Survey of British Literature
(Names/dates/literary terms)
Anglo-Saxon
1. Indo-European
2. IE migrations
3. Celtic
4. Latin
5. Germanic
6. A.D. 43
7. A.D. 449
8. A.D. 597 and
St. Augustine
9. Picts/Scots
10. Hadrian’s Wall
11. “Anglisch”
12. Angle-land
13. thorn/eth
14. 3 periods of English
language
15. language constants
16. A.D. 1066
17. Norman Conquest
18. inflections
19. features of Anglo-Saxon
20. William the Conqueror
21. Battle of Hastings
22. 1205
23. 1476
24. William Caxton
25. printing press
26. Great Vowel Shift
27. 1611
28. King James Bible
29. The Exeter Book
30. half-lines
31. caesura
32. alliteration
33. kennings
34. ubi sunt
35. Heorot Hall
36. Geats
37. Scyldings
38. ritual boasting
39. gold-giver, etc.
40. scop
41. wergild
42. Hrothgar
43. Wealtheow
44. Unferth
45. Breca
46. Aeschere
47. Hondscio
48. Hygelac
49. Hygd
50. Grendel
51. Grendel’s mother
52. Fire-breathing
Dragon
53. Wiglaf
54. thane
55. interest in
genealogy
56. Fate/wyrd
57. Fame
58. Hrunting
59. Naegling
60. “to harrow”
61. barrow
62. “peace-weaver”
Middle English
57. Thomas à Beckett
58. Canterbury
Cathedral
59. 1170
60. Henry II
61. theme of sickness
62. “mechanics” of the
CT (pilgrims, number of stories)
63. Southwark
64. The Tabard Inn
65. Harry Bailey
66. gullible narrator
67. ironic manipulation
language
68. rhyming couplets
69. iambic pentameter
70. descriptions of
pilgrims in Gen. Prol.
71. physiognomy
72. the four humours
73. jobs of clergymen
74. authority vs
experience
75. scriptural exegesis
76. a Romance
77. an exemplum
78. a fabliau
79. avarice
80. Radix malorum est
cupiditas
81. Amor vincit omnia
82. Questio quid juris
83. the Medieval
Romance (def.)
84. “prosody” of “Sir
Gawain and the
Green Knight”;
including:
85. the “bob”
86. the “wheel”
87. rhyme scheme of
bob and wheel
88. quatrain
89. Gawain’s pentangle
(the “5 fives”)
90. verisimilitude
91. setting of “Sir
Gawain (time/place)
92. use of superlatives
93. numerology (3 & 5)
94. Michaelmas
95. All Hallows Day
96. baldric/lace/sash/
girdle/weed
97. Gringolet
98. Pater/Ave/Credo
99. Bercilak de
Hautdesert
100. Morgain le Faye
101. Gawain and
Christian redemption
The Elizabethan Age
102. Elizabeth I
103. Elizabeth’s reign
(1558-1603)
104. comedy (“revel”)
105. tragedy
(“goatsong”)
106. exposition
107. conflict
108. complications
109. rising action
110. climax
111. falling action
112. catastrophe
113. denouement
114. resolution
115. catharsis
116. Aristotle’s desc. of
tragic hero
117. 1606
118. James VI/I
119. Holinshed’s
Chronicles
120. major themes of
Macbeth
121. setting of Macbeth
122. characters in
Macbeth
123. plot of Macbeth
124. “mac—”
125. “inver—”
126. place names in
Macbeth
127. composition date
of Macbeth
128. composition date
of Hamlet
129. revenge plays
130. Saxo Grammaticus
131. Historica Danica
132. setting of Hamlet
133. plot of Hamlet
134. soliloquy
135. aside
136. anachronism
137. 4 humours in
Hamlet
138. sonnet
139. Shakespearean
sonnet:
(3 quatrains & couplet)
140. Petrarchan sonnet:
(octave & sestet)
The Seventeenth Century
141. metaphysical
142. conceit
143. Dean of St. Paul’s
144. Ann More
145. “John Donne,
undone.”
146. James VI/I (1603-
1625)
147. the Stuart kings
148. PlymouthBay
Colony (1620)
149. Massachusetts Bay
Colony (1629)
150. The Long
Parliament (1642)
151. The English Civil
War (began 1642)
152. Roundheads/
Parliamentarians
153. Royalists/Cavaliers
154. execution of
Charles I (1649)
155. the Interregnum
(1649-1660)
156. The Restoration
(1660)
157. Charles II (1660-
1685)
158. James II (1685-
1688-89)
159. The Glorious
Revolution (1688-
1689)
160. The Great Fire of
London (1666)
161. Jacobites
162. The Pretender
163. The Old Pretender
164. The Young
Pretender
165. The Grand Tour
166. 1652
167. Latin Secretary
168. Mary Powell
169. Katherine
Woodcock
170. Elizabeth Minshull
171. paradox
172. epigraph
173. epic conventions:
174. in media res
175. invocation to Muse
176. statement of
purpose or theme
177. hero whose
bravery, etc.
179. desc. of hero’s
weapon
180. battle in cosmos
181. gods participating
in action
182. serious tone
183. elevated diction
184. epic simile,
catalogue, ritual
185. blank verse
186. prosody
187. periodic sentence
The Eighteenth Century
188.conventions of satire:
189.distancing of time/place
190.citation of authority:
191. “experts” as authority
192.“numbers” as authority
193.stock characters:
194.“the gullible narrator”
195.episodic plot
196.manipulation of language:
197.punning/plays on words
198.names taking on significance
199.“outrageous comparisons”
200.use of irony:
201.understatement
202.overstatement/hyperbole
203.ironic juxtaposition
204.definition of satire
205.targets of satire
206.Juvenalian satire
207.Horatian satire
208.Pope as verse satirist
209.Swift as prose satirist
210.“epithets” of the 18th c.:
211.Age of Reason
212.The Enlightenment
213.The Augustan Age
214.The Neoclassical Age
215.The Age of Satire
216.The Age of Pope
217.The Age of Swift
218.The Age of Revolution
219.The Age of the Encyclopedia
220.Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral
221.“posthumous child”
222.“Quinbus Flestrin”
223.1726
224.setting of Gulliver’s Travels
225.“High Heels/Low Heels”
226.“Big Endians/Little Endians”
227.logical arguments in “A Modest Proposal”
228.use of livestock/animal diction
229.“The Wicked Wasp of Twickenham”
230.heroic couplets
231.closed heroic couplet
232.open heroic couplet
233.HamptonCourtPalace
234.epic conventions:
235.(see #s174-185)
The Pre-Romantics
236.elegy
237.Stoke Poges
238.dialect as determined by:
239.geography
240.social class
241.education.
242.dialect as choices made in:
243.diction (vocabulary)
244.pronunciation (accent)
245.syntax(word order)
246.grammatical habit
247.Lowland Scots/Lallans
248.Ayr/Ayrshire
249.Alloway
250.personification of abstractions
251.Innocence
252.Experience
253.Organized Innocence
254.Northrup Frye
255.Jerusalem
256.unity/disunity
257.fall into division
258.restored vision of universal
brotherhood
259.Jeremy Bentham
260.Benthamite Philosophy
261.Utilitarianism
262.Poor Law Amendment Act (1834)
263.“The Dietary”
264.“The New Poor Law”
Romanticism
265.“old date”: 1798-1832
266.“new date”: 1785-1830
267.1789 (French Revolution)
268.1795 (“First Generation Romantic Poets,” Ww. & Shelley meet)
269.The Lake District
270.Dove Cottage
271.Rydal Mount
272.Grasmere
273.Dorothy Wordsworth
274.Mary Hutchinson
275.1843 (Ww. appointed Poet Laureate)
276.Annette Vallon
277.Caroline Vallon
278.“natural piety”
279.“pre-existence of the soul”
280.“What is poetry?”
281.“What is the language of poetry?”
282.“What is the subject matter of poetry?”
283.Silas Tomkyn Comberbache
284.Robert Southey
285.Pantisocracy
286.Sara Fricker
287.laudanum
288.Dr. James Gilman
289.elements, outlooks, concerns of Romanticism vs Neoclassicism
290.ballad form of Rime:
291.ballad stanza
292.quatrians rhyming abcb
293.violent subject matter
294.loss on a national scale
295.dialogue
296.repetition
297.use of supernatural.
298.frame device
299.“border ballads”
300.“Child ballads”
301.medieval folk ballads
302.“Second Generation” Romantics
303.Aeolian harp
304.The Pisan Circle
305.The Elgin Marbles
306.Harriet Westbrook
307.“The Necessity of Atheism”
308.William Godwin
309.Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
310.Claire Clairmont
311.Art as immutable
312.“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
313.Truth = Immutable thing (Ww.)
314.Immutable thing = Art
315.Art = Truth (??)
316.Hampstead Heath
317.Fanny Brawne
318.1819 (Keats’ annus mirabilis)
The Victorian Age
319.Charles Lyell
320.Principles of Geology (1833)
321.Charles Darwin
322.On the Origin of Species
323.1833 (death of A.H.H.)
324.1850 (Tennyson appointed Poet Laureate)
325.Poems by Two Brothers
326.Charles Tennyson
327.the Rev. Dr. George Tennyson
328.the “Apostles”
329.1884 (Tennyson’s peerage by Queen Victoria)
330.the “In Memoriam stanza”:
331.iambic tetrameter lines
332.abba rhyme scheme
333.“short, swallow-flights of song”
334.Wimpole Street
335.September 15, 1833
336.November, 1833
337.January 3, 1834
338.February 1
339.3 Christmases
340.Vienna, Austria
341.Emily Tennyson
342.TrinityCollege, Cambridge
343.“the Bar”
344.the Crimean War
345.“occasional poems”
346.“the little Portugese”
347.Aurora Leigh
348.dramatic monologues
349.Men and Women
350.Dramatis Personae
351.The Oxford Movement
352.John Henry, Cardinal Newman
353.the Jesuit Order
354.sprung rhythm
355.inscape
356.instress
357.characteristics of Hopkins’ poetry:
358.alliteration
359.assonance
360.consonance
361.disruption of conventional syntax
362.ellipsis
363.coining words
364.compounding words.
365.Robert Bridges
366.1918 (pub. of Hopkins’ poetry)
367.Wessex/Casterbridge
368.Dorset/Dorchester
369.Emma Lavinia GiffordFlorence Dugdale
370.Max Gate
371.A Shropshire Lad
(Edwardian Period [1901-1910])
(Georgian Period [1910-1914])
The War Poets
372.1914-1918: World War I
373.“The Great War”
374.Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
375.“The Old Lie”
376.colloquial diction
Modernism
377.stream-of-consciousness narrative technique
378.To the Lighthouse
379.“The Bloomsbury Group”
380.Leonard Woolf
381.The Hogarth Press
382.Sir Leslie Stephen
383.Maud Gonne
384.The Easter Rising
385.A Vision
386.Vivienne Haigh-Wood &
Valerie Fletcher
387.1922: pub. of The WasteLand
388.1927: T.S. Eliot becomes British subject and joins Anglican Church
389.epigraph
390.Ezra Pound
391.“a heap of broken images”
392.epiphany
393.1914: pub. of Dubliners
394.1922: pub. of Ulysses
395.1939: pub. of Finnegan’s Wake
396.quay
397.River Liffey
398.UniversityCollege, Dublin (“UCD”)
399.TrinityCollege, Dublin (“TCD”)
400.“Bloom’s Day”: June 16, 1904
401.isolato
402.1939-1945: World War II
Postmodernism
403.“theatre of the absurd”
404.concrete/visual poetry
Additional Literary Terminology
405.allusion
406.oxymoron
407.paradox
408.personification
409.epigram, epigraph, epitaph
410.ode
Topics for short-answer/discussion questions:
1.uses of understatement in two or three works of satire (or overstatement)
2.the influence of the French Revolution/democratic ideals on the works of Blake, Wordsworth, and/or Shelley
3.an issue of “common concern” for both a Victorian writer of prose and a writer of poetry
4.irony as “The English Disease”
5.What makes “Modern poets” modern? (themes and/or poetic techniques)
6.importance of nature for Romantics, Victorians, and Modern poets
7.importance of childhood
8.evolving ideas about religion/religious belief
9.relationship for some poets of literature and the visual arts
10.influence by the classics on writers studied in the course
11.advances in science or natural philosophy as a “contributor to human progress, evidence of God’s universal plan, and/or a threat to religion”
12.themes of loneliness and isolation and antidotes to that loneliness