British Literature Suggestions

For the most part, I think we count anything in the Isles as British Lit. However, Joyce didn't write fantasy, and I happen to hate his work with a bloody passion. So NO.

Otherwise, Gawain is a good suggestion and I meant to put it in there (I'm sick, so my brain isn't firing on all cylinders right now).

The Dream of the Rood is also a good one, but I don't think it will replace "The Monsters and the Critics" (cause that kind of goes along with Beowulf) but we'll read that, too.

I am not going to subject my poor sophomores to Paradise Lost. Not even a little bit of it. But I'll look into the folklore/fairy tales from this era and see if I can find anything interesting.

Hm . . . Keats. Maybe I'll make them read "Ode to Psyche." I like that one.

Harry Potter is a BIG maybe. As in, I've run out of stuff to do and it's the end of the semester, so here, stop thinking for a week. It will probably get cut for time, just like The King of Elfland's Daughter.
 
Keanoite said:
James Joyce is Irish Literature, BB's course is British Lit.
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Yeah, Irish counts as British.

Blondie Bear said:
However, Joyce didn't write fantasy, and I happen to hate his work with a bloody passion. So NO.
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Ulysses was an adaptation of the Odyssey, which was, I would say, rather fantastic. However, it's fine if you don't like him.
 
Kean
Kean
No it doesn't.
Blondie Bear said:
For the most part, I think we count anything in the Isles as British Lit. However, Joyce didn't write fantasy, and I happen to hate his work with a bloody passion. So NO.
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That lumping together of British and Irish literature only lasts until the turn of the last cenurty wirters like Joyce, Yeats, Synge, O'Connor, Shaw, Behan, Beckett etc are never considered anything other than Irish.
 
Okay. We studied them in my British Lit classes, but since I don't plan to put any of them in my class, it's a moot point. 😀
 
Keanoite said:
That lumping together of British and Irish literature only lasts until the turn of the last cenurty wirters like Joyce, Yeats, Synge, O'Connor, Shaw, Behan, Beckett etc are never considered anything other than Irish.
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Sorry, I always thought he was Northern Irish, turns out he wasn't.
 
I love reading new books and am alas, not british. 🙁 With that being said are there any books that are of British origin that anyone would reccommend?
 
B
Blondie Bear
I recommend everything I've posted that I'll be teaching and absolutely nothing that JCC says! :D (kidding! mostly)
One of the early works. He was Lord Byron's employee. It is said that B. Stoker used some of his ideas. The authors name is Polidori, the title of the book is VAMPYRE.
Once again getting a copy may be awkward, but if you can I'd recommend it. It was first written in 1819.

This is one situation where you don't want to mix up the fiction and non-fiction terminology's.
 
If you're talking fantasy, you can't miss Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1760something), which is considered to be the first Gothic Novel in english literature. You could even count it as being Restoration, although technically, gothic novels are Romantic. Also, can I suggest William Blake? I don't know what it was but his Marriage of Heaven and Hell is fascinating and strange, and not your average novel. In fact, it's not a novel at all. You could ask very tricky questions about it ^^
 
For Gothic I have Dracula and Frankenstein, but the Castle of Otranto isn't a bad suggestion. I haven't read it, though, so I probably won't use it. Blake, though, absolutely. I'll have to dig through some of my old anthologies and see what I want them to read by him.
 
I've read Castle of Otranto, it is fantastic, definitely the best of Gothic literature, though Gothic literature was an awful genre of melodramatic babble.
 
B
Blondie Bear
It really, really was.
I
itsxpaperdoll
Yeah, the Castle of Otranto is cool. I wrote an essay about Walpole (don't ask me why). He was a very funny person, you know?
I tried to read The Mysteries of Udopho once and COULD NOT get through it. I figured if I HAD to pick a gothic novel, I'd make them read Northanger Abbey, cause it's at least funny.
 
Okay, guys, here's what I have now. Questions? Comments?
(The stuff in parentheses is just where I plan to get the version they'll be reading; nothing really important to this discussion.)

The Anglo-Saxon Period (449-1066)
Beowulf (part of it)
“The Monsters and the Critics” – Tolkien
“The Dream of the Rood”

The Medieval (Middle English) Period (1066-1485)
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” – Chaucer
Le Morte D'Arthur (pieces of it)
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”

The Renaissance (1485-1660)
A Midsummer Night's Dream – Shakespeare (play)
The Faerie Queene - Spenser

The Restoration (1660-1798)
Blake – “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” (Mellor anthology)

Romanticism (1798-1832)
Coleridge – “Christabel” and “Kubla Khan” (Mellor anthology)
Keats – “Ode to Psyche” (Mellor anthology)

Victorian (1832-1900)
“Dracula’s Guest” – Bram Stoker (SFF anthology)
The Jungle Book – Kipling (novel)
“The Gray Wolf” – MacDonald (SFF anthology)
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells (novel)
“The Lotus Eaters” – Tennyson (Mermin anthology)
“Jabberwocky” – Carroll (Mermin anthology)

Modern (1900-1980)
“The Strange Drug of Dr. Caber” – Dunsany (SFF anthology)
The Hobbit – Tolkien (novel)
The Magician's Nephew – Lewis (novel)

Contemporary (1980 to now)
Stardust – Gaiman (novel)
The Hero and the Crown – McKinley (novel)
 
Kean
Kean
Nice...The Wife of Bath's Tale karma
I LOVE HG Wells', 'The Time Machine'!!! The movie is decent too. YAY Blondie!
 
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