Overview

English Literature: From Romanticism to Postmodernism is an anthology of 24 essays of varying length and complexity arranged to provide readers with an impression of literary theory as it has evolved from the Romantic period (1790s to the 1850s) through to the post-modern period (roughly defined as peaking in the 1960s and 1970s). In between lie the movements of Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and more. Through the contexts of Morality, Gender, Identity, Conflict and Social Awareness, these essays seek to enlighten the reader on the influences and techniques of some of the most highly regarded and critically renowned novels, plays and poetry. The works discussed feature Wordsworth's Book First of The Prelude, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Emile Zola's Germinal, Henry James' Portrait of a Lady, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Anton Chekov's The Cherry Orchard, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and the poetry of Edward Thomas, Walter de la Mare, W.H.Auden, Allen Ginsberg, and Seamus Heaney. Also discussed are the intricate debates about the meaning and function of Literature as perceived by critics, such as Walter Scott, George Henry Lewes, Walter Pater, Walter Besant, Sally Shuttleworth, Virginia Woolf, Michael H. Whitworth and Kathryn N. Benzel. This in an excellent introduction for all those seeking to study literature of the past two centuries. Also includes 3 bonus essays on Shakespeare's Henry V, Euripides' Medea, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract.