英国文学

Old English Literature & The Late Medieval Ages

dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.

The renaissance period

than those of any other playwright.

Romeo and Juliet and so on.

Francis Bacon, (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, essayist, and author. Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism.

Masterpiece: Advancement of learning, New Instrument, New Atlantis, Assay.

The 17th century

John Donne (1572 –1631) was an English poet, satirist, lawyer and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons. Donne's style is characterized by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. He is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.

Writing style: conceits or imagery, syllogism

Masterpiece: Song and Sonnets, Elegies, Holy Sonnets.

John Milton (1608 –1674) was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, his work writing in English, Latin, and Italian

Writing style: reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and

self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day.

Masterpiece: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes.

The 18th century

proponents of the novel,as he helped to popularize the form in Britain, and, along with others

of English Novel because of his work The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

Writing style: he is the first writer study of the low-class people, his language is smooth, easy colloquial and mostly vernacular.

Masterpiece:The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders.

Jonathan Swift (1667 –1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. He is remembered for works such as Swift is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles.

Writing style: a sa tirist

Masterpiece: Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub.

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

Writing style: early stage:celebrate love and look forward to joy and Harmony

Later period:Mystical tendencies and Religious

Masterpiece: Poetical Sketches, Song of Innocence, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Song of Experience, Visions of The Daughters of Albion, The Song of Los.

Robert Burns (1759 –1796) was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as

the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is regarded as a pioneer of

the Romantic Movement He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a light Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in Standard English, and in these his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.

Writing style:Peasant poet, spontaneity, directness, and sincerity

Masterpiece: Poem, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, The Tree of Liberty, Scots, Wha Hae, Holy Willie’s Prayer, The Twa Dogs, My Heart in the Highland, A Red, Red Rose, John Anderson, My Jo, Auld Lang Syne.