Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
a) early definitions of the novel – counter-distinction with romance
b) formal realism (the novel's assimilation of the forms of factual literature).
c) Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
- Robinson Crusoe as a novel (autobiography, diary)
- individualism, the rise of the middle class
- Robinson as homo economicus (personal relations viewed in terms of commodity value, ethos of work, every stage of economic development is described etc.)
- colonialism and the attitude to ‘the other’ (Friday as ‘the other’, Robinson’s attitude to him; the island as a land to cultivate and civilise etc.)
- religion (puritan doctrine, Bibliolatry, individual contact with God, etc.)
Richardson: Pamela (fragments), Lawrence Sterne: Tristan Shandy (fragments), Henry Fielding: Tom Jones (fragments).
a) Pamela as a domestic novel; epistolary novel (advantages and disadvantages of using this technique); interest in the psychological problems of characters in the social context
b) Tom Jones as a self-conscious novel; structure of the novel (introductory chapters); the narrator (authorial intrusions); discussion of convention of fiction writing
c) The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy as a self-conscious novel; a parody of the novel (anti-novel, anti-hero, plot based on digressions, treatment of time etc.); novel as an artefact (graphic devices, digressions; intrusive narrator; impotency of language, language games
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
a) travel accounts, geographical discoveries;
b) Gulliver’s Travels as an imperfect novel;
c) Gulliver’s Travels as a political and philosophical satire (relativity of truth, corruption of court life, critique of reason, irony)
Gothic novel: Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto, Anne Radcliffe: Mysteries of Udolpho (fragments); pre-romantic poetry (Robert Burns “To a Mouse”, “Auld Lang Syne”, “Tam O’Shanter”
a) a gothic novel and a gothic romance: characteristic features (character drawing, supernatural elements, setting, the role of nature etc.)
b) counterpoint to Neoclassical decorum
c) Romanticism (historical background, ideas of ‘new’ poetry, characteristic features of Romantic poetry); pre-romantic poetry
d) Robert Burns:
- the source of language of Burns’ poetry,
- folk tradition
- Burns’ attitude to nature
- humanistic views
William Blake: “The Lamb, “The Tyger”, “The Little Vogabond, “Holy Thursday”, “The Chimney Sweeper”. William Wordsworth: “The Preface to Lyrical Ballads”, “We Are Seven”, “Tintern Abbey”, “Lines Written in Early Spring”
a) William Blake
- Romantic elements in Blake’s poetry
- children and their reality
- innocence and experience,
- the visionary quality of Blake’ poetry,
- the philosophy of Blake – mysticism, idea of the universe, Swedenborg
- rational and mystical elements
b) William Wordsworth
- Romantic idea of poetry and its role – “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (language and subject of poetry, the role of feeling and sympathy, etc.)
- the role of the poet – “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (“a man speaking to men”, the poet as a teacher and “translator” of feelings, etc.)
- Romantic attitude to Nature: contemplation of Nature, Nature as the source of morality, Man and his place in Nature, etc. (“Lines Written in Early Spring”, “Tintern Abbey”, The Prelude).
- Folk elements in Wordsworth poetry - “We Are Seven” (the language of his poetry, the ballad, the supernatural etc.).
- Children and their perception of the world – “We Are Seven”, The Prelude.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Kubla Khan”, Biografia Literaria – chapter XIV. Lord Byron: “When We Two Parted”, Don Juan: cantos I, II, X,XI
a) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Biographia Literaria (roles of a poet and poetry, definition of poetry, form and subjects of poetry, approaches to nature, the supernatural)
- “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (the supernatural, the romantic hero, symbols, dreams, Nature, etc.)
- “Kubla Khan” (dream-vision, the source of poetry, symbols, etc.).
b) George Gordon Byron: a romantic or an anti-romantic? (‘Byronic hero’, passionate love, Nature, etc.)
- Is Don Juan an epic poem?
- influence of 18th century literature (satire, critical attitude to romantic ideas)
- criticism of Romantic idea of imagination, love, nature, etc.
- elements of crude realism
- the role of the reader
- individualism, indignation
- the Byronic hero
Percy Byssie Shelley: “Ode to the West Wind”, “The Cloud”; John Keats: “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
a) Percy Byssie Shelley:
- ode – a definition.
- the force of chaos in Shelley’s poems, the properties and symbolism of wind and autumn (‘Ode to the West Wind’)
- the idea of revolution (as reinvigoration)
- the role of the poet and his powers (“Ode to the West Wind”, “The Cloud”)
- poetic inspiration
b) John Keats
- the relation between art and life
- the function of fancy/art and Death
- the significance of images on the urn
Victorian Literature: Charles Dickens: Great Expectations, Hard Times
a) the Victorian period: historical and social background.
b) Realism – the dominating technique of writing in the period (characteristic features of realistic writing, realistic versus romantic fiction, subject matter, different definitions of realism)
c) Charles Dickens: Great Expectations
- the social aspect of the novel; representation of Victorian society
- recurrent themes of Victorian literature: upgrading one’s existence, moral lesson, social development, public vs. private, gentility vs. morality
- Bildungsroman
- character drawing, caricature, irony
- narration, the title
Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre
a) a woman’s novel or a novel by a female writer
b) attitudes to Victorian morality (double standard, hypocrisy etc.)
c) gothic and romantic elements in the novel.
d) major motifs (confinement) and symbols in the novel (e.g. the torn tree), violence and extremes of emotion.
e) the madwoman: the Other
f) imperialism
The Great War literature (the presentation of chosen war poets: Winfred Owen, Sigfried Sasoon, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves)
a) Edwardian influences
b) poetry of traumatic experiences
William Butler Yeats: “Sailing to Byzantium”, “The Second Coming”, “Easter 1916”
a) Irish themes
b) the treatment of past and tradition
c) apocalyptic symbolism
Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray
a) art and life in fin de siecle
b) aestheticism (Walter Pater's influence)
c) decadence
d) anti-philistinism
T.S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, "The Waste Land"; Ezra Pound: chosen poems
a) symbolism in The Waste Land
b) indictment of the twentieth century civilization
c) struggle for impersonality - objective correlative
d) T.S. Eliot as a neoclassical modernist
e) imagism, modernistic use of language
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness and J.M. Coetzee: Foe
a) moral visions, Conrad as a moralist of exile
b) narrative experiment
c) psychological complexities of Conrad's writing
d) colonialism
e) textual dialogue [colonizer vs colonized]
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway or To the Lighthouse
a) the narrative experiment [interior narration]
b) the use of time and space
c) female characters and their significance
d) passive vs. active approach to life
James Joyce: The Dubliners (chosen stories), A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses (Molly's monologue)
a) Dublin as the epicenter of Joyce's writing
b) ...
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