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[English Version] Shaw, George Bernard (26.7.1856 Dublin – 2.11.1950 Ayot St. Lawrence), bedeutendster engl. Dramatiker der Moderne irisch-prot. Herkunft, Theaterkritiker, Sozialist und Kritiker der viktorianischen Gesellschaft, die er mit Spott und Ironie in seinen Werken bedenkt. Sh. ist Vertreter eines rationalistischen Optimismus, aus dessen Sicht er menschliche und gesellschaftliche Maßstäbe nüchtern prüft, um sie gleichsam wie ein Reformator zu verbessern. Er lehnt Darwinismus und Determinismu…

[German Version] (Oct 2, 1904, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England – Apr 3, 1991, Vevey, Switzerland), English author, correspondent for The Times and cultural critic who converted to Catholicism in 1925 and was the leading exponent of the Anglo-Catholic novel, and so of the imaginative analysis of the conditio humana in borderline situations and from the perspective of the central convictions of the faith. The so-called Catholic novels were influenced by the ideas of the renouveau catholique, Catholic existentialism (Existentialism [philosophy]) and grace in a world of evil: Bri…

[German Version] (Dec 4, 1795, Ecclefechan, Scotland – Feb 5, 1881, London), critic of contemporary civilization and literary figure of tremendous reputation, the most important representative of idealistic (Idealism) thinking of the 19th century in England, influenced by Puritanism (Puritans/Puritanism), who protested against utilitarianism, materialism, the predatory competition of the industrial age and the general lack of intellectual culture in humank…

[German Version] (c. 1340, London – Oct 25, 1400, London), diplomat, civil servant and author from the London upper middle class. In his works, medieval English literature reached its apex. His work divides into the early French, the Italian and finally the native English phases of creativity as a synthesis of all these literary tendencies and influences. He established the idealistic courtly love lyricism of France in England (translator of the Roman de la rose ) and embraced the spirit of the early Italian Renaissance (F. Petrarca, Boccaccio). In Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385f.), he…

[German Version] (Sep 19, 1911, St. Columb Minor, Cornwall – Jun 19, 1993, Perranarworthal, Cornwall), English writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. His work lends mythical and symbolic expression to his conviction that humanity, having incurred guilt through the fall, is characterized by a capacity for evil and that evil has since then represented its moral constant. Human courses of action and ways of thinking conceal irrational drives ( Lord of the Flies, 1955). The transition from innocence to sin unleashes evil ( The Inheritors, 1955); according to Free Fall (…

[German Version] (pseudonym for Mary A. Evans; Nov 22, 1819, Nuneaton – Dec 22, 1880, London), a leading English novelist in her time, with an educated and philosophical intellect that led her, after a strict, conservative rearing in the spirit of evangelicalism, to skepticism and, by translating D.F. Strauß's Leben Jesu (1835; Evans's ET: The Life of Jesus, 1855) and L. Feuerbach's Das Wesen des Christentums (1841; Evans's ET: The Essence of Christianity, 1854), to agnosticism. The ethical rigor and the heavy emphasis on social and personal …

[German Version] (Jan [Feb?] 22, 1572, London – Mar 31, 1631, London) was a leading representative of early English Baroque in lyric poetry and a theological view ¶ of the world. Coming from a Catholic family, he converted to the Anglican faith, conducted many studies in natural sciences and theology, became a clergyman in 1615, dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London in 1621, and was the most famous preacher of his time (Sermons 1640, 1649 and 1660 in 3 vols.). Donne is the chief representative of the so-called metaphysical poets of the 16th and 17th centuries and master of the concetto techniqu…

[German Version] (Jul 26, 1856, Dublin – Nov 2, 1950, Ayot St. Lawrence), the most important English playwright of modern times, of Irish Protestant background, theater critic, socialist, and critic of Victorian society, which he treated with mockery and irony in his works. Shaw championed a rationalistic optimism, a perspective from which he unemotionally examined the standards of humanity and society in order to improve them as a kind of reformer. He rejected Darwinism and determinism; under the…

[German Version] (Nov 15, 1731, Great Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire – Apr 25, 1800, East Dereham, Norfolk), English pre-Romantic poet of great sensitivity, inclined to melancholy. His poems show a new, subjective and lyrical ability of expression in his representation of nature, its God-given soul and the influence of both on personal human development. In this regard Cowper paved the way for Robert Burns and W. Wordsworth. Tossed about between awareness of …