Ebook: The Teaching Company - The Great Courses - Classics of British Literature

This course could as properly be titled A History of British Literature, in that it is sequential and essentially “historical”—historical, that is, in two senses. It follows the trajectory of literary achievement from earliest to latest times in a progressive line, and its basic presupposition is that literature cannot be (and should not be) examined outside the historical circumstances in which it came into being. Of course, great literature is timeless. That is one of the main connotations of the word classic. Shakespeare, for example, is “for all ages.” But it is vital, while appreciating that universal, transcendent, and classic quality of literature, to appreciate, as fully as one can, the conditions that gave birth to these works of literature, to reinsert them, that is, back into history. This is one of the principal aims of this “historical” course. Literature, as an object of study, is dependent on texts—vehicles that give the literary work permanence. We can understand oral literature, the pre-textual literary universe, only insofar as it has been preserved through time and ultimately inscribed. English literature (a deceptively simple term) begins with the transcription (three centuries or so after its composition) of the great Anglo-Germanic epic Beowulf. This magnificent poem (authorless, from our perspective) exemplifies one of the foundational principles of this course: namely, that we can find “classic” quality at any point along the 1,300-year arc from Beowulf to the present day. The dawn of British literature is obstructed by Anglo-Saxon—the early English dialect in which Beowulf is written. Nonetheless, enough of the essence of the work comes through in translation for us to appreciate it. There is no such obstruction with the true father of English literature (it will, alas, be some centuries before a mother appears), Geoffrey Chaucer. With Chaucer, a keynote is struck: the idea that great literature is supremely enjoyable, indeed, laugh-out-loud enjoyable, even after half a millennium. But how, given the cultural, social, and national turbulence of the 14th century could such a masterwork as The Canterbury Tales happen? To ask the question and investigate the issue is to enrich still further one’s appreciation of the work. Edmund Spenser, it is fair to say, could never have written his great chauvinistic epic The Faerie Queene did he not have Chaucer on which to build. Likewise, Shakespeare could not have created the plays that are commonly regarded as the highest ever achievement of British literature did he not have Chaucer, Spenser, the early “Miracle” street drama, and above all, Christopher Marlowe from which to work. Classic literature will always strike us as unique, but it has its roots in earlier literature, and it responds, livingly, to the world around it. Shakespeare’s drama, for example, is as much a product of London, the London stage, and the extraordinary florescence of the English language as it is the sole creation of a glover’s son in the provincial town of Stratford. The early modern period, a period in which England (an insignificant, small, cold island off mainland Europe) was establishing itself as a world power, saw the birth (or renaissance) of a world-significant literature. The creators of this literature fondly believed that it could rival the achievements of ancient Rome and Greece and excel the current achievements of Italy and France. Jewels in the English Renaissance literary crown feature the King James Bible (to this day, the most read work of English literature); the work of the so-called Metaphysical poets, who raised wit to hitherto unscaled heights; and Milton’s supreme religious epic, justifying the “ways of God to men,” Paradise Lost. For this poem, Milton created a diction that is both idiosyncratic and artistically necessary. Paradise Lost exemplifies another basic tenet of the course, that we must labor (pleasurable labor that is) to read these works on their own terms.