British society, culture and literature

The course is divided into two units:
a) British Literature
b) British Society and Culture
British Literature: The course touches upon selected events in the history of Britain and focuses on the following periods and authors: Old English Literature (Caedmon, Bede, Beowulf), Middle English Period (Geoffrey Chaucer), Elizabethan and Jacobean drama (Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare); The Metaphysical Poets; John Milton; Restoration drama (William Congreve); English Classicism (Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding); English Romantic Poets (Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats); selected novels of the early 19th century (Austen, Scott); The Victorian Novel (Dickens, Thackeray, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy); Victorian poetry and drama (Tennyson, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Arnold, Hopkins).
British Society and Culture: Britain and Britishness, stereotypes; the nations of Britain (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, England), English identity; 20th century history; post-colonialism and multicultural Britain; the political system: parliament, the electoral system, government, the monarchy; and judicial system, the legal profession, the police; education: values, the educational system, the curriculum, university; religion, the Church of England, world religions; the media, sport and the arts; home, family, social differences, daily life, leisure, food and drink.