British literature refers to literature associated
with the United Kingdom, United Kingdom, Isle of Man
and Channel Islands. This includes literatures from England,
Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
By far the largest part of British literature has been written in the English language, with English literature developing into a global
phenomenon, because of its use in the former colonies of Britain, including the
USA. In addition the story of British literature involves writings in Anglo-Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Cornish, Guernésiais,
Jèrriais, Latin, Manx,
Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and other languages. Literature
in Northern Ireland includes writings in English, Irish and Ulster Scots. Irish writers have played an
important part in the development of literature in England and Scotland,
but though the whole of Ireland was politically part of Britain before 1922, it
can be controversial to describe Irish literature, other than from Northern
Ireland, as British. Literature in the Celtic languages of the islands is the oldest surviving vernacular
literature in
Europe.
British identity
Definitions of British literature are bound up with historical shifts of British identity. Changing consciousness of English national identity, Scottish national identity, Welsh nationalism, and the effects of British imperialism have altered interpretations of how the literatures of the Isles have interacted. The impact of Irish nationalism, that led to the partition of the island of Ireland in 1921, means that literature of the Republic of Ireland is not considered to be British, although the identity of literature from Northern Ireland, as part of the literature of the United Kingdom, may fall within the overlapping identities of Irish and British literature, where "the naming of the territory has always been, in literary, geographical or historical contexts, a politically charged activity".
Welsh
literature in English (previously
called Anglo-Welsh literature) is the works written in the English language by
Welsh writers, especially if their subject matter relates to Wales. It has been
recognised as a distinctive entity only since the 20th century. The need for a
separate identity for this kind of writing arose because of the parallel
development of modern Welsh literature in the Welsh language.
The use of the label "Celtic fringe" as applied to non-English, or traditionally
non-English-speaking, territories to marginalise these cultures has been
analysed as a colonial attitude, and the literatures of Ireland, Scotland and Wales may be studied through the methodology of postcolonialism. However, Britain's legacy survives
around the world, as a shared history of British presence and cultural
influence in the Commonwealth of Nations has produced a substantial body of
writing in English and many other languages.
Latin literature
Chroniclers such as Bede, with his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, and Gildas, with his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, were figures in the development of indigenous Latin literature, mostly ecclesiastical, in the centuries following
the withdrawal of the Roman Empire.
The Historia Brittonum composed in the 9th century is
traditionally ascribed to Nennius. It is the earliest source which
presents King Arthur as a historical figure, and is the
source of several stories which were repeated and amplified by later authors.
Adomnán's most important work is the Vita Columbae, a hagiography of Columba, and the most important surviving work written in
early medieval Scotland. It is a vital source for knowledge of the Picts, as well as
an insight into the life of Iona Abbey and the early medieval Gaelic monk. The vita of
Columba contains a story that has been interpreted as the first reference to
the Loch Ness Monster.
Written just after or possibly contemporarily with
Adomnán's Vita Columbae, the Vita Sancti Cuthberti is the first piece of Northumbrian Latin writing and
the earliest piece of English Latin hagiography.
Latin continued in use as a language of learning long
after the Reformation had established the vernaculars as liturgical languages
for the élites. In Scotland, Latin as a literary language thrived into the 17th
century as Scottish writers writing in Latin were able to engage with their
audiences on a equal basis in a prestige language without feeling hampered by
their less confident handling of English.
Early Celtic literature
For a comparatively small country, Ireland has made a large contribution to world literature in all its branches. The Irish literature that is best known outside the country is in English, but the Irish language also has the most significant body of written literature, both ancient and recent, in any Celtic language, in addition to a strong oral tradition of legends and poetry.
The Ulster Cycle written in the 12th century, is a body of medieval
Irish heroic legends and sagas of the traditional heroes of the Ulaid in what is
now eastern Ulster and northern Leinster, particularly counties Armagh, Down and Louth. The stories are written in Old and Middle Irish, mostly in prose, interspersed with occasional verse
passages. The language of the earliest stories is dateable to the 8th century,
and events and characters are referred to in poems dating to the 7th.
In Medieval Welsh
literature the period
before 1100 is known as the period of Y Cynfeirdd ("The earliest
poets") or Yr Hengerdd ("The old poetry"). It roughly
dates from the birth of the Welsh language until the arrival of the Normans in Wales towards the end of the 11th century. Y Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men
of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional
interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth in ca. AD 600. It is traditionally
ascribed to the bard Aneirin, and survives only in one
manuscript, known as the Book of Aneirin. The poem is recorded in a manuscript of the second
half of the 13th century, and it has been dated to anywhere between the 7th and
the early 11th centuries. The text is partly written in Middle Welsh orthography and partly in Old Welsh. The early date would place its oral composition to
soon after the battle, presumably in the Hen Ogledd ("Old North") in what would have been the Cumbric variety of Brythonic. Others consider it the work of a
poet in medieval
Wales, composed
in the 9th, 10th or 11th century. Even a 9th-century date would make it one of
the oldest surviving Welsh works of poetry.
The stories of the Mabinogion appear in either or both of two Medieval Welsh
manuscripts, the White Book of Rhydderch (Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch)
written ca. 1350, and the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest) written
about 1382–1410, although texts or fragments of some of the tales have been
preserved in earlier 13th century and later manuscripts. Scholars agree that
the tales are older than the existing manuscripts, but disagree over just how
much older.
Gaelic literature in Scotland includes a celebration,
attributed to the Irish monk Adomnán, of the Pictish King Bridei's (671–93) victory over the Northumbrians at the Battle of Dun Nechtain (685). Pictish, the now extinct Brythonic language spoken in Scotland, has left no
record of poetry, but poetry composed in Gaelic for Pictish kings is known. By
the 9th century Gaelic speakers controlled Pictish territory and Gaelic was
spoken throughout Scotland and used as a literary language. However, there was great cultural exchange between
Scotland and Ireland, with Irish poets composing for Scottish or Pictish
patrons, and Scottish poets composing for Irish patrons.
No Cornish literature survives from the Primitive
Cornish period (c600-800 AD). The earliest written record of the Cornish
language, dating from the 9th century, is a gloss in a Latin
manuscript of the Consolation of Philosophy, which used the words ud
rocashaas. The phrase means "it (the mind) hated the gloomy
places".
Norse literature
From the 8th to the 15th centuries, Vikings and Norse settlers and their descendents colonised parts of what is now modern Scotland. Some Old Norse poetry survives relating to this period. The Orkneyinga saga (also called the History of the Earls of Orkney) is a historical narrative of the history of the Orkney Islands, from their capture by the Norwegian king in the ninth century onwards until about 1200. 20th century poet George Mackay Brown was influenced by the saga, notably for his 1973 novel Magnus. The Icelandic Njáls saga includes actions taking place in Orkney and Wales. Besides these Icelandic sagas a few examples, sometimes fragmentary, of Norse poetry composed in Scotland survive. Among the runic inscriptions at Maeshowe is a text identified as irregular verse. Scandinavian cultural contacts in the Danelaw also left legacies in literature. Höfuðlausn or the "Head's Ransom" is a skaldic poem attributed to Egill Skalla-Grímsson in praise of king Eirik Bloodaxe in the kingdom of Northumbria.
Old English literature 449–1066
Old English literature (or Anglo-Saxon literature) encompasses literature written in Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon) in Anglo-Saxon England, in the period after the settlement of the Saxons and other Germanic tribes in England after the withdrawal of the Romans until the Norman Conquest of 1066. These works include genres such as epic poetry, hagiography, sermons, Bible translations, legal works, chronicles, riddles, and others. In all there are about 400 surviving manuscripts from the period, a significant corpus of both popular interest and specialist research.
Late medieval literature 1066-1500
Latin literature circulated among the educated classes. Gerald of Wales's most distinguished works are those dealing with Wales and Ireland, with his late 12th century two books in Latin on his beloved Wales the most important: Itinerarium Cambriae and Descriptio Cambriae which tell us much about Welsh history and geography.
Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, the development of Anglo-Norman literature in the Anglo-Norman realm
introduced literary trends from Continental Europe such as the chanson de geste. However, the indigenous
development of Anglo-Norman literature was precocious in comparison to
continental Oïl literature: Geoffrey Gaimar produced the earliest rhymed chronicle; Benedeit, the
earliest adventure narrative inspired by Celtic sources; Jordan Fantosme, the earliest eyewitness historiography; Philippe de
Thaun, the earliest scientific literature.
From the Renaissance to the Union of
England and Scotland 1500-1707
The English Renaissance and the Renaissance in Scotland date from the late 15th century to
the early 17th century. Italian literary influences arrived in Britain: the sonnet form was
introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century, and
developed by Henry Howard,
Earl of Surrey, (1516/1517
– 1547), who also introduced blank verse into England, with his translation of Virgil's Aeneid in c.1540. Chaucerian, classical and French literary language continued to influence Scots literature up until the
Reformation, and Latin remained an important literary language in Scotland in
the 17th century, long after its literary importance in England had waned. The Complaynt
of Scotland shows the
interplay of language and ideas between the kingdoms of Scotland and England in
the years leading up to the 1603 Union of the Crowns. During the Jacobean
debate on the Union, a
tradition of prophetic literature going back to the Prophetiae Merlini was invoked. The Whole Prophesie
of Scotland of 1603 treated Merlin's prophecies as authoritative. Sir William Alexander, writing in praise of King James, invoked the prophetic tradition and
dated it to 300 years before the king's birth (the middle of the 13th century).
This timing tied it to the Scottish writer, Thomas the Rhymer. The use of "Great Britain" as a title of
the kingdom as united by James was considered to reference Brutus of Troy, of the Anglo-Welsh traditional foundation myth. A mythological consonance was seen by some at the
time between what were different traditions.
The Caroline, Interregnum and
Restoration periods 1625–1689
The Metaphysical poets continued writing in this
period. Both John Donne and George Herbert died after 1625, but there was a
second generation of metaphysical poets, consisting of Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), Thomas Traherne (1636 or 1637–1674) and Henry Vaughan (1622–1695). Another important group of poets at this
time were the Cavalier poets. They were an important group of
writers, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the Wars of the
Three Kingdoms (1639–51).
(King Charles reigned from 1625 and was executed 1649). The best known of the Cavalier poets are Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling. They "were not a formal
group, but all were influenced" by Ben Jonson. Most of the Cavalier poets were courtiers, with notable exceptions. For example, Robert Herrick
was not a courtier, but his style marks him as a Cavalier poet. Cavalier works
make use of allegory and classical allusions, and are influence by Latin authors Horace, Cicero, and Ovid.
Augustan age: 1689-1750
The late 17th, early 18th century (1689 -1750) in
English literature is known as the Augustan Age. Writers at this time
"greatly admired their Roman counterparts, imitated their works and
frequently drew parallels between" contemporary world and the age of the
Roman emperor Augustus (27 AD - BC 14) (see Augustan literature (ancient Rome) ). Some of the major writers in this period were John Dryden (1631-1700), Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), William Congreve, (1670-1729), Joseph Addison (1672-1719), Richard Steele (1672-1729), Alexander Pope (1688-1744), Henry Fielding (1707–54), Samuel Johnson (1709-84).
The rise of the novel
Daniel Defoe's 1719 castaway novel Robinson Crusoe, with Crusoe standing over Man Friday after freeing him from the cannibals
The English novel has generally been seen as beginning
with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722), though John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's
Progress (1678) and Aphra Behn's, Oroonoko (1688) are also contenders, while earlier works such
as Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, and even the "Prologue" to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have been suggested. The rise of
the novel as an important literary genre is generally associated with the
growth of the middle class in England. Other major 18th century British
novelists are Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), author of the epistolary novels Pamela, or
Virtue Rewarded (1740) and Clarissa (1747-8); Henry Fielding (1707–54), who wrote Joseph Andrews (1742) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749); and Fanny Burney (1752-1840), whose novels "were enjoyed and
admired by Jane Austen," wrote Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796).
Drama in the Augustan age
Although documented history of Irish theatre began at least as early as 1601, the earliest Irish
dramatists of note were: William Congreve (1670-1729), one of the most interesting writers of Restoration comedies and author of The Way of the World (1700); late Restoration
playwright, George Farquhar (?1677-1707), The
Recruiting Officer (1706); as well as two of the most successful playwrights on the London
stage in the 18th century, Oliver Goldsmith (?1730-74), She Stoops to
Conquer (1773) and Richard
Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816),
The School
for Scandal (1777). Anglo-Irish drama in the 18th century also includes Charles Macklin (?1699-1797), and Arthur Murphy (1727-1805).
Developments in poetry in the
Augustan age
The most outstanding poet of the age is Alexander Pope (1688-1744), whose major works include: The Rape of the Lock (1712; enlarged in 1714); a
translation of the Iliad (1715–20); a translation of the Odyssey (1725-6); The Dunciad (1728; 1743). Since his death, Pope has been in a
constant state of re-evaluation. His high artifice, strict prosody, and, at
times, the sheer cruelty of his satire were an object of derision for the Romantic poets, and it was not until the 1930s that his reputation
was revived. Pope is now considered the dominant poetic voice of his century, a
model of prosodic elegance, biting wit, and an enduring, demanding moral force.
The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad are masterpieces of the mock-epic genre.
The roots of Romanticism: 1750-1798
Robert Burns inspired many vernacular writers
across the Isles with works such as Auld Lang Syne, A Red, Red Rose and Halloween.
The second half of the 18th century is sometimes
called the "Age of Johnson". Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson,
was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a
poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson has been described as "arguably the
most distinguished man of letters in English history".] He is also the subject of "the most famous
single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). His early works include the poems "London"
and "his most impressive poem" "The Vanity of Human Wishes" (1749). Both poems are modelled on Juvenal’s satires. After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755; it had a far-reaching
effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of the
greatest single achievements of scholarship." This work brought Johnson
popularity and success. Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent British
dictionary.
19th century literature
Romanticism 1798-1837
William Blake is considered a seminal figure in
the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age
The poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757-1827) was the first of the English Romantic
poets. Largely disconnected from the major streams of the literature of the
time, Blake was generally unrecognised during his lifetime, but is now
considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts
of the Romantic Age. Considered mad by contemporaries
for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for
his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical
undercurrents within his work. Among his most important works are Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) "and profound and
difficult 'prophecies' " such as Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), The First
Book of Urizen (1794), Milton (1804–?11), and "Jerusalem: the Emanation of the
Giant Albion" (1804–?20).
The
second generation of Romantic poets include George Gordon Byron. They flouted social convention and often used poetry as a political
voice. Amongst Lord Byron's best-known works are the brief poems "She Walks in Beauty" and "So, we'll go no more a roving'", in addition to narrative poems Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan. Another
key poet of the Romantic movement was John Keats, whose poems such as "Ode to a Nightingale" expound on his aesthetic theory of negative capability, and remain among the most celebrated by any author of the period.
"To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known
as "Keats's 1819 odes", poems characterized by sensual imagery. In 1882, Swinburne wrote in
the Encyclopædia Britannica that "the Ode to a Nightingale, is one of the final masterpieces
of human work in all time and for all ages". More recently critic Helen Vendler stated
the odes "are a group of works in which the English language find ultimate
embodiment".
THE ARTS
Hollywood films with a British dimension have had
enormous worldwide commercial success. Many of the highest-grossing films
worldwide of all time have a British historical, cultural or creative theme.
Films based on British historical events; RMS Titanic, Piracy in the Caribbean, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Great Escape, historical people; William Wallace, Lawrence of Arabia, King Arthur, Elizabeth I, British stories; The Lord of
the Rings, Harry Potter, James Bond, The
Chronicles of Narnia, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, A Christmas Carol, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Treasure Island, The War of
the Worlds among many others, while British video game Tomb Raider featuring English archaeologist Lara Croft, has been made into feature films. British influence
can also be seen with the 'English Cycle' of Disney
animated films, which feature Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword in
the Stone, The Rescuers and Winnie the Pooh.
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