INTRODUCTION

The aim of this course is to introduce students to the main literary periods, movements and authors of the English –speaking cultures, as well as the historical context of literary development. This overview is a necessary part of the academic education of the students.

This overview shall be dealing primarily with literature from Britain, as the one having the longest history.

The course will also make an outline of American literature and literature of other English-speaking countries.

The title of the course refers to the literature written in English, which includes authors not necessarily from England: e.g. Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, E.A. Poe, T.S. Eliot and Henry James were Americans, James Joyce was Irish, Vladimir Nabokov was Russian, V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, Salman Rushdie is Indian, Kazuo Ishiguro is Japanese, etc.

Literature is inseparable from the language, since the development of English is reflected on literature; on the other hand, literature helped spread the English language throughout the globe.

The use of literary sources in teaching EFL is of immense worth – it provides context for the use of language – context is what most learners need

The introductory class shall briefly outline the historical development of English, as the medium of literature.

Old English is often erroneously used to refer to any form of English other than Modern English. The term Old English does not refer to varieties of Early Modern English such as are found in Shakespeare or the King James Bible, nor does it refer to Middle English, the language of Chaucer and his contemporaries. The following timeline helps place the history of the English language in context. The dates used are approximate dates. It is inaccurate to state that everyone stopped speaking Old English in 1099, and woke up on New Year's Day of 1100 speaking Middle English. Language change is gradual, and cannot be as easily demarcated as are historical or political events.

450–1100 Old English (Anglo-Saxon) – The language of Beowulf.

1100–1500 Middle English – The language of Chaucer. 1500–1650 Early Modern English (or Renaissance English) –

The language of Shakespeare. 1650–present Modern English (or Present-Day English) – The

language as spoken today.

The Celtic Britons cca. 400 BC –almost no trace in English except place names, often Romanized (the river Avon, London (Londinium-lond, Old Irish ‘wild’)

Roman invasion in 55 BC – place names (chester, street). Province of Brittania

Withdrawal of Roman legions in 410 AD Anglo-Saxon invasion in 449 AD – Germanic tribes of Angles,

Saxons and Jutes from present-day Denmark and north Germany and Belgium. They spoke Anglo-Saxon, a proto-Germanic dialect called Proto English. It had lots of inflections for tenses, grammatical gender and 7 cases. from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Netherlands. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon, eventually came to dominate.

The Celtic tribes were driven to Cornwall, Wales and Scotland, ‘the Celtic Fringe’. Celtic languages had almost no influence on Anglo-Saxon. The Celts were either conquered or went into hiding into mountainous regions of Britain.

The English language arrived into Britain on the point of a sword. The Anglo-Saxons were warriors, well-known for their taste for terror and violence. They had no interest for either Celtic languages or their culture. To this day, the gap between the English, on the one hand and the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish on the other, remains huge.

The Anglo-Saxons set up 7 kingdoms in Britain. Although the Celts at first called them Saxons, about 150 years after the first raids, the term Anglii and Anglia crept into usage.

Old English did not sound or look like the Standard English of today. Any native English speaker of today would find Old English unintelligible without studying it as a separate language. Nevertheless, about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The words be, strong and water, for example, derive from Old English

Next influence on the language was the introduction of Christianity in 6 th century (Latin vocabulary)

The raids of the Norsemen (Vikings) in the 8th century. They spoke Old Norse. Anglo-Saxon lost grammatical gender and marked case (with the exception of the pronouns). English words of Old Norse origin include anger, bag, both, hit, law, leg, same, skill, sky, take, and many others, possibly even including the pronoun they.

This blend of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse language is called Old English. The most famous work is Beowulf

Hwæt! Wē Gār-Dena in geārdagum,

þēodcyninga, þrym gefrūnon,hū ðā æþelingas ellen fremedon.Oft Scyld Scēfing sceaþena

þrēatum,monegum mǣgþum,

meodosetla oftēah,egsode eorlas. Syððan ǣrest

wearðfēasceaft funden, hē þæs frōfre

gebād,wēox under wolcnum,

weorðmyndum þāh,oðþæt him ǣghwylc þāra

ymbsittendraofer hronrāde hȳran scolde,gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs gōd

cyning

Lo, praise of the prowess of people-kings

of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,

we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!

Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,

from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,

awing the earls. Since erst he lay

friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:

for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,

till before him the folk, both far and near,

who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,

gave him gifts: a good king he!

The Norman Conquest in 1066. The invaders from France spoke the Norman language.

This continued for some 300 years. The kings and high nobility spoke Norman French, and the people Old English. A tendency for Norman-derived words to have more formal connotations has continued to the present day; most modern English speakers would consider a "cordial reception" (from French) to be more formal than a "hearty welcome" (Germanic). Another example is the very unusual construction of the words for animals being separate from the words for their meat: e.g., beef and pork (from the Norman bœuf and porc) being the products of 'cows' and 'pigs', animals with Germanic names.

In the course of time, the two languages began to mix, making Middle English.

In 13th century the works in Middle English began to appear, the most famous being The Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open yë

(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

Glossary: soote: sweet swich licour: such liquid Zephirus: the west wind

(Zephyrus) eek: also (Dutch ook;

German auch) holt: wood (German Holz) the Ram: Aries, the first

sign of the Zodiac yronne: run (German

gerannt) priketh hem Nature:

Nature pricks them hir corages: their hearts

The Great Vowel Shift 15th century a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1450 and 1750

The values of the long vowels form the main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English, and the Great Vowel Shift is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English. Originally, these vowels had "continental" values much like those remaining in Italian and liturgical Latin. However, during the Great Vowel Shift, the long vowels became diphthongs, e.g. moon, stone, time

The surprising speed and the exact cause of the shift are continuing mysteries in linguistics and cultural history, but some theories attach the cause to the mass migration to the southeast part of England after the Black Death, where the difference in accents led to certain groups modifying their speech to allow for a standard pronunciation of vowel sounds. The different dialects and the rise of a middle class in London led to changes in pronunciation, which continued to spread out from that city.

The sudden social mobility after the Black Death may have caused the shift, with people from lower levels in society moving to higher levels (the pandemic also having hit the aristocracy). Another explanation highlights the language of the ruling class: the medieval aristocracy had spoken French but by the early fifteenth century they were using English. This may have caused a change to the "prestige accent" of English, either by making pronunciation more French in style or by changing it in some other way, perhaps by hypercorrection to something thought to be "more English" (England being at war with France for much of this period). Another influence may have been the great political and social upheavals of the fifteenth century, which were largely contemporaneous with the Great Vowel Shift.

Because English spelling was becoming standardized in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Great Vowel Shift is responsible for many of the peculiarities of English spelling. Spellings that made sense according to Middle English pronunciation were retained in Modern English because of the adoption and use of the printing press, which was introduced to England in the 1470s by William Caxton.

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,

Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,

In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth

Rose out of chaos: or if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed

Fast by the oracle of God, I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,

That with no middle Flight intends to soar

Above the Aonian mount, whyle it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

1650 – PRESENT DAYn 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first

significant English dictionary, his Dictionary of the English Language.

The main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English is vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; secondly, the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the Earth's surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries.

The evening arrived: the boys took their places; the master in his cook's uniform stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out, and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared, the boys whispered each other and winked at Oliver, while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table, and advancing, basin and spoon in hand, to the master, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity—

"Please, sir, I want some more."

The master was a fat, healthy man, but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder, and the boys with fear.

"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.

"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."

The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle, pinioned him in his arms, and shrieked aloud for the beadle.