British and American Literature

УДК811.111 
А49 

Рецензенты: 

кандидат филологических наук Т.А. Булановская 

(кафедра английской филологии и лингвистики МГПУ); 

кандидат филологических наук Е.И. Ковалева 
(кафедра лексики английского языка МПГУ) 

Алехина М.С. 

А49 
British and American Literature: Учеб.-метод. пособие. - М.: 
МИСиС, 2004. - 220 с. 

Цель пособия - формирование представлений об основных явлениях и 
логике развития литературного процесса в Великобритании и США. Даны 
образцы анализа художественных произведений, сведения об эпохе и эстетических принципах развития литературы на разных этапах. Приводятся упражнения, направленные на дискурсивный анализ текста, и задания, контролирующие понимание теории. 

Для студентов, обучающихся по специальности 050303 (033200) «Иностранный язык». 

© Московский государственный институтстали и сплавов (Технологический 
университет) (МИСиС), 2004 

CONTENTS 

Foreword 
4 

Introduction 
5 

PARTI 
Chapter I. Beowulf and old english literature. The age of chaucer 
8 

Chapter II. English renaissance 
20 

Chapter III. The rise of neoclassicism 
44 

Chapter IV. Romanticism: part 1 
58 

Chapter V. Romanticism: part II 
68 

Chapter VI. The Victorians: part 1 
80 

Chapter VII. The Victorians: part II 
94 

Chapter VIII. Edwardian literature 
102 

Chapter IX. British literature between two world wars 
114 

Chapter X. British literature after world war II 
126 

Chapter XI. British women writers 
140 

Chapter XII. Recent british literature 
149 

PART II 
Chapter I. The beginning. The birth of romanticism 
155 

Chapter II. American humour 
172 

Chapter III. American literature in the 1980-1920 
177 

Chapter IV. The lost generation 
187 

Chapter V. Literature of the south (1930-1940) 
195 

Chapter VI. American literature of the 1950-70s 
201 

Chapter VII. The american theatre 
210 

Conclusion 
217 

Bibliography 
218 

3 

FOREWORD 

British and American Literature has been complied with the purpose 
of giving a general comprehension of the main literary movements in 
British and American literature and the outstanding writers, poets and 
dramatists of these movements. For that some works of British and 
American literary criticism have been used. This book gives the 
traditional view on the development of literary process in these countries. 
The order of arrangement is mainly chronological. Each period is 
preceded by the political and historical background of that century, which 
had an impact on literary development. In Introduction the notion of some 
literary terms is given to be used in the further analysis of literary texts. 

In the end of each chapter there are questions for discussion as well as 
extracts from the canons of British and American literature for discourse 
analysis. While answering the questions the students should be able to 
define the main theme of a literary work, its composition, genre forms, 
give characteristics of the heroes, analyse the language and symbols. If 
several genre forms are mingled in a work of fiction, the students should 
explain the logic of their interaction. 

It is difficuh to give a broader picture of literary development within a 
limited space, so students should read additional literature on the subject. 

4 

INTRODUCTION 

This work is intended to introduce the students to English and 
American literature as a whole and to acquaint them with what is the 
generally accepted view of the writers and periods under discussion. 

Each chapter will consider historical development of the time under 
consideration and its reflection in literature of that time in the form of 
literary movements - common tendencies in literary activities of a group 
of writers belonging to the same epoch and having more or less defmite 
social and political principles and artistic methods of their work. Method 
is a way of reflecting reality, a writer's attitude to reality. 

Before introducing the main topics it is necessary to get the main ideas 
of what literary process or the structure of a literary work mean. This is the 
domain of theory of literature or criticism - the inteфretation, analysis, 
classiflcation and judgment of works of literature. Practical criticism 
concentrates on the examination of individual texts while theoretical 
criticism discusses the nature of literature and the relationship between 
literature, the critic and society. Descriptive criticism describes literature as 
it is, and prescriptive criticism argues what literature ought to be. 

The aims and conventions of literary criticism have changed through 
the centuries, exploring a work of art in its relationship to the Universe, an 
artist or the audience. Aristotie in his Poetics (IV ВС) defined art as 
imitation and founded mimetic theory, which sees a work of art as 
reflecting the Universe as a mirror. Dr Johnson and other neoclassical 
scholars studied a work's effect on an audience- pragmatic theory. 
Romantic criticism was expressive and centered on an artist, how he 
expressed his psyche and feelings. Wordsworth in is Preface to the 
Lyrical Ballads defined poetry as the spontaneous overfiow of feelings. 
Impressionistic criticism developed in the XIX and early XX centuries 
and concentrated on a critic's personal response to a literary work. The 
New Criticism of the XX century up to the 1980s was mainly objective 
and regarded a work of art as standing free from the poet, the audience 
and the worid. In their articles Allen Tate and John Ransom regarded a 
literary work as a linguistic structure in which all parts are held in a 
tension of paradox, irony, words, symbols and images. F.R. Leavis, an 
adherent of Cambridge school of criticism believed in the capacity of 
literature to train the feelings, sensibility and the power of reasoning. A 
short-lived Russian literary movement Formalism (1920s) concentrated 
on form, technique and style, avoiding social, philosophic or political 
aspects. In the 1960s there appeared a new critical movement- feminist 

5 

criticism - the study of women-writers, their imagination, re-evaluation 
of literature from genderic point of view. First adherents of this theory 
studied the depiction of women characters in literary works. This theory is 
a significant area of literary study and discussion now. The 1980s saw the 
rise of reader-response criticism. Its essence is that a text is not a stable 
entity, but is produced or created by readers. 

A category of literary works distinguished with the respect to purpose, 
form, style, etc. is called genre. In describing the kinds of literary works 
the following traditional genres are mentioned: poetry, drama and prose. 
These genres may be subdivided into many other major or minor genres, 
such as lyric (ballad, ode, epitaph, elegy); dramatic (tragedy, drama, 
comedy), narrative verse, short story, autobiography, etc. Each literary 
movement has its typical genres, as well as their specific features. 

A novel is a prose narrative of sufficient length to fill one or more 
volumes portraying characters and actions representative of real life in a 
continuous plot. The word comes from the Italian novella - a piece of 
news, a tale. This word was applied to the collections of short tales, which 
were popular in the XIV century {Decameron by Boccaccio). In the 
process of its development there appeared various kinds of the novel 
(detective, adventurous, historical, of manners, psychological, etc.). In 
fact novels rarely exist in their pure form. More often different elements 
are intermingled. Novels include all kinds of plot (tragic, comic), all styles 
and manners dealing with the material (satiric, humorous, rhapsodic, etc). 

A tale (a novelette) is a piece of prose fiction longer than a story but 
shorter than a novel and having the construction of a novel. 

A short story is a relatively brief prose story, usually characterized by 
uniformity of tone and dramatic intensity, and having as a plot a single action. 

A poem is a short mefrical piece of writing inspired by deep feeling or 
desire to communicate an experience. It can also be a composition in 
verse, either in blank verse (a poetic measure of ten syllables normally 
accented on the even-numbered syllables - iambic pentameter- without 
terminal rhyme characteristic of English dramatic and epic poetry) or 
rhymed, characterized by imagination and poetic diction (the choice of 
words, the mode of expression in poetry). 

Each author has his style - a distinctive manner of expression of 
thought, pecuhar to him. Thus style may be terse or diffiise, exphcit or 
vague, simple or rhetorical, light or ponderous, etc. Each school or period 
also has its own style, like Byronic or Impressionist style. 

Subject is a matter of a literary work to be deatt with; the basic theme, 
which the writer is going to defend or attack in his works. 

6 

structure of any literary work is the overall principle of organization 
in a work of literature, presupposed by its genre. It combines the elements 
of a literary form according to the main idea of this work. Structure of the 
works of Ancient times or Classicism is static, and it embodies the idea of 
strength and stability. On the contrary, structure of the works of Romantic 
authors is loose to show imperfection of human nature. 

A very important part of a literary work is its exposition - the beginning 
of action development (lago decides to start an intrigue against Othello), or 
comphcation of a conflict (the meeting of Romeo and Mia at a ball; the 
device of bringing Laertes and Hamlet together for a duel). Crisis or climax 
is the highest point of an action in a literary work, when the heroes manifest 
at the best their aims and inner "selves". It is a vitally decisive moment in a 
plot; a protagonist can experience a kind of anagnorisis- a sudden 
discovery of the truth of an experience. A literary work ends with closure the impression of completeness, though some works of the XX century have 
open endings - readers decide for themselves what is going to happen. 
Tragedies end with catastrophe- the flnal event in a play, usually of a 
calamitous or disastrous nature (the murder of Desdemona in Othello). 

In the works of larger forms, like novel or poem, which usually have a 
plot- the main sequence of events, and subplot(s), two or more climaxes 
are possible. Subplot accompanies and often parallels the main action in a 
novel or play (e.g. in King Lear it is the life story of Gloucester). 

Every literary work has its protagonist(s) - the chief character in a 
literary composition, on whom the action centers, as well as secondary 
characters. 

The analysis of any literary work should start with historical situation 
and then proceed to literary situation, taking into consideration literary 
trends of the period under discussion, the place of work in the creation of 
its author and in literature in general, its critical appraisal, the perception 
of a work at that time and now. 

In the chapters to follow we are going to discuss mostly the canons of 
British and American literature. It is what we, Russians, call classical 
literature. 

It should be remembered that in order to give a proper analysis of any 
literary work, it is necessary to read it more than once and never read 
critical essays before reading the work for oneself 

7 

PARTI 

Chapter I 

BEOWULF AND OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
THE AGE OF CHAUCER 

Old EngUsh period is the longest and darkest period in the development 
of Enghsh literature. It comprises more than four centuries, from 650 AD to 
the Norman Conquest in 1066, and only 30 000 lines of verse have survived. 
The most popular literary form in Old Enghsh literature is the riddle, which 
is rooted in metaphor and word-play. Ninety-four riddles are collected in the 
Exeter Book, one of the most important manuscripts of Old Enghsh poetry, 
copied about 940. Another popular form is Germanic gnome - a kind of an 
epigram, expressing a generally acknowledged truth, for example: "Women 
must weep and men remember". But the first Enghsh poem, dating to about 
657 AD is Ccedmon 's Hymn. Csedmon was a common shepherd, probably of 
Celtic origin. According to a legend, an angel appeared before him and said 
that he should sing about the Creation. Ccedmon's Hymn is in fact the first 
Christian poem, a variation on the Lord's prayer. 

Nu scolon herigean 
Now we should praise 

Meotodes meahte 
The Measurer's might 

Weorc Wuldor-Fseder 
Work of the Father of Glory 

Ece Drihten 
- Eternal Lord 
He serest sceop 
He first gave shape 

Heofontohrofe 
heaven as a roof 

tha middangeard 
then middle earth 
ece Drihten 
-eternal Lord
heofonrices Weard 
heaven-reich's Warder 

and his modgethanc 
and the thoughts of his mind 

swa he wundra gehwas 
when he of each wonder 

or onstealde 
the original made 

ielda bearnum 
for the bairns of men 

halig Scyppend 
holy Shaper of things 

moncynnes Weard 
mankind's Warder 
aefter teode 
and afterwards created 

8 

firam foldan 
Frea selmihtig 

for men the earth 
Sovereign almighty 

One should remember that certain "rules" are observed in oral poetry, 
which was designed to be heard and not to be written. In the middle of 
each line there is a gap, compelling a strong pause, called caesura. It 
creates a rhythmic parallelism between the half lines and helps to take the 
poem as a whole. The further typical structural elements are alliteration 
(a sequence of repeated consonantal sounds in a stretch of language; the 
matching consonants are usually at the beginning of words or stressed 
syllables) and assonance (the correspondence in two words of the stressed 
vowel). 

Elegy and epic are the chief Old English styles. Elegy is a song of 
lamentation for the dead. Epic is a kind of narrative poem in which a 
heroic theme is treated in elevated style. Epic celebrates the achievements 
of one or more heroic personages of history or tradition. Its main aim is to 
glorify the main hero or heroes, praise the physical attributes, rather than 
moral or collective values. Oral epic has a less integrated and more 
episodic construction, tends to use archaic language and repeated epithets. 
Its concern is with the courage and fame of an individual hero. The only 
substantial epic that survives is Beowulf. It contains some passages of 
excellent elegy that makes us suppose that the Old English elegies have 
survived from lost longer epics. After Beowulf t\iQ only other fragments of 
Old English epic are a fifty line fragment of Finnsburgh and two 
fragments (32 and 31 lines) of Waldhere, but these are not considered to 
be very important from the literary point of view. And 5eowM//antedates 
by several centuries any substantial piece of secular literature in other 
European vernaculars, like Chanson de Roland, Nibelungtnlied or the 
Icelandic sagas. 

Beowulf is to English what Odyssey and Iliad are to the Greek 
language and literature, or The Word of the Campaign of Igor to the 
Russian language and literature. The oldest piece of vernacular literature 
of any substance not only in England but the whole of Europe, it renders 
the true spirit of the northern Heroic Age. We cannot compare it with 
similar epics composed at that time, since no others have survived. The 
preservation of the Beowulf-manuscript itself was a matter of mere 
chance. The language and spelling could have become completely 
unintelligible a mere two hundred years after ft was written. But the poem 
was already several centuries old when this only surviving copy was 

9 

made, and close examination of the text suggests that it was copied 
several times in different parts of the country. And that the poem was 
highly regarded in literary circles is suggested by the fact that it seems to 
have been imitated in parts by certain writers of both poetry and prose. 

The historical events, which can be externally confirmed, all cluster 
around the years 490-525. Beowulf v^as originally composed in a northern or 
midland dialect, but the linguistic origin of the poem is not of much 
importance. Moreover, the scribe could slightly misunderstand what was 
being said or he himself used a different dialect fi-om that of the original. It is 
quite possible that there were two scribes due to the manner of witing. 

The poem may combine four tales of different origin, but brought 
together for poetic purposes. It starts with the death and fiineral of Scyld 
Scefmg. The next two parts deal with two major events in the life of the 
Geatish hero: Beowulf versus Grendel and Beowulf versus Grendel's 
mother are two distinct but related stories. Then there is a long account of 
Beowulf s retiirn, and the tale of his final battie. We may presume that the 
bulk of the story-material - the semi-historical or mythical lays, out of 
which the author composed his poem- came to England fi-om across the 
North Sea some time during the second half of the sixth century, that is, 
by the end of the Migration Age proper. The archaeological evidence 
suggests that by the end of the sixth century no very stiong cultural links 
were maintained with Scandinavia. So probably the Beowulf-poet's storymaterials were introduced just as the last stiong ties with the Baltic were 
being abandoned. 

Given a date some time in the eighth century, almost any part of 
Anglo-Saxon England would have provided a cultural context appropriate 
to the composition of such a poem. But in view of what seems to have 
been the original Anglian complexion of the dialect, it would be better to 
look for the milieu for the poem in the midland or northern kingdoms with 
their sophisticated aristocratic pattons of the arts like King Aldfi-ith. The 
discovery at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk of the magnificent memorial to the 
great bretwalda, Redwald, whose funeral in 625 A.D. bore such a 
remarkable similarity to that described in the preface to Beowulf, presents 
a stiong case for composition in East Anglia. Redwald's forbears included 
people mentioned in the poem, and he may even have recognized kinship 
with Beowulf himself On the other hand the political, economic and 
cultural dominance of Mercia from the middle of the eighth century 
makes the west midlands an almost equally possible area. 

The sole surviving text of Beowulf was found in a late tenth-century 
manuscript. Some time during the early seventeenth century, probably 

10 

when in the possession of Sir Robert Cotton, the manuscript was bound up 
with an originally quite distinct twelfth-century copy of miscellaneous 
Old Enghsh prose. But the manuscript proper is itself a composite 
volume. It begins with three short prose works: a legendary account of the 
dog-headed saint Christopher (the first two-thirds missing), an illustrated 
Wonders of the East and a translation of the Latin Letter of Alexander to 
Aristotle describing his adventures in the East. Each of these deals in 
various ways with monsters, and perhaps they were brought together with 
5eowM//on that account. 

It might seem strange that the first great piece of English literature 
deals not with England, or Englishmen at all. The hero is a Geat, living 
somewhere in central Sweden, who is involved in adventures first in 
Denmark and later in his own country. But the long hsts of poetic 
allusions offered in Dear and Widsith show that the early English minstrel 
derived his topics, from almost any part of Germanic Europe. His heroes 
may have been Burgundians, Goths, Franks, or men from a host of less 
known tribes. Most of the historical characters referred to in Beowulf are 
well-known figures from Migration times when the Germanic tribes of 
northern Europe began their great journeys south and west, land-taking, 
forming new kingdoms out of what had been the Roman Empire, and 
laying the foundations for medieval and modem Europe. The AngloSaxons recognized themselves part of this movement, and long preserved 
detailed traditions respecting their origins - much as European immigrants 
to modem America often preserve quite precise oral information as to 
their antecedents. Anglo-Saxon kings like Alfred who fraced their 
genealogies back to the Gods, did so via various continental heroes, 
including some mentioned in Beowulf. Scyld, Scef and Heremod. 

Scholars usually divide the poem into eleven "chapters", but if we start 
following the plot according to the chapters, the composition falls apart. 
The titie itself by which the poem is known is merely a name of 
convenience. As usual with Old English literature, there is no titie page, 
no introductory material, and the only preface takes the form of an 
exordium dealing with the death and burial of Scyld Scefing, which at 
first sight seems to have little to do with the main text. This poem 
corresponds with none of the genres or kinds into which we are 
accustomed to divide modern or classical hterature, and any attempt to 
judge it by classical criteria fails. Equally, as it has been mentioned above, 
we lack any comparative material. 

The poem starts with the funeral ceremony of Scyld Scefmg, the 
Danish king. Then we know about the reign of Scyld's son and grandson 

11 

(another Beowulf). After that we meet King Hrothgar who builds a great 
festive hall called Heorot, lives in peace and happiness, but the monster 
Grendel, portrayed as Cain's offspring, attacks him at night, eats up 
thirty kings in a single dinner and ruins Hrothgar. After a dozen years 
Beowulf (the hero of the poem). King of the Geats with his fourteen 
good friends arrives in Denmark, meets Hrothgar, a close friend of his 
grandfather and vows to defeat Grendel or die. Heorot is left to him and 
his companions. When everybody falls asleep, Beowulf fights against 
Grendel without a sword and defeats him, pulling off Grendel's arm. 
The monster, mortally wounded, flees, and Beowulf shows off the torn 
arm and is rewarded by Hrothgar and his wife. But then Grendel's 
mother, a more dangerous and formidable monster, arrives and steals 
chief of the King's councilors. Beowulf follows her, kills her in her 
underwater cave, cuts off dead Grendel's head and brings this trophy to 
Hrothgar's. By the time Beowulf comes back his friends have despaired 
of his survival. He is again rewarded for his heroic deed and leaves 
Hrothgar for home. 

Here we can compare this part of the poem with a European folktale 
The Bear's Son Tale in which the young hero sets out on a series of 
adventures accompanied by several companions. He successfully 
combats a supernatural creature haunting a house, though several others 
have failed to withstand him, usually because they had fallen asleep. In 
the course of the struggle he wrenches a limb off the monster. Later he is 
guided by bloodstained tracks to its lair, underground. The hero 
descends by means of a rope. He finds there his former enemy either 
wounded or dead, and also a female of the species, whom he overcomes 
with the aid of a magic sword, which is found in the lair. Finally, his 
comrades on the surface, who were to have hauled him up by the rope, 
abandon the hero, either treacherously or because they think him dead. 
Nevertheless he manages to return, bringing with him a piece of the dead 
monster and occasionally the sword with which it was overcome, and is 
acclaimed victorious. 

Scandinavian versions in particular, although found in their recorded 
form only from the fourteenth century, seem to preserve certain features 
of this folk tale in a relatively pristine form. It is clear from several 
versions that the marauding monsters are in fact froUs - that is, the living 
dead, who, because of some unhappiness in their lives or in the manner of 
their deaths, walk abroad in the dark at night creating havoc wherever 
they go. Being creatures of darkness, they are upset by any kind of light which if shone in their eyes, causes them to lose their hideous sfrength, 

12