Anthony Trollope

One of the most solidly competent of the professional Victorian novelists who aimed to entertain by constructing stories grounded in the kind of life recognizable by his readers was Anthony Trollope. His most popular are the Barsetshire series-Barchester Towers. Doctor Thorne. The other novels are Phineas Finn, The Prime Minister, The Claverings, and The Orley Farm. These novels dealing with life and love in a small cathedral city provided the readers a world to retire to.

Sybil

Sybil is political novel in which the flamboyancy of a grandiose political imagination, high idealism and exhibitionist dandyism are oddly combined. The novel reflects Tory romanticism. Benjamin Disraeli wrote this novel to tackle the 'condition of England question'. The novel embodies his vision of a Young England restored to an organic national wholeness and freed from the disintegrating effects of Whig economic individualism and lack of tradition.

Achievement of Alfred, the great as a king

King Alfred of Wessex wasnknown in political history for his achievement in stemming the Danish conquest of England. He was one of the best military readers of tge Western world in the Anglo-Saxon age. He organized a strong and unified defense against the Danish marauders who were threatening the complete overthrow of Anglo-Christian civilization. The Danes were forced to sign the Treaty of Wedmore in 878 and leave Wessex to live peacefully in Danelaw. Alfred established Wessex as a new centre of English culture by encouraging literary production ane himself playing active role as a writer and translator in the development of English language and literature. He patronized the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

HAROLD PINTER

Harold Pinter was born on 10 October 1930 in the London borough of Hackney, son of a Jewish dressmaker. Growing up, Pinter was met with the expressions of anti-Semitism, and has indicated its importance for his becoming a dramatist. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was evacuated from London at the age of nine, returning when twelve. He has said that the experience of wartime bombing has never lost its hold on him. Back in London, he attended Hackney Grammar School where he played Macbeth and Romeo among other characters in productions directed by Joseph Brearley. This prompted him to choose a career in acting. In 1948 he was accepted at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1950, he published his first poems. In 1951 he was accepted at the Central School of Speech and Drama. That same year, he won a place in Anew McMaster’s famous Irish repertory company, renowned for its performances of Shakespeare. Pinter toured again between 1954 and 1957, using the stage name of David Baron. Between 1956 and 1980 he was married to actor Vivien Merchant. In 1980 he married the author and historian Lady Antonia Fraser. Pinter made his playwriting debut in 1957 with The Room, presented in Bristol. Other early plays were The Birthday Party (1957), at first a fiasco of legendary dimensions but later one of his most performed plays, and The Dumb Waiter (1957). His conclusive breakthrough came with The Caretaker (1959), followed by The Homecoming (1964) and other plays.
Harold Pinter is generally seen as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century. That he occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: “Pinteresque”. Pinter restored theatre to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretence crumbles. With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution. Pinter’s drama was first perceived as a variation of absurd theatre, but has later more aptly been characterised as “comedy of menace”, a genre where the writer allows us to eavesdrop on the play of domination and submission hidden in the most mundane of conversations. In a typical Pinter play, we meet people defending themselves against intrusion or their own impulses by entrenching themselves in a reduced and controlled existence. Another principal theme is the volatility and elusiveness of the past. It is said of Harold Pinter that following an initial period of psychological realism he proceeded to a second, more lyrical phase with plays such as Landscape (1967) and Silence (1968) and finally to a third, political phase with One for the Road (1984), Mountain Language (1988), The New World Order (1991) and other plays. But this division into periods seems oversimplified and ignores some of his strongest writing, such as No Man’s Land (1974) and Ashes to Ashes (1996). In fact, the continuity in his work is remarkable, and his political themes can be seen as a development of the early Pinter’s analysing of threat and injustice. Since 1973, Pinter has won recognition as a fighter for human rights, alongside his writing. He has often taken stands seen as controversial. Pinter has also written radio plays and screenplays
for film and television. Among his best-known screenplays are those for The Servant (1963), The Accident (1967), The Go- Between (1971) and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981, based on the John Fowles novel). Pinter has also made a pioneering contribution as a director.

Physiologus

Physiologus is an example of allegorical use of natural history to illuminate Christian teaching. The Old English poem Bestiary bears some relationship with Continental Physiologus. It consists of three brief sketches of Panther, the Whale and the Partridge- the last poem surviving in a form too fragmentary for profitable interpretations. The Panther is full of kindness and is symbolical of Christ. The Whale is full of deceit recalling to our mind the deceitful character of Satan whom Milton compares to Leviathan. The practice of this kind of allegorizing animals lasted well into the Renaissance.

Effect of English Conquest on Britons.

Many of Britons were killed in the fighting. Many of them took refuge in the West in Cornwall, Wales and Cumberland. Some went over the sea to the north west of France and settled in the land called Brittany. To the English Britons were known as Welsh. Cornishmen were West Welsh, the people of Wales were North Welsh and those of Cumberland were Cumbrian Welsh. Until the West Saxons won the Battle of Deorham in 577, the West Welsh were not cut off from the North Welsh. Similarly, North Welsh was cut off from the Cumbrian Welsh when the Angels won the Battle of Chester in 613 and reached the Irish Sea.

POETIC DRAMA

Side by side with the realistic plays of Shaw, Galsworthy and Grandville Barker, there arouse the type of drama that is called poetic drama by 1920. Tennyson and Browning attempted poetic drama but they were more poetic than dramatic. So, truely speaking was no tradition poetic drama before the beginning of 20th century and poetic drama may be regarded as a new literary creation. Verse was a natural medium of poetic drama but many dramatist wrote poetic drama in prose. J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea is a good example of poetic drama which is rich in imaginative qualities and metaphysical conception of life. W.B. Yeats, the ever lyric poet wrote poetic drama and mention may be made of The Shadowy Waters, Deride and The Golden Helmet. John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln is a good example of poetic drama. Masefield used prose with a poets vision in the Tragedy of Nan and The Tragedy of Pompey the Great. Stephen Phillips wrote a number of blank verse notably Nero and Ulysses. But these dramas had little dramatic quality.

MORALITY PLAY

After the success of Mystery Play, the next stage in the history of English drama is the morality play. This was didactic in purpose; but its characters, instead of being taken from the holy Bible of from the legends of the saints, were personified abstractions. All kind of mental and moral qualities appeared as characters in the play- perseverance, Free Will, the five senses, the Seven Deadly sins, good and bad angels, etc. Among such personifications, there was generally a place for the Devil who had held a prominent position in the mircle plays. A later introduction of much importance was the so-called Vice, who was a humorous personification of evil taken on the comic side. This was the recognized fun-maker of the piece. This character often scored a tremendous popular success by jumping on the devil's back, sticking thorns into him, beating him with a stick, and making him roar with pain.

KEW GARDENS

Kew Gardens is written by Virginia Woolf.. You can read the entire story by downloading the pdf file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzAMnd--KDJBUjlMZUdJekxWSnc/view?usp=sharing

Irony

Irony is derived from Latin 'ironia' which comes from Greek 'eironeia' meaning feigned ignorance. The greek comic character Eiron, a clever underdog who by his wit repeatedly triumphs over the boastful character Alazon. The Socratic irony of the Platonic dialogues derives from this comic origin. Feigning ignorance and humility, Socrates goes about asking silly and obvious questions of all sorts of people on all sorts of subjects only to expose their ignorance. There are two example of irony- verbal and dramatic. Verbal irony is the intentional irony in speech, the speaker saying one thing to mean its reverse using innocent language with an offensive motive. The classic example of this kind of irony is Antony's repeated assertion in Julius Caesar that 'Brutus is an honourable man'. Verbal irony arises from a sophisticated or resigned awareness of contrast between what is and what ought to be and expresses a controlled pathos without sentimentality.

Bede

Bede (673-735)

The Venerable Bede, as he is called, spent his life as a monk at Jarrow and is one of the really great scholars of England and of Europe. Bede is famous for his Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum ( Ecclesiastical History of the English People ). His writings also include grammatical and critical bandbooks like De Metrica Arte, scientific treatises like De Ratione Temporum, commentaries on various books of the Bible ( canonical and apocryphal), homilies, saint's lives and verse. Bede wrote Latin with the competence to be expected of a gifted man. He is not only the first among English historians in point of time, he is also first in importance.

John Mandeville

John Mandeville is best known by the work The Travels of John Mandeville. It is written in the Midland dialect which was then becoming the literary language of England. It is now established that Sir John Mandeville is a fictitious hero very much like Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Mandeville is the imaginary English knight who narrates his journey to Palestine and China. The author confesses that he traveled through strange countries where men were fed on serpents and hissed like them. He also described dog-headed men and many such fantastic things. Fantasy is the soul of the narrative of Mandeville because truth and fiction are strongly mingled by its simple effortless and almost nursery style. The book had a happy effect on the development of English prose which in the Middle English period was very nascent. Mandeville's name is uttered with another name, that is of John Wycliffe. Although Wycliffe's prose was grave in tone, Mandeville's prose was imaginative and marked by a child like simplicity.

Caxton

The beginning of the revival of learning was one important feature of Renaissance of Europe and England. After the fall of Constantinople, the monks who possessed the manuscripts of Greek literature and philosophy, took shelter in Mylam, Venice and Florence. Quite naturally there was a need for printing new books on new literature. It was Caxton who bore the entire responsibility for publishing books for spreading the message of humanism. In 1476 Caxton established his printing press in England and promoted 'New Learning' by printing Lydgate's Temple of Glass. It is the first printed book in Europe. In 1485 Caxton published Malory's Morte d' Arthur which was a manifestation of the Renaissance spirit. Caxton himself translated some of the books from latin and printed them with the zeal of reformer. Caxton was more than a mere printer of books. He embodied Renaissance ideals through his publications.

Renaissance

Renaissance in the words of Michelet, the French historian means, 'the discovery of the world and the discovery of man by man'. In the 16th century, Renaissance in Europe means the liberation of the human mind from the authority of the church and the new spirit of enquiry and challanges. Renaissance means the freedom from all blind faith in conventions and dogmas. The Middle age which was dominated by religion, suppressed freedom of thought and freedom of action. But after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the revival of learning occurred when the  greek and the roman writings were studied with great zeal and eagerness. In England, 'New Learning' got a new impetus from the publication of two books- Thomas More's Utopia and The Praise of Fooly by Erasmus. The scholars like Elyot, Wilson and Aschan played their parts in the revival of humanism. Humanistic spirit of the Renaissance was supported by the Reformation which made Protestantism of Martin Luther Triumphant. Also in England, Shakespeare, Marlowe , Kyd and Spenser promoted humanism in their writings and the legacy of the classical literature is upheld.

THE DIDACTIC NOVEL

The Didactic Novel

The didactic novel is best represented by Dr. Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759). In it Johnson uses the framework of exotic tale. Rasselas grows weary of the happy valley of Abyssinia. He tells the philosopher Imlac about his discontent. But the prince is adamant; he desires to escape and see the world outside to know the secret of content. At last the prince leaves the happy valley, accompanied by his sister and Imlac and goes to Egypt. They study the various aspects of social life in Cario. Rasselas mixes with the youth but finds that the laughter of the youths is without motives. So he recoils from their society, weary and disgusted. Then the prince turns to the teachers of morality. He is again disillusioned for he finds that "they discourse like angels, but they live like men". While the prince studies the public life, the princes mixes with the members of private families who are enchanted by her charm and beauty. She finds that imperious husbands, perverse wives, disobedient children alike contribute to domestic unhappiness. The party come to conclusion that man is nowhere happy and virtue is nowhere to be found, and return to Abyssinia.
The historical importance of Rasselas lies in the fact that it is the first example of a novel consisting of a series of philosophical essays strung on a thin thread of story. The novel is set in an oriental setting. No attempt is made to reproduce the life atmosphere, manners, customs of the Far East. The novel seems to be a warning to those who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope.