Title/author/year Canon Genre Historical context Narrative Setting Themes sonnet -tragedy - -W.Shakespeare The Sonnets (1609) Renaissance, Elizabethan age, Humanism Elizabeth I (1558-1603), James I (1603-1625) *18- young man, 130 - dark lady love, 130 mocks the Petrarchan metaphors-love don't need conceits to be real W.Shakespeare Romeo&Juliet (mid1590) Renaissance, Elizabethan age, Humanism drama tragedy Elizabeth I (1558-1603), James I (1603-1625) point of view of Romeo and Juliet, occasionally servants' 14th-15th c, Verona and Mantua forcefulness of love, love as cause
of violence, indiv. Vs. Society W. Shakespeare Julius Caesar (1599) Renaissance, Elizabethan age, Humanism Elizabeth I (1558-1603), James I (1603-1625) anxiety of Elizabethan England over succession of leadership W.Shakespeare Hamlet (1603) Renaissance, Elizabethan age, Humanism drama revenge tragedy Elizabeth I (1558-1603), James I (1603-1625) late medieval period, Denmark
indecision, son and mother, impossibility of certanty, mystery of death, nation as a diseased body W.Shakespeare A midsummer's..
(1600) Elizabethan age, Renaissance, Humanism drama comedy fantasy farce Elizabeth I (1558-1603), James I (1603-1625) elements of Ancient Greece and Renaissance England friendship,treacher y, difficulty of love, magic, nature of dreams, fantasy-reality
Title/author/year Canon Genre Historical context Narrative Setting Themes novel satire Victorian era Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe (1719) Neoclassical Augustan A. Enlightment Classicism adventure novel novel of isolation dissenters, the restoration, colonialism, glorious revolution England in 1719 1st & 3rd person fictional autobiography 1659-1694 York, Brazil, Trinidad island self-awareness, colonial attitudes, fear, human condition,money, industrialization Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels (1726) Neoclassical Augustan A. Enlightment Classicism England in the 1720s, the Restoration, the
Glorious Revolution and War of Spanish Succession, Ireland, the Enlightnment unreliable author, 1st person narrator, ppl as they appear to him England, Lilliput, Blefescu, Brobdingnag, Houyhnhnms indiv. Vs. Society, limits of human understanding, Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice
(1813) btw 19th &20th c., btw Classicism & Romanticism comedy of manners, novel of manners
J.A.'s England, the French Revolution and
Napoleonic Wars, English Regency society 3rd pers omniscient n.,Elizabeth's point of view-indirect speech 1797-1815 Napoleoniv Wars, Longbourn marriage, love, reputation, class, pride, prejudice and tolerance, change and transformation Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights (1847) gothic novel, realist fiction
The Victorian Age (1837-1901), Illness,
Death, Funeral Customs, Literary
traditions and romanticism, Inheritance and social
position Lockwood, Nelly(not an omniscient n.) 1770-1802 Yorkshire moors: Wuthering Heights, Thruschross Grange the destructiveness of love that never
changes, the precariousness of social class, revenge, violence and cruelty, supernatural
Victorian era industrialization,
Victorian period
Title/author/year Canon Genre Historical context Narrative Setting Themes
Enlightenment ideas Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861) social criticism bildungsroma n, autobiographi cal fiction 1st pers n., n. +protagonist=Pi p mid19th c., Kent and London ambition, desire of self-improv.,guilt, innocence, maturation, affection, loyalty, victim, victimization Lewis Carroll Alice's Adventures in W. (1865) novella, fairy tale, children's fiction, satire, allegory
the Victorian Age in England, Victorian views of childhood, the early development of children's literature 3rd pers, occasionally 1st and 2nd pers, anonymous narrator victorian era, England, Wonerland tragic inevitable loss of childhood innocence, life as a meaningless puzzle Henry James The portrait of a Lady (1881) Realistic period claimed by both AM&ENG psychological realism limited point of view, through the eyes of Isabel Albany, NY, England, Florence Americans living in Europe, social and
emotional maturation Thomas Hardy Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) Victorian Realism regional, tragic novel
Darwin & Social Darwinism,Industrializ
ation and Rural England, Women in Victorian Society omniscient, obj. 3rd pers n. Anonymous n. 1880s-1890s Wessex,SW England social ostracism, men dominating women, fate&chance, God&religion, sex Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1902) 20th c., Edwardian period, Modernism novella, colonial lit., frame story, adventure tale, romantic traits:symboli sm, supernatural, heroism European presence in Africa, the Ivory
Trade, Belgian atrocities in the Congo 1st narrator uses 1st pers pl, Marlow narrates in the 1st pers. Sg. 1876-1892, Thames River, Brussels, Congo civilisation, hypocrasy of Colonialism, madness as a result of imperialism, absurity of evil, race&racism, violence, moral corruption
Modernism
Modernism
Title/author/year Canon Genre Historical context Narrative Setting Themes
James Joyce A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) bildungsroma n, autobiographi cal novel, use
of stream of consciousnes
s
Joyce's Ireland: the historical and political
context, literary context 3rd pers narrator, Stephen Dedalus' point of view 1882-1903, Dublin and surrounding area development of individual consciousness, religion extremism,
the role of the artist, the need of
Irish autonomy E.M. Forster A passage to India (1924) psychological novel
Forster's England, the Indian context omniscient 3rd pers n., 1910s-1920s, India: Chandrapore, Mau difficulty of ENG-IND friendship,, unity of all living things, muddle of India, negligence of British colonial gov. Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway (1925) Modernism stream of consciousness modernist, formalist, feminist
the new modern era, WWI anonymous omniscient n., point of view changes constantly:strea m of conscio., free indirect discourse 3rd mid June 1923, flashbacks Bourton summer 1890, London neighborhood of Westminster fragmentary post WWI England, consiousness, disillusionment with the British E.
Fear of death, threat of opression
William Golding Lord of the flies
(1954)
Contemporary Age
novel, allegory
Golding and WWII, the geography of a
tropical island, political climate ofthe
1950s anonymous 3rd pers n., omniscient, character's inner thoughts near future, a deserted tropical island civilisation vs. Barbarism, loss of innocence, innate human evil, good
and evil, reason&emotion,
John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) Between modernism and postmodernism Victorian setting, metafiction techniques Existentialism, the New Woman narrator has a double vision and double voice Lyme Regis, Exeter social constraints, freedom
Motifs Symbols - -light/dark imagery, opposite points of view poison, thumb-biting, Queen Mab incestuous desire, death and suicide, darkness and the supernatura l, misogyny the ghost, Yorick's skull love out of balance, contrast Theseus and Hippolyta-order, stability
Motifs Symbols Pemberley counting, measuring, eating footprint, cross, crusoe's bower foreign languages, clothing LilliputiansB robdingnagi ans, Laputans, Houyhnhnm s courtship, journeys doubles, repetition, conflict btw nature and culture the moors, ghosts
Motifs Symbols crime, criminalitydi sappoin. Expect., weather-dramatic events, doubles stopped clocks, obj relating to crime and guilt, Satis House, Joe, marsh mist dream, subversion, curious, nonsense, confusing garden, mushroom birds, book of Genesis, variant names Prince, d'Urberville family vault, Brazil darkness, hyperbolic language, inability to find words, upriver vs. Downriver rivers, fog, women,sev ered heads, maps, ''whited sepulchre", man trying to fll bucket with hole in it
Motifs Symbols music, flight, prayers, secular songs, Latin phrases green&mar oon, Emma, the girl on the beach echo, Eastern-Western architect., Godbole's song the Marabar Caves, the green bird, the wasp time, shakespear e,trees&flo wers, waves & water the Prime minister, weapons, old woman in the window biblical parallels, natural beauty, bullying of the weak by the strong conch shell, Piggy's glasses, signal fire, the beast, Lord of Flies,boys
