UGC CBSE Net/set/slet - English

UGC NET/SET/SLET/JRF
HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, THE ELIZABETHAN ERA
Main Literary Figures
Spenser (1552-99)-
Drayton (1563-1631)
Donne (1573-1631)
Marlowe (1564-93)
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Ben Jonson (1573-1637)
Ho**er (1554-1600)
Bacon (1561-1626)
Burton (1577-1639)
Historical Background
1. Settlement- stability, No open warfare, end of the conflict between France and England.
2. Expansion- Expansion of mental and geographical horizon.
Literary Features of the Age
1. New Classicism- Ardent revival of Greek and Latin shaped the rudeness of English
2. Output- historical situation creates a healthy production
3. New Romanticism- romantic quest for remote, wonderful and beautiful
4. Drama- in spite of strong puritanical attack drama made a swift leap, Marprelate Controversy
Development of Literary Genre
Poetry :
1. Edmund Spenser-
a. The Faerie Queen-
• The work appeared in installment, first three book in 1589. Remaining 3 in 1596.
• After his death two cantos and two odd stanza of Bk VII appeared.
• A preface in the form of letter was written by him to Sir Walter Ralegh for explaining the scheme.
• There were to be 12 Books, each containing adventure of a particular knight to represent some sorts of virtue.
• 1st Book – Red Cross Knight- representing holiness, 2nd with Temperance, 3rd Chastity, 4th with Friendship, and so on .
• Arthur is the chief of all 12, appears in the critical moment who at the end is to marry Gloriana.
• Strong political elements of the Elizabethan Era , Gloriana representing Elizabeth, Duessa may be Mary,Archimago may be the pope.
• Weakness in style but the pictorial description, magical color make it supreme in English.
• Technique- Archaic Diction helps to create medieval atmosphere. Spenserian stanza.
b. The Shepherds Calender
• Published in 1579, a series of 12 eclogues, one for each month of the year.
• Stock character such as Cuddie, Colin Clout and Perigot.
c. Amoretti
• Published in 1595, containing 88 petrarchan sonnets celebrating his love.
d. Epithalamion
• Written in honor of hid marriage.
e. A View of the Present State of Ireland ( Prose)
• Published in 1594, view on the settlement of Irish question
2. John Donne
a. Of the progress of the Soule
• Written in couplet form
b. A nocturnal Upon St lucies day.
3. Sir Thomas Wyatt
• His 96 poems appeared posthumously in Tottel’s Miscellany.
• All were written in Petrarchan form except the couplet ending.
4. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
• Shakespearean style.
• Founder of Blank Verse before Shakespeare.
5. Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset.
• Myrroure for Magistrates ( Rhyme Royal)- 1563
• Sackville collaborated with Norton in Gorboduc.
6. George Gascoigne
• The Stelle Glass (1576) – Satire
• Jocasta – Tragedy
7. Sir Philip Sidney
a. Astrophel and Stella (1591)
• 108 love sonnets
• Written to his mistress Lady Penelope Rich
• Petrarchan Style
b. Arcadia ( Prose Romance)-
• Published incomplete 1590, complete in 1598
c. Apology for Poetry
• Published in 1595
• Answer to Gosson’s School of Abuse
8. Michael Drayton
a. The Harmony of the Church
b. Poly- olbion- longer poem- tedious and careful description of England.
c. The Man in the Moon (science)
d. Nymphidia
9. Thomas Champion
a. A Booke of Ayres (1601)
b. Songs of Mourning
10. Fletcher
a. The Purple Island or The Isle of Moon-
• 12 cantos describing human body in allegorical term.
b. Christ’s Victory and Triumph
11. Samuel Daniel
a. Delia
b. The complaint of Rosamond
c. The Civil Wars
d. Hymen’s Triumph
e. Defence of Ryme
f. Art of English Poesy

Drama Before Shakespeare
Influence of Seneca
• English Tragedy was not developed from Miracle plays of Middle ages but from the model of Seneca, latin dramatist of 12 c A.D
The University Wits
Chief Members-
1. Geroge Peele1558-99
a. The Arrangement of Paris
b. The Old Wives Tale
c. The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe

2. Robert Greene
a. Frier Bacon and Friar Bungay
b. Alphonsus
c. King of Aragon

3. Thomas Nash
a. The Unfortunate Traveller or Life of Jack Wilton

4. Thomas Lodge
a. The wounds of Civil War

5. Thomas Kyd
a. The Spanish Tragedy (1558)
b. Cornelia
c. Soliman Persida
6. Christopher Marlowe (1564-93)
a. Tamburline the Great Part-1587, Part-2 – 1588
b. The Jew of Malta (1589)
c. Edward II (1591)
d. Doctor Faustus (1592)
e. The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage (1593

7. Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Poems:
a. Venus adonis
b. The R**e of Lucrece
c. The Passionate Pilgrim
Drama:
Early Period- 1589-1593
a. King Henry VI – P 1 , 2, 3
b. Titus Andronicus
c. The comedy of Errors
d. The Two Gentlemen of Verona
e. The Taming of the Shrew
f. King Richard III
2nd period- 1593-1598
a. King John
b. Love’s Labours Lost
c. Romeo and Juliet
d. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
e. The Merchant of Venice
f. King Richard III
g. Henry IV P 1 & 2
h. The Merry Wives of Windsor
3rd Period 1598-
a. Much Ado About Nothing
b. King Henry V
c. Julius Caesar
d. As You Like It
e. Hamlet
f. Twelfth Night
g. Troilus and Criseyde
h. All’s Well That Ends Well
i. Measure for Measure
j. Othello
k. King lear
l. Macbeth
m. Antony and Cleopatra
n. Timon of Athens
o. Coriolanus
Last Plays
a. Pericles
b. Cymberline
c. The Winter’s Tale
d. The Tempest
e. King Henry VIII
Post – Shakespearean Drama
1. Ben Jonson
a. Everyman In His Humour
b. Out of His Humour
c. Cynthia’s Revels
d. The Poetaster
e. Volpone
f. Epicorne
g. The Alchemist
h. Bartholomew Fayre
i. Sejanus his fall ( historical Tragedy)
j. Catiline
k. The Masque of Beauty
l. The Masque of Queens

2. Beaumont and Fletcher
a. A King and No King
b. The Knight of the Burning Pastle
c. The Maid’s Tragedy
d. Philaster
e. The Faithful Shepherds

3. Geroge Chapman:
a. Bussy d Ambois
b. All Fools
c. Eastward Hoe

4. Marston:
a. Antonio Mellida
b. Antoni’s Revenge

5. Thomas Dekker
a. Old Fortunates
b. The Shoemaker’s Holiday

6. Thomas Middleton
a. The Changelling
b. Women Beware Women

7. Thomas Heywood
a. A women Killed With Kindness

8. John Webster
a. The White Devil
b. The Duchess of Malfi

9. Tourneur
a. The Revenger’s Tragedy
b. The Atheist Tragedy

Prose Writing

The English Bible- The Authorized Version
a. King James Version / Authorizes – 1611. 47 scholars , celebration for its freedom from Rome.
b. William Tyndale

Bacon:
a. The Advancement of Learning
b. The New Atlantis
Robert Burton
a. The Anatomy of Melancholy

ALBERT CAMUS (1913–60) Algeria/France----

WORLD IS MEANINGLESS, SEARCH FOR MEANING IS FRUITLESS

THE OUTSIDER (1942)
Of Nobel Prize winners in literature only >> Rudyard Kipling was younger than Camus was when he received the award in 1957. According to the judges, he received the prize for work which ‘illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times’.
This work ranges from The Plague, a novel set in a quarantined North African town, and The Fall, the record of one man’s disillusionment with the life he had been leading, to plays and philosophical essays such as The Rebel and The Myth of Sisyphus. His best known and most widely read book, however, is The Outsider, sometimes translated, more accurately, as The Stranger. Set in Algeria, the country in which Camus grew up, the novel focuses on the alienated figure of Meursault. At the beginning of the novel he has just received word of his mother’s death (‘Mother died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know’ are the famous opening lines which establish very concisely Meursault’s detachment from everyday emotions) and he is about to travel to her funeral. The narrative follows the next few days in Meursault’s life, culminating in his shooting of a man on a heat-ravaged beach. As the law moves into action to deal with Meursault’s crime, attention focuses as much on his apparent indifference to his mother’s death and on his unsettling beliefs about the essential meaninglessness of life as on the murder he committed. Albert Camus died in a car crash three years after becoming a Nobel Laureate. The legacy he left consists of the writings, both fictional and non-fictional, in which he presents his vision of an absurd universe where man can only assert his freedom and individuality by coming to recognize that rationality and meaning in life are unattainable goals. Of these writings, The Outsider continues to be the most accessible and the most rewarding for readers.