Title/author/year

W.Shakespeare
The Sonnets
(1609)

W.Shakespeare
Romeo&Juliet
(mid1590)
W. Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
(1599)

W.Shakespeare
Hamlet (1603)

W.Shakespeare
A midsummer's..
(1600)

Canon

Renaissance,
Elizabethan age,
Humanism

Renaissance,
Elizabethan age,
Humanism

Renaissance,
Elizabethan age,
Humanism

Renaissance,
Elizabethan age,
Humanism

Genre

Historical context

Narrative

sonnet

Elizabeth I (1558*18- young

1603), James I (1603- man, 130 - dark
1625)
lady

drama
tragedy

point of view of
Elizabeth I (1558Romeo and
1603), James I (1603Juliet,
1625)
occasionally
servants'

tragedy

drama
revenge
tragedy

Elizabeth I (15581603), James I (16031625)

Elizabeth I (15581603), James I (16031625)

Renaissance,
drama
Elizabeth I (1558Elizabethan age,
comedy
1603), James I (1603Humanism
fantasy farce
1625)

Setting

14th-15th c,
Verona and
Mantua

Themes
love, 130 mocks
the Petrarchan
metaphors-love
don't need
conceits to be real
forcefulness of
love, love as cause
of violence, indiv.
Vs. Society
anxiety of
Elizabethan
England over
succession of
leadership

late medieval indecision, son and

period,
mother,
Denmark
impossibility of
certanty, mystery
of death, nation as
a diseased body

elements of friendship,treacher
Ancient Greece y, difficulty of love,
and
magic, nature of
Renaissance
dreams, fantasyEngland
reality

Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe
(1719)

Neoclassical
Augustan A.
Enlightment
Classicism

Title/author/year

Canon

Jonathan Swift
Gulliver's Travels
(1726)

Neoclassical
Augustan A.
Enlightment
Classicism

btw 19th &20th

Jane Austen
c., btw
Pride and Prejudice Classicism &
(1813)
Romanticism

Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights
(1847)

Victorian era

dissenters, the
self-awareness,
adventure
restoration,
1st & 3rd person 1659-1694
colonial attitudes,
novel novel of colonialism, glorious
fictional
York, Brazil,
fear, human
isolation
revolution England in autobiography Trinidad island condition,money,
1719
industrialization

Genre

Historical context

Narrative

Setting

Themes

novel satire

England in the 1720s,

unreliable
England,
the Restoration, the
author, 1st
Lilliput,
Glorious Revolution
person narrator,
Blefescu,
and War of Spanish
ppl as they
Brobdingnag,
Succession, Ireland,
appear to him Houyhnhnms
the Enlightnment

indiv. Vs. Society,

limits of human
understanding,

comedy of
manners,
novel of
manners

J.A.'s England, the

3rd pers
French Revolution and
omniscient
Napoleonic Wars,
n.,Elizabeth's
English Regency
point of viewsociety
indirect speech

1797-1815
Napoleoniv
Wars,
Longbourn

marriage, love,
reputation, class,
pride, prejudice
and tolerance,
change and
transformation

The Victorian Age

(1837-1901), Illness,
Death, Funeral
Lockwood,
gothic novel,
Customs, Literary
Nelly(not an
realist fiction
traditions and
omniscient n.)
romanticism,
Inheritance and social
position

1770-1802
Yorkshire
moors:
Wuthering
Heights,
Thruschross
Grange

the
destructiveness of
love that never
changes, the
precariousness of
social class,
revenge, violence
and cruelty,
supernatural

Charles Dickens
Great Expectations
(1861)

Victorian era

social
criticism
bildungsroma
n,
autobiographi
cal fiction

novella, fairy
Lewis Carroll
tale,
children's
Alice's Adventures Victorian period
fiction, satire,
in W. (1865)
allegory

Title/author/year
Henry James
The portrait of a
Lady (1881)
Thomas Hardy
Tess of the
D'Urbervilles
(1891)

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
(1902)

Canon

Genre

industrialization,

1st pers n., n.

+protagonist=Pi
p

the Victorian Age in

England, Victorian
views of childhood,
the early
development of
children's literature

3rd pers,
occasionally 1st
and 2nd pers,
anonymous
narrator

Historical context

Narrative

Setting

Themes

limited point of
view, through
the eyes of
Isabel

Albany, NY,
England,
Florence

Americans living in
Europe, social and
emotional
maturation

1880s-1890s
Wessex,SW
England

social ostracism,
men dominating
women,
fate&chance,
God&religion, sex

Realistic period
psychological
claimed by both
Enlightenment ideas
realism
AM&ENG

Victorian
Realism

20th c.,
Edwardian
period,
Modernism

Darwin & Social

Darwinism,Industrializ omniscient, obj.
regional,
ation and Rural
3rd pers n.
tragic novel
England, Women in
Anonymous n.
Victorian Society

mid19th c.,
Kent and
London

ambition, desire of
self-improv.,guilt,
innocence,
maturation,
affection, loyalty,
victim,
victimization

tragic inevitable
victorian era, loss of childhood
England,
innocence, life as a
Wonerland
meaningless
puzzle

novella,
1st narrator
1876-1892,
colonial lit.,
uses 1st pers pl, Thames River,
frame story,
Marlow
Brussels,
adventure European presence in narrates in the
Congo
Africa, the Ivory
tale, romantic
1st pers. Sg.
Trade, Belgian
traits:symboli
atrocities in the
sm,
Congo
supernatural,
heroism

civilisation,
hypocrasy of
Colonialism,
madness as a
result of
imperialism,
absurity of evil,
race&racism,
violence, moral
corruption

James Joyce
A portrait of the
Artist as a Young
Man (1916)

Modernism

E.M. Forster
A passage to India
(1924)

Modernism

Title/author/year

Canon

Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway
(1925)

William Golding
Lord of the flies
(1954)

Modernism
stream of
consciousness

Contemporary
Age

bildungsroma
n,
3rd pers
autobiographi Joyce's Ireland: the
narrator,
cal novel, use historical and political
Stephen
of stream of
context, literary
Dedalus' point
consciousnes
context
of view
s

psychological Forster's England, the omniscient 3rd

novel
Indian context
pers n.,

Genre

modernist,
formalist,
feminist

novel,
allegory

Historical context

Narrative

anonymous
omniscient n.,
point of view
changes
the new modern era, constantly:strea
WWI
m of conscio.,
free indirect
discourse 3rd

1882-1903,
Dublin and
surrounding
area

development of
individual
consciousness,
religion extremism,
the role of the
artist, the need of
Irish autonomy

1910s-1920s,
India:
Chandrapore,
Mau

difficulty of ENGIND friendship,,

unity of all living
things, muddle of
India, negligence
of British colonial
gov.

Setting

Themes

mid June 1923,

flashbacks
fragmentary post
Bourton
WWI England,
summer 1890,
consiousness,
London
disillusionment
neighborhood with the British E.
of Westminster
Fear of death,
threat of opression

Golding and WWII, the anonymous 3rd

geography of a
pers n.,
near future, a
tropical island,
omniscient,
deserted
political climate ofthe
character's
tropical island
1950s
inner thoughts

civilisation vs.
Barbarism, loss of
innocence, innate
human evil, good
and evil,
reason&emotion,
morals&morality

John Fowles
The French
Lieutenant's
Woman (1969)

Between
modernism and
postmodernism

Victorian
setting,
metafiction
techniques

Existentialism, the
New Woman

narrator has a
double vision
and double
voice

Lyme Regis,
Exeter

social constraints,
freedom

Motifs

Symbols

light/dark
imagery,
opposite
points of
view

poison,
thumbbiting,
Queen Mab

incestuous the ghost,

desire,
Yorick's
death and
skull
suicide,
darkness
and the
supernatura
l, misogyny
love out of
balance,
contrast

Theseus
and
Hippolytaorder,
stability

counting,
measuring,
eating

footprint,
cross,
crusoe's
bower

Motifs

Symbols

LilliputiansB
robdingnagi
foreign
ans,
languages,
Laputans,
clothing
Houyhnhnm
s

courtship,
journeys

Pemberley

doubles,
repetition,
the moors,
conflict btw
ghosts
nature and
culture

crime,
criminalitydi
sappoin.
Expect.,
weatherdramatic
events,
doubles

stopped
clocks, obj
relating to
crime and
guilt, Satis
House, Joe,
marsh mist

dream,
subversion,
garden,
curious,
mushroom
nonsense,
confusing

Motifs

Symbols

birds, book
Prince,
of Genesis, d'Urberville
variant
family
names
vault, Brazil
darkness,
hyperbolic
language,
inability to
find words,
upriver vs.
Downriver

rivers, fog,
women,sev
ered heads,
maps,
''whited
sepulchre",
man trying
to fll bucket
with hole in
it

music,
flight,
prayers,
secular
songs, Latin
phrases

green&mar
oon, Emma,
the girl on
the beach

echo,
the Marabar
EasternCaves, the
Western
green bird,
architect.,
the wasp
Godbole's
song

Motifs

Symbols

the Prime
time,
minister,
shakespear
weapons,
e,trees&flo
old woman
wers, waves
in the
& water
window
biblical
parallels,
natural
beauty,
bullying of
the weak by
the strong

conch shell,
Piggy's
glasses,
signal fire,
the beast,
Lord of
Flies,boys