Terminology

Question 1

What is literature?

Answer 1

• no fixed definition of literature
• understanding of literature as
  imaginative, creative, original writing came in to being at the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th century → does not imply invention of literature, but the invention of a theoretical concept
• literature as a cultural construct

Question 2

The canon of English Literature -

Answer 2

What is literary canon? → group certain works of art/literature that belong to a national context or any other context

Which texts are part of the canon of English Literature and which are not? → canonisation difficult

• up to 1970s/80s was judged by predominantly white male scholars
• rise of Shakespeare studies → happens in the 19th century, Shakespeare fashioned as the
  national English poet → importance of spreading the English culture in the Empire → ‘substitute’ to the Bible, not only Christianity brought to the Empire but also English culture

Question 3

Literary Periods

Answer 3

5th C -1066 Old English period
1066-1485 Middle English period
1485-1660 Early Modern period
1660-1780 Eighteenth-century literature / Enlightenment
1780-1830 Romanticism
1830-1914 Nineteenth-century literature / Victorian period
1914-1945 Modernism
1945-1989 Post-War / Postmodern literature
>1989 contemporary literature