1. Intro to British Literature

2. What is British Literature?
Literature made in Britain. Whew, that was tough. See ya later!
Okay. More specifically: Literature from the United Kingdom
England
Scotland
Wales
And, depending on how you view things, Irish literature as well.
British Literature is commonly taught as a 12th grade course in high school, following an American literature course in 11th grade… But if we’re all Americans, why have a whole year on British literature?

3. Periods of British Literature
Anglo-Saxon
Old English
Beowulf
Medieval Period
Middle English
Geoffrey Chaucer
Tudor Period
Humanist Era
Thomas More
John Skelton
Elizabethan Period
Renaissance Era
Edmund Spencer
William Shakespeare
Jacobean Period
Metaphysical poets
John Donne
George Herbert
Caroline Period
John Milton
Commonwealth
Baroque
Andrew Marvell
Thomas Hobbes
The Restoration
John Dryden

4. Periods of British Literature, continued
The Enlightenment
Age of Reason
Neoclassical Period
Alexander Pope
Jonathan Swift
Samuel Johnson
Romanticism
William Wordsworth
S.T. Coleridge
Jane Austen
Bronte sisters
Victorian Period
Charles Dickens
George Eliot
Robert Browning
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Modernism
H.G. Wells
James Joyce
T.S. Eliot
George Orwell
1960- present
Postmodernism
Ted Hughes
John Fowles

5. Breakdown of this class
Quarter 1: Shakespeare
Focusing almost exclusively on Hamlet
Quarter 2: Poetry
Poetry from 1600s-1800s (broad overview)
Quarter 3: Romanticism
Focusing almost exclusively on Frankenstein
Quarter 4: Satire and Dystopia
Focusing almost exclusively on 1984

6. British Literature before Shakespeare
Anglo-Saxon / Old English ( s)
Few writings survive from this era, including the epic Beowulf
Legends, tales of war, long epic poems
Medieval Period / Middle English ( s)
Strong religious influence, where the Church was the center of learning and monks recorded literature (much of which survived)
Time of courtly love and chivalry, translations of Bible and Greek/Latin works
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Arthurian tales like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
British Literature before Shakespeare

7. Elizabethan Era and the Renaissance
Period in s marked by unprecedented literary productivity.
The printing press arrived, the Church’s role faded, and new ideas prospered.
The new ideal was that of the renaissance man: A lover, a fighter, and a poet
Greek and Latin literature was rediscovered and became the standard for education and culture, and it was also incorporated into new works/adaptations
John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, an epic poem about Adam and Eve and the fall of man
The King James version of Bible was released; John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress
The theatre prospers, namely William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe above all

8. Why we’re starting with Hamlet
Shakespeare’s the biggest name in British Literature.
He’s as early as we can go without the writing needing to be translated or else being very difficult/almost impossible to get through.
Even though we’re skipping over 1000 years of British Literature, there’s simply too much to cover in one year, and I think you’ll get more out of reading more recent works.
We can read Hamlet together, whereas most of the other works we read as a class will be individual reads or potentially material you’ll be teaching your own class. I like the idea of starting with something we can all participate in together.
This gives us an excuse to watch The Lion King in a couple of months.