay on Criticism

William Shakespeare---King Lear

Christopher Marlowe--- The Tragic History of Dr. Faustus

Jonathan Swift---- A Modest Proposal; The Battle of Books, Gulliver’s Travels

Robert Burns---- My Heart’s in the Highland; A Red, Red Rose

William Wordsworth---- I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud; The Solitary Reaper; My Heart Leaps Up;

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

Lord Byron--- The Isles of Greece; Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage;

Percy Shelley---- Ode to the West Wind; Ozymandias

John Keats---- To Autumn; Ode on a Grecian Urn

Emily Bronte--- Wuthering Heights

Walter Scott----- Waverley; Ivanhoe;

Oliver Goldsmith---- The Vicar of Wakefield

Henry Fielding---- Tom Jones

W. M. Thackeray---- Vanity Fair

John Galsworthy----- The Forsyte Saga

Oscar Wilde----- The Picture of Dorian Gray

D.H. Lawrence ------Sons and Lovers; The Rainbow;

Bernard Shaw---- Mrs. Warren’s Profession

Thomas Hardy ------ The Mayor of Casterbridge; Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Jane Austen---- Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice

R. B. Sheridan---- The School for Scandal; The Rivals

Charles Dickens ----A Tale of Two Cities; David Copperfield II.

1. Before Renaissance

Conquests: Anglo-Saxons Normans

Alfred the Great a prose writer Anglo-Saxon period

Beowulf: a hero origin

Geoffrey Chaucer: literary background The Canterbury Tales significance

Romance: the most prevailing kind of literature in medieval England; loyalty to king and lord

Norman Conquest three languages

Thomas More Utopia forerunner of modern socialist thought

2. Renaissance

Humanism

Francis bacon： the foundation for modern science

17th C. Literature: different schools

John Milton: a real revolutionary, a master poet and a great prose writer Paradise Lost The

freedom of the will “the man of thought”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress

3. Enlightenment Movement Rationalism

Neoclassicism

Alexander Pope: A representative writer of the neo-classical school An Essay on Criticism

18th century a new literary form--- the modern English novel, features

Robinson Crusoe the rising bourgeoisie

Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels; four trips; the Houyhnhnms; Yahoo; a typical

feature of Swifts writings; Bitter satire

Henry Fielding： Father of the English Novel； Tom Jones； comic epic in prose; the

third-person narration

William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience; Childhood

R. B. Sheridan The Rivals The School for Scandal morality is the constant theme

4. English Romanticism

William Wordsworth: poetic theory; short poems

Thomas Gray The Graveyard School Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Lake Poets

Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single

man in possession of a good for-tune, must be in want of a wife.” Mrs. Bennet

Walter Scott Historical Novels

Byron: Don Juan comic epic John Keats ode quotation

5. Victorian Literature

Critical Realism

Charlotte Bronté: Jane Eyre the life of the middle---class working women, particularly

governesses. the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions

Charles Dickens: a mingling of humor and pathos Oliver Twist exposure of the bitter

conditions of the workhouse

William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair

Robert Browning My Last Duchess use of the dramatic monologue

Alfred Tennyson: Crossing the Bar; his fearlessness towards death

6. Modernism:

theoretical base : irrational philosophy theory of psycho-analysis

The rise of the irrational philosophy and new science greatly incited modernist writers to make

new explorations on human natures and human relationships.

Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D’Urbervilles; “Wessex” novels; nostalgic; novels of

character and environment; man’s fate is predeterminedly tragic

D. H. Lawrence: the psychological development of his characters and in his energetic

criticism of the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist industrialization on

human nature.

modern drama: A technical revolution did not occur in the field of drama as it did in poetry and

fiction.

George Bernard Shaw Realism

James Joyce Ulysses stream of consciousness

John Galsworthy: conventional Forsyte novels