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Bede
The Venerable Bede, in his monastery at Jarrow, completes his history of the English church and people -
The Edinburgh Introduction to Studying English Literature, dramatic poem
Ozymandias
This striking and dramatic poem was written by Percy Shelley and published in 1818. The overall effect is of the hollow pride of the emperor: nothing could hold back the tides of time, and the drifting sands have covered over every further trace of his achievements. -
novel The Jungle
novel The Jungle (1906), which shed light on the horrific working conditions in Chicago slaughterhouses and led directly to popular calls for legislative action. Historical novels are another interesting borderline case. A historical novel promises to tell us something about how things really were in the past but we allow the novelist sufficient licence that specific details of plot, dialogue or description may be inventions. -
anonymous Anglo-Saxon epic poem
Beowulf, the first great work of Germanic literature, mingles the legends of Scandinavia with the experience in England of Angles and Saxons -
novel
We expect a novel to be in some sense rooted in the real world: although we allow a degree of licence for unusual things to happen, if a novel were to become too unlikely we might dismiss it. -
fantasy, science- fiction, horror
We often draw generic distinctions between novels primarily to indicate their degree of distance from ‘everyday’ reality (fantasy, science- fiction, horror) and may be suspicious of the literary credentials of novels which rely on overly formulaic plots (detective novels). -
Aristotle
ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in the fourth century bce and to his approval of writing that offers a general truth, rather than the messy particularity of specific events. In more modern times – and with experience of the novel, rather than the drama and poetry which was Aristotle’s main focus -
literary historians
literary historians have gone on to praise authors’ ability to present not general truths but accurate versions of specific societies at specific moments in time. For many of these commentators, this accurate representation and ‘realism’ is the very essence of the modern novel -
fiction
fiction has been directly influential in drawing a society’s attention to real social problems. -
The Romantic Period
This period produced authors who wrote about life, love and nature. Many of these authors found the world to be disappointing and had a melancholy bent to their works. John Keats is possibly the most famous author of this period -
John Keats and William Wordsworth
Students often study his many odes, especially one contemplating the unchanging nature and eternal youthfulness of characters painted on a Grecian urn. William Wordsworth is also a key figure, with the notable poem "The world is too much with us, late and soon," as is his collaborator Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." -
Geoffrey Chaucer
Next, most courses move onto "The Canterbury Tales," which helped English to gain credibility as a literary language in a culture where educated people wrote mainly in Latin. Written by Geoffrey Chaucer, the "Tales" is another series of stories told by different narrators that offers a snapshot of late medieval cultural diversity. Perhaps the most surprising thing about these early British works is their graphic content and crude sexual content. -
Diane Kampf
An Introduction to English Literature
"English literature" is a broad term used in many educational settings. It refers to the body of work written or spoken in the English language. It includes prose, poetry, and oral traditions. Although some schools may include American literature in this genre, W. W. Norton and Company, which publishes the definitive literature anthologies used by many colleges, only includes works by British and Irish authors in its English anthology. -
Early British Literature
A survey of English literature course or test will most likely begin with the oral traditions of Old and Middle English. The most popular is the epic poem "Beowulf." Although there are numerous written versions of the work, it was originally a spoken poem passed through generations of early inhabitants of England called Anglo-Saxons. The poem is a series of adventure tales about a people called the Geats and an embattled hero named Beowulf.
