AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE INTRODUCTION I-WHAT LITERATURE IS THE word literature is used in two distinct senses: (a) Its first and literal meaning is-something written, from the Latin, litera, a letter of the alphabet, an inscription, a writing, a manuscript, a book, etc. In this general sense the literature of a nation includes all the books it has produced, without respect to subject or excellence. (b) By literature, in its secondary and more restricted sense, we mean one especial kind of written composition, the character of which may be indicated but not strictly defined. Works of literature, in this narrower sense, aim to please, to awaken thought, feeling, or imagination, rather than to instruct: they are addressed to no special class of readers, and they possess an excellence of expression which entitles them to rank as works of art. Like painting, music, or sculpture, literature is concerned mainly with feelings, and, in this, is distinguished from the books of knowledge, or science, whose first object is to teach facts.* Much that is literature in the strictest sense does deal with facts, whether of history or of science, but it uses these facts to arouse the feelings or to please the imagination. It takes them out of a special department of knowledge and makes them of universal interest, and it expresses them in a form of permanent beauty or value. Shakespeare's historical plays, Carlyle's French Revolution, or an essay of De Quincey or Macaulay, while they tell us facts, fulfill these conditions, and are strictly literature; and, in general, poetry, history, biographies, novels, essays, and the like, may be included in this class. It is in this stricter sense that we shall hereafter use the word. The permanence and universality of literature. Literature is occupied chiefly with the great elementary feelings and passions which are a necessary part of human nature. Such feelings as worship, love, hate, fear, ambition, remorse, jealousy, are common to man, and, through them, men separated by education or surroundings are able to sympathize with or understand each other. Literature, expressing and appealing to such feelings, shares in their permanence and universality. In the poetry of the Persian Omar Khayyám, of the Greek Anacreon, of * " To ascertain and communicate facts is the object of science; to quicken our life into a higher consciousness through the feelings is the function of art."- 'The Scientific Movement and Literature," in Studies in Literature, p. 85, by Edward Dowden. This distinction between literature and science was laid down in a famous passage of De Quincey : "There is first, the literature of knowledge (i. e., science), and the Roman Horace, and of the English Robert Herrick, we find the same familiar mood. Each is troubled by the pathetic shortness of human life, each shrinks from the thought of death and tries to dispel it with the half-despairing resolve to enjoy life while it lasts. Neither time nor place prevents us from entering into the work of each of these poets, in many respects so widely separated, because they express alike a common human feeling, which we can understand through imagination or experi ence. So the Edipus at Colonus of Sophocles and the King Lear of Shakespeare treat of the same elementary feeling, the love between parent and child, and, while that feeling lasts, those immortal portrayals of it will be admired and understood. Literary Finally, works of literature have a beauty, power, and individuality of expression which helps to make them both permanent and universal. Not only is there a value in the thought style. or feelings contained in a literary masterpiece, there is a distinct and added value in the special form in which thought and feeling have been embodied. Each great writer has his own style or manner, his characteristic way of addressing us. This style is the expression of his personal charac secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of the second is to move. The first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure or sympathy." V. this whole passage in the essay on Alexander Pope. ter; we learn to know him by it, as we recognize a man by his gait or by the tones of his voice. This personal element is another distinguishing feature of literature, and further separates it from science. The study of English literature. Through his books a great writer expresses a part of his inner self. He is impelled to give us, as best he can through written words, the most that he has gained by his experience. In the poet's verse we read the lesson he has learned from living; it is warm and alive for all time with his sorrows, exaltations, hopes, or despairs. Literature is born of life, and it is in this sense that Milton calls a good book "the precious life-blood of a master-spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life bey rd life.”* Thus we learn to look on the works of each great writer as an actual part of a human life, mysteriously preserved and communicated to us. But we must go farther and realize that each nation as well as each individual has a distinct character and a continuous inner life; that, in generation after generation, men and women have lived who have embodied in literature not their own souls merely, but some deep thought or feeling of their time and nation. Often thousands feel dumbly what the great writer alone is able to express. Accordingly literature is not merely personal, but national. The character of a nation manifested through action we commonly call its history; the character of a nation written down in its books, or throbbing in its dramas, songs, and ballads, we call its literature. For more than *Milton's Areopagitica. twelve hundred years the English people has been revealing its life, and its way of looking at life, through its books; to study English literature is, therefore, to study one great expression of the character and historic development of the English race. II-THE GREAT DIVISIONS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE When we look at this life of the English race as expressed in literature through more than twelve centuries, we find that it possesses marked characteristics at certain periods. For centuries the mind of England is stimulated and influenced by a foreign. civilization. The nation and its literature, like the individual life, pass through moods of faith and passion, of frivolity and unbelief. English literature, reflecting or expressing these varied influences or changing moods, naturally divides itself into the following four great periods of development: 1. The Period of Preparation; 670 to about 1400. 2. The Period of Italian Influence; about 1400 to 1660, 3. The Period of French Influence; 1660 to about 1750. 4. The Modern English Period; since about 1750. These divisions must be broadly laid down at the start, although their meaning will become plainer as we advance. I. THE PERIOD OF PREPARATION. FROM 670 TO ABOUT 1400 During this period England made for her use a national language. During this time, also, the vari |