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Open in new tab Literary forms
Literary forms such as the novel or lyric poem, or genres, such as the horror-
story, have a history. In one sense, they appear because they have not been
thought of before, but they also appear, or become popular for other cultural
reasons, such as the absence or emergence of literacy. In studying the history
of literature (or any kind of art), you are challenged to consider
what constitutes a given form,
how it has developed, and
Whether it has a future.
The novels of the late Catherine Cookson may have much in common with those
of Charlotte Brontë, but is it worth mimicking in the late 20th century, what was
ground-breaking in the 1840s. While Brontë examines what is contemporary for
her, Miss Cookson invents an imagined past which may be of interest to the
cultural historian in studying the present sources of her nostalgia, but not to the
student of the period in which her novels are set. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson
Crusoe is a long work of prose fiction, but critics do not necessarily describe it
as a novel. Why might this be? Knowing works in their historical context does
not give easy answers, but may shed more or less light on our darkness in
considering such questions.
Old English, Middle English and Chaucer
Old English
English, as we know it, descends from the language spoken by the north
Germanic tribes who settled in England from the 5th century A.D. onwards. They
had no writing (except runes, used as charms) until they learned the Latin
alphabet from Roman missionaries. The earliest written works in Old English (as
their language is now known to scholars) were probably composed orally at first,
and may have been passed on from speaker to speaker before being written. We
know the names of some of the later writers (Cædmon, Ælfric and King Alfred)
but most writing is anonymous. Old English literature is mostly chronicle and
poetry – lyric, descriptive but chiefly narrative or epic. By the time literacy
becomes widespread, Old English is effectively a foreign and dead language. And
its forms do not significantly affect subsequent developments in English
literature. (With the scholarly exception of the 19th century poet, Gerard
Manley Hopkins, who finds in Old English verse the model for his metrical
system of “sprung rhythm”.)
Middle English and Chaucer
From 1066 onwards, the language is known to scholars as Middle English. Ideas
and themes from French and Celtic literature appear in English writing at about
this time, but the first great name in English literature is that of Geoffrey
Chaucer (?1343-1400). Chaucer introduces the iambic pentameter line, the
rhyming couplet and other rhymes used in Italian poetry (a language in which
rhyming is arguably much easier than in English, thanks to the frequency of
terminal vowels). Some of Chaucer’s work is prose and some is lyric poetry, but
his greatest work is mostly narrative poetry, which we find in Troilus and
Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Other notable mediaeval works are the
anonymous Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight (probably by the same author)
and William Langlands’ Piers Plowman.
Tudor lyric poetry
Modern lyric poetry in English begins in the early 16th century with the work
of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-
1547). Wyatt, who is greatly influenced by the Italian, Francesco Petrarch
(Petrarch) introduces the sonnet and a range of short lyrics to English, while
Surrey (as he is known) develops unrhymed pentameters (or blank verse) thus
inventing the verse form which will be of great use to contemporary dramatists.
A flowering of lyric poetry in the reign of Elizabeth comes with such writers
as Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Edmund Spenser(1552-1599), Sir Walter
Raleigh (1552-1618), Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) and William
Shakespeare (1564-1616). The major works of the time are Spenser’s Faerie
Queene, Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Renaissance drama
The first great English dramatist is Marlowe. Before the 16th century English
drama meant the amateur performances of Bible stories by craft guilds on
public holidays. Marlowe’s plays (Tamburlaine; Dr. Faustus; Edward II and The
Jew of Malta) use the five act structure and the medium of blank verse, which
Shakespeare finds so productive. Shakespeare develops and virtually exhausts
this form, his Jacobean successors producing work which is rarely performed
today, though some pieces have literary merit, notably The Duchess of
Malfi and The White Devil by John Webster (1580-1625) and The Revenger’s
Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626). The excessive and gratuitous violence
of Jacobean plays leads to the clamour for closing down the theatres, which is
enacted by parliament after the Civil war.
Metaphysical poetry
The greatest of Elizabethan lyric poets is John Donne (1572-1631), whose short
love poems are characterized by wit and irony, as he seeks to wrest meaning
from experience. The preoccupation with the big questions of love, death and
religious faith marks out Donne and his successors who are often
called metaphysical poets. (This name, coined by Dr. Samuel Johnson in an essay
of 1779, was revived and popularized by T.S. Eliot, in an essay of 1921. It can be
unhelpful to modern students who are unfamiliar with this adjective, and who are
led to think that these poets belonged to some kind of school or group – which is
not the case.) After his wife’s death, Donne underwent a serious religious
conversion, and wrote much fine devotional verse. The best known of the other
metaphysical are George Herbert (1593-1633), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
and Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).
Epic poetry
Long narrative poems on heroic subjects mark the best work of classical Greek
(Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey) and Roman (Virgil’s Æneid) poetry. John
Milton (1608-1674) who was Cromwell’s secretary, set out to write a great
biblical epic, unsure whether to write in Latin or English, but settling for the
latter in Paradise Lost. John Dryden (1631-1700) also wrote epic poetry, on
classical and biblical subjects. Though Dryden’s work is little read today it leads
to a comic parody of the epic form, or mock-heroic. The best poetry of the mid
18th century is the comic writing of Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Pope is the
best-regarded comic writer and satirist of English poetry. Among his many
masterpieces, one of the more accessible is The Rape of the Lock (seekers of
sensation should note that “rape” here has its archaic sense of “removal by
force”; the “lock” is a curl of the heroine’s hair). Serious poetry of the period is
well represented by the neo-classical Thomas Gray (1716-1771) whose Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard virtually perfects the elegant style favoured at
the time.
Restoration comedy
On the death of Oliver Cromwell (in 1658) plays were no longer prohibited. A
new kind of comic drama, dealing with issues of sexual politics among the
wealthy and the bourgeois, arose. This is Restoration Comedy, and the style
developed well beyond the restoration period into the mid 18th century almost.
The total number of plays performed is vast, and many lack real merit, but the
best drama uses the restoration conventions for a serious examination of
contemporary morality. A play which exemplifies this well is The Country
Wife by William Wycherley (1640-1716).
Prose fiction and the novel
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), wrote satires in verse and prose. He is best-known
for the extended prose work Gulliver’s Travels, in which a fantastic account of a
series of travels is the vehicle for satirizing familiar English institutions, such
as religion, politics and law. Another writer who uses prose fiction, this time
much more naturalistic, to explore other questions of politics or economics
is Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
The first English novel is generally accepted to be Pamela (1740), by Samuel
Richardson (1689-1761): this novel takes the form of a series of letters; Pamela,
a virtuous housemaid resists the advances of her rich employer, who eventually
marries her. Richardson’s work was almost at once satirized by Henry
Fielding (1707-1754) in Joseph Andrews (Joseph is depicted as the brother of
Richardson’s Pamela Andrews) and Tom Jones.
After Fielding, the novel is dominated by the two great figures of Sir Walter
Scott (1771-1832) and Jane Austen (1775-1817), who typify, respectively, the
new regional, historical romanticism and the established, urbane classical views.
Novels depicting extreme behaviour, madness or cruelty, often in historically
remote or exotic settings are called Gothic. They are ridiculed by Austen
in Northanger Abbey but include one undisputed masterpiece, Frankenstein,
by Mary Shelley (1797-1851).
Romanticism
The rise of Romanticism
A movement in philosophy but especially in literature, romanticism is the revolt
of the senses or passions against the intellect and of the individual against the
consensus. Its first stirrings may be seen in the work of William Blake (1757-
1827), and in continental writers such as the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and the German playwrights Johann Christopher Friedrich
Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The publication, in 1798, by the poets William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) of a volume entitled Lyrical Ballads is a
significant event in English literary history, though the poems were poorly
received and few books sold. The elegant Latinisms of Gray are dropped in
favour of a kind of English closer to that spoken by real people (supposedly).
Actually, the attempts to render the speech of ordinary people are not wholly
convincing. Robert Burns (1759 1796) writes lyric verse in the dialect of lowland
Scots (a variety of English). After Shakespeare, Burns is perhaps the most
often quoted of writers in English: we sing his Auld Lang Syne every New Year’s
Eve.
Later Romanticism
The work of the later romantics John Keats (1795-1821) and his friend Percy
Byssi Shelley (1792-1822; husband of Mary Shelley) is marked by an attempt to
make language beautiful, and by an interest in remote history and exotic
places. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) uses romantic themes,
sometimes comically, to explain contemporary events. Romanticism begins as a
revolt against established views, but eventually becomes the established outlook.
Wordsworth becomes a kind of national monument, while the Victorians make
what was at first revolutionary seem familiar, domestic and sentimental.
Victorian poetry
The major poets of the Victorian era are Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
and Robert Browning (1812-1889). Both are prolific and varied, and their work
defies easy classification. Tennyson makes extensive use of classical myth and
Arthurian legend, and has been praised for the beautiful and musical qualities of
his writing.
Browning’s chief interest is in people; he uses blank verse in writing dramatic
monologues in which the speaker achieves a kind of self-portraiture: his
subjects are both historical individuals (Fra Lippo Lippi, Andrea Del Sarto) and
representative types or caricatures (Mr. Sludge the Medium).
Other Victorian poets of note include Browning’s wife, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning (1806-1861) and Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Gerard Manley
Hopkins (1844-1889) is notable for his use of what he calls “sprung rhythm”; as
in Old English verse syllables are not counted, but there is a pattern of stresses.
Hopkins’ work was not well-known until very long after his death.
The Victorian novel
The rise of the popular novel
In the 19th century, adult literacy increases markedly: attempts to provide
education by the state, and self-help schemes are partly the cause and partly
the result of the popularity of the novel. Publication in instalments means that
works are affordable for people of modest means. The change in the reading
public is reflected in a change in the subjects of novels: the high bourgeois
world of Austen gives way to an interest in characters of humble origins. The
great novelists write works which in some ways transcend their own period, but
which in detail very much explore the preoccupations of their time.
Dickens and the Brontës
Certainly the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, and possibly of all
time, is Charles Dickens (1812-1870). The complexity of his best work, the
variety of tone, the use of irony and caricature create surface problems for the
modern reader, who may not readily persist in reading. But Great Expectations,
Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend and Little Dorrit are works with which every
student should be acquainted.
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) and her sisters Emily (1818-1848) and Anne (1820-
1849) are understandably linked together, but their work differs greatly.
Charlotte is notable for several good novels, among which her masterpiece
is Jane Eyre, in which we see the heroine, after much adversity, achieve
happiness on her own terms. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a strange work,
which enjoys almost cult status. Its concerns are more romantic, less
contemporary than those of Jane Eyre – but its themes of obsessive love and
self-destructive passion have proved popular with the 20th century reader.
The beginnings of American literature
The early 19th century sees the emergence of American literature, with the
stories of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the novels of Nathaniel
Hawthorne (1804-64), Herman Melville (1819-91), and Mark Twain (Samuel
Langhorne Clemens; 1835-1910), and the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819-92)
and Emily Dickinson (1830-86). Notable works include Hawthorne’s The Scarlet
Letter, Melville’s Moby Dick, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Whitman’s Leaves of
Grass.
Later Victorian novelists
After the middle of the century, the novel, as a form, becomes firmly-
established: sensational or melodramatic “popular” writing is represented
by Mrs. Henry Wood’s East Lynne (1861), but the best novelists achieved serious
critical acclaim while reaching a wide public, notable authors being Anthony
Trollope (1815-82), Willie Collins (1824-89), William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-
63), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans; 1819-80) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928).
Among the best novels are Collins’s The Moonstone, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair,
Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede and Middlemarch, and Hardy’s The
Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native, Tess of the
d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.
Modern literature
Early 20th century poets
W.B. (William Butler) Yeats (1865-1939) is one of two figures who dominate
modern poetry, the other being T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965). Yeats
was Irish; Eliot was born in the USA but settled in England, and took UK
citizenship in 1927. Yeats uses conventional lyric forms, but explores the
connection between modern themes and classical and romantic ideas. Eliot uses
elements of conventional forms, within an unconventionally structured whole in
his greatest works. Where Yeats is prolific as a poet, Eliot’s reputation largely
rests on two long and complex works: The Waste Land (1922) and Four
Quartets (1943).
The work of these two has overshadowed the work of the best late Victorian,
Edwardian and Georgian poets, some of whom came to prominence during the
First World War. Among these are Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling (1865-
1936), A.E. Housman (1859-1936), Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Rupert
Brooke (1887-1915), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
and Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918). The most celebrated modern American poet
is Robert Frost (1874-1963), who befriended Edward Thomas before the war of
1914-1918.
Early modern writers
The late Victorian and early modern periods are spanned by two novelists of
foreign birth: the American Henry James (1843-1916) and the Pole Joseph
Conrad (Josef Korzeniowski; 1857-1924). James relates character to issues of
culture and ethics, but his style can be opaque; Conrad’s narratives may
resemble adventure stories in incident and setting, but his real concern is with
issues of character and morality. The best of their work would include
James’s The Portrait of a Lady and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,
Nostromo and The Secret Agent.
Other notable writers of the early part of the century include George Bernard
Shaw (1856-1950), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), and E.M. Forster (1879-1970). Shaw
was an essay-writer, language scholar and critic, but is best-remembered as a
playwright. Of his many plays, the best-known is Pygmalion (even better known
today in its form as the musical My Fair Lady). Wells is celebrated as a
populariser of science, but his best novels explore serious social and cultural
themes, The History of Mr. Polly being perhaps his masterpiece. Forster’s
novels include Howard’s End, A Room with a View and A Passage to India.
Joyce and Woolf
Where these writers show continuity with the Victorian tradition of the novel,
more radically modern writing is found in the novels of James Joyce (1882-
1941), of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), and of D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Where
Joyce and Woolf challenge traditional narrative methods of viewpoint and
structure, Lawrence is concerned to explore human relationships more
profoundly than his predecessors, attempting to marry the insights of the new
psychology with his own acute observation. Working-class characters are
presented as serious and dignified; their manners and speech are not objects of
ridicule.
Other notable novelists include George Orwell (1903-50), Evelyn Waugh (1903-
1966), Graham Greene (1904-1991) and the 1983 Nobel prize-winner, William
Golding (1911-1993).
Poetry in the later 20th century
Between the two wars, a revival of romanticism in poetry is associated with the
work of W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (1907-73), Louis MacNeice (1907-63)
and Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-72). Auden seems to be a major figure on the poetic
landscape, but is almost too contemporary to see in perspective. The Welsh
poet, Dylan Thomas (1914-53) is notable for strange effects of language,
alternating from extreme simplicity to massive overstatement.
Of poets who have achieved celebrity in the second half of the century,
evaluation is even more difficult, but writers of note include the
American Robert Lowell (1917-77),Philip Larkin (1922-1985), R.S. Thomas (1913-
2000), Thom Gunn (1929-2004), Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and the 1995 Nobel
laureate Seamus Heaney (b. 1939).
Notable writers outside mainstream movements
Any list of “important” names is bound to be uneven and selective. Identifying
broad movements leads to the exclusion of those who do not easily fit into
schematic outlines of history. Writers not referred to above, but highly
regarded by some readers might include Laurence Sterne (1713-68), author
of Tristram Sandy, R.L. Stevenson(1850-94) writer of Kidnapped and The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), author
of The Importance of Being Earnest, and novelists such as Arnold
Bennett (1867-1931), John Galsworthy (1867-1933) and the Americans F. Scott
Fitzgerald (1896-1940), Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961), John Steinbeck (1902-
68) and J.D. Salinger (b. 1919). Two works notable not just for their literary
merit but for their articulation of the spirit of the age are Fitzgerald’s The
Great Gatsby and Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. The American
dramatist Arthur Miller (b. 1915) has received similar acclaim for his play Death
of a Salesman (1949). Miller is more popular in the UK than his native country,
and is familiar to many teachers and students because his work is so often set
for study in examinations.
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