Literature Blogs

'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive' (William Wordsworth, The Prelude) The dates of the Romantic period of literature are not precise and the term 'romantic' was itself not widely used until after the period in question. Conventionally, the period begins in 1798, which saw the publication by Wordsworth and Coleridge of their Lyrical Ballads and ends in 1832 a year which saw the death of Sir Walter Scott and the enactment by the parliament of the First Reform Bill. These years link literary and political events. The Romantic period was an era in which a literary revolution took place alongside social and economic revolutions. In some histories of literature, the Romantic period is called the 'Age of Revolutions'. The Period was one of rapid change as the nation was transformed from an agricultural country to an industrial one. The laws of a free market, development by the economist Adam Smith in this book Wealth of Nations (1776), dominated peoples lives. At ...

AGE OF TRANSITION HISTORIANS        David Hume   (1711 - 1776) :   Born  and educated at Edinburgh, Hume first distinguished himself as a philosopher,  publishing A treatise of Human Nature and Essays, Moral and Political. Later he turned historical works, writing The History of England, in six volumes. As a historian, Hume makes no pretence at profound research, so that his work has little permanent value as history. He possesses a clear and logical mind and a swift and brilliant narrative style. In the history of literature, his work is of importance as being first of the popular and literary histories of the country.       William Robertson (1721-1793) :    Robertson also was a Scot, being born in the country of Midlothian. After leaving university, he entered the Scottish church. He had an active and successful career as a historian, producing among other works The History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary ...

Comedy:   In the most common literary application, a 'comedy' is a fictional work in which the materials are selected and managed primarily in order to interest and amuse us: the characters and their discomfitures engage our pleasurable attention rather than our profound concern, we are made to feel confident that no great disaster will occur and usually the action turns out happily for the chief characters. The term "comedy" is customarily applied only to plays for the stage or to motion pictures and television dramas; it should be noted, however, that the comic form of the plot as just defined also occurs in prose fiction and narrative poetry.  Paradox:     A paradox is a statement that seems on its face to be logically contradictory or absurd, yet turns out to be interpretable in a way that makes sense. The Paradox is used occasionally by almost all poets but was a persistent and central device in the seventeenth century in both its religious and secular f...

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle  is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of Anglo-Saxons. It was in all probability inspired by Alfred, who himself may well have dictated some of the entries, more particularly those dealing with his own campaigns. It is extant in several manuscripts the most important being the A or Parker and the E or laud MSS. To the year 915 much of the material is common to most of the manuscripts through the relations of each an individual one of the others presents serious difficulties. Local events and miscellaneous items are introduced into the various versions and they also show clearly varying points of view in their attitude to events. They all end at different dates, the latest being 1154. The literary quality of the early part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is poor. The Annalist of 775, for  example, had a very interesting  story of inter-tribal rivalry the story of Cynewulf and Osric of Deira (7th century AD) but ...

 Old English Prose   King Alfred:   Though there were some prose writings of an official nature before  the time Alfred, there can be little objection to the claim frequently made for him, that he is the 'father of English prose'. As he himself tells us in the preface to the Pastoral Care, he began his series of translations due to the lamentable state of English learning, largely the result of the depredations of the Danes. Even the knowledge of Latin was declining, so the king, in order to encourage learning among the clergy, translated some popular books into his own tongue. These works are his contribution to our literature. Sometimes he translated word for word, at others more freely but those passages which have the greatest value both for an understanding of the character of the king and also for their literary qualities are originals freely introduced by way of explanation or expansion. The five important translations are the Pastoral Care of Pope Gre...

The first fragment of literature is known as Caedmon's Hymn. It dates from the late seventh century (around 670). The Story goes that Caedmon was a lay worker on the estate of the monastery of Whitby, in Northumbria. His hymn is, therefore, the first song of praise in English culture, and the first Christian religious poem in English, Although many Latin hymns were known at the time. It was preserved by monks of Whitby, and it is not certain whether the few lines which have survived through the ages are the complete hymn or not. Christian monks and nuns were, in effect, the guardians of culture, as they were virtually the only people who could read and write before the fourteenth century. It is interesting therefore the most of the native English culture they preserved is not in Latin, the language of the church, but in old English, the language of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Christian monks and nuns were, in effect, the guardians of culture, as they were virtually the only peop...