Final Review

1. Final Review What you need to know for your Final: English Literary History from 1785 - now Terminology used in discussing literature in order to analyze reading passages The basic plot and characterization of Pride and Prejudice

2. Section 1: Major Themes in English Literature from 1785 Review your reading and make sure you are comfortable with the major themes in English Literature from 1785. You can review all of our PowerPoints on e-companion This section will be short answer like the midterm (3-5 sentences)

3. The Romantic Period 1789 - 1815 Revolutionary and Napoleonic period 1807 British Slave Trade outlawed 1811 - 20 The Regency: George, Prince of Wales, acts as regent for George III 1819 Peterloo Massacre 1820 Accession of George IV

4. Major Authors and Diversity William Blake William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor Coleridge George Gordon, Lord Byron Percy Bysse Shelley John Keats Yet several authors, mainly women, were more popular early in the period: Anne Barbauld, Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson Older authors: Gray, Collins, Crabbe, and Cowper

5. Revolution and reaction American Revolution 1776 French Revolution 1789 Reign of Terror 1804 Napolean 1815 Ongoing social pressure Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Man” Edmund Burke “Reflections on the Revolution in France”

6. Industrial revolution 1765 James Watts perfects steam engine Rise of mill towns Enclosures Divisions into capital and labor Laissez-faire economics Child labor Working Conditions Fear of Revolution

7. The Spirit of the age “Great spirits now on earth are sojourning” Keats Lake Schools – Wordsworth, Coleridge, Robert Southey Cockney Schools – Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, Keats Satanic School – Percy Shelley, Byron Revolution as apocryphal Promise and Regret

8. Poetic theory and practice ‘The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” Wordsworth First person lyric poetry and self reference Bardic ideals and innovation Romantic nature poetry Personification of nature and landscape Ordinary subjects The supernatural, the romance, psychological extremes Individualism and alienation

9. Writing in the Marketplace and Courts By 1830 about half of Britain’s population was regularly reading Working classes and Sunday school Circulating Libraries Steam engine printing presses Books as big business Fears of reading and readers Pirated novels Problematic attempts at censorship

10. Other literary forms An era of prose? Drama and disorder The novel gains respectability

11. Victorian 1832 First reform Bill 1837 Victoria becomes Queen 1846 Corn Laws Repealed 1850 Tennyson replaces Wordsworth as Poet Laureate 1851 Great Exhibition in London 1859 Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War 1901 Death of Victoria

12. British History “British history is two thousand years old, and yet in a good many ways the world has moved further ahead since the Queen was born than it moved all the rest of the two thousand years put together” (Mark Twain 1897). London becomes the largest European city England first industrialized Colonial Power “Sun never sets on the British Empire”

13. Queen Victoria and the Victorian Temper Victorian – earnestness, moral responsibility, domestic propriety By the 1850s and 1860s writers were calling the period Victorian Georgian reaction against the period Overwhelming energy and practical outlook

14. The Early Period 1830-1848 1830 Liverpool and Manchester railroad 1832 Reform bill and breaking up of rotten boroughs 1867 Lower class vote 1830s and 40s know as “Time of troubles” Working conditions Child labor Chartism Corn laws repealed 1846

15. The Mid-Victorian Period 1848-70 • More prosperous time • Queen Victoria and Prince Albert seen as models of middle class domesticity • Benefits of free trade • Factory Acts • 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park (Crystal Palace) • Exports doubled between 1850 and 1870 • Emigration and Empire • Utilitarianism and Bentham • Challenges to the Church • Advancements in Science

16. Late Victorian Period 1870-1901 • Apex of British Empire • London’s greatness • Increasing cost of Empire • The Irish Question • US competition • Economic depression and emigration in 1870’s • Second reform bill • Reactions against Victorian ideals

17. The Role of Women First petitions for Woman’s suffrage in 1840s, yet no vote until 1918 Married Woman’s Property Acts 1870-1908 Divorce laws different for men and women Middle class debate about middle class women The Custody Acts of 1839 The Divorce and Matrimonial act of 1857 Improving women’s education Increased employment opportunities Single woman and governesses

18. Literacy, Publication, and reading Basic literacy nearly universal by 1900 Repeal of stamp act and improved printing made periodicals much cheaper Periodicals would serialize longer works – Dickens, Thackeray, Eliot, Trollope, and Gaskell (fiction);Carlyle, Mill, Arnold, Ruskin (essays); Tennyson and the Brownings (poetry) Broad readership and common literary culture

19. The Novel and Poetry The novel was the dominant form of Victorian Literature Multi-plot novels; “large, loose, baggy, monsters” (Henry James) Realism Social relationships and middle class society Woman writers – Gaskell, Eliot, Austen, the Brontes Genres – crime, mystery, horror, science fiction, detective stories Poetry builds on romantics, but without same creative enthusiasm Narrative poetry and the dramatic monologue

20. TimeLine 1914 World War I 1922 James Joyce’s Ulysses; T.S. Elliot’s “The Waste Land” 1929 Stock Market crash and Great Depression 1939 -1945 World War II 1947 India and Pakistan become independent 1953 Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot 1957-62 Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago become independent 1991 Collapse of Soviet Union 2001 Destruction of World Trade Center

21. Social Sciences New concepts radically changing human identity Sigmund Freud Interpretation of Dreams – psychology (psychoanalysis) Sir James Frazer Golden Bough – anthropology (culture, religion, myth) Friedrich Nietzsche – philosophy and challenges to religious doctrine

22. Science and Technology Max Planck’s quantum theory Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity Wireless communication across Atlantic 1901 Wright brothers’ airplane 1903 Henry Ford and the Model T 1913 Atomic Energy and Bomb 1945 Moon Landing 1969 Internet 1969 Personal Computers 1974-75

23. Women’s Rights 1882 Woman’s Property Act Late 1800’s Women allowed in various universities Suffragettes late 1800’s early 1900’s 1918 Women 30 and over could vote 1928 Women 21 and over could vote

24. Problems of Empire • 1899 -1902 Anglo-Boer war and protests • 1907 Canada, Australia, and New Zealand given dominion status • 1914 -1918 World War I: at the start of the war about 25% of the earth under British control • 1921-1922 Irish free state • Increasing calls for self rule in Indian and Africa “swaraj” • 1939 -1945 World War II and loss of empire • 1947 India and Pakistan win independence • 1957-62 Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago become independent • 1950s and beyond - reverse colonization and shifting identity • Continuing issues with IRA and Northern Ireland

25. Modernism 1901-1945 Radical individualism Focus on being new Minimal Narrators and Subjectivity Less Authoritative Character Voices Both highly elitist and connections to Popular Literature Expatriates writers

26. Modernism Cont Transformation and breaking down of traditional forms Order, sequence, and unity were seen as no longer reflective of reality Omits explanations, interpretations, connections, summary, continuity, and perspective – fragmented Questions of meaning and truth Very Self Reflexive and Striving to be New

27. Formal and Stylistic Characteristics Juxtaposition, irony, comparisons, and satire are elements found in modernist writing. The most obvious stylistic tool of the modernist writer is that it is often written in first personor with an extremely unobtrusive narrator Rather than a traditional story having a beginning, middle and end, modernist writing typically reads as a long stream of consciousness similar to a rant. Juxtaposition could be used for example in a way to represent something that would be oftentimes unseen, for example, a cat and a mouse as best friends. Irony and satire are important tools for the modernist writer in aiding them to make fun of and point out faults, often in society

28. Thematic characteristics and difficulties For the first-time reader, modernist writing can seem frustrating to understand because of the fragmentation and lack of conciseness of the writing. The plot, characters and themes of the text are not always linear. The goal of modernist literature is not heavily focused on catering to one particular audience in a formal way. Modernist writing is more interested in getting the writer's ideas, opinions, and thoughts out into the public at as high a volume as possible. Modernist literature often forcefully opposes or gives an opinion on a social concept. The breaking down of social norms, rejection of standard social ideas and traditional thoughts and expectations, objection to religion and anger towards the effects of the world wars, and the rejection of the truth are topics widely seen in this literary era.

29. Post-Modernism 1945 -Current Postmodernism follows most of the conventions of modern art. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject. But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism see fragmentation, ambiguity, and a destructured, dehumanized subject as tragic. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.

30. Section 2: Reading Passages You will be given one short story and one poem to analyze similar to the sample yesterday. The questions will use our literary terminology. Make sure to use the passages to back up your claims. You can review a writing about literature guide on the course website.

31. Tips for Reading Passages Read the questions first; then read the passage Read with a pencil in hand – mark up the text Plan on reading the text more than once Look for quotes that back up the claims you plan to make in your response Make sure you understand the basics of the text before you respond: plot, setting, characters, narrator, style, and themes for fiction and speaker, situation, style, and theme for poetry

32. Tips for Writing Responses Make sure you fully address all parts of the question The questions are asking you to make claims; these are opinions that use the text for support Make sure your claims both answer the question fully and are well supported from the text

33. Section 3: Pride and Prejudice Extra Credit This section will be extra credit. You will be asked about the plot and characterization of Pride and Prejudice. You will need to know plot and character terminology as well as the plot and characters of the novel.

34. Odds and Ends Diction means the authors choice of words Lyric poems are often short and are song like poems expressing feelings, thoughts, and moods

35. Good Luck Please let me know if you have any questions. Be ready to present your novel review on Thursday – there can be no late presentations Your 500 word novel review is also due by the end of class Any standing assignments can be turned in late with a 25% penalty through the end of Thursday’s class