British and American Literature

МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РФ 

ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ АВТОНОМНОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ  
ВЫСШЕГО ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ  
«НАЦИОНАЛЬНЫЙ ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬСКИЙ ТЕХНОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ «МИСиС» 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 
 

 

№ 173 

Кафедра русского и иностранного языков и литературы

М.С. Алехина 
 
 

British and American Literature

Учебно-методическое пособие 

 

Рекомендовано УМО по специальностям педагогического  
образования в качестве учебного пособия для студентов  
высших учебных заведений, обучающихся по специальности 
050303 (033200) – Иностранный язык 

Москва  2012 

УДК 811.111 
 
A49 

Р е ц е н з е н т ы :  
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. 
A49  
British and American Literature: Учеб.-метод. пособие. – М.: 
МИСиС, 2012. – 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». 

© НИТУ «МИСиС», 2012 

CONTENTS 
Foreword.....................................................................................................4 
Introduction ................................................................................................5 
PART I 
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 I ..............................................................57 
Chapter V. Romanticism: part II ..............................................................68 
Chapter VI. The victorians: part I.............................................................79 
Chapter VII. The victorians: part II..........................................................94 
Chapter VIII. Edwardian literature.........................................................101 
Chapter IX. British literature between  two world wars.........................113 
Chapter X. British literature after world war II ......................................125 
Chapter XI. British women writers.........................................................139 
Chapter XII. Recent british literature .....................................................148 
PART II 
Chapter I. The beginning. The birth of romanticism..............................154 
Chapter II. American humour.................................................................171 
Chapter III. American literature in the 1980–1920.................................176 
Chapter IV. The lost generation..............................................................186 
Chapter V. Literature of the south (1930–1940) ....................................193 
Chapter VI. American literature of the 1950–70s...................................200 
Chapter VII. The american theatre .........................................................209 
Conclusion..............................................................................................217 
Bibliography...........................................................................................218 
 

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

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 definite 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 interpretation, analysis, 
classification 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. Aristotle in his Poetics (IV BC) 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 overflow 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 world. 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 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 readerresponse 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 metrical 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, peculiar to him. Thus style may be terse or diffuse, explicit 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 dealt with; the basic theme, 
which the writer is going to defend or attack in his works.  

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 (Iago decides to start an intrigue against Othello), or 
complication of a conflict (the meeting of Romeo and Julia 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 final 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.  

PART I 

Chapter I 

BEOWULF AND OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
THE AGE OF CHAUCER 

Old English period is the longest and darkest period in the development 
of English 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 English 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 English 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 English poem, dating to about 
657 AD is Cædmon’s Hymn. Cædmon 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. Cædmon’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-Fæder  
Work of the Father of Glory  

Ece Drihten  
 – Eternal Lord –  

He ærest sceop  
He first gave shape  

Heofon to hrofe  
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 

firum foldan  
for men the earth 
Frea ælmihtig 
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 the 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 Beowulf 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 it was written. But the poem was already several centuries old when this only surviving copy was 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 was 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 from that of the original. It is quite possible that there were two scribes due to the manner of writing. 
The poem may combine four tales of different origin, but brought together for poetic purposes. It starts with the death and funeral of Scyld 
Scefing. 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 return, and the tale of his final battle. 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 from 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 strong cultural links were 
maintained with Scandinavia. So probably the Beowulf'-poet's storymaterials were introduced just as the last strong 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 patrons of the arts like King Aldfrith. 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 strong 
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 

when in the possession of Sir Robert Cotton, the manuscript was bound up 
with an originally quite distinct twelfth-century copy of miscellaneous 
Old English 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 
Beowulf 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 lists 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 modern Europe. The Anglo-Saxons 
recognized themselves part of this movement, and long preserved detailed 
traditions respecting their origins – much as European immigrants to 
modern America often preserve quite precise oral information as to their 
antecedents. Anglo-Saxon kings like Alfred who traced 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 title itself by which the poem is known is merely a name of convenience. As usual with Old English literature, there is no title 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 literature, 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 Scefing, the 
Danish king. Then we know about the reign of Scyld’s son and grandson