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Literature. Arts and culture in Britain

Arts and culture in Britain

Artistic and cultural life in Britain is rather rich. It passed several main stages in its development.

The Saxon King Alfred encouraged the arts and culture. The chief debt owed to him by English literature is for his translations of and commentaries on Latin works.

Art, culture and literature flowered during the reign of Elizabeth I (Elizabethan age); it was the period of English domination of the oceans. It was at this time that William Shakespeare lived.

The empire, which was very powerful under Queen Victoria, saw another cultural and artistic heyday as a result of industrialization and the expansion of international trade.

The madness of the First and Second World Wars briefly interrupted the development of culture.

Immigrants who have arrived from all parts of the Commonwealth and the world since 1945 have not only created a mixture of nations, but have also brought their cultures and habits with them.

Monuments and traces of past greatness are everywhere. There are buildings of all styles and periods. A great number of museums and galleries display precious and interesting finds from all parts of the world and from all stages in the development of nature, man and art.

London is one of the leading world centres for music, drama, opera and dance. Festivals held in towns and cities throughout the country attract much interest. Many British playwrights, composers, sculptors, painters, writers, actors, singers and dancers are known all over the world.

The British Council promotes knowledge of British culture and literature overseas. It organizes British participation in international exhibitions and encourages professional interchange in all cultural fields between Britain and other countries.

 

In 2009 the British Social Attitudes Survey found that watching television remains Britain’s most common leisure activity, with 90% of population watching several times a week. Although the British watch TV a lot, they are nonetheless enthusiastic readers. Moreover, television can actually help to promote literature. When a book is dramatized on television, its sales often rocket. The most spectacular example of this occurred in the late 1960s. The Forsyte Saga, a series of novels by John Galsworthy, had been out of print for several decades. When an adaptation was shown on the BBC, half a million copies of the books were sold!

Thousands of new books are published every year, including literary fiction and poetry. Novels and stories by British writers and writers in English are constantly discussed in the review sections of our national papers and on the BBC.

The British Library (the national library of the UK) has about 14 million volumes, occupying 320 kilometres of shelf space. At present, the library must house a copy of every book published in the country. This obligation, however, will probably disappear in the future. It is just too difficult to organize. By 1993, its collection was expanding at the rate of 150 centimetres of books per hour. It possesses more than 6,000 different editions of Shakespeare’s plays and more than 100 different editions of most novels by Charles Dickens. The result of all this is that it can take up to two days to find a particular book!

Today in Britain, there is a new cultural phenomenon called “reading groups”. Such groups are usually started by enthusiasts who think, “Why not?” and begin to contact other people in order to read and then discuss books together. These groups of friends or acquaintances meet once a month to discuss a book that they have all agreed to read beforehand. Now there are at least 60,000 of these groups whose members meet in the evenings, at the weekends, or perhaps on a weekday afternoon because reading is really important to them.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is probably the greatest of all English writers. His ability to capture and convey the most profound aspects of human nature is regarded by many as unequalled, and the English Renaissance has often been called “the age of Shakespeare”. He was among the few playwrights who have excelled in both tragedy and comedy. He wrote 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and several poems.

Shakespeare wrote between 1588 and 1613, although the exact dates and chronology of the plays attributed to him are often uncertain. His contribution to English Literature is magnified still further by the fact that he only lived to be 52.

Shakespeare is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with the introduction of nearly 3,000 words into the language. His vocabulary in his works, numbers upward of 17,000 words, is four times larger that of an average, well-educated conversationalist in the language. In addition, he introduced a huge number of idioms and set phrases, many of which are still familiar today (e. g. “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse”, “Love is blind”, “All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players”, “All’s well that ends well”, “Too much of a good thing”, “Much ado about nothing”, “To be, or not to be, that is the question”, etc).

Shakespeare’s plays are usually divided into three major categories. These are comedy and romance (11 works), tragedy (17), and history (10).

Most historians agree that William Shakespeare – actor, playwright and poet – was a single person, the life and work of whom there is considerable historical evidence. There is also a large number of conspiracy theories that claim Shakespeare was a collective of authors, another person entirely or even Queen Elizabeth I herself. These have been formed as it is difficult to imagine how one man could have written so much of such quality.

Shakespeare retired in about 1611. He is buried in Holy Trinity Church in his native town, Stratford-upon-Avon. His grave carries his well-known epitaph:

Good friend for Jesus sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blest be the man that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones. Друг, ради Господа, не рой Останков, взятых сей землёй; Нетронувший блажен в веках, И проклят – тронувший мой прах.

Popular legend claims that unpublished works by Shakespeare may lie inside his tomb, but no one has ever verified these claims, perhaps for fear of the curse included in the quoted epitaph.

Another very popular English writer is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973), who wanted to be known as JRR. He worked as a professor of Anglo-Saxon and a professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford. Besides, he was an eminently distinguished lexicographer and an expert in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse. But JRR is best known as the author of the classic fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

In a survey The Big Read by the BBC in 2003, The Lord of the Rings was voted as Britain’s best-loved novel and the three Hollywood films based on this book have become the favourite of many cinema viewers.

But even The Lord of the Rings cannot compare with the literary phenomenon that is the Harry Potter series, the magical adventures that have entertained millions of children (and a fair few adults too) over the last decade. Since the release of the first novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on 30 June 1997, the books have gained immense popularity, critical acclaim and commercial success worldwide. As of June 2011, the book series has sold about 450 million copies, making it the best-selling book series in history, and has been translated into 67 languages. The last four books set records as the fastest-selling books in history. The author of these books, Joanne Rowling (born in 1965), has already become one the richest women in Britain.

Other English authors. The first great individual in English literature, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote “The Canterbury Tales” in the 1370s, a popular work of the period which readers still enjoy today. John Milton (“Paradise Lost”) and John Dryden (“Marriage a la Mode”) were major writers of the 17th century. Jonathan Swift wrote “Gulliver’s Travels” in 1726 and John Brinsley Sheridan wrote many plays in the same era, including two clever comedies of manners, “The Rivals” (1775) and “The School for Scandal” (1777).

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were the first important English romantic poets, followed by Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats.

Jane Austen is still many people’s favourite author today and her works, including “Pride and Prejudice” (1813) and “Emma” (1816) are known for their independence and wit. Jane Austen was only beaten by JRR Tolkien in the 2003 BBC survey to choose Britain’s favourite books.

The novels of Charles Dickens are noted for their colourful characters. In “Oliver Twist” (1837-1839) and “David Copperfield” (1849-1850), Dickens described the lives of children made miserable by cruel or thoughtless adults.

The novels of the three Brontë sisters – Emily, Charlotte, and Anne – have many romantic elements and are known especially for their psychologically tormented heroes and heroines. Critics rank Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” (1847) and Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” (1847) among the greatest works of Victorian fiction. From the late Victorian era, George Elliot, Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling remain popular today.

In the early 20th century, HG Wells, John Galsworthy and Virginia Woolf are regarded most highly and after the war, Graham Greene, George Orwell, Doris Lessing and William Golding are thought to be the most significant before today’s contemporary authors. Other than Joanne Rowling, it is extremely difficult to say who of those writing today will enter history.

Scotland has produced many of the world’s great authors and poets, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Burns. Although Joanne Rowling is English, she lives in Edinburgh, as do many of the best British writers, including Ian Banks and Ian Rankin. In 2004, UNESCO started City of Literature programme in order to promote the social, economic and cultural development of cities in the world. Edinburgh was named the world’s first City of Literature. It’s no wonder that Edinburgh was titled as a world centre for literature and literary activity because the city contains fantastic libraries, bookshops and places of literary significance.

Robert Burns (1759–1796) is undoubtedly the best known Scottish poet. His poem Auld Lang Syne is often sung at New Year’s Eve (or Hogmanay) all over the world.

Born in Alloway, Ayrshire to a poor farming family, his parents made sure that he was well educated as a child. In 1783 he started composing poetry in a traditional style using the Ayrshire dialect of Scots. These poems were well received locally and in 1786 they were published in the volume, “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect”.

This volume made him famous in Scotland overnight and as a result he spent several years in Edinburgh fashionable society. However the fame was not accompanied by money and he found it necessary to return to farming. However that too proved unprofitable and in 1789 he entered government service working for the Customs and Excise service.

He died at the age of 37 as a result of a weak heart brought on by years of poor working conditions on the farm dating back to his childhood. Within a short time of his death, money started pouring in from all over Scotland to support his widow and children. His memory is celebrated by Burns clubs across the world; his birthday is an unofficial “National Day”" for Scots and those with Scottish ancestry, celebrated with Burns suppers.

 

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