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In 1653 Oliver Cromvell imposed a military dictatorship on the country; after his death the monarchy was again restored (1660). Charles II, son of the executed king, ascended the throne. The reasons that brought about the Restoration are clear enough: the people were dissatisfied with the results of the revolution which did not rid them of poverty and misery; the ruling classes realized the need of vigorous measures, a "strong hand" which would be able to keep the people in submission. Although the Stuarts tried their best to retain power they were unable to restore the former order of life and the so-called "Glorious revolution" of 1688 ended their rule and established a constitutional monarchy based on a compromise between the bourgeoisie and the landed nobility.

The main factors influencing English literature of the 17th century were the strifle of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy for power, the growth of revolutionary ideology among the masses and the interaction of Renaissance and puritan trends in art and philosophy.

English literature of the 17th century reflects the events of the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. These ideas can be most effectively traced in the works of the prominent writers of the time: John Milton, John Bunyan, John Dryden.

Pre-revolution and revolution literature include works reflecting the rising moment directed against monarchy. The most prominents figures in the literary field were Ben Jonson and young Milton. The pamphletes of John Milton and Gerard Winstanley and others appear at this time and gain great popularity.

The restoration period (the sixties and seventies) is marked by the appearance of such remarkable works as John Milton's epic poems and The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1628 - 1688). Milton and Bunyan continued to defend in their works the ideas of struggle and Revolution, exposing at the same time the reactionary forces that reigned in their country. In Bynuan's great allegorical novel The Pilgrim's Progress the writer describes the ordeals of the hero, named Christian. The greatest ordeal awaits high-minded Christian in the town of Vanity, where he is seized, beaten and brought to trial. At the fair of the town - Vanity Fair one could buy everything "houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures... wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not." The Pilgrim's Progress is a scathing (едкая) satire on the customs and manners of Restoration.

But Restoration created a literature of its own, that was often witty and clever, but on the whole immoral and cynical. The most popular genre was that of comedy whose chief aim was to entertain the licentious (безнравственный) aristocrats. John Dryden (1631 -1700), critic, poet and playwright was the most distinguished literary figure of that time.

Lecture 18. Milton. Dryden and Bunyan

John Milton (1608 - 1674). John Milton was born in the family of a London scrivener (нотариус). His father being a man of much culture himself, did all he could to give his son good education at St Paul's school, and afterwards at Cambridge. Having taken his degree of Master of Arts in 1632, Milton settled at Horton, Buchinghamshire, where his father had bought a small country seat. His systematic studies did not, however, close with the close of his college course. He decided to givehimself up (придаваться) entirely to self- culture and poetry. Fortunally his father was in a financial position to further (поддерживать) his wishes. While a boy at school, as he himself tells, his books had kept him out of bed till midnight; at the university he had shown the same untiring devotion to learning; and now during six years of almost uninterrrupted seclusion (уединение) he was able to pursue his studious way undisturbed. Building upon the firm foundation s he had already laid, Milton thus became a very great scholar. This point must be carefully marked, not only because in the breadth and accuracy of his erudition he stands head and shoulders above all English other poets, but also because his learning everywhere nourishes and interpenetrates his poetic work.

Between the years 1632 and 1638, he determined to broaden his views by travel. He journeyed to France, Italy and Switzeland. While in Florence, he met Galileo, who was living the rest of his days in misery, broken down by the tortures of the Inquisition. This meeting left a deep impression on Milton. Even after many years he alludes to Galileo twice in his poem, Paradise Lost.

The troubled state of affairs in England in connection with the outbreak of the Civil War brought Milton back home in 1639.

On his return to London, Milton opposed the monarchic party and gave all his energies to the writing of pamphlets. His principal pamphlets are: Areopagitica, or Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644), a bold attack on the censorship of the press; Eikonoclastes (1649), a pamphlet in which the author justified the execution of Charles I, Defense for the English People (Защита английского народа)(1650) - a defense of Commonwealth and Revolution.

In 1643 he married Mary Powell, the young daughter of a Royalist, but the union proved a most unhappy one.

In 1649 Milton was made Latin, or foreign Secretary of the new Republic government, and the next ten years of his life were taken up with politics and official work.

Early in 1653 a terrible calamity overtook him; his sight, which had long been failing, was now ruined entirely by over - stress of work, and he became totally blind. Three years later he married again, but his wife, Catherine Woodcock, died within fifteen months.

On the restoration of the monarchy, Milton was arrested and deprived of his office and, consequently, of his livelihood. Two of his books were publicly burnt by the hangman; Only his extremely poor state of health saved him from being executed, soon he was released and permitted to drop into political obscurity. He was now poor and lonely as well as blind; he felt bitterly the failure of the cause for which he had toiled so hard and sacrificed so much; and though his third wife, Elizabeth Minshall, brought comfort to his declining years, he was greatly distresses by the unfilial conduct of his daughters by his first marriage.

He left London and settled in a little cottage where he resumed work on his epic. Now he turned back upon the ambitious poetical designs which he had cherished many years before and had long set aside at the call of practical duty. There he completed Paradise Lost (1667) and composed Paradise Regained and the drama Samson Agonistes (1671).

In his Paradise Lost Milton set forth the revolt of Satan against God, the war in heaven, the fall of the rebel angels, the creation of the world and man, the temptation of Eve and Adam, and their expulsion from Edem. Yet, while his central purpose was to show how "man's first disobedience" brought sin and death in its train (в результате), it is characteristic of him that he does not close on the note of evil triumphant, but prophetically introduces the divine work of redemption. Though in this way he had apparently completed his original scheme, however, he was afterwards led to add a sequel in four books the substance of which was provided by the temptation of Christ in the wildlerness; but, while not without its occasional passages of sublimity and of tenderness, Paradise Regained seems to most modern readers a very slight thing beside its gigantic predecessor. The "dramatic poem" Samson Agonistes (Samson the Wrestler) crowns the labours of these closing years. In this as in Paradise Lost, Milton applies the forms of classic art to the treatment(обработка) of a biblical subject, for the work is fashioned (моделировать) strictly upon the principles of Greek tragedy, while the matter is, of course, derived from the fate of Samson among the Philistines. The subject had been in Milton's thought many years before. He returned to it now in all probability (по всей вероятности) because he saw in the hero an image both of himself, blind, disappointed, and surrounded by enemies, and of the Puritan cause, overwhelmed (поражать) by the might of its foes.

Surrounded by a few of devoted friends, John Milton, the great English poet, died on November 8, 1674.

In his poetic art Milton blends the traditions of Renaissance with the ideas of puritanism. That is why Milton's poetry is in many respects so contradictory and complex. Paradise Lost is written as an exposition of his theology. But if as a thinker and moralist he belonged completely to Puritanism, as an artist he had not ceased to belong to the Renaissance; poem everywhere shows how fondly in the blindness and loneliness of his age, he recalled the wide secular studies of his happy earlier days. Even now, then, the Puritan in Milton had not killed the humanist.

Lecture 19 Dryden's Life.

John Dryden was born at Aldwinkle All Saints, Northamptonshore, 1631; was educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge, and settled in London about 1637. Soon after this he wrote his first poems of any importance, the Heroic Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromvell (1639), and (indicative of a rapid change of front) Astraea Redux, in celebration of the "happy restoration" of Charles II. In 1663 he began to work for the stage, which was then the only profitable field for anyone who had to depend for his livelihood upon his pen; and for some fifteen years playwriting continued to be his chief occupation. In 1670 he was made poet laureate, and 1681 opened a new chapter in his career with the publication of the first of his great satires in verse, Absalom and Achitophel. This was followed by other work of the same character, and later by two theological poems, Religio Laici or a Layman's Faith(Верa мирянина) (1682), a defence of the Church of England, and The Hind and the Panther (1687), an elaborate argument in favour of Roman Catholicism, to which in the meantime he had been converted. In consequence of this change of religion the revolution of 1688 came upon him as a heavy blow. He lost his position of poet laureate, and, all hopes of official recognition now being destroyed, devoted himself for his remaining years to literature with praiseworthy courage and industry. He prodused five more plays, translations of Juvenal, Persius, and Vergil, and a volume of Fables (or paraphrases from Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer). These were published in November, 1699. Six month later - in May, 1700 - he died.

Dryden's Critical Work.

The epoc of Restoration saw the real beginnings of modern criticism; though, there had already been a certain amount of criticism in England, it was now for the first time that people addressed themselves systematically to study of the principles and laws of literature. In this growth of criticism we have illustration of the spirit of an age which was far stronger on the side of analysis than on that of imagination, and in which the intellectual predominated over creative powers; and Dryden is also first great English critic.In the course of his criticism he takes up and discusses nearly all the topics which were of interest to the literary world of his time - the forms and methods of the drama; the relations of art and nature; the qualities of the great writers of Greece and Rome; and so on. On the whole, his best criticism is to be found in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, in which he considers the respective principles and merits of the three chief types of drama - the classical drama of the Greeks and Romans, the neo-classical drama of the French, and the romantic drama of the English, and, among other matters, undertakes to justify the use of rime in place of blank verse on the stage. Dryden often writes hastily and is habitually careless in detail; and as in general he accepted the limitations and prejudices of his age, a good deal of his criticism, while historically important, has but slight permanent value. At the same time, his sagacity and penetration are indeed remarkable; while his prose style is characterised by clearness, vigour and wonderful felicity of phrasing (умение находить удачные фразы).

Bunyan.

John Bunyan (1628 -88). The son of a tinker, whose trade he himself afterwards followed, Bunyan was born at Elstow, Bedfordshire; fought for a time in the civil war, though on which side is uncertain; was converted; married early; and in 1655 began to preach on village greens. Continuing the practice after the Restoration, he was soon convicted as " a common upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventicles (cekтанское моление)", and committed to the Bedford jail, where he remained twelve years. His autobiographical Grace Abounding was the work of his captivity; the first part of The Pilgrim's Progress (Путь паломника)belоngs to a second imprisonment of six months in 1675. Meanwhile he had obtained a licence to preach, and had become the regular minister of the Baptist congregation at Bedford. In his later years he was also famous as a preacher in London. It was on a visit to London that he died; and he was buried in the old Dissenters' Burial Ground at Bunhill Fields, where Defoe and Isaac Watts were afterwards to be laid to rest. Bunyan wrote much; but his four great works are Grace of Abounding (1660), The Pilgrim's Progress (1678-84), The Life and death of Mr. Badman (1680), and The Holy War (1682). There are many things about Bunyan which make him a very important figure in literary history. He is the only man in English literature who has ever has ever succeeded in writing a long prose allegory and in filling it throughtout (повсюду), without any sacrifice of the symbolism, with the absorbing interest of a real human story. The combined vividness and plainness of his writing is another remarkable feature of his work. Bunyan was not an educated man; he knew nothing of the classics; nothing about theory of literature; little or nothing, even about English Literature. But he was endowed by nature with a genius for style. We must not overlook Bunyan's position in the evolution of English prose fiction. His The Pilgrim' s Progress for its dramatic power, characters, the grasp of ordinary life must, at least, be regarded as a forerunner of the novel.

LECTURE 20

ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE 18th CENTURY

Enlightenment

. The 18th century is known un the history of Eurioean countries as the period pf Enlightement. The Enlightenment defended the interest of the common people – craftsmen, tradesmen, peasants. The central prolem of the Enlightenment ideology was that of man an his nature.

The Enlighteners believed in reason as well as in mn’s inborn goodness. Vice in people, they thought, was due to the miserable living conditios which could be changed by force of reason. They considered in their duty to enlighten people to help them see the roots of evil. The Enlighteners also believed in the powerful educational value of art. The English Enlighteners were not unanimous in their views. Some of them spoke in defence of the existing order, considering that a few reforms were enough to improve it. These were: Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope and Samuel Richardson.

The other group included the writers who openly protested against the social order. They defended the interests of exploited masses. They were: Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Seridan, Robert Berns.

F. Pope (1688-1744).

Alexander Pope was born in London. His father pprosperious linen-draper, was a catholic, and because of his religion Pope was expelld from public schoos and universities. He picked up most of his knowledge from books and though he read much he never became an accurate scholar.

Pope’s poetic career began with “Four Pastorals” published in 1709. These were short poems on spring, summer, autumn and winter, closely fashioned on Virgil. His “Essay on Criticism” contained Pope’s ethetic views.

A mock-heroic poem “The rape of the Lock” which appeard in 1712 enjoyed instant success. Pope’s next work was the translation of the “Illiad”, which brought him fame and established financial positions. Pope translated Homer in the elegant artificial language of his age and gave the reading public what it wanted – a readable version of the Greek poem in accordance with the taste of time.

After the “Illiad” Pope translated the Odyssey. After the publication of his Homer, as the two poems are together popularly ca;;ed, Pope wrote satiric poetry. In 1728 he published satire on the “dunces” – the bad poets – called the Dunciad. In “Dunciad Pope ridiculed his literary opponents. The theme of the poem is the most important theme f the Enlighten,ent – the fight of the reason against ignorance and barbarity. It is the fiercest and the finest of Pope’s satires. Jne of the best known and most quoted of his works is “The Essay on Man”. The purpose of the essay is to justify the xiting state o things.

In his lifetime Pope was immensely popular. Many foreughn writers as well as the majoity of English poets looked to him as their model. But later at the end of the 18 century yuong romantic poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge, criticized Pope’s poetry for its rationalism and lack of imagination.

LECTURE 21 Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe is regarded as the founder of realistic novel in English Literature. Defoe ‘s life was compllicated and adventurous. He was the son of a wealthy London butcher and received a good education. His father being puritan wanted his son to became a priest. He preferred, however, the life of a merchant He travelled in Spain. Germany, France and Italy on business. Ye spoke half a dozen languages and was a man of wide learning. From 1694 Defoe took an active part in public affairs. His energy enabled him to combine the life of a man of action with that of a writer. He was the earliest literary journalist in England. He wrote political pamphlets on any subject and every event. He was a man of an active and original mind, an independent and courageous thinker who dealt with social questions.

In his interesting “Essay on Projects” (1689) Defoe suggested all kinds of reforms in different spheres of social life: to establish saing –banks, to construct railways, to give higher education to women, to protect seamen etc.

In 1702 Defoe published a satirial pamphlet written in support of protestants. In the pamphlet “The shortest day with the dissenters” he defended the freedom of religious belief. He was punished for this and had stand for three days in the pillory (позорный столб). The pillory sentence turned to his triumph.

After producing politial pamphlets Defoe turned to writing novels. He came to it when he was nearly sixty. His first book of fiction was “Robinson Crusoe”. Its success encouraged Defoe. There followed a series of other novels: Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jacque, Roxana. Daniel Defoe died in London in 1731 in poverty.

He left behind him more than three hundred published works, and the reputation of being th”First English Journalist”. Also with his imaginative account of the adventures of robinon Crusoe, he was become regarded as the forerunner of the great English novelist.

LECTURE 22

Jonathan Swift (1667- 1745)

The greaest of th prose satirists of the age of the Enlightenment was Jonathan Swift. His bitter satire was aimed at the policy of the Englis towards Ireland.

He was born in Dublin, but he came from an English family. His father died before he was born. The boy saw little of his mother’s care: she had to go back to her native town. He was supportfd by his uncle and from his very boyhood he learned how miserable it was to be depended on the charity of relatives. He was educated at Kilkenny school in Dublin University, Trinity College, to beome a clergyman. At school he was fond of history, literature and languages.

After graduating from school he went to London and became private secretary to sir William Temple who was a retired statesman and a writer. Swift improved his education at sir Willim’s library and in 1692 he took his master of Art degree at Oxford. He got a place of vicar in Ireland and worked there for a year and a half. He wrote much and burned most of what he wrote. Soon he grew tired of the lonely life in Ireland and was glad to accept Sir William Temple’s proposal for his return to him. Swift lived and worked there untill Temple’s death in 1699.

The satire “The Battle of the books” (1697) marked the beginning of Swift’s literary career. It depicts a war between books of modern and ancient authors. The book is an allegory and reflects the literary discussion of the time.

Swift’s first success was “A Battle of a Tub” (1704), a biting satire on religion. In the introductiob to it the author tells of a curious custom of a seamen. When a ship is attacked by a whale the seamen throw an empty tub into the sea to distract the whale’s attention. The mening of the allegory was clear to the readers of that time. The tub was religion which the state (for a ship has always been the emblem of a state) threw to its people to distract them from any struggle.

The Satire is written in the form of a story about three brothers symbolizing the three main religions in England: Peter (the catholic Church), Martin (The Anglican Church) and Kack (puritanism).

In 1726 Swift’s masterpiece “Gulliver’s Travels “ appeared. All Swift;s inventive genius and savage satire were t their bes in this work. This nivel brought him fame and immortality. Swift died on th 19 th of october, 1745, in Dublin.

LECTURE 23 Robert Burns (1759-1796)

His popularity in Scotland is very great. The scottish bard was born in a clay cattage in the village of Alloway. His father was a poor farmer, but a man who valued knowledge. It was from his father that Robert received his learning and his love for books. His mither had a beautifl voice and taught Robert old Scottish songs and ballads which he later turned into his best poems.

Burns hd no regular schooling. But when he was seven his father engaged a teacher to educate him and hi brother. At the age of 13 Robert had to tke over from his father mot of the work on the farm as his father was growing old. Those were hrd times for Robert. Nearly all life Robert worked on his small piece of land. At fifteen he did most of the work on the farm, his father’s health being very poor. And as Robert followed the plough he wistled and sang. He made up his own words to the old folk tunes of Scotland that he knew so well. In his songs he spoke of what he saw – of the woods and fields and valleys, of the deer and the skylark and the small field mouse, of the farmer’s poor cottage.

Burns wrote his first verses when he was 15. Very soon his poms became popular among his friends. In 1785 he met a girl, who became the great love of all his life and inspirer of his numerous lyrical verses.

In 1786 Burns published his first book under the title of “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect” The book was a great success. He was invited to Edinburgh. He conquered the Edinburgh society by his wit and manneres as much as by poetry. While in Edinburgh Burns got acquainted with some enthusiasts of Scottish songs and ballads and became eengaged in collecting the treasures of the Scottish folklore. He travelled about Scotland collecting popular songs. After his father’ death he did not giv up farming and work hard to earn his living. The last years of hi life is very hard. On July 21, 1796, at the age of 37, Burns died. His body rests in a Mausoleum in Dumfries.

LECTURE 24 English literature in the second half of the 18^th century.

Pre – Romanticism

Another trend in the English literature of the second half of the 18^th century was so-called pre-romanticism. It originated among the conservative groups of men of letters (писатели) as a reaction against Enlightenment.

The mysterious element plays a great role in the works of pre-romanticists. One of pre-romnticists was William Blake (1757-1827), who in spite of mysticism, wrote poems full of human feelins and sympathy for the ppressed peole. Blake;s effectiveness comes from the “poetic contrsts” and simple rhythms.

Blake was born in london into the family of trades people. The family was neither rich nor poor. Blake did not receive any formal education but he demonstrated good knowledge of English literature. At the age of 14 he became an apprentice engraver. And is as well known for his engravings as for his poetry.

Blake has always been seen as a strange character, largely because of his chilhood experience of seeing visions.

He was a very religious man, but he rejectd the established church, declaring that personal experience, the inner-light, should direct and guide man.

Blake had a very individual view of the world. His religious philosophy is seen through his works “Songs of Innocence” (1789), “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (1790) and “Songs of Experience” (1794). His poems are simple but symbolic. For example, in his poems “The tyger” and “the Lamb”, the tyger is the symbol of mystery and the lamb is the symbol of innocence.

The tyger is the mystical poem that, rather than describes a tyger, an animal that Blake had never seen, is a perception of the Universal Energy, a power beyond good nd evil. In the poem the nature of universal energy becomes clear through a series of questions,which the reader is forced to answer. This makes the reader nter into the poem, becoming part of the poetic experience. During the poem, the reader passes from a state of ignorance to a state of understanding. In this way the poem becomes an “experience” for reader as well as a picture of an experience felt by the poet.

Blake’s later poems are very complex symbolic texts but his voice in the early 1790 is the conscience of the Romantic age. He shows a contrast between a world of nature and childhood innocence and a world of social control. Blake saw the dangers of an industrial society in which individuals were lost, and in his famous poem “Londin” he calls the systems od society “mind forged manacles”.

Blake thought that childhood was the perfect period of sensibility and experience and he fought against injustices against children. In his poem “The chimney sweeper” he shows how the modern world, the world of chimney sweepers, corrupts and “dirties” children. Using the symbolic technique of a “dream”, Blake presents a heavenly view of children who are clean, naked, innocent, and happy, and contrasts it with the reality of the sweep’w life, which is dirty, cold. Corrupted and unhappy.

Blake’s poetry was not immediately recognized during his lifetime, because ot its mysticism.

LECTURE 25 English literature in the beginning of th 19^th century.

Romanticism

The period of Romaticism covers approximatly 30 years, beginning from the last decade of the 18^th century and continuing up to the 1830s. Romanticism as a literary current can be regarded as a result of two great hitorical events: 1. The Industrial revolution in ngland and 2. The French revolution of 1789. The Indutrial revolution began with the invention of a weavring-machine which could do the work of 17 people. The weavers that were left without work thought that the mashines were blame for their misery. They began to destroy theses mashines, or frames as they were called. The frame-breaking movements was called the Luddite movement, because the name of the first man to break a frame was Ned Ludd.

The industrial revolution in England. As well as the French Revolution, had great influence on the cultural life of the people, their fellings and beliefs, the beauty of nature. Romnticits were dissatisfied with the present state of things in their country. Some of the writers were revolutionary they defended the existing order, cfkked upon the people to strugglefor better future, shared the peopl’s deire for liberty and objected o colonial oppression. They supported the national liberation wars on the continent against feudal reaction. Such writers were George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelly.

Others, though they had welcomed the French Revolution and the slogan of liberty, fraternity and equality, later abandoned revolutionary ideas. They turned their attention to nature and to the simple problems o life. Among these writers were poets Wiliam Wordsworth< Samuel Coleridge, Robert Southey, who formed the “Lake school”, called so because they all lived for a time in the beautiful Lake District in the North –West of England. They dedicated much what they wrote to Nature. Legends, tales. Songs and ballads became part of the creative method of the romanticists. The romanticists were talented pots and the contribution to English Literature was very important.

LECTURE 26. George Byron (1788 – 1824)

Byron, the great romantic poet, has often been called a pot of “world sorrow’. In almot all his potry there isa current of gloom and pessimism. The reason for his gloom and sorrow may be found in the social and political events of his day which influenced him deeply.

“To solve the mistery of the gloomy poetry of so immense, colossal a poet as Byron, we must first search for the secret of the epoch it expresses” Belinsky wrote.