British and American literature (Anglický jazyk)

British and American literature (Anglický jazyk) 

Téma: British and American literature

Predmet: Angličtina

BRITISH LITERATURE

1. Prewar literature

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

• Stratford upon Avon
• Playwriter, poet, actor
• Wife – Anna Hathaway, 4 children
• Left to London -> company Lord Chamberlains´s men -> Theather Globe
• Comedies, tragedies, historical plays and sonnets
• Comedies – As you like it, The Winter’s Tale, The Two Gentlemen of Verona,..
• Tragedies – Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othelo
• Historical plays – Richard II., Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI

Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870)

– writer, critical realism

– Oliwer Twist – life of poor boy and society in England in 19th century

– David Copperfield, Little Dorit

1. Interwar literature

James Joyce (1882 – 1941)

• novelist, short story writer, and poet
• Ulysses – extensive experimental novel, one day of jewish publicist Bloom Dublin
• Dubliners
• A portrait of the artist as a young man

Virginia Wolf (1882 – 1941)

• Writer, essayist
• Her experimental creation affected evolution of modern literature
• Mrs Dalloway – a fictionalhigh-society woman in post–First World War England
• Jacob´s room
• Orlando
• Night and day

1. Postwar literature

Joanne Rowling (1965)

• Novelist, film producer, screenwriter
• Pseudonym Robert Galbraith
• Sold more than 480 milion copies
• Harry Potter (the Philosopher’s stone, the Chamber of Secrets, the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Goblet of Fire, the Order of the Phoenix, the Half-Blood Prince, the Deathley Hallows)
• Young wizard Harry Potter and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy
• Related works: Fantastics Beats and Where to Find Them, The Tales of Beedle the Bard

John R. R. Tolkien (1892 – 1973)

• writer, poet,philologist, and university professor
• The Lord of the Rings – epic high-fantasy novel
• The Hobbits – a fictional, diminutive,humanoid race who inhabit the lands of Middle-earth

AMERICAN LITERATURE

1. Prewar literature

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

• Poet, essayist and the founder of the detective story
• The Raven – his best poem, students who has lost his love asks, if he will evermeet her again. His doubí are underlined by the raven’s repetition „Nevermore“
• The Pit and the Pendelum

Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

• Famous humorist, journalist and writer
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huсkleberry Finn – describe the adventures of his boyhood

1. Interwar literature

Ernest Hemingway (1898 – 1962) 

• writer, the Lost Generation
• Nobel prize for literature (1954)
• The Old Man and the Sea – novel about an old fisherman and Santiago, struggling with a huge marlin
• For Whom the Bell Tolls

Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940)

• Writer, novelist and scenarist
• Speaker of american golden teenagers
• The Great Gatsby – best novel, the young and mysterious millionaireJay Gatsby and his passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan.

1. Postwar literature

William Styron (1925 – 2006)

• Novelist and essayist
• Themes about question of faults and conscience
• Sophie’s choice – psychological novel about problems of nazis concentracion camps and conditions of human life

Dan Brown (1964)

• Novelist, journalist, writer, teacher
• Themes of novels are keys, symbols, codes, crypthography or conspiracy theories
• 52 languages, Three films
• The Da Vinci Code – bestselling novel
• Angels and Demons
• The Lost Symbol
• Inferno