English

The Renaissance

• Renaissance in England culminated during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558 – 1603).
• It was a period of prosperity and great cultural activities.
• It was also a period of successful military expeditions and sea voyages of exploration.
• While in Italy it found its expression in poetry, painting, sculpture and architecture, in England renaissance was represented by the Golden Age of Drama and Theatre.
• Theatres became more eccessible to the poor and various levels of society.

Elizabethan stage

• There were few decorations and props on the stage.
• The performances were held in daylight in open scenes without a curtain.
• Women´s roles were played by young male actors.
• In order to get into a closer contact with the audience, the authors often drew parallels between the events in plays and contemporary life.

 

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

• He was born in Stradford-upon-Avon.
• He married Anne Hathaway and later left Stradford for London.
• He was a playwright and an actor with the Lord Chamberlain´s Theatre Company, later called the King´s Men.
• He participated in establishing the Globe Theatre.
• Both Queen Elizabeth and James l liked Shakespeare a lot.
• Later he returned to Stradford and lived a quiet family life.
• He died on the same day he was born (23rd April).

 

He wrote 37 plays which can be divided among several categories:

1. TRAGEDIES

           Romeo and Juliet, Mackbeth, King Lear, Othello, Hamlet

2. COMEDIES

3. HISTORICAL PLAYS

4. ROMANCES

           The Winter´s Tale

 

Famous quotes:

To be or not to be. (Hamlet)

There is something rotten in the state of Denmark. (Hamlet)

All the world´s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. (As You Like It)

 

• His plays are written in BLANK VERSE (a rhymed form).
• His language is full of vivid metaphores, puns, images, jokes, romantic images of love, pride and honour.
• He often used two dramatic main characters to strenghten the dramatic tension of the play (e.g. Hamlet vs. Claudius).
• Shakespeare ignores the 3 UNITIES OF THEATRE :

            TIME (There should be 1 simple time line in the story.)

            PLACE (The action should take place in very few locations.)

            ACTION (The action should be simple and linear.)

            → In his plays there are more plots, place changes from scene to scene etc.

 

Shakespeare´s SONNETS

• A sonnet is a rhymed form which has 14 lines and each line has 10 syllables.
• The rhyme is called iambic pentameter.
• The rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. (The first line rhymes with the third, the second line rhymes with the fourth etc.)
• The two last lines are called a couplet.
• He wrote 154 sonnets.
• The first two thirds are dedicated to a young male and they speak of platonic love and admiration.
• The young male may have been Shakespeare´s rival poet.
• The last third is dedicated to a dark lady and they speak of sexual affection.

 

 

 

 

C R I T I C A L   R E A L I S M

 

• Critical realism or social criticism is a literary movement.
• It appeared during Victorian Era (Queen Victoria 1837 – 1901).
• The main theme was the misery of people suffering under the industrial system and other social evils.
• The remedy the writers offered was a social reform – moral regeneration of the ruling class and education of the working class.
• The main genre is the novel, which is in contrast to the previous Romantic Period with its lyrical poetry and historical and mythological themes.
• Novels written in the period of critical realism focused on the then problems.
• Gave a broad description of the society and criticised mainly hypocrisy of the middle class.

 

Authors of this period:

William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair

Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D´Urbervilles

the Bronte sisters –    Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights

                                      Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre

                                      Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

 

 

Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

• He was born in Dublin into a family of a doctor.
• He studied in Dublin, later in Oxford.
• He was married and had children, but he was gay and dated young men.
• At the end of his life, he was imprisoned for obscene behaviour.
• When he returned from prison, he was a broken man and lived in France.
• He was a founder of the following movements/cults:

 

AESTHETIC CULT

• He lectured on aesthetics in London.
• Aesthetic cult is a literary movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than social-political themes for literature.
• Art focused more on being beautiful rather than having a deeper meaning.
• "art for art's sake" – art should not be judged by any moral attitudes, but only by its aesthetic values.

 

DECADENT MOVEMENT

• This movement followed the aesthetic ideology.
• The movement was characterized by self-disgust, sickness at the world, general skepticism, delight in perversion.
• It employed crude humor.
• A belief in the superiority of human creativity over logic and the natural world.

 

• Oscar Wilde was known as the greatest playwright of the Victorian Period.
• He wrote mainly conversational comedies full of witty satire and amusing situations.
• His comedies are full of observations of people´s behaviour and manners and often penetrate into deeper levels of life.

 

2. TRAGEDIES

•  He wrote only one tragedy: Salome.
• In London it was banner for provocative erotic motifs.

 

3. FAIRY-TALES

• He also wrote fairy-tales for his sons.
• Later were published.
• These are sophisticated fairy-tales.
• Wilde shows his sympathy for the poor and suffering. 
• Each fairy-tale includes a teaching moment/moral lesson for child readers.
• The collection includes 7 fairy-tales and it is called:

           The Happy Prince and Other Tales 

 

• Oscar Wilde wrote only one novel – The Picture of Dorian Gray.
• It is a decadent, but stylistically perfect novel dealing with themes which were controversial at that time.

 

 

George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)

• He was born in Dublin.
• Later he moved to London.H
• He became a journalist and a drama critic.
• He was influenced by the realistic problem drama of the Scandinavians (represented by Ibsen) and he tried to write similar plays criticising English social conditions.
• He often puts progressive thoughts into the prefaces of his plays.
• He excelled in writing witty and interesting dialogues.
• His importace lies in undermining standard opinions and his attacks on the insecurity and injustice in society.
• He was a public speaker in Hyde Park at Speakers´ Corner.
• One of the founders of the Fabian Society – socialists who wanted to spread socialism not through a revolution like Marx, but through a gradual reform.
• He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.

 

His plays:

• He shocked the public with an open discussion of prostitution.
• He also criticised the middle class and its hypocrisy.

Pygmalion

• A play telling a story of a poor flower girl who rises in society thanks to her intelligence and ambition.

 

He also wrote historical plays: St. Joan

Plays showing his negative attitude to militarism: Arms and the Man

Plays showing problems of women´s position in the family and society: Getting Married

 

 

 

T H E   L O S T   G E N E R A T I O N

 

• It is a literary movement which came into existence in the USA after World War l.
• A lot of young people in the post World War l period lost their ideals although the twenties – the Jazz Age – was supposed to bring a happy and confident mood.
• Writers were deeply affected and shared disillusionment and anxiety of the modern chaotic world.
• They felt disenchantment and cynism which is reflected in their work.
• Writers were also influenced by S. Freud who emphasized the unconcious aspect of an individual and stressed the importace of sex in the behaviour of people.

 

The Lost Generation was represented by the following novelists:

And also by the following poets:

 

 

Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961)

• He was born in the USA.
• During World War l, he drove an ambulance in Italy and he was wounded there.
• After the war, he returned to the USA.
• Later he moved to Paris where he spent several years.
• He was visiting literary discussions of a modernist writer Gertrude Stein in her flat in Paris.
• Her famous remark to Ernest ´you are all a lost generation´ gave name to this movement.

 

The Sun Also Rises

• The first Hemingway´s novel
• A portrait of young American adults living in Paris in the post-war era.
• All characters have been affected/demaged by the war.
• Spiritually they are all ´impotent´.
• They try to live in the emptiness of the world.
• Hemingway is famous for his simple style.
• Careful structuring of fiction and short sentences.
• He rarely uses adjectives. 
• His language is without emotions with the aim to suggest a kind of stoicism (= patience and courage when suffering).

A Farewell to Arms

• Anti-war love story
• Uses nature symbolically: mountains = life/hope, the plain = war/death, rain = death
• Arms = 1) weapons/army/militarism    x   2) a part of human body

 

To Have and Have Not

For Whom the Bell Tolls

• Written in the 30s, both books speak of tough-guy heroes.

 

The Old Man and the Sea

• A short simple novel which depicts the eternal fight between the nature and man.
• Man must lose if he-she fights alone.
• Themes: heroism, stoicism, ceremony.

• The book received the Pulitzer Prize in 1952.
• In 1954 Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize.
• As Hemingway entered his own old age, he felt his powers as an artistic failing.
• In 1961 he shot himself with his favourite hunting gun.