Introduction to the study of English literature

Introduction

TO

THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

BY

VIDA D. SCUDDER, A.M.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE

GLOBE SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY

NEW YORK AND CHICAGO

THE LIBRARY OF

CONGRESS, Two Copies Received

CQPYfWGHT ENTRY

CLASS (XxXc. N».

COPY 8.

Copyright, 1901, by Globe School Book Company.

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON.

M. P. I.

MANHATTAN PRESS 474 WEST BROADWAY NEW YORK

Preface

It is no light matter to present within five hundred and fifty pages the story of the imaginative life of a nation as found in its literature. No one can hope for absolute success in such a task. The excuse for adding to the already long list of histories of English literature is that the subject is inexhaustible. The point of view of each new narrator must bring into relief fresh aspects of the great story, and suggest, at least in detail, new lines of approach for the student.

This book aims, like all modern text-books, not to supplant, but to accompany the direct and copious reading of texts. The Suggestions for Class Work and for Talks from the Teacher are not merely theoretical ; they may in some cases appear at first too advanced, but they have been well tested in a practical experience of over ten years in the class-room. Their application in detail will of course depend on the grade of the class. If the teacher of literature is not prepared to give certain lectures, a teacher of history or of art in the same school may well be asked to do so. Occasional interchange of appointments among the different departments is indeed a very salutary thing ; it checks the student's often inveterate instinct to hold different forms of national or individual expression in distinct water-tight com-

PKEFACE partments of his mind, as if they had nothing to do with one another.

No attempt has been made to outline work for the advanced scholar of college or university. On the other hand, the book is beyond the scope of grammar schools. It seeks to meet the needs of the high school and of the younger classes in college.

Any short history of literature must of course proceed on a strictly selective principle. Many interesting people and sundry not unimportant phases of literary development must remain unnoticed. The method here chosen has been to present a fairly full outline of authors, their works, and contemporary events in Tables arranged for easy reference, and, so far as possible, to disencumber the text of details which the young student is sure to forget. Each part of the book opens with a brief chapter of general statements, picturing the period to be treated, or describing its characteristics ; this has been done in the belief that a few sound introductory generalizations help to start the student right in his personal inductive study of any period. Emphasis is placed on the greatest or most significant figures, to each of whom a chapter, or a long section in a chapter, has been allotted. Authors of secondary importance, however fascinating, have been relegated to the background, and grouped to illustrate the characteristics of their periods. The time for close and loving study of figures less than the greatest will come later ; but the young student needs to gain first a sense of the great movements of national life as expressed in literature, and a clear picture of the Masters. Perspective has to be carefully considered

PREFACE if these ends are to be attained. Too many facts concerning authors not to be known at first hand simply deaden the mind.

More stress has been placed than is customary in books of this kind on the period before Chaucer. This is in accord with the modern tendency which is bringing into ever clearer light the significance of our origins and the imaginative achievement of the great mediaeval centuries, and is recognizing more and more that some knowledge of these things is essential to a right understanding of English literature.

If specific references to history are few in these pages, it is because the study of literature and of history should always go on side by side, and no one book can treat both subjects. Literature bears only indirect relation, however, to dynasties and wars, while it bears direct relation to that life of the whole people whence it proceeds. This life, in its varying manifestations and in its onward movement, the book tries constantly to suggest to the student's consciousness. Instead of enumerating a series of unconnected facts, it seeks to tell a consecutive story.

For chronology, the book leans in the main, though with occasional rectifications, on Ryland's " Chronological Outlines of English Literature " and Nichol's " Tables of European History, Literature," etc. Leading authorities are not constantly repeated in references in the text, but no work would be possible unless the elaborate treatment of separate periods by modern scholars had led the way. Among books frequently used may be mentioned the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," the "Dictionary of

PREFACE

National Biography," Traill's " Social England," Green's "Short History of the English People," Saintsbury's " Short History of English Literature," Courthope's " History of English Poetry," Ten Brink's "English Literature" (3 vols.), Stopford Brooke's " English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman Conquest," Henry Morley's "English Writers," Jusserand's " Literary History of the English People," " Periods of European Literature " (Series, edited by Saintsbury), Saintsbury's "Elizabethan Literature," Gosse's "History of Eighteenth Century Literature," Stephen's " History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century," Saintsbury's "History of Nineteenth Century Literature," Harford's "The Age of Wordsworth," Stedman's "Victorian Poets," Introductions to the "Warwick Library" and the "Athenaeum Press Series."

For the tables on different periods and the Index, I am indebted to my friend and former pupil, Florence Converse, B.S. The tables on Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, were prepared by my friend, Lucy H. Smith, A.B.

CHAPTER II The Chief Phases of Medleval Literature

I. Chivalry and Catholicism : their Literary Results . 65

II. Literature of Chivalry 67

III. Literature of Catholicism 74

PAGE

I. Work in French and Latin on English Soil . . .78

II. The Growth of the English 80

III. Literature in English 84

I. Chaucerian Imitators 156

II. Scotch Literature 158

III. Ballads 160

IV. The Decadence of the Middle Ages . . . .162

Part III The Renaissance Chapter I

PA(

The Rebikth 1(

Learning and Poetry under Henry VIII

I. The New Learning 11

II. The New Art li

Outlines of Elizabethan Literature . . . .11 CHAPTER IV

Sir Philip Sidney 1(

CHAPTER V General Literature

I. Elizabethan Prose . . . . . . . 2(

II. Elizabethan Translations 2(

III. Elizabethan Lyrics 2(

CHAPTER VI Edmund Spenser

I. Spenser's Life 2.

II. The "Eaerie Queene" 2.

The Early Drama

I. Development 229

II. Types 230

III. The Predecessors of Shakespeare 232

PAGE

I. The Elizabethan Stage 235

II. Shakespeare's Life 236

III. Shakespeare's Work 239

IV. Shakespeare's Art 251

The Literature of Puritanism

I. Puritan Literature 302

II. Satires on Puritanism 306

PAET IV THE AGE OF PROSE

CHAPTER I The Change in Taste page

I. The New Temper 311

II. Periods of the Age of Prose 312

III. Characteristics of the Age of Prose .... 314

I. Revival of Classicism 320

II. John Dry den 321

III. Other Literature of the Restoration .... 327

The Age or Queen Anne : its Poet . . . . . 333

CHAPTER IV Prose of the* Age of Queen Anne

I. The Rise of Prose 342

II. Jonathan Swift 343

III. Daniel Defoe 347

IV. Addison and Steele . 348

I. Samuel Richardson 357

II. Henry Fielding 360

III. Other Novelists 362

IV. Reasons for the Rise of the Novel 363

CHAPTER VI Johnson and his Times

PAGE

I. Samuel Johnson 365

II. Oliver Goldsmith 4 .372

I. Literature of Art 378

II. Literature of Thought 379

III. The Trend of Thought 382

I. The Return to Nature 386

II. Quickening of the Imagination 388

III. Literary Revivals 392

IV. The Methodist Movement 394

PART V MODERN ENGLAND CHAPTER I The Heralds : Burns and Blake

I. The New Notes 403

II. Robert Burns 404

III. William Blake 407

I. Review of Forces making for Democracy '. . . 411

II. The French Revolution and Literature .... 412

III. English Poets of the Revolution 417

From Wordsworth to Keats

PAGB

I. " Lyrical Ballads," Character and Significance . . 420

II. Wordsworth, Coleridge, South ey 422

III. Byron, Shelley, Keats 429

IV. General Characteristics 440

I. Fiction .445

II. Essay 450

Conditions of Victorian Literature

I. The Forces at Work 459

II. The Decade of Origins 464

I. Charles Dickens 468

II. William Makepeace Thackeray 472

HE. Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot) 477

IV. Other Novelists 482

I. Thomas Babington Macaulay . . . . . 486

II. Thomas Carlyle 487

III. John Henry Newman 492

IV. John Ruskin 493

V. Matthew Arnold 498

VI. Later Essayists 502

CHAPTER VIII Victorian Poetry

PAGE

I. Minor Schools 505

II. Alfred Tennyson 512

III. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 516

IV. Robert Browning 516

V. Conclusion 520

INDICES

I. Books and their Authors 527

II. Bibliographical References 537

TABLES

The Pre-Chaucerian Period, 1066-1350 90

Chaucer's Works 120

The Period of Chaucer's Influence, 1350-1500 . . .124

The Early Renaissance, 1500-1579 192

Shakespeare's Plays , 256

The Later Renaissance, 1579-1650 277

Milton's Life and Works 298

The Age of Pope and Swift, 1702-1744 354

The Age of Johnson, 1744-1789 375

The Revolutionary Period, 1789-1830 456

The Victorian Writers, 1830-1900 523

PAET I