SYNOPTIC RESEARCH IDEAS
You
need to have read “widely, independently and critically” and know something
of the traditions of English Literature. This will involve an appreciation of
the significance of cultural and historical influences on readers and writers.
This list is a starting point for research into major writers, poets and
dramatists, covering the seventeenth century to the present day.
Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to research the major
historical events listed, as well as particular movements, or ideas and, of
course, the authors and their works. This should give you an overview of what
shaped the writings of these authors.
Use
the internet. A good search engine is to be found at www.copernic.com.
A free download of their basic search engine gives you the ability to type in
plain language questions, such as “find out about postmodernism”. You should
then be directed to various linked sites to continue your quest.
Good
basic reference texts are the various Oxford & Cambridge Guides to English
Literature. Use also the catalogue of your local library and any other sources
available to you. When you research try to make a set of basic notes with clear
sub-headings. As far as possible USE YOUR OWN WORDS to provide a summary of the
information you find. You need to find out who was writing what and when. Also
the influences on them at the time, historically, politically and socially. You
also need to be able to identify and evaluate the literary techniques used by
each author, i.e. how they choose to use their words. Remember, the words used
are almost always shaped by the time and the place and what is happening in the
world. You might like also to look at why these authors are still read today.
What ideas or lasting philosophies are evident in their work?
(We've chosen to start with the 17th century because we think you'll probably have done lots of work already on Shakespeare and Chaucer and the 'obvious' authors and works in English Literature (who largely 'happened' before that) so now we think it's time for you to find out all about the Restoration and the Enlightenment and all that good stuff. In fact we really WANT you to become enlightened, because if we had to do it - then so should you - so there!)
17th
Century
Puritanism/Civil War/ Cromwell/ Restoration of the Monarchy (1660)
Milton
Metaphysical
Poets
Restoration
Comedy
18th
Century
Protestants
& Catholics/ ‘Glorious Revolution’
The
Enlightenment. The Royal Society. Exploration & Scientific discoveries
(Newton, Leibnitz, etc)
Crime/Punishment/
Transportation/ Slavery
Agrarian
Revolution
Transport
developments (canals, bridges, roads, railways)
French
Revolution
American
Revolution
Rise
of the novel – Defoe, Fielding
Satire
– Swift, Pope
Drama
- Sheridan
Pre-Romantics
(poets) – Blake
Early
Romantics (poets) – Wordsworth, Coleridge
19th
Century
Queen
Victoria the 'Victorian Age'
Defeat
of Napoleon (1815)
Imperialism
Industrial
Revolution
Transport
(see above)
Abolition
of Slavery / American Civil War
Novelists
– Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, the Bronte sisters, George
Elliot, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain (U.S.) Nathaniel Hawthorne (U.S) Rudyard
Kipling
Poets
– George, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Robert & Elizabeth
Browning, Tennyson, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Hardy.
Dramatist
– Oscar Wilde
20th
Century
Empire
(Africa, India, etc) and especially the decline of the Empire & the rise of
postmodernist philosophy
Tensions
in Europe
Womens
Suffrage
Novelists
– HG Wells, DH Lawrence, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Henry James (US)
Poets
– Robert Frost (US)
WORLD WAR ONE 1914-1918
Poets
– Sassoon, Owen, Brooke, Rosenberg
“Between
the Wars” 1918 – 1939
Russian
Revolution
Ireland
Women’s
Right to Vote
Novelists
– Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, F. Scott Fitzgerald (US) John
Steinbeck (US), George Orwell,
Alan Paton
The
Depression & Wall Street Crash
Rise
of Fascism
WORLD
WAR TWO (1939-45)
Beginings
of breakup of British Empire (Ghandi)
Dramatists
– GB Shaw, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams (US)
Poets
– TS Eliot, WB Yeats
The
Atomic Age
The
Cold War
Communist
Threat & McCarthyism in the US
Rise
of working class literature (Angry Young Men)
Kitchen
Sink Drama (British Theatre)
Rock
and Roll. Youth Culture. Rebellion. Beatniks
Novelists
– JD Salinger (US), also all mentioned above in post war section
Poets
– Ginsberg (US) ‘Beat Poets’
Drama
– Pinter, Delaney, Arthur Miller (US)
Civil
Rights & Racial Awareness (esp. in USA) (then watch for the rise of black
literary figures & works)
Kennedy
Era (USA)
Ban
the bomb
Vietnam
‘Swinging
Sixties’
Era
of Protest
Women’s
Liberation / Sexual Revolution/The Pill
Novelists
– Harper Lee (Mockingbird) (USA), Heller (Catch22) (USA) Muriel Spark
Poets
– Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Philip Larkin, John Betjeman
Drama
– Peter Schaffer, Robert Bolt (also see above in 50,s)
Feminism
Consumerism
Computer
technology
Belfast
‘troubles’
Cambodia
(Killing Fields & Khmer Rouge)
Continuing
conflict in Middle East
Growth
of ‘Commonwealth Literature’
Investigative
journalism (Watergate)
Novels
& Polemical writing – Germaine Greer, Angela Carter, VS Naipaul
Drama
– Stoppard, Ayckbourn
Poets
– see above
Thatcherism
Postmodernism
Deconstructionism
Rise
of individualism
Also
continued progress in communications & technology
Novels
– Margaret Atwood (Canada) Alice Walker (US) Isaac Asimov, Toni Morrison (US)
(esp. ‘Beloved’) Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie
Poets
– Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney
This list merely offers a flavour of the periods, with mostly ‘mainstream’ writers and many ‘popular’ writers. Your research will enlarge your knowledge of each era. Feel free to include any other names you discover as you search. Feel free, also, to look at the fashions and the music and art of each era, if you have time.
The
main thing to remember about this element of the course is that the pre-release
material will certainly be compatible - that is whatever is given to you will
inform your answer in some way.