Hledejte v chronologicky řazené databázi studijních materiálů (starší / novější příspěvky).

English and American Literature

(famous English and American authors, your favourite author – life, works, style of writing, plots, settings)

1) My favourite author – Isaac Asimov
•    born in 1920 in Petrovichi, Russia
•    in 1923 emigrated to New York, USA
•    1934 first story
•    studies at Columbia University, biology and chemistry
•    1939 first professional story in Amazing Stories
•    died in 1992
•    short stories about robots: Robbie, Reason, Lair!, Runaround, Evidence, Little Lost Robot, The Bicentennial Man – published in collection I, Robot
•    novels about robots: The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Drawn, Robots and Empire
•    famous Laws of Robotics (from Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot)
1.    A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2.    A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the 1st Law.
3.    A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the 1st or 2nd Law.
•    1951-53 famous trilogy Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation (describes “future history” of galactic empire), in 1966 Best All-time Novel Series Hugo Award, then additional 4 parts
•    novels The Gods Themselves, The End of Eternity, series of novels about Lucky Starr
•    1989 Nemesis; story for film Fantastic Voyage
•    influenced by Karel Capek’s RUR, a lot of Hugo and Nebula awards, author of words “robotics”, “positronic”, “psychohistory”

2) English Literature
•    oldest epic poem The Song of Beowulf, form Anglo-Saxon period
•    religious literature by John Wycliff, influenced John Huss
•    Middle Ages: Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century, Canterbury Tales – about pilgrims on their way to Canterbury)
•    Renaissance (without William Shakespeare)
o    Sir Thomas More (philosopher, Utopia)
o    Christopher Marlowe (The Tragical history of Doctor Faust – inspiration for Goethe)
•    Baroque: John Milton (Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained)
•    Enlightenment
o    Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels)
o    Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe)
•    Romanism
o    Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe, Rob Roy)
o    George Gordon Byron (Child Harold’s Pilgrimage)
o    Percy Bysshe Shelley (Prometheus Unbound; his wife, Mary Shelley, wrote Frankenstein)
•    Victorian age: Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Papers of the Pickwick Club, Christmas stories)
•    1st half of 20th century
o    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (detective stories with Sherlock Holmes)
o    Agatha Christie (detective stories with Hercule Poirot)
o    Herbert George Wells (The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine)
o    George Bernard Shaw (Pygmalion – My Fair Lady)
•    2nd half of 20th century (“Angry Young Men”)
o    John Osborne (Look Back in Anger)
o    Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim)

3) American Literature
•    19th century
o    Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tow Sawyer)
o    Edgar Allan Poe (Murder in the Morgue Street, poem The Raven)
o    Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
•    prose in 20th century (without Ernest Hemingway): William Faulkner, John Steinbeck
•    poetry in 20th century: Allen Ginsberg (Howl)

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