English literature

The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, or literature composed in English by writers who are not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian. In academia, the term often labels departments and programs practicing English studies. This new label was necessary not only because all of England's former colonies have developed literatures of their own, but also because each speak their variety of English. In other words English literature is as diverse as the Englishes that are spoken around the world.

Romanticism

The changing landscape of the England brought about by the steam engine has two major outcomes: the boom of industrialism with the expansion of the city, and the consequent depopulation of the countryside as a result of the enclosures, or privatisation of pastures. Most peasants poured into the city to work in the new factories.

Related Topics:
Industrialism - Enclosure - Privatisation

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This abrupt change is revealed by the change of meaning in five key words: industry (once meaning "creativity"), democracy (once disparagingly used as "mob-rule"), class (from now also used with a social connotation), art (once just meaning "craft"), culture (once only belonging to farming).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But the poor condition of workers, the new class-conflicts and the pollution of the environment causes a reaction to urbanism and industrialisation prompting poets to rediscover the beauty and value of nature. Mother earth is seen as the only source of wisdom, the only solution to the ugliness caused by machines.

Related Topics:
Urbanism - Earth

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The superiority of nature and instinct over civilisation had been preached by Jean Jacques Rousseau and his message was picked by almost all European poets. The first in England were the Lake Poets, a small group of friends including William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. These early Romantic Poets brought a new emotionalism and introspection, and their emergence is marked by the first romantic Manifesto in English literature, the "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads". This collection was mostly contributed by Wordsworth, although Coleridge must be credited for his long and impressing Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a tragic ballad about a demon that first kills and then possesses a group of sailors on a boat headed for the south seas.

Related Topics:
Civilisation - Jean Jacques Rousseau - England - Lake Poets - William Wordsworth - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Romantic Poets - Lyrical Ballads - Rime of the Ancient Mariner

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Coleridge and Wordsworth, however, understood romanticism in two entirely different ways: while Coleridge sought to make the supernatural "real" (much like sci-fi movies use special effects to make unlikely plots believable), Wordsworth sought to stir the imagination of readers through his down-to-earth characters taken from real life (for eg. in "The Idiot Boy"), or the beauty of the Lake District that largely inspired his production (as in "Tintern Abbey").

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The "Second generation" of Romantic Poets includes Lord Byron, Percy Bysse Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats. Byron, however, was still influenced by 18th-century satirists and was, perhaps the least 'romantic' of the three. His amours with a number of prominent but married ladies was also a way to voice his dissent on the hypocrisy of a high society that was only apparently religious but in fact largely libertine, the same that had derided him for being physically impaired. His first trip to Europe resulted in the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a mock-heroic epic of a young man's adventures in Europe but also a sharp satire against English society. Despite Childe Harolds success on his return to England, accompanied by the pubblication of The Giaour and The Corsair his alleged incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh in 1816 actually forced him to leave England for good and seek asylum on the continent. Here he joined Shelley, his wife Mary, with his secretary John Polidori on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1816.

Related Topics:
Lord Byron - Percy Bysse Shelley - Mary Shelley - John Keats - Europe - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage - The Giaour - The Corsair - 1816 - John Polidori - Lake Geneva

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Although his is just a short story, Polidori must be credited for introducing The Vampyre to English literature. Shelley, like Mary, had much in common with Byron: he was an aristocrat from a famous and ancient family, had embraced atheism and free-thinking and, like him, was fleeing from scandal in England.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Shelley had been expelled from college for openly declaring his atheism, and from England for supporting Irish independence. He had married a 16-year-old girl, Harriet Westbrook whom he had abandoned soon after for Mary (Harriet took her own life after that). Harriet did not embrace his ideals of free love and anarchism, and was not as educated as to contribute to literary debate. Mary was different: the daughter of philosopher and revolutionary William Godwin, she shared his ideals, was a poetess, and a feminist like her late mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.

Related Topics:
Atheism - Harriet Westbrook - Anarchism - William Godwin - Mary Wollstonecraft

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Shelley's best work was the Ode to the West Wind. Despite his apparent refuse to believe in God, this poem is considered a homage to pantheism, the recognition of a spiritual presence in nature.

Related Topics:
Ode to the West Wind - God - Pantheism

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mary Shelley did not go down in history for her poetry, but for giving birth to science fiction: the plot for the novel is said to have come from a nightmare during a stormy night on the lake Geneva. Her idea of making a body with human parts stolen from different corpses and then animating it with electricity was perhaps influenced by Alessandro Volta's invention and Luigi Galvani's experiments with dead frogs. Frankenstein's chilling tale also suggests modern organ transplants, tissue regeneration, reminding us of the moral issues raised by today's medicine. But the creature of Frankenstein is incredibly romantic as well. Although "the monster" is intelligent, good and loving, he is shunned by everyone because of his ugliness and deformity and the desperation that results from social exclusion turns him into a killing machine that eventually murders his own maker.

Related Topics:
Science fiction - Novel - Electricity - Alessandro Volta - Luigi Galvani - Frankenstein

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Probably John Keats does not share Byron's and Shelley's extremely revolutionary ideals, but his cult of pantheism is as important as Shelley's. Keats was in love with the ancient stones of the Parthenon that Lord Elgin had brought to England from Greece, also known as the Elgin Marbles). He celebrates ancient Greece: the beauty of free, youthful love couples here with that of classical art. Keats's great attention to art, especially in his Ode on a Grecian Urn is quite new in romanticism, and it will inspire Walter Pater's and then Oscar Wilde's belief in the absolute value of art as independent from aesthetics.

Related Topics:
Pantheism - Parthenon - England - Greece - Elgin Marbles - Art - Ode on a Grecian Urn - Walter Pater - Oscar Wilde - Aesthetics

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jane Austen wrote novels about the life of the landed gentry, seen from a woman's point of view, and wryly focused on practical social issues, especially marriage and money.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~