enIs. by Anthem survey, first pub J. Burgess Wilso Burgess incorporates til tiony ice the 1950s. the literature u l£5!m 1®Elj-j ÿjBSsraws a Er / r: Ll ihztik ISBN D-SfiE-SSBch-T 9 780582 552241 Contents Foreword page vii i What is Literature? i 2 What is English Literature? 9 3 The First English Literature 15 4 The Coming of the Normans 23 5 Chaucer and After 29 Interlude—The English Bible 39 6 The Beginnings of Drama 44 7 The Beginnings of English Drama 5 1 S Early Elizabethan Drama 6 1 9 William Shakespeare 73 10 Other Elizabethan Dramatists 83 11 Tudor Poetry and Prose 93 12 The Age of Milton: End of a Period 103 13 The Age of Dryden 120 14 The New Drama 132 15 Poetry in the Age of Reason 141 16 Prose in the Age of Reason 154 17 The Romantics 165 iS The Victorian Age 178 19 Fresh Life in the Drama 197 20 The Coming of the Modern Age Z07 21 To the Present Day 215 22 The British Novel Since 1950 226 English Verse Forms 234 . Chronological Table 245 Suggestions for Further Reading 256 Index 264 i. What is Literature ? The subjects we study at school can be divided roughlv into two groups—the sciences and the arts. The sciences include mathematics, geography, chemistry, physics, and so on. Among the arts are drawing, painting, modelling, needlework, drama, music, literature. The purpose of education is to fit us for life in a civilised community, and it seems to follow from the subjects we study that the two most important things in civilised life are Art and Science. Is this really true? Ifwe take an average dav in the life of the average man we seem to see very little evidence of concern with the sciences and the arts. The average mangets up, goes to work, eats his meals, reads the newspapers, watches television, goes to the cinema, goes to bed, sleeps, wakes up, starts all over again. Unless we happen to be professional scientists, laboratory experiments and formulae have ceased to have any meaning for most of us; unless we happen to be poets or painters or musicians—or teachers of literature, painting, and music—the arts seem to us to be only the concern of schoolchildren. And yet people have said, and people still say, that the great glories of our civilisation are the scien¬ tists and artists. Ancient Greece is remembered because of mathema¬ ticians like Euclid and Pythagoras, because of poets like Homer and dramatists like Sophocles. In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive. Why then are the arts and sciences important? Isuppose with the sciences we could say that the answer is obvious : we have radium, peni¬ cillin, television and recorded sound, motor-cars and aircraft, air-con¬ ditioning and central heating. But these achievements have never been the primary intentionof science; they are a sort of by-product, the things that emerge only when the scientist has performed his main task. That task is simply stated: to be curious, to keep on asking the question 'Why?' and not to be satisfied till an answer has been found. The scien¬ tist is curious about the universe: he wants to know why water boils at / 1 English Literature What is Literature ? > truth is the name given to it by the one temperature and freezes at another; why cheese is different from thing which we can call x, and that to the artist. Let us try to make chalk; why one person behaves differently from another. Not only scientist and beauty the name given itby IfIam a blind man Ihave to 'Why?' but 'What?' What is salt made of? What are the stars? What is this clear. There is a substance called salt. of taste to describe it: salt to me is a substance with a the constitution of all matter? The answers to these questions do not rely on my sense can call salty '. IfIhave my eyesight but no sense of necessarily make our lives any easier. The answer to one question—'Can taste which we only ' as a white crystalline substance. Now both the atom be split?'—has made our lives somewhat harder. But the ques¬ taste Ihave to describe salt are correct, but neither is complete in itself. Each descrip¬ tions have to be asked. Itis man's job to be curious ;it is man's job to try descriptions salt. It is possible to say that the to find out the truth about the worldabout us, to answer the bigquestion tion concentrates on one way ofexamining 'What is the world really like?' scientist examines x in one way, the artist examines it in another. Beauty But what is x? Some people call it tth and Beauty 'The truth about the world about us.' 'Truth' is a word used in many is one aspect of x, truth is another. the universe of appearances, different ways—'You're not telling the truth.' 'The truth about condi¬ ultimate reality—the thing that is left when Other callit God, and they say that tions inRussia.' 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.' Iwant to useithere inthe of outward show, is removed. people are the of God. sense ofwhat liesbehindan outwardshow. Let mehastento explainby giving beauty and truth two of qualities the scientist are seeking something which an example. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. That is what we Anyway, boththe artist and are different. The scientist sets his brain see; that is the 'outward show'. In the past the outward show was re¬ they think is real. Their methods and error, after long experiment garded as the truth. But then a scientist came along to question it and to work and, by a slow process of trial is usually an exciting moment. We then to announce that the truth was quite different from the appearance : and enquiry, he finds hisanswer. This finding his famous principle in the the truth was that the earth revolvedandthe sun remainedstill the out¬ remember the story of Archimedes — it!') The ward show was telling a lie. The curious thing about scientific truths like bath and rushing out naked, shouting 'Eureka! ' ('I've found just that sort of this is that they often seem so useless. Itmakes no difference to the aver¬ artist wants to make something which will produce the excitement of discovering age man whether the sun moves or the earth moves. He still has to rise excitement in the minds of other people— at He may make a picture, a play, a dawn and stop work at dusk. But because a thing is useless it does not something new about x, about reality. the who see or hear or mean that itis valueless. Scientists still think it worthwhile to pursuetruth. poem, or a palace, but he wants to make people and about it, That is beautiful.' Beauty, They do not expect that laws of gravitation and relativity are going to read his creation feel excited say ' object which pro¬ make much difference to everyday life, but they think it is a valuable then, you could define as the quality you find in any an excitement somehow activity to ask their eternal questions about the universe. And so we sav duces inyour minda special kindof excitement, that truth—the thing they are looking for—is a value. tied up with a sense of discovery. Itneednot be something made by man; may excitement A value is something that raises our lives above the purely animallevel a sunset or a bunchofflowers or a tree make you feel this —the level of getting our food and drink, producing children, sleeping, and utter the word 'Beautiful!' But the primary task of natural things but just and dying. This world of getting a living and getting children is some¬ like flowers and trees and the sun is perhaps not to be beautiful is to be beautiful. times called the world of subsistence. A value is something added to the to exist. The primary task of the artist's creations Artistic excitement world of subsistence. Some people say that our lives are unsatisfactory Let us try to understand a little more about this 'artistic excitement'. because they are mostly concerned with things that are impermanent First of all, itis what is known as a static excitement. Itdoes not make you — bad names, I things that decay and change. Sittinghere now, a degree or so above the want to do anything. If you call me a fool and various other equator, Ilook roundmy hot roomand see nothingthat willlast.Itwon't shall get very excited and possibly want to fight you. But the excitement as one has just be long before my house collapses, eaten by white ants, eroded by rain of experiencing beauty leaves one content, though and wind. as Ihave already suggested, is The flowers infront of me will be dead tomorrow. My type¬ achieved something. The achievement, writer is discovery. a discovery of what? Iwould say the already rusty. And sol hunger for something that is permanent, the achievement of a But I hasten to something that will last forever. Truth, Iam told, is a thing that will last discovery of a pattern or the realisation of order. Again must forever. explain. Life to most of us is just a jumble of sensations, like a very bad Truth is one value.