Anglo-American Literature

Ignatius Joseph N Estroga MA-Eng
Liceo de Cagayan University, Philippines

•The name "England" is derived from
the Old English name ENGLALAND,
which means
“LAND OF THE ANGLES"
ignatius joseph n estroga

•Few surviving texts with little
in common.
•Language closer to modern
German than modern English.
•Frequently reflect non-English
influence.
•Beowulf, “The Wanderer”ignatius joseph n estroga

I. The Anglo – Saxon Period:
Britain before the Anglo-
Saxons
The Germanic Invasions
Anglo- Saxon Society
Anglo – Saxon Literature

England before
the English
• When the Romans arrived, they
found the land inhabited by
“Britons.”
• known as the Celts
• Stonehenge
• no written language
• absorbed into the Latin
speaking Roman society
Romans withdraw, leaving the Britons/Celts behind
Invasions from the Northern Europe
Anglo-Saxon bring Germanic languages

• By 600, Anglo-Saxons
conquer the Britons
• language becomes more
Germanic
• still retains some Latin
• The Anglo-Saxons’ two
urgings--war and
wandering become
part of the oral
tradition
• Beowulf is an example of
an Anglo-Saxon hero
taleBeowulf battles Grendel’s mother

•Literature: Beowulf , the
earliest literature, the national
epic of the Anglo-Saxon, one
of the striking features - the
use of alliteration
•Alliteration

• By 700, Christian
missionaries arrive to
convert the pagans
• Latin (the language of
the Church) returns
• King Alfred
• the Britons become
organized
• first true king of the
Britons
• period of prosperity
King Alfred brings an age of prosperity

•Works frequently of a
religiously didactic content.
•Written for performance at
court or for festivals.

Trivia
Who is the Father of
English Literature?

Geoffrey Chaucer
His family name derives from the French
chausseur, meaning "shoemaker".

• known as the Father of English literature
• is widely considered the greatest English
poet of the middle Ages
• was the first poet to have been buried in
Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.

• Social background: the Norman conquest
under William, Duke of Normandy, the
battle of Hastings in 1066; the mark of
establishment of feudalism
• Literature: Langland; Chaucer
• Allegory
• Ballad
• Romance

The 3 Estates in the Middle Ages
• The idea of estates, or orders, was
encouraged during the Age, but this
ordering was breaking down.
• Clergy
• Latin chiefly spoken, those who pray,
purpose was to save everyone’s soul
• Nobles
• French chiefly spoken, those who fight,
purpose was to protect—allow for all
to work in peace—and provide justice
• Commoners
• English spoken, those who work,
purpose was to feed and clothe all
above themignatius joseph n estroga

feudalism • The economic system of much of
the Middle Ages (800-1100)
• Commoners (peasants) lived on a
feudal manor. The lord of the
manor gave his vassals (the peasants)
land to farm.
• In return, the vassals received
protection from roving bandits. Yet
they were taxed and had to surrender
a portion of their crops to the lord.
• it was better to be a lord than a vassal!
• Feudalism is important as it
created ties of obedience and
fostered a sense of loyalty
between the vassals and their lord.A tenant (vassal) renews his oath of fealty
to his lordignatius joseph n estroga

Chivalry
• A product of feudalism, chivalry
was an idealized system of
manners and morals
• Restricted to nobility
• The Medieval knight was bound
to the chivalric code to be loyal
to…
• God
• his lord
• his lady
• Chivalric ideals include...
• benevolence
• brotherly love
• politeness
• Sir Gawain is an example

Characteristics of Medieval Literature
• Heroism
• from both Germanic and Christian traditions, sometimes mingled
• Presentations of idealized behavior
• literature as moral- loyalty to king -Chivalry
• Romance
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• A narrative in prose or verse that tells of the adventures and heroic
exploits of chivalric heroes
• exploits of knights- often a supernatural element involved
• Christian message
• concern with salvation and the world to come
• no interest in social change
• until the late 14th century
• Chaucer signals new thinking, up-ending social order

The High Middle Ages
• These people wrote music, but they also wrote
poetry. Cretien de Troyes, Walter von der
Vogelweide, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and
Marie de France are examples.
a. Arthur and his knights, the Song of Roland, the
Niebelungenlied,
b.and literary material based on the lives of
Alexander the Great and Charlemagne.
c. The movement was important in promoting the
idea of a code of chivalry.ignatius joseph n estroga

The High Middle Ages
d. During the High Middle Ages, other works
became important, such as ancient Greek
philosophy, translated into Latin from Arabic.
This brought about a new interest in philosophy,
religion, and science.
e. Religion remained important. One example
was the works of Thomas Aquinas. Another was
Bonaventure's Life of Francis of Assisi.

The Late Middle Ages
• This had truly great products with
a. the Divine Comedy, by Dante, and
b.The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey
Chaucer.
Interest in Arthurian legends also continued,
and both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur
were products of this time.

•Influence of Aristotle, Ovid, and other
Greco-Roman thinkers, as well as science
and exploration.
•Primarily texts for public performance
(plays, masques) and some books of
poetry.
•William Shakespeare, Christopher
Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon,
John Fletcher, Francis Beaumont.ignatius joseph n estroga

• Renaissance- marks the transition from the
medieval to the modern world;
• It means rebirth or revival of letters; a
historical period in which thinkers and
scholars made attempts to get rid of those
old feudalist ideas, to introduce new ideas
that expressed the interest of the rising
bourgeoisie, and to recover the purity of the
early church from the corruption of the
Roman Catholic Church.
• Two features are striking of this movement:
thirsting curiosity for the classical literature
and the keen interest in the activities of
humanity.ignatius joseph n estroga

• Humanism-key-note of the
Renaissance; emphasis on the
dignity of human beings and the
importance of the present life; belief
in the right to enjoy the beauty of
this life and the ability to perfect
himself and to perform wonders.
• Thomas Moore- Utopia
• Francis Bacon- Of Studies

Francis Bacon (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626),
an English philosopher, statesman,
scientist, jurist, orator, essayist, and
author. He served both as Attorney
General and Lord Chancellor of
England. After his death, he
remained extremely influential
through his works, especially as
philosophical advocate and
practitioner of the scientific method
during the scientific revolution.
Francis Bacon

Trivia
What are the three important uses of studies
according to Francis Bacon?
• A. for happiness, for truth, and for knowledge
• B. for delight, for ornament, and for ability
• C. for judgment, for disposition, and for wisdom
• D. for personal, social, and transcendental
inclinations

• Drama---the highest
glory of the English
Renaissance with
Christopher Marlowe,
Shakespeare and Ben
Jonson

Christopher Marlowe-
• --the most gifted of the
“university wits”, Doctor
Faustus, blank verse first
used in his drama.

*Shakespeare---his life, his works,
his status
*His life---born in 1564 in Stratford-
on Avon, died in 1616
*His works---38 plays, 154 sonnets

TRIVIA
What phrase appears on William Shakespeare’s
gravestone?
A. “May the great author rest in peace”
B. “He wrote so much that man will take years
to understand everything.”
C. “He arrived on this earth with nothing.
When he died, he left everything to us.”
D. “…curst be he that moves my bones.”ignatius joseph n estroga

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

V. The Restoration Period:
(17th Century)

• Social background: the clash between the
King and Parliament; the Civil War between
1642-1649; Charles I was executed in 1649;
the declining of Cromwell’s
Commonwealth and the compromise with
the feudal remnants.

John Milton-
• --a revolutionary poet, political both in his life and his art;
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes

•John Bunyan---The Pilgrim’s Progress,
a religious allegory, the spiritual
pilgrimage of Christian
•John Dryden---the most distinguished
literary figure of the Restoration
period; use of heroic couplet in his
writing
•*heroic couplet---two successive lines
of verse, equal in length and with
rhyme.

• Metaphysical school of poetry------break away
from the convention; simple diction, common
speech words and cadences, actual life imagery,
argument with the poet’s beloved, with god, or
with himself; John Donne and Andrew Marvell.
• *John Donne---leading figure of the Metaphysical
school of poetry,
• *Marvel---“To his Coy Mistress”

England 1660-1785 America 1750-1800
•Reaction to the expansiveness of the
Renaissance in the direction of order
and restraint.
•Developed in France (Moliere,
Rousseau, Voltaire).

•Emphasized classical ideals of
rationality and control (human nature is
constant through time).
•Art should reflect the universal
commonality of human nature. (“All
men are created equal.”)
•Reason is emphasized as the highest
faculty (Deism).ignatius joseph n estroga

•Writing should be well structured,
emotion should be controlled, and
emphasize qualities like wit.
•England: John Locke,, Alexander
Pope (Essay on Man), Jonathon
Swift (Gulliver’s Travels), Henry
Fielding (Tom Jones), Daniel
Defoe (Robinson Crusoe), Jane
Austen (Sense and Sensibility,
Emma, Pride and Prejudice).

DANIEL DEFOE: 1660-1731
was born in London, England. His real
name was Daniel Foe, later changed
his name to Daniel Defoe, wanting to
sound more gentlemanly. He went
into business, having given up an
earlier intent on becoming a
dissenting minister. He traveled often,
selling such goods as wine and wool,
but was rarely out of debt. He went
bankrupt.
He wrote his world famous novel “The
Life and Strange Surprising
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe”.

•America: Benjamin Franklin (Poor
Richard’s Almanac, autobiography),
Thomas Paine (“Common Sense”),
Thomas Jefferson (“The Declaration of
Independence”), James Madison (“The
Constitution of the United States”).

England 1785-1830America 1800-1860
•Reaction against the scientific
rationality of Neoclassicism and the
Industrial Revolution.
•Developed in Germany (Kant, Goethe).
•Emphasized individuality, intuition,
imagination, idealism, nature (as
opposed to society & social order).

• *Romanticism---It designates a literary and
philosophical theory which tends to see the
individual as the very center of all life and all
experience.
• It also places the individual at the center of art,
making literature most valuable as an expression
of his or her unique feelings and particular
attitudes;
• Nature is not only the major source of poetic
imagery, but also provides the dominant subject
matter; Romantics also tend to be nationalistic.ignatius joseph n estroga

Trivia
•Who is the Father of
Romanticism?

William Wordsworth

•Elevation of the common man (folklore, myth).
•Mystery and the supernatural.
•England: Robert Burns (“To a Mouse”), William
Blake (Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience),
William Wordsworth (Lyrical Ballads, “Tintern
Abbey,” “Intimations of Immortality,” “I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud”), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Kubla Kahn”), Lord
Byron (“Don Juan”), Percy Bysshe Shelley
(“Ozymandias”), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
(Frankenstein), John Keats (“Ode on a Grecian Urn”),
Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe).

America:
• Washington Irving (“Rip Van Winkle,” “The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow”),
• Edgar Allan Poe (“The Raven,” Tales of the Grotesque
and Arabesque, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”
“The Philosophy of Composition”),
• James Fennimore Cooper (The Last of the Mohicans),
• Herman Melville (Moby-Dick, Billy Budd),
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (Twice-Told Tales, The Scarlet
Letter),
• William Cullen Bryant (“To a Waterfowl”),
• Oliver Wendell Holmes (“The Chambered Nautilus”),
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (“Paul Revere’s Ride”),
• James Russell Lowell (“The First Snowfall”).

Trivia
Who is the Father of
Short Stories?

• American writer, known as a poet and critic but most
famous as the first master of the short-story form,
especially tales of the mystery.
• The literary merits of Poe's writings have been debated
since his death, but his works have remained popular
and many major American and European writers have
professed their artistic debt to him.
• El Dorado videoignatius joseph n estroga

WASHINGTON IRVING:1783-1859
was born to a wealthy New York family and
received an excellent education. He was the
first American writer to gain international
attention. He began his writing career by
creating satires about New York society. He
later wrote about the Dutch influences
upon the city in its early days. He attempted
to give America a sense of a romantic past
like that found in Europe.
His most popular work by far was “The
Sketch Book”, which contains two of his
most beloved stories: “The legend of Sleepy
Hollow: and “ Rip van Winkle”.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW:
1807-1882
was one of the most widely read
American poets of the 19th century.
From 1835 to 1854 he was Smith
Professor of Modern Languages at
Harvard. In 1884, 2 years after his
death, he became the first American
to be honoured with a bust in the
Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey,
London.
He is best remembered for poems
such as “The Song of Hiawatha” and
“Paul Revere’s Ride”.

American Transcendentalism (Romantic
philosophy)
Named for the core belief that our spiritual
nature transcends rationality and religious
doctrine; thus, it is found in intuition.
Developed in New England, influenced by
Eastern philosophy.
Pro-suffrage & abolitionist.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature, “The
American Scholar”),
• Henry David Thoreau (Walden, “Civil
Disobedience”),
• Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass).ignatius joseph n estroga

Romantic Period video

•Named for the reign of Queen Victoria,
Britain’s longest reigning monarch.
•Period of stability and prosperity for
Britain.
•British society extremely class conscious.
•Literature seen as a bridge between
Romanticism and Modernism.
•Generally emphasized realistic portrayals of
common people, sometimes to promote
social change.

• Charles Dickens (David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Great
Expectations),
• George Eliot (Middlemarch),
• Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D’Ubervilles),
• Robert Louis Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde),
• Rudyard Kipling (Jungle Book),
• Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland),
• Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre), Emily Brontë (Wuthering
Heights),
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson (In Memoriam),
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the
Portuguese),
• Robert Browning (“My Last Duchess”), Matthew Arnold
(“Dover Beach”), Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being
Earnest).

CHARLES DICKENS: 1812-1870
was a novelist who provided Victorian England
with one of its greatest champions of reform.
Dickens used his novels to identify and address
many problems of the nineteenth century, such
as child abuse, unfair labour practices, injustices
in the legal system, and weaknesses in
education.
Dickens had experienced many of these
problems in his own childhood, and so on. He
dedicated his life to brining about social reform.
Some of his most popular novels include: “David
Copperfield”, “Oliver Twist”, “A Tale of two
Cities”, Christmas Carol and “Great
Expectations”.

Trivia
In Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, who
were the visitors of Scrooge?

1. Ghost of Christmas Past
2. Ghost of Christmas Present
3. Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

RUDYARD KIPLING: 1865-1936
was born in Bombay, India, but attended school
in England. He was an English novelist, shot-
story writer and poet. After completing his
education, he returned to India where he
worked as a newspaper reporter for several years.
Many of Kipling’s stories and novels reflect his
experiences in India and convey the importance
of duty and unselfishness.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
Kipling is most widely known for his works for
children, especially the “Jungle Book”.

Alfred Tennyson(6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892)
• was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and
Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's
reign and remains one of the most
popular British poets.
• Tennyson excelled at penning short
lyrics, such as "Break, Break, Break",
"The Charge of the Light Brigade",
"Tears, Idle Tears" and "Crossing the
Bar".ignatius joseph n estroga

Elizabeth Barrett Browning(6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861)
• was one of the most prominent English poets of the
Victorian Era. Her poetry was widely popular in both
Britain and the United States during her lifetime
• At 15 Browning became ill, suffering from intense
head and spinal pain for the rest of her life, rendering
her frail.
• During this time she contracted a disease, possibly
tuberculosis, which weakened her further.
• They had one son, Robert Barrett Browning, whom
they called Pen. Towards the end of her life, her lung
function worsened, and she died in Florence in 1861

•Reaction against Romantic values (Civil War).
•Developed in France (Balzac, Flaubert, Zola).
•Emphasized the commonplace and ordinary (as
opposed to the romanticized individual).
•Sought to depict life as it was, not idealized.
•Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn),
•Ambrose Bierce (“An Occurrence at Owl
Creek Bridge”),
•William Dean Howells (A Modern Instance),
•Theodore Dreiser (Sister Carrie).

MARK TWAIN: 1835-1910
was born in a small village of Florida. His
real name was Samuel Clemens, but he took
his penname from a term used by the men
who operated the river boats. They would
call, “By the mark, twain!” This meant that
the river was two (twain) feet deep.
Samuel Clemens left his hometown of
Hannibal, Missouri at the age of eighteen.
He began his carrier as a newspaper writer.
Later in life he used memories from his
childhood to create some of his most
popular novels, including “The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn”.
Mark Twain used humor to develop many
serious themes in his novels and to help
society see itself more clearly.

O’HENRY: 1862-1910
was a well-known American short –story
writer. He had to jam his living from age of
fifteen and he educated himself with the help
of friends.
O’Henry knew people very well., especially
the ordinary people of New York. In his
stories you can feel satirical criticism of the
American way of life. Most of his short stories
are full of warm sympathy for ordinary
American people. O’Henry was the penname
used by author William Sydney Porter.
O’Henry wrote many popular stories and
earned a reputation as the master of surprise
endings. He was especially talented at
developing his characters, and at portraying
city life accurately. He wrote over 600 stories,
the most famous of them “The Ransom of
Red Chief”, “The Gift of the Magi” and “The
Furnished Room”.ignatius joseph n estroga

•Naturalism – hyper-realism
•Named for the belief that man is simply
a higher order animal, and thus under the
same natural constraints and limitations
as other animals.
•Controlled by heredity and environment.
•Stephen Crane (Maggie: A Girl of the
Street, The Red Badge of Courage), Jack
London (“To Build a Fire”), Upton
Sinclair (The Jungle).ignatius joseph n estroga

•Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness), H.G.
Wells (War of the Worlds), E.M. Forster (A Room with
a View, A Passage to India), George Bernard Shaw
(Major Barbara), A.C. Bradley (Shakespearean
Tragedy).

•Reaction against the values which led to WWI.
•Influenced by Schopenhauer (“negation of the will”),
Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil), Kierkegaard (Fear
and Trembling), as well as Darwin and Marx.
•If previous values are invalid, art is a tool to establish
new values (Pound: “Make it new”).
•Writers experiment with form.
•Form and content reflect the confusion and
vicissitudes of modern life.
•Expositions and resolutions are omitted; themes are
implied rather than stated.

Poetry:
Ezra Pound (The Fourth Canto),
T.S. Eliot (Prufrock and other Observations,
The Waste Land, “The Hollow Men”),
W.B. Yeats (The Wanderings of Oisin and
Other Poems, The Swans at Coole),
H.D. (“Pear Tree”),
Wallace Stevens (Harmonium),
William Carlos Williams (“The Red
Wheelbarrow,” “This Is Just to Say”),
Robert Frost (Mending Wall, The Road Not
Taken).

To whom did Frost dedicate his poem
The Road Not Taken?

Edward Thomas

Fiction:
James Joyce (Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man), Franz Kafka (The Metamorphosis, The
Trial, The Castle), Ernest Hemingway (In Our Time,
The Sun Also Rises), William Faulkner (As I Lay
Dying, The Sound and the Fury), F. Scott Fitzgerald
(The Great Gatsby), John Steinbeck (The Grapes of
Wrath), Thornton Wilder (Our Town, The Bridge at
San Luis Rey), D.H. Lawrence (The Rainbow),
Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse).

•Critical dispute over whether an actual period
or a renewal and continuation Modernism post-
WWII.
•Influenced by Freud, Sartre, Camus, Derrida,
and Foucault.
•Deconstruction: Text has no inherent meaning;
meaning derives from the tension between the
text’s ambiguities and contradictions revealed
upon close reading.
•Some believe it leads directly to the counter-
cultural revolution of the 1960s.

Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot),
Gabriel Garcia Marques (One Hundred Years of Solitude), William
Burroughs (Naked Lunch),
J.D. Salinger (A Catcher in the Rye),
Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five),
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow),
John Updike (Rabbit Run),
Phillip Roth (Portnoy’s Complaint, American Pastoral),
J.M. Coetzee (Life & Times of Michael K),
Joyce Carol Oates (“Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?”),
Margaret Atwood (The Handmaiden’s Tale),
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian), Allen Ginsberg (Howl and
Other Poems), Charles Bukowski (The Last Night of the Earth
Poems).

White Cliffs of Dover

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

ST. PAUL CATHEDRAL

Kings College, Cambridge

BEN CLOCK

COAST OF CORNWALL

NATIONAL GALLERY OF
LONDON

BRITISH MUSEUM

CANTERBURY
CATHEDRAL

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

LAKE DISTRICT

STONE HENGEignatius joseph n estroga

YORK MINISTER

HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT

SALISBURY CATHEDRALignatius joseph n estroga

WINDSOR CASTLE

STRATFORD UPON AVON

TATE MODERN

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

TOWER BRIDGE

LONDON
EYE

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Anglo-American Literature

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