Introduces the elements considered essential to English literature, in which writing became more personal and had a new sense of humanity.

Both the form and content of literature today owes much to the developments that took place in England between the Restoration and Romantic periods. The emergence of the novel triggered the creation of new genres and accompanied a rise in literacy throughout the country. This volume examines the English writers who helped shape the social, political, and religious climate of the age, and immerses students in the history of narratives that continue to enchant audiences today.

This is a guide to the main developments in the history of British and Irish literature, charting some of the main features of literary language development and highlighting key language topics.

Details the evolution of literature during a period representing a staggering amount of change, moving from one-dimensional action stories and religious lessons to stories with subtleties of plot and character development.

Details the evolution of literature and explores the writers, works, and events that have shaped literature.

Brimming with the fascinating eccentricities of a complex andconfusing movement whose influences continue to resonate deeply,30 Great Myths About the Romantics adds great clarity towhat we know – or think we know – about one ofthe most important periods in literary history. Explores the various misconceptions commonly associated withRomanticism, offering provocative insights that correct and clarifyseveral of the commonly-held myths about the key figures of thisera Corrects some of the biases and beliefs about the Romanticsthat have crept into the 21st-century zeitgeist – for examplethat they were a bunch of drug-addled atheists who believed in freelove; that Blake was a madman; and that Wordsworth slept with hissister Celebrates several of the mythic objects, characters, and ideasthat have passed down from the Romantics into contemporary culture– from Blake’s Jerusalem and Keats’sOde on a Grecian Urn to the literary genre of thevampire Engagingly written to provide readers with a fun yet scholarlyintroduction to Romanticism and key writers of the period, applyingthe most up-to-date scholarship to the series of myths thatcontinue to shape our appreciation of their work

As the British empire expanded ever outward, English writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries such as Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf turned their gaze inward to matters of ethical and moral import. Modern writers continue to examine British identity by reformulating and reinventing literary movements and devices introduced by their predecessors. Readers of this volume are invited to observe the progression of English literature and enjoy the stories behind some of the most seminal works in the world.

The present book is third in a series of works which aim to expose the complexity and essence, power and extent of the major periods, movements, trends, genres, authors, and literary texts in the history of English literature. Following this aim, the series will consist of monographs which cover the most important ages and experiences of English literary history, including Anglo-Saxon or Old English period, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Restoration, neoclassicism, romanticism, Victorian Age, and the twentieth-century and contemporary literary backgrounds. The reader of these volumes will acquire the knowledge of literary terminology along with the theoretical and critical perspectives on certain texts and textual typology belonging to different periods, movements, trends, and genres. The reader will also learn about the characteristics and conventions of these literary periods and movements, trends and genres, main writers and major works, and the literary interaction and continuity of the given periods. Apart from an important amount of reference to literary practice, some chapters on these periods include information on their philosophy, criticism, worldview, values, or episteme, in the Foucauldian sense, which means that even though the condition of the creative writing remains as the main concern, it is balanced by a focus on the condition of thought as well as theoretical and critical writing during a particular period. Preface Introduction: Approaching Literary Practice and Studying British Literature in History Preliminaries: Learning Literary Heritage through Critical Tradition or Back to Tynyanov Genre Theory for Poetry The Intellectual Background 1.1 The Period and Its Historical, Social and Cultural Implications 1.2 The Philosophical Advancement of Modernity 1.2.1 Francis Bacon and the “New Method” 1.2.2 The Advancement of Classicism: French Contribution 1.2.3 The Social and Political Philosophy: Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan 1.2.4 Rationalists and Empiricists 1.3 The Idea of Literature as a Critical Concern in the Seventeenth Century 1.3.1 The English “Battle of the Books” or “La Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes” in the European Context 1.3.2 Restoration, John Dryden and Prescribing Neoclassicism The Literary Background 2.1 The British Seventeenth Century and Its Literary Practice 2.2 Metaphysical Poetry, Its Alternatives and Aftermath 2.3 The Puritan Period and Its Literary Expression 2.4 The Restoration Period and Its Literature 2.5 The Picaresque Tradition in European and English Literature Major Literary Voices 3.1 The Metaphysical Poets I: John Donne 3.2 The Metaphysical Poets II: George Herbert 3.3 The Metaphysical Poets III: Andrew Marvell 3.4 John Milton: The Voice of the Century 3.4.1 L’Allegro and Il Penseroso 3.4.2 Lycidas and Sonnets 3.4.3 Paradise Lost and the Epic of Puritanism 3.5 John Dryden and His Critical Theory and Literary Practice Conclusion: The Literature of a Turbulent Age References and Suggestions for Further Reading Index

It appears that literary work possesses eternal temporal validity due to its autonomous aesthetic value, whereas criticism provides points of view having temporary and transitory significance. Despite such claims, the vector of methodology in our series of books, dealing with the history of English literature, relies on Viktor Shklovsky, T. S. Eliot, Mikhail Bakhtin, and especially Yuri Tynyanov, whose main reasoning would be that literature is a system of dominant, central and peripheral, marginalized elements – to us, “tradition” (centre) versus “innovation” (margin) engaged in a “battle” for supremacy, demarginalization, and the right to form a new literary system – and the development or historical advancement of literature is the substitution of systems. Roman Jakobson and French structuralism, on the whole, later Linda Hutcheon, with her “system” and “constant”, and Bran Nicol with the “dominant”, to say nothing about Itamar Even-Zohar and his theory of polysystem, to a certain extent Julia Kristeva, and even Homi Bhabha – as well as our humble contribution, we would like to believe – maintain Tynyanov’s line of thinking and concepts alive, which have developed and emerged nowadays more like a kind of “neo-formalism”. Focusing on literary practice, applying critical theory and emerging from within our own teaching experience, the books in the present series are theoretical and surveyistic, like a monograph, whereas their more practical and text-oriented aspect should appeal as a student handbook for didactic purposes, in which certain literary works belonging to various writers of different trends, movements, and periods are analysed and compared with regard to their source, form, thematic arrangements, ideas, motifs, character representation strategies, intertextual perspectives, structural or narrative techniques, and other aspects.

It appears that literary work possesses eternal temporal validity due to its autonomous aesthetic value, whereas criticism provides points of view having temporary and transitory significance. Despite such claims, the vector of methodology in our series of books, dealing with the history of English literature, relies on Viktor Shklovsky, T. S. Eliot, Mikhail Bakhtin, and especially Yuri Tynyanov, whose main reasoning would be that literature is a system of dominant, central and peripheral, marginalized elements – to us, “tradition” (centre) versus “innovation” (margin) engaged in a “battle” for supremacy, demarginalization, and the right to form a new literary system – and the development or historical advancement of literature is the substitution of systems. Roman Jakobson and French structuralism, on the whole, later Linda Hutcheon, with her “system” and “constant”, and Bran Nicol with the “dominant”, to say nothing about Itamar Even-Zohar and his theory of polysystem, to a certain extent Julia Kristeva, and even Homi Bhabha – as well as our humble contribution, by means of the books in the present series, we would like to believe – maintain Tynyanov’s line of thinking and concepts alive, which have developed and emerged nowadays more like a kind of “neo-formalism”.