UGC NET 2019 English Literature Syllabus

UGC NET English Syllabus

Unit –I : Drama

Unit –II : Poetry

Unit –III : Fiction, short story

Unit –IV : Non-Fictional Prose

NOTE: The first four units must also be tested through comprehension passages to assess critical

reading, critical thinking and writing skills. These four units will cover all literatures in English.

Unit –V : Language: Basic concepts, theories and pedagogy. English in Use.

Unit –VI : English in India: history, evolution and futures

Unit –VII : Cultural Studies

Unit –VIII : Literary Criticism

Unit –IX : Literary Theory post World War II

Unit –X : Research Methods and Materials in English

UNIT I – Drama Content

DRAMA CONTENT

1.      Introduction

1.      Forms of Drama

2.      Medieval Drama

3.      Mystery play

2.      The Second Shepherds’ Play

1.      Miracle play

2.      Morality plays

f.     Hrotsvitha

1.      Everyman – Play

1.      Mummers Play

2.      Greek Drama

2.      Mimesis

1.      Roman drama

2.      Elizabethan and Jacobian Drama

3.      Elizabethan Drama Features

4.      English theatres

5.      Playing companies

6.      Elizebethan Playwrights:

k.    Restoration Drama

a.    Restoration Drama Characteristics

2.      Aristophanes (446 BC – 386 BC)

3.      The Clouds

4.      Euripides (c. 480 – c. 406 BC)

5.      Electra

6.      Sophocles (497/6 – 406/5 BC)

1.      Ajax

2.      Antigone

3.      Women of Trachis

4.      Oedipus at Colonus

5.      Electra

f.     Philoctetes

1.      Oedipus Rex, or Oedipus Tyrannus or Oedipus the King

2.      Oedipus The King

5.      Aeschylus (524 – 456/455)

i.    Agamemnon

ii.    The Libation Bearers

iii.    The Eumenides

iv.    The Persians

v.    Seven Against Thebes

vi.    The Suppliants

§  Oresteia

§  Proteus

1.      Prometheus Bound

a.    Electra (Euripides play)

1.      Medea

2.      Orestes

3.      Hippolytus

4.      Herakles

5.      The Trojan Women

6.      John Heywood – (1497 – 1580)

1.      A Play of Four “P” S

2.      A Woman Killed with Kindness

7.      Nicholas Udall – (1504 – 1556)

8.      Roister Doister

9.      Thomas Norton (1532 – 1584)

10.  Thomas Sackville (1536 –1608)

11.  Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex

12.  John Still – (1543 – 1607/8)

13.  Gammer Gurton’s Needle.

14.  John Lyly  (1553 or 1554 – 1606)

15.  Euphues: The Anatomy of Wyt

16.  George Peele (1556 – 1596)

1.      The Arraignment of Paris

2.      The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First

c.    The Old Wives’ Tale

d.    The Battle of Alcazar

e.    David and Bethsabe

1.      The Troublesome Reign of King John

13.  Robert Greene – ( 1558 – 1592)

14.  Thomas Kyd. (1558 – 1594)

15.  The Spanish Tragedy

16.  Thomas Lodge -(1558 – 1625)

17.  The Wounds of Civil War

18.  Francis Beaumont (1584 – 1616)

19.  George Chapman- (1559 – 1634)

a.    Bussy D’Ambois

b.    The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron

1.      The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France

2.      Caesar and Pompey

e.    The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn

18.  Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593)

1.      University Wits

2.      Doctor Faustus

3.      The Jew of Malta

4.      Taburlaine

5.      Edward II

6.      Dido, Queen of Carthage

19.  Thomas Nashe (1567 – 1601)

1.      The Unfortunate Traveller: or, the Life of Jack Wilton

2.      Summer’s Last Will and Testament

20.  Thomas Heywood (1570 – 1641)

21.  A Woman Killed with Kindness

22.  John Fletcher- (1579 – 1625)

23.  John Webster Webster  (1580 – 1634)

1.      The Duchess of Malfi

2.      The White Devil

22. Thomas Middleton (1580 – 1627)

a.    The Revenger’s Tragedy

b.    A Game at Chess

c.    The Changeling

23.  John Ford  (1586 – 1639)

24.  ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore

25.  George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1592 – 1628)

26.  John Dryden (1631 – 1700)

a.    The Indian Queen

b.    The Indian Emperour

c.    The Tempest (Dryden and D’Avenant play)

d.    The Mistaken Husband

e.    The Mistaken Husband

1.      The State of Innocence

2.      All for Love

26.  Sir George Etherege(1636 – 1692)

27.  The Man of Mode

26. Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet (1639 – 1701)

27. Aphra Behn (1640 – 1689)

28. George Farquhar(1677 – 1707)

a.    The Recruiting Officer

1.      The Beaux’ Stratagem

29.  William Wycherley (1641 – 1716)

a.    The Country Wife

1.      William Congreve

2.      The Way of The World

d.    The Old Bachelor

e.    The Double Dealer

f.     The Mourning Bride

1.      Love for Love

30. Thomas Shadwell (1642 – 1692)

31.  Thomas Otway (1652 – 1685)

a.    Venice Preserv’d

1.      The Orphan

32.  Nathaniel Lee (1653 – 1692)

a.    Oedipus

1.      The Rival Queens

33.  Sir John Vanbrugh (1664 – 1726)

a.    The Relapse

1.      Sequel: The Relapse

c.    The Provoked Wife

1.      Kit-Cat Club

34.  Colley Cibber (1671 – 1757)

35.  Love’s Last Shift

36.  Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719)

37.  Cato

36. Oliver Goldsmith (1728 – 1774)

c.    She stoops to conquer

37.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 -1832)

38.  Faust

39.  Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan (1751 – 1816)

1.      The school for scandal

2.      The Rivals

3.      A Trip to Scarborough

40.  Friedrich Schiller (1759 – 1805)

41.  William Tell

42.  Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906)

43.  A Doll’s House

41. Lady Gregory (1852 – 1932)

a.    Cathleen ni Houlihan

b.    The Rising of the Moon

c.    Spreading the News

42.  Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

a.    Salomé

1.      Lady Windermere’s Fan

2.      A Woman of No Importance

3.      An Ideal Husband

4.      The Importance of Being Earnest

43.  George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)

1.      Widowers’ Houses

2.      Man and Superman

3.      The Dark Lady of the Sonnets

d.    Don Juan in Hell

1.      Pygmalion

44. Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904)

1.      The Seagull

b.    The Cherry Orchard

45.  John Masefield (1878 – 1967)

46.  M Barrie (1860 – 1937)

a.    Mary Rose

b.    Peter and Wendy

47.  Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941)

1.      Mukta Dhara

2.      Girish Raghunath Karnad

3.      Tughlaq

4.      Larins Sahib

48. W. B. Yeats (1865 – 1939)

a.    At the Hawk’s Well

b.    Diarmuid and Grania

c.    On Baile’s Strand

d.    Purgatory

e.    The Land of Heart’s Desire

f.     Cathleen ni Houlihan

g.    The Countess Cathleen

h.    Mosada

49.  Joe Orton (1933 – 1967)

50.  John Galsworthy (1867 – 1933)

1.      Harley Granville-Barker

2.      The Madras Hous

51. Luigi Pirandello (1867 – 1936)

a.    Six Characters in Search of an Author

52.  Sean O’Casey (1880 -1964)

53.  Juno and the Paycock

54.  James Joyce (1882 – 1941)

55.  Exiles

54. Nikos Kazantzakis(1883 – 1957)

d.    Buddha

55.  Eugene O’Neill(1888 – 1953)

a.    The Hairy Ape

1.      The Great God Brown

2.      Death of a Salesman

56.  John Arden ( 1930 – 2012)

57.  Bertolt Brecht (1898 – 1956)

58.  Mother Courage and Her Children

59.  Herbert Ernest Bates (1905 – 1974)

60.  Harold Pinter(1930 – 2008)

1.      The Birthday Party

2.      The Homecoming

1.      The Caretaker

1.      The Room

2.      No Man’s Land

3.      One for the Road

60. Henry Livings(1929 – 1998)

61. Samuel Beckett (1906 – 1989)

a.    Krapp’s Last Tape

b.    Happy Days

c.    Waiting for Godot

d.    Endgame

62. Christopher Fry (1907 – 2005)

a.    The Lady’s Not for Burning

b.    Ring Round the Moon

63.  Eugène Ionesco ( 1909 – 1994)

a.    The Chairs

1.      The Irish Dramatic Movement

64. Tennessee Williams(1911 – 1983)

a.    The Glass Menagerie

b.    A Streetcar Named Desire

65. Terence Rattigan (1911 – 1977)

a.    John Whiting(1917 – 1963)

66. Norman Frederick “N. F.” Simpson  (1919 – 2011)

67. Brendan Behan (1923 – 1964)

68. Badal Sarkar (1925 – 2011)

1.      Ebang Indrajit

2.      Evam Indrajit

c.    Pagla Ghoda

69. Asif Currimbhoy (1928 – 1994)

a.    Inquilab

70.  Edward Albee (1928 – 2016)

a.    The American Dream

b.    Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

71.  John James Osborne (1929 – 1994)

72.  Look Back in Anger

73.  Sir Arnold Wesker ( 1932 – 2016)

1.      Chicken Soup with Barley

2.      Roots

74.  Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka (1934)

75.  The Lion and the Jewel

74. Caryl Churchill (1938)

b.    Top Girls

75. Shelagh Delaney (1938 – 2011)

a.    A Taste of Honey

76.  Tom Stoppard (1937)

1.      Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

b.    Jumpers

c.    Travesties

d.    Rough Crossing

e.    Arcadia

f.     Indian Ink

g.    The Invention of Love

1.      The Hard Problem

77. Mahesh Dattani (1958)

a.    Final Solutions

78.  Douglas Stewart (1963 – 1985)

79.  Ned Kelly

UNIT II – Poetry

POETRY

UGC NET English

1.      Horace

2.      Ars Poetica

3.      Dante Alighier(1265 – 1321)

1.      The Divine Comedy

4.      John Gower (1330 – 1408)

1.      Confessio Amantis

5.      William Langland (1332 – 1386)

1.      Piers Plowman

6.      Chaucer (1343 – 1400)

1.      Troilus and Criseyde:

2.      The Book of the Duchess:

3.      The Parliament of Fowls

4.      The House of Fame

5.      The Legend of Good Women

6.      The Canterbury Tales

7.      John Heywood (1497 – 1580)

1.      Verse

8.      Thomas Wyatt (1503 -1542)

1.      Wyatt’s poems

2.      “Forget Not Yet”

3.      “The Appeal”

9.      Earl of surrey (1516 -1547)

10.  Edmund Spenser (1552/1553 – 1599)

1.      Farie Queen

2.      Epithalamion

3.      Prothalamion

4.      The Shepherd’s Calendar

5.      Amoretti

6.      Astrophel

7.      Colin Clouts Come Home Againe

11.  Sir Philip Sidney (1554 -1586)

12.  Astrophil and stella

13.  Arcadia

14.  The Spider and The Flie (1556)

1.      Richard Tottel

2.      Tottel’s Miscellany

15.  Robert Greene (1558 – 1592)

16.  George Chapman (1559 -1634)

17.  Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593)

1.      Hero and Leander

14. Shakespeare (1564 –1616)

a.    Sonnets

15.  Samuel Purchas (1577 – 1626)

1.      Purchas his Pilgrimage

16.  John Donne (1572 – 1631)

17.  John Donne

18.  Metaphysical Poetry

19.  The Canonization

20.  The Ecstasie

21.  Elegies

22.  Robert Herrick (1591 –1674)

23.  Herbert (1593 – 1633)

1.      “Affliction”

2.      The Pulley

19. Thomas Nash (1593 –1647)

a.    The Choice of Valentines

1.      The Terrors of the Night

2.      Thomas Carew (1595 –1640)

1.      The cavalier poets

3.      John Milton (1608 -1674)

1.      Paradise Lost

2.      Paradise Regained

3.      Samson Agonites

4.      Sir John Suckling (1609 – 1641)

5.      Richard Crashaw (1613 –1649)

6.      Richard Love lace

7.      Abraham Cowley (1618 –1667)

8.      Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678)

1.      To his Coy Mistress

2.      Garden

9.      Henry Vaughan (1621 – 1695)

10.  Regeneration

27. George Villiers (1628 – 1687)

28.  Dryden (1631 – 1700)

1.      Meckfleck

2.      Absalom and Achitophel

3.      Dryden’ Mac Flecknoe

4.      Religio Laici

5.      A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day

6.      The Hind and the Panther

7.      Mac Flecknoe

29. Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet (1639 – 1701)

30. Thomas Shadwell (1642 –1692)

a.    Jonatham Suift

31.  Alexander Pope Pope (1688 – 1744)

1.      The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

2.      The Rape of the lock

3.      An Essay on Criticism

4.      Pastorals

5.      Discourse on Pastoral Poetry

6.      Dunciad

7.      An Essay on Man

8.      The Imitations of Horace

32.  James Thomson (1700 –1748)

33.  Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

1.      The Vanity of Human Wishes

34.  Thomas Gray (1716 –1771)

1.      Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

35.  William Collins (1721 –1759)

36.  Oliver Goldsmith (1728 – 1774)

a.    The Hermit

b.    The Deserted Village

1.      The Traveller

37. Thomas Percy (1729 – 1811)

a.    Reliques of Ancient English Poetry

38.  William Cowper (1731 – 1800)

1.      The task

39.  Thomas Chatterton (1752 – 1770)

40.  William Blake (1757 – 1827)

1.      Songs of Innocence

2.      Songs of Experience

3.      Poison Tree

4.      The Human Abstract

5.      The Clod and the Pebble

6.      The Book of Urizen

7.      The eternal laws of God”

41.  Robert Burns (1759 – 1796)

1.      Tam o’ Shanter

2.      The Jolly Beggar

42.  Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)

43.  Ode : Intimations of Immortality

44.  Tintern Abbey

45.  The Prelude

46.  Daffodiles

47.  Solitary Reaper

48.  Walter scott (1771 – 1832)

a.    The Lady of the Lake (poem)

b.    Scott The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border

44.  Coleridge (1772 – 1834)

1.      Ode Dejection

2.      Kublakhan

3.      Christophel

4.      The Ancient marriner

5.      Frost at Night

6.      Lyrical Ballads

45.  Robert Southey (1774 – 1843)

46.  Byron (1788 – 1824)

1.      The Prisoner of Chillon

2.      Don Juan

3.      The Vision of Judgment

4.      Beppo: A Venetian Story

47.  B.Shelly (1792 – 1822)

1.      To a Skylark

2.      Queen Mab

3.      Adonis

4.      Ode to west wind

5.      Alastor

6.      Julian and madato

48.  John Clare (1793 – 1864)

49.  John Keats (1795 – 1821)

1.      Ode to Grecian Urn

2.      Ode to autumn

3.      Ode to a Nightingale

4.      Endymion

5.      The Eve of St.Agnes

6.      Hyperion

7.      The Fall of Hyperion

8.      La Belle Dame Sans Merci

9.      Ode on Melancholy

10.  Lamia

11.  “Egotistical sublime”

50.  Elizebeth Brarrett Browning (1806 – 1861)

51.  Connets from Portuguese

52.  Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 –1892)

1.      The Charge of the Light Brigade -poem

2.      The Defence of Lucknow

3.      The Princess

4.      Ulysses

5.      Maud

6.      Idylls of the King

7.      Tithonus

8.      Morde’ Arthur

i.      Crossing the Bar –published in 1898

1.      “Tithonus”

2.      “Enoch Arden”

3.      Maud, and Other Poems

52.  Robert Browning (1812 –1889)

1.      Andreadel Sarto

2.      My Last Duchess

3.      Rabbi ben Ezra

4.      Men and Women

53. Charles Baudelaire (1821 –1867)

a.    The Flowers of Evil

54.  Matthew Arnold (1822 –1888)

1.      Dover Beach

2.      The scholar Gipsy

3.      Memorial Verses

55.  Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 –1882)

1.      The Blessed Damozel

2.      Modern Love

56.  Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)

57.  James Thomson (1834 –1882)

1.      TheCity of Dreadful Night

58.  Robert Seymour Bridges (1844 -1930)

59.  Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 -1889)

1.      Curtal sonnet

b.    “The sonnets of desolation”

c.    The Wreck of the Deutschland

60.  William Ernest Henley (1849 -1903)

1.      “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands”

2.      Recessional”

61.  Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936)

62.  Easter 1916

63.  Sailing to By Zantum

64.  Byzantium

65.  Vision

66.  Tower

67.  Leda and Swan

68.  B.Yeats (1865 -1939)

63. André Gide (1869 –1951)

64.  M. Forster (1879 –1970)

65.  Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)

1.      The Snow man

66.  Harold Hart Crane ( )

1.      Brooklyn Bridge

70. Shri Purohit Swami Shri Purohit Swami (1882 – 1941)

71.  Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)

a.    The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

b.    The Hollow Men

c.    Ash-Wednesday

d.    Four Quartets

1.      Burnt Norton

2.      old possum’s book

3.      Gerontion

4.      East Coker

5.      The Dry Salvages

6.      Little Gidding

k.    The Waste Land

l.      Whispers of Immortality

72.  Wilfred Owen (1893 -1918)

73.  Michael Roberts (1902 –1948)

74.  Cecil Day Lewis (1904 -1972)

75.  H. Auden (1907-1973)

1.      Paid on Both Sides

2.      The Orators: An English Study

3.      The Auden Groupor the Auden Generation

d.    September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden

e.    In Memory of W. B. Yeats by W. H. Auden

76.  Sir Stephen Harold Spender (1909 -1995)

77.  Edward Benjamin Britten (1913 – 1976)

1.      Billy Budd–opera

78.  Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914 – 1953)

1.      The New Apocalyptics

2.      Fern Hill

79.  Easter (1916)

1.      Sailing to Byzantium

2.      Rhymers’ Club

3.      A Vision

4.      Lead and Swan

80.  Philip Larkin ( 1922 – 1985 )

81.  Sad steps

82.  Seamus Justin Heaney (1939 – 2013)

83.  Musee des Beaux Arts (1940)

84.  Walter whit man (1819 – 1892)

84.  American Literature

85.  Sylvia Plath(1932 -1963)

1.      Daddy

86.  Allen Ginsberg  (1926 – 1997)

87.  e.e. cummings (1894 – 1962)

1.      The Cambridge ladies

88.  Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

1.      “Mending Wall”

2.      Birches

3.      West-Running Brook

89.  Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

1.      A something in a Summer’s Day

2.      Bless God, he went as soldier’s

3.      How happy is the little Stone

4.      This is my Letter to The World

5.      It sifts from leaden sieves

6.      Because I could not stop for Death”

90.  Edgar Allan Poe (1809 -1849)

a.    The Haunted Palace

1.      To My Mother

2.      The Lake

90.  Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

91.  A something in a Summer’s Day

92.  Bless God, he went as soldier’s

93.  How happy is the little Stone

94.  This is my Letter to The World.

95.  This is my Letter to The World.

96.  Robert Frost (1874-1963)

97.  Mending Wall

98.  ‘Desert Places‘.

99.  Birches

100.                      West Running Brook.

1.      e.e. cummings (1894 – 1962)

1.      The Cambridge ladies

1.      Harold Hart Crane (1899 -1932)

1.      Brooklyn Bridge

1.      Indian Literature

1.      Tagore

2.      Aurobindo

3.      Sarojini Naidu

4.      Toru Dutt from

5.      K.Ramanujam

6.      Kamala Das

7.      Nissim Ezekiel

8.      Common wealth

9.      Judith Wright

10.  Wole Soyinka

11.  Abioseh Nicoll

12.  D.Hope

e.    Derek Walcott

f.     Omeroos

Fiction & Short Story

1.    Introduction

1.      Types of Novel

2.    Sir Thomas More (1478 –1535)

1.      Utopia

3.      Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616 )

1.      Don Quixote

4.      Sir Francis Bacon(1561 –1626)

1.      New Atlantis

5.      Daniel Defoe (1660 –1731)

1.      Robinson Crusoe

2.      Moll Flanders

6.      Samuel Richardson (1689 –1761)

1.      Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded

7.      Henry Fielding (1707 –1754)

1.      Tom Jones

b.    Joseph Andrews

c.    Shamela

d.    Amelia

8.      Laurence Sterne (1713 –1768)

1.      Tristram Shandy

9.      Horace Walpole(1717 –1797)

1.      The Castle of Otranto

10.  Oliver Goldsmith(1728 – 1774)

1.      The Vicar of Wakefield

11.  William Godwin (1756 – 1836)

1.      Things as They Are; or The Adventures of Caleb Williams

12.  Ann Radcliffe (1764 –1823)

1.      The Mysteries of Udolpho

13.  Walter scott(1771 – 1832)

1.      Ivanhoe

2.      The Heart of Midlothian

3.      Rob Roy

d.    Waverley

1.      The Bride of Lammermoor

2.      Quentin Durward

3.      Guy Mannering or The Astrologer

4.      The Antiquary

i.      The Black Dwarf

j.      The Monastery

1.      A Romance

2.      The Pirate

m.   The Fortunes of Nigel

1.      Saint Ronan’s Well

2.      Redgauntlet

3.      The Betrothed

4.      The Talisman

5.      Woodstock, or The Cavalier. A Tale of the Year Sixteen Hundred and Fifty-one

6.      The Fair Maid of Perth(or  Valentine’s Day)

7.      Anne of Geierstein, or The Maiden of the Mist

8.      Count Robert of Paris

9.      Castle Dangerous

10.  The Abbot

14.  Jane Austen(1775 – 1817)

1.      Sense and Sensibility

2.      Persuasion

3.      Pride and Prejudice

4.      Northanger Abbey

5.      Emma

6.      Mansfield Park

15.  Benjamin Disraeli (1804 –1881)

16.  Hawthorne 1804-1864

1.      A House of the Seven Gables

17.  Elizabeth Gaskell(1810-1865)

18.  William Makepeace Thackeray(1811 –1863)

1.      Vanity Fair

19.  Charles Dickens(1812 –1870)

1.      Great Expectations

2.      David Copperfield

3.      A Tale of Two Cities

4.      Martin Chuzzlewit

5.      The Pickwick Papers

6.      Hard Times

7.      The Old Curiosity Shop

8.      Bleak House

i.      Racism in the work of Charles Dickens

1.      William Makepeace Thackeray(1811 –1863)

2.      Vanity Fair

20.  Anthony Trollope( 1815 – 1882)

1.      Barchester Towers

21.  Charlotte Bronte(1816 – 1855)

1.      Jane Eyre

22.  Emily Bronte(1818-1848)

1.      Wuthering heights

23.  George Eliot (1819 –1880)

1.      Middle March

2.      Adam Bede

24.  Herman Melville(1819 –1891)

1.      Moby-Dick or The Whale

25. Wilkie Collins (1824 – 1889)

a.    The Moonstone

26.  George Meredith(1828 – 1909)

1.      The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of Father and Son

2.      The Egoist

27.  Leo Tolstoy (1828 –1910)

1.      Anna Karenina

28.  Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

1.      Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

2.      The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

29.  Samuel Butler (1835 – 1902)

1.      Erewhon

2.      The Way of All Flesh

30.  Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)

a.    The Return of the Native

1.      Jude the Obscure

2.      The Mayor of Casterbridge

31.  Henry James (1843-1916)

1.      The lesson of the master

32.  Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

1.      The Picture of Dorian Gray

33. Joseph Conrad (1857 –1924)

a.    Lord Jim

1.      Heart of Darkness

c.    The Shadow-Line  or The Shadow-Line: A Confession

34.  Herbert George Wells (1866-1946)

1.      Tono-Bungay

35.  John Galsworth(1867 –1933)

36.  Luigi Pirandello(1867 –1936)

1.      The Late Mattia Pascal

2.      One, No One and One Hundred Thousand

37. W. Somerset Maugham(1874-1965)

38.  M.Forster (1879-1970)

39. Kailyard school(1880-1914)

40. Premchand ( 1880 – 1936)

41.  Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

1.      To the Lighthouse

2.      Orlando

3.      Dalloway

4.      The Waves

5.      The Voyage Out

42.  James Joyce(1882 – 1941)

1.      Finnegans Wake

2.      Ulysses

3.      A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

43. Franz Kafka(1883 –1924)

44.  H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

1.      The last lesson Women in Love

45. Katherine Mansfield (1888 –1923)

46.  Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

1.      Time Must Have a Stop

47.  Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

1.      Brave New World

2.      Brave New World Revisited

48.  Ernest Miller Hemingway(1899 –1961)

1.      The Old Man and the Sea

49. Evelyn Waugh (1903 – 1966)

a.    A Handful of Dust

50.  George Orwell ( 1903-1950)

1.      Nineteen Eighty-Four

51.  Henry Graham Greene(1904-1991)

1.      Brighton Rock

2.      The Heart of the Matter

3.      England Made Me

4.      The End of the Affair

5.      The Man Within

f.     The Human Factor

1.      The Power and the Glory

52.  P.Snow (1905- 1980)

1.      Corridors of Power

53.  Mulk Raj Anand(1905 –2004)

1.      Coolie

2.      Untouchable

54.  K. Narayan(1906 – 2001)

55.  Raja Rao (1908-2006)

56.  Sir William Gerald Golding (1911-1993)

57.  Anthony Burgess(1917 –1993)

58. Doris Lessing(1919 –  2013)

59. Alan Sillitoe(1928 –2010)

60.  John Maxwell Coetzee(born 1940)

61.  S. Maniam (born 1942)

62.  Alice Walker (1944)

63.  Nuruddin Farah (1945)

64.  William John Banville(1945),

65.  Alan Hollinghurst (1954)

66.  Sir Kazuo Ishiguro (1954)

64.  Arundhati Roy (1961)

65.  Alain Mabanckou (1966)

66.  Deshpande (1966-2009)

67.  Helon Habila Ngalabak (1967)

68.  Colson Whitehead (1969)

69.  Marlon James (1970)

UNIT IV – Non Fictional Prose

NON FICTIONAL PROSE

1.      John Wycliffe (1320-1384

2.      Myles Coverdale (1488 -1569)

3.      William Tyndale (1494  1536)

4.      Roger Ascham (1515 – 1568)

1.      Toxophilus

2.      The Scholemaster

1.      George Puttenham (1529–1590)

1.      English Bible History

1.      John Lyly  (1553 or 1554 –1606)

2.      Richard Hooker (1554 – 1600)

1.      Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie

1.      Sir Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban(1561-1626)

2.      Thomas Middleton (1580 – 1627)

10. Francis Quarles (1592 -1644)

a.    Emblem book

11.  Sir Thomas Browne (1605 – 1682)

1.      Urn Burial

1.      Thomas Browne (1605 – 1682)

1.      Religio Medici(The Religion of a Doctor)

2.      The Garden of Cyrus

1.      John Bunyan (1628 – 1688)

1.      The Pilgrim’s Progress

1.      John Locke (1632 – 1704)

2.      Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703)

16.  Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)

1.      A Tale of a Tub

2.      A Modest Proposal

3.      Drapier’s Letters

4.      Gulliver’s Travels

1.      Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719)

18.  Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)

1.      Moral Essays

19.  Samuel Richardson (1689 – 1761)

1.      The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia

20.  Samuel Johnson (1709 –1784)

1.      Preface to Shakespeare

2.      Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets

1.      Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)

2.      Edward Gibbon (1737 – 1794)

3.      Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809)

4.      Charles Lamb (1775 – 1834)

1.      Essay – South sea House -by Charles Lamb

2.      Essay – New year’s Eveby Charles Lamb

§  Essay – Christ’s Hospital Five and Thirty Years Agoby Charles Lamb

1.      Essay – Dream-Children; a Reverieby Charles Lamb

2.      Oxford in the vacation

1.      Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb

2.      “The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers”

3.      My Relations

4.      Mathew Arnold

5.      Culture and Anarchy

6.      Hellenism and Hebraism

1.      William Hazalitt (1778 – 1830)

1.      Table-Talk-Essays on Men and Manners

2.      The Round Table

3.      The Indian Jugglers

4.      My first acquaintance with poets

1.      Shelly (1792 –  1822)

1.      A Defence of Poetry

1.      Thomas Love Peacock (1785 –  1866)

1.      “The Four Ages of Poetry”

1.      Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881)

1.      The Hero as Man of Letters

2.      Modern Painters

29. John Ruskin (1819 – 1900)

a.    Unto This Last

b.    Sesame and Lilies

30. Lytton Strachey  (1880 – 1932)

a.    Eminent Victorians

1.      Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941)

1.      A Room of One’s Own

2.      Professions for Women

3.      The Common Reader

d.    The Modern Essay

e.    The Sun and the Fish

32. Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897 – 1999)

1.      George Orwel (1903 – 1950),

1.      “Politics and the English Language”

2.      The Road to Wigan Pier

1.      C. P. Snow (1905 – 1980)

1.      The Two Cultures

2.      Rede Lecture

35. Jean Baudrillard (1929 – 2007)

36. Aijaz Ahmad (1932)

Unit –VIII : Literary Criticism

LITERARY CRITICISM CONTENT

1.      Longinus ( c. 213 – 273 AD)

1.      On the Sublime

1.      Aristotle (384 – 322)

2.      Plato (428 / 427 or 424 / 423 – 348/347 BC)

1.      Poetics

1.      Socrates (470 / 469 – 399BC)

1.      Philip Sidney (1554 – 1586)

1.      An Apology for Poetry

1.      John Dryden (1631 – 1700)

1.      Essay of Dramatic Poesy

1.      William Wilberforce (1759 –1833)

2.      Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 –  1834)

1.      Biographia Literaria

1.      Leigh Hunt (1784 – 1859)

2.      Shelly (1792 –1822)

1.      A Defence of Poetry

1.      Keats (1795 –  1821)

1.      Letters

1.      Percy Wyndham Lewis  (1882 – 1957)

1.      Arnold

2.      The Function of Criticism at the Present time

3.      The Study of Poetry

13.  Virginia Woolf(1882 – 1941)

1.      Bennet and Mrs.Brown

2.      “Modern Fiction”

1.      Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

1.      The ABC of Reading

1.      T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

1.      Traditions and Indivitual Talents

2.      Metaphysical poets

3.      The Sacred Wood

4.      “Hamlet and His Problems”

1.      Charles Kay Ogden (1889 – 1957)

2.      I. A. Richards (1893 –1979)

1.      Practical Criticism

2.      The Four Kinds of Meaning

1.      F. R. Leavis (1895 – 1978)

19.  Allen Tate (1899 –1979)

1.      Tension in Poetry

20.  Lionel Mordecai Trilling  (1905 –1975)

1.      Sense of the Past

21.  1906 William Empson(1906 – 1984)

1.      The Seventh Type of Ambiguity

1.      Cleanth Brooks (1906 – 1994)

1.      Irony as a Principle of Structure

23. Northrop Frye (1912 – 1991)

1.      Critical path

b.    Anatomy of Criticism

c.    The Archetypes of Literature

1.      Wayne C. Booth (1921-1983)

1.      The Rhetoric of fiction

1.      Jacques Derrida Jacques (1930 –2004)

1.      Deconstrction

26.  Helen Hennessy Vendler (1933)

An Essay on Dramatic Poesy

Essay on Dramatic Poesy

                                                                                             -Dryden

John Dryden was one of the most shining stars of the Restoration Age, that’s why this age is also known as the age of Dryden. He was the great critic. So, Dr.Samuel Johnson quotes as...

“The Father of English Criticism, who first taught us to 

Determine upon principles the merits of composition”

His Life:

Born-9, August, 1631, Aldwincle, Thrapston, Northampire, England.

Death-1 May,1700(aged 68 years) London, England.

Occupation-Poet Laureate, Critic, Dramatist.

Education-At Cambridge University.

His Creative Works:

Ø  Preface to the Fables

Ø  Preface to the Indian Emperor

Ø  The Wild Gallant

Ø  An Essay on Dramatic Poesy

Ø  All for Love

Ø  Absalom and Achitophel

Ø  Macflecknoe.

 But, here we are Only Concerned with ‘An Essay on Dramatic Poesy’. So let’s discuss this essay in detail.

An Essay on Dramatic Poesy: Introduction

Dryden developed a very ingenious plan of writing his essay. In 1665 great plague broke out in London. In order to escape from the infection of the plague, many people left London. So, Dryden takes this situation and develops a plan to write a great treatise on drama. He imagines the  he and his friends sails out  of London in a boat on the river of thames.so,to avoid boredom the journey, they decide to hold some useful discourse on the theory of drama in different ages in Greece,Rome,France and of England. They decide to allot one age to each of the four friends.

Each taking up the defense of dramatic Literature of one country or one age. Crites speaks for the Greek and the Roman dramatists and their principles.  Lisideius expresses his view that the French drama is superior to the English drama. So, he favors French dramatists. Eugenius claims that the English Drama of the last age in England is better than the Ancient Dramatists. Neander (For Dryden himself) pleads for England and Liberty. So, Dryden holds that ancient principle should be respected, but should not be followed blindly.

                                           Dryden’s definition of drama

 Here, Dryden expresses his views on Drama that what a play should be, therefore, he defines drama as

“Just and Lively Image of human nature,

Representing its passions and humors,

And the changes of fortunes to which it

Is subject, for the delight and instruction Of mankind”.

Therefore, Dryden and his friends talk about what a play should be, further, Lisideius conveys his view about Drama as ‘a just lively image of Human nature ‘.after this discussion, they start to give their views and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of French and English Drama. At last the debate goes on about the comparison between Ancient and Modern writers.

Violation of the three unities

As far as the unities of the time, place and action are concerned. This group further discusses the playwrights like Ben Jonson, Moliere and Shakespeare with a deeper insight. John Dryden himself. 

Also defenses English tragic-Comedy.

He comments that the French plays may be more regular but they are not as lively as that of English. For example in William Shakespeare’s Plays the more lively and just images of life can also be observed. Therefore, Dryden here condemns French Plays s lack of just and lively image.

          

Eugenius’s arguments on the superiority of the Moderns over the Ancients

            

Eugenius defends the English dramatists of the last age with a highly penetrating insight. It is true, he says that the Ancients Greek and Roman scholars laid down many basic principles of Drama. The English authors gave due respect to them, but they had no clear-cut concept of dividing a Play into Acts. The Dramatist set the voyage of dividing a play into five acts. Most of the Ancient Greek Playwrights wrote their plays on highly popular episodes of Thebes or troy on which many narrative poems, epics and plays had already been written. Therefore, the spectators found nothing new in them. Many times they spoke out the dialogues before the actors spoke them. The English Dramatist wrote their Plays on new Themes. In Comedies, the Greek and Roman playwrights repeated common theme of lost children coming back to their home after gap of many years. This often repeated theme lost its interest to the spectators.so,the English Dramatist invented new and interesting themes. In all these respects the English Dramatists of the last age were better than the Greek or Roman Dramatists.

Crites’s arguments in favor of the Ancients

Crites begins defending the Ancient Greek and Roman Poets and dramatists, and expresses his views that Ancients are better than the Modern one. The Ancient writers set rules of drama like, Aristotle also laid down the principles of the three unities of time place and action. By the unity of Time he meant that the action of a play should not be exceed “Compass of a natural day”, By the Unity of Place he meant that scene ought to be continued in the same place from the beginning to the end for the stage s “But one and the same Place”. It is Unnatural to shift the action from one place to another, especially to distant places. This will give the greatest likelihood to untruth. By the Unity of action, he meant that there should not be two or more actions. There should be only one action at a time to cover the whole Plot. The Ancient observed the three dramatic unities faithfully, and The Romans, The French, and The English dramatists tried their best to observe them, though not always successfully.Thus, The Ancients are our first law-givers as well as models for the Moderns to follow.

  

Lisideius view in favor of the superiority of the French drama over the English Drama

Defending the French Drama and Dramatist, Lisideius says that they far surpass the English and even the Greek dramatists.Corneill and some other French dramatists have so reformed their theatre that no European theatre stands comparison to it. So as far as the three dramatic unities are concerned, the French Dramatists observe them more faithfully than the Greeks themselves who propounded them. In observing the unity of time, they are so scrupulous that the action in some of their plays is limited to only twelve hours. The French are equally faithful in observing the unity of place. Many of them limit to the very spot of ground where the play is supposed to begin.However, none of them exceeds the compass of the same town. Equally conspicuous is the observance of the unity of action. There are under plots in their plays.

Further, the French generally write their tragedies on well-known historical facts which the people can easily comprehend. They do not make their plots so complicated that the spectators may lose their patience. In their plays the hero is most important, and rest of the characters are marginalized to him.Finally,The French write their plays in beautiful rhyming verse which is far sweeter than the blank verse in which the English plays are written. To Sum Up, The French playwrights are superior to the English.

   

Neander’s view in favor of English Drama

Dryden in the person of Neander rises up in defence of English dramatists and strongly pleads that English Dramatist are fully justified in not slavishly accepting the classical principles in many respects. They have developed their own principles and proved themselves to be superior to the Greek and French dramatists in many ways. In the First place French drama, whether comic or tragic, lacks in emotion and passion. English dramatists surpass them in both. The English tragedies produce fear and pity more powerfully, and their comedies excel in producing delightful humors and Romantic love. He equally defends the insertion of under plots which highlight the main plot.

Coming to the dramatic unities of Time and Place, he says that their observance might adversely affect the total impact of a play. It is unbelievable that sufficient material for the plot of a good play.Finally, coming to Shakespeare, he says “He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacle of books to read literature; he looked inwards and found him there.

The Ancient versus Modern Playwrights

Here, by this essay, John Dryden makes comparison between Ancients versus Modern Playwrights.Crites makes favor of the Ancients by giving some views about them.

A. Crites favors the Ancients

The first significant thing which favors Ancients that they are acknowledged models of the modern. They had a special technique for writing drama is that of perfection. And further, Crites expresses his views that the Ancients were honored and rewarded by the merits of their drama. They closely observed nature and depicted faithfully in their plays. The Rules and unities of composing drama, which were made by the Ancients. Therefore, Crites favors Ancients rather than Moderns.

B. Eugenius favors Moderns

Eugenius tries to reply to Crites by making Modern dramatists better than that of Ancients. Of course, Moderns have written drama the way the Ancients were written. But, they have not _blindly imitated them. Their themes of the drama were similar, but not Moderns tried to present the same thing in a better way and in a different way. They have perfected the division of plays and divided their plays not into acts but into various scenes. The Ancient observed the three unities of time place and actions are not perfect. In fact, the Moderns tried to get perfection of these unities in their dramas.Ancients’s plays do not perform one of the function of drama, that of giving delight as well as instruction. There was no rule to punish vice, but even, they have mostly shown a prosperous wickedness. Therefore, by giving the reply to Crites in favor of Moderns, Eugenius tries to differentiates Moderns from the Ancients.

Mixture of tragedy and comedy

Being a liberal Critic, Dryden, who tries to give his view on mingling of tragedy and comedy.sometimes, it may be possible that one becomes bore after watching comedy drama. so here, the same thing is told by Dryden that the eye can pass from an unpleasant object to  pleasant one.so,also the soul can move from the tragic to the comic. There were no rules of mixing tragedy and comedy in their plays. But, they had written play of tragedy, no comic elements were there. But, perhaps, Aristotle would have revised his rules. That’s why, Dryden puts here that “Had Aristotle seen the English plays, He might have changed his mind”.Hence,the views of John Dryden proves that he is more frank as well as liberal as he suggests the mixture of Tragedy and Comedy must be there.

Rhymed verse versus Blank verse

Heroic couplet was used as a form of poetry in the Restoration Age as this form was mastered by John Dryden. He puts his idea on Rhyme through the mouth of Neander, while Crites attacks on Rhyme and puts forward his ideas that Rhyme must not be used in the drama. Of course, it may be utilized in comedy plays, because a play is made up of dialogues, if Rhyme is used, than the play seems unnatural or we may call a Rhymed Verse play, which is not permitted to use it.

 Neander’s Defence

In making attempt to give reply to Crites, Neander favors Rhyme and further says that Rhyme makes the play natural.Therefore, it must be used in the play.Moreover, he puts forward his view that Rhyme is different from Blank Verse. Rhyme is a type of similar word at the end of the lines, while a Blank Verse stand alone, which was used by Christopher Marlowe and other Elizabethans. In a form of tragedy they used Rhyme.So, at last, Neander makes a comment and it indicates that he favors Rhyme.

Comparison between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson

In this essay, Dryden makes comparison between two great Elizabethan Dramatists like William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. So let’s discuss this comparison in detail.

A. Shakespeare:

William Shakespeare was one of the prominent dramatists of the Age of Elizabeth. He describes the thing in such a way that not only one can see, but also you feel it. He wrote 37 Plays and in which he portrayed all the things in his Dramas and Sonnets. Though, he was not considered a great writer in the days of Elizabethan.

B. Ben Jonson:

Another writer of high quality in the Elizabethan Age was Ben Jonson, who was considered superior to William Shakespeare in those days. Because, Wit; Humour in his Dramas makes him a learned man. Jonson was a judge himself, therefore, as one can observe in his Dramas that he wrote plays, which contain Homour and Wit also.

       

One critic Atkins states,

“If I would compare him with Shakespeare,

 I must acknowledge him with the more correct    

 Poet, but Shakespeare the great wit, Shakespeare

 Was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets;

 Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing

 I admire him, but I love Shakespeare”.

So, Neander expresses his view about this comparison. Now let’s explain his ideas about another comparison between Fletcher and Beaumont in detail.

A. John Fletcher

John Fletcher belonged to the Age of Elizabeth, who was Dramatist of high quality and poet too. Fletcher wrote most of his play as a comedy and of course his real talent lay in it. By writing tragicomedy he generates laughter and power of arousing emotions. John Fletcher was the first person, who Customized 10 syllable line of Elizabethan Dramatic Blank Verse. The Themes of his plays were love or honor .sometimes both theme or subject can be observed in a tragicomedy. So, he was a man of technical abilities too.

B. Francis Beaumont:

The most influential play Wright and poet of Elizabethan Age. He also more wrote comedies and his comedies help Beaumont to stand as a man of talent. He was more famous for his tragicomedies, which he wrote with Fletcher. They both have written ten Plays in collaboration. So these collaborations had helped to establish both men in the ranks of the best dramatists. Therefore; Dryden makes comparison of both the Dramatists.

Romanticism

Etymology

The group of words with the root "Roman" in the various European languages, such as "romance" and "Romanesque", has a complicated history, but by the middle of the 18th century "romantic" in English and romantique in French were both in common use as adjectives of praise for natural phenomena such as views and sunsets, in a sense close to modern English usage but without the amorous connotation. The application of the term to literature first became common in Germany, where the circle around the Schlegel brothers, critics August and Friedrich, began to speak of romantische Poesie ("romantic poetry") in the 1790s, contrasting it with "classic" but in terms of spirit rather than merely dating. Friedrich Schlegel wrote in his Dialogue on Poetry (1800), "I seek and find the romantic among the older moderns, in Shakespeare, in Cervantes, in Italian poetry, in that age of chivalry, love and fable, from which the phenomenon and the word itself are derived."

Period

The period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place "roughly between 1770 and 1848",^[24] and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, perhaps a little later than some other critics.^[25] Others have proposed 1780–1830.^[26] In other fields and other countries the period denominated as Romantic can be considerably different; musical Romanticism, for example, is generally regarded as only having ceased as a major artistic force as late as 1910, but in an extreme extension the Four Last Songs of Richard Strauss are described stylistically as "Late Romantic" and were composed in 1946–48.^[27] However, in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier.

The early period of the Romantic Era was a time of war, with the French Revolution (1789–1799) followed by the Napoleonic Wars until 1815. These wars, along with the political and social turmoil that went along with them, served as the background for Romanticism.^[28] The key generation of French Romantics born between 1795–1805 had, in the words of one of their number, Alfred de Vigny, been "conceived between battles, attended school to the rolling of drums".^[29] According to Jacques Barzun, there were three generations of Romantic artists. The first emerged in the 1790s and 1800s, the second in the 1820s, and the third later in the century.^[30]

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature—all components of modernity. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education, the social sciences, and the natural sciences.^{[not in citation given]} It had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing liberalism, radicalism, conservatism and nationalism.

The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially that experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, but also spontaneity as a desirable characteristic (as in the musical impromptu). In contrast to the Rationalism and Classicism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism revived medievalism^[7] and elements of art and narrative perceived as authentically medieval in an attempt to escape population growth, early urban sprawl, and industrialism.

Basic characteristics[edit]

The nature of Romanticism may be approached from the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich, "the artist's feeling is his law".^[10] To William Wordsworth, poetry should begin as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet then "recollect[s] in tranquility", evoking a new but corresponding emotion the poet can then mold into art.^[11]

To express these feelings, it was considered the content of art had to come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules dictating what a work should consist of. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were natural laws the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone.^[12] As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creator's own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own original work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism, and to be derivative was the worst sin.^[13][14][15] This idea is often called "romantic originality."^[16] Translator and prominent Romantic August Wilhelm Schlegel argued in his Lectures on Dramatic Arts and Letters that the most phenomenal power of human nature is its capacity to divide and diverge into opposite directions.^[17]

According to Isaiah Berlin, Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals."^[19]Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief and interest in the importance of nature. This particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. In contrast to the usually very social art of the Enlightenment, Romantics were distrustful of the human world, and tended to believe a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy. Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the personal voice of the artist. So, in literature, "much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves".^[18]

Literature

Some authors cite 16th century poet Isabella di Morra as an early precursor of Romantic literature. Her lyrics covering themes of isolation and loneliness, which reflected the tragic events of her life, are considered "an impressive prefigurement of Romanticism",^[40] differing from the Petrarchist fashion of the time based on the philosophy of love.In literature, Romanticism found recurrent themes in the evocation or criticism of the past, the cult of "sensibility" with its emphasis on women and children, the isolation of the artist or narrator, and respect for nature. Furthermore, several romantic authors, such as Edgar Allan Poeand Nathaniel Hawthorne, based their writings on the supernatural/occult and human psychology. Romanticism tended to regard satire as something unworthy of serious attention, a prejudice still influential today.^[39] The romantic movement in literature was preceded by the Enlightenment and succeeded by Realism.

The precursors of Romanticism in English poetry go back to the middle of the 18th century, including figures such as Joseph Warton(headmaster at Winchester College) and his brother Thomas Warton, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.^[41] Joseph maintained that invention and imagination were the chief qualities of a poet. Thomas Chatterton is generally considered the first Romantic poet in English.^[42]The Scottish poet James Macpherson influenced the early development of Romanticism with the international success of his Ossian cycle of poems published in 1762, inspiring both Goethe and the young Walter Scott. Both Chatterton and Macpherson's work involved elements of fraud, as what they claimed was earlier literature that they had discovered or compiled was, in fact, entirely their own work. The Gothic novel, beginning with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764), was an important precursor of one strain of Romanticism, with a delight in horror and threat, and exotic picturesque settings, matched in Walpole's case by his role in the early revival of Gothic architecture. Tristram Shandy, a novel by Laurence Sterne (1759–67) introduced a whimsical version of the anti-rational sentimental novel to the English literary public.