1MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION UZBEK STATE WORLD LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY Elmira Denisovna Muratova THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LITERATURE The text of Lectures Bachelor’s Department 5120100-Philology Tashkent 2006
2Ўзбекистон давлат жахон тиллари университети Илмий кенгашининг 2005 йил “___” августдаги йиғилишида мухокама қилинган ва тасдиқланган. Баённома№______ Reviewer:Svetlana A. Glazyrina, Ph.D., Head, Chair of Stylistics External Reviewer:Vasilya Rakhimova, Ph.D., Head, Chair of Foreign Languages, Institute for Oriental Studies. ANNOTATION The course of lectures is designed to acquaint students with the main outlines of English literature and provides an overview of its evolution covering several centuries, from its dawn to modern time. The thematic organization should assist students of Bachelor Departments in their studies. The text of lectures will be an important addition to available sources of information on English literature.
3CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................................4 Theme 1: The Dawn of English Literature.The Anglo-Saxon and Norman Periods............5 Theme 2: The Literature of the 14th and 15th Centuries........................................................10 Theme 3: Renaissance. William Shakespeare’s Work and His Theatre................................13 Theme 4: The Enlightenment and Reflection of its Ideas in English Literature...................19 Theme 5: Romanticism...............................................................................................................29 Theme 6: Critical Realism..........................................................................................................41 Theme 7: She-writers in English Literature of the 19th Century...........................................48 Theme 8: English Writers at the Turn of the Century (end of 19th and beginning of the 20th century)................................................................................................................................52 Theme 9: English Literature of the 20th Century (1st half)....................................................60 Theme 10: English Literature of the 20th Century (2nd half)................................................64 LITERATURE.............................................................................................................................71
4INTRODUCTION English literature is often described as beginning with Chaucer.This would give England six centuries of literature. Actually there were more than six centuries of literature before Chaucer was born. The modern reader can make out the general meaning of a page of Chaucer without difficulty, but if he looks at the earliest English literature he finds that it doesn’t read like English.The two most important events in the history of England took place before the Norman Conquest. One of them was the period when Angles, Saxons and Jutes came to England. Literature in the Anglo-Saxon period was recorded in manuscripts, among which is “The Song of Beowulf”. Each art has its own medium: the painter his pigments, the musician his sound, and the writer, words.The difficulty of the writer is that words are used for all everyday purposes, so that they become worn, “like coins rubbed by long use”. Modern poetry begins with Geoffrey Chaucer, diplomat, soldier and scholar. Chaucer as a poet is so good that he makes the fifteenth century appear dull.“His imitators are brought on to the stage of literature only to receive cat-calls”.
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