Notes
Notes on English Literature
Every age, every major writer, every set text — arranged in the order the subject actually developed, so nothing floats free.
How these notes are arranged
Not alphabetically. English literature only makes sense in sequence — the Metaphysicals are a reaction to something, the Romantics are a reaction to that reaction, and the Modernists break a form that had to exist first. So the notes are arranged by age, and within each age by genre and then by individual text.
If you are preparing for a specific examination, start from your exam page instead and follow the links from there — it will filter this same material down to your syllabus and skip what you do not need.
By age
Eight periods, from the earliest surviving English verse to writing being published now. Each page covers the historical background, the dominant forms, the major writers and the points that recur in question papers. Entries become clickable as each one is written — tell me which you need first and it moves up the queue.
Old English
Beowulf · Caedmon · Cynewulf
Age of Chaucer
Chaucer · Langland · Gower
Renaissance
Shakespeare · Marlowe · Donne
Neoclassical
Dryden · Pope · Swift
Romantic
Wordsworth · Keats · Shelley
Victorian
Dickens · Tennyson · Hardy
Modern
Eliot · Woolf · Joyce
Postmodern
Beckett · Pinter · Rushdie
Text and topic notes
Individual works and topics, each one written to be read in a single sitting. The tag tells you the language the note is written in — Hinglish for narrative and explanation, English where the examination will use precise critical vocabulary. Titles become clickable as each note is published.
Metaphysical Poetry — Donne to Marvell
British Literature · 12 min read
The Waste Land — Section-wise Analysis
Modern Poetry · 15 min read
Aristotle's Poetics — Tragedy & Catharsis
Criticism & Theory · 10 min read
The Wife of Bath's Tale — Full Summary
Age of Chaucer · 11 min read
Paradise Lost, Book 1 — Summary & Analysis
Puritan Age · 13 min read
Doctor Faustus — Themes & Important Lines
Renaissance Drama · 12 min read
Ode to a Nightingale — Stanza-wise Explanation
Romantic Poetry · 9 min read
Waiting for Godot — Absurd Theatre Explained
Postmodern Drama · 10 min read
How to actually use a note
Reading a note once and feeling that you understood it is the most common way students waste an evening. Understanding and remembering are different processes, and only the second one is tested.
- Read the primary text first if you possibly can. Even a rough reading of the poem or the play makes the note three times more useful, because you will be recognising things instead of memorising them.
- Close the page and write the argument from memory. Four or five lines, in your own words. Whatever you cannot write down, you have not learned yet.
- Keep one notebook of your own condensed points, not a copy of the note. In the last week before the examination you will revise your notebook, not this website.
- Return after three days, then after two weeks. Two short revisits beat one long study session, and this is the single cheapest improvement most candidates can make.
If a note is unclear, or you think something in it is wrong, say so — the contact details are here.