The Complete Idiot's Guide to English Literature

by Stevenson, Ph.D., Jay

• ISBN13: 9781592576562
• ISBN10: 1592576567
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-06-05
• Publisher: DK Publishing, Inc.

Summary

You're no idiot, of course. You'd love to learn more about the greatest novels, poems, and plays of the English language. But when you try to pick apart plots and piece together themes, you feel that you're just not getting the whole story ...

Author Biography

Jay Stevenson, Ph.D., is the author of The Complete Idiot-'s Guide-« to Philosophy, The Complete Idiot-'s Guide-« to Eastern Philosophy, and The Pocket Idiot-'s Guide-Ö to Grammar and Punctuation. He received his Ph.D. in English Literature from Rutgers University and has taught at Rutgers and Ryder University.

Table of Contents

Angles on English	p. 1
Lit and Crit	p. 3
The It of Lit	p. 4
Serious Play	p. 4
A Full Plate	p. 5
The Worm Turns	p. 6
Shifting Focus	p. 6
The Old English, or the Early Medieval Period (Fifth to Eleventh Centuries)	p. 7
The Middle English, or the Late Medieval, Period (Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries)	p. 7
The Renaissance (1540-1640)	p. 7
The Augustan Period (1670-1790)	p. 8
The Romantic Period (1790-1840)	p. 8
The Victorian Period (1840-1900)	p. 9
The Modern Period (1900-1945)	p. 9
The Postmodern Period (1945-Present)	p. 9
The More Things Change	p. 11
So Why Study English?	p. 11
Holding Your Own	p. 12
Up Close and Textual	p. 15
Close Calls	p. 16
Still Critical	p. 16
Open and Close	p. 17
Cutting Both Ways	p. 17
Reading Actively	p. 18
Back and Forth	p. 18
The Ways of Words	p. 19
Reading by Design	p. 20
Seeing Is Believing	p. 21
Worth a Thousand Words	p. 21
Beyond Compare	p. 22
Descent from the Mountain	p. 22
Playing with God	p. 23
Hall of Famer	p. 24
Canon Fighting	p. 27
Gone but Not Forgotten	p. 28
Not Fade Away	p. 28
Making the Cut	p. 29
Canon to the Right of Them	p. 30
Annie Get Your Canon	p. 30
Canon Cannot	p. 31
Disarming the Canon	p. 31
In Defense of the Canon	p. 31
Loaded Canon	p. 32
Parting Shots	p. 33
It Takes All Kinds	p. 35
Assigning Labels	p. 36
Knowing Ahead of Time	p. 36
Hard to Pin Down	p. 36
Poking Holes	p. 37
Family Resemblance	p. 38
Generic Makeup	p. 38
Generic Mutation	p. 38
Good "Ode" Times	p. 39
Song and Dance	p. 40
The Other Ode	p. 40
"Ode" English	p. 41
The Ode Looks Inward	p. 42
The Ode Comes of Age	p. 42
A Well-Urned Retirement	p. 43
Forgotten, but Not Gone	p. 44
Between the Lines	p. 45
Structure and Beyond	p. 46
The Shape We're In	p. 46
Meaning Turned Inside Out	p. 47
Taking Talk Apart	p. 47
Coming Up Empty	p. 47
Pulling the Rug of Language Out from Under Us	p. 48
Disassembly Required	p. 48
The Human Element	p. 49
Key Players	p. 49
Meeting the Challenge	p. 50
The Point Is How Powerfully You Miss the Point	p. 50
P.C. (Political Criticism)	p. 53
Folks in Focus	p. 54
Made-Up Selves	p. 54
The Power of the Powerful	p. 55
The Legs We Stand On	p. 55
Strange Bedfellows	p. 56
New Historicism: It's All in the Timing	p. 57
Feminism: Angel Killers	p. 57
Essence Is Optional	p. 58
Postcolonialism: Who's "We," White Man?	p. 58
Radicals: Left Out and Taken Over	p. 59
Queer Theory: Same Difference	p. 59
Time and Tide	p. 61
It Is Written	p. 62
Close Encounters of the Literary Kind	p. 62
New and Newer	p. 63
Pride and Prejudice	p. 64
The "Great" Tradition	p. 64
Time Warps	p. 65
Bursting Bubbles	p. 66
Bridging the Gaps	p. 67
Levels of Difficulty	p. 67
Lines in the Sand	p. 68
Dead White Man's Burden	p. 69
Multiculturalism	p. 69
Different Sides of the Story	p. 69
Multiculturalism in the Classroom	p. 70
Finding a Place	p. 71
Fitting Forms	p. 73
The Best and the Verse	p. 75
Speaking Strangely	p. 75
Questions and Answers	p. 76
Talking a Good Game	p. 76
Less Clear, More Meaningful	p. 77
Spitting Imagery	p. 78
Hearing Things	p. 79
Sound Off	p. 80
Rosy Rhythm	p. 80
Lines Through Time	p. 82
Stressed Out	p. 82
Coupling	p. 82
Shooting Blanks	p. 83
Free and Easy	p. 84
Stage lights	p. 87
Serious Play	p. 88
Two Major Occasions	p. 88
Introducing Drama	p. 89
Aristotle: A Man of Principles	p. 89
Tragic Turns	p. 89
Tying Things Together	p. 90
Drama's Second Start	p. 91
Staging Morality	p. 91
The Subject of Morality Plays	p. 91
Old Styles, New Forms	p. 92
School Plays and Court Dramas	p. 93
Production Numbers	p. 93
Not Playing Around	p. 93
Drama Curriculum	p. 94
The Influence of Senecan Tragedies	p. 94
More Changes in Theater	p. 95
Limitations of the Restoration	p. 96
Pantomime and Melodrama	p. 96
The Return of Serious Drama	p. 97
Shaw's Socialist Satire	p. 97
Trade Secrets	p. 98
Taking Lit by the Tale	p. 101
Tell Me Another	p. 101
Writing the Unwritten	p. 102
Speaking and Writing	p. 102
Oral Fixations	p. 103
Structured Stories	p. 103
Telling Characters	p. 104
Spoken Perspective	p. 105
The Write Place at the Write Time	p. 105
Story Lines	p. 105
Written Writers	p. 106
Epic Achievements	p. 106
The Romance of Narrative	p. 108
Narrative Necessity	p. 109
Leave It to the Prose	p. 111
All Talk	p. 112
Nice Figures	p. 112
Eloquent Examples	p. 113
Shining Lives	p. 113
Prose Reformers	p. 114
Try, Try Again	p. 114
Literary Characters	p. 115
Essay Issues	p. 116
Good Morals and Good Taste	p. 116
Common Bonds	p. 117
Way Back When	p. 119
Old School	p. 121
In the Beginning	p. 122
The Christian Empire Emerges	p. 122
A Mixed Bag	p. 123
Mental Mergers	p. 123
All Signs Point Up	p. 124
What's the Big Ideal	p. 124
Typecasting	p. 125
Deja Vu	p. 125
A Tale of Types	p. 126
A January-May Romance	p. 127
Mythic Figures	p. 128
True and False	p. 128
Born-Again Classicism	p. 129
Virgil's Vocation	p. 129
Echoes of Virgil	p. 130
Polished Models and Deism	p. 131
Rite and Wrong	p. 132
Christ Victorian	p. 133
From Nostalgia to Irony	p. 134
Monks and Warriors	p. 135
"Dark" Is Beautiful	p. 136
Hard to Fathom	p. 136
Will the Real "English Lit" Please Stand Up?	p. 137
The Whole Story	p. 137
From Tribal to Scribal	p. 138
Fighting and Writing	p. 138
Caedmon: In Your Dreams	p. 138
Strong Survivors	p. 139
Charmed, I'm Sure	p. 140
Riddle Me This	p. 140
You Know It	p. 141
Beowulf: Old Hero	p. 142
Praise and Blame	p. 143
Men and Monsters	p. 143
Quests and Visions	p. 145
Stormin' Normans	p. 146
A Day of Knights	p. 146
Hello, Ladies	p. 146
Conquered and Conquering Kings	p. 147
Stories from the Round Table	p. 147
Off with His Head!	p. 147
Nobody's Perfect	p. 148
Tales for the Road	p. 149
Narrative Frame	p. 150
Lightening Up	p. 150
Birds of a Feather	p. 151
Chaucer's Trade Secrets	p. 152
Works and Plays	p. 153
Family Feud	p. 154
Courtiers and Cavaliers	p. 157
Brave New World	p. 158
Fame and Finesse	p. 158
Boy Meets Girl, Boy Gets Tree	p. 159
Order in the Court	p. 159
Queen and Country	p. 160
Old-Fangled Language	p. 161
The Queen Is Dead! (and Other Changes)	p. 162
Getting It Donne	p. 162
Now or Never	p. 163
Severed Head of State	p. 164
Justifying the Ways of God to Men	p. 164
Devilish Doings	p. 165
The Bard	p. 167
William Who?	p. 168
Strokes of Genius	p. 168
That's Show Biz	p. 169
Shakespeare's Playbook	p. 170
Paper Trail	p. 170
Playing with the Past	p. 171
The Tudor Myth	p. 172
Bad Rap	p. 173
Signs of the Times	p. 174
Status Symbolism	p. 174
Back to Nature	p. 175
Depth of Character	p. 177
Blue-Blooded and Blue	p. 177
A Chip Off the Old Chopping Block?	p. 178
August Personages	p. 181
King and Stage Restored	p. 182
Good Manners	p. 182
Good Boys Behaving Badly	p. 182
Potent Pretence	p. 183
Satire: The Best Medicine	p. 183
High Standards, Low Expectations	p. 183
Swift Kicks	p. 184
Wry Lines	p. 186
Novel Ideas	p. 187
True to Life-Sometimes	p. 187
Just Desserts	p. 188
These Days	p. 191
Romantic Moods	p. 193
Rising Tides	p. 194
Growing Pains	p. 194
All, All Alone	p. 194
Wordsworthy Sentiments	p. 195
Theory and Practice	p. 195
Formative Years	p. 196
All for One	p. 197
Byron: Alone with Others	p. 197
Fitting the Profile	p. 198
A Hopeless Romantic	p. 198
Plain Jane	p. 199
Even Keel	p. 199
Off Again, on Again	p. 200
Gothic Novels: Scary Stories	p. 200
Grave Ideals	p. 200
Seeing Things	p. 201
Works for Victoria	p. 203
Pride and Power	p. 204
From Bildungsroman to Sci Fi	p. 204
Keeping It Real	p. 205
Shifting Standards	p. 205
Going to the Dickens	p. 206
It's a Twisted World	p. 206
A Virtue of Naivete	p. 207
Getting Dark	p. 207
Dark Hearts, Dark Minds	p. 208
Kurtz Rejoinders	p. 208
Skip This Section If You Haven't Read the Book	p. 209
Good Liars	p. 209
Lady Killer	p. 210
The Mating Game	p. 211
You Better Believe	p. 212
Gasping for Eyre	p. 212
Losing Game	p. 213
Gothic Revival	p. 213
Wilde and Earnest	p. 213
Modern Methods	p. 217
In the Line of Fire	p. 218
Entrenched in War	p. 218
A Tomb of One's Owen	p. 218
Showing and Knowing	p. 220
Modern Shake-Up	p. 220
Old and New	p. 220
A Big Waste	p. 221
Typist as Archetype	p. 222
Stream Lines	p. 223
Words Unspoken	p. 224
Mind in Motion	p. 224
This Just In	p. 227
From Pillar to Post	p. 228
Pointless Plays	p. 228
Laid Bare	p. 228
Arrested Development	p. 229
Play List	p. 230
Spell-Binders	p. 230
Clash of Enchantment	p. 230
A Magic State	p. 231
Eyes of the Beholders	p. 231
More Charmers	p. 232
Cyber-Fi	p. 232
Don't Call 'Em Geeks	p. 232
Brain Link	p. 233
A Hard Case	p. 234
Now Is the Future	p. 234
...And Read All Over	p. 237
New Theories, Wider Focus	p. 238
There's More to Life Than Literature	p. 238
Don't Ask What, Ask How	p. 239
Fitting In	p. 239
Act Locally, Think Globally	p. 240
All Connected	p. 240
Writ Large	p. 241
Culture: High vs. Mass	p. 241
What Are We, Barbarians?	p. 242
Industrial Strength	p. 242
You Are Getting Sleepy	p. 242
Muddling Along	p. 243
Culture R Us	p. 243
Net Culture	p. 244
Lit Lives On	p. 244
Appendixes
Lit Gloss	p. 247
Read On, MacDuff	p. 257
Index	p. 313
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