[Music] hello everyone let me welcome you all to the first lecture of the course the history of English language and literature at the outset this being the first session it's very important to give an overview of the course this course is spread over 12 weeks and we may have 30 hours of teaching involved in this and we may also introduce you to the objectives of this course so the intention speaker more clear the first objective is to introduce the learners to the foundations of English language and literature focusing on its emergence evolution and progress through different ages and periods the second one is to enable the learners to identify the key moments and events in the intellectual history of England the third one is to equip the learners to critically evaluate or analyze a text within a social historical or political context and the fourth one is to help understand the relevance of each period or era in the overall scheme of literary studies here we find that some of the concepts become very important in underlying the objectives of this course in that sense we shall be focusing on four major elements the foundations the intellectual history of the nation the context and the relevance so as and when we progress in each session you may also notice that most of the discussions will be highlighting these four major aspects which would also form and refine the understanding of literary history in general and before we move on it's also important to take a look at the various texts and sources that have the charleen forming our understanding of the history of England and the history of literature in during this course so this is a range of texts from which we have drawn our material from the course we'll be focusing including the material which is available from most of the major literary histories which has been written from the early 20th century onwards in that sense we shall be highlighting a couple of texts over here the first one being the outline history of English literature by William Henry Hudson we should be following this book in order to get a framework of our understanding of history and the details at Hudson does not talk about will be supplemented through our reading of the other text and a lot of other events which Hudson does not talk about the socio-political context that are not mentioned in detailed in Hudson should all be referred from the other text and in that sense the illustrated history of English literature by Pat Rogers is also supreme importance because he gives a fairly balanced account of literary and non-literary events of the period quite simultaneously and here we also see that GM trevelyan's our work the English social history a survey of six centuries it's very important to locate our understanding of the socio-political context especially in the early centuries when our English literature and even the nation of England was getting are framed so overall this is how the course is going to be structured with the objectives in place and also drawing from the right view of sources which talk about the history of language and literature at the outset itself it's very important to make this distinction and to make you aware of what exactly we mean when we talk about English language in literature English in this course is going to be used in a very limited linguistic and JA graphic sense as Pat Rogers would put it this is going to be the literature in English of the British people so we should not be talking about the literature written in English outside this geographical centre also it's very important to highlight and the outset that this course does not engage with these other kinds of writings available in English like American literature African literature Indian writing in English Canadian literature so on and so forth so this is going to be a discussion on the English literature produced from the island of England and now about the period that this course covers this is going to be a history from wolf - wolf wolf being the first of the first available text written in Old English Bay wolf and Wolf being Virginia was the modernist writer so in a sense this connection is very important or to this course because we shall be looking at a range of texts from the earlier times onwards like takes like Beowulf which do not even have a proper or Teleca the outer is anonymous and from then onwards we should be moving to the modern and postmodern period when even the women writers begin to claim a space for themselves in the space of literature in the in terms of publications in terms of publishing in terms of dissemination of work so on and so forth so this connection and this range is very important for us to understand right if he outs it so that it will kind of set the tone for the course in the beginning and what is the significance of literary history one of the earlier historians GM Trevelyan he understands literary history as the product of the intellectual curiosity of a set of people and he even opined that intellectual curiosity is a lifeblood of any civilization keeping this in mind it's also important to figure out whether some of us find this connection between history and literature a little incongruous but let me assure you at the beginning itself that this is not an incongruous relationship that our literature literature and history shares but it's a more organic and/or more interconnected relationship so in that sense what is literary history if we go for a very simple definition it's the chronological account of books and authors talking about various influences that shape them and some of these influences could also be shaping each other and also highlighting the ways in which language and literature history and literature continue to inform each other and what is a central purpose of any literary history it is perhaps to give an account of the transformation of the literature from period to period because when we talk about a chronological account there's an inherent understanding that literature there's an inherent understanding that we are talking about our sequential order of literary and non-literary events from one set of are a means to the other so in that sense the transformation and the connection between these different are literature's these different cultures also become supremely important so this is also with this inherent understanding that there are solid interactions between different literary cultures and also that becomes very important in our understanding of the past and also in the shaping of what lies ahead that since we shall be tracing the intellectual ancestry of a particular literature which also means we shall be tracing the intellectual ancestry of a particular community or even a particular nation so what do I mean by intellectual ancestry this could be perhaps a sequential understanding of the rising growth of various movements by the schools of thoughts and ideas it could also mean the various kinds of limitations that are reflection of the popularity of particular kinds of writing it would also be the prevalent taste of our particular community or province and it can be the discussion of our predecessors and successes and the relationship between them so this intellectual ancestry is very important not just for understanding of our literary history but also for an understanding of a nation in general so it would be useful to remember that the origins of literary history in fact is also very connected to the origins of the nation-state itself and in literary history we will begin to also note and highlight this fact that each author and each kind of writing is in fact a position within the location of the nation so we would begin to see how there's an intimate connection between literary history and the general history and how one goes on to inform the other so in that sense this are the the shaping of literary history is also are quite connected with the shaping of a nation in particular and the other important feature is the and literary history is based on an idea of continuity and discontinuity is very important because when one moves from a one school of thought to the other or from literary age to the other or even from a one kind of an authority to the other there's a sense of continuity which is built in and a literary history tries to highlight this connection and and and even while we are trying to highlight this connection it's useful to remember that are the modern literary history is quite unlike the earlier kinds of prototypes of literary history is available which could include Chronicles catalogs so on and so forth the earlier catalogs and chronicles perhaps merely narrated the facts but in the later modern history's we have not merely a narration of facts but also a sense of a critical explanation available which would also give you a rationale for the continuity which is built into this a structure of literally histories and this continuity we may often know that it's not always organic it's also at times we find that historians at a later point have forcefully insured a kind of continuity so that particular literary traditions live on particular canonical structures do not get disturbed there could be many many reasons for this some of which we shall be looking at at a later point so to sum about what exactly literary history it's a chronological account of books and authors and about the various influences that shape them the influences could be a social historical political or economic and it could also be combined with the influence of individuals cultural ideals moral state tendencies of the society so on and so forth this is a connection between literary history and general history the nation is also offers supreme importance in this in that sense when we are looking at the literary history of a nation we should also be looking at the autobiography of a nation and also focusing on the literary traditions that have emerged when this understanding we move on to ask this may pertinent question what is a literary history a history of we all know that the literary history is of a particular nation a particular community and perhaps a particular set of writings which have been brought together but we free try to narrow it down a little further does it include only the history of masterworks or is only about national literature's or does it also include the subordinated groups do we talk about various genres and the hierarchies which are built in and how do we position the various socio-economic forces these many many questions inform our understanding of literary histories in general and some of these questions will also help us to critically evaluate the literary history which has been received from one generation to the other as and when we discuss this we also highlight a few ways in which we should be talking about literary history and the various aspects that define it throughout this course during the postmodern era we celebrate the death of the order in the understanding of literary history the positioning of the author is of supreme importance for example when we begin to talk about a particular author we may begin to talk about certain very mundane details including his birth family person name the occupation when he died the kind of wealth the kind of status of wealth that he enjoyed his friends and associates and also moving on to other various life events that had perhaps defined not just his personal a career but also his self now writing Korea and we should also be perhaps and one should also perhaps begin to talk about some of the very important things that become central to our understanding of literary history itself like cultural formation which went on to shape the author the politics of the period which influenced the author or maybe even things like Legion and society which are when instrumental in making in determining particular writing careers so here we begin to note that some of these aspects could be entirely personal like the friends and associates one shared or the family into which one is born that the kind of wealth estate as that one's family had so on and so forth but there are also these things like the cultural formations the politics of the period the societal formations etcetera which could perhaps be shared by more than one author so this becomes important in assigning subgroups for each author or even identifying particular forms of writing that emerged in a society in a particular aid so on and so forth so this is perhaps one of the ways in which we begin to locate the order within the literary history and there are also various aspects of a text that needs to be covered so when we talk about a text it could be a book it could be a performance it could be any kind of cultural or artistic production so when we look at the text and try to locate it within the literary history we should be looking at various of these aspects which could include issues related to genre the date and place of publication or perhaps the kind of characterization that are it involved the voice or narration in the text so on in so fourth and all of these become important in not just narrating where the text belongs to but also in our critically evaluating and critically seeing the connection between various literary traditions and also in locating the predecessor and successor of particular kinds of writing and this is another interesting aspect when we talk about literary history we should also be talking about the reception of not just although Centex but also of ideas in that sense we shall be talking about a particular authors best-known work or the kind of influences that this author or a text had on other things and maybe about the recognition value and even about the penalties that one incurred for writing a particular kind of thing when we later begin to talk about censorship of getting into longer heads with the authority of each period when we shall be talking about the various penalties as well and also about some of the works which get destructed either due to a natural calamity or even due to another political or socio-economic force so these are the various aspects that we should be looking at and we should also be looking at various modes of production of text this is very important in our understanding it could include details of authorship about the attitudes and motives it could be literary and non-literary and the mode of publication the the submissions and rejections at a particular text or an author or an idea incurred during its lifetime the rarity is features decorations of that involved that's part of production and the manuscript history especially with regard to the earlier texts from the Old English and early Middle English period this becomes important in understanding how our text had been disseminated over a period of time even before the advent of printing so these are the various aspects which we need to keep in mind when we talk about literary history is and are the particular connections to authors texts to our nation's to communities to identities so on and so forth so in the recent decades in fact there's a surge of works on literary histories and general which could be referred to him on the whole a slippery history study these are some the seminal texts that have begun to inform our ways of understanding the literary histories and also are calling for a rewriting of the existing literary histories now we come to another important aspect of literary histories which is a literary periodization so as a review progress through this course we may begin to note that our discussion is conveniently based on particular literary periods or literally ages so why are these sub segments brought into place this division in the segment's which are loosely termed as periods it's primarily for the convenience of discussion because it would be easier to clap a set of authors or a set of writings or particular modes of production in two different different segments and clearance and this periodization is also based on a general consensus so so that all of us know what we are talking about it's easier to refer to an age and immediately image of the age will come to everyone's mind that makes the discussion more lively and also the understanding is also enhanced and a curious fact about this aspect of periodization is that these are not rigorously fixed at all are there more or less arbitrary and in that sense we find many historians and many critics even arguing about the different starting points for example one could talk about the origins of English literature there are a few historians who argue that it should begin with the anglo-saxon period there are a few who identify a bay wolf as the first literary text in English but there are also a set of historians who argue that English literature cannot have any of the starting-point than that of Chaucer so in that sense there is a certain arbitrariness which allows a lot of flexibility and which also allows you tree history to remain as fascinating and as interesting as ever and the periodization is also important to ensure a sense of continuity which will enable us to understand how one period are seamlessly emerged from the other or our oath will also help us to highlight the connections between these different periods which are seemingly very different but also the understanding the transition will allow us to be aware of the various common factors and the various connections which are built into the structure and the method of classification into different periods or different segments that could also be either arbitrary or it could be based on certain factors and some of the times we find that the classification could be based on epithets from history like one could have the terms like Elizabethan age or Jacobean age or we could even classify this age loosely based on the most prominent writer of the period like Chaucer's age or the age of Shakespeare or the age of Johnson and it could also be based on a major school of thought like metaphysical poetry or at later point modernist writing post modernist affection so on and so forth so this is also this is certain Arbitron is involved in it and it could also be based on certain commonalities in certain dominant preferences so this kind of arbitral is built into it and a lack of rigid structures has also led to the emergence of various kinds of classification and various kinds of periodization but this is the loosely the the periodization which is followed in most of the dominant works on literary history in this course also will be more or less sticking to this form of utilization and highlighting the problematize sessions as and when they are required and in that sense we should be going through in that sense we shall be beginning with the Old English period through middle English period then the features of Renaissance moving on to the neoclassical period and highlighting the Romantic period through the Victorian age and then moving on to the modern and the postmodern period we'll also see here that the set of authors which seem to be more representative and more dominant compared to the others but however I would like to a highlight at this point that our discussion will not be limited to these authors who are being highlighted but the these names are being given here to show the connection and show the chronological order in which the discussion would be loosely based on this might lead us to also assume that the understanding of literary history is quite simple in the sense that the chronological account seemed to be quite clear there's a linear kind of an understanding from Beowulf to Chaucer from Chaucer to Shakespeare from Shakespeare to Milton from Milton to Wordsworth from words for the tennis and so on and so forth but the interesting thing is that this is not so linear we should not just be talking about as we had highlighted we should not just be talking about the various authors in the various works that they are produced but there's going to be a plethora of things that come into the discussion we should be talking about past sense of tradition about artistic forms about various genres about print culture about the stand points about the political opinions which inform the understanding of a text about native traditions about the Heritage's about literary reputation so there's a cue there's a vast range of topics that will inform our understanding of the seemingly linear discussion from Beowulf to the modern times so with this introduction we begin to wind up the first lecture so I also assume that you've got a clear understanding of what literary history is and how we would be going about this course using literary history as a central framework and as we move on we'll begin to look at how origins are being are created how various forms of transitions are being enable and in between our discussions of the literary and non-literary features we should also be talking about how language continues to evolve through all of these ages and how language continues to be influenced by the various aspects of literature socio-political and cultural issues so on so forth so when this we come to the end of this lecture thank you for listening and see you in the next session [Music] you