ENG1303 BRITISH LITERATURE, exam

• EARLY MIDDLE AGES:

  The early middle ages in literature corresponds to the Anglo-Saxon period. Poetry from this period is split into half-lines with a gap in the middle, these lines are referred to as A-line and B-line. Each half line consists of two stresses and alliteration, but it lacks rhyme. Elegies are common in Anglo-Saxon literature; elegiac poems are about loss and they depict an alienated and often exiled narrator.
• “The Wanderer”

  The poem portrays the life of a lordless man. It starts with describing how the personae came to be lordless (this through a massacre) before it has a religious turn towards the end. Important is the motif of “ubi sunt”. “The Wanderer” also has a dream element to it; the personae drifts from dreams to reality towards the middle of the poem.
• Genre of “The Wanderer”

  It is an elegiac poem. It describes the loss of the personae’s clan and his lord. The personae has become lordless, and mourns the loss of his lord and clan. Because of the heavy emphasis on loss, it is an elegiac poem.
• Development

  “The Wanderer” moves from an elegy about loss and being lordless to dreams (where the lord is still alive). In the latter part of the poem there is a religious turn.
• How is alliterative verse constructed?

  Usually, two or more consonant sounds in both A-line and B-line. These consonant sounds are the same.
• Anglo-Saxon culture

  Foregrounds the relationship between a retainer and his lord, the personae spend most of his time in the poem mourning the loss of his fellow warriors and lord. “The Wanderer” also considers the themes of exile and loneliness.
• “The Dream of the Rood”

  “The Dream of the Rood” is a religious dream vision. It portrays the cross as a central figure. Additionally, it attributes devotion to the cross and uses it as imagery. The poem changes and adapts the crucifixion of Christ; Anglo-Saxon tradition is written in. It develops from focusing on Christ as a hero to focus on his suffering.
• Who or what speaks?

  The cross is the speaker and has a central position in the poem.
• How does the poem rework crucifixion?

  The poem adapts the Crucifixion story using Germanic tropes. It adapts to Anglo-Saxon culture and traditions, and it uses Germanic tropes, like personification of the cross. There are issues with adapting the Crucifixion story to Anglo-Saxons, firstly there is a break between the retainer-lord bond because Jesus leaves his disciples. Secondly, there are issues with how to frame it in a literary heroic tradition when Jesus is executed.
• LATER MIDDLE AGES:

  In the 14th century there is an alliterative revival by the Gawain-poet. Present in texts from the later Middle Ages is chivalric ideals and courtly love. Chivalric ideals stem from an idealised knightly code established after Christianisation of Europe. The chivalric ideal is etiquette for how knights deal with their peers. And it comes to replace the lord-retainer bond in earlier Anglo-Saxon culture and literature.
• Courtly love

  Courtly love is a literary ideal etiquette in European royal courts. Courtly love must be viewed within the bounds of political marriage, where passion happened outside marriage. The main aspect of it is as an expression of admiration and affection between a knight and a noble lady. There are three elements that constitute courtly love: secrecy and discretion, the knight being inferior to the lady, and challenges that may be fulfilled.
• “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”

  The poem is split into four fitts:

  1.     The Green Knight interrupts a feast at Camelot; Gawain accepts the challenge presented to him.

  2.     Gawain’s journey and refuge in Hautdesert.

  3.     Hunting and seductive games.

  4.     Gawain’s reckoning with the Green Knight; revelation of secret identities.

  It follows a strict rhyme scheme ABABA. Additionally, there are contrasts between the outside and the inside.
• Genre

  It is a chivalric romance.
• Literary tradition

  It is written into the tradition of Arthurian legend.
• How does Gawain meet conventions and expectations?

  Gawain follows the chivalric ideal present in texts from this era. He also follows the conventions of courtly love. Through following both courtly love and chivalric ideals, he meets what is expected of him.
• How are Gawain’s loyalties tested and torn?

  They are tested through challenges given by the Green Knight himself, through the tests that Lord Bertilak presents Gawain with when he is at Hautdesert, and through the courtly love he has with Lady Bertilak.
• RENAISSANCE I – SONNETS

  Renaissance concerns itself with the self and how the self works.
• The sonnet

  The sonnet has two different forms: the Shakespeare sonnet and the Petrarch sonnet. Both are written in iambic pentameter and both deals with the ideal of love and love itself. The Shakespeare sonnets are split into three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet, the rhyming couplet is the conclusion. The Petrarch sonnets are divided into an octave and a sestet. Both have a volta, but the volta happens at different times; the Shakespearean has a volta in the 12th line, while the Petrarch sonnet has a volta in the 8th line.
• “Sonnet 18”

  Sonnet 18 is written to the young man. The theme of the sonnet is the power of the poem to defy time and last forever. The point of the poem is that the young man’s beauty shall not fade because it is embodied in the poem.
• “Sonnet 129”

  This sonnet is part of the dark lady sequence. It grapples with the idea of sexual desire, and it expresses a revulsion at being dependent on sex. It makes use of carnal language.
• “Sonnet 130”

  Sonnet 130 is also written to the dark lady. It compares the lover’s beauty with a number of things; these comparisons are never in the lover’s favour. The sonnet satirises the concept of ideal beauty.
• “Sonnet 138”

  Also a sonnet written to the dark lady. The sonnet unveils the speakers personal struggle to come to terms with deceit and trust in love; the relationship that is portrayed is one of mutual dishonesty.
• “How I Consider How My Light Is Spent”

  The sonnet has political and personal reflections, these are accompanied by religious tones.
• How does the arrangement in Shakespeare’s and Milton’s sonnets embody the progression of an argument?

  Both sonnets are Shakespearean sonnets, so they have three quatrains and one couplet. The first two quatrains introduce a problem or an arrangement, while the final quatrain and the couplet is a solution to the problem.
• “A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning”

  A love poem that is tinged with melancholy as if the lovers are separated. John Donne wrote metaphysical poetry, that is poetry that focuses on deceit.
• “The Good-Morrow”

  This is also a love poem, but this one is centred around morning. The morning can symbolise new beginnings. Additionally, the poem moves from dawn to dusk, so the poem shows progression of the lover’s relationship.
• What is Donne trying to communicate?

  With “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” Donne is trying to communicate and show the bond between lovers. While with “The Good-Morrow” he is trying to show the progression of love.
• RENAISSANCE II – TRAGEDY AND MACBETH

  The tragic plot requires a rigorous, internal chain of cause and effect. There are four necessary elements to a tragedy: Hamartia: the tragic hero makes an error and starts a chain of events. Peripeteia: reversal, the tragic hero falls from a lofty position. Anagnorisis: recognition, the tragic hero realises their situation. Catharsis: purgation, the audience experiences an emotional purge. All tragedies should involve three unities: unity of time; unity of place; unity of action. Theatrum Mundi, a character describing life like theatre, is important
• Macbeth

  Macbeth is about many things. Most importantly about the nature of violence and about certain recurring anxieties. It is also about autonomy, the rise and fall in status, a disconnect between the moral and political, and how time is experienced. Macbeth’s three witches have likely been added by Thomas Middleton.
• LONG 18TH CENTURY I

  Satire as a genre and emerging new ideals of the beautiful are important. Emphasis on the picturesque: considers landscapes as a kind of art, values wildness and ruggedness. Emphasises nature and how landscapes are framed. Literary romanticism: a broad description of a new aesthetic, often seen as a contrast to classicism, the Enlightenment, and the IR. Emphasises emotion and imagination. Overlaps with the picturesque and the Gothic. The idea of the sublime: aligns the beautiful with classical balance and grace, the sublime with the fear of death and the unknown.
• “On Being Cautioned Against Walking on a Headland Overlooking the Sea, Because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic”

  All of Charlotte Smith’s poetry has an emphasis on rootedness in landscapes. This sonnet mixes both English and Italian sonnets. Presents the octave as a question and the sestet is a reply to the octave. The idea that insanity may be enviable in certain situations is important.
• Wordsworth and Coleridge

  Both present radical energies. Additionally, it highlights democratic ideals and utopianism. “We are Seven” and “The Lamb” emphasises innocence and experience.
• “Kubla Khan”

  Blake was a visionary poet, and this has transferred to “Kubla Khan”. The poem is an early example of orientalism.
• What interests did the poets associated with literary romanticism have?

  They were interested in the picturesque, the sublime, a sense of transience, emotions and expressing them, defiance of the divine, and bridging the material and supernatural worlds.
• Byron and Shelley

  Concerned with the world made small in sense and time.
• How is the urban landscape presented? “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3 1802”

  The landscape is presented in terms of beautiful natural phenomena and personification of the city itself.
• What is unusual? “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3 1802”

  The poem doesn’t conform to ideals of romanticism; it doesn’t emphasise any of the things important in romanticism. It also doesn’t overlap with ideals of the picturesque.
• LONG 18TH CENTURY II

  The gothic is linked to tribes linked to the fall of the Western Roman empire; thus, the gothic becomes synonymous with barbaric. The gothic is anti-classical, and it diverges from classical ideas of beauty. Gothic fiction has a couple marked features: Setting, often a castle or a large house. Rural. Frame narratives and invented provenances. Atmosphere of secrecy, uncertainty, and dread. Suggestions or explicit manifestations of the supernatural. The past intrudes on the present. Romantic/erotic love is juxtaposed with violence. Association with femininity.
• Northanger Abbey

  Catherine, the protagonist, is deluded by her reading of gothic novels. Northanger Abbey is both a defence of the novel and a satire of the gothic. There are two real supernatural/imaginary forces at work, these are money/wealth and interpretation.
• How does Catherine’s experiences relate to her reading habits?

  Catherine is deluded by the gothic novels she reads, and so she imagines things that are not there.