Brief introduction to English literature

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AYESHA ZAFAR

NIMRA MAQBOOL

SADAF AFREEN

SANA ISHAQPunjab University

AYESHA ARIF

DefinitionLiterature is the reflection of life. It is one of Fine Art, like

Music, Dance, Painting, Sculpture, as it is meant to give aesthetic pleasure rather than serve any utilitarian purpose.

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Genres of literature

POETRY DRAMA

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definitionkinds of poetry

Poetic devices

Themes of poetry

Famous English poets

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Poetry is a literary work in which special intensity is given to the

expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive styles

and rhythms.

Definition of Poetry

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Epic sonnet

lyrical ballad

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A long poem typically derived from old tradition

narrating the deeds and

adventures of heroic figures.

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Sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of

formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten

syllables per line.

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Lyrical poetry is a form of literary work in which language is

used for its aesthetic and advocate sense.

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A Ballad is a song that tells a story, and it can be dramatic, funny or

romantic.

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Similie Alliteration

Metaphor Symbolism

PersonificationBACK

A figure of speech that compares two unlike things using the word like or as.

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The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words.

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A figure of speech that compares two

unlike things directly without the use of

word like or as.

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It uses an object to represent an idea. A symbol means what

it is and also something more.

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A figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings,

thoughts or attitudes.

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Theme of Nature

Theme of Love

Theme of Isolation

Theme of Modernis

m

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A Night in JuneThe sun has long been set,The stars are out by twos and threes,The little birds are piping yetAmong the bushes and the trees;There's a cuckoo, and one or two thrushes,And a far-off wind that rushes,And a sound of water that gushes,And the cuckoo's sovereign cryFills all the hollow of the sky.Who would go `parading'In London, `and masquerading',On such a night of JuneWith that beautiful soft half-moon,And all these innocent blesses?On such a night as this is! 

William Wordsworth

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THE HOLLOW MEN

We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed men

Leaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, whenWe whisper together

Are quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glassIn our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossedWith direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us—if at all—not as lostViolent souls, but only

As the hollow menThe stuffed men.

T.S Eliot

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BEREFTWhere had I heard this wind beforeChange like this to a deeper roar?

What would it take my standing there for,

Holding open a restive door,Looking down hill to a frothy shore?Summer was past and day was past.

Somber clouds in the west were massed.

Out in the porch’s sagging floor,Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,

Blindly struck at my knee and missed.Something sinister in the tone

Told me my secret must be known:Word I was in my house alone

Somehow must have gotten abroad,Word I was in my life alone,

Word I had no one left but God.

Robert Frost

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A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING. by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,      And whisper to their souls to go,  

Whilst some of their sad friends do say,     "Now his breath goes," and some say,

"No." [1]                    So let us melt, and make no

noise,                                       5     No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ; 

'Twere profanation of our joys      To tell the laity our love. 

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;     Men reckon what it did, and meant ;                              10 

But trepidation of the spheres,      Though greater far, is innocent. 

Dull sublunary lovers' love      —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit  

Of absence, 'cause it doth remove                                     15     The thing which elemented it. 

But we by a love so much refined,     That ourselves know not what it is,  

Inter-assurèd of the mind,      Care less, eyes, lips and hands to

miss.                           20Our two souls therefore, which are one,  

    Though I must go, endure not yet  A breach, but an expansion,  

    Like gold to aery thinness beat. If they be two, they are two

so                                          25     As stiff twin compasses are two ;  

Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show      To move, but doth, if th' other do. 

And though it in the centre sit,      Yet, when the other far doth roam,                                30 

It leans, and hearkens after it,      And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must, 

    Like th' other foot, obliquely run ; Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                    35 

    And makes me end where I begun.   

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John Keats

John MiltonRobert Frost

T.S Eliot

William Wordsworth Sylvia Plath

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John Keats ; 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work only having been in publication for four years before his death.Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his life, his reputation grew after his death, so that by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. 

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John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly 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. Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime.

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William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

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Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was a publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and "one of the twentieth century's major poets."Born in the United States, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised. Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), which is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets.(1945).

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Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in America. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century,

Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution." 

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Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and  Newnham College, Cambridge, before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and they lived together first in the United States and then England, having two children together, Frieda and Nicholas. Plath suffered from depression for much of her adult life, and in 1963 she committed suicide. Controversy continues to surround the events of her life and death, as well as her writing and legacy.Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her two published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel.

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