ENGLISH CULTURE-ENGLISH LITERATURE

ENGLISH CULTURE



The concept of Culture can be defined in many aspects like history and literature, art galleries and museums, food or music and education. It’s the way of life of a group of people. This includes the accumulated habits, attitudes, beliefs, customs, arts, food, dress, what they wear, how they govern themselves, rituals, etc. The total set of learned activities that identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.

Attractions
There are an estimated 6,400 visitor attractions in the United Kingdom. This includes Museums and galleries like National Gallery and British Museum, Historical houses and monuments like Tower of London and Windsor Castle, Churches and cathedrals like St Paul's Cathedral and Other Tourist Attractions like London Eye.

Education
The United Kingdom contains some of the world's leading seats of higher education, such as the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, along with Imperial College, the London School of Economics and University College of the University of London.

Science
The United Kingdom has played a significant role in the development of science. It has produced innumerable scholars, scientists and engineers including Sir Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, Adam Smith, James Clerk Maxwell. The nation is credited with numerous scientific discoveries including hydrogen, oxygen, gravity, the electron, the structure of DNA, human evolution and natural selection and inventions including the chronometer, television, the modern bicycle, the electronic computer and the later development of the World Wide Web.

Engineering and innovation
As birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the UK was home to many significant inventors during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Famous British engineers include Isambard Kingdom Brunel, best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series of famous steamships, and numerous important bridges.

Cinema
The United Kingdom has been influential in the development of cinema. Famous films include the Harry Potter, Star Wars and James Bond series which, although made by American studios, used British source materials, locations, actors and filming crew.

Music
Notable composers from the United Kingdom have included Henry Purcell, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Arthur Sullivan. London remains one of the major classical music capitals of the world. The UK was, with the US, one of the two main contributors to the development of rock music, and the UK has provided some of the world's most famous rock bands including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

Sport
A number of major sports originated in the United Kingdom, including football, rugby, cricket and golf. The UK is home to many world-renowned football clubs, such as Arsenal, Chelsea, Newcastle United, Liverpool, and Manchester United in England, and Celtic and Rangers in Scotland. British teams are generally successful in European Competitions and several have become European Cup/UEFA Champions League winners: Liverpool (five times), Manchester United (twice), Nottingham Forest (twice), Aston Villa, and Celtic.

Religion
Christianity was first introduced to Britain by the Romans. The UK still is a predominantly Christian country. Other large Christian groups include the Methodists and the Baptists. There are also growing Evangelical or Pentecostal churches, many of which have flourished with immigration from around the Commonwealth of Nations and beyond. Modern day Britain has always had a minority of other religions such as Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, Judaism.

ENGLISH LITERATURE


 

The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S. Naipaul is Trinidadian. In other words, English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world.

The first works in English, written in the Anglo-Saxon dialect now called Old English, appeared in the early Middle Ages. In the late medieval period (1200-1500), the ideals of courtly love entered England and authors began to write romances, either in verse or prose. Especially popular were tales of King Arthur and his court. England's first great author, Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 -1400), wrote in Middle English. His most famous work is The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories in a variety of genres.

The poetry, drama, and prose produced under both Queen Elizabeth I and King James I constitute what is today labelled as Early modern (or Renaissance). Th'e Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the field of drama. The Italian Renaissance had rediscovered the ancient Greek and Roman theatre, which was then beginning to evolve apart from the old mystery and miracle plays of the Middle Ages.

Th'e Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the field of drama. The Italian Renaissance had rediscovered the ancient Greek and Roman theatre, which was then beginning to evolve apart from the old mystery and miracle plays of the Middle Ages. William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as yet unsurpassed. The sonnet was introduced into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. Poems intended to be set to music as songs, such as by Thomas Campion, became popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in households.

After Shakespeare's death, the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson was the leading literary figure of the Jacobean era. Others who followed Jonson's style include Beaumont and Fletcher, who wrote the brilliant comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Another popular style of theatre during Jacobean times was the revenge play, popularized by John Webster and Thomas Kyd.

Restoration literature includes both Paradise Lost and the Earl of Rochester's Sodom, the high spirited sexual comedy of The Country Wife and the moral wisdom of Pilgrim's Progress. The largest and most important poetic form of the era was satire. In general, publication of satire was done anonymously.

In Romanticism, poets rediscover the beauty and value of nature. Mother earth is seen as the only source of wisdom, the only solution to the ugliness caused by machines of industrialism. The Romantic poets includes Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats. The most popular novelist of the era was Sir Walter Scott, whose grand historical romances inspired a generation of painters, composers, and writers throughout Europe. By contrast, Jane Austen wrote novels about the life of the landed gentry, seen from a woman's point of view, and wryly focused on practical social issues, especially marriage and money.

The movement known as English literary modernism grew out of a general sense of disillusionment with Victorian era attitudes of certainty, conservatism, and objective truth. Although literary modernism reached its peak between the First and Second World Wars, the earliest examples of the movement's attitudes appeared in the mid to late nineteenth century. Important novelists between the World Wars included Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot. Perhaps the most contentiously important figure in the development of the modernist movement was the American poet Ezra Pound. Other notable writers of the period included W. H. Auden, Vladimir Nabokov, William Carlos Williams, Ralph Ellison, Dylan Thomas, R.S. Thomas and Graham Greene.

 

 
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ENGLISH SOUNDS
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
 
VOCABULARY
 
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