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Literature in Britain and Ireland is a survey of literature on the British Isles since the time of the Anglo-Saxons. Despite this wide angle, the linguistic, regional and ethnic differentiations in each particular period are being emphasised. Because of its combination of traditional and innovative components of English Studies, this history of literature is useful as a study book accompanying courses as well as an incentive for discoveries while reading. The chapters are systematically structured to allow profiles along the history of genres.In addition to poetry, drama, short stories and the novel, different forms of non-fictional prose are being highlighted, too. Innovative tendencies in teaching English literature are taken into account beyond the consideration of popular and contemporary literature.
List of contents
Introduction IX
1 Medieval Literature (up to c.1500) 1
1.1 Literature from Anglo-Saxon England 1
1.2 Middle English Literature 7
1.3 Celtic Contexts 20
Guiding Questions and Exercises 25
2 Renaissance Literature (c.1500 ?1660) 27
2.1 Renaissance Contexts 27
Guiding Questions and Exercises 36
2.2 Theatre and Drama 36
2.2.1 The Renaissance Stage 36
2.2.2 Romans and Roses: Elizabethan History Plays 41
2.2.3 Tragedies 55
2.2.4 (Tragi-)Comedies and Humours 70
Guiding Questions and Exercises 78
2.3 Renaissance Poetry 79
2.3.1 Poets, Poetic Styles and Themes 79
2.3.2 The Sonnet Craze 93
2.3.3 Epic Poetry and Other Long Poems 105
Guiding Questions and Exercises 112
2.4 Utopia and Other Prose Writings 113
Guiding Questions and Exercises 125
3 The Long Eighteenth Century:
Neoclassicism and Romanticism (1660 ? c.1830) 127
3.1 Literary Communication in Britain between 1660 and the 1830s . 127
Guiding Questions and Exercises 144
3.2 Performance Culture: Drama, Orality and Oratory 145
VI Contents
3.2.1 Dramatic Genres and Genre Theory 145
3.2.2 Popular Politics in Songs and Speeches 159
Guiding Questions and Exercises 162
3.3 Neoclassicist and Romantic Poetry 162
3.3.1 Translations, Imitations, Mock-Epic and Verse Satire 162
3.3.2 From Gray's "Elegy" to the Odes of Keats, from
the Ballad Revival to the Return of the Sonnet 168
3.3.3 Poetry and Gender Relations: 'Love, Honour and Obey'? 182
Guiding Questions and Exercises 191
3.4 From Manuscript to Print: Adaptation to a
New Medium, and New Forms of Writing 192
3.4.1 Romantic Poets and the Continuum of Recital,
Manuscript and Print 192
3.4.2 'Letter Writing' in Various Forms 196
3.4.3 Familiar, Formal and Periodical Essays 200
3.4.4 Writing Lives 203
3.4.5 The Literature of Travel 207
3.4.6 The Children's Book: Literature for a New Audience 216
Guiding Questions and Exercises 221
3.5 'The Rise of the Novel': A Series of Experiments 222
3.5.1 Robinson Crusoe and Its Relation to Individualism,
Religion and Colonialism 222
3.5.2 Male Novelists and Their Female Heroines:
Gender Relations, Materialism and Morality in
Moll Flanders, Pamela, and Fanny Hill 225
3.5.3 The Novels of Fielding and Sterne 230
3.5.4 'Mothers of the Novel': Women Writers before
and beside Jane Austen 236
3.5.5 Oriental Tales and Gothic Romances: Other
Worlds in an Age of Reason 242
3.5.6 Fiction and Nation-Building in Scott's Historical
Novels 247
Guiding Questions and Exercises 253
4 The Literature of the Victorian Age and of the
Early Twentieth Century (c.1830 ? c.1920) 255
4.1 Authors, Publishers and Readers: The Changing Face
of Literary Communication in Britain and Ireland 255
Guiding Questions and Exercises 268
4.2 'Victorian Values': Materialism, Morals and Mentalities
in the Literature of the Period 269
4.2.1 Utilitarianism, Darwinism and Religious Belief
in the Victorian Age 269
4.2.2 The Impact of the Empire 277
4.2.3 'The Angel in the House' vs. the Fallen Woman:
Gender Roles and Their Impact on Literature 291
Guiding Questions and Exercises 304
4.3 Drama and Performance: From Music Hall and
Melodrama to the Plays of Wilde, Shaw, Yeats and Synge 304
Guiding Questions and Exercises 326
4.4 Poetry from Tennyson to Yeats: Forms and Themes 327
Guiding Questions and Exercises 350
4.5 The Development of Fiction from Dickens to
Lawrence 351
4.5.1 Charles Dickens and the Breakthrough of the Novel 351
4.5.2 History and Social Realism in Fiction by
Dickens's Rivals and Contemporaries 361
4.5.3 Regional and Sensational Elements in the Novel
from Wilkie Collins and Thomas Hardy to
D. H. Lawrence 378
4.5.4 Devils, Doubles and Detectives:
The Development of Short Fiction in Ireland,
Scotland and England 390
4.5.5 From Workhouse to Wonderland: The Child in
Fiction, and Fiction for
