English Literature Throughout Time

Historical Context

• Life dominated by church and king
• You live where you are born
• Uneducated majority
• Invention of the printing press
• Crusades
• extreem rich vs. extreem poor

Key Themes and Ideas

• Chivilric Romances
• Mystery/Morality plays
• explicit and humerous portrayles of sex
• vernacular languages
• Courtly Love
  • love is an overwhelming experience
  • idealisation of the woman
  • spiritual experience
  • transforming effect

Key Texts

Poetry

The Miller’s Tale- Geoffrey Chaucer

• Male characters suffer consequences of actions fuelled by love/lust/greed
• Effictio and lovesickness used to describe Absolon
• Alison described through animal imagery
• Irony
• Allusions to the bible
• Absolon takes literature too seriously

Historical Context

• Economic growth
• Start of scientific knowledge
• 'Rebirth'
• Humanism

Key Themes and Ideas

• tragedies
• comedies
• sonnets
• classical verse
• allegorical poetry

Key Texts

Poetry

Sonnet 130- William Shakespeare

• 'My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun'
• Parody of Petrachian Sonnet
• He loves her because of her ordinariness 

Drama

Romeo and Juliet- William Shakespeare

• Conversation forms a perfect, unified sonnet
• Religious imagery ‘saints’ extended metaphor

Historical Context

• Severe punishment for treason
• Golden age
• Threat of war- Spanish Armada
• Geographical and intellectual exploration
• High class has idealistic ideas about pastoral life

Key Themes and Ideas

• courtly love poetry
• 'Ode to...' Lengthy, lyrical and reflective poem
• Sharing poems in court
• Young men expected to produce love poems
• Metaphysical poetry

Key Texts

Drama

Anthony and Cleopatra- Shakespeare

• Hyperbolic language
• Questionable love
• Melting imagery

Historical Context 

• Parliamentary revolt
• Gunpowder plot
• Debt caused severe economic depression

Key Themes and Ideas

• metaphysical poetry
• revenge tragedy
• Dark mood
• Questioning the stability of social order
• Acid satire

Key Texts

Poetry

The Sun Rising- John Donne

• Realistic
• Colloquial language
• Arrogant yet relaxed
• Their love is invincible
• Centre of their own universe

Historical Context

• Puritans left for America
• Civil war
• Return of theatre
• Monarchy restored
• Hedonism
• Social ambition

Key Themes and Ideas

• Social comedy
• Bawdy, Cynical, Amoral
• Reaction against restriction
• Cavalier Poets:
  • Carpe diem
  • Short lyric poems
  • Underlying sense of eroticism
• Money and marriage
• Dramatic irony
• Jokes about country people 

Key Texts

Poetry

‘To Celia’ by Ben Johnson

• ******
• Angelic power
• ‘thirst’

Historical Context

• Achievements in art and architecture
• Upper class mini-Renaissance of culture
• Fashionable novels
• Polite society

Key Themes and Ideas

• satire
• political essays
• invention of the novel
• female readership

Prose

Sense and Sensibility- Jane Austen

• Money is power
• Sensibility is looked down on
• Social rules

Poetry

Remember Thee!-Lord Byron

• Male is central to relationship
• Relationship is central to life

Historical Context

• Dramatic revolutions in science, philosophy and politics 
• Individualism over tradition
• French Revolution inspired
• Increase in the literate
• Egalitarianism, Rationalism 
• More goods produced for less money
• Chances for social climbing
• Book industry
• Coffeehouses allowed for intellectual discussion
• Human rights enshrined by law
• Seperation of church from state

Key Themes and Ideas

• passion and imagination
• worship of nature

Poetry

To His Coy Mistress- Andrew Marvell

• Pursuit of a woman
• Theme of death associated with virginity
• ‘birds of prey’

Historical Context

• The industrial revolution
• Natural sciences
• Liberalism and radicalism
• Aesthetic experience

Key Themes and Ideas

• Sensibility
• Supernatural
• The gothic novel
• Increase in female authors and readers
• Nature
• Celebration of childhood
• Idealism

Prose

Sense and Sensibility- Jane Austen

• mocking of Marianne, an idealistic teenager, through free indirect narration

Poetry

To Helen- Edgar Allen Poe

• Mythological imagery
• Praise
• Nature imagery
• Religious imagery

Historical Context

• British Empire
• Darwinism
• Role of women
• Changing attitudes to science religion and culture
• Social issues of class

Key Themes and Ideas

• Duty
• Morality
• Fear of the unknown
• Romanticism
• The gothic
• Crime fiction
• Visions of the future

Poetry

No, Thank You, John-Christina Rossetti

• Woman rejecting man

Prose

Queen of Gardens- John Ruskin

• ‘protected from danger and temptation’
• Gender roles

Drama

A Woman of No Importance- Oscar Wilde

• Religion is love

Historical Context

• Large British Empire
• Build up to WWI and the Titanic
• Suffragettes

Key Themes and Ideas

• questioning beliefs
• art for art’s sake
• experimentalism

Key Texts

Prose

House of Mirth- Edith Wharton

• Social rules
• Actions rather than words

Historical Context

• Abstract thought
• pop art
• minimalism
• Marxism
• World Wars

Key Themes and Ideas

• science fiction
• social and personal identity
• feminism
• Experimental
• Deliberate obscurity
• Breakdown of traditional values
• More equality between men and women
• Freedom to express desires
• Realistic attitude towards love
• Less conventional and more personal poetry
• The theatre of the absurd

Key Texts

Prose

The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald

• High class
• Obsessive love
• Careless attitudes towards life

Historical Context

• Sceptical interpretations of life
• Growing media impact

Key Themes and Ideas

• randomness
• binary oppositions
• Criticism of religion
• Black humor and deliberate irony
• Formlessness
• Pastiche
• Populism
• Meta fiction

Key Texts

Poetry

Widow- Sylvia Plath

Prose

Margaret Atwood